Stop Turkey

Turkey Top Human Rights Violator in 2011

2012-01-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

Turkey was the country with the highest number of violations of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in 2011, the third year in a row.
European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) head Nicolas Bratza said at a press briefing on Thursday that Turkey topped the list of countries that violated the ECHR with 159 cases. Russia followed Turkey with 121 cases and Ukraine with 105. According to Bratza, Greece (69), Romania (58) and Poland (54) had all violated at least one article of the convention.

Council of Europe Secretary-General Thorbjorn Jagland recently said during a meeting that there are currently 16,000 ongoing cases against Turkey, making it the country against which the second-highest number of cases have been filed.

The Turkish government claims it has made substantial progress in improving the human rights situation in the country. Justice Minister Sedat Ergin recently said in a conference that a series of reforms had been adopted to prevent human rights violations in the past few years, adding that similar legal amendments will continue to improve the situation.

The most important breakthrough in judicial reform was achieved last year with a landslide approval in a public referendum of amending a number of constitutional articles -- many related to judicial changes. For the first time, it introduced the individual right to petition the Constitutional Court for alleged violations of fundamental human rights. It also established the Ombudsman Office for grievances regarding the misconduct of government employees and agencies.

In its 2010 report, the Strasbourg-based court again listed Turkey as the country most often found to be in violation of the convention. The highest number of judgments finding at least one violation of the ECHR concern cases from Turkey (228), followed by Russia (204), Romania (135), Ukraine (107) and Poland (87). In 2009, Turkey also topped the list in terms of violations of ECHR articles.

The ECHR, drafted in 1950, places Turkey under the jurisdiction of the ECtHR. In 1987, Turkey accepted the right of individuals to file applications with the ECtHR to apply individually to the ECtHR and in 1990 recognized the compulsory jurisdiction of the court. However, Turkey has still not ratified some of the protocols of the convention despite having signed them.

Source: Today's Zaman

Turkish Police Chief Says Honour-Killed Women Deserve It

2012-01-27T05:56:00.000-08:00

Women are partly to blame for Turkey’s ever-rising number of women’s murders, a retired police chief has said in an article for the January edition of the Contemporary Police Journal magazine.

“Naturally our women are in a position of victimhood against men due to the [discrepancy between their levels of] physical strength. It is not possible to say the same, however, with respect to [women’s use of] language and gestures. The blame for the murders cannot be squarely placed on men’s shoulders,” retired Police Chief Dr. Hasan Yağar said in his article, according to daily Milliyet.

Yağar further said nearly all such incidents pertaining to the murder of women take place in dense urban areas rather than in villages or hamlets in distant corners of Anatolia. The presence of attitudes that are not in line with Turkey’s traditions, customs and religious convictions in major cities are causing new migrants trying to adapt to their new circumstances to falter and fall into confusion, he said.

“It is a grave mistake to link the problem merely to the sadism of men. It is entirely impossible to ignore or deny that the matter is related to our national traditions and customs, and even to our social mysticism, or in other words, our religious perspective,” he said.

Source: Hurriyet

Women provoke men to commit murders, which then cost the male offenders their futures, he argued.

Source: Today's Zaman

In the article he also refers, as if in astonishment, to the fact that German men even allow their wives to be kissed by other men!

Turkey to Expel Thousands of Armenians in Response to French Genocide Bill

2012-01-26T23:53:00.000-08:00

Recall that the original Armenian Genocide was presented in the form of expulsion. The Armenians were force-marched out of their homes and died on the course of the journey. So, now, what do we have here? In response to people talking about the first Armenian Genocide, Turkey effectively commits another. Astonishing. Even more astonishing is that the countries of the western world will go on treating Turkey as if it was a civilised nation.

BY NANORE BARSOUMIAN
From The Armenian Weekly

ISTANBUL–Turkey is set to amend a law that aims to rid the country of illegal workers. Many view this move as retaliation against Armenians, in light of the new bill criminalizing Armenian Genocide denial in France.

Different estimates in Turkey put the number of Armenian citizens in the country at as low as 10,000 and as high as 100,000. Many of them are women, and they are employed in low-skill jobs.

“This country, which Mark Levene called ‘the Genocide zone,’ throughout its history has made it a habit to deport, expel, and relocate innocent people as retaliation and punishment for things they did not do, or have no connection to at all,” human rights advocate Ayse Gunaysu told the Armenian Weekly Editor Khatchig Mouradian.

The amendment to Law No. 5683 on Residence and Travel of Foreign Subjects will be ratified on Feb. 1. In the past, people from the region migrated to Turkey on tourist visas, finding employment and becoming illegal workers. After a few months, they would leave and reenter the country on a new tourist visa (a process called “visa runs”). The workers hailed mostly from countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan, the Ukraine, Indonesia, and Armenia. The new system will force migrants to stay out of the country for 90 days between two entries. Authorities are set to strictly enforce the new law, penalizing visa overstays and runs.

However, the amendment allows for employees who wish to keep their workers to pay a salary of TL 1,330 ($744), and an insurance premium, reported Bianet.org. The minimum wage in Turkey is TL 701 ($392), and it is unlikely that an unskilled worker will make significantly more than that.

Back in March 2010, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan hinted at retaliation against Armenian migrant workers if Genocide resolutions were passed in foreign parliaments. In a discussion about Genocide resolutions in the U.S. and Sweden, he told the BBC’s Turkish Service that of the 170,000 Armenians living in Turkey, only 70,000 are Turkish citizens. “We are turning a blind eye to the remaining 100,000… Tomorrow, I may tell these 100,000 to go back to their country, if it becomes necessary.”

It appears the French bill was the last straw for Erdogan’s government. On Jan. 25, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters that “Turkey’s response to the adoption of the bill had long been decided.”

President of the Migrants’ Association for Social Cooperation and Culture Sefika Gurbuz called the law a “threat to Armenians,” reported Bianet.

Meanwhile, Gunaysu characterized Turkey’s response a “black comedy.” “The ongoing blackmail and threats against France is itself proof of guilt as well as a manifestation of lack of dignity and self-respect, despite—of course—pathetic demonstrations of national pride,” said Gunaysu.

Gunaysu, who is a member of the Committee Against Racism and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association of Turkey, pointed out the country’s history of deporting innocents peoples. In 1915 the Young Turk regime began its systemic deportations of Armenians as a main tool to rid the Eastern provinces of a native population. “They still tell lies that it was because treacherous Armenians, whereas hundreds of thousands of Armenians were not engaged in any political activity whatsoever,” said Gunaysu. Then it was the turn of Turkey’s Kurdish and Greek populations. “The republican period is full of Kurdish deportations, especially in 1938 during and after the Dersim massacres,” she said. “In 1964, the Turkish government expelled 40,000 Anatolian Greeks, forbidding them to bring along any personal belongings over 20 kg and $20, as a retaliation against Greece in connection with the Cyprus issue—a deportation which is still terribly painful in the memories of these people.”

Gunaysu added, “The mindset from which this policy of retaliation originates is racist, inhuman, and brutal. The rulers of Turkey have once more proven that [the government] still follows the same path as that of their predecessors back in 1915 and all along the history of the Republic.”

Asbarez.com

Reactions to the French Genocide Bill

2012-01-25T09:30:00.001-08:00

This incident has been very revealing. It has exposed the true savage nature of the Turks. And it proves that it is not just a substratum of the Turkish population that is morally dubious, but all of them. Even the supposedly westernised liberals, like the journalists who write for Hurriyet, have joined in the frenzy of France-bashing.

Iranian Christian Asylum Seeker Burned by Employer in Turkey

2012-01-25T09:19:00.000-08:00

It's fascinating that the United Nations refugee agency is apparently employing Muslims to assess claims for asylum even when the applicants are converts from Islam fleeing Muslim prejudice against apostates.

Iranian Christian Asylum Seeker Burned by Employer in Turkey

MONDAY, 23 JANUARY 2012

Pressures and threats against Christian converts are increasing tremendously inside Iran. Severe sentences are being issued for converts with an Islamic background and this is the primary reason these converts flee their homeland and apply to the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for refugee status. However, it seems that UNHCR decision makers do not understand the seriousness of this issue.

Iranian Christian news agency, Mohabat News notes that before the Islamic revolution all religious minorities, including Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians could conveniently and securely speak about their faith. After the Islamic revolution and after the Islamic regime came to power, although it stressed freedom of religion, this was just one side of the story. The regime proceeded to break its own constitution, generated a terrorizing atmosphere and put growing pressure on churches through its security organizations.

People with different beliefs, especially Christians, were subjected to arrest, imprisonment, threat and torture. The string of executions of outstanding Iranian Christian figures and pastors is a prime example of that. The laws are even being tightened more and more as time goes by. Such pressures and threats as well as heavy sentences cause Christian converts with an Islamic background to flee their homeland and seek refuge through the UNHCR office in Ankara. However, interviewers and decision makers at the UNHCR fail to understand their grievous situations and often turn down their asylum appeals.

Yousef Fallah Ranjbar is one of these asylum seekers who is currently awaiting a decision on his case in Turkey. Like other asylum seekers in Turkey, Fallah Ranjbar had to work in order to survive. However he was brutally assaulted by his Turkish employer with hot water and his body was severely burned.

In a recent contact with the Association in Support of Iranian Asylum Seekers in Turkey, Ranjbar related some tragic facts and explained what has happened to him during these years.

- Leaving Iran

Ranjbar stated that he left Iran legally in December 2008 because of problems he faced because of his Christian faith. He waited four months after his application to the UNHCR was registered. His case was reviewed during this period. After this four month period he received an appointment date for his first interview. Then he waited another full year without receiving any response from the UNHCR. After that year he was informed that his statements during the interview were not acceptable.

He says, "I went to the Helsinki organization (a consultant organization) and submitted an appeal. After a long delay, I went to the UNHCR again for my second interview. There I found out that the same interviewer who had conducted my first interview and knew nothing about Christianity, had been appointed again for my renewal interview." Ranjbar explained that because the interviewer had mocked his faith during the first interview, he refused to proceed with the renewal interview when he realized that the interviewer was the same person. This refusal cost him another long wait until his case was closed by the UNHCR in early 2011 and he was deprived of another chance to prove his claims.

Ranjbar continued, "I had to continuously work 14 hours per day for a maximum of 20 Turkish Liras in the worst conditions i.e. cold winters and hot summers. I am a barber and my hands were not prepared for such hard labour. However, I had to work as labourer in buildings moving 50 KG bags of cement as much as a full container and work in restaurants, etc."

- Burned by Turkish employer

The extreme religious views of his Turkish employer resulted in Ranjbar's rights being violated. After Ranjbar asked for his pay several times, his employer emphatically told him that he had no rights and that he would not pay him any money. Ranjbar said "Then the employer and several other workers attacked and beat me before spilling hot water all over my body." After Ranjbar was burned, he went directly to the police station to file a complaint and bring the guilty one to justice. However the trial was postponed to another time because the employer didn't appear for the hearing. After months of waiting the case is still pending.

Ranjbar is just one example of hundreds of Iranian Christian asylum seekers who are living in such situations in Turkey. Unfortunately, the lack of adequate knowledge by some UNHCR officials regarding the seriousness of such situations, especially in religious cases, as well as the unresponsiveness of related organizations regarding the special situation of Christian converts in a country like Turkey, are just some of the problems that asylums seekers are suffering from.

Source: Mohabatnews.com

Council of Europe Criticises Turkish Judiciary

2012-01-25T09:14:00.000-08:00

The criticism comes as two of the main opposition parties claim the government is using the judiciary to silence opposition in the country.

In a detailed report, the Council of Europe's commissioner on human rights, Thomas Hammerberg, has raised serious concerns that Turkey's judiciary is threatening fundamental human rights.

"There are real problems in the way the system of justice function, including the judicial system, and that has an impact on human rights," said Hammerberg. "[That's] obvious, you don't have justice in all cases being brought into the system."

One of the main concerns raised in the report is the growing number of arrests of political party members. The ongoing investigation into the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) is cited as a particular concern. Turkish authorities believe the KCK is the political wing of the Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

According to local human-rights groups, more than 4,000 people have been detained since 2009, most of them members of the country's pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP). BDP parliament member Ertugral Kurkcu says the detentions have little to do with fighting terrorism and more to do with undermining the political party.

"These people are kidnapped. They have no guilt. Many of them elected people," said Kurkcu. "Many of them trade union leaders. All influential politicians, middle men in Kurdish politics. They have no relation with violence. They have not even been accused of being affiliated with any kind of violent action."

Hammerberg echoed such concerns, saying he believes in many cases there appeared to be little evidence to justify the detentions. Many of those detained in the probe have been held for years without trial. The Council of Europe report also raised pretrial detention as an area of serious concern.

Hammerberg claims his interviews with members of the judiciary suggest pretrial detention is being used as a punishment.

"I was discussing with a prosecutor in Diyarbakir and spelling out there should be reasons to detain someone before the final trial, and he said at least they will learn a lesson. But why does the penitentiary system take on, teach lessons to people who perhaps may be innocent?" Asked Hammerberg. "There have been cases up to 10 years. That [is] absolutely outrageous. No one should be held before [being] proven guilty for such long periods."

The leader of the main opposition People's Republican Party, or CHP, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, strongly attacked pretrial detention earlier this month, and claimed that Turkey is becoming "an open prison." Two of his parliamentary deputies have been held in jail for more than three years, as part an investigation into an alleged plot to overthrow the government.

The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly ruled against Turkey on the issue of pretrial detention. Facing mounting criticism, Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin announced a package of reforms that include addressing pre-trial detention.

He said decisions pertaining to arrest, or the refusal of a request for release on bail, will now have to be clearly written out. He said the courts will have to justify with concrete facts any strong suspicion that a defendant will commit a crime. He said they will have to make clear the purpose behind a detention and ensure that it is reasonable.

Riza Turmen, a deputy for the main opposition and a former judge for the European Court of Human Rights, says the reforms are cosmetic, and that the reform does not apply to anyone held in connection with anti-terror laws. He adds that controversial portions of those laws have resulted in the detention of nearly 100 journalists - another area of concern raised by the Council of Europe report.

But Turmen argues a more fundamental threat is facing Turkey. "The problem today in Turkey [is], there is enormous concentration of power in the hands of one party," he said. "The government controls the judiciary. The government controls all the independent institutions. Turkey has never seen such a big concentration of power, and such a concentration of power is detrimental to any democracy."

In his report, Hammerberg expresses concern about the government's influence on Turkey's judiciary. He acknowledges that Turkey faces a serious problem of terrorism and says the government's commitment to reform appears to be genuine, but now is the time for action.

"We are still waiting for implementation of signals we have received from the government," said Hammerberg. "It's a question of real implementation, not only talks and statements, when it comes to reforms and genuine changes."

In the early years of its decade-long rule, the AK Party won praise in combating torture and ending extra-judicial killings. But observers warn that good will is fast running out with the main opposition parties, along with a growing body of evidence - of which the Council of Europe report is the latest - that raises concerns about increasing authoritarian tendencies.

Source: VOA

Erdogan Claims French Genocide Bill is Racist

2012-01-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blasted French lawmakers on Tuesday for being "racist and discriminatory" after the Senate passed a bill that would outlaw denying that the 1915 massacre of Armenians in Turkey amounted to genocide.
By Tony Todd (text)

A French bill that outlaws denial of genocides recognised by the state is "racist and discriminatory", Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday, promising to implement sanctions against France "step by step with no retreat."

The bill, which only needs French President Nicolas Sarkozy's signature to pass into law, includes the massacre of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces in 1915 - an event Turkey recognises but refuses to classify as genocide.

SARKOZY'S LETTER TO TURKEY
In a letter to Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said a draft law making it illegal in France to deny a genocide was not aimed at targeting Ankara and urged Turkey to remember the many "common interests" it shares with France.

France's Senate passed a bill on Monday outlawing the denial of a genocide that has been recognised by French law, namely the Holocaust or the 1915-1916 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Turkey had threatened to impose sanctions if the Senate passed the bill, which Erdogan has slammed as "racist".

A presidential source said on Tuesday that Sarkozy will likely sign the bill into law in the next two weeks.

Erdogan said the law was "null and void" as far as Turkey was concerned, but added that "we still have not lost our hope that it can be corrected."

Earlier, Turkey had promised total diplomatic rupture with Paris, while the country’s press was united in fury and condemnation of the French parliament.

“Shame on you France,” splashed popular daily Vatan. “France, the country where the ideal of liberty was born, has delivered a powerful blow against freedom of expression. By passing this bill on genocide, France is denying its own history.”

Hurriyet, one of Turkey’s biggest-selling newspapers, headlined that Sarkozy had “massacred democracy.”

The bill, which must now be signed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy before it can come into law, would criminalise publicly denying that the mass killing of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turk forces in 1915 was a deliberately organised genocide.

Turkish press was also pushing the angle that Sarkozy, languishing in the polls, was trying to court the significant Armenian population in France (some 500,000 voters) ahead of May’s elections.

“The French president has turned his back on freedom for the sake of a few votes,” headlined Turkish tabloid Posta, while the left-leaning Radikal said that “a subject that should be the domain of historians has become a political tool.”

Pro-government Yeni Safak said that “for a small electoral calculation, France has committed a huge crime against humanity.”

‘Total rupture’

Ankara froze political and military ties with France, a NATO ally, in December after lawmakers in the lower National Assembly passed the bill.

At the weekend, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told FRANCE 24 that Ankara had already prepared a response.

"There will be further sanctions against France, and this time the sanctions will be permanent,” he said.

And after the bill was passed by the Senate, Turkey's ambassador to France, Tahsin Burcuoglu, said final approval by the President would cause a “total rupture” of relations between Ankara and Paris.

On Tuesday Engin Solakoglu, spokesman for the Turkish embassy in Paris, told FRANCE 24: “Relations with France will be seriously affected. Not having Turkey as a diplomatic partner, especially in the Middle East, will be felt very strongly by France.”

A day ‘written in gold’

Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said that the Senate vote, which was passed by 127 to 86, was a day that “will be written in gold”.

The vote “will further consolidate the existing mechanisms of prevention of crimes against humanity,” Nalbandian said in a statement.

The bill was passed on Monday despite a Senate recommendation that the law would be unconstitutional, while opponents in France’s two houses of parliament said it would not help Turkey recognise the genocide or help reconcile relations with Armenia.

Centre-left senator Jacques Mezard said it was “an unbearable law that calls into question historical research,” while French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé on Monday called for calm, saying on Canal+ television that the new law was “ill-timed”.

Sarkozy is expected to sign the bill into law in February. It could still stall if 60 lawmakers appeal against it, and the country’s constitutional council would have the final say.

Armenians maintain that 1.5 million of their forebears were killed in the massacre, while Turkey insists the number is smaller – at 500,000 – and that the tragedy should be seen in the context of a world war and a Russian attack in which the Armenians sided with the invader.

The French state officially recognised the event as genocide in 2001. The new bill would punish anyone publicly denying it with up to a year in prison and fines of 45,000 euros.

Source: France24

OIC: Adoption of genocide law sign of Islamophobia in France

2012-01-24T20:16:00.000-08:00

The adoption of the law criminalizing the denial of the so-called "Armenian Genocide" is a sign of Islamophobia in France, Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu told Trend on Tuesday.

"This law contradicts three fundamental principles of democracy -- equality, freedom and brotherhood. It is a sign of growing Islamophobia," Ihsanoglu said.

He called the law unacceptable, non-complying with historical facts and demonstrating double standards.

After a nearly eight-hour debate, the French Senate adopted the bill. Some 127 senators voted in favor, while 86 senators voted against on Jan.23.

The lower house of the French parliament adopted a bill criminalising the denial of the so-called "genocide" on Dec.22. Some 45 out of 577 French MPs voted with 38 voting for and seven against the adoption of the bill.

The bill demands a year's imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euro for denying the so-called "genocide." In response to the decision, Turkey announced that it has frozen all diplomatic relations with France.

MPs from the French president's Union for Popular Movement (UMP) party, which has the parliamentary majority, proposed the bill aimed at criminalising the denial of the so-called "genocide" to the legislative committee of the National Assembly in early December.

Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that the predecessor of the Turkey - Ottoman Empire had committed the 1915 genocide against the Armenians living in Anadolu, and achieved recognition of the "Armenian Genocide" by the parliaments of several countries.

Source: Trend

French Senate Approves Bill Criminalising Denial of Armenian Genocide

2012-01-23T20:32:00.000-08:00

France's Senate has passed a bill outlawing the denial of a genocide that has been recognised by French law, namely the Holocaust or the 1915-1916 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks. Turkey had threatened to impose sanctions if the bill passed.

France and Turkey headed for a major diplomatic rift on Monday after French senators ignored threats from Ankara and approved a law outlawing the public denial of genocides.

The draft law passed by the Senate makes it illegal for anyone to deny that the mass killing of ethnic Armenians at the hands of Ottaman Turks in 1915 amounted to genocide.

Under the law public denial would be punished by a year’s jail sentence and a €45,000 fine.

The vote, which came after an eight-hour debate, is now likely to incite the wrath of Turkey who had earlier threatened to impose “permanent” sanctions against Paris if the law was passed.

Reacting to the vote, Engin Solakoglu, a spokesman for the Turkish Embassy in Paris, told FRANCE 24 his country would not tolerate anymore “Turkey bashing” from France.

“It is very sad to see such a law passed by the French Senate,” he said.

“Every time there are elections in France, a kind of Turkey bashing becomes a national sport. We cannot take this anymore,” Solakoglu added, accusing French politicians of meddling with "our history".

'Permanent sanctions'

Speaking before the vote, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told FRANCE 24 “permanent sanctions” would be imposed against France if senators sanctioned the bill.

He said the proposed law was an affront to freedom of expression that would make him a criminal for openly discussing an “historical tragedy”.

“If I am asked a question by a journalist, how could I remain silent?” he asked. “This bill would punish me for having an opinion on an historical event. It goes against all European and French values of freedom of expression.”

Davutoglu accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is languishing in the polls ahead of elections in May, of using the bill to gain approval from France’s significant Armenian population of some 500,000 voters.

“The painful history of Armenians and Turks is being used … for political opportunism and against the basic values of politics,” he said.

Reacting to the result, Esra Bulut Aymat, a senior research fellow at the EU Institute for Security Studies, said: "While many French citizens may see this as a principled stand, many Turkish citizens, already wary of President Sarkozy's opposition to Turkish membership of the EU, may interpret it primarily as anti-Turkish pre-electoral populist opportunism.”

Senators did win the backing of some Armenian groups.

“This law will bring the Armenian issue to a different international forum,” said Berge Setrakian, President of the Armenian General Benevolent UNION (AGBU), speaking to FRANCE 24 from New York.

“The major powers will focus more on this issue and hopefully now we can try and find a solution with Turkey. This will be good for Turkey too because they have been in a permanent state of denial about it.”

Setrakian accepted the fallout from the bill could have a detrimental effect on Armenia’s own relations with their neighbours.

“I think it is most likely Turkey will retaliate and render our lives more difficult, but this is a price the Armenians are willing to pay.”

A disputed history

The draft law means any public denial of genocides recognised by the French state would be outlawed, including the Second World War Holocaust and the massacre of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey in 1915.

France’s lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, had already approved the bill in a vote on December 23, 2011. That vote had prompted Turkey to recall its ambassador for consultations.

France officially recognised the Armenian killings as genocide in 2001. The new bill would punish denial with a year’s jail and a fine of up to 45,000 euros.

President Sarkozy is expected to ratify the bill in February before the closure of parliament in the run up to the presidential elections.

Armenia, backed by many historians and parliaments, says about 1.5 million Christian Armenians were killed in what is now eastern Turkey during World War I, in a deliberate policy of genocide ordered by the Ottoman government.

The Ottoman empire was dissolved soon after the end of World War I, but successive Turkish governments and the vast majority of Turks feel the charge of genocide is a direct insult to their nation. Ankara argues there was heavy loss of life on both sides during fighting in the area.

Thousands of Turks from across Europe demonstrated in central Paris at the weekend and about 200 Franco-Turks protested on Monday in front of the Senate. They waved their French voting cards and banners with slogans including: “It’s not up to politicians to invent history”.

Sarkozy tried to calm tensions before the vote by writing to Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan last week saying the bill did not single out any country. He said that Paris was aware of the “suffering endured by the Turkish people” during the final years of the Ottoman empire.

Source: France24

France Faces Turkish Sanctions Over Genocide Bill

2012-01-20T06:51:00.000-08:00

More evidence of staggering Turkish childishness: they're going to rename streets with French names and erect a monument to the Muslims who died in Algeria's war of independence.

Turks Release Film Glorifying Their Conquest of Byzantium

2012-01-19T03:47:00.000-08:00

Note the bit about how their prophet predicted the fall of first Byzantium, then Rome.

It's a disgustingly false historical epic. There's nothing in it about the days of rape and pillage that followed the conquest. A sub-plot features a European woman who falls in love with a filthy Turk.

French Senate Panel Rejects Armenian Genocide Bill

2012-01-18T23:55:00.000-08:00

A French Senate panel dealt a blow Wednesday to the government's plans to make it illegal to deny that mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks nearly a century ago amounted to genocide.

In a striking development, the Commission of Laws in the Senate — the upper house of parliament — voted 23-9, with 8 abstentions, that such a bill, if passed, could violate constitutional protections including freedom of speech.

"We consider that if this law was passed, there would be a large risk of it being unconstitutional," said Jean-Pierre Sueur, the commission head. "We cannot write history with laws. Freedom of expression must be respected," Sueur said.

The panel vote, while a nonbinding recommendation, was the first legislative setback for the bill that has soured relations between France and Turkey since the National Assembly, the lower house, passed it last month.

The measure, floated by President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives despite a visceral outcry from Turkey, goes to the full Senate for debate Monday. The opposition Socialists had in the past also expressed support.

Officials at the Senate press office said that in the vast majority of cases the full chamber follows the recommendations of the Commission of Laws.

However, rejection by the Senate does not necessarily kill a measure that the lower house — the most powerful in France — wants passed into law. The National Assembly can resurrect the bill and try again, and eventually gets the last word.

France formally recognized the 1915 killings as genocide in 2001, but provided no penalty for denying it. The Assembly bill would set punishment of up to one year in prison and a fine of up to euro45,000 ($59,000) for those who deny or "outrageously minimize" the killings — placing such denial on par with those of the Holocaust.

France is home to an estimated 500,000 people of Armenian origin.

The bill has sparked a show of animosity between the two countries, with Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accusing the French of "genocide" during France's 132-year colonial rule in Algeria. Turkey also briefly recalled its ambassador to Paris for consultations, while suspending military and economic cooperation.

Two scenarios are now most likely when the French Senate debates the bill Monday, Senate press officials said. Senators could ignore the panel vote and pass the bill, putting it on a fast track to becoming law, or they could reject the bill, handing it to a commission from both houses to iron out differences.

The second option would greatly slow the legislative process. A freeze on all but the most critical legislation goes into effect in early March ahead of spring presidential and legislative elections.

In a statement, the commission said: "There was a genocide, and the commission wants to express its infinite respect for the Armenian people, and the terrible experiences that they have endured."

But the panel also expressed doubts about "the legitimacy of the intervention of the legislature in the field of history" and suggested that commemorations or legislative resolutions might be a better way to express sympathy for the suffering than laws to criminalize some types of speech.

Source: StarTribune

American Presidential Candidate Rick Perry Says Turkey is Ruled by Islamic Terrorists

2012-01-18T02:35:00.001-08:00

Life Sentence for Hrant Dink Murder

2012-01-17T19:12:00.000-08:00

The verdict was greeted by protests.

Muslim Party in the Netherlands Demands Immediate Turkish Admission to the EU

2012-01-17T17:30:00.001-08:00

The Dutch Muslim Party has announced plans to seek seats in the Dutch Parliament. The party already has a hold in regional governments in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other Dutch cities.

The Partij Voor Moslim Nederland (Party for Muslim Netherlands), as it calls itself when it is not referring to itself as The Dutch Muslim Party (note the strong differences in meaning), campaigns on an anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, and anti-discrimination platform. It hopes to take part in Parliamentary elections in 2015. Among its principles:

Criminalization of blasphemy

Free speech within limitations: speech that can be seen as insulting or offensive on religious grounds will be prosecuted.

Damage or destruction of holy texts for any religion to be criminalized by law.
Members of the party can also be non-Muslims.

Women and men are to be seen as equal under the law.

The party is to be based on the Islamic principle of Shura

All troops must be withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan

Turkey must immediately be made a member of the EU

Support to Israel must be stopped

Zero-tolerance for all drugs, including marijuana (currently tolerated under Dutch law)
No bans shall be set against the current practice of importing poorly-educated women as brides for Dutch Muslim men

A new pamphlet outlining the party’s vision is to be published by the end of this month.

Source: Forbes

Turkey Fails to Deliver Justice for Murdered Armenian Journalist as Trial Ends

2012-01-16T16:08:00.000-08:00

The Turkish authorities have failed to address state officials' alleged involvement in the killing of journalist and human rights activist Hrant Dink, Amnesty International said today, as the trial of 18 people accused of his murder drew to a close.

Hrant Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, was killed on 19 January 2007 outside the offices of the Agos newspaper where he was the editor.

When the trial ends on Tuesday, almost five years to the day after the death of Hrant Dink, the authorities will still not have investigated the full circumstances behind his murder.

"Hrant Dink was murdered for peacefully expressing his opinions," said Andrew Gardner Amnesty International’s expert on Turkey.

"The security services knew of the murder plot and were in communication with those accused of the murder yet nothing was done to stop it taking place.

"Nothing short of a full investigation into the actions of all the state institutions and officials implicated in the murder will represent justice."

Calls by the Dink family to investigate the collusion and negligence of state officials in the murder, backed by a European Court of Human Rights judgment in 2010, have not been heeded.

In July 2011 Ogün Samast, 17 years old at the time of the murder, was found guilty of shooting Hrant Dink and was sentenced to nearly 23 years in prison by a Children's Court.

He was initially given a life sentence but the term was commuted because he was a minor at the time of the murder.

In June, Colonel Ali Öz and six other Trabzon Gendarmerie officials were convicted of negligence for their failure to relay information of the plot that could have prevented the murder.

"The actions of the Trabzon Security Directorate, Istanbul Governor’s office and the Istanbul Security Directorate have not been effectively investigated," said Andrew Gardner.

"The authorities must address this immediately and ensure that Hrant Dink and his family receive the justice they deserve."

Hrant Dink was best known for being critical of the Turkish government over issues of Armenian identity and over official versions of history in Turkey relating to the massacres of Armenians in 1915. He was repeatedly targeted for expressing his opinions.

In 2005, he was given a six-month suspended prison sentence for "denigrating Turkishness" in writings about the identity of Turkish citizens of Armenian origin.

Source: Amnesty International

Fergie cancels US flight over Turkish extradition fears for covert filming in orphanage

2012-01-15T23:49:00.000-08:00

The Duchess of York has cancelled a trip to America amid concerns that she could be extradited to Turkey to face a court case.

Sarah Ferguson was supposed to travel to the United States yesterday but altered her plans at the last minute after a court in the Turkish capital Ankara pressed charges against her for filming in the country without permission.

The Duchess had made an undercover documentary for ITV’s Tonight programme in 2008 in which she investigated allegations of cruelty to children in Turkey’s state-run orphanages.

Duchess And Daughters: Their Secret Mission showed footage of disabled children at an orphanage near Ankara. Some were tied to their beds and others were left in cots all day without being taken out to be fed.

However, the Duchess, 52, did not have a permit to film and has since been accused of breaching the country’s strict press laws.

The office of Turkey’s chief prosecutor announced last Thursday that it was pressing charges against her for ‘violating the privacy’ of five children.

If she is found guilty of the allegation, she could face between seven-and-a-half years and 22-and-a-half years in prison.

A friend of the Duchess told The Mail on Sunday yesterday: ‘Sarah is totally shocked by this because she thought it had gone away. It was, after all, more than three years ago. This has come out of the blue and she is deeply worried.’

Britain has an extradition deal with Turkey under the 1957 Council of Europe Convention on Extradition. However, the Home Office has said that it will not be providing assistance to the Turkish authorities because the Duchess’s actions in exposing poor conditions at the orphanage did not constitute a crime in the UK.

A spokesman said: ‘In this case there is no offence in UK law so there will be no extradition.’

Nevertheless, Prince Andrew’s former wife thinks it is ‘prudent’ to stay in Britain until the matter has been resolved. The Duchess was reported to have spoken to her lawyers about the charges, but last night a friend said: ‘It was her decision to cancel the trip. She didn’t do it on the advice of anyone else.

‘She’s sort of grounded herself until this whole thing is over. She doesn’t want to travel until it gets sorted out.’

The Duchess’s lawyers were said to be working to clarify the position in Turkey in the hope that the charges will be dropped.

For the television documentary, the Duchess disguised herself in a black wig and headscarf as she and her daughter Princess Eugenie accompanied an undercover team investigating the orphans’ living conditions.

The programme provoked an immediate diplomatic row after it was aired, with the Turks accusing the Duchess of trying to smear their country as it awaited a report on its application for membership of the European Union.

Charges were apparently brought against the Duchess and two other members of the production team soon afterwards.

A spokesman for ITV said last night: ‘We were made aware through media reports on Thursday that the issue over charges relating to our programme had arisen again.
‘When charges were originally brought three years ago, we made it clear that we stood firmly by our programme and our position remains unchanged.’

A spokesman for the Duchess refused to comment.

Source: Daily Mail

The Duchess of York's Secret Mission

2012-01-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

In view of the recent revival of this case, I thought I'd post the documentary again.

Duchess of York Evades Extradition

2012-01-13T18:13:00.000-08:00

This is a strange one. What are the Turks up to here? There's obviously no chance they will actually get her into prison, so what are they thinking? Perhaps it's the old Turkish carpet seller's haggling mentality they think would give them a bargaining chip to use in the EU negotiations? Crazy, if so. Or could it be they really don't want to be allowed into the EU and are trying to provoke Europeans into turning them down? This was a conspiracy theory I came across a while ago and made a post about. It sounded far-fetched to me at the time but has come to seem more plausible since.

Turkish prosecutors made a formal request to the Home Office on Thursday to help them gather evidence against the Duchess after she and an ITV1 crew filmed children in a state-run orphanage near Ankara.

Turkey’s chief prosecutor charged the Duchess in her absence with “violating the privacy” of five children, an offence which carries a prison sentence of up to 22 and a half years.

But a spokesman for the Home Office told The Daily Telegraph that no assistance would be given to the Turkish authorities because the Duchess’s actions in exposing poor conditions at the orphanage did not constitute a crime in the UK.

“Under UK extradition law a judge must order the discharge of [an extradition request] if it is not an offence under UK law and in the country requesting extradition,” said the spokesman. “In this case there is no offence in UK law so there will be no extradition.”
While the Home Office’s refusal to help Turkey is good news for the 52-year-old Duchess, she would still face arrest if she ever went back to Turkey.

James Henderson, a spokesman for the Duke of York’s former wife, said the charges had “come as a complete surprise” to her because the Turkish authorities had said last year that the case was closed.

The possibility of legal action had first been raised shortly after the ITV1 Tonight programme was shown in 2008, in which the Duchess, disguised in a black wig and headscarf, and her daughter Princess Eugenie, accompanied an undercover team investigating the orphans’ living conditions.

The programme, called Duchess and Daughters: Their Secret Mission, sparked an immediate diplomatic row, with the Turks accusing the Duchess of trying to smear their country as it awaited a report on its application for EU membership.

Mr Henderson said the Duchess’s lawyers were working to clarify the position in Turkey, in the hope that the charges will be dropped, otherwise the Duchess will face a potential lifelong restriction on visiting Turkey.

The Turkish family and social policies minister, Fatma Sahin, refused to comment on the latest development, saying: “Our lawyers are following the case, we are waiting for the ruling. It will be wrong to comment on an ongoing court case. We will be following the process.”

The Duchess has already apologised for any embarrassment the documentary had caused Turkey, but insisted she was motivated only by humanitarian rather than political reasons.

Source: The Daily Telegraph

Duchess of York Charged in Turkey

2012-01-12T13:28:00.000-08:00

A court in Turkey has brought charges against the Duchess of York over a controversial ITV documentary in which she went undercover to secretly film orphanages in Ankara and Istanbul.

The court accused Sarah Ferguson in her absence of going "against the law in acquiring footage and violating privacy" of five children. The charges carry a maximum jail term of more than 22 years if a conviction results.

Ferguson wore a disguise to visit the homes with her daughter Princess Eugenie for the special edition of ITV's Tonight current affairs show, which was broadcast in November 2008.

The film, which prompted a major diplomatic row with the Turkish government, featured footage of children dressed in bedclothes and rags, some of them with shaven heads and tied to beds or left in their cots all day.

Turkish politicians accused the programme-makers of a smear campaign aimed at derailing the country's attempts to join the European Union.

Ferguson, who also covertly filmed in orphanages in Romania, accompanied by her other daughter, Beatrice, said at the time of the broadcast that she was "apolitical" and was "happy with courage to stand by the film".

ITV declined to comment and is understood not to have been contacted by the Turkish authorities.

The broadcaster previously described the programme as a "valid area of public interest at a time when the UK government is endorsing the accession of Turkey into the EU, a process which is conditional in part on Turkey improving its human rights record with children".

It was unclear why Turkish authorities waited more than three years to raise the charges.

Ferguson did not declare her royal status during the film, in which she was known only as Sarah, with the footage filmed by members of her entourage posing as potential wealthy donors. The Tonight special was watched by 2.4 million viewers.

Source: The Guardian

Turkish Hackers Attack French Websites

2012-01-09T22:30:00.000-08:00

I've posted about this before, but here's a video version of the story.

Turkey ‘Ignored' Assassination Plot of Hrant Dink

2012-01-09T22:01:00.000-08:00

Long before one of Turkey's most famous journalists was shot three times in the head by a 17-year-old Turkish nationalist, he was already in the crosshairs of the security and intelligence forces.

A top European court and critics in Turkey say members of the police force knew of the plot to kill the journalist, Hrant Dink - an ethnic Armenian who was gunned down in Istanbul on January 19, 2007 - but took no action to prevent the crime.

Turkish authorities are still blocking a thorough investigation into the involvement of state officials in the conspiracy, critics say.

Last July, Ogun Samast, a young nationalist, was convicted by a juvenile court of killing Mr Dink in downtown Istanbul, but the trial against his alleged accomplices has been dragging on amid accusations that the authorities are reluctant to shed light on the role of security forces in the plot to kill the journalist.

Istanbul's High Criminal Court is scheduled to convene today for the 24th hearing in the trial.

"It was like a chronicle of a death foretold," said Banu Guven, a Turkish journalist and a member of Friends of Hrant, a group calling for a full investigation against policemen, military officers and members of the intelligence services.

"Officers knew this group was going to kill Hrant, they even knew the type of weapon that was going to be used," Ms Guven said this week.

Turkish nationalists hated Mr Dink because he openly said the killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire amounted to genocide, a term Turkey rejects.

Suspicions that there was support or at least sympathy within the security forces for the perpetrators arose after Samast's arrest on January 20, 2007, when policemen posed for souvenir pictures with Mr Dink's murderer.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights in France ruled Turkey was guilty of failing to protect Mr Dink's life.

Police in Istanbul and the north-east city of Trabzon, the home of the suspected killers, "had been informed of the likelihood of an assassination attempt and even of the identity of the suspected instigators", the court said.

After the crime, authorities refused to allow investigations against high-ranking officers of the security forces, the judges said.

The verdict has not changed the situation in court in Istanbul, critics said.

"The people who would conduct the investigation are the very ones who should be investigated," Ms Guven said.

Friends of Hrant, campaigning under the slogan "This trial must not end this way", has called on its supporters to gather in front of the court in Istanbul today to protest against what it sees as attempts at a cover-up.

Samast, who was 17 when he killed Mr Dink outside the offices of Mr Dink's Armenian newspaper, Agos, was sentenced to almost 23 years in prison. According to Turkish rules on prison terms, he is to be released in about 10 years.

In the separate trial against Samast's suspected accomplices before Istanbul's High Criminal Court, the prosecution has demanded life sentences for Yasin Hayal, a member of the militant nationalist scene in Trabzon, and Erhat Tuncel, a former police informer from the Black Sea city.

Summing up its case last September, the prosecution said the murder was the work of a local cell of Ergenekon, a suspected network of nationalists accused by prosecutors in another ongoing trial of plotting to overthrow the government by provoking a military coup with the help of assassinations and other terrorist acts.

But prosecutors did not go into details of the Ergenekon connection.

Critics accused the prosecution of trying to end the trial prematurely.

"We have always said that the slowness with which this trial was proceeding was unbearable, but hastily concluding the prosecution case will not help the truth to emerge," Reporters Without Borders, an international group campaigning for media freedom, said last year.

Friends of Hrant have said the state involvement in the murder was obvious.

"It is clear that the ones responsible for Hrant's death and for an organised effort to hide the truth are state officials," the group said on its website.

Ms Guven said court proceedings, which started in February 2008, showed clear signs of reluctance by the state to get to the bottom of the case.

"The trial has been dragging on for so long because there are problems with gathering evidence," she said. "Sometimes authorities do not want to supply the court with evidence."

One example, cited by Ms Guven and other critics, is that Turkey's telecommunication authorities refused for months to give the court mobile phone records from the time and place where Mr Dink was shot. The records were sent to the court last year only after several demands by the judge.

Other evidence that Mr Tuncel and Mr Hayal, the men accused of organising the murder with Samast, worked with members of the security apparatus, has also not been examined properly, critics say.

Mr Hayal's father, Bahattin Hayal, said last November that an unnamed official had congratulated him on his son after the murder and told him that Yasin worked for the state.

There have been signs that the suspects are confident of their early release.

In one court hearing, Samast said he would get even with Mr Dink's family after the trial.

"Just wait, I'll see you in five years," he told family members in the courtroom.

Ms Guven said she was concerned the trial would end without shedding light on the true dimension of the conspiracy behind Mr Dink's death.

"The people on trial now will go to prison for a few years and may even expect a hero's welcome after their release," she said.

The militant nationalist mentality that led to Mr Dink's death was still alive in Turkey five years after the murder, she added.

"As long as we do not see the whole picture and as long as that mentality is not clearly condemned, there is a danger that things like that could happen again," she said.

Source: The National

Former Head of Turkish Armed Forces in Court

2012-01-06T00:14:00.000-08:00

Turkey's former army chief Ilker Basbug was arrested Friday over an alleged bid to topple the Islamist-rooted government in the latest confrontation likely to inflame tensions with the powerful military.

"The 26th chief of staff of the Turkish republic has unfortunately been placed in preventive detention for setting up and leading a terrorist group and of attempting to overthrow the government," Ilkay Sezer, a lawyer for Basbug, was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency.

It is the first time in the history of the Turkish republic that a former chief of the Turkish military has been arrested as a suspect.

However, dozens of active and retired military officers, academics, journalists and lawyers have been detained in recent years in probes into alleged plots against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Basbug, who retired in 2010, is the highest-ranking officer caught up in a massive investigation into the so-called Ergenekon network, accused of plotting to topple Erdogan's Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).

His arrest came hours after he testified as a suspect at an Istanbul court on Thursday as part of a probe into an alleged Internet campaign to discredit the government.

"The commander of such an army facing charges of forming and leading an armed organisation is really tragicomic," the 68-year-old general told prosecutors, Anatolia reported.

"I always followed the law and the constitution throughout my tenure."

"It is up to the esteemed nation to make a judgement" on his arrest, he was also quoted as saying by the private NTV television as he was leaving the Istanbul courthouse.

Basbug was sent to a prison at Istanbul's Silivri prison where other suspects of the alleged Ergenekon network are being detained. His lawyer said he would challenge the court's ruling.

The military, which considers itself as the guardian of secularism in modern-day Turkey, has carried out three coups -- in 1960, 1971 and 1980.

The move against Basbug appears to be a fresh warning to the NATO member state's military whose political influence has waned since Erdogan's AKP came to power in 2002.

Critics accuse Erdogan's government of launching a campaign to silence its opponents, charges it denies.

In 2009, Turkey's former army chief Hilmi Ozkok also testified to prosecutors in the Ergenekon probe but as a witness.

Among the allegations is an attempt by a group of army officers to establish websites to disseminate anti-government propoganda in order to destabilise the country.

"I reject this charge... I, as the chief of General Staff, am the commander of the Turkish Armed Forces which is one of the most powerful armies in the world," said Basbug in his testimony according to Anatolia.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of Turkey's opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), said that the courts trying the Ergenekon suspects were not delivering justice.

"They are implementing the decisions made by the political authority," he was quoted as saying by Anatolia.

Source

Foreign Affairs Says Turks 'Have Destroyed but Never Built' and 'Contributed Nothing to Human Progress'

2012-01-01T12:56:00.000-08:00

From the time when the Turks streamed westward out of their pagan homelands in Central Asia and picked up Islam on the way,
they have destroyed but never built. They destroyed Saracenic
civilization when they broke up all the early Mohammedan
States of Western Asia, and, wresting the leadership of Islam from
the more highly gifted Semitic Arabs, they impressed upon it the
baser stamp of their Turanian race. Stout fighters to the present
day, they have contributed nothing of their own to human
progress, nothing to science or art or literature, and what they
borrowed from Persians and Arabs they have degraded. The first
ten Sultans of the House of Othman were great conquerors with
some conceptions of statesmanship, but after them the power
passed to the effete and blood-stained creatures of the Seraglio
and to the corrupt Pashas of the Sublime Porte.

The devastating tide of Turkish conquest, sweeping over the
Christian kingdoms and principalities of South Eastern Europe,
became a formidable danger to Western civilization until it was
at last arrested outside the gates of Vienna in 1683. It then
swiftly receded.

Source: "Islam and Britain" by Sir Valentine Chirol, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Mar. 15, 1923).

Kurdish Uprising in Turkey

2011-12-30T19:41:00.000-08:00

Santa is Indecent Says Turkish Mufti

2011-12-28T23:55:00.000-08:00

Santa Claus does not exist, the mufti of the northwestern district of Keşan said today, adding that even if he did, he was not of decent character since he entered houses through chimneys instead of doors.

"It is not known if Santa Claus really lived," Mufti Süleyman Yeniçeri said. "They speak of a place and say he lived there. But it is actually a character invented by the Christian world.”

"Santa Claus enters homes through chimneys and windows, but he would have entered homes through the door if he was a decent person," Yeniçeri said. “We enter homes through doors. The Quran tells us to enter homes through doors. Why would he enter through the chimney?"

The mufti also said Saint Nicholas, whom the Santa Claus persona was believed to be based on, was also a made-up person and a legend.

'New year' a Christian tradition

Yeniçeri said new year's celebrations had no place in Turkish culture and that such events came from Christianity.

"Celebrating an event that originated from Christianity means striving to become like them," Yeniçeri said. "Why would we ever want to live like them? Do they want to become like us?"

Yeniçeri said Christmas was not a Muslim holiday and said it would be dangerous if one said, "I want to live like a Christian."

"If one wants to have fun because others do, we need to look into the notion of entertainment. One becomes a sinner if entertainment involves drinking wine and alcohol,” he said.

Source: Hurriyet

Turkish Jets Kill Innocent Villagers

2011-12-28T23:52:00.001-08:00

Former Turkish Prime Minister Reportedly Admits Turkey Set Forest Fires in Greece

2011-12-28T23:26:00.000-08:00

Greece seeks investigation on Turkish arson claims
ATHENS / ANKARA

Greece lodged an official complaint with Turkey on Dec. 27 following a newspaper report that implied Turkish government involvement in setting forest fires in Greece in the mid-1990s.

The Greek Foreign Ministry described the allegations as “serious” and demanded an official response.
“As long as such information remains unclear, it will poison public opinion and undermine efforts to build relations of trust between our two peoples,” a ministry statement said, according to the Associated Press.

Turkey’s daily BirGün quoted former Prime Minister Mesut Yılmaz as saying Ankara had set forest fires in its Aegean neighbor, but Yılmaz subsequently said he had been misquoted and that the allegations were untrue.

On Dec. 27, Greek Supreme Court prosecutor Yiannis Tentes launched an emergency inquiry, ordering that investigations be reopened into mid-1990s wildfires blamed on arson, while the Foreign Ministry said it was seeking an official response from Ankara.

Ankara replied to Greece’s requests, saying Yılmaz’s words had been misunderstood and told Greece to take into account the former prime minister’s recent statement in which he denied the previous media reports, daily Hürriyet reported yesterday.

Tensions between traditional rivals Greece and Turkey were running high at the time referred to in the newspaper report, with the two countries coming to the brink of war in 1996 due to the disputed sovereignty of a tiny island in the Aegean Sea. The two NATO allies have since improved ties.

Yılmaz, who served as Turkey’s prime minister three times during the 1990s, was quoted by the newspaper as saying that a report into a scandal in Turkey excluded information about Turkish state secrets, including “forest retaliation against Greece.”

In his subsequent correction, Yılmaz said he had been referring to unsubstantiated reports of Greek involvement in Turkish forest fires.

Source: Hurriyet

Turkish Hackers Attack French Government Websites to Avenge Armenian Genocide Bill

2011-12-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

The websites of the French Senate a National Assembly lawmaker who introduced a bill that would outlaw the denial of the 1915 Turkish ‘genocide’ of Armenians have been attacked by Turkish hackers.
By Tony Todd (text)

Turkish hackers have launched revenge attacks against the French government after the country’s lower house of parliament approved a bill that would outlaw the denial of the 1915 massacre of Armenians in Turkey as a crime of genocide.

The website of the Senate, France’s upper house of parliament which will have to approve the bill before it can become law, was down for two days over the Christmas weekend.

On the evening of December 24, the site showed a black screen signed by Iskorpit, an infamous Turkish hacker who claims to have hijacked some half a million websites during his "career."

A source at the Senate said the site came under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, in which thousands of hijacked computers bombard a website with demands for information, swamping it and effectively shutting it down.

On the same day the website of Valérie Boyer, parliamentarian from the ruling UMP party in the lower National Assembly and primary sponsor of the “genocide bill”, was hijacked, this time showing a black screen with a Turkish flag.

Messages in Turkish and English called the National Assembly’s approval of the genocide bill “pathetic and pitiful” and accused France of committing a genocide in Algeria.

The message was signed by a group calling itself “GrayHatz”, which according to French news site Nouvelobs.com includes members of “Akincilar”, the group that launched the attacks on satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo after it published an edition “guest-edited by the Prophet Mohammed” titled “Charia Hebdo” last November.

Charlie Hebdo’s offices were also firebombed on the day the controversial issue went to press, although one purported member of Akincilar calling himself “Ekber” told Sunday newspaper Journal du Dimanche that the cyber group had nothing to do with the firebombing.

Immediately after the dual Christmas Eve attacks, Akincilar announced its intention to “hack the websites of every single French lawmaker”, nouvelobs.com reported, quoting one of its members saying the group would publish a list of all its attacks made in France with their GrayHatz “friends”.

On Tuesday, blogger Guillaume Perrier , writing in the left-leaning French daily Le Monde, accused the Turkish government of failing to investigate Akincilar for its criminal activities.

“These hackers are acting with impunity in Turkey,” said the blogger. “Not one of them was questioned after attacking Charlie Hebdo’s site, or for their many attacks on other sites.”

“If these people had targeted [Turkish Prime Minister] Recep Erdogan’s site, they would already have been locked up and would be facing terrorism charges.”

Meanwhile, Valerie Boyer's site remained down on Tuesday as she told reporters that she was filing a criminal complaint for harassment. On Monday, she told BFM radio that she had also received “threats of death, of rape, of destruction of property and of physical assault” and that her parents and children had also been threatened.

As for the Senate's website, it was quickly restored and went back on line.

Source: France 24

Geert Wilders Demands that Turkey's NATO Membership be Reconsidered

2011-12-27T11:31:00.000-08:00

Ankara accused of ‘abandoning’ Israel and France by Dutch Freedom Party.

BERLIN – The Dutch Freedom Party, the Netherlands’s third largest political party, urged the Foreign Affairs and Defense Ministries last week to reconsider Turkey’s continued membership in NATO.

Geert Wilders, head of the party, and its Mideast expert, deputy Wim Kortenoeven, accused Turkey of abandoning its allies – Israel earlier this year, and now France.

Turkey severed diplomatic and military ties with France last week, over the French parliamentary resolution on the current Turkish government’s reaction to the Ottoman Empire’s massacre of Christian Armenians in 1915. The empire preceded the modern secular Turkish state founded in 1923, and the French deemed the state’s denial that these events represented genocide to be punishable by a monetary fine.

France is a leading member of the NATO military alliance, as is Holland.

Kortenoeven, a leading European specialist on the Mideast and author of several books on the region, told The Jerusalem Post that since Turkey has a short but disturbing history of abandoning allies, it could be a lethal mistake to entrust them with the custody of a crucial element of the new Western/European defense system against nuclear rogue states such as Iran and Pakistan. The Dutch lawmakers asked that the slated missile shield to be installed in Turkey be reconsidered.

The party’s military spokesman, Marcial Hernandez, also posed questions to the ministries regarding Turkey’s reliability as a NATO partner.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide stated that it is unlikely that countries such as the Netherlands or Germany will follow the French example and pass resolutions against Turkey.

Larissa van den Herik, professor of international law at Leiden University, was cited as saying: “Both countries have large Turkish communities. No one will be keen to offend them with a ban. But it would be good to put a bit more pressure on Turkey. It’s always good to take an honest look at your history.”

The Dutch Freedom Party opposes militant Islam and has generated much controversy in Europe due to its criticisms of political and reactionary strands of Islam in Holland and throughout Europe. The party played a kingmaker role in the last national election and helped establish the current coalition government.

Source: Jerusalem Post

Daniel Hannan Shamefully Denies Armenian Genocide

2011-12-24T05:36:00.000-08:00

I've written before about Daniel Hannan, the Conservative MEP and Conservative Friends of Turkey member who expends almost as much effort trying to get Turkey into the European Union as he does trying to get Britain out of it. He is a shameless, conscienceless propagandist for the Turkish cause. But today he has reached a new low. In a blog post saying we should all support Turkey in its dispute with France over the Armenian Genocide bill passed by the French government, he implies the events are shrouded in so much uncertainty that only future inquiries undertaken by specialist scholars could establish whether it was really a genocide.

The question is whether the deaths and atrocities amounted to a policy of deliberate genocide. While I have read a certain amount about the period, it’s not a question I feel competent to settle, since it is at heart a legal rather than a historical one. Defining a particular set of killings as genocidal goes beyond semantics. A series of juridical consequences flow: the matter can be lifted from the courts of the state concerned to supranational level, and the argument can swiftly move on to reparations.

As I say, I am not competent to pronounce definitively about 1915.

Of course the view that the events of the period need to be clarified by specialists is exactly the one propounded by the Turkish government - as if it was all a great mystery waiting to be unravelled.
Hannan writes as if he was on their payroll. In fact, I sometimes wonder whether he is.

They were tangled and tragic events, and historians have wrangled ever since about precisely what occurred.

Hannan acknowledges that "guiltless Armenians perished" but artfully remains vague about the role of the government in this; and insinuates that anyway it was half-justified by Armenian support for Russia.

When the Ottomans joined the First World War, and fighting began along the Caucasian frontier between the two empires, many Armenians threw in their lot with the Russians. The Young Turks, at war on two fronts and foreseeing the overthrow of their regime, feared that their entire Armenian population would rise in revolt. Brutal repressions ensued, with arrests, executions, evacuations, forced marches and at least some deliberate pogroms.

No one, not even the most hardline Turkish nationalist, denies that guiltless Armenians perished. Similarly, no one, not even the most vengeful diaspora reparationist, denies that many Armenians died in Tsarist uniforms.

But there really is no uncertainty about whether this was a deliberate programme of mass murder orchestrated by the government or a spontaneous popular outpouring of nationalistic rage during wartime. At the time a British diplomat called Clifford Heathcote-Smith obtained a secret Turkish government document that was being circulated around the country, with orders to destroy it after it had been read.

One remarkable document was discovered and translated in early 1919 by British ofﬁcials in Turkey, who labeled it “The Ten Commandments.” It is a blueprint of the Armenian extermination operation and appears to have been the centerpiece of a secret party meeting, which took place sometime in late December 1914 or in January 1915. The document was obtained by Comm. C. H. Heathcote Smith, the right-hand man of Adm. Somerset Calthorpe, the British high commissioner in Constantinople. Fluent in Turkish, Smith had served as British consul in Smyrna before the war, and he ﬁrst learned of the “Ten Commandments” from the former British intelligence agent Percival Hadkinson, in Smyrna.

The document (along with several others) came into British hands through Ahmed Essad, the wartime head of the Ottoman Interior Ministry Department II, Intelligence. Essad had served as secretary at the conference at which the “Ten Commandments” were issued—a conference presided over by Talaat Pasha, the minister of the interior, and Drs. Nazimand Behaeddin Shakir, the masterminds of the Special Organization.

Source: The Burning Tigris

The document is described below in an extract from the book Paradise Lost by Giles Milton:

It was this draft document that Heathcote-Smith managed to acquire. It was entitled ‘The Ten Commandments of the Comite Union and Progress [sic]’ and was the minutes of a secret conference attended by the Minister of the Interior, Talaat Bey, and four of his senior officials in the winter of 1914.

Commandment One set the tone for the entire document. It called for the arrest of all Armenians who were working against the government and their ostensible deportation to Baghdad or Mosul. Once they were on the march, their Turkish guards were to ‘wipe them out either on the road or there’. Commandment Three called on officials to excite Muslim opinion in Van, Erzeroum and Adana ‘[and] provoke organised massacres’. Commandment Five was to ‘exterminate all males under 50, priests and teachers, [and] leave girls and children to be Islamised’. Commandment Eight called for the murder of any Armenians still serving in the army, while Commandment Nine ordered that ‘all action . . . begin simultaneously, and thus leave no time for preparation of defensive measures’.

Source: Paradise Lost by Giles Milton

By casting doubt on the Armenian Genocide, Daniel Hannan has stooped to holocaust denial in service of his Turkish masters. Shame on him.

Turkish Barbarians Go Into Hysterics Over 'Racist' French Law on Armenian Genocide

2011-12-23T06:52:00.000-08:00

France has passed a draft bill making it illegal to deny genocide, including the Ottoman Turks' 1915 massacre of Armenians. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded Friday by accusing France of committing genocide in Algeria in the 1940s.

AFP - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday accused France of committing "genocide" in Algeria after French lawmakers voted a bill criminalising the denial of Armenian genocide.

"France massacred an estimated 15 percent of the Algerian population starting from 1945. This is genocide," Erdogan told a news conference after the French move on the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman-era forces.

The Turkish premier accused French President Nicolas Sarkozy of "fanning hatred of Muslims and Turks for electoral gains."

"If the French President Mr. Sarkozy does not know about this genocide, he can ask his father Pal Sarkozy... (who) had served in the French legion in Algeria in the 1940s," Erdogan said in his televised remarks.

"I am sure he has many things to tell his son about the French massacre in Algeria," Erdogan said.

France is home to around 500,000 citizens of Armenian descent and they are seen as a key source of support for Sarkozy and his UMP ahead of presidential and legislative elections in April and June next year.

On Thursday, France's National Assembly voted the first step towards passing a law that would impose a jail term and a 45,000 euro fine on anyone in France who denies that the 1915 massacre of Armenians constitutes genocide.

During World War I hundreds of thousands of Armenians died at the hands of Ottoman Turk forces. Armenia says 1.5 million died in a genocide, Turkey says around 500,000 died in fighting after they sided with a Russian invasion.

France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe called on Turkey not to "overreact" to a bill that he insisted was a parliamentary initiative, and not a project of Sarkozy's government.

France has a 500,000-strong community of Armenian descent, many of whose forebears fled the killings a century ago, and French politicians assiduously court their votes every five years ahead of elections.

Turkey and many of Sarkozy's domestic opponents accuse him of jeopardising relations with a key NATO ally and trading partner to win Armenian votes.

Turkey Warns France Over Armenian Genocide Bill

2011-12-15T15:33:00.000-08:00

Turkey has reportedly threatened on to recall its ambassador to France and freeze ties with Paris if the French parliament next week passes a bill criminalizing the denial of the Armenian genocide.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu accused French lawmakers of seeking to “dishonor” his country.

Under the bill, which will be debated by the French National Assembly on December 22, anyone in France who publicly denies that the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide could face a year in jail and a fine of 45,000 euros ($58,000)?

French President Nicolas Sarkozy signaled support for its passage when he visited Yerevan in October.

“There will be irreparable consequences in all bilateral relations,” Turkish Ambassador Engin Solakoglu told the AFP news agency, adding that he expects to be called back to Ankara for an indefinite period from December 22.

“Turkey considers this a hostile act by the French executive," said Solakoglu. “All cooperation with the French government, all joint projects, will be frozen.”

Davutoglu likewise told Turkish parliamentarians late on December 14 that it is “out of the question to leave unanswered an attempt by any country leader, government or parliament to dishonor our country and nation.”

“If this proposal is legislated, France will pioneer the return of a Middle Ages mindset to Europe,” the Anatolia news agency quoted him as saying.

The French foreign ministry refused to directly comment on the threat. “Turkey is an important friend and ally,” spokesman Bernard Valero said, according to AFP.

On his visit to Armenia, Sarkozy repeatedly reaffirmed France’s official recognition of the genocide enshrined in a 2001 law. He urged Ankara to stop denying there had been a premeditated effort by the government of the time to wipe out Ottoman Turkey’s Armenian population.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily rejected the call.

Ankara vehemently denies that some 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman Turks in 1915-1918.

Successive Turkish governments have said that Armenians died in much smaller numbers and because of civil strife, rather than a premeditated Ottoman government effort to annihilate a key Christian minority.

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian was full of praise for Sarkozy when he visited France’s second largest city of Marseille last week. “We must simply be grateful to the wise president of this beautiful country,” he said in a speech there.

Sarkisian also urged the Turks to “repent” for the genocide and expressed confidence that they will eventually recognize it.

Source

Britain's new Special Friend: Turkey

2011-11-23T14:27:00.000-08:00

The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, wrote the following in the Telegraph.

This week’s State Visit to the UK by Turkey’s President, Abdullah Gul, reminds us that Turkey is a country that is developing a new role and new links for itself, within and beyond existing structures and alliances. The UK and Turkey have a strong relationship across the range of foreign policy and security issues. Over the last 18 months we have laid firm foundations for that relationship through an ambitious Strategic Partnership which prompted the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to say that relations with the UK had entered a “golden age.” Indeed they have.

Source: Daily Telegraph

Mainstream Germany Society Hostile to Turks

2011-11-22T13:15:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Kebab Murders have stirred up political debate in Germany. Here is a translated extract from an interview Hans-Ulrich Jörges [on the right in the photograph] - one of the editors of the Stern news magazine - gave on the German news channel NTV.

How many murdered fellow citizens does it take, murdered by Neo-Nazis, till the mass of the people go on to the streets?

Jörges: …We note with some shock that there is no sympathy for the victims. At least not in the majority German society. In a minority milieu there is. Now and then we see a small group of people in a place where there were victims, stand in front of the door in the evening and light candles or hold up signs. Those groups are no larger than 100 people. The majority German society, we learn from this, apparently lives in a mixture of indifference, fear and even contempt towards the Turkish immigrant society that lives alongside it. They have very little to do with one another. They do not feel, do not consider them as fellow citizens. And if you look at where that comes from, I believe you need to look back at the last year. Last year Thilo Sarrazin rose up to be a folk hero. This man has transported the language of the NPD [German “far right” party they are now talking about banning in the wake of these murders, even though it had nothing to do with them] into the mainstream of society. He started the debate at the end of 2009 with phrases like “The Turks conquered Germany with their higher birth-rate”, they had “no productive function other than selling fruit and vegetables”, they “unceasingly produced little headscarf girls”. When you look back on it now, those are unbelievable phrases. And I say very deliberately that is the language of the NPD. And that book he wrote with over 1.3 million copies sold is the most successful political book since the war – incredible actually.

And what does that say about the mainstream of the society he was able to transport these theses to?

Jörges: The mainstream of society is receptive to such theses…

Why?

Jörges: Mainstream society rejects Turkish-Muslim culture. It is afraid of it. It doesn’t like it. Also it rejects integration. We’re always looking at the Turkish immigrants and their willingness to integrate. The German majority society also has no willingness to integrate, the majority society. And when we look at the mainstream again, on the internet there’s now a relatively well-known platform for inciting hatred against Turks and Muslims. It’s now had over 50 million visitors and more than 125 million page views. That is not a fringe milieu any more. That is the mainstream of society. So we shouldn’t just be looking at the right, although that’s correct; we need to look at the mainstream society too and see what’s happening there.

Source: PI

The internet hate platform he's referring to is, of course, PI (Politically Incorrect).

This news clip gives some background on the Kebab Murders that have provoked this discussion:

Recent Scenes of Turkish Violence in Europe

2011-11-18T08:40:00.000-08:00

Amsterdam savagery - Turks vs. Kurds

Antwerp savagery - Turks vs. Kurds

Copenhagen savagery - Turks vs. Hells Angels

Syria's Muslim Brotherhood 'open to Turkish intervention'

2011-11-17T15:09:00.001-08:00

The Muslim Brotherhood obviously recognise Erdogan as a kindred spirit.

Mohammad Riad Shaqfa, a leader of Syria’s banned Muslim Brotherhood said Thursday his country would accept military intervention to stop the regime's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protestors if it was led by Turkey instead of Western powers.

REUTERS - A leader of Syria’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood said on Thursday the Syrian people would accept military intervention by Turkey, rather than Western countries, to protect them from President Bashar al-Assad’s security forces.

Mohammad Riad Shaqfa, who lives in exile in Saudi Arabia, told a news conference in Istanbul the international community should isolate Assad’s government to encourage people in their struggle to end more than four decades of Assad family rule.

Hundreds of people have been killed this month, one of the bloodiest periods in the revolt that began in March. The United Nations says more than 3,500 people have died in the unrest.

If Assad’s government refused to halt its repression, Shaqfa said Turkish intervention would be acceptable.

“If the international community procrastinates then more is required from Turkey as a neighbour to be more serious than other countries to handle this regime,” Shaqfa said.

“If other interventions are required, such as air protection, because of the regime’s intransigence, then the people will accept Turkish intervention. They do not want Western intervention,” Shaqfa said.

Source: France24

Jailed Author's Banned Book Launched

2011-11-16T13:28:00.000-08:00

By Ayla Albayrak

The book was banned and the author jailed before it was published, but on Wednesday a group of fellow journalists and writers in Turkey launched Ahmet Sik’s “The Army of Imam” at an annual book fair, outraged by what they see as suppression of free speech.

Mr. Sik has been in jail since March and it wasn’t until September that the charges against him — aiding an alleged terrorist organization known as Ergenekon, that aimed to overthrow the government — were made public. His trial is expected to begin later this month. The book is being used in evidence against him.

Mr. Sik’s case and that of fellow journalist Nedim Sener, who was arrested at the same time, have become lightning rods for critics of the government’s record on freedom of expression. The European Union and the U.S. also have criticized the arrests.

The book was co-signed by 124 journalists and others, who revised and edited it for release at Istanbul’s TUYAP book fair Wednesday.

The book argues that the Turkish police force has become increasingly controlled by a religious Muslim movement led from the U.S. by Turkish Imam-businessman, Fethullah Gulen. Many Turks see the Gulen movement, which is known mainly for building and running schools in Turkey and around the world, including in the U.S., as a moderate and modernizing Islamic force.

But opponents say the movement has a hidden Islamist agenda. They say that since the Islamic-leaning Justice and Development Party, or AKP, came to power in 2002, the Gulen movement has become increasingly powerful, replacing the militarist so-called deep state that the Ergenekon case is designed to uncover, with a new Islamist one that also abuses the courts.

Mr. Sik’s book, a draft of which was widely downloaded from the internet after his arrest, is no smoking gun against the Gulen movement. But Mr. Sik’s supporters note his own long record of investigative journalism against the old deep state and believe he is being prosecuted and punished for doing his job as a journalist.

His book was renamed by his co-signatories “000KITAP – Dokunan Yanar” (000BOOK – Who Touches, Will Burn), referring to what he said on the day of his arrest. “Those who touch [Gulen’s movement] will burn,” Mr. Sik said to TV cameras and onlookers, as he was shoved in a police car in front of his house in early March, over eight months ago.

“We shall retain our patience, strengthen our perseverance, keep our determination and continue our protest until our friends, Ahmet Sik and Nedim Sener are given back their freedom,” journalist Ismail Saymaz, who has also had his share of trials for his journalistic work, read in a press statement at the book fair. “In other words, “Even if we burn, we’ll touch!”

Mr. Sener also is charged with helping Ergenekon. He had been inspecting the shortcomings in the ongoing murder trial of a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, Hrant Dink, who was shot dead by an ultranationalist in front of his office in Istanbul in 2007.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that around two dozen journalists are in Turkish jails and none in connection with their journalistic work. Many of the jailed journalists are Kurds, accused of spreading propaganda for the Kurdish Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization in Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union. Human rights groups in Turkey and abroad disagree with Mr. Erdogan. They say the number of jailed journalists is above 50 and that they were punished for their work.

Source: Wall Street Journal

New Approach to Integration in Germany: "Perhaps We Should Learn Turkish"

2011-11-15T17:20:00.000-08:00

This shocking interview with the psychologist Thomas von Stosch appeared in the German newspaper "Heilbronner Stimme".

Heilbronner Stimme: What mistakes were made in the 60s from today’s perspective?

Von Stosch: At that time people actually did not think about how living together should be arranged and how the immigrants could feel at home here. For a people immigration means opening themselves up to the immigrants. But up to now it’s noticeable how difficult it is to welcome someone from another culture and especially to consider them equals.

To what extent is integration adaptation?

It’s necessary to distinguish between different migration processes. Whoever immigrates wants to feel at home here; that includes adapting themselves. He or she wants to live according to the rules of their new home and accept its customs. Immigrants assimilate and consciously give up something of their old ways.

This behaviour does not correspond to what a large number of migrants are living. Why?

For many migrants it’s not about immigration, but rather a process of migration of peoples that is taking place. The conflicts with many Turkish citizens can only be understood from this perspective. In a migration of peoples people remain connected to their homeland. They take their people with them and look for a new place for themselves. They don’t assimilate, but expect that their way of life, their language and their culture can develop in the new country, that is to say Germany.

Your thesis provokes objections because normally it’s expected of immigrants that they will adapt a bit. So is learning German not a necessity?

This demand is part of the old model, which is: go to school, learn German, be good, then all problems are solved. This fails to take into account the fact that the migration of Turkish people to Germany is a historical movement that is nowhere near complete. So sometime there will be Turkish schools and universities. The process can no longer be reversed; on the contrary, in Europe we are just at its beginning. We must consent to this development. Until that happens, understanding will not work. And only when we consent can we shape the process. I am certain it will generate something completely new..

Are we Germans then required to make room and accept parallel societies?

Migration was never discussed in terms of the migration of peoples, only in terms of immigration and adjustment. But we must engage with those who do not want to immigrate. Perhaps we need to start learning Turkish. The migration of peoples demands a lot of everyone involved. It’s about co-existence on the basis of equality. And accepting other people as equals, leaving them as they are, and granting them the same rights, that is a real challenge. For example, that a muezzin should be able to call in the mornings in the same way that church bells ring.

Source: PI

Is Turkey Building a New Ottoman Empire?

2011-11-15T14:54:00.000-08:00

ISTANBUL—It’s a broken world out there and today, more than ever, Turkey is offering itself as the glue to make everything right again.

Need a new boss in the buckling Middle East? Been-there, done-that, for 500 years. See Ottoman Empire.

Need a modernist model to whip the revolutions of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya toward just the right blend of democracy, Islam and prosperity? Hey, that’s us.

Need someone to deliver tough love to Syria, Iran and Israel, all at the same time? We can do that, too. We’ve got the second-largest army in NATO, after the U.S. We play nice. We can even talk to Pakistan. And when we talk, they listen. Need a bridge between east and west that brings both halves together in harmony? Apply here. Good terms available.

Such are the superficial slogans of the neo-Ottomans, whose sultan — three-term Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — is flexing political muscle unmatched since the days of Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey from the ashes of empire nearly a century ago.

Erdogan’s Turkey has reasons to preen. It can look to withering neighbour and longtime rival Greece with something approximating pity, whispering, “But for the grace of Allah.”

Like Greece, Turkey jumped through a frenzy of market-reform hoops demanded by Europe during its decades-long accession dance, tripling its GDP in the process. But the coveted EU membership never came, and now resurgent Turkey is laughing all the way to the bank. Which happens to be bursting with Turkish lira, not ticking-bomb Euros, thank you very much.

Turkey got the milk, economists will say, without actually buying the cow, thanks to a customs union with Europe that drives as much as 80 per cent of Turkish exports.

Look at any washer or dryer on the continent, for example, and chances are it is Turkish-made — an industrial boom that has lifted many of its 70 million inhabitants from a low-tech textile and tea-growing past.

You can feel the rising confidence on the exotic streets of Istanbul, where explosive sprawl means something close to 17 million people now reside in a megacity straddling two continents.

But more than anything you can see it in Erdogan himself. This summer, the prime minister, head of the Islamic-inspired Justice and Development Party (AKP), ended years of intrigue by imposing full civilian control over Turkey’s fiercely secular military elite. Four times between 1960 and 1997, Turkish generals toppled their governments. It appears now the era of coups is over.

But in September, it was Erdogan’s “victory tour” of Tunis, Tripoli and Cairo that raised the most eyebrows in these parts — uninvited, the Turkish leader imposed himself on the seats of the Arab Spring’s new rulers, offering advice and encouragement. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood was especially piqued when Erdogan urged a secular separation of mosque and state as the way forward — and many Turks weren’t very amused either, given the absence of such a message on home turf.

Indeed, Turks themselves are as riven as ever with objections to Erdogan’s regional wanderings. They may be doing well, economically, but among the conspiracy-minded electorate there are many who doubt the AKP’s commitment to democracy, let alone the separation of religion and government that was laid down as Ataturk’s cardinal tenet for Turkish governance.

For evidence, most critics look no further than the country’s jails, where hundreds of retired and active military officers, journalists and political dissidents have been gathering dust, many accused of conspiring against the government in alleged coup plots known as Ergenekon and Sledgehammer.

“You have journalists labeled as terrorists because they dared criticize the AKP. And they’re talking about democracy? That’s been under siege here since 2003 (when Erdogan was first elected),” said Buket Sahin, an Istanbul-based writer/photographer and contributor to the country’s oldest daily, Cumhuriyet (Republic).

“Now Ergodan speaks as if he owns the country, just like a neo-sultan. The ones who were not put in jail were effectively bought, including many of my friends, and the result is silence as Turkey slides toward Islam and away from the secular society.

“I consider myself a daughter of Ataturk. He was the one who gave rights to women and ended the Sharia laws of the Ottoman era. Turkey didn’t need a new model because we already had the best one. And that’s at risk now.”

Some Turkish observers take a more tempered view, noting that dogma cuts both ways and even under the sway of its secular military elite Turkey was more autocratic than democratic.

British-born political analyst Gareth Jenkins, a resident of Istanbul since 1989, observes “secular space is shrinking” in Erdogan’s Turkey. From successive tax hikes on alcohol and cigarettes to the removal of barriers on expressions of Sunni Muslim values and a dauntingly large number (8,000) of websites blocked by the government, the AKP regime demonstrated a vision of the “more explicitly conservative society.”

One recent example: the Istanbul district of Beyoglu, a hub of revelry in a city that never sleeps, was raided repeatedly late in the summer with police teams stripping the district of its outdoor patio tables. District officials cited safety concerns, saying the unauthorized outdoor beer parlours had sprawled so completely across the narrow streets as to make the passage of an ambulance impossible.

The crackdown spawned a wild range of rumours — all false — blaming Erdogan himself. One version claims that the prime minister was offended by the sight of so much booze during a walk through the district on the eve of Ramadan. Another holds that a foolish reveler taunted Erdogan by toasting him with a tall glass of Efes beer as he strode past.

“None of the rumours about Erdogan being here are true. And the tables were removed long before Ramadan. But that’s Istanbul for you,” said Molly Farquharson, an expat Canadian and proprietor of Molly’s Café in nearby Galata.

“Still, the way it was done was very rude and ugly. In some cases, the police just told tourists to stand up as they sat there enjoying a drink. They seized tables right out from under people. And the result is about 2,000 service industry staff are jobless now.”

Jenkins said the patio table scandal is but one example in a growing list of AKP-inspired restrictions aimed at “the common demon.

“There is no great desire in the AKP party for sharia law. Their main aim is not an Islamic state but rather, a more Islamic society. So things like chairs and tables were removed — all right, now the ambulances can get through — but at the same time these things always coincide with something the AKP sees as offensive to their values. That’s why you will only see them pick on restaurants that serve alcohol.”

Mehmet Demirhan, a broadcast executive with Turkey’s Kanal 7, suggests Turkey’s shift toward conservative family values is more a consequence of the rise of a new electorate from the once-impoverished Anatolian heartland, the AKP’s political base.

“The Kemalists think it’s a religious thing — but it’s actually the opposite. It’s about class,” Demirhan said.

“As Turkey develops, we’re seeing the development of a new class of Anatolian people gaining affluence as they move to the urban centres. They’re becoming wealthier and more refined — but they are still traditionally conservative in their outlook. And they have the energy and the momentum in Turkey now.

“The secular elite doesn’t like it. But I expect time will heal those tensions. Give it another generation and their kids will all get along better than the parents.”

With Turkish democracy still very much a work-in-progress, few feel comfortable speaking openly, in Turkish at least, about this riddle of contractions, lest they fall afoul of dreaded penal code Article 301, which has been used to prosecute journalists for “insulting Turkishness.”

But it’s a different matter in English, which is why some of the most bristling domestic commentary today comes from such outlets as the English daily Hurriyet, where columnist Burak Bekdil last month mocked the “political schizophrenia” of Erdogan’s regional ambitions. From befriending the likes of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Syria’s Bashar Assad, only to quickly turn on both, Turkey’s outreach has approached comic dimensions, he wrote.

“Turkey is a man who thinks he is a plumber, firefighter, Superman, Spiderman, Batman, sultan and everyone else” in the region, said Bekdil. “But sadly, at the end of the day, he looks like a comic figure from the circus.”

Jenkins agrees: “There is extraordinary hubris at play with Erdogan, in part because he is surrounded by terrified yes-men. To actually go to Libya and say, ‘We liberated you’ — and this from a guy who was the last recipient of the Gadhafi Human Rights Award (a dubious honour) — is astonishing.

“There’s a lot of self-aggrandizement in what he and the AKP say, all informed by the rhetoric of Ottoman nostalgia. Their vision is really to be a regional leader in a neo-Ottoman sphere.”

But the irony, said Jenkins, is that if Turkey were only to scale back its ambitions a few notches, “they would have a huge amount to offer.”

“What the Middle East needs is partnership, not leadership. But Turkey isn’t looking for partnership so much as hegemony. And that’s what is so frustrating about this moment. It calls out for Turkey’s strong, though not perfect, track record of parliamentary elections rather than Erdogan’s irascible personality.”

Kanal 7’s Demirhan, meanwhile, notes that in the context of the growing global economic and political unrest, Turkey at least deserves a chance to play out its hand on the world stage.

“The whole world can see the system is broken, from the Wall Street protests to the financial wreckage in Europe. Everyone’s looking for something else, some new basis for sharing the world’s wealth.

“For almost a century, Turkey turned its back on the East and looked only to the West. And now it realizes it can look both ways. So let us find out. If Turkey can do so with the Abrahamic spirit of a table where all are welcome, let it happen.”

Source: The Star

Kebab Murders in Germany

2011-11-14T14:33:00.000-08:00

Turkish Police Brutally Attack Earthquake Survivors

2011-11-12T10:18:00.000-08:00

At the very end of this clip, you see the Turkish police wade in and start clubbing the earthquake survivors. The city of Van has a substantial Kurdish and Armenian population. No doubt that's a factor.

Historic Church to be Turned into Mosque

2011-11-11T13:45:00.001-08:00

The Seventh Ecumenical Council, the Second Council of Nicaea, held in the Aghia Sophia of Nicaea in 787, declared the orthodoxy of icons and images. It was the last meeting of all the world's bishops that included representatives of both the Church of Rome and the Church of Constantinople, the leaders of Western and Eastern Christianity, respectively.

The church was turned into a mosque when Islamic jihadists conquered Nicaea in the fourteenth century; then, like its more famous namesake in Constantinople, it was made into a museum by the secular Turkish regime. Now that Turkey is rapidly re-Islamizing, it is a mosque again. "Erdogan's religious acrobatics: Nicaea council church back to being a mosque," by NAT da Polis for Asia News, November 11 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Istanbul (AsiaNews) - The specter of Aghia Sophia continues to plague the Islamic world of Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey. Not the most famous symbol of the church of Constantinople, but another church, Aghia Sophia in Nicaea (now Izmit), which predates the Constantinople church, having been built in the fourth century. It passed into history in 787 AD, when it was the last church to host a united Christendom drawn to discuss the iconoclastic question, in a truly ecumenical synod, before the fatal schism of 1024 [actually 1054 -- ed.].
This Christian church, the Aghia Sophia in Nicaea (Izmit), was transformed into a mosque in 1331 by Orhan Gazi who led the Ottomans and which was later made a museum in 1920, has returned once again to being a mosque.

All that was needed was a directive from the Directorate General for Religious Affairs led by Mehmet Gormez, appointed by Erdogan instead of Ali Bardakoglu, the man behind the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Turkey, since retired. The move has elicited several considerations in Turkey and abroad in a period in which much importance and emphasis is placed on religious freedom. It is also noted that this decision by the Directorate for Religious Affairs, made in accordance with the Directorate General of Religious Foundations, to which the church of Aghia Sophia in Izmit belongs, is in complete contrast with the decisions of the Ministry of Culture in Ankara, which granted permission for religious celebrations in Christian monuments that have since been transformed into museums....

Source: Jihadwatch

Non-Muslim Soldiers’ Experiences in the Turkish Army

2011-11-10T15:17:00.001-08:00

Last year, writer Tuba Çandar published a biography of Hrant Dink. In addition to interviewing a number of people who knew Dink, Çandar also talked to Dink himself for the book: In that interview, he narrated his memories of his military service.

It was interesting to learn what mandatory military service means for non-Muslims in Turkey, where the minorities, including Greeks and Armenians, have been suffering with mistreatment and discriminatory practices for a long time. Dink said: “I have been subjected to discrimination my whole life just because I was Armenian. One of these occurred during my military service. During my service in the Denizli 12th Infantry Regiment in 1986, all of my friends except me were promoted to an upper military rank after the military training. I was an adult with two kids; maybe I should not have cared about it. But this discrimination really hurt. Everyone was sharing their joy with their relatives at the ceremony; but I was alone, sobbing behind the barracks.” This topic attracted my attention after reading Dink’s account. Recently another book has been published which may answer my questions. Researcher and writer Rıfat Bali interviewed 80 non-Muslims who served in the Turkish army, and published the interviews in a book titled “Gayrimüslim Mehmetçikler: Hatıralar-Tanıklıklar” (Non-Muslim soldiers: Memoirs-Witnesses). I have just bought the book; I am still reading it. Some of Bali’s interviews were also published in various Turkish newspapers. He makes some interesting statements in these interviews. Below are some excerpts from different interviews he gave to different newspapers, namely Milliyet, Agos and Radikal, which I found interesting:

“Perhaps it is no coincidence that most of those who responded to your call were Jewish and that only a few Armenians told you their stories?

‘Only a few responses came from Armenians. Of course, there are some differences between the experiences of Jews and Armenians in terms of the specific problems they met with as well as their relations with the state. The problems of the Armenian soldiers generally revolve around 1915 [when Armenians were forced to leave Turkey]. While enlisted in the army they witness anti-Armenian propaganda relating to the incidents of 1915, which they find offensive.’

Who are in the most delicate and difficult position?

‘Armenians. They are being tested and questioned because of the 1915 controversy. They have to prove themselves and their patriotism.’

But is not far more difficult for a Jew serving in the army now?

True: they may face offensive remarks about Israel and Zionism. The answer to such remarks is simple: ‘I am a Turkish citizen; the disagreements with Israel are none of my business.’” (Milliyet)

“You are saying that Armenians encounter the most serious problems during their military service; why is that?

‘The 1915 incidents become a matter of discussion every year; Armenians experience serious problems in their military service because of this. The difficulties that the Jews encounter because of the ongoing row with Israel are not comparable to the troubles that Armenians experience.’” (Agos)

“What changed after the 1990s, and have things gotten better?

Non-Muslims were viewed as dangerous through the late 1970s. They were considered dangerous particularly because of their commercial activities. But this changed in the 80s. Now the shrunken non-Muslim population is enjoying the benefits of affirmative action, which has been in place for over the last 15 years.” (Radikal)

Below are excerpts from a former non-Muslims soldiers’ memories related in Balcı’s book:

Yosi Kastoryano says: “When they separated the illiterates, former convicts and non-Muslims from the rest in the selection of staff for different positions, I wondered why I was being considered together with the illiterate and the former cons…”

Arsen Yarman says: “A high-ranking military officer came in, with a list on his hand. He said: ‘Those whose names I call, take one step forward.” Then, he called out: ‘Garo Halepli, Agop Yeşil, Ardaş Altınay.’ We were nine soldiers, all Armenian. He said: ‘You others go get your equipment.’ We were looking at each other, afraid for our lives. We thought they were going take us to another place and kill us. It turned out that they had chosen us for appointment as sergeants. But we were thinking that we were going to be deported.”

I hope that Turkey will someday fully confront its discriminatory and racist practices, and that this valuable work by Rıfat Bali is used as a textbook in out children’s history classes.

Source: Today's Zaman

Turkish Association Made Bizarre Claims About Christian Symbols Embedded in the Design of Cologne Mosque

2011-11-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

The Cologne mosque has always been controversial. While it was till at the planning stage, it inspired the anti-mosque, anti-Islam Pro-Cologne movement which later blossomed nationwide as the Pro-Deutschland movement, one of the main Counterjihad movements and political parties in Germany.

Now that much of the mosque has been built, it is still generating controversy. A few weeks ago the Turkish association (DITIB) behind the mosque construction dismissed the company responsible for designing and building it, on the grounds of time and cost overruns and failures in the design.

The architect, Paul Böhm, is now hitting back, claiming that the time and cost overruns were due to DITIB continually insisting on changes in the design. Bizarrely, it seems many of these changes were due to DITIB's belief that the architect had embedded secret Christian symbols in the original plans.

DITIB claimed the three-part dome was a reference to the Christian concept of the Trinity. So Böhm changed it to a four-part dome instead. After extensive computer graphics processing, DITIB claimed this was a cross. So he changed it again.

Next DITIB claimed to have found an interwoven P and X symbol in the blueprints. This is a Christian symbol, the Chi Ro, constituting the first letters of Christ's name in Greek. Of course this was entirely imaginary, but the architects were constantly having to adapt the design in response to nonsensical claims like this.

Böhm ultimately blames the Turkish government for the dispute. DITIB is controlled by the Turkish government and the analysis behind the claims of Christian symbolism was apparently done in Turkey itself. Böhm claims DITIB has become increasingly conservative in recent years in keeping with the politics of Ankara. He also says he chose to keep quiet about all of these strange goings-on before so as not to provide fodder for "right-wing populists".

Billed originally as a symbol of "open and transparent" Islam, the mosque has instead become the exact opposite.

Sources: Köln Nachrichten Sueddeutsche Zeitung KSTA

Turk vs. Kurd Violence in Antwerp at Weekend

2011-11-09T16:14:00.000-08:00

I posted about this incident before but this video has more detail in it.

Police officers did their best to separate the two groups and prevent further fighting. At one point the rioters hurled street paving stones at the police that responded with tear gas. Calm returned around 1:30 AM.

The rioting has caused considerable material damage. Shop windows were shattered, cars were trashed and bus shelters damaged. A number of people had to be taken to hospital for treatment, but all have now been discharged. The police also report one stabbing in which one person was injured, but the exact circumstances have not yet been established.

Source: Flanders News

See earlier post about same incident here.

Turkey Accused of Using Chemical Weapons Against Kurds Again

2011-11-09T15:53:00.000-08:00

The activists are circulating gruesome pictures of some of the 24 rebels, from the PKK guerrilla group, killed in the Kazan Valley in air raids that began on October 19. Blackened and dismembered, the corpses lie in a morgue in a nearby town with weeping relatives nearby.

Their allegations have forced their way into the open in Turkey, which is usually fiercely nationalist when it comes to accusations of abuse by the Kurds, whose campaign for autonomy is a long-running sore. The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, made a public denial of them as a "slander" while on his recent trip to the G20 summit in Cannes.

The activists say the only explanation for the type of burns exhibited is that some chemical agent was used. Their claims has now been raised by MPs from the legal pro-Kurdish party, the BDP, and taken up by the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD).
"One of our branches in the area has acted to investigate whether chemical weapons were used or not," a spokesman said from IHD headquarters in Ankara. He said chemical samples had been taken from plants in the area, as well as from clothes from the bodies of 13 of those killed.

The PKK has led a long struggle for recognition for the Kurdish people, who have no state of their own but also inhabit large areas of Syria, Iran and Iraq. In Turkey alone more than 40,000 people have died.

The moderate Islamist government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has granted Kurds more rights, particularly over the use of language, but the PKK have resumed their campaign, including suicide bombing, in recent months.

The government attack in October followed a series of coordinated raids by the PKK which killed more than 20 soldiers. Retaliation, including over the border into the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq, began immediately.

According to a local news website, IHD investigators, who were admitted to the region only after intervention by the local governor, found body parts scattered across the valley.

"The statements of both the relatives and eyewitnesses imply the use of chemical weapons. The bodies were completely burned," the local IHD branch chairman, Ismail Akbulut, said. "This allegation definitely has to be investigated." He said villagers had been told not to drink local water for two to three days.

It would not be the first time the Turkish authorities had been accused of resorting to chemical weapons – a particularly sensitive issue because of the massacre of thousands of Kurds with mustard gas by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s.

Last year, the German magazine Der Spiegel said experts at Hamburg University Hospital shown photographs of similarly scorched and burned bodies from a strike in September 2009 also attributed the deaths to the "highly probable" use of "chemical substances".

Ruwaydah Mustafah, a London-based activist and editor of the KurdishRights.org website, said that the Turkish authorities had ordered an autopsy on that occasion but had never released any results. "That's what makes us very curious and very worried," she said.

She said such allegations tended not to be widely taken up for fear of being seen to support the PKK, which is condemned as a terrorist organisation by most western governments. "I don't support the PKK but everyone has a right to die in a dignified way," she said.

The PKK attacks have also been followed a series of arrests of Kurdish intellectuals and BDP members across the country.

Mr Erdogan was asked about the claims by reporters travelling with him to Cannes. "This is slander," he said. "The operations in the Kazan Valley were carried out by our Air Force. The [bodies of] PKK members who were killed in the caves are currently in the Forensic Medicine Institute in Malatya, where everything is proceeding according to the law, down to the DNA tests."

A spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry also said: "We reject these claims."

Source: Daily Telegraph

Video from: KurdishRights.org

Turkish Genocide Denial Continues

2011-11-08T15:52:00.001-08:00

Turkey has doubled its efforts of distorting the historic facts ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. Young Turkish historian Mehmed Perincek has published his recurrent masterpiece, where he presents his views on the Armenian Genocide.

In” The Armenian Cause in 120 documents of Russian state archives” book published in Moscow the author tries to persuade that massacres were perpetrated by both sides, and blames the imperialistic powers and Russia for this.

The Turkish historian tries to prove the authenticity of his doctrine, saying it is based on 120 Russian archive documents. “When you look through the book, it becomes clear that the author has used only 63 documents, the rest are different Soviet-era publications against the Armenian Revolutionary Federation,” Director of the Armenian National Archive Amatuni Virabyan told a press conference today.

According to him, the Genocide-related materials kept in Russia archives are rather modest. There are more documents in the archives of the countries, which had diplomatic representatives in Turkey at the turn of the century. In particular, the German, American, Austrian, and even Spanish diplomats were reporting to their respective governments about the brutalities against Armenians of Turkey.

Director of the National Archive has prepared an article to be translated into Russian in the near future. This is a response to Mehmer Perencek’s book, where Amatuni Virabyan has enlisted all of the above-mentioned documents.

Ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide the National Archive is preparing to publish “Vshtapatum” (The Story of Sorrow) - a 1 500-page work, which presents the Armenian Genocide by the eyes of eyewitnesses, in Armenian, English and Russian, and possibly French.

In the near future the National Archive will publish about 1 200 documents on the massacre of the Armenian population of Kars in 1918-1920. The documents were collected by the commission set up by Hovhannes Tumanyan in 1919 and were to be presented at the Paris Peace Conference.

Source: Public Radio of Armenia

Cyprus Divided: a Documentary

2011-11-07T14:13:00.001-08:00

Turkish Hacker Group Threatens to Attack Libération if it Continues to Publish Charlie Hebdo Cartoons

2011-11-06T14:02:00.000-08:00

In an interview with the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche, a member of the Turkish hacker group Alcincilar has threatened to attack the website of the newspaper Libération if it continues to republish Charlie Hebdo cartoons. After the firebombing of the Charlie Hebdo building last week, Libération allowed Charlie Hebdo's staff to work from its offices and republished some of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons in a gesture of solidarity.

A journalist from Le Journal du Dimanche interviewed a member of the group in an Istanbul cafe. The 20-year-old, an IT student, who is referred to in the article as "Ekber" but uses the pseudonym "Black Apple" online, claimed to be the one responsible for the hack on the Charlie Hebdo website.

"We don't think we have done anything wrong. It's not as if we were siphoning bank accounts. It's a protest against an insult to our values and our beliefs." But the young hacker immediately insists on dissociating himself from the Molotov cocktail attack that ravaged the newspaper. "Of course not, we don't support violence. Islam is a religion of peace..."

Akincilar claims to have hacked more than 6000 sites, including that of Penguen, a kind of Turkish equivalent of Charlie Hebdo, which published a cartoon deemed disrespectful of Islam. The artist who drew that cartoon is now being prosecuted.

But the majority of Akincilar's targets are more political than religious. Thus, hundreds of Israeli sites, especially those of Mossad, were captured after the Israeli attack on the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara in May 2010. Armenian sites, Kurdish media favourable to the rebellion of the PKK of Kurdistan… Or more recently the site of the American petroleum company Noble Energy, which is carrying out gas explorations off the coast of Cyprus, in a territorial zone that is disputed by Turkey.

"We are defending our country and our institutions", says Ekber. After Charlie Hebdo, the hacker promises they will keep an eye on the French press. "If Libération continues to publish these drawings, we will deal with them too," he promises.

Source: Le Journal du Dimanche

Turks and Kurds Bring Their Quarrels to Belgium

2011-11-06T10:19:00.001-08:00

Hundreds of Turks and Kurds fought one another in the Belgian city of Antwerp last night. A massive police intervention was required to contain the disorder. The fighting lasted from 10 pm till 1.30 am. In total, 5 people were slightly injured. This is the third time this week a fight like this has broken out in Antwerp. Ah ... Anatolian enrichment! Don't you just love it, Europe?

Source: RTL.be

The video is a Turkish news clip about a Molotov cocktail attack (supposedly by Kurds) on a Turkish cultural centre in Antwerp on 2 November.

Turkish Hacking Group Admits Responsibility for Charlie Hebdo Website Attack

2011-11-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I posted about speculation that the Turkish hacking group AKINCILAR (means 'Ottoman raiders' in Turkish) may have been behind the hack of Charlie Hebdo's website. Yesterday the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur received a communication (in English) apparently from the hacking group group, declaring its responsibility. Besides acknowledging involvement in the Charlie Hebdo incident, it claims to have attacked many other websites, including American and Israeli ones, to avenge various perceived slights to Turkey or Islam. It denies any connection to the physical attack on the premises, however.

The statement is reproduced in full below:

Hello,

First of all we are appreciated for giving us the opportunity to explain the reason to perform this attack. www.cyber-warrior.org has been one of the best security platform in Turkey since 2001. Our platform has almost everything about informatics and security topics. We have an active attacking group named "AKINCILAR" that attacks other websites which is not suitable for our mission to protest them.

Our mission is that;

# Struggling the publications that attack our beliefs and moral values, contain pornographic and satanist materials which perplex innocent people.

# The publications that are opponent to Turkey, our religion, and the situations which influence society conscience (This is in the direction of our mission's general principle) are within the scope of the attacks.

# We provide consultancy about security and other technical details to the organizations, sites and groups that are broadcasting within the context of our mission without expecting any benefit. (This is valid for only Turkish websites for now.)

You can find other detailed information about our mission by visiting the link below;

http://www.cyber-warrior.org/Misyon.Asp

The website named "www.charliehebdo.fr" became our target because of its materials that affront our religious values. Because of the fact that it disregards our prophet, we put our protesting content on the website's homepage successfully. This is not the first attack for our AKINCILAR group. In the past we hacked many websites that target our religious values. To set some examples about the previous attacks made by AKINCILAR which have appeared in media;

- You may remember that there was a website named "www.drawmohammed.com" which was insulting our prophet by its comics. We hacked that website's domain, and you can still see our protest context on its homepage.

- We have hacked 1500 USA websites to protest the situation in which gunny bags were put on 11 Turkish soldiers' head in Iraq on July 4th 2003 by USA soldiers.

- Many popular websites that attack our religious values have seen our protest texts on their homepages.

- Thousands of pornographic and satanist websites were hacked by us.

- We hacked hundreds of Israel websites contain Israel navy ministry to protest the situation in which Israel soldiers have attacked Turkish aid vessel named "Mavi Marmara".

- After popular hacker group named "Anonymous" have attacked Turkish websites, we hacked their social sharing platform named "www.anonplus.net/org/com and many other websites that support this group.

- You can find some of the information about our attacks by visiting the link below;
http://www.cyber-warrior.org/SuccessHistory.asp

All things considered it can be concluded that it is unthinkable that we are attacking the websites randomly. Many people think that hackers are bad people since they destroy other websites and platforms. However, we try not to harm the database of the websites that we hacked, and only put our protest context on their homepages. On the other hand, we as a security platform, censure harming innocent websites and other hacking attempts that are malevolent. We have never thought to attack other religions' values and will never think. There is a tolerance and respect to other religions in our religious principles. “And we always consider expressing our protest and anger about disrespectfulness to our sacred values on the relevant websites' homepages as a rightful and a good cause.”

NOTE: There is nothing to do with AKINCILAR about the assault with molotov coctail to the Charlie Hebdo Magazine building. We do not support any kind of attack that is performed such a violence.

Sources :

http://www.zone-h.org/mirror/id/15739759

http://www.zone-h.org/archive/notifier=AKINCILAR

http://turk-h.org/defacement/list/filter/attacker/AKINCILAR

http://fr.news.yahoo.com/r%C3%A9seau-social-censure-anonplus-censur%C3%A9-pirate-132947230.html

http://www.google.fr/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=tr&source=hp&q=Drawmohammed.com+hacked&pbx=1&oq=Drawmohammed.com+hacked&aq=f&aqi=g-vL2&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=2899l7247l0l7430l25l10l2l10l10l2l986l3755l0.2.3.2.2.0.1l17l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=ae347da71d3ff224&biw=1280&bih=670

http://www.google.fr/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=tr&source=hp&q=Geert+Wilders+hacked&pbx=1&oq=Geert+Wilders+hacked&aq=f&aqi=g1&aql=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=3637l3637l2l3876l1l2l0l0l0l0l209l209l2-1l2l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=ae347da71d3ff224&biw=1280&bih=670

Thank you for the opportunity of the explanation.
Greetings from Turkey

F0RTYS3V3N
AKINCILAR Group Leader
Web Security Expert

Sources: Le Nouvel Observateur AKINCILAR Statement

Child Rape Scandal in Turkey

2011-11-04T09:23:00.000-07:00

Pressure mounted yesterday on the Supreme Court of Appeals over a ruling that upheld reduced sentences for the abuse of a 13-year-old girl on grounds that she consented to sex, as Family and Social Policies Minister Fatma Şahin said the court was yet to pronounce its final word.

“The Supreme Court of Appeals is saying that the case is not yet over and that the media have distorted the issue. Let’s wait and see their decision,” Şahin told reporters in Parliament.

The minister said she had spoken with the victim, identified only as N.Ç., and her lawyers, pledging “all support” on issues the government might help with.

“N.Ç. is our daughter and Turkey is a state based on the rule of law. We will follow up this issue together,” she said.

The Supreme Court of Appeals said Wednesday that “not all aspects of the judicial process have been completed yet,” pointing out that the case covered offenses committed in 2002 and 2003, and that the suspects were indicted in six separate charge-sheets.

In 2002, N.Ç. met female suspects T. and E., identified only by their initials, who cajoled her into sexual intercourse with 26 individuals in exchange for money. The men included soldiers, civil servants, shopkeepers and teachers.

Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said the controversy arose from the fact that the case pertained to offenses committed before a penal code reform introduced tougher provisions in 2005.

The Turkish Bar Association, however, said yesterday that even the implementation of old provisions could not justify the ruling.

“To consider and accept that N.Ç. willingly allowed herself to be raped is against the realities of life, and also against the letter and spirit of the law that was in effect when the offenses were committed,” the association said in a statement.

Women’s rights activist Leman Yurtsever, who has acted as foster mother to N.Ç., now 20, said they were planning to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

A last recourse of appeal is also possible at the Supreme Court of Appeal’s general assembly chamber, which makes definitive rulings.

In a separate development, Minister Şahin visited Chief of General Staff Gen. Necdet Özel to ask for the Army’s support in efforts to stamp out violence against women.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Şahin said the military was a key venue to reach out to adult men and she would discuss how to streamline education for soldiers to raise awareness of women’s rights.

Turlish President Abdullah Gül also commented on the scandal, stating that he was "deeply disturbed" by the reduction of sentences.

"As far as I know, the judiciary process isn't over yet," Gül said via his Twitter account. "I hope that a decision will be made that would coincide with the public conscience."

Source: Hurriyet

Another Gaza Flotilla on the Way from Turkey

2011-11-03T17:23:00.001-07:00

Note this report is from Press TV, which is controlled by the Iranian government.

There is more information about Turkish complicity in this flotilla here.

95% of Turks Born in Germany Feel Turkish First

2011-11-03T16:31:00.000-07:00

Turkish Group Behind Hack of Charlie Hebdo Website?

2011-11-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

Last night the Charlie Hebdo website was hacked into, and their offices burned. The hackers left messages in English and Turkish. The French newspaper Le Point suggest a Turkish hacking group may be responsible. :

The cyber-attack which affected the Charlie Hebdo site last night, adding the slogan "Be God's curse on you! We will be your curse in Cyberworld!", was signed Cyber-Warrior TIM, a group close to Akincilar, an association of pirates based in Turkey and known for their "defacements", that is to say inserting images on websites to communicate a message. On Turk-h.org, the group lists its own record of interventions: there are many Israeli sites there, like the Israel Wander Tour travel agency or Noble Energy, a petroleum investment company.

Source: Le Point

Noble Energy, of course, is the company involved in oil exploration off the coast of Cyprus.

Front National Posters in France

2011-11-01T16:24:00.000-07:00

The image shows posters for the Front National that are going up around France. They say "Turkey - Sarkozy Lied". Before becoming French president, Sarkozy threatened to block Turkey's accession to the EU, which has nonetheless remained on track.

Source: Vlad Tepes

More on the Turkish Violence in European Cities at the Weekend

2011-10-31T18:19:00.001-07:00

I think this is another view of the demonstration in Paris yesterday. The Turks burn a flag. Not sure which one. Probably a PKK flag.

You have to ask what Europeans have done to merit the (now seemingly routine) violent disruption of our city life by aggressive Turks and Kurds? It happened this weekend. It happened the weekend before. This is over a quarrel in Turkey. Are European governments helping either side? No. So what is the logic of protesting in European cities?

Here is a clip from Turkish television that shows some of the violence.

One 18-year-old Turk apparently later died of the injuries sustained in these scuffles.

Cyprus Condemns Turkish Violations of Human Rights at UN

2011-10-31T18:16:00.000-07:00

Permanent Representative of Cyprus to the UN Ambassador Minas Hadjimichael condemned Turkey’s violations of human rights in Cyprus, while speaking Wednesday to the Third Committee of the General Assembly of the United Nations.

According to an official announcement, Hadjimichael said in his speech that Turkey has violated in 1974 basic human rights and fundamental freedoms, in addition to violating Cyprus’ independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.

As Hadjimichael noted, in relation to its population, Cyprus has the highest percentage of displaced persons in the world.

The Permanent Representative added that since 1974, the UN has adopted a series of important resolutions, calling on Turkey to respect its obligations under international law.

Instead, he said, Turkey continues to commit mass violations of human rights in Cyprus, by violently maintaining the division of people and of territory and by having displaced almost one third of the population, as well as by illegally exploiting Greek Cypriot properties.

Moreover, Hadjimichael also referred to the continuous grief of families of missing people, whose fate cannot be established due to Turkey’s refusal to provide information, as well as to the continuation of the illegal settlement of the Turkish-occupied territories, with the transfer of more than 160,000 people from Turkey. Finally, the Ambassador also noted the ongoing destruction of cultural and religious heritage in the northern part of Cyprus.

All these violations, he said, have been condemned constantly in a series of UN resolutions, as well as in decisions issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). He referred to the recent report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay and added that according to ECHR, Turkey violates 14 articles of the European Convention of Human Rights.

On the issue of altering the island’s demographic composition, by continuously transferring settlers from Turkey, Hadjimichael noted that this affects the settlement of the Cyprus problem and it constitutes a blatant violation of the Geneva Convention and a war crime under the Statute of the International Criminal Court.

He said that the Turkish Prime Minister Recep tayyip Erdogan, while on an illegal visit in occupied Cyprus last July, referred to this policy of population transfer from mainland Turkey, warning the Turkish Cypriot population not to oppose it.

On the issue of missing persons, Hadjimichael expressed his appreciation for the work conducted by UNFICYP and the Committee on Missing Persons but underlined the lack of cooperation by Turkey, which he said is also noted by the Secretary-General himself in his report.

Regarding the enclaved Greek Cypriot population that remains in the northern part of Cyprus, Hadjimichael said that they continue to face serious violations of human rights, particularly with regards to their freedom to exercise their religious rights, the right to transfer property to their rightful heirs and the right to education, which is being compromised through numerous cancellations of appointments of teachers and book censorship.

On the destruction of cultural heritage, Hadjimichael said that almost 575 churches as well as other Christian monuments and cemeteries have been knowingly destroyed and desecrated, with the most recent example being the demolition of the church of Ayia Thekla last May.

The Permanent Representative of Cyprus noted that the President of the Republic of Cyprus is striving for the last three years, through direct talks, to reach a solution to the Cyprus problem, based on a bizonal, bicommunal federation, in accordance with the relevant UN resolutions.

A basic element for the successful conclusion of this process, he said, is the immediate termination of human rights violations in Cyprus. As he put it, the aim of the Cyprus government is the restitution and support of fundamental human rights and basic liberties, for all its citizens.

He said that in order to achieve this aim, the Turkish occupation of a large part of the island of Cyprus must be terminated and UN resolutions need to be respected.

This is of vital importance, not just for Cyprus, but for the credibility and the moral standing of the UN itself, Hadjimichael concluded.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded and occupied its northern third.

Peace talks are currently underway to find a negotiated settlement that will reunite the country, under a federal roof.

Source: Famagusta Gazette

Kurds vs. Turks in Paris

2011-10-30T16:23:00.000-07:00

24 Kurds vs. 150 Turks. Kurds win.

Massive Unemployment Among Turkish Immigrants in Austria

2011-10-29T09:10:00.001-07:00

[The orange lines show what percentage of the employed are of immigrant origin in various Austrian cities.
The blue lines show the percentage of the unemployed who are of immigrant origin.
The red line shows the percentage of unemployed of immigrant origin for Austria as a whole.]

Often they come in accompanied, sometimes with half the family in tow. The women sit there mutely, the veil pulled over their faces, while the man at their side speaks. If the counsellor manages to get a few words out of them, often it reveals broken German.

Turkish girls and women are among the most difficult clients for employment counsellors. Three quarters have only completed the period of mandatory schooling - and even that not always completely. "One day they go to school, then not again", says Inge Friehs, "because it's clear in advance they're supposed to marry and become housewives."

Friehs describes only one facet of the disquieting overall picture: among the clients of the employment service people of immigrant origin are heavily overrepresented. At 31.4% their share of those who are unemployed in Austria is almost twice as high as their share of those who are employed. In Vienna immigrants represent "only" 32 percent of those in employment, but almost half of job-seekers. Of the unemployed young people in the city, those of foreign origin represent as many as 70 per cent.

Source: Der Standart Via: SOS Heimat

Turkey's Churlish Acceptance of Israeli Earthquake Aid

2011-10-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

It is testimony to the severity of the earthquake in Turkey that after two days of turning down foreign assistance and, in particular, desperately needed help from its nearby former friend Israel, Ankara has finally relented. The Jerusalem Post reports that after several rebuffs of Israeli overtures the Turks reached out to the Jewish state via its embassy. Tonight, a plane will carry the first of several loads of equipment to Turkey. But anyone believing this gesture marks a thawing of relations between the two countries is probably mistaken.

The first plane sent to Turkey from Israel was a civilian plane chartered by the Defense Ministry. The most logical explanation for this otherwise puzzling decision not to use a military aircraft is that despite backing down from their refusal to accept Israeli help, the ban imposed on Israeli military aircraft flying in Turkish airspace at the time of the Gaza flotilla confrontation between the two nations may still be in place. The alacrity of the Israeli response to Turkey’s need will, like most good deeds, probably go unrewarded as the Islamist government in Ankara continues to make a pitch for leadership of the Muslim world based on its hostility to its former strategic ally.

Last December, when Israel was dealing with forest fires in the Carmel Forest in the northern region of the country, many hoped the fact that Turkey sent a plane to help put out the flames would help both sides smooth over their dispute. But though Israel was properly grateful for the Turkish gesture, relations have worsened as Ankara has fully embraced the Hamas regime in Gaza. While one would hope Israel’s eagerness to help would soften the hearts of the Turks, given the commitment of the Erdoğan government to a pan-Islamic foreign policy that would return Turkey to the position of preeminence it had during the Ottoman era, seems to preclude a rapprochement.

Had their needs been less severe, it is entirely possible Turkey would have stuck to its refusal to accept Israeli help. But given the reports of terrible damage, homelessness and the inability of the government to get aid where it is needed in a timely fashion, it appears Erdoğan had no choice to but to break down and let the Israelis bring in assistance.

Source: Commentary

ECHR Rules in Favour of Armenian Genocide Scholar Taner Akcam

2011-10-28T12:21:00.001-07:00

Today, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Turkish government's prosecution under Article 301 of its penal code with respect to Dr. Taner Akçam's public views on the Armenian Genocide violated Akçam's right to freedom of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, reported the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly).

Dr. Akçam, the holder of the Kaloosdian/Mugar Chair for the Study of Modern Armenian History and Armenian Genocide at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, became the target of threats and harassment for expressing his views and publishing his findings on the Armenian Genocide. A close friend to the late Hrant Dink, the Turkish-Armenian journalist assassinated in January 2007, Dr. Akçam knew all too well the dangers of speaking about this taboo subject in Turkey. Before he was gunned down in broad daylight, Hrant Dink was also prosecuted under Article 301. The Court acknowledges this connection and in its decision notes "it was widely believed that Hrant Dink had been targeted by extremists because of the stigma attached to his criminal conviction for 'insulting Turkishness.'"

Responding to public horror and international condemnation upon Dink's demise, the Armenian Assembly worked with then-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joe Biden (D-DE) who spearheaded legislation calling upon Turkey to repeal Article 301. At that time, Senator Biden stated that "Hrant Dink was a leading voice in Turkey's Armenian community and an eloquent advocate for human rights, press freedom, and democracy." Chairman Biden also told the Assembly that "his assassination was an outrage and a tragedy. Hrant's legacy deserves the Senate's respect. His murder demands our action."

In its verdict today, the Court honors Dink's legacy in its conclusion that "the criminal investigation commenced against the applicant [Taner Akçam] and the standpoint of the Turkish criminal courts on the Armenian issue in their application of Article 301 of the Criminal Code, as well as the public campaign against the applicant in respect of the investigation, confirm that there exists a considerable risk of prosecution faced by persons who express 'unfavourable' opinions on this matter and indicates that the threat hanging over the applicant is real."

The Court further concluded that changes to Article 301 and the replacement of the term "Turkishness" by the words "the Turkish Nation" made "no change or major difference in the interpretation of these concepts because they have been understood in the same manner by the Court of Cassation...[in other words it] does not introduce a substantial change or contribute to the widening of protection of the right to freedom of expression."

Welcoming the court's decision, Dr. Akçam commented that "Turkey should learn that facing history and coming to terms with past human rights abuses is not a crime but a prerequisite for peace and reconciliation in the region. I consider myself as a part of Turkish civil society, which fights for a truly free and democratic Turkey. This cannot happen if Turkey continues to criminalize discussion of the Armenian Genocide." He added: "You cannot achieve reconciliation and peace with Armenia with the existence of this kind of poisonous law or continue to deny diplomatic relations."

Source

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer

2011-10-27T16:01:00.000-07:00

Another take on the Turks marching in Germany at the weekend.

50 Years of Turkish Colonisation in Germany

2011-10-27T15:59:00.001-07:00

50 Years - Built Up Together

This week is the 50-year anniversary of the Anwerbeabkommen (Recruitment Agreement) signed between Germany and Turkey. It was this agreement that paved the way for the colonisation of Germany by aggressive Muslim aliens. The terms of the agreement required the aliens to leave after no more than two years. Now, 50 years later, they're still there. And they've brought their sisters and brothers and aunties and uncles and cousins (often for marriage purposes).

Although many ordinary Germans would now consider this process of Turkish colonisation to be the greatest disaster in German history after Hitler, Germany officialdom is intent on celebrating it.

Here we see two genocide celebration posters from Hamburg, with slogans in German and Turkish. These were photographed in the local subway.

50 Years - Together We Are Germany

Source: PI

Turkish Cypriots Agree to Repeal Ban on Homosexuality

2011-10-26T15:15:00.000-07:00

Turkish Cypriot leader Dervis Eroglu has agreed to repeal a ban on homosexuality in the northern part of Cyprus.

It comes after an outcry over the arrest of three men accused of "conspiring to have a sexual intercourse against the order of nature".

The men's case was taken up by UK Tory MEP Marina Yannakoudakis who met with Eroglu last week.

She was visiting Nicosia as a member of parliament's high-level contact group for relations with the Turkish Cypriot community.

She said she had received assurances from Eroglu that the Turkish Cypriot community was seeking to repeal the ban and that he would sign the repeal into law.

Following the meeting, she said, "It's not illegal to be gay anywhere else in Europe; it's not illegal to be gay in Turkey.

"Chapter 154 of the penal code is an anachronism and needs to be repealed.

"All Cypriot adults should have the right to engage in consensual sex, be it with the same or different gender. I hope that Eroglu will keep the promise he made to me to rescind the ban and I will keep the pressure on him until he does."

The northern part of Cyprus is the last place in Europe where homosexuality is still illegal.

The recent high-profile arrest of the three gay men has once again brought the issue into stark focus. Violations of the law can result in a prison-sentence of up to five years.

During her visit, the MEP held meetings with leaders from both sides of the 'green line' including Republic of Cyprus president Dimitris Christofias and Alexander Downer, special adviser of the UN secretary general on Cyprus, as well as Greek and Turkish Cypriot political parties and trade unions.

She also held what she called a "particularly poignant" meeting with the committee for missing persons in Cyprus, who thanked the deputy for her work in parliament raising awareness of the fate of those missing.

Yannakoudakis said there was a "great deal of pessimism" about the future of the peace negotiations between the two sides.

She said, "While Greek and Turkish Cypriots continue to talk, issues such as exploration for natural gas in waters off Cyprus have slowed progress.

"I do not believe that drilling should be halted, nor should it be used as an excuse to apply the brakes to the peace process. If natural gas were to be found it would benefit all communities in Cyprus," she said.

She hopes that the two sides can make progress at further talks at the end of October.

She said she saw "further evidence" of bi-communal cooperation at a crisis centre which deals with fires, earthquakes and other natural disasters.

She also met with the crime and criminal matters committee, which is also made up of Turkish and Greek Cypriots.

"There are still concerns, however, that EU aid is not getting through to the northern part of Cyprus. I was told of about €27m which was cancelled by the Turkish Cypriot authorities due to worries about its location near a military base.

"While progress on a political settlement may have slowed, I saw many examples of how the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities are working well together."

Source: The Parliament

Savage Turkish Nationalism on Display Across Europe

2011-10-25T12:17:00.000-07:00

Hagen

Yesterday I posted videos showing aggressive displays of Turkish nationalism in Stuttgart, and Amsterdam over the weekend. That seemed bad enough. But it's now clear many other European cities were rocked by virulent displays of Turkish nationalism at the same time, many culminating in violence. The videos on this page do not show the violence, only the main parts of the demonstrations. But the primitive, aggressive nationalism of the Turks is there for all to see.

The video above shows Turks in the German city of Hagen. After marching through the city, about 150 of the Turks advanced aggressively on a Kurdish cultural centre. Kurdish youths emerged from it and engaged them in a pitched battle. There was hand-to-hand combat and stones and roof slates were also thrown. The police had to summon reinforcements then deploy tear gas and use their truncheons to get the situation under control.

Source

The video below shows a similar demonstration in Hamburg.

Hamburg

After the main demonstration, around 200 Turks and Kurds confronted one another, exchanging insults and occasionally fighting. Police tried for around one hour to defuse the situation and separate the groups. The name of the YouTube channel this video appears in is Bozkurt.TV. Bozkurt means "Grey Wolf".

Cologne

Here you see the Turks (even the females) engaging in primitive nationalistic chanting and making the fascist wolf-sign salute in front of Cologne's ancient cathedral.

In the video below you can even see them flying a Turkish flag from the cathedral.

Turkish flag flying from Cologne cathedral

Known members of the Grey Wolves were spotted at this demo.

Source

Turkish Grey Wolves on the March in Europe

2011-10-24T08:18:00.001-07:00

The video above shows the Turkish Grey Wolves on the march in Stuttgart yesterday. They were protesting against recent Kurdish PKK attacks. Although they claimed to be demonstrating in favour of peace, making the Turkish fascist Wolf salute, which you see many of them doing, is a curious way of calling for peace.

The text on the image at the end reads:

The Europe of our children and grandchildren will no longer be the Europe we know.

Source: PI

For more on the spread of the Grey Wolves in Germany, see here.

On Saturday, militant Turks were also on the march in Saint-Étienne in France. During this demonstration "for peace" they smashed up a shop owned by a Kurd.

Source: Fdesouche.com

The shop owner was interviewed by a French newspaper:

"We do our work here. I employ nine people. We don't get involved in politics or religion. I'm not a representative of the PKK. We are in France here. Let them demonstrate against the PKK!"

He is still asking "why the police didn't intervene. They told me they didn't have enough people. This evening, I'm afraid for my family. Who knows if they're going to come back and set fire to the place?"

Source

The Turks were really showing their true colours this weekend! They also attacked police and smashed up a Kurdish Community Centre in Amsterdam. There are even rumours that shots were fired. This video from the Vlad Tepes site where you can find additional information. In this video, too, you see them making the fascist wolf salute.

Erdogan Gets His 'Revenge'

2011-10-22T16:17:00.001-07:00

Boris 'The Turk' Johnson Sensitive About his Great-Grandfather

2011-10-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

Ken Livingstone has claimed Boris Johnson threatened to "punch his lights out" during the last mayoral campaign, after Livingstone had suggested his rival's Turkish great-grandfather might have been a British spy.

In his autobiography, published on Monday, Livingstone chronicles the mounting tension during the 2008 mayoral race. Publication comes months before he faces a rematch with Johnson at the 2012 mayoral election in May.

In the book, titled You Can't Say That, Livingstone dismisses his Tory rival as a politician used to "getting away with it" through humour when responding to difficult policy questions. But he says Johnson's "mask slipped" a couple of times during the campaign.

Livingstone recounts an appearance on the BBC's Question Time with Johnson: "After Question Time the cameras were still on us as a smiling Boris draped his arm around my shoulders and said, 'If you carry on talking about my great-grandfather I'm going to punch your lights out.'"

Source: The Guardian

Greek FM: Our Efforts Intensified Turkey’s Isolation

2011-10-20T18:05:00.000-07:00

Greece has managed to raise awareness among its counterparts and intensify the isolation of Turkey on the issue of exploratory drillings of the Republic of Cyprus in its EEZ during the UN General Assembly, Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Stavros Lambrinidis has said.

Speaking to the Parliamentary Committee on National Defence and Foreign Affairs, on the contacts he made on the sidelines of the 66th UN General Assembly, the minister said that in the absence of arguments, Turkey tried to militarise the debate around the issue and made rhetorical threats.

Lambrinidis said that during his meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, they exchanged views on the Cyprus issue and Turkey's behaviour in the Eastern Mediterranean. On the same issues he also had meetings with President of the Republic of Cyprus Demetris Christofias and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoglu.

As he said, in all of his other contacts during the UN General Assembly, he pointed out ''the deep concern of Greece over Turkish actions and statements, that destabilise the situation in a critical period for the entire region of Eastern Mediterranean.''

The Greek Minister reiterated that Nicosia has the sovereign right for exploration and exploitation of its natural wealth, guaranteed under international law, which cannot be questioned by anyone.

He also noted that there were clear statements by the European Union, the United States and Russia on the issue.

Turkey, whose troops occupy Cyprus’ northern part since they invaded in 1974, does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus. Following a decision by Nicosia to begin natural gas and oil exploration in its exclusive economic zone, Ankara has deployed warships in the Eastern Mediterranean and has signed an illegal agreement with the Turkish Cypriot regime in occupied Cyprus to delineate what it calls continental shelf.

Drilling has already begun and is being carried out by Houston-based “Noble Energy”, off Cyprus’ south-eastern coast.

The government of Cyprus has protested to the UN and the EU Turkey’s moves, saying it has a sovereign right to exploit its natural resources, pointing out that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots will benefit from any benefits that may come from oil drilling.

Cyprus has signed an agreement to delineate the Exclusive Economic Zone with Egypt and Israel with a view to exploit any possible natural gas and oil reserves in its EEZ. A similar agreement has been signed with Lebanon but the Lebanese Parliament has not yet ratified it.

Source: Famagusta Gazette

Why Does Europe Receive so Many Asylum Claims from Turkey?

2011-10-19T16:14:00.000-07:00

The UNHCR published its Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries document yesterday. It makes interesting reading vis-a-vis our Turkish friends. As the table above demonstrates, on average Europe receives more than 1500 requests for asylum from Turkish citizens each quarter. Why is a country being seriously considered for EU membership when it generates so many requests for political asylum?

Turkey Does not Understand What it Means to be a Candidate Country for EU Membership

2011-10-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

Turkey does not understand what it means to be a candidate country for EU membership, Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis has said, clarifying at the same time, that Ankara’s commitments to EU member states, including the Republic of Cyprus, are not negotiable.

...Replying to questions, she said Cyprus has made representations about Turkey’s explorations within Cyprus’ EEZ by Turkish seismographic vessel Piri Reis and the Norwegian research vessel 'Bergen Surveyor”, adding that Cyprus has made representations both to the Norwegian and the French governments since a French company is also involved in cooperating with the Norwegian company.

She said that these representations are primarily addressed to the UN and the Security Council, “which we constantly keep updated with all developments,'' he said.

Asked to comment on Turkish newspaper Sabah reports according to which Turkey has proposed to Cyprus opening the port of Mersin to Cyprus-flagged ships in exchange of opening a chapter in its accession process which remains closed due to the Cyprus problem, Marcoullis said that this is a very old proposal.

“Things are clear. In 2004 the EU demanded that Turkey signs and implements the Ankara Protocol, which requires the opening of all Turkish ports and airports to Cyprus. There is no question of negotiating,” she said.

Of course, she continued, ''Turkey is known for haggling, but it must understand that the EU is not an issue for negotiation. It is a matter of specific rules and procedures which each candidate country must follow. ''

Asked to comment on statements by Turkish Minister Responsible for Europe who described the Greek Cypriot side as the Trojan Horse of Israel on the issue of natural gas, the Minister said that such statements prove that Turkey has not realized what it means to be a candidate country for EU membership.

She said that ''the candidate country must adapt to the EU and not the other way around. It seems, ''she added,'' they have not understood this very basic element which governs the relations of all candidates with no exception, irrespective of the difficulties they face.”

“The road to EU membership is not an easy one, it is difficult and requires difficult and serious decisions,'' she said.

Turkey, she said, has to decide if it wants to proceed at all costs, adding that it will also have to pay a political cost since it should certainly recognize the Republic of Cyprus, meet its commitments to the EU and implement the Ankara Protocol.

In conclusion she said that this road is not determined by Turkey but by the EU and if Turkey wants to move on then it should follow this precise path.

Turkish troops occupy Cyprus’ northern part since they invaded in 1974. Ankara does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus.

Drilling in Cyprus’ EEZ has begun and is being carried out by Houston-based “Noble Energy”, off Cyprus’ south-eastern coast.

Following Nicosia's decision to begin drilling in its EEZ, Ankara has deployed warships in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The government of Cyprus has protested to the UN and the EU Turkey’s moves, saying it has a sovereign right to exploit its natural resources, pointing out that Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots will benefit from any benefits that may come from oil drilling.

Cyprus has signed an agreement to delineate the Exclusive Economic Zone with Egypt and Israel with a view to exploit any possible natural gas and oil reserves in its EEZ. A similar agreement has been signed with Lebanon but the Lebanese Parliament has not yet ratified it.

Famagusta Gazette

German Foreign Minister Urges EU to be Fair to Turkey

2011-10-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle has criticized the European Union in its negotiation process with Turkey, saying it should act more fairly during the accession of candidate’s negotiations to join the bloc.

The “European Union should act respectful and fair to Turkey in the negotiation process,” Westerwelle said during a visit to Turkey yesterday.

Westerwelle met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu in Istanbul yesterday, with Westerwelle and Davutoğlu later holding a joint pres conference.

Westerwelle said Turkey’s accession process to the EU should go on without a break.

“Once the train has stopped, it is very difficult to get it moving again. Therefore, the train should not stop and the next chapter, which is the competition chapter, should open soon,” Westerwelle said, adding that they talked about the German foundation issue during his meeting with Erdoğan.

The Turkish prime minister has accused German foundations of indirectly supporting the local administrations run by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Davutoğlu corrected the question of a journalist during the press conference regarding the German foundations and said Erdoğan did not say the German foundations were financing the terrorist group.

Westerwelle said they cleared away any misunderstandings regarding the issue of German foundations. “Both German foundations and German banks are highly appreciated in Turkey,” Westerwelle said.

Source: Hurriyet

"Turkey will move toward membership despite EU's discouragement"

2011-10-16T17:11:00.000-07:00

See the astounding arrogance in Bagis' remarks below. Turkey is like a persistent beggar who hassles you for cash while you're trying to enjoy a meal in an outdoors restaurant with friends, won't take no for an answer and constantly tries to convince you he would be doing you a favour by taking your money.

Although the European Union's approach toward membership candidate Turkey is not encouraging at all, Turkey will not lose its appetite and determination for full membership in the union, EU Minister Egemen Bağış has stated.

“The EU's attitude towards us is like a teacher who does not want his student to pass the class. The same attitude can be seen within the latest progress report, too,” Bağış said in an interview with the Aksiyon magazine, referring to the progress report on Turkey which was released by the European Commission last week.

The European Commission urged the EU to continue talks with Turkey, but said no progress had been achieved in the last year. It also expressed concern about tensions between Ankara and EU-member Greek Cyprus.

“However, we are no longer considering the EU as a teacher. Turkey is no longer a student that accepts a ‘well done' from the EU whenever it performs successfully. Whether they appreciate the reforms carried out in Turkey or not, we will continue making progress on the way in which we assume is the right way for us,” Bağış said.

The EU minister replied in the affirmative when asked whether it was possible to say “Turkey is becoming Europeanized despite the EU.”

As the EU talks drag on, Turkey has failed this year to open even one new chapter, or policy area, of the 35 that a candidate country must complete before it can join the bloc.

Turkey opened accession negotiations with the EU in 2005, but has been able to open talks on only 13 out of 35 chapters thus far. Talks have been provisionally completed only on one chapter. Eight chapters are blocked by the EU due to the Cyprus dispute, while France, which opposes Turkish membership, also blocked talks on five other chapters that it says are directly related to accession. France and Germany oppose Turkey's membership due to cultural differences, and many in the EU fear that Turkish accession will spark an influx of immigrants from Turkey.

“As a matter of fact, the latest progress report confirms that there has been progress at various levels on a majority of the chapters, even on chapters which have not been opened due to political reasons. This shows how Turkey is successful and resolute. Turkey is aware of its own experience, power and potential. It will continue making progress in this way,” Bağış reiterated.

According to Bağış, the EU, which has become weaker both politically and economically, needs new members, and Turkey, with its young population, can heal the problems stemming from Europe's steadily ageing population.

“While Europe's total economic growth was 1.5 percent in 2010 and as the growth of Germany, which has Europe's most successful economy, stood at 3 percent in 2010, Turkey's growth in the same year was 8.9 percent. While Europe is shrinking, Turkey is rapidly growing,” Bağış said.

The latest progress report by the European Commission appreciates Turkey's economic success, saying that Turkey's functioning market economy should be able to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the union in the medium term, provided that it accelerates the implementation of its comprehensive structural reform program.

“In 2010, the Turkish economy grew by 8.9 percent vis-à-vis 2009, driven mainly by strong domestic demand. The rapid economic expansion continued in the first half of 2011. The private sector, in particular the industrial sector, remains the main driving force behind Turkey's rapid expansion. Robust economic development allowed strong employment growth and a sizeable drop in unemployment. Budget performance was better than expected, and the consolidation of public finances is on track. Privatization has gained momentum. Trade and economic integration with the EU remained high and Turkey strengthened its presence in new markets,” the report said.

Bağış, meanwhile, warned that the economic crisis in Europe was fueling extreme political parties, including racist parties. In an apparent reference to the rise of Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, Bağış said this rise was related to the Dutch people's economic concerns.

“That is why Turkey wants to help Europe economically. We believe that we will have a partnership with Europe like we had in the past. So, we are ready to help Europe not to let it be dragged into extreme and racist waves,” Bağış said.

In October 2010, a minority Dutch coalition made up of Liberals and Christian Democrats took office, aiming to curb immigration in exchange for support for its austerity agenda from the anti-immigration Freedom Party. At the time, Turkey expressed concerns over the new government in the Netherlands, which has had to rely on an anti-Islam party, headed by anti-Islam leader Wilders, for support.

The Netherlands are among the countries that resist Turkey's full EU membership, and racist attacks against ethnic Turks in the country have been on the rise in recent years.

Source: Today's Zaman

Turkey Hits Back at EU Criticism

2011-10-15T16:15:00.000-07:00

European Commission Says Turkey Needs Further Reforms

2011-10-14T16:35:00.000-07:00

The European Commission (EC) presented its annual Progress Report on Turkey on Wednesday (October 12th), arriving at positive and negative conclusions regarding Turkey’s stalled EU accession process.

On the political front, the EC welcomed the progress made following the September 2010 constitutional amendments, especially ensuring civilian oversight of the military as well as strengthening an independent judiciary.

Still, further judicial reform is needed, the report says, citing the ongoing Ergenekon trial, the KCK case, and a backlog of criminal cases. While the Ergenekon trial is considered an opportunity to reinforce democracy, “serious concerns” over the conduct of investigations, judicial proceedings, and the criminal procedures threaten its legitimacy.

Another important concern of the Commission is the high number of violations of freedom of expression and freedom of press resulting in widespread self-censorship in the media.

“The imprisonment of journalists, and the confiscation of an unpublished manuscript in connection with the Ergenekon investigation, fuelled these concerns,” the report says.

Emiliano Alessandri, a transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund, told SETimes that the report is bolder than in the past in pointing out areas of serious lack of progress, or even regression, such as freedom of expression.

In the report, the Commission invites authorities to accelerate the process of drafting a new civilian constitution, although it warns that the “prevailing political climate lacks an adequate dialogue and spirit of compromise between political parties”.

“A new constitution would cement the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities and address long-standing problems, including the Kurdish issue,” the report underlines.

Cyprus was deemed to be the most critical part of the report. Turkey’s support for negotiations between the leaders of the two communities is welcomed and encouraged to further a peace settlement on the island.

However, Turkey is criticised for not fulfilling its obligations under the Additional Protocol by extending the Association Agreements to Cyprus and removing all obstacles to the free movement of goods with that country.

The EU notes that Turkey has performed very well in its foreign policy in the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, but its relations with Israel and Cyprus are criticised in the report.

“Most importantly, I believe the European Commission has come to terms with the fact that Turkey is literally becoming a soft power in its region, and that this does not necessarily contradict the European interests,” Professor Ayhan Kaya of the European Institute at Bilgi University told SETimes.

“Turkey is actually reminding EU circles that it is now the most efficient agent of the ‘transformative effect of the EU’, which the EU itself has forgotten for the last decade,” he said.

“Turkey’s more independent foreign policy could make the strategic partnership alternative look more attractive to Ankara than full membership,” Alessandri said.

In a nutshell, “The European Commission, as a stakeholder in the policy of enlargement, has done all it could in this report to avoid unnecessary criticism, while pointing out areas where alignment with the EU remains insufficient,” Alessandri added.

Source: SETimes

EU Eases Visa Rules for Turks

2011-10-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

ISTANBUL—The European Union on Thursday eased visa procedures for Turkish citizens, just a day after Turkey again raised onerous visa requirements for its businessmen and citizens as a key source of friction in the relationship.

Under changes announced Thursday by the European Commission, EU consulates in Turkey will now have uniform lists of documents they can ask visa applicants to provide.

Turkey, which started negotiating for EU membership six years ago and has had a customs union with the bloc since the mid-1990s, has become increasingly impatient as the bloc has eased visa requirements for countries in the Balkans and elsewhere, but not Turkey.

Responding to the move in a phone interview Thursday evening, Turkey's EU minister Egemen Bagis—who had attacked Brussels over the visa issue Wednesday—welcomed the move, but said it wasn't enough.

"This is a very good first step, but the point we want to get to is for Turkish citizens to be able to travel to Europe without a visa," Mr. Bagis said in a phone interview. "Turks are the only citizens of a country negotiating for [EU] membership who need a visa to travel to the EU."

Mr. Bagis said the commission had promised him that further partial steps would follow, namely that in future Turks would be able to get multiple-entry, instead of just single-entry, visas to the EU's visa-free Schengen area, and that offices would be set up in Turkey to ease the process. EU citizens don't need a visa to visit Turkey.

Resistance to easing visa restrictions for Turks has come from EU governments rather than the European Commission, Turkish officials say. Turkey has a population of 74 million and income levels much lower than in core EU countries. Governments have worried over a potential flood of Turkish immigration that would be politically unpopular at home.

Turkey's economic success over the past decade, which has seen gross domestic product per capita triple to around $10,000, played a role in Thursday's decision, according to Mr. Bagis. "It is not enough to be right, you have to be strong and Turkey has become stronger," Mr. Bagis said.

Turkish businessmen in particular have long complained that while their exports and investments are welcome in the EU, they are not. The EU is by far Turkey's largest trading partner.

"We know cases when Turkish businessmen were prevented from coming to fairs in Europe or were given only two or three-day visas for one-week events," said Bahadir Kaleagasi, Brussels-based international coordinator for TUSIAD, Turkey's main business association. "Countries could even require for land registry documents."

An EU official said the change had been in the works for some time and was designed to address such complaints.

"Some countries could ask for marriage certificates. Military certificates could be asked from young men who were suspected of trying to escape [compulsory military service in the] Turkish army," said Erwan Marteil, Counselor in the European Commission's Ankara office.

The new rules on visa documentation entered into force immediately Thursday and will apply to all of the Schengen visa area, which covers more than 25 European countries, including several such as Iceland that aren't EU members.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Cyprus on the World Stage

2011-10-12T14:29:00.000-07:00

by Daniel Pipes

Cyprus, an island near Turkey and Syria of roughly 1.3 million inhabitants, finds itself on the cusp of momentous change. As it belatedly makes its grand debut on the world stage after domestic Greek-Turkish communal issues have consumed its first 51 years of independence, it faces both great opportunity and great danger.

The "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" controls 37 percent of the island's land area.
That communal problem originated in 1570, when the Ottoman Empire conquered the island and its almost entirely Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian population. Over the next three centuries, immigration from Anatolia created a Turkish-speaking Muslim minority. British rule between 1878 and 1960 left this situation basically unchanged. At the time of Cypriot independence in 1960, Turks constituted one-sixth of the population.
Cyprus was hardly the only territory rife with ethnic tensions that London eventually abandoned in frustration – think of India, Iraq, Palestine, and Sudan – but it was the only one where it retained a permanent role for itself and brought in patron states, namely Turkey and Greece, as guarantors of the newly-independent state.

This mischievous arrangement heightened tensions between both the two island's two communities and their patron states. Those tensions boiled over in 1974 when Athens attempted to annex the whole of Cyprus and Ankara responded by invading the island, seizing the northern 37 percent of the island's territory. Greek annexation fizzled but the invasion led to the establishment of a nominal "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus" (TRNC), which is maintained today by some 40,000 troops from the Republic of Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of settlers have since emigrated from Turkey, fundamentally altering the island's demography.

Cyprus remained thus for 35 years, divided, deadlocked, and largely ignored by the outside world, until two recent developments upended the island's obscure if unhappy status quo.

The Noble Corporation's Homer Ferrington rig, built in 1985, has begun drilling in the Aphrodite gas field off Cyprus.
First, the AK Party came to power in Turkey in 2002 with an aggressive program of regional domination. It initially kept this ambition in check but with a heady electoral success in June 2011, followed immediately by its seizure of political control over the Turkish military, this intent emerged in full blossom. The drive to regional domination takes many forms – from escalating tensions with Israel to the prime minister's triumphal tour of North Africa – but with a specific focus on increasing Turkish power in the eastern Mediterranean. AKP ambitions have thus transformed the Turkish occupation of Cyprus from a sui generis problem into one aspect of a larger issue.
Second, the June 2010 discovery of gas and oil reserves ("Leviathan") in Israel's Mediterranean Sea exclusive economic zone, right near the Cypriot EEZ, suddenly made Cyprus a player in the world energy market. Cypriots talk of 300 trillion cubic feet worth US$4 trillion. Such numbers attract covetous gazes, especially from Ankara, which demands (via the TRNC) its share of future gas income. Further, the AKP's escalating anti-Zionism combined with Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's strategic ambitions suggest Turkish claims extending to Israeli-controlled waters.

In conjunction, these two developments – growing Turkish ambitions and possible gas deposits in the trillions – link Cyprus and Israel in self-defense. Leading Greek Cypriot figures in the government, the media, and business told me during a just-concluded trip to the island about their urgent wish to build economic and security relations with Israel.

The Piri Reis, Turkey's only maritime research ship, is being escorted by Turkish naval ships as it trolls the Cyprus exclusive economic zone.
In the economic realm, a ranking government official proposes five projects: a joint pipeline from the gas fields to Cyprus, followed by a liquidification plant, a methanol plant, a 1,000 megawatt electricity plan, and a strategic reserve, all located in Cyprus. A media tycoon suggests selling the gas reserves to Israel and letting its companies bear responsibility.
In the security realm, several interlocutors proposed a full-on alliance with Israel. Cyprus would gain from Israel's much greater military, economic, and diplomatic prowess. Israel, which has already made protective efforts on behalf of Cyprus, would benefit from access to an airbase at Paphos, 185 miles (300 kilometers) from its shore, belonging to a European Union member.

Such an alliance would terminate the Cypriot legacy of non-alignment and low-key diplomacy designed to convince governments not to recognize the TRNC, though that strategy, arguably, has not brought it much benefit.

In the face of an over-confident and possibly messianic Turkish leadership that increasingly betrays rogue attributes, Washington, Brussels, Athens, and Moscow have important roles to play in encouraging Cypriot-Israeli relations and thereby diminishing the likelihood of AKP-led Turkish aggression.

Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org), president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, recently visited Cyprus to deliver the Thoukidides Think Tank's inaugural lecture. © 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.

Source: Middle East Forum

Dutch Representative Denounces Turkey at OSCE Meeting

2011-10-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

Remarks by Wim Kortenoeven, Dutch delegation to the OCSE conference in Dubrovnik, 9 October 2011 (meeting on security in the Mediterranean area).

Mister chairman,

I am addressing this meeting on behalf of the Dutch Party for Freedom.

As we speak, the peace in the Mediterranean is being threatened, by Turkish imperialism, by dangerous dreams to re-establish the Turkish Caliphate that was abolished in 1923.

We are witnessing the death of Kemalism, the positive ideology that transformed Turkey into a valuable, responsible and respected member of the international community.

But now, Turkey is sliding into the abyss of Islamic extremism and authoritarianism. This is visible on the inside and on the outside.

For instance: the freedom of speech in Turkey is increasingly suppressed. Many journalists have been jailed for speaking out. The Turkish cartoonist Bahadir Baruter is to be tried for renouncing Allah in a cartoon. He might get a year in jail for that.

Cyprus, a member State of the European Union, has been partly occupied by Turkey since the brutal invasion of 1974.

And now the Erdogan regime is turning Turkey into a predator state, a rogue state, that apparently also wants to seize the oil and gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean. Reserves that it does not own.

Threats are being issued in the direction of Cyprus. Strong Turkish military forces have been deployed on and near Cyprus.

Mister chairman,

Turkey, a member state of NATO, is also increasingly belligerent towards the Jewish State of Israel. Threats and baseless accusations are issued against Israel – ever more frequently. And provocations are rampant. Israeli freighters are harressed by Turkish warships.

Turkey also objects to Israel’s legitimate desire to drill for natural gas in its own exclusive economic zone. Turkish warships are backing up threats against Israel’s sovereignty.

A simple mistake in this combustible situation might spark a military confrontation.

Also troubling and dangerous are Turkey’s sympathy for the Hamas terror organization and Turkey’s attempts to undermine Israel’s legitimate right to supervise the maritime routes to Gaza.

Mr. Chairman,

The situation is extremely dangerous.

This irresponsible Turkish policy of threats, insults and provocations, this macho bellegerency, needs to be urgently adressed. As it is a clear and present danger to peace and security in the Mediterranean and even beyond.

Therefore, I urge you to ad this Turkish threat to peace and security to the agenda of the Winter session of the OSCE.

Thank you.

Kortenoeven later gave a brief description of the meeting and the reaction his remarks provoked.

Dear Editor,

Sorry for the delay, but I was ‘on the road’ until now. Yesterday afternoon in Dubrovnik, I delivered a speech at the OSCE meeting on peace and security in the Mediterranean (you received the text). I did not make friends with this. But it had to be said, As no reference had been made to the Turkish agression. And that is absurd, considering that the OSCE is dealing with peace and security in Europe.

All delegates were busy with the so called Arab spring and/or with bashing Israel. I was the only one referring to the Turkish agression.

And the Turks responded with villainous accusations against me (I had issued an ‘anti peace declaration’) and a vicious attack against Israel: shooting innocents in the head and in the back, point blank, on the Flottilla ship last year.

There was complete silence when I spoke and I got no applause. And a wave of resentment engulfed the hall after I had finished. And even my Dutch colleagues (of the ruling Christian Democratic Party) distanced themselves from me – publicly, in a very harsh statement. The world is in state of denial.

Best wishes,
Wim Kortenoeven,
MP, Party for Freedom
The Netherlands

Source: Tundra Tabloids

Turkish Colonists in Germany Claim German Teachers Give Their Children Low Marks Because of Prejudice

2011-10-10T13:50:00.001-07:00

Turks laughably claim their children get poor marks at school not because they are stupid, lazy or disruptive, or can't speak German properly, but because of 'prejudice' among the teachers. They claim German teachers give their children lower marks for the same quality of work.

Most parents of ethnically Turkish children in Germany say they are dissatisfied with the way their kids are being educated, according to a survey seen by Der Spiegel magazine.

The survey of 1,256 parents of children between 3 and 18 years old by the Allenbach Institute and commissioned by the Vodafone Foundation found 59 percent believed their kids were not given the same opportunities as ethnically German children. A full 63 percent said they believed teachers had pre-existing prejudices against children from minority backgrounds, the magazine reported.

A slight majority (51 percent) also felt that their children were unfairly graded by teachers, even if they were achieving as highly as their ethnically German peers. A majority also felt language barriers were a major reason for what they felt was their children’s unfair treatment.

Previous research has shown that children from immigrant backgrounds fare poorly in Germany’s school system compared to their ethnically German peers, although there has been disagreement over the reasons. Suggested reasons range from low expectations among teachers to poor German language ability among some minority young people.

A 2009 article in the American University Law Review reported that between two thirds and three quarters of children of Turkish origin were assigned to the lowest of Germany's secondary schools – the Hauptschule – compared to just one third of ethnically German children.

Source: The Local

Turkey's EU Affairs Minister Calls French President Sarkozy 'Totally Hopeless'

2011-10-09T17:24:00.000-07:00

Turkey’s EU Minister Egemen Bağış called French President Nicolas Sarkozy “totally helpless” after Sarkozy called for Turkey to recognize the World War I-era killings of Armenians as genocide.

Bağış repeated his earlier remarks saying, “It would be better... if Mr. Sarkozy abandons the role of historian and looks for the ways to solve the economic problems of the European Union, of which his country is a membe.” Bağış said, calling Sarkozy’s recent remarks “attempts to abuse the domestic politics” of France. Bağış also said Sarkozy is trying to hide his loss of support in France.

Bagis said yesterday that Turkey’s EU negotiations had begun after a unanimous vote by the EU. Within this vote was also France’s vote. Turkey’s EU process can end only if the 27-nation bloc unanimously votes to end the process, he said.

Source: Hurriyet

Lepanto

2011-10-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the anniversary of the battle of Lepanto, in which the Turkish fleet was obliterated by the Christian Holy League. To commemorate it, here is G. K. Chesterton's poem Lepanto.

Lepanto

BY G. K. CHESTERTON

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;
From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,
And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,
Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,
Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,
That once went singing southward when all the world was young,
In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,
Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.
Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,
Don John of Austria is going to the war,
Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold
In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,
Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,
Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.
Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,
Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,
Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.
Love-light of Spain—hurrah!
Death-light of Africa!
Don John of Austria
Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,
His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.
He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,
And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,
And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring
Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.
Giants and the Genii,
Multiplex of wing and eye,
Whose strong obedience broke the sky
When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,
From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;
They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea
Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;
On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,
Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;
They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—
They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.
And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,
And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,
And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,
For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.
We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,
Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,
But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know
The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:
It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;
It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!
It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,
Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”
For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,
(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)
Sudden and still—hurrah!
Bolt from Iberia!
Don John of Austria
Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north
(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)
Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift
And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.
He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;
The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;
The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes
And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,
And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,
And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,
And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,
But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.
Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse
Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,
Trumpet that sayeth ha!
Domino gloria!
Don John of Austria
Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck
(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)
The walls are hung with velvet that, is black and soft as sin,
And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.
He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,
He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,
And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey
Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,
And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,
But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.
Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—
Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid
Gun upon gun, ha! ha!
Gun upon gun, hurrah!
Don John of Austria
Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,
(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)
The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,
The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.
He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea
The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;
They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,
They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;
And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,
And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,
Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines
Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.
They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung
The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.
They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on
Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.
And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell
Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,
And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—
(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)
Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,
Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,
Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,
Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,
Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea
White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania!
Domino Gloria!
Don John of Austria
Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath
(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)
And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,
Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,
And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....
(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

Sarkozy Tells Turkey to Acknowledge Armenian Genocide

2011-10-07T11:04:00.000-07:00

President Nicolas Sarkozy warned Turkey on Friday that it might soon become illegal in France to deny that the mass killing of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was genocide.

Sarkozy, in Armenia, his first stop on a visit to the Caucasus, called on Turkey to make a "gesture of reconciliation" and recognize the killings as genocide.

If it does not, he said, France "will consider it must go further to amend its legislation to penalize this denial."

Sarkozy warned the measures could be adopted in "a very brief" timeframe but said the comments were not an ultimatum.

The challenge by the president of France -- which opposes Turkey's bid to join the European Union -- drew an angry rebuttal from Ankara on Friday.

Turkey's Foreign Minister said France should confront its colonial past before giving lessons to others. The French "do not have the right to teach Turkey a history lesson or call for Turkey to face its history," Ahmet Davutoglu told a news conference.

Armenia, backed by many historians and world parliaments, says some 1.5 million Armenians died during the upheaval that accompanied World War I, and calls it genocide.

Ankara rejects the term genocide and says large numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks were killed.

Sarkozy courted some 500,000 Armenian diaspora votes in France and angered Turkey before his election in 2007 by backing legislation that would prosecute those who denied the deaths were genocide. The measure was rejected by the French lower house of parliament.

Source: Reuters

The demand was immediately rebuffed by Turkey.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's call for Turkey to recognise the World War I-era massacres of Armenians as genocide was rejected Friday by Ankara's European Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis.

Sarkozy would do better to concern himself with getting France out of its economic crisis than to play historian over the Armenian question, Bagis said during a visit to Sarajevo, the Anatolia agency reported.

"It would be better... if Monsieur Sarkozy abandons the role of historian and puts his mind to getting his country out of the economic gulf in which it finds itself and comes up with plans for the future of the European Union," he said.

"Our mission, as politicians, is not to define the past or past events. It is to define the future," he added.

He accused Sarkozy of exploiting the Armenia question for electoral reasons in the run-up to next year's presidential election, he said.

Source: AFP

Turks Claim They Have Secured Assurance That NATO Will Not Share Intelligence with Israel

2011-10-07T10:54:00.001-07:00

Turkey has said it trusts on promise of NATO member states on keeping its intelligence within the alliance and not sharing it with Israel, Turkey’s new foe.

Defense Minister İsmet Yılmaz told reporters following NATO’s Defense Ministers meeting in Brussels that one should trust on NATO member states’ pledge that they won’t use the intelligence they gather from NATO’s early warning radar system in the southeast of the country that will serve as part of the alliance's missile defense system.

Yılmaz also warned that this intelligence cannot be used outside NATO member states, referring to Israel.

Turkish-Israeli relations badly damaged after Israeli naval commandos stormed Mavi Marmara ship carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza to breach the naval blockade, killing nine Turkish civilians. Turkey demands official apology, compensation to families of the victims and lifting Gaza blockade. Israel claims its soldiers acted in self-defense.

Last year, Turkey’s leaders also repeatedly asked NATO during the alliance summit in Lisbon not to share intelligence it gets from radar systems with Israel.

Turkey agreed to host the radar in September as part of NATO's missile defense system aimed at countering ballistic missile threats from neighboring Iran. Ankara claims the shield doesn't target a specific country and had threatened to block the deal if Iran was explicitly named as a threat.

A military installation in Kürecik has been designated as the radar site, according to Turkish government officials. Kürecik in Malatya province lies some 700 kilometers (435 miles) west of the Iranian border.

In September, Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the United States hopes to have the radar deployed there by the end of the year.

Yılmaz stressed that the primary reason for NATO’s early warning radar system is to maintain the security of Europe. Yılmaz also added that by the radar system, Turkey is also protecting itself.

Yılmaz said no one has a right to object a project which is only for defense purposes and said no any NATO state member should tell “no” when asked to protect other member states.

Yılmaz said he had a chance to have talks with his British, Canadian, Australian and Afghan counterparts and said all of them stressed Turkey’s increasingly influence in the region and asked for more cooperation.

Source: Today's Zaman

'German' Football Player of Turkish Descent Doesn't Want to Play Against Turkey

2011-10-07T10:43:00.000-07:00

Remember all those articles during the World Cup about how much Germany had benefited from immigration thanks to the multicultural background of the football players in its national team. As the French World Cup experience demonstrated, this "vibrant multiculturalism" also brings problems, one of which is disloyalty. Here we have one of Germany's supposed star players who is reluctant to play against the team from the country his ancestors came from. He claims he is injured. Is the injury real, or is he feigning? What the article doesn't mention is that many of the Turkish supporters who booed him in Berlin last year were German residents and even German citizens.

One of Germany’s high-profile ethnic Turkish footballers, Mesut Özil, has asked to sit out Friday’s match against Turkey to avoid angry Turkish fans – but has been told he has to play.

“I love Turkey as much as I do Germany,” he told Turkish daily newspaper Radikal.

“Even though we have already qualified, for me this will be the most difficult match of the competition.”

But the German Football Association (DFB) rejected his request to sit out the match, saying it could encourage bad habits, Radikal reported.

German-born Özil is often held up as a brilliant example of integration, yet when he first played for Germany against Turkey last year in Berlin he was booed by Turkish supporters, one of whom held up a placard reading, “We could’ve been cheering for you, Özil!”

The 23-year-old midfielder told Radikal on Wednesday that the booing last year had scuppered him, and that he had asked the DFB to sit out Friday’s match at Istanbul’s Türk Telekom Arena.

Although Germany has already qualified for the Euro 2012 finals, Turkey needs to do well in order to go through and Özil could face a sea of angry Turkish fans if things do not go their way.

Most of the player’s extended family still live in Turkey, so he explained to Radikal that he was aware of the prejudices many Turks still hold against him and that he would expect to be jeered at again.

His father Mustafa also spoke with Radikal.

“Özil is no different from [German born, Turkish players] Nuri, Hamit or Mehmet, but circumstances took them to the Turkish team and him the German. I wish people would accept his decision,” he said.

“In Germany today there are Turkish politicians in the Bundestag and Turkish professors in the universities. We Turks came here 50 years ago as guest workers and brought skills to contribute to the country. My son is a part of this and Turkey should be proud of him.”

Yet Özil sat out training on Wednesday, citing Achilles tendon pain, and has yet to train with the squad. Coach Joachim Löw has said a decision would be made about his fitness on Thursday; just 24 hours before the match.

Undefeated so far, Guus Hiddink’s team qualified following a 6 – 2 victory against Austria, and will be heading to the finals in Poland and Ukraine next year. Riding on a wave of nine consecutive victories, Hiddink said “I can see very few weaknesses [in the German team].”

However Löw admitted, "We have in fact a few question marks over our players," as key strikers Mario Gomez and Miroslav Klose are suffering from injuries. Their potential absence from the field could benefit Turkey, whose ticket to the finals still hangs in the balance despite two home wins in their string of six undefeated matches.

Turkey needs a better result against Germany than Belgium gets against Kazakhstan.

Turkish Left-back Gokhan Gonul said, "We know the power of Germany; they come with an unbeaten record in the group. We know it will be difficult, but not impossible."

Özil told Radikal that he hoped, “Turkey reaches the next round in the Euro 2012 competition.”

Source: The Local

Why Is Erdogan Attacking Germany's Foundations?

2011-10-06T11:10:00.000-07:00

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is leveling targeted attacks against German political foundations, accusing them of supporting the Kurdish PKK. But the foundations view the attacks as merely part of a calculated plan to criminalize legal Kurdish organizations.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is well-known for the tough and occasionally undiplomatic tone he uses with foreign politicians. The most recent to experience his wrath was Israel's government. But now Erdogan is attacking German political foundations with a presence and projects in Turkey -- and in no uncertain terms.

Erdogan is accusing several foundations of supporting the "Kurdish terrorist organization PKK," the Kurdistan Worker's Party. Several days ago, he spoke of a single foundation, accusing it of collaborating with local officials of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) -- a legal political party that managed to win 36 seats in the Turkish parliament in June -- and of issuing loans to companies with PKK ties.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Erdogan went even further. He alleged that German foundations are using loans to Kurdish BDP officials to get aid to the PKK. "The German foundations have unfortunately been doing similar things for a long time, but German officials have yet to respond to Turkish complaints," he said. In other words, Erdogan was no longer concerned about a single foundation, it was now "the German foundations" in general.

In Turkey, it is no minor matter to be charged with supporting the PKK -- especially when the man leveling the charge is the prime minister himself. In such cases, state prosecutors are quick to draw up an indictment like the ones that have put thousands in jail on similar charges.

Cries of Dismay

Appalled representatives of German political foundations are rejecting the accusations. For example, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, a think tank associated with Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has labeled the claims as "absurd." Officials in both Turkey and Germany with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, which is aligned with the Green Party, said the accusations "are lacking any basis in fact," adding that "foundations don't issue loans nor do they finance any infrastructure projects."

Eberhard Pohl, Germany's ambassador to Turkey, has made similar statements in recent days. He has stated that any loans issued to municipalities or to support infrastructure measures in Turkey can only come from KfW, Germany's government-owned investment bank, or the German development organization GIZ. Granted, in addition to supporting a number of different projects in other Turkish cities, the GIZ has backed ones bringing new sewer tunnels and wastewater treatment plants to the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, which has the largest population of Kurds. But it has always only done so after getting the approval of the responsible Turkish ministries. He said it is simply impossible that money was channeled from the projects to the PKK. Representatives of foundations also pointed out that they cannot legally provide any loans in Turkey.

A Complicated History

At first glance, it seems puzzling that Erdogan would be launching such a massive attack on German foundations at this point in time. Still, conflicts revolving around German political foundations are nothing new in Turkey. The involvement of foreign organizations in Turkish affairs has always been a thorn in the side of many, particularly with Turkish nationalists. Already in 2002, the foundations were forced to defend themselves against accusations of espionage and of having sought to destroy the Turkish economy. At the time, the charges had to do with foreign support for a citizen's initiative opposing a gold mine on Turkey's western coast that was using cyanide to leak gold out of rock. The matter ultimately found its way before the Ankara State Security Court, which acquitted foundation representatives tried on espionage charges.

The foundations continue to work with mostly civil-society groups and, of course, also with some based in predominately Kurdish areas. The Heinrich Böll Foundation primarily supports projects related to women's issues, but it also engages in talks with politicians from the Kurdish opposition. Foundation CEO Ralf Fücks defends these activities as being the only way to foster dialogue aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

Undercutting Foreign Support

Ulrike Dufner, the head of the foundation's office in Istanbul, views Erdogan's current accusations as an attempt to "stir up nationalist emotions." In fact, she believes the attack is targeting the civilian Kurdish opposition much more than German foundations themselves. Ralf Fücks, who happens to be in Turkey at the moment for talks, backed her opinion, saying: "Erdogan intends to criminalize all collaboration with the Kurdish BDP, the Kurds' legal civilian opposition."

It is a view that seems to be supported by the fact that, in two days alone earlier this week, 150 Kurds with ties to the BDP -- including mayors and municipal representatives -- were arrested. The charges are always the same: allegedly being a member of a secret PKK organization trying to use legal means to wrestle control in predominantly Kurdish areas and erect a parallel structure to the state. Over the last two years, a total of 4,000 Kurds have been arrested on these charges. At the moment, roughly 3,000 cases are being heard involving predominantly elected Kurdish municipal politicians.

"The government's strategy is evidently to cut off these Kurds from international support," Fücks said, adding that this is the actual reason behind attacks on the foundations. For that reason, Dufner considers it unlikely that state prosecutors will be showing up in her office any time soon. "On its merits," she said, "the charges are just too weak for that."

Source: Der Spiegel

Is Turkey Going Rogue?

2011-10-05T17:27:00.000-07:00

In a Middle East wracked by coups d'état and civil insurrections, the Republic of Turkey credibly offers itself as a model thanks to its impressive economic growth, democratic system, political control of the military, and secular order.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan effectively bought the June 2011 elections by pumping credit into the Turkish economy.

But, in reality, Turkey may be, along with Iran, the most dangerous state of the region. Count the reasons:

Islamists without brakes: When four out of five of the Turkish chiefs of staff abruptly resigned on July 29, 2011, they signaled the effective end of the republic founded in 1923 by Kemal Atatürk. A second republic headed by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Islamist colleagues of the AK Party began that day. The military safely under their control, AKP ideologues can now pursue their ambitions to create an Islamic order.

An even worse opposition: Ironically, secular Turks tend to be more anti-Western than the AKP. The two other parties in parliament, the CHP and MHP, condemn the AKP's more enlightened policies, such as its approach to Syria and i ts stationing a NATO radar system.

Looming economic collapse: Turkey faces a credit crunch, one largely ignored in light of crises in Greece and elsewhere. As analyst David Goldman points out, Erdoğan and the AKP took the country on a financial binge: bank credit ballooned while the current account deficit soared, reaching unsustainable levels. The party's patronage machine borrowed massive amounts of short-term debt to finance a consumption bubble that effectively bought it the June 2011 elections. Goldman calls Erdoğan a "Third World strongman" and compares Turkey today with Mexico in 1994 or Argentina in 2000, "where a brief boom financed by short-term foreign capital flows led to currency devaluation and a deep economic slump."

Sending the Mavi Marmara to Gaza amounted to an intentional provocation.
Escalating Kurdish problems: Some 15-20 percent of Turkey's citizens identify as Kurds, a distinct historical people; although many Kurds are integrated, a separatist revolt against Ankara that began in 1984 has recently reached a new crescendo with a more assertive political leadership and more aggressive guerrilla attacks.

Looking for a fight with Israel: In the tradition of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Saddam Hussein, the Turkish prime minister deploys anti-Zionist rhetoric to make himself an Arab political star. One shudders to think where, thrilled by this adulation, he may end up. After Ankara backed a protest ship to Gaza in May 2010, the Mavi Marmara, whose aggression led Israeli forces to kill eight Turkish citizens plus an ethnic Turk, it has relentlessly exploited this incident to stoke domestic fury against the Jewish state. Erdoğan has called the deaths a casus belli, speaks of a war with Israel "if necessary," and plans to send another ship to Gaza, this time with a Turkish military escort.

Stimulating an anti-Turkish faction: Turkish hostility has renewed Israel's historically warm relations with the Kurds and turned around its cool relations with Greece, Cyprus, and even Armenia. Beyond cooperation locally, this grouping will make life difficult for the Turks in Washington.

Asserting rights over Mediterranean energy reserves: Companies operating out of Israel discovered potentially immense gas and oil reserves in the Leviathan and other fields located between Israel, Lebanon, and Cyprus. When the government of Cyprus announced its plans to drill, Erdoğan responded with threats to send Turkish "frigates, gunboats and … air force." This dispute, just in its infancy, contains the potential elements of a huge crisis. Already, Moscow has sent submarines in solidarity with Cyprus.

The Leviathan gas field is the largest of several found recently between Cyprus and Israel.

Other international problems: Ankara threatens to freeze relations with the European Union in July 2012, when Cyprus assumes the rotating presidency. Turkish forces have seized a Syrian arms ship. Turkish threats to invade northern Iraq have worsened relations with Baghdad. Turkish and Iranian regimes may share an Islamist outlook and an anti-Kurd agenda, with prospering trade relations, but their historic rivalry, contrary governing styles, and competing ambitions have soured relations.

While Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu crows that Turkey is "right at the center of everything," AKP bellicosity has soured his vaunted "zero-problems" with neighbors policy, turning this into a wide-ranging hostility and even potential military confrontations (with Syria, Cyprus, and Israel). As economic troubles hit, a once-exemplary member of NATO may go further off track; watch for signs of Erdoğan emulating his Venezuelan friend, Hugo Chávez.

That's why, along with Iranian nuclear weapons, I see a rogue Turkey as the region's greatest threat.

Source: Daniel Pipes

Turkish Schoolchildren Ruining German Education System

2011-10-04T08:46:00.000-07:00

There are an estimated 3-4 million Turks living in Germany. Their conduct there gives us a good idea of what the rest of Europe could expect if Turkey ever succeeded in getting into the EU. The Turks in German schools are characterised by low educational performance and a high propensity for violence. Often they terrorise German children. This article from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung traces the roots of their problem behaviour to the backwards culture of their parents and country of origin.

Not long ago, I posted an interview with Thilo Sarrazin in which he argued that Islamic culture leads children from Muslim families to perform poorly at school and therefore in later life. This article confirms his hypothesis.

The points made about Islamic/Turkish culture (its authoritarianism, orientation towards the collective rather than the individual, denigration of girls), although mentioned here in an educational context, also have significant implications for the rest of society.

Around a third of the immigrant children living in Germany have problems in school. Educational researchers Ahmet Toprak und Aladin El Mafaalani [of Turkish and Syrian extraction] have now investigated the reasons for their poor performance and disciplinary difficulties on behalf of the Konrad Adenauer Institute. Their behaviour to now has been “irritating, disconcerting and socially undesirable,” it says in their study about “Muslim children and youths in Germany.”

According to the analysis of the authors, lack of success in school is due to a number of cultural and familial factors. One relates to the early childhood upbringing. While German parents generally know that the basis for success in school is found at home, in families of Turkish origin no “pre-education” in line with school requirements takes place. They pay little attention to the development of the linguistic, motor and cognitive abilities of their children to prepare for school. Displaying a helpless trust in authority, they rely on schools to teach their children what they need to know. They barely know the education and training system, write the authors, overestimate the function of the school and renounce their own educational responsiblity for successful learning. Because that is what they know from their countries of origin: “There what children learn is up to the teacher alone. Parents never get involved in the school’s education,” says Mafaalani, who is an educational researcher and also a teacher himself.

Children under strict control

“On the other hand, if there are difficulties with the children, a teacher in Turkey or an Arab country will never turn to the parents,” says Toprak, who is professor of educational science at the Fachhochschule Dortmund. “When that happens in Germany, the parents think the teacher is incompetent. They see him asking for help as a sign of weakness.” From the other perspective, teachers interpret the parents’ lack of involvement as disinterest.

Another reason for the difficulties in school is that the aims of bringing up a child are significantly different in poorly educated immigrant families from Turkey compared to those of ordinary Germans: children are first of all supposed to fit into the community they were born into, believe Turkish parents. Obedience to elder family members, respect for authority, maintaining family honour and following the religious rules of Islam are right at the top of the scale of objectives, as the authors demonstrate through interviews. Children are strictly controlled, even spoon-fed, told off and even beaten. The tendency to idolise boys and get girls involved in housework, and otherwise neglect them, still exists.

Longer group learning

German parents, by contrast, want to raise their children to be self-conscious, educated, independent personalities. While, according to the study, individuality is a highly-prized value for them, it makes Turkish parents afraid: Here it’s all about the collective – family and country of origin – rather than the individual. Independence and self-determination, which are called for and promoted in school, are not upbringing objectives, the very opposite: out of fear that children will behave too permissively in a “western” environment, they are very strictly disciplined.

The different intensity of disciplinary measures at home and at school also creates problems for the children: “Turkish children are used to getting into real trouble when they do something forbidden at home,” says Mafaalani. “When they do something crazy at school and the teacher only softly calls on them to show insight and understanding, they don’t take him seriously.”

…Even the motives for founding a family differ in families of Turkish and Arab immigrant extraction compared to the majority society, as the authors describe. They differentiate between “economic-utilitarian” motives (insurance for old age, contribution to family budget), “psychological-affective” motives (joy, emotional reinforcement) and “social-normative” motives (status increase, continuation of family name). Among Turkish and Arab parents, the utilitarian view of children predominates. Even the desire for sons is based on the fact that in Islamic cultures they remain part of the family and support the parents, while girls become part of another family upon marriage. The career preferences of the parents for their children are therefore ambitious: even children with a Hauptschule recommendation [certain class of German secondary school, generally not for the top performers] should be doctors, lawyers or engineers. When the parents become aware that the prerequisites for this are not present, there is great disappointment. In their perception “the German school system” is then to blame for not helping immigrants enough.

To come to grips with this school misery, the authors argue that nurseries should no longer assume that they will be educating “pre-trained” children, but should orient themselves more strongly to heterogeneous learning groups. Solving conflicts without violence and desirable social behaviour should also first be practised there, so that children who have learned other ways of solving conflicts at home do not continually rub others up the wrong way. Whole-day schools offer better opportunities for this than half-day schools. The authors also argue – and this is very unusual for a study from the Adenauer Institute – that there should be longer group learning, that is that nursery should continue until the 6th year so that immigrant children have more time to make up their deficits. Ideally, though, the upbringing style of the parents could be changed in the direction of a supportive, discursive behaviour, says Mafaalani, but in his view that plan would have little prospect of success.

Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

For Europe, a Bridge Too Far to Turkey

2011-10-03T16:15:00.000-07:00

Many of the articles that have appeared recently about Turkey's prospects of joining the EU have had a pleasantly valedictory tone about them.

By JOHN VINOCUR

BRUSSELS — There was always, at least for its critics, something preposterous about the idea of Turkey entering the European Union.

It meant, in their eyes, Europe literally extending its frontiers to the borders of Iran, Syria and Iraq, and the E.U. adding to its membership a predominantly Muslim country whose population would soon give it the biggest number of seats in the European Parliament. As for Turkey’s government, its uncertain relationship with democracy was exemplified by 57 journalists in jail — more, at last count by international watchdogs, than either China or Iran.

Now, at an increasing pace over the last six months, Turkey is portraying itself as a regional power in the Middle East, threatening to send its ships to challenge Cypriot or Israeli gas exploration rights in the Mediterranean, talking up “an axis” with Egypt, and warning of a “real crisis” with the E.U. if it allows the Republic of Cyprus to hold, as scheduled, its six-month rotating presidency next year. To its backers in Europe, this Turkey can no longer look much like an idealized bridge to a world beyond clashes of civilizations.

In the opposite direction, surveying a weakened and divisive Europe, whose resolve and forthrightness are in question as it stumbles from nonsolution to nonsolution of its economic and financial crises, the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, insists his country has accumulated as much political influence internationally as the entire E.U. combined.

So? In the very short term, Turkey’s new stance gives Europe (with Germany and France opposing full Turkish membership) a respectable alibi and respite from an issue it cannot easily solve. But in the process, the door closes on the goal of integrating Turkey into a European-led geopolitical and economic order.

“The majority of Europe welcomes the moment, thinking, ‘Great, the Turkey thing is off the table,”’ said a Brussels official whose country backs Turkish entry. He added, “We think Turkey is worth it, and that they’re a real risk if they sail off into the distance.”

All the same, a new distance has unspoken pluses.

The apocalyptic notion of Europe being overrun by Turkish Muslims, brandished by right-wing populists like Geert Wilders of the Netherlands — Turkey’s rapidly growing population is approaching 80 million — is deflated as a hysteria-making political argument.

Reality also says the European Union couldn’t handle two existential issues at one time. The magnitude of the problems represented by Turkish entry into full-fledged membership (Germany talks instead of a “privileged partnership”) appears incompatible with the E.U.’s unresolved issues of debt and deficit, an economy nearing standstill by the end of the year, and an intensifying discussion of the need for greater economic governance.

The Obama administration, so far, can praise Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s “great leadership,” be happy that Turkey will be part of a U.S. antimissile defense system, and disregard Mr. Erdogan’s Putin-style remark that there are only “presumptions” about Iranian nuclear weapons intentions.

Yet the question of Turkey’s new engagement in the Arab world, its falling out with Israel, and general bluster is a more intimate one for Europe. Some Europeans would like to minimize the problem.

The Brussels official who found a majority of E.U. members liking the idea that Turkey’s entry seems shelved for now — I spoke to a cabinet minister from another E.U. core country who agreed — described Turkish assertiveness as “tactics, not strategy,” and part of an expression of Turkey’s irritation with Europe’s resistance to it.

The Finnish foreign minister, Erkki Tuomioja, has pointed in the same direction and asserts, “Turkey doesn’t have the means for its policy.”

But if you take Turkey’s Middle East power ambitions as serious — and not blowhard fantasizing — then it is the Turks who are forcing the E.U. to turn away from its candidacy. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said, “A Turkey that wants to become a regional power must build up its political and economic influence on the waterways from the Agean to the Adriatic and from the Suez Canal to the Persian Gulf.”

The leading German research organization for international politics and security affairs, SWP, takes the point. It published a paper two weeks ago, titled “Turkey on a Course of Confrontation,” whose introduction reads, “Ankara is looking to pick a fight in the Mediterranean not only with Israel and the Republic of Cyprus, but also with the European Union.”

The same week, Mr. Gul, while rejecting anything short of full E.U. membership during a visit to Germany, sounded provocative about his hosts’ approach to Turkish immigration. He described as a violation of “human rights” a German regulation requiring spouses of Turks living in Germany to pass German-language competency tests before taking up residence.

Earlier in the year, Mr. Erdogan, as a guest of Angela Merkel, had an imperative-type message for Turkish immigrants: “Integrate yourselves into German society, but don’t assimilate.”

Finding an overall response to the new circumstances is not easy.

Last week, NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, both chose to praise Turkey’s “stabilizing role in the region” and dodge the issue of its charter member’s warning that it might send its navy toward non-NATO Cyprus to block its exploration for gas. He said the alliance “as an organization is not going to interfere in these disputes.”

On this matter, at least — if it sees a measure of immediate comfort in Turkey talking itself out of closer association anytime soon — the E.U. can ignore an active Turkish challenge to a tiny member’s sovereignty only at the expense of its self-respect.

Source: New York Times

Europe and Turkey need each other – but not in an EU context

2011-10-02T15:46:00.000-07:00

This article was published in Today's Zaman by the Danish People's Party MEP Morten Messerschmidt, founder of the Turkey Assessment Group, which appears to be one of the few institutions in Europe willing to apply some degree of rationality or scepticism to the question of whether Turkey should join the EU.

The “Turkish question” is still on the EU agenda and discussions as well as negotiations over Turkish membership of the EU have been taking place for decades. But we have to scrutinize the situation carefully and ask ourselves whether it is in the interest of Europe and the wishes of a more and more self-confident Turkish population to become the 28th member state of the EU. Has Turkey asked herself whether the typical EU centralized model of legislation serves her interests as an independent nation? Has Turkey asked herself whether she can live with a model where around 75 percent of the legislation is proposed by a non-elected body of commissioners in Brussels?

I doubt that the Turkish government has seriously dealt with the question as to whether Turkish EU membership is really an advantage, simply because membership seems so far away. The whole “play” around the negotiations has something ritualistic about it and goes around in circles with no one really getting anywhere. So instead of moving around in circles, it would be much more honest and realistic to move forward with other models for a binding bilateral cooperation between the EU and Turkey.

Turkey is in many ways moving in a direction which makes it hard to deal with the traditional European values of democracy, gender equality and freedom of speech. The present government with Erdoğan as its leader has curbed freedom of speech, and journalists are jailed for criticizing the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which shrewdly connects any criticism with terrorist activities. Furthermore, we have the unsolved situation in Cyprus, which is certainly not aiming for a solution but rather an escalation. The Turks maintain their grip on the northern part of the island, and nothing indicates that the government is going to loosen its iron grip on the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, or TRNC,” despite the expressed wish among Turkish Cypriots.

Having said this and having criticized the ruling Erdoğan government, it is not my aim to oust Turkey from the European House. On the contrary, it is my firm belief that Europe and Turkey need each other as “cousins.” Europe and Turkey are neighbors, and a sound neighborhood should be built upon a foundation of mutual trust and understanding, thus aiming at diminishing and closing the existing cultural and political gap between Turkey and Europe. We cannot move forward, aiming at the stars, but should be satisfied with less, focused on what is realistic.

Turkey has an important role to play as a trustworthy and reliable partner to Europe and as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. And I think I speak on behalf of most Europeans when I say that I’d rather see a democratic Turkey as the leading nation in the Middle East than Ahmadinejad’s theocratic and totalitarian dictatorship in Iran. Therefore, Europe has to place its trust in Turkey, but we can only make a new beginning in the relationship if we bury the idea of a full Turkish EU membership.

This new beginning of a prosperous European-Turkish relationship should be based on political realism and objective criteria. Ideology and utopian dreams, as we have seen them for the last decades, have to be consigned to the dustbin of history, as they only cause unnecessary confusion and uncertainty that create frustrations and push both parties farther apart. The EU and Turkey have to stay on the path of realism and work out agreements in various fields such as trade, security issues and exchange of knowledge – for example, an exchange of students and experts. Why not focus on common free trade agreements or even better, exchange of highly skilled workers rather than aiming at what for decades has seemed unreachable?

Turkey and Europe need each other but within a framework of good neighboring. The present and futile negotiations over membership have proved to be a dead end, and, in my view, we are wasting precious time on this project with the possible result of exacerbating the relationship between our countries and Turkey. Only when Europe removes the blindfold of ideology can we move forward and create a new framework for a partnership between the EU and Turkey in the 21st century. I sincerely believe that this will happen – simply because we cannot afford to wait any longer.

Why the World Should Start to Worry About Erdogan

2011-10-02T15:33:00.000-07:00

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s verbal antics are nothing new to European leaders. Radical rhetoric is one thing, they say, but at the end of the day, the pragmatic good sense that has characterized Turkish foreign policy for so long will prevail.

The problem is that Erdogan’s tone is growing ever more shrill, and it looks increasingly as if he might translate words into action.

He has sent a Turkish ship to prospect for natural gas and oil deposits along the coast of Cyprus and threatened Turkish military supervision of the activity: non-stop patrols by “frigates, gunboats and the air force“ warned Erdogan. This offers more than hint that the Turkish premier intends to back up his high-flying claims to dominance not only in the Middle East but also in Europe.

Erdogan appears increasingly to be leaving a sensible sort of Realpolitik behind in favor of a self-aggrandizing messianic stance. Since his recent trip to Egypt and Libya, where he was celebrated as a kind of healing force, he has mixed a pro-Islamic democracy message with an ever stronger anti-Israel position.

One result is that Erdogan’s sense of international law appears to have morphed into his own definition of what that law is. Turkey claims to have a rightful share in Cyprus’s natural gas and oil deposits based in the supposed right of a state – the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus – that is only recognized by Ankara.

His approach on the Gaza Flotilla conflict with Israel offers a similar militant will to disparage international law if it shouldn’t happen to coincide with his way of reading events.

When trying to get through Israel’s Gaza blockade in the Spring of 2010, nine activists were killed by the Israelis on the Turkish aid ship Mavi Marmara.

Erdogan keeps insisting that Israel must present formal excuses to Turkey and put an immediate end to the Gaza blockade which he says violates international law. The Turkish Prime Minister has even gone so far as to say that Israel’s behavior constitutes grounds for war.

Double standard

But not only does Erdogan sneeringly push aside international laws if they don’t suit him, he posits himself as guardian of a kind of higher morality among states.

However, even as he denounces Israel’s behavior towards the Palestinians in ever more strident tones, he apparently sees nothing objectionable in the fact that for years Turkey has launched attacks against PKK extremists in Kurdish northern Iraq.

And Erdogan recently announced a joint offensive of Turkish and Iranian forces against Kurdish rebels deep inside Iraq. When asked about possible casualties from this operation, he replied coldly: “I’m sorry to say this, but there will be a price to pay.”
Erdogan assumes a moral tone even as he preaches a double standard with regard not only to international law, but to human beings. He went so far as to state that Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir could not be responsible for genocide since Muslims, quite simply, did not do that sort of thing. And his government continues to question the Armenian genocide at the end of World War I at the hands of his own people.

Erdogan has been increasingly critical of the bloody repression of Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad, who used to be a close ally. Still, he hasn’t quite been able to bring himself to call for Assad to step down.

Meanwhile, he goes deeper and deeper in demonizing Israel. In a recent interview with CNN, Erdogan even questioned just how accurate figures were with regard to Israelis who had lost their lives as a result of Palestinian terror attacks. According to Erdogan it was, however, beyond question that Israel had murdered “hundreds of thousands” of Palestinians. With regard to the Holocaust, Erdogan appears to share views similar to those of Iranian president Ahmadinedjad – that Israel uses the Holocaust as an “excuse” so as to be able assume the stance of victim.

Furthermore, according to Erdogan, “Germany alone” should pay for the atrocities against the Jews: neither the Turks nor the Muslims in the region had anything to do with “this problem.”

This sort of attitude shows that Erdogan‘s hostility to Israel goes well beyond economic and political disgruntlement. It constitutes the ideological core of his endeavor to present himself to the Arab world as a charismatic spiritual guide and pan-Islamic leader.

And indeed: since Gamal Abdel Nasser, arguably no other political figure has found such broad resonance in the region as Erdogan.

Still his growing irrationality and regional stature should not cover up the fact that he pursues Turkey’s interests with an unwavering eye. Even Erdogan’s anger at Israel is connected to the fact that Cyprus and the Jewish state want to team up to drill for gas and oil in the Mediterranean. Turkey’s confrontation course against Israel will become a European problem -- so Europe would be well-advised to listen exactly to what Erdogan has to say, and assume that he means it.

Source: Die Zeit

In a similarly crazy vein, Erdogan apparently called the UN an "unjust West tool" this week.

Erdogan criticized the United Nations (UN), and said that it was condoning unjust and inhumane behaviors and acts of some countries, whereas it was imposing many sanctions on some other countries.

"On one hand you put pressure and sanctions on Iraq for nuclear energy projects while on the other hand you remain silent to Somalia and you do not follow any of 89 sanction decisions regarding Israel," he said.

Erdogan said the organization could not solve world problems if it did not behave fairly, and problems in Cyprus, Somalia and Syria were stemming from unilateral, insincere and unjust attitude of international community, particularly Western countries.

Source

Turkish Cartoonist Faces Up to a Year in Prison for Insulting Islam

2011-10-01T03:22:00.000-07:00

A Turkish cartoonist will be put on trial for a caricature he drew in which he renounced god, daily Habertürk reported on its website Wednesday.

The Istanbul chief public prosecutor's office charged cartoonist Bahadır Baruter with "insulting the religious values adopted by a part of the population" and requested his imprisonment for up to one year.

Baruter's caricature depicted an imam and believers praying in a mosque. One of the characters is talking to God on his cellphone and asking to be pardoned from the last part of the prayer because he has errands to run.

Within the wall decorations of the mosque, Baruter hid the words, "There is no Allah, religion is a lie." The cartoon was published in the weekly "Penguen" humor magazine.

Turkish Religous Affairs and Foundation Members' Union and some citizens filed complaints against Baruter.

The public prosecutor's office accepted the complaints and filed a lawsuit against the cartoonist.

Source: Hurriyet

EU Prepares Road Map to Remove Visa for Turks

2011-09-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

The European Union for the first time is planning to draw a road map to completely remove visa requirements for Turkish citizens, while in the meantime the union will take steps to ease visa procedures, according to Cecilia Malmstrom, European Commission representative for interior affairs.

The process will start in the fall and will have five steps starting with granting longer visas, then multi-entry visas, then shortening the processing time, then reducing the paperwork required, and then extending again or even eliminating visas for certain sectors.

Turkey’s European Union Minister Egemen Bağış on Wednesday participated in a session of the European Parliament discussing the union’s visa regime for Turkish nationals. The EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee meeting on Wednesday was the first high-level meeting between Turkey and the EU on what Ankara hopes will lead to further negotiations to remove visa requirements for Turks visiting EU member countries.

“We are about to embark on a journey. But it will take time. And to begin with, we will ease visa procedures,” said Malmstrom, adding that the EU member countries would issue longer-stay, multi-entry visas with shorter issuance periods and less paper work, as well as indefinite visas for certain sectors.

“We have seen the light at the end of the tunnel. All we ask for is an end to the discrimination and equal treatment with other candidate countries,” Bağış said.

Bağış denied allegations that a wave of migration from Turkey to the EU would follow visa exemption, saying that a reverse migration was already underway.

“As a matter of fact, nearly 30,000 Turks returned home within the past few years,” he said. Responding to a question by a parliamentary lawmaker about Turkey’s decision to freeze relations with the EU term presidency when the Greek Cypriot administration assumes the helm if a settlement on the Cyprus issue has not been found, Bağış said membership negotiations could wait for six months without opening another chapter.

“It isn’t the end of the world if we don’t open a new chapter in accession talks for another six months,” Bağış said.

Source: Hurriyet

Austria's Docile Descent into Dhimmitude

2011-09-30T11:12:00.001-07:00

When they're feeling really, really bold, western politicians occasionally murmur about the prevalence of foreign imams in mosques. It's a barrier to integration, they say, having foreigners from countries with alien traditions in charge of religious affairs.

What, though, if the western governments didn't complain? What if they even hosted receptions to welcome the new religious officials coming from abroad? And what if this gratitude was effusively expressed even though the new sacerdotes were in the pay of a foreign government and didn't speak a word of the native language?

This is exactly what has just happened in Austria. The Turkish government in Ankara, through its Office for Religious Affairs (Diyanet) has just appointed 9 new religious commissars to be dispatched to Austria. There they will remain in the pay and under the authority of the Turkish government and will play a dominating role in the religious lives of Muslims living in Austria. Most of the mosques and Islamic religious organisations there are effectively controlled by ATIB (Avusturya Türkiye İslam Birliği), the Turkish-Islamic Union for Cultural and Social Cooperation, and, through it, the Turkish government. Austrian imams literally have their sermons written for them in a government office in Ankara.

However, the Turks have graciously agreed to undergo training in Austrian culture and have expressed a "motivation" to learn German! For this, the Austrian Foreign Affairs Ministry is deeply grateful. Its official statement reads:

In the "Socio-cultural training sessions", which will be held once per year in Vienna on the initiative of the Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the new religious commissioners will be given tuition in the history, politics, society and culture of Austria. In this, themes such as democracy and the rule of law, religious pluralism and freedom of religion and conscience will be touched on, as well as questions relating to integration and participation in presentations and discussions.

The extent to which Austria has descended into dhimmitude and abased itself in front of these Muslim Turks is simply astounding. It's almost a reverse of 19th century imperialism when western powers would extract special "concessions" and privileges for their nationals in weak, oriental despotisms.

Source: SOS Heimat

Cyprus Blasts Turkey Over Gas

2011-09-29T11:21:00.000-07:00

"I think that now the international community, and especially our partners in the European Union, have started witnessing now the real face of Turkey."

Full transcript below:

EU member Cyprus has a major natural gas find on its hands, which is complicating even further dealings with EU-candidate country Turkey. Unification talks on the divided island and Cyprus’s turn as EU president next year make this a particularly testing time. Cyprus strikes it rich; Turkey insists the claim is far from cut and dry.

For a reaction to the Turkish view, euronews spoke to the Cyprus government’s foreign minister Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis.

Alasdair Sandford, euronews:
By going drilling for oil and gas in the first place, was this not a provocative gesture, that was obviously going to annoy the Turks?

Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus:
This project started several years ago. It is not something new. First of all, since 2007, Cyprus started concluding agreements with its neighbours, first with Lebanon then with Egypt in 2007. In 2010 we concluded an agreement with Israel for the delineation of our exclusive economic zones. All our contact and all our activities are based on the UN convention on the law of the sea. Following all these agreements, we began the process of licensing. All these activities are taking place in our exclusive economic zone. Whatever [everything] we discover in our exclusive economic zone, whatever natural resources will be for the benefit of Cyprus — for the benefit of the people of Cyprus, Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, as well as for the benefit of the energy needs of Europe.

euronews:
How are you going to ensure that it is for the benefits of everyone on the island, as you say for Turkish Cypriots as well?

Kozakou-Marcoullis:
We hope, and we are convinced that we will have a unification of the island, so that both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots — the entire population of Cyprus — will benefit from this exploitation of our natural resources. Now, regarding the conduct of Turkey: we are not surprised, really. I mean, we have been undergoing — for the past 37 years — an aggression, continuing aggression, and I think that now the international community, and especially our partners in the European Union, have started witnessing now the real face of Turkey.

euronews:
Turkey says it is not being aggressive, and that it is just defending its interests.

Kozakou-Marcoullis:
‘Defending its interests…’ You defend your interests when you have the rights! It [Turkey] is going into our exclusive economic zone. It is now conducting, as they say, seismic research. And they threaten that they will go ahead with exploration and possible exploitation or extraction activities within our exclusive economic zone… the exclusive economic zone of a member of the European Union. And Turkey is a candidate for membership to the Union!

euronews:
Speaking more generally, next year you take over the presidency of the EU. Are you going to use that to reach out to Turkey with a view to reconciliation, or are you going to try to isolate Turkey?

Kozakou-Marcoullis:
We are not going to try to isolate Turkey. I’m afraid that Turkey is trying to isolate itself from the European Union, when they are threatening – and this has come out of the mouth of all Turkish officials, from the prime minister to many ministers – that they declare that if there is no solution to the Cyprus problem by that time, that they will freeze their relations with the European Union. This is an insult for the European Union. This is an affront to the institutions of the European Union, and the problem is that Turkey does not recognise one of the member states of the European Union. This is a problem for Turkey, it’s not a problem for the European Union.

Source: Euronews

WTF? Turkish Bureaucrats Now Shaping EU Policy

2011-09-29T10:54:00.001-07:00

A memorandum of understanding for the secondment of Turkish officials at the European Commission is signed in Strasbourg on the 28th of September, 2011 by the Minister for EU Affairs and Chief Negotiator Mr. Egemen BAĞIŞ and Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Inter Institutional Relations and Administration Mr. Maroš ŠEFČOVIČ.

As agreed between Turkey and the European Commission, Turkish national experts will be employed at the Commission as "Seconded National Experts" and "National Experts in Professional Training". This recent development is a ‘milestone' for Turkey-EU relations since through this secondment, Turkish bureaucrats will work together with the Euroaucrats in policy making and implementation of the EU politics. In other words, Turks will have a role in shaping EU's future politics and legislation.

The network created in the corridors of the European Commission and other European institutions between Turkish bureaucrats and Eurocrats, will not only contribute to mutual learning and socialization, it will also remove misperceptions and misjudgments against Turkey's membership in the minds and hearts of some Europeans.

Source

Only Geert Wilders and Barry Madlener of the PVV party in the Netherlands seems to have reacted to this extraordinary announcement.

Wilders: "Erdogan recently threw off his mask, and behaved like a common war-monger. The European commission has evidently lost its mind in letting in this islamic Trojan horse at this time and letting Turks co-write EU legislation to be implemented in the Netherlands. It is time to end once and for all this charade and tell the Turks they are not welcome in the EU. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever".

Madlener: "It is an outrageous scandal that, in a time when Turkey is a security risk in the region, the European Commission tries to hasten the accession of Turkey. Turkey has been occupying for decades now a large part of full EU member state Cyprus and recently has sent warships to the European outer border. Letting in these wolves in sheeps clothing is a tragic low point in the futile negotiations currently being held. Those negotiations should be ceased definitively and the commission should withdraw this idiotic plan".

Source: KleinVerzet