Starting Points: Turkey

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Jun 1, 2010

Israel says Free Gaza Movement poses threat to Jewish state

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 1, 2010; A06

Once viewed only as a political nuisance by Israel's government, the group behind the Gaza aid flotilla has grown since its inception four years ago into a broad international movement that now includes Islamist organizations that Israeli intelligence agencies say pose a security threat to the Jewish state.

The Free Gaza Movement's evolution is among Israel's chief reasons for conducting Monday morning's raid on a ship carrying medicine, construction materials, school paper and parts for Gaza's defunct water treatment plant. The movement once drew its support almost entirely from activists and donors in Australia, Britain and the United States. But the ship that Israeli forces stormed Monday morning was operated by a Turkish charity that Israeli intelligence agencies and others contend has connections to radical Islamist groups. The raid left nine activists dead, and at least eight U.S. citizens in Israeli custody.

The movement's leadership rejects Israeli claims of an Islamist takeover.

"That's absolutely ridiculous," said Ramzi Kysia, who sits on the board of the U.S. arm of the Free Gaza Movement. "There's always been an expectation that Israel would try to set an example with one of these flotillas. But the fact that they did so in this way is absolutely insane. The Israeli government is out of control."

Itamar Rabinovich, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington, said there was a "qualitative change" to this Gaza aid mission compared with earlier ones that Israel's navy had let pass. He said the group on the Mavi Marmara vessel was "a front for a radical Islamist organization, probably with links to the ruling party in Turkey," which less hawkish Israeli governments than the current one have pointed to as a model of appropriate Islamist rule. He called the aid mission a provocation.

"And we walked right into the trap," Rabinovich said.

Israel's government has long divided Palestinian advocacy groups into two camps -- those run by Israelis and Palestinians, and those headed by foreigners. The two often overlap in terms of financial support, but they act at times toward different ends.

Many of the Israeli and Palestinian-run groups focus on chipping away at the legal framework underpinning Israel's occupation of the territories it seized in the 1967 war. The work does not always make headlines outside the region, which is a chief goal of the Free Gaza Movement and other international groups that seek to draw attention to the Palestinian national cause.

"One of our goals is to bring in actual materials," said Adam Shapiro, a Free Gaza Movement board member whose wife, Huwaida Arraf, was aboard one of the boats seized before dawn Monday. "But there's also a political component. The blockade is a form of collective punishment, and nearly everyone talks about how it shouldn't be in place but never does anything about it. We're showing you must act."

The Israeli government largely sealed off the Gaza Strip when it withdrew its soldiers and settlements from the narrow coastal area in summer 2005.

A 2006 election victory by Hamas, an armed Islamist movement formally known as the Islamic Resistance Movement that does not recognize Israel's right to exist, followed by a purging of the rival Fatah a year later gave Hamas day-to-day power over Gaza. The group, and other militant factions, used the territory to launch rocket attacks on southern Israel. The Israeli government hoped a siege would keep weapons out of Gaza and create public antipathy toward the Hamas-run government. The United Nations has criticized the blockade for causing a humanitarian crisis in the strip, where 1.5 million people live, most of them destitute refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendants.

Kysia said the group initially set summer 2007 as the date for running the Gaza blockade. But money and volunteers were scarce until the movement began to recruit through the International Solidarity Movement, whose foreign activists often work inside the Palestinian territories. "We maxed out our credit cards, emptied our bank accounts and jumped off a cliff," Kysia said.

By summer 2008, the group had bought two fishing boats, and the Israeli government let them dock in Gaza five times that year. The boats carried medicine, food, school and construction materials, and other non-military items, as well as human rights activists and lawmakers from Europe and Turkey. On one occasion, the boats carried out Palestinian students who had won scholarships to study abroad but had been unable to secure Israeli travel documents.

Then in late 2008, when Israel began "Operation Cast Lead" in Gaza to put down Hamas rocket fire, the Israeli navy turned back a flotilla carrying medical supplies. The group tried again in January and June 2009, when the Israeli military seized the ship and detained those aboard for as long as eight days.

Among them was Máiread Corrigan-Maguire, a Northern Ireland peace activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976. Corrigan-Maguire was scheduled to travel on the flotilla Sunday night. But Kysia said the cargo ship she was supposed to sail on had mechanical problems and did not leave port. Among the Americans onboard was Edward L. Peck, a retired U.S. diplomat who once served as chief of mission in Iraq.

Israel has been concerned about the participation of IHH, or Humanitarian Relief Fund, a large Turkish charity that raises some of its money from Islamic religious groups. Kysia compared IHH to the U.S. charity CARE, which relies in part on donations from Christian organizations.

"Just because the IHH affiliation is with Islam and not Christianity does not mean they are terrorists," Kysia said.

But an Israeli military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said: "It was called a 'ship of peace,' but they were carrying cargo for war."

The official conceded that "we should've been a little smarter about how to stop them."

Staff writer Laura Blumenfeld contributed to this report.

May 31, 2010

Turks march against Israeli attack

Israeli security forces fired tear gas at protesters in the occupied West Bank [AFP]

Thousands of people have taken to the streets in the Turkish city of Istanbul and around the world to denounce Israel over its attack on the convoy of Gaza-bound aid ships that left at least 19 people dead.

Around 10,000 people marched from the Israeli consulate in Istanbul towards the city's main square shouting slogans and waving banners saying "Killer Israel".

Bulent Arinc, Turkey's deputy prime minister, said there were up to 400 Turks among those aboard the Mavi Maramara, the Turkish cruise vessel which was leading the so-called Freedom Flotilla.

Other demonstrations denouncing the Israeli raid have been held in many cities around the world, including the capitals of Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and the UK.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank clashed with Israeli security forces who responded with tear gas, injuring many people.

An emergency session of the United Nations Security Council is under way to discuss the matter.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, condemned Israel's actions and called for an investigation.

European anger

Pro-Palestinian campaigners marching in London spoke of their fears about the fate of British citizens aboard the flotilla.

Several hundreds activists blocked Whitehall, the main administrative area for the UK government, shouting "Free Palestine" and carrying flags and banners with slogans such as "Stop Israel's War Crimes in Gaza" and "End the Criminal Siege of Gaza".

Hundreds of protesters marched in London against the Israeli raid [Jacqueline Head]

Kate Hudson, chairwoman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), who joined the demonstration, said: "Obviously we have great support for the humanitarian convoy which has gone there to try and bring relief to the people in Gaza.

"It is devastating and deplorable that the Israeli forces have attacked civilians on the flotilla.

"We have close friends on the boat on which people were killed and we are here waiting for news.

"We are trying to get through to them but we are not getting any answers."

Turkey, Egypt, Cyprus, Spain, Greece, Denmark and Sweden have all summoned the Israeli ambassadors in their respective countries to protest against the assault.

Greek police fired tear gas at demonstrators protesting outside the Israeli embassy in Athens after about 2,500 protesters rallied outside the building, chanting "Hands off Gaza".

In Paris, hundreds of protesters also clashed with police after charging at the Israeli embassy.

Police responded by firing tear gas, and some officers used police batons to beat back protesters.

Paris police headquarters said about 1,200 people had joined the demonstration.

Consulate stormed

Earlier on Monday, protesters in Istanbul attempted to storm the consulate, scaling over the compound's walls, but were blocked from going further by police.


	Live updates: Israel's flotilla raid
	Gallery: Protests around the world

Protests also took place in Ankara, the Turkish capital.

A charity in Turkey has said most of those killed in the raid on six ships in international waters were Turkish nationals.

Israel has advised its citizens to avoid travel to Turkey and instructed those already there to keep a low profile and avoid crowded downtown areas.

Arinc said that the nation would be cancelling three joint military exercises and recalling a youth football team from Israel.

Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Istanbul, said relations between Israel and Turkey have deteriorated since Israel's recent war on Gaza.

"Up until that point they had ... a constructive military alliance and for many years they saw the issue of domestic terrorism as one they had to share information about," she said.

"But since the Gaza war relations have nose-dived and it would be absolutely fair to say that this is the lowest point."

International condemnation

Israeli forces stormed the flotilla, which was carrying 700 pro-Palestinian activists and 10,000 tonnes of aid, while they were 65km off the Gaza coast in international waters.

people on board


	Two Palestinian's who are also members of Israeli parliament
	Swedish author Henning Mankell (unharmed according to the Swedish foreign ministry)
	Nobel peace prize laureate Mairead Maguire
	Aengus Snodaigh, member of the Irish parliament
	Irish writer and historian Fintan Lane
	Three German parliamentarians

The action has brought widespread condemnation, with the EU foreign affairs chief demanding that Israeli authorities mount a "full inquiry" into the attack.

Catherine Ashton also reiterated a longstanding demand for "an immediate, sustained and unconditional opening of the crossings for the flow of humanitarian aid, commercial goods and persons to and from Gaza," a spokesman said.

France and the UN's Middle East envoy have also condemned the attack, while Greece suspended a military exercise with Israel and postponed a visit by Israel's air force chief.

There are about 700 activists on board the flotilla, included people from the US, Britain, Australia, Greece, Canada, Malaysia, Algeria, Serbia, Belgium, Ireland, Norway, Sweden and Kuwait.

The majority of people on the ships are from Turkey.

Apr 30, 2010

Kemalism Is Dead, Long Live Kemalism

Image via Wikipedia

How the AKP Became Ataturk’s Last Defender

Dariush Zahedi and Gokhan Bacik
DARIUSH ZAHEDI is a Research Fellow at the Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and currently teaches at Zirve University, in Turkey. GOKHAN BACIK is Associate Professor of International Relations at Zirve University and a contributor to Zaman and Today’s Zaman.

In both Turkey and the West, Kemalism -- the principle that Turkey should be secular and Western -- has been pronounced dead. The country is drifting away from both, the argument goes, and Islamists, led by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP), are socially and politically aligning the country with the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East.

Turkey’s domestic and foreign politics are indeed transforming. In the ongoing Ergenekon trial, state prosecutors, encouraged by AKP officials, are indicting a group of alleged Kemalist academics, journalists, officers, and politicians (accusing them of plotting to overthrow the government) in order to purge them from public institutions. Meanwhile, a growing AKP-aligned religious bourgeoisie is starting to dominate various sectors, including energy, finance, manufacturing, and the media. Trade unions and professional associations, such as the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, are also increasingly under the sway of the AKP. And in terms of foreign policy, Turkey is pursuing ties with Iran and Syria while putting some distance between itself and its old allies in the region, such as Israel.

But in reality, most of the AKP’s policies are not incompatible with Kemalism. Indeed, the irony of Turkey today is that the AKP -- a religiously rooted, conservative political party -- has become the closest thing the country has to a defender of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkey’s original Kemalist vision.s

For the last several decades, military Kemalism has been the organizing principle of Turkish politics, with a small group of military officials (along with a few bureaucratic and judicial representatives) responsible for guarding European values in Turkish society. But the military’s dominance has always been a distortion of Ataturk’s idea of Kemalism. Beginning in the 1920s, a few years before the declaration of the Republic of Turkey, the leaders of the Kemalist movement were adamant that the new state should embrace European social, economic, and political practices. Recognizing that Turkish society was still a long way from achieving secular modernity, they urged a period of tutelage during which the government would lay the socioeconomic and cultural foundations needed for transformation, such as modern infrastructure, better provision of social services, Western legal codes, a cadre of economic technocrats, and a reorganized educational system.

The military was never meant to lead this process. Ataturk, who had been a general in the Ottoman army and a field marshal in the Turkish army, set aside his military fatigues upon assuming the role of head of state in 1923. He removed other military officers from political posts, promoted civilian control of the armed forces, and cautioned the military against intervening in political affairs. He gave responsibility for developing the public’s understanding of liberal, Western values to politicians, civil servants, schoolteachers, journalists, and public intellectuals. Finally, he encouraged the country to adopt modern, liberal economics, though the worldwide depression of the 1930s forced him to resort to state control of the economy.

Elite guardianship over the country’s political and economic systems was to be temporary, lasting only until the bulk of the people had embraced modern norms and institutions. Thereafter, the guardians would relinquish their control over the economy, institute multiparty elections, and extend greater rights to the citizenry.

In 1938, Ataturk died and Ismet Inonu, who had served as prime minister until Ataturk removed him shortly before his death, became president. It was during Inonu’s 12-year, increasingly autocratic rule that civilian Kemalism warped into military Kemalism. Inonu relied on the military (which had supported his bid for the presidency) to implement his policies. Even after he was voted out of office in 1950, the military remained the most powerful actor in the Kemalist establishment. The Cold War only perpetuated this distortion: in exchange for Turkey’s alignment with the Western bloc, the United States gave its support to an increasingly strong military, which, in 1960, carried out the first of three Cold War–era military coups and brought Inonu back to power.

At the end of the Cold War, with communism no longer a threat, Turkish military rulers shifted their sights to creeping Islamization. Beginning in the 1990s, they sought to use the army’s status as the protector of secular Kemalism to justify its continued dominance in Turkish politics. In 1997, they forced the elected government to resign, purportedly because it was pursuing an Islamic agenda. Working with allies in the judiciary and bureaucracy, they banned Islamic political parties, jailed their leaders, and expelled suspected members from government posts. The media, which was supportive of military Kemalism, hailed their actions.

But the military’s claim that it is the protector of Kemalist values is increasingly falling on deaf ears. Many of the AKP’s policies represent an actual fulfillment of Ataturk’s notion of Kemalism. Western values are no longer abstract; they are codified in the Copenhagen criteria for EU accession. The AKP has tried to institutionalize civil liberties, improve minority rights by ending martial law in Kurdish regions, promote civilian control of the military, and further develop the free market.

The emerging industrial, commercial, and financial bourgeoisie, most of which is linked to the AKP, in effect accomplishes Ataturk’s grand historical vision. This rising middle class no longer wants (or needs) to be treated like an adolescent in need of supervision. It willingly embraces democracy, participation in civil society, and the market. It yearns to be a part of the modern world and -- if allowed -- would want to become a member of the European Union.

Rather than being apprehensive about the AKP and its political, economic, and foreign policies, the West should welcome it. A democratic, market-oriented, prosperous, and stable Turkey, at ease with its Islamic identity and at peace with its neighbors, will prove to be a more natural ally than a military Kemalist state. It will also be better positioned to promote Western interests. A Turkey that is respected and trusted by its neighbors can serve as a broker between, for example, Iran and the West, Israel and Palestine, and Israel and Syria.

This is not to suggest that the AKP is completely benign. Indeed, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s frequent attempts at silencing dissent in the media are worrisome and should be countered.

In time, however, the rise of a middle class will be the most effective guarantee that Turkey will continue its route to secular, Western democracy. Although much of the emerging pious bourgeoisie is closely linked with -- even dependent on -- the AKP, this class will shun extremist policies that endanger its economic interests, even as it continues to embrace moderate Islam. Eventually, the AKP and parties like it may play a role akin to that of the Christian democratic parties of Western Europe.

Finally, those who worry that the AKP’s already lengthy tenure appears set to continue, thereby affording it the opportunity to erode Turkey’s secular foundations further, should recognize that the opposition’s prospects would improve if it embraced some of the more liberal tenets of the AKP’s political platform, such as market reform, civilian control of the military, and the extension of greater cultural rights to the Kurdish minority. But rather than dividing the AKP’s base among its intellectual, religious, entrepreneurial, and Kurdish components by championing progressive causes, the opposition parties have so far opted for reflexive opposition dismissal to its religious platform and bemoaned the end of Kemalism.

Apr 8, 2010

Turkey hopes to grow economic ties and influence within Middle East

Image by blhphotography via Flickr

By Janine Zacharia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 8, 2010; A11

GAZIANTEP, TURKEY -- Since Turkey and Syria eliminated border restrictions several months ago, the crowds of Syrians at the glittering Sanko Park Mall in this southeastern Turkish city have grown tenfold. Exports from Gaziantep to Syria are booming, and rich Turkish businessmen are stepping up their investments across the border.

"There's no difference between Turks and Syrians," said Olfat Ibrahim, a 35-year-old Syrian construction engineer with bags of goods in hand. She said she has stepped up her visits across the border since the lifting of visa requirements. "Syria is Turkey.''

The thriving trade is a sign of Turkey's rising influence with Syria, part of its effort to reach out to neighboring countries to build economic ties it hopes will also stabilize political relationships and expand its influence in the region. Those efforts, which include business ventures with Iran, illustrate to some extent how futile U.S. efforts to isolate those countries with sanctions have become. They've also raised concerns in Washington and in Israel about whether this key Muslim member of NATO is undergoing a fundamental realignment.

Turkey's efforts, however, seem as much about economic expansion as they do about foreign policy, with an aggressive strategy of seeking new markets for Turkish businessmen, many of them backers of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party.

Image by huntz via Flickr

"We want to have an economic interdependency between Turkey and neighbors and between different countries in these regions. If you have an economic interdependency, this is the best way to prevent any crisis," said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

The push has included an effort to broker a resumption of Syrian-Israeli peace talks, easing tensions between Syria and Saudi Arabia -- the main power brokers in Lebanon -- to help avert a political crisis there, and trying to mediate an end to the West's dispute with Iran over its nuclear program.

With wealth garnered in emerging markets and growing self-confidence as a new member of the G-20, Turkey is reaching out as much to former European enemies, such as Greece, as to its Muslim neighbors. In the past year and a half, Davutoglu and his predecessor made roughly twice as many trips to Europe as they did to the Middle East. A Turk serves as president of the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly as well as the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

To some analysts, Erdogan doesn't seem as much of an ideologue as a pragmatic capitalist trying to make money and create markets. When he visited Tehran in October, he described the Iranian nuclear program as "peaceful,'' causing U.S. officials to bristle. Less noticed was Erdogan's push for a free-trade agreement.

Accompanying the Turkish leader on the trip was Rizanur Meral, chief executive of Sanko Holding's Automotive Group and president of TUSKON, a Turkish business association representing 50,000 small and medium-size Turkish companies.

Business leaders are playing an important role in Turkey's foreign policy, serving as unofficial ambassadors and advisers. Syrian businessmen in Gaziantep pushed for the relaxation of the visa requirements. When President Abdullah Gul visited Cameroon last month to sign a free-trade accord and open a new embassy, he was accompanied by three cabinet ministers, four members of parliament -- and 147 businessmen. Erdogan took similar-size delegations to India, Iran and Libya.

"The business consideration is very important for this government," said Ismail Hakki Kisacik, general coordinator of Turkey's Taha Group, which controls the country's largest clothing chain and joined government officials on the recent Africa trip. "If you're developing your business with countries, it means your relations improve.''

The United States may be an exception.

Washington's relations with Turkey took on a sour tone in February when the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution calling Turkey's killing of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 "genocide." Turkey recalled its ambassador, Namik Tan. The Obama administration has insisted that it does not support the panel's move.

Over the past year, U.S. officials have shown muted tolerance toward Turkey's outreach to Syria and outright disapproval of Turkey's rhetoric on Iran. The United States has openly chastised Turkey -- which is heavily dependent on Iranian-supplied energy sources -- for undercutting the U.S. push to isolate Iran internationally over its nuclear program.

"It seems, to me at least, that Turkey is contemplating a fundamental realignment,'' said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds U.S. foreign policy initiatives.

Phil Gordon, the assistant secretary of state for Europe, said recently that the United States doesn't necessarily believe that Turkey is turning away from its Western allies. He said Turkey's move to improve relations with its neighbors was understandable, but warned that that effort "should not be pursued uncritically or at any price," especially at the expense of its relationship with Israel.

Relations between Israel and Turkey were good until Israel launched a military offensive in the Gaza Strip in December 2008. Erdogan's popularity soared after he lectured Israeli President Shimon Peres about the attacks in January last year.

His criticism, which has continued, contributes "negatively to the way Israel is perceived in Turkey," said an Israeli diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of relations between the two nations. "It's not clear which direction Erdogan is taking Turkey."

But to Turkish officials, the direction is obvious. As their nation has grown economically, it is only natural for Turkey seek a bigger role in global affairs.

Turkey, meanwhile, is also looking to export some of its cultural influence. In recent years, the country has had about 30 television shows broadcast across the Arab world.

Kivanc Tatlitug, a popular soap opera star, has been so effective at promoting Turkey's interests and tourism in the region that during Foreign Minister Davutoglu's recent visit to Bulgaria, "there was a question whether Turkey, as a government, is promoting these series as propaganda,"' Davutoglu said.

It is, he said, one thing the government is not doing.

Apr 2, 2010

In Turkey, Proposed Changes Aim at Old Guard - NYTimes.com

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan via last.fm

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and SEBNEM ARSU

Turkey’s governing party moved this week to further reduce the power of the country’s staunchly secular old guard, submitting a series of amendments to Turkey’s military coup-era 1982 constitution, but passage is far from assured.

A number of the 26 amendments, if passed, would strike at a center of power for the old elite, the judiciary, by opening up its appointment process and expanding its membership.

For generations, Turkey’s judiciary has been controlled by a small class of hard-line secularists with a nationalist ideology, and the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, has long urged that it be changed. The amendments require 367 votes out of 550 to become law, more than the governing party has. At the same time, the secular opposition party is having trouble gathering the 110 votes needed to kill the package in the Constitutional Court.

Some liberals criticized the measures for falling short of what is needed for deeper democracy in Turkey, while opponents of the party, Justice and Development, say the amendments are an effort by its leader, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to consolidate his power. But supporters say the changes would start to bring Turkey in line with European countries.

“When you actually look at what the amendments propose, you see that all changes are copied from examples that function quite well in E.U. member states,” said Joost Lagendijk, senior adviser at the Istanbul Policy Center at Sabanci University and a former European Parliament member.

The current constitution, which enshrines Turkey’s secular mandate, has been amended several times since it was put in place, and most Turkish intellectuals argue that it should be scrapped entirely.

But Mr. Erdogan’s past efforts to change it have met with ferocious criticism. His party commissioned a new draft in 2008, which was written largely by a group of intellectuals, but was forced to scrap it after the secular opposition party filed suit against Justice and Development, which is Islamic-inspired, and a high court threatened to ban the party.

The government argues that the changes as necessary to break away from a troubled past of military coups and strong control of the state by a small coterie of unelected officials in the bureaucracy and the judiciary. Critics of the newly proposed amendments fear that the key changes — the way appointments are made to the constitutional court, the main watchdog of secularism in Turkey, and to the Senior Council of Judges and Prosecutors, responsible for judicial appointments and monitoring court officials — would damage Turkey’s founding principles. They do not trust Mr. Erdogan, whose party arose from a class of Muslim entrepreneurs that upper class secular Turks long looked down upon.

“The secular democratic state in Turkey is in danger,” said Sabih Kanadoglu, the chief prosecutor of the Court of Appeals, another powerful court.

Other changes include trying military officers in civilian courts and making it harder to ban political parties.

If Mr. Erdogan fails to pass the changes in Parliament, he has said he would bring them to a nationwide referendum, though some have criticized that approach as too black-and-white for the complexity of the amendments.

The disagreement follows a long-running divide in Turkish society between the broad sector of society that supports Justice and Development and secular Turks, who believe Mr. Erdogan is dismantling the old system to establish a new one that empowers him.

At the same time, liberals who were hoping for bolder change expressed disappointment. One of the principle authors of the 2008 draft, Ergun Ozbudun, a professor of law at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey’s capital, noted that the amendments offered no concessions to ethnic or religious groups, for example, whose rights in Turkey have been routinely abused.

“The desire deep in their hearts was probably to go more courageously,” he said by telephone, “but they are maybe afraid of the opposition and constitutional court.”

Nor do the amendments lower the steep 10 percent threshold that political parties must meet to claim seats in Parliament, which keeps out smaller political parties, including those that represent ethnic groups such as Kurds, out of Parliament one of the liberals’ central demands.

Ibrahim Kaboglu, a professor of constitutional law at Istanbul’s Marmara University, said the changes would expand the president’s powers, for example by allowing him to choose more members of the constitutional court, and he said he worried that the court, a bastion of secular resistance, would soon be packed with Mr. Erdogan’s allies.

“They seem to be in a rush to fill both institutions with judges and members who are closer to their political line to secure their future,” he said, referring to the Constitutional Court and the Senior Council.

Mar 4, 2010

House Panel Says Deaths of Armenians Were Genocide

Image by 517design via Flickr

By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted narrowly on Thursday to condemn as genocide the mass killings of Armenians early in the last century, defying a last-minute plea from the Obama administration to forgo a vote that seemed sure to offend Turkey and jeopardize delicate efforts at Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.

The vote on the nonbinding resolution, a perennial point of friction addressing a dark, century-old chapter of Turkish history, was 23 to 22. A similar resolution passed by a slightly wider margin in 2007, but the Bush administration, fearful of losing Turkish cooperation over Iraq, lobbied forcefully to keep it from reaching the House floor. Whether this resolution will reach a floor vote remains unclear.

In Ankara, the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately issued a sharp rebuke. “We condemn this bill that denounces the Turkish nation of a crime that it has not committed,” the statement said. Ambassador Namik Tan, who had only weeks ago taken up his post in Washington, has been recalled to Ankara, the capital, for consultations, according to the statement.

Historians say that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died amid the chaos and unrest surrounding World War I and the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey denies, however, that this was a planned genocide, and had mounted a vigorous lobbying campaign against the resolution.

A White House spokesman, Mike Hammer, said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had told Representative Howard L. Berman, the committee chairman, late Wednesday that a vote would be harmful, jeopardizing Turkish-Armenian reconciliation efforts that last year yielded two protocols aimed at a thawing of relations.

President Obama spoke to President Abdullah Gul of Turkey on Wednesday to endorse the efforts at normalization with Armenia, said Philip J. Crowley, a State Department spokesman.

“We’ve pressed hard to see the progress that we’ve seen to date, and we certainly do not want to see that jeopardized,” he said.

The timing of the administration’s plea seemed to catch some committee members by surprise. Early in the meeting on Thursday, the ranking Republican member, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, said that the administration had taken no position on the vote. But several minutes later she requested time to correct herself: an aide had handed her an news article describing the administration’s newly announced opposition.

Suat Kiniklioglu, a member of Turkey’s Parliament who was in Washington to meet with lawmakers, said later that he thought the intervention by Mrs. Clinton — who was asked about the resolution last week before the same House committee, but did not condemn it explicitly — had come too late.

“It was done in a fashion to be able to allow this administration to say in future, when things go wrong, that they did intervene” in support of Turkey, he said.

Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America, also said he doubted Mrs. Clinton’s intervention had changed much. “It was closer than anticipated,” he said of the vote, “but at the end of the day the truth prevailed and the members made a very affirmative statement in the face of the opposition.”

Committee members were clearly torn between what they said was a moral obligation to condemn one of the darkest periods of the last century and the need to protect a relationship with Turkey, a NATO partner vital to American regional and security interests on issues from Afghanistan to Iran.

“This is not one of those issues that members of Congress look forward to voting on,” said Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York.

Like nearly every member, Mr. Berman saluted Turkey as an important ally. “Be that as it may,” he added, “nothing justifies Turkey’s turning a blind eye to the reality of the Armenian genocide.”

“The Turks say passing this resolution could have terrible consequences for our bilateral relationship,” Mr. Berman said. “But I believe that Turkey values its relations with the United States at least as much as we value our relations with Turkey.”

While still in the Senate, Mr. Obama had described the killings of Armenians at Ottoman hands as genocide. Mrs. Clinton, also then a senator, had taken a similar stance.

Last year, she strongly supported talks that led to two protocols between Turkey and Armenia calling for closer ties, open borders and the creation of a commission to examine the historical evidence in dispute.

Those accords, not yet ratified by either nation’s parliament, could now be endangered, opponents of the resolution said. “This is a fragile process that destabilizes the protocols,” said Representative Dan Burton, Republican of Indiana.

In Istanbul, Ozdem Sanberk of Global Political Trends Center at Istanbul Kultur University, agreed that the protocols would suffer. “With this result,” he said, “the effectiveness of the ethnic lobbies got maximized and American foreign policy got hurt.”

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul.

Feb 25, 2010

Turkey releases military chiefs wanted over coup plot

Former Air Force Commander Gen Ibrahim Firtina arriving at court in Istanbul, 25 Feburary 2010

Ex-Air Force head Gen Ibrahim Firtina was among those questioned

A Turkish court has freed the former heads of the navy and air force after they were questioned over an alleged coup plot, Anatolia news agency said.

It was unclear whether the two men - arrested on Monday with more than 40 other officers - face charges.

Some 20 senior military officers have been charged and remanded in custody this week over the suspected 2003 plot.

Earlier, President Abdullah Gul said tensions over the plot would be resolved within the law.

President Gul made the statement after a summit with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and armed forces chief Gen Ilker Basbug.

Tension between the government and the military has risen following a round of arrests over the alleged plot.

The military has denied any coup plot and has held its own officers' summit to discuss the "serious situation" in the wake of the latest arrests.

Reassurance

The retired head of the air force Ibrahim Firtina and former navy chief Ozden Ornek were in court on Thursday morning for questioning, but were later released.

HOW 'COUP PLOTS' EMERGED

June 2007: Cache of explosives discovered; ex-soldiers detained

July 2008: 20 arrested, including two ex-generals and a senior journalist, for "planning political disturbances and trying to organise a coup"

July 2008: Governing AK Party narrowly escapes court ban

October 2008: 86 go on trial charged with "Ergenekon" coup plot

July 2009: 56 in dock as second trial opens

Jan 2010: Taraf newspaper reports 2003 "sledgehammer" plot to provoke coup

Feb 2010: More than 40 officers arrested over "sledgehammer"; 20 charged

After several hours of talks on Thursday, Mr Gul sought to reassure the country.

"It was stressed that citizens can be sure that the problems on the agenda will be solved within the framework of the constitution and our laws," a statement from his office said.

The BBC's Jonathan Head in Istanbul says the Turkish government is embroiled in the greatest test yet of its authority over the armed forces.

Turkey's military has overthrown or forced the resignation of four governments since 1960 - most recently in 1997 - though Gen Basbug has insisted that coups are a thing of the past.

The scale of Monday's operation against the military was unprecedented. Those arrested include two serving admirals, three retired admirals and three retired generals.

Turkish military on parade (file picture)

Turkey's religious-secular divide

Turkish military faces crossroads

A number of them are being kept in jail.

Dozens of current or former members of the military have been arrested in the past few years over similar plot allegations, and some have been charged.

The latest men to be charged were arrested over the so-called "sledgehammer" plot, which reportedly dates back to 2003.

Reports of the alleged plot first surfaced in the liberal Taraf newspaper, which said it had discovered documents detailing plans to bomb two Istanbul mosques and provoke Greece into shooting down a Turkish plane over the Aegean Sea.

The army has said the scenarios were discussed but only as part of a planning exercise at a military seminar.

The alleged plot is similar, and possibly linked, to the reported Ergenekon conspiracy, in which military figures and staunch secularists allegedly planned to foment unrest, leading to a coup.

Scores of people, including military officers, journalists and academics, are on trial in connection with that case.

'Painful transformation'

Analysts say the crackdown on the military would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.

The army has regarded itself as the guardian of a secular Turkish state, but its power has been eroded in recent years, with Turkey enacting reforms designed to prepare it for entry to the European Union.

Many Turks regard the cases as the latest stage in an ongoing power struggle between Turkey's secular nationalist establishment and the governing AK Party.

Critics believe the Ergenekon and sledgehammer investigations are simply attempts to silence the government's political and military opponents.

The AK Party has its roots in political Islam, and is accused by some nationalists of having secret plans to turn staunchly secular Turkey into an Islamic state.

The government rejects those claims, saying its intention is to modernise Turkey and move it closer to EU membership.

"Transformations may sometimes be painful," Economy Minister Ali Babacan said Wednesday.

"We are trying to make Turkey's democracy first class."

Feb 23, 2010

Former Top Generals Detained in Turkish Coup Inquiry

By SEBNEM ARSU

Published: February 22, 2010

ISTANBUL — In one of the toughest actions against the powerful Turkish military in the history of modern Turkey, the police detained three of the country’s highest-ranking former generals on Monday as part of a vast investigation into a shadowy ultranationalist movement accused of planning to overthrow the Islamist-inspired government.

Ibrahim Usta/Associated Press

Soldiers kept watch as the police searched the home of a retired army commander in Istanbul.

News reports identified the detainees as a former deputy chief of the general staff, Ergin Saygun; a former air force commander, Ibrahim Firtina; and a former naval commander, Ozden Ornek. They were detained at their homes in Istanbul and the capital, Ankara.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said more than 40 people in all were taken into custody during the operations on Monday, including 14 other former high-ranking military officers.

The case, which has riveted Turks, revolves around a suspected conspiracy by secular ultranationalists who are accused of developing several plots to attack civilian targets, like a mosque in central Istanbul, and to provoke a crisis with neighboring Greece, with a goal of paving the way for a coup.

More than 200 people have been arrested so far in the case, including military officers, intellectuals, academics and writers who are outspoken critics of the government, and some have been held for months without charge. A first trial opened two years ago. The case is widely referred to as Ergenekon (pronounced ahr-GEN-eh-kahn) after the mythic Turkish valley that lent its name to the suspected conspirators.

Mr. Erdogan would not elaborate on the Monday operation. Speaking at a news conference in Madrid, where he was on an official visit, he said, “We are going to learn about it once the judiciary makes an evaluation after the delivery of the security forces.”

Details of the suspected plot first emerged in 2007, when a left-wing publication printed what it said was a 2004 diary kept by Mr. Ornek, the former naval commander detained Monday. He denied the authenticity of the documents, and the publication is now closed.

Since the establishment of the modern Turkish state in 1923, the military has cast itself as the guardian of the country’s stability and secularism. It has usurped civilian governments at least four times in the past 50 years.

The arrest of high-ranking officers is widely seen here as part of the continuing struggle between the country’s relatively new religiously conservative political leadership and staunchly secular institutions in Turkey.

Turkish society divides largely along those lines, as has reaction to the conspiracy case, with secularists seeing it as a crackdown that threatens Turkey’s secular future and the conservative Islamic side regarding the case as necessary to protect their own democratically-won power.

One political analyst who has been strongly supportive of the investigation, Oral Calislar of the newspaper Radikal, said that whatever failings there might be in the trial process, they are products of the military’s distorting influence.

“Forces supporting military coups are still very powerful and resisting change,” Mr. Calislar said. “If there is a political will to prosecute military coup perpetrators, it is a fantastic will to be supported, regardless of the criticism of the methods.”

The Constitution, adopted after one of the military’s coups in 1980, assigns the army to intervene in politics to defend of the republic, a vaguely defined responsibility that has until now been read as granting the military unconditional immunity. But the Turkish military has been criticized by the European Union for its influence in civilian politics, as the country aspires to join the pact.

Jan 2, 2010

Turkey, Georgia, UAE bankroll Caucasus rebels

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Created 02/01/2010 - 20:00

Militants in Russia's volatile North Caucasus region of Dagestan have received financing from supporters in Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the United Arab Emirates, television said Saturday, after a special operation yielded notebooks of expenses kept by rebels.

The notebooks seized during a special operation in Dagestan conducted by the Federal Security Service (FSB) on New Year's Eve show the rebels had received hefty donations from their foreign sponsors, national television said, airing footage from the press department of the Dagestan branch of FSB.

"Tens of millions of rubles came from the United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Turkey and Azerbajan," NTV channel said. Rossia television channel added that supporters from Saudi Arabia were also among the foreign sponsors.

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"The sums are huge," Rossia channel said. "There was never any doubt anyway that militants in the North Caucasus have been generously bankrolled. But that generously...."

The notebooks show that rebels also extorted money from local businessmen and unscrupulous officials, television reports said.

"The money was distributed among various groups" in Dagestan and was used to finance purchases of arms, medicine and cars, they said.

The notebooks belonged to the leader of Dagestan's rebels, Umalat Magomedov also known by his nom de guerre as Al-Bara, television reports said, adding he was one of four rebels killed during the December 31 operation in the town of Khasavyurt.

"In spring, Al Qaeda's emissary in the Caucasus appointed Magomedov commander of the Dagestan front," Rossia channel said.

Authorities have also seized machine guns, grenade launchers and 45 cell phones containing rebels' phone numbers.

Authorities have long said that Islamist rebels receive financing from abroad.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in August acknowledged "foreign" elements as a factor fomenting instability in the region, but stressed the root cause of the problem was within Russia itself, referring to corruption among law enforcement personnel.

Clashes between government forces and Islamist rebels are common in Dagestan.

Dagestan's neighbour Chechnya was the site of two bloody separatist wars after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, and a low-level insurgency persists in the region despite the end of major hostilities.

Nov 14, 2009

Turkey moves toward peace with Kurds - Washington Times

Suzan Fraser ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANKARA, Turkey | Turkey's government Friday announced new measures aimed at reconciling with minority Kurds and ending a 25-year-old insurgency, but there was no mention of the sweeping amnesty sought by Kurdish rebels.

The government wants to remove all restrictions on the once-banned Kurdish language, create a committee to fight discrimination, restore Kurdish names of villages and establish an independent body to deal with complaints against security forces, Interior Minister Besir Atalay told the parliament.

"It is an open-ended, dynamic process," Mr. Atalay said.

Turkey is under pressure to resolve the Kurdish conflict as it courts membership in the European Union. Turkey's civilian and military leaders have both acknowledged, however, that force alone cannot wipe out the rebels, who began fighting for autonomy in 1984 and have staged cross-border attacks from bases in northern Iraq.

Tens of thousands of people have died in the conflict, with human rights abuses committed by both sides.

Though fighting has ebbed in recent months, the Turkish government still must persuade a skeptical public that making peace with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, is both possible and necessary for long-term stability.

Opponents say reconciliation would ignore the sacrifices of slain soldiers and undermine state unity. They also accuse the government of negotiating with rebels deemed terrorists by Turkey, the EU and the United States.

"Have the mountains been bombed? They have," Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an address to lawmakers. "Have there been cross-border operations? Yes, there have. Is terrorism continuing? Yes, it is. It is not possible to solve the problem through the security forces alone."

The rebels are asking for amnesty for their leaders and fighters. Rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan, a hated figure among many Turks, is serving a life sentence in jail. Persuading thousands of fighters to lay down their arms is likely to be a long and difficult process.

The government made no mention of an amnesty, however, in announcing its new peace plan, which would require legislative approval. Mr. Erdogan's ruling party has a strong parliamentary majority.

The measures would allow Kurdish politicians to speak their language while campaigning, reversing a policy that exposed pro-Kurdish politicians to prosecution if they spoke Kurdish in public settings.

The interior minister underlined Mr. Erdogan's message, saying "We aim to expand all our citizens' political rights and freedoms. The democratic overture does not intend to harm our unitary state and national unity, but to strengthen it."

Opposition lawmakers, who had disrupted Mr. Atalay's speech on the Kurdish issue earlier this week, listened to the minister this time in silence. However, they heckled the prime minister, and some walked out during his speech.

Kurds make up about 20 percent of Turkey's more than 70 million people and dominate the country's poor southeast region.

Oct 30, 2009

Is Turkey Leaving the West? - Foreign Affairs

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An Islamist Foreign Policy Puts Ankara at Odds With Its Former Allies

Soner Cagaptay

SONER CAGAPTAY is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the author of Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk?

In early October, Turkey disinvited Israel from Anatolian Eagle, an annual Turkish air force exercise that it had held with Israel, NATO, and the United States since the mid-1990s. It marked the first time Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) let its increasingly anti-Western rhetoric spill into its foreign policy strategy, and the move may suggest that Turkey's continued cooperation with the West is far from guaranteed.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister and the leader of the AKP, justified the decision by calling Israel a "persecutor." But only a day after it dismissed Israel, Turkey invited Syria -- a known abuser of human rights -- to joint military exercises and announced the creation of a Strategic Cooperation Council with the Syrian regime. A mountain is moving in Turkish foreign policy, and the foundation of Turkey's 60-year-old military and political cooperation with the West may be eroding.

Starting in 1946, when Turkey chose to ally itself with the West in the Cold War -- later sending troops to Korea and joining NATO -- successive Turkish governments have pursued close cooperation with the United States and Europe. Turkey viewed the Middle East and global politics through the lens of their own national security interests. This made cooperation possible, even with Israel, a state Turkey viewed as a democratic ally in a volatile region. The two countries shared similar security concerns, such as Syria's support for terror groups abroad -- radical Palestinian organizations in the case of Israel, and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey. In 1998, when Ankara confronted Damascus over its support for the PKK, Turkish newspapers wrote headlines championing the Turkish-Israeli alliance: "We will say 'shalom' to the Israelis on the Golan Heights," one read.

The AKP, however, viewed Turkey's interests through a different lens -- one colored by a politicized take on religion, namely Islamism. Senior AKP officials called the 2004 U.S. offensive in Fallujah, Iraq, a "genocide," and in February 2009, Erdogan compared Gaza to a "concentration camp."

But the AKP's foreign policy has not promoted sympathy toward all Muslim states. Rather, the party has promoted solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes (Qatar and Sudan, for example) while dismissing secular, pro-Western Muslim governments (Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia). This two-pronged strategy is especially apparent in the Palestinian territories: at the same time that the AKP government has called on Western countries to "recognize Hamas as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people," AKP officials have labeled Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas the "head of an illegitimate government." According to diplomats, Abbas' last visit to Ankara in July 2009 went terribly -- now, these diplomatic sources say, Abbas does not trust the AKP any more than he trusts Hamas.

As the cancelled military exercises with Israel show, the AKP's moralistic foreign policy is not without inherent hypocrisies. An earlier example came last January, when, a day after Erdogan harangued Israeli President Shimon Peres, as well as Jews and Israelis, at the World Economic Forum for knowing "well how to kill people," Turkey hosted the Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha in Ankara. This is a dangerous position because it suggests -- especially to the generation coming of age under the AKP -- that Islamist regimes alone have the right to attack their own people or even other states. In September, Erdogan defended Iran's nuclear program, arguing that the problem in the Middle East is Israel's nuclear arsenal.

Some analysts have dismissed such rhetoric as domestic politicking or simply an instance of Erdogan losing his temper. But Erdogan is an astute politician, and he is now reacting to changes in Turkish society. After seven years of the AKP's Islamist rhetoric, public opinion has shifted to embrace the idea of a politically united "Muslim world." According to independent polling in Turkey, the number of people identifying themselves as Muslim increased by ten percent between 2002 and 2007; in addition, almost half of those surveyed describe themselves as Islamist.

The AKP's foreign policy now has a welcome audience at home, making it more likely to become entrenched. After Erdogan stormed out of his session at the World Economic Forum, thousands gathered to greet his plane as it arrived back home in what appeared to be an orchestrated welcome. (Banners with Turkish and Hamas flags stitched together appeared from nowhere in a matter of hours.)

The transformation of Turkish identity under the AKP has potentially massive ramifications. Guided by an Islamist worldview, it will become more and more impossible for Turkey to support Western foreign policy, even when doing so is in its national interest. Turkish-Israeli ties -- long a model for how a Muslim country can pursue a rational, cooperative relationship with the Jewish state -- will continue to unravel. Such a development will be greeted only with approval by the Turkish public, further bolstering the AKP's popularity. Thus, the party will be able to kill two birds with one stone: distancing the country from its former ally and shoring up its own power base.

The same dynamic will also apply to Turkey's relations with the European Union and the United States. The AKP has a tactical view of Turkey's possible accession to the EU: it pushes for membership when it brings the party public approval, but it does not take a strategic view of closer ties with Europe. Thus, the AKP is reluctant to take on tough, potentially unpopular reforms mandated by the EU, making accession seem less and less a likely reality. Statements such as Erdogan's calling the West "immoral" in 2008 only erode popular support for EU membership: by last year, about one-third of the population wanted their country to join the EU, down sharply from more than 80 percent in 2002, when the AKP took power.

Meanwhile, as the United States devotes much of its energy abroad to Muslim countries, from opposing radicalism to countering Iran's nuclear program, the AKP will oppose these policies through harsh rhetoric and opt out of any close cooperation.

Many suggested that the AKP's rise to power presented Turkey with an opportunity to "go back to the Middle East" and adopt more of an Islamic identity. The hope was that such a shift would help "normalize" Turkey, recalibrating the secularizing and nationalist reforms of Kemal Atatürk, who turned Turkey to the West in the early twentieth century. The outcome, however, has not been so positive. Turkey's experience with the AKP proves that Islamism in the country's foreign policy may not be so compatible with the West, after all.