AVOID MUSLIM TURKEY
Jerusalem will
be conquered, Jews will be wiped out, says Turkish jihadist cleric Nurettin Yıldız
August 16,
2020 Nordic Monitor
Jerusalem will
be conquered when Turkish women abide by the Charter of Medina (of the Prophet
Muhammad in 622) instead of the Istanbul Convention on combatting violence
against women, stated Nurettin Yıldız, a
jihadist and anti-Semitic Turkish cleric who has called for armed jihad.
“When Turkish
women abide by the Medina Charter instead of the Istanbul… and prefer the
protection of God rather than human protection, the Jews will be disappeared
and Jerusalem be ready for a new [Islamic] conquest,” Yıldız
said during a conference titled “Jerusalem and the martyrs of the Mavi Marmara [flotilla]” and organized by the Foundation
for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) on February 20.
Yıldız, a radical imam who is
close to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan,
is a leading figure among conservative and pro-government groups claiming the
Istanbul Convention undermines traditional family values and structure. He is a
frequent keynote speaker at both youth events organized by the ruling Justice
and Development Party (AKP) and conferences and lectures sponsored by
pro-government groups and foundations.
Yıldız openly advocates armed
jihad, describes democracy as a system for infidels and says it can only be
used as a means of deception to rise to power. He is the man who radicalized
the young al-Nusra-affiliated police officer who assassinated the Russian
ambassador to Turkey in December 2016.
AKP officials
are discussing withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention and the annulment of Law
No. 6284, enacted following the signing of the convention in 2011. A meeting of
the party’s Central Executive Committee (MYK) to decide the fate of the
convention scheduled to take place on August 5 was postponed.
The Council of
Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and
domestic violence, the first European treaty specifically targeting violence
against women and domestic violence, was opened for signature in May 2011 in
Istanbul and entered into force in August 2014. So far 45 Council of Europe
member states have signed the convention, while 34 of them have ratified it,
with Turkey being the first among the 34 ratifying countries.
Commenting on
Turkey’s ratification of the Istanbul Convention, AKP Deputy Chair and former
Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş
had earlier said it was wrong to become a party to the convention, indicating
that the government might consider withdrawing from it.
President Erdoğan’s neo-nationalist (Ulusalcı)
and hardline secularist ally Doğu Perinçek, leader of the Homeland Party (Vatan
Partisi), has also urged the Turkish
government to withdraw from the international accord. Perinçek
defined the convention as “a tool of Western imperialist powers to control
Turkish society.”
The Charter of
Medina, referred to by Yıldız, was drafted
by the Prophet Muhammad in 622 and provided the basis of a city-state in
Medina.
“Liberation of
the al-Aqsa Mosque [in Jerusalem’s Old City]” and “the conquest of Jerusalem”
have regularly been presented as goals by President Erdoğan,
AKP officials and jihadist figures during recent discussions.
For instance,
addressing the nation regarding his decree on July 10 ordering the conversion
of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque after the top administrative court annulled
a 1934 presidential decree that made it a museum, President Erdoğan
had pointed out that “the resurrection of Hagia Sophia heralds the liberation
of the al-Aqsa Mosque [from Israel].”
Speaking
during a video conference organized by a pro-government foundation, Kurtulmuş stated that the legacy for Jerusalem should
be Turkey’s next responsibility after the Hagia Sophia. “It is the
responsibility of our nation to fulfill the legacy of ‘La Ilahe
Illallah, Ibrahim Halilullah
[There is no God but Allah, Abraham is his friend]’ written at the top of the
Hebron Gate, as a dream, as a goal in the coming days,” Kurtulmuş
said.
Most recently,
Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kıran
defined Turkey’s Hagia Sophia reconversion to a mosque as a message for the
Islamic world to liberate the al-Aqsa mosque, at a video conference held
by the Islamic Cooperation Youth Forum on August 10.
“The reopening
of Hagia Sophia as a mosque has significance beyond being a new place of
worship. It is a message of self-confidence from Turkey to the Islamic world.
We hope that we as Muslims take this message further. I would like to recall
what our President Erdoğan said during the
reopening of the Grand Mosque of Hagia Sophia. He underlined that the
reclamation of Hagia Sophia as a mosque is the signal for the liberation of Masjeed al-Aqsa,” said Kıran.
Yıldız himself admitted his
connections to jihadist groups in Syria in a letter he wrote right after the
leader of Ahrar al-Sham, Hassan Abboud,
also known by the nom de guerre Abu Abdullah al-Hamawi,
was killed in September 2014 in a suicide attack on a high-level meeting in
Syria’s Idlib province. In the letter, dated Sept. 10, 2014, Yıldız recalls how he made a trip to Idlib to
meet Abu Abdullah and how they discussed the jihadist fight against the
infidels. He described the killing of Abu Abdullah as “a great loss to the
cause,” regretting that his invitation to host him in Istanbul had not come to
fruition.
The IHH, the
organizer of the event on Jerusalem, is a front charity that is known as a tool
of Turkish intelligence agency MIT and has been under investigation by the
Turkish police. It was accused of smuggling arms to al-Qaeda-affiliated
jihadists in Syria and Libya. IHH was also utilized in the transport of wounded
Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al-Qaeda fighters by ambulance from
Syria to Turkey.
In 2010
Israeli forces stormed the Mavi Marmara, a
Turkish-owned vessel that was part of a flotilla seeking to break the Israeli
blockade on Gaza by delivering aid and humanitarian support. Eight Turkish
nationals and an American-Turkish activist were shot dead during the raid,
while another Turkish man later succumbed to his injuries. The boat was
owned and operated by the IHH.
In
Turkey, political Islam is getting in the way of rational health policy
By Can Dundar
The Washington Post
March 26, 2020 at 11:49 a.m. PDT
Can Dundar, the
former editor in chief of the leading Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, is now
living in exile.
Over the past two weeks, Turkey has been
witnessing a lethal tug of war between reason and belief — one that shows us
again how dangerous politicized religion can be.
Turkish health-care professionals and
scientists, led by the Turkish Medical Association, have been advocating fact-based policy
responses to the coronavirus pandemic. But they face a powerful
opponent in the country’s religious establishment. The government’s enormously
influential Directorate of Religious Affairs, an agency that is
supposed to regulate the role of Islam, has become one of the key institutions
in the fight against covid-19 — and not always for the better.
It was clear from early on that the biggest
threat would come from outside Turkey’s borders — and especially from those
making their Islamic pilgrimages to Mecca. When authorities in Saudi Arabia
identified 100 coronavirus cases, they quickly
moved to cancel visits to the central Kaaba shrine. Some 21,000 pilgrims from
Turkey returned home by March 15.
Experts insisted that returning pilgrims should immediately be
quarantined, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party
(AKP) did not want to annoy those religious people who mostly vote for the AKP.
The Directorate of Religious Affairs, the state institution in charge of
managing the mosques, requested that returnees self-isolate at home for 14 days,
without receiving any visitors.
The majority of people did not listen. Social media filled with photos of returning pilgrims making visits and
accepting guests. Confronted with the public refusal to cooperate, the
government suddenly decided to quarantine the last group of returnees. More
than 6,400 returning pilgrims were placed in university dormitories; all the
students who had lived there were evicted.
Some of the pilgrims, citing the unequal treatment, tried to escape
quarantine. Some of them tried to force open the doors of their dormitories;
another group that managed to
get out was caught traveling to another city
in a rented bus.
But it was too late. Thousands of people had spread across the country.
Within a week, the number of cases surged from one to more than 1,000.
The second big mistake was made at Friday prayers, which draw around 18
million people each week. Friday prayers have been canceled in many Islamic
countries. Iran pulled back on February 27; on March 13, Kuwait put out the
message that people should pray in their homes. In Turkey, the Directorate of
Religious Affairs made a similar announcement — but only in the form of a
suggestion. Bars, night clubs, libraries and museums were closed, but mosques
remained open — and they were crowded with believers. On March 16, the
government announced that communal Friday prayers were being suspended.
But it was too late again. The death announcements began on March 17.
Within one week, Turkey had surpassed all
other countries in the rate of increase of cases.
Erdogan stayed inside his presidential palace for a full week following
the first announced case. On March 18, he finally emerged to host a meeting on
“Coordinating the Fight against the Coronavirus.” Officials from the
Directorate of Religious Affairs participated, but there was no one there from
the Turkish Medical Association. As he left the four-hour conference, Erdogan chose to speak like a cleric rather than a president, citing traditional
Islamic texts: “It is up to us to behave in accordance with the hadiths, to
take precautions and leave judgment to Allah. I believe that we will make it
through this period with patience and prayers.”
A week later, on March 25, when the number of deaths had risen to 59 and
the number of cases had reached 2,433, Erdogan gave a televised
address in which he assured the nation that the
government would end the spread of the virus in two to three weeks. To experts
who have argued that the illness will be transmitted even faster in the coming
weeks because of the initial delayed response, he said simply: “Our Lord’s help
will be on our side.”
On television, religious scholars rather than
scientists dominated coverage of the coronavirus,
explaining the role of “extramarital relations, adultery, homosexuality, and
anal relations” in the spread of the virus. The coronavirus emergency is
showing the country just how the secular foundations of the education system
have been eroded.
Turkey’s economy was already in poor shape as the pandemic approached,
and its health-care system is utterly unprepared for the challenge it faces. So it’s no wonder that the authorities have been unable to
produce a serious, well-thought-out response. Religious officials have stepped
into the gap — announcing, for example, that mosque loudspeakers would
broadcast prayers every night.
The Directorate of Religious Affairs is a huge and powerful institution.
In 2019, it received five times more funding from the budget than the
intelligence community. Its staff outnumbers the number of doctors in the
country; Turkey has more mosques than hospitals.
By obstructing science and misallocating
vital resources, political Islam in Turkey has become a direct threat to the
health of the nation. Turks now find themselves fighting the virus even as they
confront the ignorance that leads to bad policy.
Turkey: How the
Greek presence in Cappadocia came to an end
Greek City
Times
January 8,
2020
By Uzay Bulut
An
international academic conference on the multicultural history of the Anatolian
city of Kayseri in the historic region of Cappadocia has recently been banned by
Turkish authorities.
The conference on
“The Social, Cultural and Economic History of Kayseri and The Region” organized
by the Hrant Dink Foundation, was set to discuss
issues relating to the local changes in Kayseri between 1850 and 1950. Several
scholars from Turkey, the US, France, Greece, and Armenia would present their
research at the conference on October 18 and 19.
The Hrant Dink Foundation, an organization founded after the
assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
first tried to hold the event in Kayseri, but their attempts failed.
The Foundation
announced on its official
website that the governorship of Kayseri called to inform them
that it would be “inappropriate” to gather the conference in the city. The
phone-call came weeks after the organizers asked to have a face-to-face meeting
with the governorship, and their request for an explanation and to justify the refusal
received no answer at all.
When the
conference could not take place “due to the
interference of the Kayseri Governorship”, the Hrant
Dink Foundation intended to proceed with it in Istanbul at the premises of the
Foundation.
But this time,
the conference was prevented
by the authorities in Istanbul (Constantinople). The Foundation once
again announced on its
website that “After all the preparations were made, and
speakers from around the world had arrived in Istanbul,” the conference was
banned. The organizers added that the Şişli
Governorship gave the official notice of the ban to the Foundation and this
notice included no explanation for the Governorship’s decision.
Had it not
been banned, the participants of the conference would have discussed
issues concerning the Greeks, Armenians, Protestant Christians,
Turks and other communities of Kayseri or Caesarea.
An ancient
city in Asia Minor, Caesarea served as the capital of the
Roman province of Cappadocia and the Romans called it “Caesarea
Cappadociae”. The city was formerly known as Mazaka. According to Professor Nigel Guy Wilson’s Encyclopedia of
Ancient Greece:
“Mazaka became the capital in the 2nd century BC but was
renamed Caesarea in the 12 – 9 BC, and became the provincial capital in AD 17,
serving not only as an administrative center but as a focus of literature and
learning.”
When the
western part of the Roman Empire collapsed in 476, Caesarea, a city of
strategic importance, came within the eastern realm. The Greek-speaking Eastern
Roman Empire later came to be called “the Byzantine Empire” by modern
historians.
Caesarea is
significant in Christian history, as well: It became a nucleus of Christianity in
the 4th century when Saint Basil the Great reputedly established an
ecclesiastical center there. According to Southern Europe:
International Dictionary of Historic Places:
“The
Cappadocians were converted to Christianity by St. Paul, and from Cappadocia
the faith was disseminated throughout eastern Anatolia. King Tiridates III of Armenia, the first to establish
Christianity as the official religion, was converted in 314 by St. Gregory the
Illuminator, who came from Caesarea.
“Caesarea was
centered on an ancient acropolis on the slopes until the fourth century A.D. A
new city was built on the plains around a church and monastery built by St.
Basil the Great, the bishop of Caesarea. Basil born in Caesarea in 329, was
called ‘master of the holy.’ He was one of three Cappadocians (the others were
St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and St. Gregory of Nyssa) whose writings were said to
be second only to the scriptures in formulating the theology of the early
Christian Church.”
After the
inception of Islam in the 7th century, the region became a target of
Muslim armies pouring out of Arabia. It was first the jihadist commanders of
the Umayyad Caliphate that launched military campaigns against the Byzantine
Empire. The Arab commander Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik
of the Umayyad Caliphate, for instance, invaded Cappadocia and took Caesarea
from the Greek Byzantines temporarily in AD 726. According to the Southern
Europe: International Dictionary of Historic Places,
“When Arabs
began their attacks, the ancient empires of Byzantium and Persia, spent by wars
and internecine struggles, could not mount strong resistance…. Their [Arab]
raids occurred almost annually and took their toll on Asia Minor. They reached
Caesarea as early as 647… Caesarea was captured in 726 but in 740 emperor Leo
III drove the Arabs out…
“The peace was
only temporary, however, and in 797 Arabs again invaded Cappadocia. On more
than one occasion, Byzantium had to pay tribute to the Arabs. The Byzantine
Empire had the power to win a war with the Arabs, but they were hampered by
internal intrigues and dissension and preoccupied with religious debates.
Emperor Nicephorus I, who reigned from 802 to 811, refused to pay tribute but
was defeated and forced to pay by a huge Arab army in 806. Internal troubles in
Arabia in 809 stopped the raids until 890. The Byzantine triumph over the Arabs
came under Nicephorus II Phocas.”
Yet, Islamic
jihad against Christian Byzantines continued. Turks were the next group of
invaders. The Seljuk Turks, originally from Central Asia, invaded and sacked
Caesarea in 1067. The city then came under the control of other Muslim groups
such as Danishmendids, the Anatolian Seljuk Sultanate
and finally by the Ottoman Turks in 1515. The Byzantine Empire survived until
the Ottoman invasion and sack of Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1453. Under the Ottoman
rule, Christians and Jews became “dhimmis”, distinctly
subjugated, second-class non-citizens who had to pay heavy taxes (jizya) to be
able to live as non-Muslims.
When the
Turkish Republic was founded in 1923, the city, called Kaisariyah
by the Arabs and later Kayseri by Turks, was passed down to Turkey.
Despite the
severe oppression during the Ottoman era, there had been a continuous Greek
presence in Cappadocia since antiquity – until the 1913-1923 Christian genocide
that targeted Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians and the subsequent Greek–Turkish
forcible population exchange of 1923. Professor Hannibal Travis writes that during the genocide:
“Greek men
became victims of murder, torture, and starvation; Greek women suffered all
this and also became slaves in Muslim households; Greek children wandered the
streets as orphans ‘half-naked and begging for bread’; and millions of dollars’
worth of Greek property passed into Muslim hands:
“American
diplomatic and journalistic sources confirmed Ambassador [James] Bryce’s charge
of an Ottoman policy to exterminate Christians other than the Armenians.
According to the American ambassador to Constantinople from 1913 to 1916, Henry
I. Morgenthau, widely regarded as a principal source of information on the
Armenian Genocide: ‘The story which I have told about the Armenians I could
also tell with certain modifications about the Greeks and the Syrians,’ as
Assyrians were often known to the West, especially those adhering to the Syrian
Orthodox Church:
“Absent a
governmental intention to exterminate the Christians of the empire, it would be
nearly impossible to explain how the massacres, rapes, deportations, and
dispossessions of the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek Christians living in the
Ottoman Empire at the time of World War I could have taken place on such a vast
scale. How could such a remarkable degree of coordination and common purpose in
slaughtering civilians, ravaging women, orphaning children, and stealing money
and property have emerged without organization and direction from above?
Indeed, it takes a little searching to uncover abundant evidence of planning
for genocide.”
As the Greek
population got annihilated in Anatolia from 1913 to 1923, so did their cultural
and religious heritage. Innumerable Greek churches, monasteries, school
buildings and other properties either “disappeared” or were converted to other
uses. Many were destroyed outright. The remaining ones became the “new
property” of Muslims of the country.
The Hrant Dink Foundation has long been investigating these
issues and published a book entitled
“Kayseri with Its Armenian and Greek Cultural Heritage” in 2016. The book also
presents a list of the Armenian and Greek churches, monasteries, chapels, and
schools, among others, in Kayseri that have been destroyed, are used for other
purposes or left to deteriorate by neglect. A few examples include:
“The Greek
church of Akkışla’s Kululu
village has become a mound, the current local name of which is “Çataltepe.” Monumental building blocks and treasure
hunters’ digs can be spotted.
“The Church of
Agios Georgios in the neighborhood of Karacaören in Bünyan, which currently functions as a mosque, has retained
its original bell tower and gate.
“A part of the
Iperagia Theotokos Monastery
in the village of Doğanlar at Bünyan was still standing until 1955 when it was totally
demolished.
“Agios
Georgios Greek Church in the village of Karacaören at
Develi was converted into a mosque and was renovated
in 1966.
“Along with
the nearby ruins of a church and a bath complex, the Byzantine ruins in Gereme in Bünyan comprise a
non-extant settlement, thought to be a Greek monastery.
“The Greek
church in Kocasinan’s Molu village has fallen into
disrepair. Village residents point to an old building that is currently used
for dwelling as the site of the church.
“The Greek
school in the neighborhood of Erkilet in Kocasinan is currently in ruins. The use of spolia is
evident in the surrounding buildings.
“A building in
Melikgazi’s Gesi
neighborhood, which is said to be a Greek church converted to a mosque in 1925,
currently functioning as a post office.
“The Agios
Georgios Greek Church in the village of Taşlık
near Özvatan, for which an official restoration
request was submitted in 1906, has been converted into Taşlık
Mosque.
“The building
of the Kimisis Theotokou
Greek Church in the Harman neighborhood of Talas, built in 1890 over the
demolished original church, is now Yaman Dede
Mosque.”
On October 6,
the human rights organization, International Christian Concern (ICC), issued a statementon Turkey’s
prevention of the Kayseri conference. It said, in part:
“This kind of
conference covers several subject matters that the government has a long
history of suppressing. The years 1850-1950 cover the years immediately before,
during, and after Turkey’s genocide of Christians. Many of those Christians who
survived the genocide now have descendants living in Greece and Armenia. Turkey
consistently denies the genocide and makes every attempt at blocking efforts to
raise awareness about Turkey’s historical record of persecution.
“The freedom
of expression is severely restricted in Turkey. For Christians, many of whom are
still suffering the consequences of genocide, this restriction is doubly
oppressive. Many desire to speak about these problems,
but the government’s abuse of using national security reasons to restrict free
speech makes doing so incredibly challenging.”
Today, the
descendants of Cappadocian Greeks are known to reside mainly in Greece and
other Western countries. For instance, Elia Kazan (Elias Kazantzoglou) a Greek-American director, producer, writer,
and actor, was born in Constantinople to Cappadocian Greek parents originally
from Kayseri. However, the Cappadocian Greek civilization has been almost
completely wiped out. Cappadocian Greek, for instance, is an “extinct” language
in Turkey, according to the UNESCO
Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger.
Expulsions,
massacres, and genocide with the goal
of achieving “Turkey for the Turks” have resulted in the complete
homogenization and Islamization of Anatolia. Due to the lack of freedom of
speech and academic research and the constant propaganda in the educational
system and the media, the true history of the Islamization of the Turkish
population and the destruction of the advanced, indigenous civilizations there
remain a mystery for many Turks.
The only way
to break the mold is to have the freedom to engage in informed conversations
about these issues. The conference on Kayseri aimed to do just that. But sadly,
the Turkish government seems to have no tolerance for those whose views may
challenge the official position of the government. Its immediate response to
intellectual challenges is the banning of ideas.
Erdogan Seizes 50 Syriac Churches and Monasteries, Declares Them
Turkish State Property
BY PATRICK POOLE
JUNE 27, 2017
The Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet)
has seized control of at least 50 Syriac churches, monasteries, and cemeteries
in Mardin province, report media sources from Turkey.
The Turkish-Armenian daily Agos reports:
After Mardin became a Metropolitan Municipality, its
villages were officially turned into neighbourhoods
as per the law and attached to the provincial administration. Following the
legislative amendment introduced in late 2012, the Governorate of Mardin established a liquidation committee. The Liquidation
Committee started to redistribute in the city, the property of institutions
whose legal entity had expired. The transfer and liquidation procedures are
still ongoing.
In 2016, the Transfer, Liquidation and Redistribution Committee of Mardin Governorate transferred to primarily the Treasury as
well as other relevant public institutions numerous churches, monasteries,
cemeteries and other assets of the Syriac community in the districts of Mardin.
The Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation appealed to the
decision yet the liquidation committee rejected their appeal last May. The
churches, monasteries and cemeteries whose ownerships were given to the
Treasury were then transferred to the Diyanet.
Inquiries of the Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation
revealed that dozens of churches and monasteries had been transferred to the
Treasury first and then allocated to the Diyanet. And
the cemeteries have been transferred to the Metropolitan Municipality of Mardin. The maintenance of some of the churches and
monasteries are currently being provided by the Mor
Gabriel Monastery Foundation and they are opened to worship on certain days.
Similarly, the cemeteries are still actively used by the Syriac community who
visits them and performs burial procedures. The Syriacs have appealed to the
Court for the cancellation of the decision.
"We started to file lawsuits and in the meantime our enquiries
continued" said Kuryakos Ergün,
the Chairman of Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation. Ergün said they would appeal to the court for the
cancellation of nearly 30 title deed registries.
Included in the seizure is the 1600-year-old Mor
Gabriel Monastery:
Foundation of Mor Gabriel Monastery, filed a court
case at the Civil Court of First Instance in Mardin
against the registration of title deed records in the name of Treasury.
In the petition filed to the court it has been noted that the properties
subject to the court case had been, since ancient times, under the possession
and ownership of the Foundation and the significance of Mor
Gabriel Monastery has been underlined; "Its history dates back to the 4th
century AD. The Monastery is one of the oldest monasteries in the world which
is still active and is one of the most ancient religious centers of Syriacs and
the entire world with its history of more than 1600 years.
Midyat Syriac Deyrulumur Mor Gabriel Monastery Foundation had been established on
the basis of the imperial order of Sultan Abdülmecid
Han during the Ottoman Empire in “1267 Islamic calendar (1851/1852 Gregorian
calendar) and its status was redefined, became a legal entity, on the basis of
the Foundations Law of 13.06.1935 with no 2762.
The Foundation had been recognised as "a
religious community foundation" on the basis of a Regulation issued in
2002 by the Directorate General of Foundation and was included in the List of
Religious Community Foundations drafted same year. Foundations that I'm not
included in this list are in not recognised as
religious community foundations."
Syriac groups in Europe have protested the seizures, calling them outrageous
and illegal.
The Diyanet has officially rejected the seizure
claims.
But government registries appear to show the property transfers to the Diyanet in Mardin.
As I reported here at PJ Media back in April, a number of European countries
have reported that Diyanet-controlled mosques have
been used by Turkish intelligence to spy on Turkish communities in their
countries.
And the Turkish government opened last year a $100 million complex operated by
the Diyanet just outside of Washington, D.C.
The confiscation of church properties and the closings have escalated under the
regime of Turkish president Recep Erdogan and his program to re-Islamicize the country.
Istanbul nightclub terror attacker 'screamed Allahu Akbar' during massacre that
left 39 dead and 69 injured
The gunman, who is still at large, screamed in Arabic as he blasted innocent
people in Reina - one of Turkey's most famous clubs
BY ALEX WELLMAN & STEVE ROBSON
1 JAN 2017
The Mirror
The 'Santa gunman' who gunned down 39 people and injured 69 with a machine gun
in an Istanbul nightclub 'screamed Allahu Akbar' during massacre - an
eye-witness has revealed.
A manhunt has been launched for the killer after he went on the run following
the mass murder in the popular Reina nightclub, in Turkey.
A Lebanese woman who gave her name as Hadeel and was in the club with her
husband has spoken of the moment the carnage unfolded.
She said: “At first we thought some men were fighting with each other.
“Then we heard the sound of the gunfire and ducked under the tables.
Of the 39 dead, 16 have so far been confirmed as foreigners and British
authorities were trying to work out if any of those killed were UK nationals.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are in touch with the local
authorities following reports of an incident at a night club in Istanbul."
Terrified revellers ran for their lives as the
gunman, armed with an AK-47 assault rifle, tore through the exclusive venue
slaughtering people at will.
Many dived into the nearby Bosphorus waterway and hid
underwater waiting for police to arrive.
The mayhem began when the unknown attacker, who witnesses claim was shouting in
Arabic as he blasted through the club, arrived in a yellow taxi, shot a
policeman stationed outside and then stormed in.
Named as 21-year-old Burak Yildiz,
the tragic officer had been in the job for just a year.
Once inside, CCTV footage showed the terrorist appearing to take off his coat
as he ran around the club shooting people at random.
Initial reports claimed the gunman had barricaded himself in toilets.
But following a search involving armed police and bomb experts, it appears he
remains at large.
Up to 600 people were believed to be in Reina at the time.
Located in the Ortakoy district of Istanbul, it is
one of the most well-known venues in Turkey and is popular with the city's rich
and famous.
Celebrities including Sting, Paris Hilton and Gisele Bundchen have visited in
the past.
Some witnesses spoke of multiple attackers, but officials have not confirmed
this.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said 15 or
16 of those killed were foreigners but that only 21 of the bodies had so far
been identified.
He said 69 people were in hospital, four of them in a critical condition.
He added: "A manhunt for the terrorist is underway. Police have launched
operations.
"We hope the attacker will be captured soon."
The attack again shook Turkey as it tries to recover from a failed July coup
and a series of deadly bombings in cities including Istanbul and the capital
Ankara, some blamed on Islamic State and others claimed by Kurdish militants.
The club, one of Istanbul's most iconic that is popular with locals and
foreigners alike, overlooks the Bosphorus Strait
separating Europe and Asia in the city's cosmopolitan Ortakoy
district.
Around 500 to 600 people were thought to have been inside when the gunman
opened fire, broadcaster CNN Turk said.
Some jumped into the waters of the Bosphorus to save
themselves and were rescued by police.
Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin
said the attacker had used a "long-range weapon" to "brutally
and savagely" fire on people, apparently referring to some sort of assault
rifle.
US President Barack Obama, on vacation in Hawaii, expressed condolences and
directed his team to offer help to the Turkish authorities, the White House
said.
Sahin and Soylu both
referred to a single attacker but other reports, including on social media,
suggested there may have been more, at least one of them wearing a Santa Claus
costume which he later ditched in order to escape.
The Hurriyet newspaper cited witnesses as saying
there were multiple attackers and that they shouted in Arabic.
"We were having fun. All of a sudden people started to run. My husband
said don't be afraid, and he jumped on me. People ran over me. My husband was
hit in three places," one club-goer, Sinem Uyanik, told the newspaper.
"I managed to push through and get out, it was terrible," she said,
describing seeing people soaked in blood and adding that there appeared to have
been at least two gunmen.
Dozens of ambulances and police vehicles were dispatched to the club in Ortakoy, a neighbourhood on the
city's European side nestled under one of three bridges crossing the Bosphorus and home to nightclubs, restaurants and art
galleries.
Sefa Boydas, a Turkish
soccer player, wrote on Twitter: "I didn't see who was shooting but heard
the gun shots and people fled.
"Police moved in quickly,".
"My girlfriend was wearing high heels. I lifted her and carried her out on
my back."
Hurriyet quoted Reina's owner, Mehmet Kocarslan, as saying security measures had been taken over
the past 10 days after US intelligence reports suggested a possible attack.
Turkey, a NATO member and part of the US-led coalition against Islamic State,
faces multiple security threats including spillover from the war in neighbouring Syria.
It launched a military incursion into Syria in August against the radical
Islamist group and is also fighting a Kurdish militant insurgency in its own southeast.
The New Year's Eve attack came five months after Turkey was shaken by a failed
military coup, in which more than 240 people were killed, many of them in
Istanbul, as rogue soldiers commandeered tanks and fighter jets in a bid to
seize power.
Istanbul, Turkey's most populous city, has seen several attacks this year, the
latest on Dec. 10, when two bombs claimed by Kurdish militants exploded outside
a soccer stadium, killing 44 people and wounding more than 150.
In June, around 45 people were killed and hundreds wounded as three suspected
Islamic State militants carried out a gun and bomb attack on Istanbul's main
Ataturk airport.
Kurdish Militant Group Claims Responsibility for Deadly Istanbul Bombing
By SAFAK TIMUR
DEC. 11, 2016
The New York Times
ISTANBUL — A Kurdish militant group claimed responsibility on Sunday for a
double bombing that killed 39 people and wounded 154 outside a soccer stadium
in the heart of Istanbul the night before.
The group — Kurdistan Freedom Falcons — said in a statement that two of its
members had carried out the suicide attacks in retaliation for state violence
in the predominantly Kurdish region in southeast Turkey. The group also cited
the continuing imprisonment of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’
Party, or P.K.K., which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish
state.
The Kurdish Freedom Falcons, which claimed responsibility in June for a car
bombing in Istanbul that killed at least 11 people, is considered an offshoot
of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
Prime Minister Binali Yildirim had blamed the P.K.K.
for the twin bombings on Saturday night.
Turkish officials said the two suicide attacks were carried out near the
Vodafone Arena stadium.
One of them involved the detonation of nearly 1,000 pounds of explosives in a
vehicle, and the other was carried out by a suicide bomber who targeted police
officers after a soccer game.
At least 30 police officers, eight civilians and one unidentified person were
killed in the attacks, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu
said during a funeral for one of the victims on Sunday.
The government declared a national day of mourning on Sunday, and top Turkish
officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, attended funeral services
held at Istanbul’s Police Headquarters.
“They should know that they would not get away with this; they will pay heavier
prices,” Mr. Erdogan said after visiting the wounded at an Istanbul hospital.
“They attacked vilely, perfidiously at two spots against those young lions, who
were preparing to get on their buses.”
So far, the authorities have detained 13 people in connection with the attacks,
the Istanbul chief prosecutor’s office said.
Violence has surged in southeastern Turkey and spilled over to western cities
since the government started a counterinsurgency campaign against the P.K.K.
after the group ended a two-year cease-fire in July 2015.
Turkey has been hit by a string of terrorist attacks this year that officials
have attributed to Kurdish militants and the Islamic State. And the
government’s crackdown and consolidation of power after an attempted coup over
the summer have further set the country on edge.
On Sunday, video footage published by the local news media appeared to show one
of the suicide bombers in the attacks on Saturday walking along a road when
several police officers stopped him just before he detonated his explosives.
“All terror organizations are attacking our nation and our people for the same
goal,” Mr. Erdogan said in a statement after the attacks. “Whenever Turkey
takes a positive step with regards to its future, a response comes immediately
before us in the form of blood, lives, savagery and chaos at the hands of
terrorist organizations.”
Suicide Bomber in Turkish Wedding Attack Was 12-14 Years Old
51 people were killed
and 61 were wounded in the blast in southern Turkey, which Turkish President
Erdogan blames on ISIS.
Dasha Afanasieva
Aug 21, 2016
REUTERS - The suicide bomber who attacked a wedding
party in the southeastern Turkish city of Gaziantep on Saturday killing 51
people was a child between the ages of 12 and 14, President Tayyip Erdogan
said.
"Initial evidence suggests it was a Daesh
attack," Erdogan said, using an Arabic name for ISIS, during a visit to
Gaziantep after the attack. He said 69 people were in hospital and 17 were
"heavily injured".
ISIS has been blamed for other attacks in Turkey,
often targeting Kurdish gatherings in an effort to inflame ethnic tensions. The
deadliest one was last October, when suicide bombers killed more than 100
people at a rally of pro-Kurdish and labor activists in Ankara.
Saturday's wedding party was for a member of the
pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, it said, and the groom was among those
injured. The bride was not hurt, one local official said.
Celebrations were ending at the traditional henna
night party, when guests have decorative paint applied to their hands and feet.
Some families had already left when the bomb went off but women and children
were among the dead, witnesses said.
Blood and burns marked the walls of the narrow lane
where the blast hit. Women in white and checkered scarves cried, sitting crosslegged outside the morgue waiting for word on missing
relatives.
"The celebrations were coming to an end and there
was a big explosion among people dancing," said 25-year-old Veli Can. "There was blood and body parts
everywhere."
"We want to end these massacres," witness
Ibrahim Ozdemir said. "We are in pain,
especially the women and children."
Turkey coup attempt reveals division over desire for secular or Islamist rule
ANALYSIS
By Anne Barker
ABC News
Turkish General Cevik Bir
once said, "In Turkey, we have a marriage of Islam and democracy … The
child of this marriage is secularism. Now this child gets sick from time to
time. The Turkish armed forces is the doctor which
saves the child. Depending on how sick the kid is, we administer the necessary
medicine to make sure the child recuperates".
Those words help explain why Turkey has been
vulnerable to so many military coups or coup attempts since it emerged as a
modern secular nation under Mustafa Kemal Attaturk
after World War I.
It was Attaturk who
enshrined secular government in Turkey's constitution and removed the provision
declaring that the "religion of the state is Islam".
General Bir was one of the masterminds of the last
military coup in Turkey — in 1997 — which successfully ousted another Islamic
leader, Necmettin Erbakan.
In the 12 months Mr Erbakan
was prime minister his government began to steer Turkey down an increasingly
Islamic path, appointing religious conservatives to government positions,
pushing the case for Islamic schooling, and strengthening Turkey's relations
with the Arab world.
Mr Erbakan's Islamic party was banned and Turkey was restored
to secular rule. But in a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim, religious
fundamentalism remains a powerful force in competition with secularism.
Between 1960 and 2001 the military has intervened
four times to ban successive Islamist parties through court action or coups.
But each time new Islamist parties have emerged.
President a protege of former Islamist leader
So it was in 2001 that current president Recep Tayyip
Erdogan — a political protege of Necmettin Erbakan — founded the Islamic leaning
AKP, or Justice and Development Party, which was elected to power in 2002 and
has ruled ever since.
Indeed Mr Erdogan once served four months in jail for
inciting religious hatred after giving a public speech in support of Mr Erbakan, in which he cited the lines of a Turkish poem:
"Our minarets are our bayonets, Our domes are our helmets, Our mosques are our
barracks."
Omer Taspinar, of the
Brookings Institution, wrote in the book The Islamists Are Coming: Who They
Really Are, the AKP moved to the centre-right over a
decade "mainly to escape the fate of its defunct predecessors".
"Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party
(AKP) went through five incarnations before it found a balance that voters
would embrace but the military would also accept, albeit reluctantly," he
wrote.
But in recent years the AKP has become increasingly
autocratic, more religious and less secular, lifting rules that banned women
from wearing headscarves, imposing tougher restrictions on alcohol, building
new mosques, and reintroducing religious education into schools.
More worryingly, the Turkish leader initially
supported Islamist rebels fighting in Syria — as a counter force to separatist
Kurds in Turkey's southeast — which helped give rise to the Islamic State
group.
And in April his government supported a referendum
for a religious constitution which critics say would remove any guarantee of
secular rule.
Coup attempt reveals public's discontent
Rodger Shanahan, a research fellow at Australia's
Lowy Institute, says the latest coup attempt points to the magnitude of the
fissures in Turkish society.
"Parts of the military and other sections of
society are unhappy with Erdogan's aggregation of power at the expense of
democratic checks and balances," he writes.
"The coup plotters claimed to be acting to
restore democracy without a hint of irony.
"However, they also pointed to the need to stem
corruption and the move away from secularism, both claims that resonate with a
significant element of the Turkish population."
He said the attempt failed because it was
"littered with fundamental errors".
"To begin with, when you are committing
regicide, the first target has to be the regent. Erdogan may have been isolated
for a short period of time but he wasn't detained or otherwise neutralised," he says.
"Coup plotters only have the element of surprise
for a short period of time. They have to create the impression the coup is a
fait accompli and they are firmly in control in order to maintain momentum and
quickly win over those outside the secret planning bubble that has existed up
until the coup commences. This didn't happen."
And Mr Shanahan says it is
unlikely Mr Erdogan will take any lessons from the
coup attempt.
"To many leaders, an attempted coup would give
one pause for thought as to the direction they had taken a society. But Erdogan
cares little for introspection and is driven to a large extent by ideology.
"He has made his way in the hard scrabble of
Turkish politics with a firm belief in using power to shape society, and the
fewer constraints on that power the better.
"He is little interested in repairing fissures
in society, rather he is focused on punishing those who were directly involved
in the coup and in purging those who may support opposing views to that of the
AKP."
He says Turkey's political prospects don't look good.
"It has a domestic terrorist problem from
Islamic State and Kurdish groups, is fighting Kurds in the south east, and is
under pressure to control foreign fighters entering and leaving Syria, all of
this while hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. Turkey, once seen
as the exemplar for secular, democratic Islam is no longer viewed in that
way."
Turkey bans academics from traveling, blocks WikiLeaks website
July 20, 2016
Turkish
Weekly
The Turkish government has banned all academics from foreign travel as part of
wide-ranging restrictions put in place in Turkey following a failed military
coup on July 15.
Turkey's High Board of Education made the announcement on July 20 and said the
ban would be in place "until further notice."
The announcement comes one day after Turkey's High Board sacked 1,577 deans at
universities across Turkey and revoked the licenses of some 21,000 teachers
working in private institutions.
The moves are seen as attacks against U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has been accused of masterminding the attempted
coup, which resulted in more than 200 people being killed.
Gulen, who actively promotes educational institutions
in Turkey and other countries, has condemned the coup attempt and rejected any
connection to it.
Meanwhile, Turkey's telecom agency on July 20 blocked access to the WikiLeaks
website one day after it leaked hundreds of thousands of e-mails from the
ruling Justice and Development Party.
WikiLeaks said it had obtained the e-mails before the coup attempt but had
decided to release them "in response to the government's postcoup
purges."
An estimated 50,000 soldiers, police, judges, civil servants, and teachers have
been suspended or detained since the attempted coup.
Turkey: Mass arrests after coup bid quashed, says PM
July 16, 2016
Some 2,839 soldiers, including high-ranking officers, have been arrested over
an attempted coup that is now over, says Turkey's PM Binali
Yildirim.
In a night he called a "black stain on Turkish democracy", he said
161 people had been killed and 1,440 wounded.
Explosions and gunfire were heard in Ankara, Istanbul and elsewhere overnight
and thousands of Turks heeded President Erdogan's call to rise up against the
coup-plotters.
It is unclear who was behind the coup.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed a "parallel structure", in a
clear reference to Fethullah Gulen, a powerful but
reclusive US-based Muslim cleric whom he accuses of fomenting unrest.
However, in a statement, Mr Gulen
rejected any suggestion he had links to the events, saying he condemned
"in the strongest terms, the attempted military coup in Turkey".
Reasons behind coup: By BBC's Middle East Editor Jeremy Bowen
The attempted coup happened because Turkey is deeply divided over President
Erdogan's project to transform the country and because of the contagion of
violence from the war in Syria.
President Erdogan and his AK Party have become experts at winning elections,
but there have always been doubts about his long-term commitment to democracy.
He is a political Islamist who has rejected modern Turkey's secular heritage. Mr Erdogan has become increasingly authoritarian and is
trying to turn himself into a strong executive president.
From the beginning Mr Erdogan's government has been
deeply involved in the war in Syria, backing Islamist opposition to President
Assad. But violence has spread across the border, helping to reignite the fight
with the Kurdish PKK, and making Turkey a target for the jihadists who call
themselves Islamic State.
That has caused a lot of disquiet. Turkey has faced increasing turmoil and the
attempt to overthrow President Erdogan will not be the last of it.
The BBC's Katy Watson in Istanbul says by Saturday morning the Bosphorus Bridge had reopened, and traffic was flowing
across it as if nothing had happened.
People here are shocked about the events of the past day - President Erdogan
divides opinion among Turks but a military takeover was not something they saw
coming, our correspondent adds.
Events began on Friday evening when tanks took up positions on two of the
bridges over the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul,
blocking it to traffic. Troops were seen on the streets and low-flying military
jets were filmed over Ankara.
Shortly after, a faction of the army released a statement saying that a
"peace council" was running the country, and it had launched the coup
"to ensure and restore constitutional order, democracy, human rights and
freedoms".
President Erdogan was in the south-west holiday resort of Marmaris at the time.
He made a televised address, via his mobile phone, urging people to take to the
streets to oppose the uprising.
He then flew on to Istanbul, saying Marmaris had been bombed after he left.
In a speech at Istanbul airport, Mr Erdogan said:
"What is being perpetrated is a treason and a rebellion. They will pay a
heavy price."
Outbreaks of violence
The Turkish parliament and presidential buildings in Ankara were attacked. At
least one bomb hit the parliament complex. MPs were believed to be hiding in
shelters.
Gunfire was also heard outside Istanbul police headquarters and tanks were said
to be stationed outside Istanbul airport.
Broadcaster CNN Turk was temporarily taken off air after soldiers entered the
building and tried to take it over. CNN Turk later tweeted a photo of soldiers
being arrested by police.
Mike Baddeley, on holiday in Marmaris, said he was woken by "a very large
explosion, followed by, it seemed like one or two helicopters flying above our
heads... with machine gun fire".
In the morning, he saw armed men in military fatigues walking around the hotel,
but no further violence.
There were reports of fierce clashes in Taksim Square
in the centre of Istanbul, and gunfire and explosions
were heard near the square.
One of the helicopters being flown by rebels was reportedly shot down by
government troops in Ankara.
Sporadic gunfire was still being heard in some areas by morning.
ISIS eyed as prime culprit in Istanbul airport terror attack
Published June 29, 2016
FoxNews.com
The coordinated massacre at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport came into clearer focus
Wednesday as officials revealed a more detailed timeline of the terror attack
that killed 42 and wounded 238.
After the three attackers arrived at the Turkish transit hub via taxi on
Tuesday, one of the assailants entered the terminal, began shooting people and
then blew himself up near X-ray machines, officials said. During the chaos, a
second attacker rushed to the departures level and detonated his explosives.
The third attacker waited outside during the entire episode, blowing himself up
as scared travelers frantically flooded out of the airport.
"When the terrorists couldn't pass the regular security system, when they
couldn't pass the scanners, police and security controls, they returned and
took out their weapons out of their suitcases and opened fire at random at the
security check," Turkish Prime Minister Binali
Yildirim said Wednesday.
Several U.S. airports strengthened security measures due to the carnage in
Istanbul, and, adding to the tension, a terminal at JFK Airport in New York was
evacuated for a brief period Wednesday when a suspicious bag was spotted. It
was later determined the unattended bag posed no threat and travelers were
allowed back in the terminal.
Authorities viewed ISIS as the most likely culprit in the Istanbul attack, as
the Turkey assault bore hallmarks similar to the March 22 coordinated terror
attacks in Brussels, in which ISIS operatives killed 32 in coordinated bombings
at Zaventem airport and a nearby metro station. But ISIS had not taken credit
for Tuesday's attacks, and Ankara has battled Kurdish militants as well as
ISIS.
Turkish officials told The Associated Press and Reuters that ISIS was the primary
suspect, however, and the Islamic State released an infographic Wednesday in
which it claimed to have "covert" units in Turkey. The infographic,
sent out via ISIS' Amaq news agency, was made to
commemorate the two-year anniversary of the militants establishing their
so-called caliphate in areas of Syria and Iraq.
A U.S. government official told Fox News that the attack fits the profile of
ISIS, which has stepped up its targeting of Turkey. The official said ISIS
tends to attack internationally known targets with an economic impact, such as
an airport, while the Kurdish terror group PKK generally targets Turkish
military and law enforcement.
"If this Islamic State is indeed behind this attack, this would be a
declaration of war," Analyst Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at The
Washington Institute, told AFP. "Turkey's vengeance will come down like
rain from hell on the Islamic State."
Of the 238 people injured in the carnage, 109 had already been discharged from
the hospital Wednesday morning, The Istanbul Governor's Office said. The
Turkish Health Minister said 40 people remained in intensive care.
Most of those killed were Turkish, officials said. The 14 foreign travelers
killed included six Saudis, two Iraqis and citizens from China, Iran, Jordan,
Tunisia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, Reuters reported.
The assault began when one attacker blew himself up outside the Ataturk
terminal, the Haber Turk newspaper reported. Two other terrorists then opened
fire at a point where X-ray machines are located.
"He's shooting up, two times, and he's beginning to shoot people like
that, like he was walking like a prophet," Otfah
Mohamed Abdullah, who witnessed one of the attackers, told AFPTV.
One attacker was shot at while running amid fleeing passengers, then blew
himself up at an exit. The third attacker went up one level to where the
international departures terminal is, was shot by police and blew himself up.
A Turkish official told The Associated Press that authorities were going
through CCTV footage and eyewitness statements to establish a more detailed
timeline of the attack. "It is a jigsaw puzzle" said the official,
who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government protocol.
Airport surveillance video posted on social media showed the moment of one
blast, a huge ball of fire, and passengers fleeing in terror. Another appeared
to show an attacker, felled by a gunshot from a security officer, blowing
himself up seconds later.
The recent attacks on Turkey, a key partner in the U.S.-led coalition against
ISIS and a NATO member, have increased in scale and frequency. They have scared
away tourists and hurt the Turkish economy, which relies heavily on tourism.
Hundreds of passengers who fled the airport in fear were left sitting on the
grass outside. Several ambulances drove back and forth, and security vehicles
surrounded the scene.
As if to underscore Turkey's determination to carry on in the face of a growing
threat, the airport reopened Wednesday, just hours after the dead were carried
away and glass and debris were cleared.
Adam Keally, from Boston, said he heard gunfire
followed by several explosions, then saw people "very badly injured."
Hevin Zini, 12, had just
arrived from Duesseldorf, Germany, with her family and was in tears.
"There was blood on the ground," she told the AP. "Everything
was blown up to bits... if we had arrived two minutes earlier, it could have
been us."
Two South African tourists, Paul and Susie Roos from
Cape Town, were at the airport and due to fly home at the time of the
explosions.
"We came up from the arrivals to the departures, up the escalator when we
heard these shots going off," Paul Roos told the
AP. "There was this guy going roaming around, he was dressed in black and
he had a handgun."
Veysel Allay, who was waiting for a friend in the
arrivals terminal, told the Daily Telegraph, "A
man ran up and ripped open his jacket, showing a bomb vest. I ran before
he did anything."
Jim Hyong Lee of South Korea told the Telegraph he
and his family were checking in for a flight home when "we heard
gunshots."
"I grabbed my family and ran," Lee said. "Someone waved us into
the prayer room and hid us there until the police came."
A State Department spokesman told Fox News late Tuesday that Americans in
Turkey were being urged to contact family members immediately.
Saudi Arabia's Embassy in Turkey said at least seven Saudis were injured in the
attack and all were in stable condition.
U.S. and world leaders immediately offered condolences following the attack.
In the U.S., President Obama was briefed about the attack by Lisa Monaco, his
homeland security and counterterrorism adviser. A statement from the White
House on Tuesday condemned the attack "in the strongest possible
terms."
"We remain steadfast in our support for Turkey, our NATO Ally and partner,
along with all of our friends and allies around the world, as we continue to
confront the threat of terrorism," the statement said.
Turkey has stepped up controls at airports and land borders and deported
thousands of foreign fighters, but has struggled to tackle the threat of ISIS
militants while also conducting vast security operations against Kurdish
rebels, who have also been blamed for recent deadly attacks.
Turkish airports have security checks at both the entrance of terminal
buildings and then later before entry to departure gates.
Istanbul's Ataturk Airport was the 11th busiest airport in the world last year,
with 61.8 million passengers, according to Airports Council International. It
is also one of the fastest-growing airports in the world, seeing 9.2 percent
more passengers last year than in 2014.
Blast strikes military convoy in Turkish
capital; at least 28 killed
By Liz Sly and Brian Murphy
February 17, 2016
The Washington Post
ISTANBUL — A bomb blast in the heart of the
Turkish capital, Ankara, killed 28 people Wednesday, deepening a sense of
crisis enveloping Turkey as it grapples with wars on three fronts.
The explosion appeared to have been caused by a
car bomb that detonated as a military bus paused at a traffic light in a
central neighborhood that houses the nation’s parliament and government
headquarters, according to Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency. In addition
to the deaths, at least 61 people were injured in the fireball that engulfed
the bus and ignited trees in a nearby park at the height of the evening rush
hour.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility
for the blast, which came amid increasing challenges from the civil war in
neighboring Syria, Turkey’s intensifying feud with Kurds and the rising threat
posed by the Islamic State.
A suicide bombing that killed 10 German
tourists near the landmark Blue Mosque in Istanbul in January, a double suicide
attack that claimed more than 100 lives at a peace rally in Ankara in October
and another that killed more than 30 Kurds in southern Turkey last summer were
all widely blamed on the Islamic State, although no group asserted responsibility.
The attacks followed Turkey’s agreement to join a U.S.-led coalition against
the Islamic State and allow U.S. warplanes to launch attacks on the militants
from Turkish bases.
In this instance, however, Turkish authorities were swift to blame the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party, or PKK, the Kurdish nationalist movement that has been waging
war against the Turkish state for most of the past 30 years. Turkey and the
United States both designate the PKK as a terrorist organization. The Turkish
military in recent months has been pursuing a fierce campaign against PKK
fighters and sympathizers, turning many of the Kurdish-majority cities in
southeastern Turkey into war zones.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan immediately
canceled a state visit to Azerbaijan and vowed retaliation, although he did not
specify against whom.
Istanbul bomber entered Turkey as refugee from
Syria
ISTANBUL | BY AYLA JEAN YACKLEY AND HUMEYRA
PAMUK
Reuters
January 13, 2015
An Islamic State suicide bomber who killed 10
German tourists in the heart of Istanbul's historic district entered Turkey as
a refugee from Syria and went undetected as he was not on any watch lists,
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday.
The bomber, who blew himself up among groups of
tourists on Tuesday near the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia, the top sites in one
of the world's most visited cities, had registered with immigration authorities
in the city a week ago.
Turkey has kept an open border to refugees from
Syria's civil war and is now home to more than 2.2 million, the world's largest
refugee population. But its border has also been used by foreign fighters
seeking to join Islamic State or return from its ranks to commit atrocities
abroad.
"This individual was not somebody under
surveillance. He entered Turkey normally, as a refugee, as someone looking for
shelter," Davutoglu told a news conference, adding he had been identified
from fragments of his skull, face and nails.
"After the attack his connections were
unveiled. Among these links, apart from Daesh, we have the suspicion that there
could be certain powers using Daesh," he said, using an Arabic name for
Islamic State.
Turkey accuses Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,
and his allies including Iran and Russia, of cooperating with Islamic State in
the Syrian regime's effort to destroy Syrian opposition forces.
Turkey, which like Germany is a member of the
U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, has become a target
for the radical Sunni militants.
It was hit by two major bombings last year
blamed on the group, in the town of Suruc near the
Syrian border and in the capital Ankara, the latter killing more than 100
people in the worst attack of its kind on Turkish soil.
Asked if Turkey planned retaliatory air strikes
on Islamic State, Davutoglu said Ankara would act at a time and in a manner
that it saw fit. He pointed out the Turkish military had hit Islamic State
targets abroad after the Suruc and Ankara attacks.
But he said Russia's entry into the Syrian war
was a complicating factor. Turkish war planes have not flown in Syrian air
space since Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet in late November, triggering
a diplomatic row with Moscow.
"They (the Russian air force) shouldn’t
obstruct Turkey's fight against Daesh ... Right now
unfortunately there is such a barrier," Davutoglu said. "Certain
countries are in an obstructive attitude in terms of Turkey’s air bombardments.
They should either destroy Daesh themselves or allow us to do it."
TOUR GUIDE YELLED "RUN"
Asked about a report in the Turkish media that
the bomber had registered at an immigration office in Istanbul a week ago,
Interior Minister Efkan Ala earlier confirmed that
his fingerprints were on record with the authorities.
The Haberturk
newspaper published what it said was a CCTV image of the man, named in some
local media as Saudi-born Nabil Fadli, at an Istanbul
immigration office on Jan. 5. Turkish officials have said he was born in 1988.
Foreign tourists and Turks paid their respects
at the site of the attack early on Wednesday. Scarves with the Bayern Munich
soccer club emblem were left along with carnations and roses at the scene,
before Turkish police sealed off the area.
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, visiting Istanbul, said there were no indications
Germans had been deliberately targeted and that he saw no reason for people to
change travel plans to Turkey. He said Germany stood resolutely by Turkey's
side in the fight against terrorism.
"If the terrorists aimed to disturb,
destroy or jeopardize cooperation between partners, they achieved the opposite.
Germany and Turkey are becoming even closer," he said, adding there was no
link to Germany's role in the fight on terrorism.
Davutoglu praised the German group's Turkish
guide who, according to the Hurriyet newspaper,
yelled "run" after seeing the bomber standing among the tourists and
pulling a pin on his explosives, enabling some of them to get away.
Witnesses said the square was not packed at the
time of the explosion, but that several groups of tourists were there.
"I didn't finish the tour, you know, the
tour I had bought," said Jostein Nielsen, a
wounded Norwegian tourist, as he waited on a stretcher at Istanbul airport, his
left leg bandaged.
"I still have to go to the Blue Mosque and
the old Turkish Bazaar ... We have no hard feelings towards Turkey. We know
there are some mad people out there," he said.
COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK
INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF HUMAN
RIGHTS
Research
Paper: ISIS-Turkey Links
By
David L. Phillips
Introduction
Is
Turkey collaborating with the Islamic State (ISIS)? Allegations range from
military cooperation and weapons transfers to logistical support, financial
assistance, and the provision of medical services. It is also alleged that
Turkey turned a blind eye to ISIS attacks against Kobani.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu strongly deny
complicity with ISIS. Erdogan visited the Council on Foreign Relations on
September 22, 2014. He criticized "smear campaigns [and] attempts to
distort perception about us." Erdogan decried, "A systematic attack
on Turkey's international reputation, "complaining that "Turkey has
been subject to very unjust and ill-intentioned news items from media
organizations." Erdogan posited: "My request from our friends in the
United States is to make your assessment about Turkey by basing your
information on objective sources."
Columbia University's Program on Peace-building and Rights assigned a team of
researchers in the United States, Europe, and Turkey to examine Turkish and
international media, assessing the credibility of allegations. This report
draws on a variety of international sources -- The New York Times, The
Washington Post, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, BBC, Sky News, as well as
Turkish sources, CNN Turk, Hurriyet Daily News, Taraf, Cumhuriyet, and Radikal
among others.
Allegations
Turkey Provides Military Equipment to ISIS
• An ISIS commander told The Washington Post on August 12, 2014: "Most of
the fighters who joined us in the beginning of the war came via Turkey, and so
did our equipment and supplies."
• Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, head of the Republican People's
Party (CHP), produced a statement from the Adana Office of the Prosecutor on
October 14, 2014 maintaining that Turkey supplied weapons to terror groups. He
also produced interview transcripts from truck drivers who delivered weapons to
the groups. According to Kiliçdaroglu, the Turkish
government claims the trucks were for humanitarian aid to the Turkmen, but the
Turkmen said no humanitarian aid was delivered.
• According to CHP Vice President Bulent Tezcan,
three trucks were stopped in Adana for inspection on January 19, 2014. The
trucks were loaded with weapons in Esenboga Airport
in Ankara. The drivers drove the trucks to the border, where a MIT agent was
supposed to take over and drive the trucks to Syria to deliver materials to
ISIS and groups in Syria. This happened many times. When the trucks were
stopped, MIT agents tried to keep the inspectors from looking inside the
crates. The inspectors found rockets, arms, and ammunitions.
• Cumhuriyet reports that Fuat Avni, a preeminent
Twitter user who reported on the December 17th corruption probe, that audio
tapes confirm that Turkey provided financial and military aid to terrorist
groups associated with Al Qaeda on October 12, 2014. On the tapes, Erdogan
pressured the Turkish Armed Forces to go to war with Syria. Erdogan demanded
that Hakan Fidan, the head
of Turkey's National Intelligence Agency (MIT), come up with a justification
for attacking Syria.
• Hakan Fidan told Prime
Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Yasar Guler, a senior
defense official, and Feridun Sinirlioglu,
a senior foreign affairs official: "If need be,
I'll send 4 men into Syria. I'll formulate a reason to go to war by shooting 8
rockets into Turkey; I'll have them attack the Tomb of Suleiman Shah."
• Documents surfaced on September 19th, 2014 showing that the Saudi Emir Bender
Bin Sultan financed the transportation of arms to ISIS through Turkey. A flight
leaving Germany dropped off arms in the Etimesgut
airport in Turkey, which was then split into three containers, two of which
were given to ISIS and one to Gaza.
Turkey Provided Transport and Logistical Assistance to ISIS Fighters
• According to Radikal on June 13, 2014, Interior
Minister Muammar Guler signed a directive:
"According to our regional gains, we will help al-Nusra militants against
the branch of PKK terrorist organization, the PYD, within our borders...Hatay is a strategic location for the mujahideen crossing
from within our borders to Syria. Logistical support for Islamist groups will
be increased, and their training, hospital care, and safe passage will mostly
take place in Hatay...MIT and the Religious Affairs
Directorate will coordinate the placement of fighters in public
accommodations."
• The Daily Mail reported on August 25, 2014 that many foreign militants joined
ISIS in Syria and Iraq after traveling through Turkey, but Turkey did not try
to stop them. This article describes how foreign militants, especially from the
UK, go to Syria and Iraq through the Turkish border. They call the border the
"Gateway to Jihad." Turkish army soldiers either turn a blind eye and
let them pass, or the jihadists pay the border guards as little as $10 to
facilitate their crossing.
• Britain's Sky News obtained documents showing that the Turkish government has
stamped passports of foreign militants seeking to cross the Turkey border into
Syria to join ISIS.
• The BBC interviewed villagers, who claim that buses travel at night, carrying
jihadists to fight Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, not the Syrian Armed
Forces.
• A senior Egyptian official indicated on October 9, 2014 that Turkish
intelligence is passing satellite imagery and other data to ISIS.
Turkey Provided Training to ISIS Fighters
• CNN Turk reported on July 29, 2014 that in the heart of Istanbul, places like
Duzce and Adapazari, have
become gathering spots for terrorists. There are religious orders where ISIS
militants are trained. Some of these training videos are posted on the Turkish
ISIS propaganda website takvahaber.net. According to CNN Turk, Turkish security
forces could have stopped these developments if they had wanted to.
• Turks who joined an affiliate of ISIS were recorded at a public gathering in
Istanbul, which took place on July 28, 2014.
• A video shows an ISIS affiliate holding a prayer/gathering in Omerli, a district of Istanbul. In response to the video,
CHP Vice President, MP Tanrikulu submitted parliamentary
questions to the Minister of the Interior, Efkan Ala,
asking questions such as, "Is it true that a camp or camps have been
allocated to an affiliate of ISIS in Istanbul? What is this affiliate? Who is
it made up of? Is the rumor true that the same area allocated for the camp is
also used for military exercises?"
• Kemal Kiliçdaroglu warned the AKP government not to
provide money and training to terror groups on October 14, 2014. He said,
"It isn't right for armed groups to be trained on Turkish soil. You bring
foreign fighters to Turkey, put money in their pockets, guns in their hands,
and you ask them to kill Muslims in Syria. We told them to stop helping ISIS.
Ahmet Davutoglu asked us to show proof. Everyone knows that they're helping
ISIS." (See HERE and HERE.)
• According to Jordanian intelligence, Turkey trained ISIS militants for
special operations.
Turkey Offers Medical Care to ISIS Fighters
• An ISIS commander told the Washington Post on August 12, 2014, "We used
to have some fighters -- even high-level members of the Islamic State --
getting treated in Turkish hospitals."
• Taraf reported on October 12, 2014 that Dengir Mir Mehmet Fırat, a
founder of the AKP, said that Turkey supported terrorist groups and still
supports them and treats them in hospitals. "In order to weaken the
developments in Rojova (Syrian Kurdistan), the
government gave concessions and arms to extreme religious groups...the
government was helping the wounded. The Minister of Health said something such
as, it's a human obligation to care for the ISIS wounded."
• According to Taraf, Ahmet El H, one of the top
commanders at ISIS and Al Baghdadi's right hand man, was treated at a hospital
in Sanliurfa, Turkey, along with other ISIS militants. The Turkish state paid
for their treatment. According to Taraf's sources,
ISIS militants are being treated in hospitals all across southeastern Turkey.
More and more militants have been coming in to be treated since the start of
airstrikes in August. To be more specific, eight ISIS militants were
transported through the Sanliurfa border crossing; these are their names:
"Mustafa A., Yusuf El R., Mustafa H., Halil El
M., Muhammet El H., Ahmet El S., Hasan H., [and]
Salim El D."
Turkey Supports ISIS Financially Through Purchase of Oil
• On September 13, 2014, The New York Times reported on the Obama
administration's efforts to pressure Turkey to crack down on ISIS extensive
sales network for oil. James Phillips, a senior fellow at the Heritage
Foundation, argues that Turkey has not fully cracked down on ISIS's sales
network because it benefits from a lower price for oil, and that there might
even be Turks and government officials who benefit from the trade.
• Fehim Taştekin wrote
in Radikal on September 13, 2014 about illegal
pipelines transporting oil from Syria to nearby border towns in Turkey. The oil
is sold for as little as 1.25 liras per liter. Taştekin
indicated that many of these illegal pipelines were dismantled after operating
for 3 years, once his article was published.
• According to Diken and OdaTV,
David Cohen, a Justice Department official, says that there are Turkish
individuals acting as middlemen to help sell ISIS's oil through Turkey.
• On October 14, 2014, a German Parliamentarian from the Green Party accused
Turkey of allowing the transportation of arms to ISIS over its territory, as
well as the sale of oil.
Turkey Assists ISIS Recruitment
• Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu claimed on October 14, 2014
that ISIS offices in Istanbul and Gaziantep are used to recruit fighters. On
October 10, 2014, the mufti of Konya said that 100 people from Konya joined
ISIS 4 days ago. (See HERE and HERE.)
• OdaTV reports that Takva
Haber serves as a propaganda outlet for ISIS to recruit Turkish-speaking
individuals in Turkey and Germany. The address where this propaganda website is
registered corresponds to the address of a school called Irfan Koleji, which was established by Ilim
Yayma Vakfi, a foundation
that was created by Erdogan and Davutoglu, among others. It is thus claimed
that the propaganda site is operated from the school of the foundation started
by AKP members.
• Minister of Sports, Suat Kilic,
an AKP member, visited Salafi jihadists who are ISIS supporters in Germany. The
group is known for reaching out to supporters via free Quran distributions and
raising funds to sponsor suicide attacks in Syria and Iraq by raising money.
• OdaTV released a video allegedly showing ISIS
militants riding a bus in Istanbul.
Turkish Forces Are Fighting Alongside ISIS
• On October 7, 2014, IBDA-C, a militant Islamic organization in Turkey,
pledged support to ISIS. A Turkish friend who is a commander in ISIS suggests
that Turkey is "involved in all of this" and that "10,000 ISIS
members will come to Turkey." A Huda-Par member at the meeting claims that
officials criticize ISIS but in fact sympathize with the group (Huda-Par, the
"Free Cause Party", is a Kurdish Sunni fundamentalist political
party). BBP member claims that National Action Party (MHP) officials are close
to embracing ISIS. In the meeting, it is asserted that ISIS militants come to
Turkey frequently to rest, as though they are taking a break from military
service. They claim that Turkey will experience an Islamic revolution, and
Turks should be ready for jihad. (See HERE and HERE.)
• Seymour Hersh maintains in the London Review of Books that ISIS conducted
sarin attacks in Syria, and that Turkey was informed. "For months there
had been acute concern among senior military leaders and the intelligence
community about the role in the war of Syria's neighbors, especially Turkey.
Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was known to be supporting the al-Nusra Front, a
jihadist faction among the rebel opposition, as well as other Islamist rebel
groups. 'We knew there were some in the Turkish government,' a former senior US
intelligence official, who has access to current intelligence, told me, 'who
believed they could get Assad's nuts in a vice by dabbling with a sarin attack
inside Syria - and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat."
• On September 20, 2014, Demir Celik, a Member of
Parliament with the people's democratic party (HDP) claimed that Turkish
Special Forces fight with ISIS.
Turkey Helped ISIS in Battle for Kobani
• Anwar Moslem, Mayor of Kobani, said on September
19, 2014: "Based on the intelligence we got two days before the breakout
of the current war, trains full of forces and ammunition, which were passing by
north of Kobane, had an-hour-and-ten-to-twenty-minute-long stops in these
villages: Salib Qaran, Gire Sor, Moshrefat Ezzo. There are evidences, witnesses, and videos about
this. Why is ISIS strong only in Kobane's east? Why is it not strong either in
its south or west? Since these trains stopped in villages located in the east
of Kobane, we guess they had brought ammunition and additional force for the
ISIS." In the second article on September 30, 2014, a CHP delegation
visited Kobani, where locals claimed that everything
from the clothes ISIS militants wear to their guns comes from Turkey.
• Released by Nuhaber, a video shows Turkish military
convoys carrying tanks and ammunition moving freely under ISIS flags in the Cerablus region and Karkamis
border crossing (September 25, 2014). There are writings in Turkish on the
trucks.
• Salih Muslim, PYD head, claims that 120 militants crossed into Syria from
Turkey between October 20th and 24th, 2014.
• According to an op-ed written by a YPG commander in The New York Times on
October 29, 2014, Turkey allows ISIS militants and their equipment to pass
freely over the border.
• Diken reported, "ISIS fighters crossed the
border from Turkey into Syria, over the Turkish train tracks that delineate the
border, in full view of Turkish soldiers. They were met there by PYD fighters
and stopped."
• A Kurdish commander in Kobani claims that ISIS militants
have Turkish entry stamps on their passports.
• Kurds trying to join the battle in Kobani are
turned away by Turkish police at the Turkey-Syrian border.
• OdaTV released a photograph of a Turkish soldier
befriending ISIS militants.
Turkey and ISIS Share a Worldview
• RT reports on Vice President Joe Biden's remarks detailing Turkish support to
ISIS.
• According to the Hurriyet Daily News on September
26, 2014, "The feelings of the AKP's heavyweights are not limited to
Ankara. I was shocked to hear words of admiration for ISIL from some high-level
civil servants even in Şanliurfa. 'They are like
us, fighting against seven great powers in the War of Independence,' one
said." "Rather than the [Kurdistan Workers' Party] PKK on the other
side, I would rather have ISIL as a neighbor," said another."
• Cengiz Candar, a well-respected Turkish journalist,
maintained that MIT helped "midwife" the Islamic state in Iraq and
Syria, as well as other Jihadi groups.
• An AKP council member posted on his Facebook page: "Thankfully ISIS
exists... May you never run out of ammunition..."
• A Turkish Social Security Institution supervisor uses the ISIS logo in
internal correspondences.
• Bilal Erdogan and Turkish officials meet alleged ISIS fighters.
Mr. Phillips is Director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at
Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights. He served as a
Senior Adviser and Foreign Affairs Expert for the U.S. Department of State.
Senior Western official: Links between Turkey
and ISIS are now 'undeniable'
By Natasha Bertrand
July 28, 2015
(REUTERS/Umit Bektas) An
ISIS fighter walks near a black flag belonging to the Islamic State as a
Turkish army vehicle takes position near the Syrian town of Kobani,
as pictured from the Turkish-Syrian border near the southeastern town of Suruc, Sanliurfa province, October 7, 2014.
A US-led raid on the compound housing the Islamic State's "chief financial
officer" produced evidence that Turkish officials directly dealt with
ranking ISIS members, Martin Chulov of the Guardian
reported recently.
The officer killed in the raid, Islamic State official Abu Sayyaf, was
responsible for directing the terror army's oil and gas operations in Syria.
The Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh) earns up to $10 million a month
selling oil on black markets.
Documents and flash drives seized during the
Sayyaf raid reportedly revealed links "so clear" and
"undeniable" between Turkey and ISIS "that they could end up
having profound policy implications for the relationship between us and
Ankara," senior Western official familiar with the captured intelligence
told the Guardian.
NATO member Turkey has long been accused by
experts, Kurds, and even Joe Biden of enabling ISIS by turning a blind eye to
the vast smuggling networks of weapons and fighters during the ongoing Syrian
war.
The move by the ruling AKP party was apparently
part of ongoing attempts to trigger the downfall of Syrian President Bashar
Assad's regime.
Ankara officially ended its loose border policy
last year, but not before its southern frontier became a transit point for
cheap oil, weapons, foreign fighters, and pillaged antiquities.
In November, a former ISIS member told Newsweek
that the group was essentially given free rein by Turkey's army.
"ISIS commanders told us to fear nothing
at all because there was full cooperation with the Turks," the fighter
said. "ISIS saw the Turkish army as its ally especially when it came to
attacking the Kurds in Syria."
But as the alleged arrangements progressed,
Turkey allowed the group to establish a major presence within the country — and
created a huge problem for itself.
"The longer this has persisted, the more
difficult it has become for the Turks to crack down [on ISIS] because there is
the risk of a counter strike, of blowback," Jonathan Schanzer,
a former counterterrorism analyst for the US Treasury Department, explained to
Business Insider in November.
"You have a lot of people now that are
invested in the business of extremism in Turkey," Schanzer
added. "If you start to challenge that, it raises significant questions of
whether" the militants, their benefactors, and other war profiteers would
tolerate the crackdown."
A Western diplomat, speaking to The Wall Street
Journal in February, expressed a similar sentiment: "Turkey is trapped now
— it created a monster and doesn’t know how to deal with it."
Ankara had begun to address the problem in
earnest — arresting 500 suspected extremists over the past six months as they
crossed the border and raiding the homes of others — when an ISIS-affiliated
suicide bomber killed 32 activists in Turkey's southeast on July 20.
Turks subsequently took to the streets to
protest the government policies they felt had enabled the attack.
Amidst protesters' chants of "Murderous
ISIL, collaborator AKP," Erdogan finally agreed last Thursday to enter the
US-led campaign against ISIS, sending fighter jets into Syria and granting the
US strategic use of a key airbase in the southeast to launch airstrikes.
At the same time, Turkey began bombing Kurdish PKK shelters and storage
facilities in northern Iraq, the AP reported, indicating that the AKP still
sees Kurdish advances as a major — if not the biggest — threat, despite the
Kurds' battlefield successes against ISIS in northern Syria.
“This isn’t an overhaul of their
thinking," a Western official in Ankara told the Guardian. "It’s more
a reaction to what they’ve been confronted with by the Americans and others.
There is at least a recognition now that ISIS isn’t leverage against Assad.
They have to be dealt with.”
President Erdoğan
joins Quran defamation case as plaintiff
Hürriyet Daily News, June 17,
2015
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become involved as a plaintiff in a case
filed against a woman who allegedly “insulted the Quran” by posting a photo on
Twitter showing her foot standing on the Muslim holy book.
The defendant faces up to four years in prison.
With Erdoğan’s involvement in the case there are
now 22 plaintiffs, including Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek and former minister Egemen
Bağış, who was one of the most
prominent names embroiled in Turkey’s huge corruption probe launched in late
2013.
The woman did not attend the first court hearing in the case, which was held in
Istanbul’s 58th Criminal Court of First Instance on June 17.
The indictment against the woman, prepared by the Istanbul Public Prosecutor’s
Office, carried a penalty of up to four years in prison on charges of
“incitement to hatred and enmity.”
President Erdoğan’s attorney, Ferah Yıldız, said the
charge against the woman was clear and they demanded that she be punished.
“My client [Erdoğan] has been harmed by the
crime,” Yıldız added.
The attorneys of other plaintiffs, including Bağış
and Gökçek, also said their clients had been harmed
by the crime.
The indictment said the defendant was required to serve from 1.5 to 4 years in
prison for “inciting society to hatred and enmity by insulting Islam, the Quran
and the Prophet Muhammad.”
The woman, who is being tried without arrest, will be brought to court by force
for the next hearing due to her absence in the first hearing.
Turkey journalists face 4.5 years jail over
Charlie Hebdo cartoon
08
April 2015
ISTANBUL (AFP) –
Turkish prosecutors on Wednesday called for two prominent journalists who
featured Charlie Hebdo's cover with the image of the Prophet Mohammed in their
columns to be jailed for four and a half years.
Istanbul's chief public prosecutor has charged Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Cetinkaya
with "inciting public hatred" and "insulting religious
values" by illustrating their columns with the cartoon, the Hurriyet daily reported.
The cartoon was a smaller version of the controversial front cover depicting
the Prophet Mohammed that French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo printed in its
first edition after the attack on its offices by Islamist gunmen in January
that killed 12 people.
The cartoon angered Muslims all over the world and most media in overwhelmingly
Muslim Turkey refrained from publishing it.
Turkish daily Cumhuriyet on January 14 had published a four-page Charlie Hebdo
pull-out translated into Turkish marking the French satirical weekly's first
issue since the attack.
The edition did not include the controversial front cover of the Prophet
Mohammed but a smaller version of the cartoon was included twice inside the
newspaper to illustrate columns on the subject by Karan and Cetinkaya.
Prosecutors had announced the day after the publication of the issue that they
had opened an investigation into the two columnists.
The case, based on a 38-page indictment and complaints by 1,280 individuals,
has now been submitted to the criminal court ahead of trial, Hurriyet said.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had condemned the publication of
cartoons of the Muslim prophet as an "open provocation", warning that
Turkey would not tolerate insults against Mohammed.
There has been growing concern about the numbers of journalists currently
facing legal proceedings in Turkey, many on accusations of insulting President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The Cumhuriyet daily, which sees itself as the voice of secular Turkey, is a
vehement opponent of the Islamic-rooted authorities under Erdogan.
Women are not equal to men, Turkish president
declares
The
Associated Press
Published Monday, November 24, 2014 9:19AM EST
ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan set off a new
controversy on Monday, declaring that women are not equal to men and accusing
feminists of not understanding the special status that Islam attributes to
mothers.
Addressing a meeting in Istanbul on women and justice, Erdogan said men and
women are created differently, that women cannot be expected to undertake the
same work as men, and that mothers enjoy a high position that only they can
reach.
"You cannot put women and men on an equal footing," Erdogan said.
"It is against nature. They were created differently. Their nature is
different. Their constitution is different."
Erdogan added: "Motherhood is the highest position ... You cannot explain
this to feminists. They don't accept motherhood. They have no such
concern."
Lawyer and women's rights activist Hulya Gulbahar
said Erdogan's comments were in violation of Turkey's constitution, Turkish
laws and international conventions on gender equality and didn't help efforts
to stem high incidences of violence against women in Turkey.
"Such comments by state officials which disregard equality between men and
women play an important role in the rise of violence against women,"
Gulbahar said. "Such comments aim to make women's presence in public life
-- from politics to arts, from science to sports -- debatable."
Erdogan, a devout Muslim, often courts controversy with divisive public
comments. He has previously angered women's groups by stating that women should
bear at least three children and by attempting to outlaw abortion and adultery.
He raised eyebrows this month by declaring that Muslims had discovered the
Americas before Christopher Columbus.
Christians in Danger
July
8, 2010
National Review Online
Bishop Luigi Padovese, stabbed to death last month,
is the latest victim of Turkey’s growing hostility to Christians.
For all the attention Turkey has gotten lately, very few Americans are aware
that the Roman Catholic bishop serving as apostolic vicar of Anatolia was
stabbed to death and decapitated last month by an assailant shouting, “Allahu
Akbar! I have killed the great Satan!”
There are fewer than 60 Catholic priests in all of Turkey, and yet Bishop Luigi
Padovese was the fifth of them to be shot or stabbed
in the last four years, starting with the murder of Fr. Andrea Santoro in 2006,
also by an assailant shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” (An Armenian journalist and
three Protestants working at a Christian publishing house — one of them German,
the other two Turkish converts — were also killed during this period.)
What’s going on? Why has traditionally secularist Turkey, with its minuscule
Christian community (less than 0.2 percent of the population), lately become
nearly as dangerous for Christians as neighboring Iraq? And why has this
disturbing pattern of events so far escaped notice in the West?
In a nutshell, all these violent acts reflect a popular culture increasingly
shaped by Turkish media accounts deliberately promoting hatred of Christians
and Jews.
As it happens, Bishop Padovese was murdered on the
same day (June 3) that the Wall Street Journal published an eye-opening report
on how Turkey’s press and film industry have increasingly blurred the
distinction between fact and fantasy, especially since the Islamist Justice and
Development Party (AKP) took power in 2002.
“To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national
decline into madness.” That’s how Robert L. Pollock, editorial-features editor
of the Journal, summed up the trajectory of the daily fare that shapes Turks’
attitudes toward the outside world — and toward non-Muslims in their midst.
Indeed, much of what passes for fact in Turkish public discourse would be
comical if not for the deadly consequences.
Take, for instance, the wildly popular 2006 film Valley of the Wolves, later
serialized for television. An earlier Journal piece summing up the plot as “a
cross between American Psycho in uniform and the Protocols of the Elders of
Zion” hardly does it justice. The plot turns on
blood-crazed American soldiers committing war crimes for fun and profit in
Iraq. These include the harvesting of body parts from murdered Iraqi civilians
on an industrial scale (overseen by a Jewish doctor, of course) for shipment in
crates clearly labeled New York and Tel Aviv.
Valley of the Wolves is the most expensive and most commercially successful
Turkish feature film ever. Worse yet, it comes with the endorsement of leading
AKP figures, such as the speaker of the parliament (“absolutely magnificent”)
and the mayor of Istanbul (“a great screenplay”). Mr. Pollock’s judgment? “It
is no exaggeration to say that such anti-Semitic fare had not been played to
mass audiences in Europe since the Third Reich.”
Unfortunately, this film — with its poisonous blood libel against Christians
and Jews — falls well within what is now mainstream Turkish public discourse.
Consider only some of the wilder rumors given credence by the Turkish press —
for example, how the United States intends to colonize the Middle East because
of an impending asteroid strike on North America, or how the 2004 Asian tsunami
was really caused by secret U.S. nuclear testing. The latter claim was so
prevalent in the Turkish media that the U.S. ambassador at the time, Eric
Edelman, actually organized a conference call with Turkish journalists to
refute the calumny.
This is the overall context in which incendiary published accusations are made
that Catholic priests, sometimes identified by name, are engaging in
proselytism — that is, seeking to convert Muslims, often with cash payments. I
happen to know just how implausible these claims are, based on my own
experience as a Catholic seminarian living and working in the Middle East a
decade ago. I found that pastors of the historic Middle Eastern churches almost
always go out of their way to discourage prospective converts, rightly fearing
agents provocateurs from the security services or Islamist groups. In the rare
case where a conversion does occur, the person is generally baptized outside
his home country, in a place where apostasy is not criminalized or barred by
powerful social norms, such as preservation of family honor.
What local Christian clergy actually do is to tend shrinking flocks without
seeking to add to their numbers. (These little congregations increasingly
include migrants like the Filipina nurses and domestic workers who are
ubiquitous throughout the Middle East.) Some also provide public goods such as
education and health care for Muslims and Christians alike on a non-sectarian
basis. Others serve the pastoral needs of pilgrims visiting places (like
Turkey) where Christianity once flourished. Nearly all see themselves as silent
witnesses for Gospel values in places where prudence now bars the Gospel’s open
proclamation.
There are vanishingly few Christians and Jews in Turkey. So
the numbers of non-Muslims in the country cannot begin to explain the mounting
popular hostility — not simply toward Americans, Europeans, and Israelis, but
toward Christians and Jews as such. Turkey’s population (roughly 77 million) is
more than 99.8 percent Muslim, with its tiny Jewish and Christian populations (perhaps
25,000 and 150,000, respectively) looking like a rounding error. Yet more than
two-thirds of all Turks (68 percent) expressed a negative view of Christians in
the 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, as opposed to the results in nearby
Muslim-majority states with much larger Christian minorities, like Jordan (44
percent negative) and Egypt (49 percent). Hostility toward Jews, moreover, has
spiked recently, with those self-identified as “very unfavorable” jumping from
32 percent in 2004 to 73 percent in 2009.
The short answer to the question why Christians keep
getting attacked in Turkey is that ideas have consequences, with bad ones often
leading to deadly consequences. In the current issue of Commentary, Michael
Rubin offers a masterly step-by-step analysis of the way in which Turkey’s
current Islamist rulers have systematically undermined and dismantled Atatürk’s
secular legacy and have put in place an embryonic Islamist state. Ideas once
expressed on the fringes of Turkish society have now become mainstream and
respectable.
It is precisely this darkening climate of public opinion that provides the
essential context for the spate of attacks against Catholic priests. Here it’s
worth noting that, historically, Catholics were not regarded as enemies of modern
Turkey in the way that Greeks and Armenians were. The Holy See was one of the
first states to exchange ambassadors with the newly formed Turkish Republic in
1923; and one of its first ambassadors (from 1933 to 1944), still fondly
remembered, was Angelo Roncalli, better known today as Blessed John XXIII.
So too is it a fact that Catholic clergy serving in trouble spots like Turkey
have sometimes (though not always) enjoyed a certain immunity from violence or
arbitrary arrest. That’s because the Vatican is widely perceived as a powerful
entity that can command diplomatic and media attention (especially as compared
to Christian evangelicals, who lack similar institutional support). That
several Catholic priests have now been attacked in Turkey is a troubling new
development that may reflect political Islam’s implacable hostility toward Pope
Benedict XVI. Recall that what angered Islamists most about Benedict’s 2006
Regensburg lecture was not an injudicious quotation from a 14th-century
Byzantine emperor. It was Benedict’s observation that while reason without
faith leads to nihilism (Europe’s problem), faith without reason leads to
fanaticism and violence (Islam’s problem).
But it’s also a fact that the killing of Catholic clerics in Muslim-majority
states tends nowadays in the West to be passed over in silence or treated as
business as usual. Imagine for a moment what would happen if — God forbid! — a
very senior, foreign-born Muslim cleric were murdered in the U.S. in
circumstances amounting to a hate crime. It is not difficult to imagine the
likely aftermath: wall-to-wall media coverage, repeated international
condemnations, and multiple presidential apologies.
In the case of Bishop Padovese, one close observer
makes explicit the connection between pervasive media vilification and violence
against Catholic clergy. Fr. Bernardo Cervellera,
whose Asia News broke the story of the true facts surrounding the bishop’s
murder, maintains that “there’s a campaign against Christian priests in Turkey.
The government says it’s not true, the Turks say they don’t believe it, but
it’s quite enough to watch television or read the newspapers to realize that
indeed it is true.”
These facts — and their necessary implications — are a long way from the
Islam-is-a-religion-of-peace happy talk peddled by both the Bush and Obama
administrations. Little wonder that there’s practically no understanding in the
U.S. that Turkey’s beleaguered religious minorities — and their co-religionists
elsewhere in the region — serve as canaries in the coal mine, bellwethers for
major policy shifts that our foreign-policy establishment is slow to grasp. Or
indeed that the plight of these minorities mirrors, at
least roughly, the state of U.S. interests and ideals in the region.
It wasn’t always the case that Americans paid no attention to the plight of
Middle Eastern Christians. In the wake of World War I, the New York Times could
safely assume a lively interest (and some Biblical literacy) among readers when
editorializing in 1922 about the mass expulsion of ethnic Greek Christians from
the new Turkish state: “Is this to be the end of the Christian minorities in
Asia Minor — that land where, 13 centuries and more before the Turk came to
rule, Paul had journeyed as a missionary through its length and breadth, and
where the first ‘seven churches that are in Asia’ stood, to which the messages
written in the Book of Revelation were sent?”
But that was then; and this is now.
—John F. Cullinan, a regular NRO contributor, writes frequently on international
religious freedom and Middle Eastern Christianity.
Twelve officers charged over Turkey coup plot
By Daren Butler
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Twelve senior Turkish
military officers were charged on Wednesday over an alleged plot to topple a
government that secularist hardliners fear is pursuing a hidden Islamist
agenda.
Turkey's top military commanders, who have seen
the army's role as ultimate guardian of secularism eroded under European
Union-backed reforms, held an emergency meeting late on Tuesday and warned in a
statement of a "serious situation."
With tensions hitting investors' confidence and
feeding speculation that elections due next year could be brought forward,
Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul will meet Turkey's top
military commander on Thursday, a government source said.
Turkish stocks closed down 3.4 percent and the
lira weakened to a seven-month low against the dollar, while bond yields rose.
Adding to uncertainty, Turkey's chief
prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya said he was looking
into statements made by deputies from the ruling AK Party, but had not reached
the stage of opening a formal investigation against the party.
Yalcinkaya tried to have the
party banned for anti-secular activities in 2008. Speculation that he could try
again has prompted talk that the government could call a snap election.
The AK Party, first elected in 2002 in a
landslide victory over older, established parties blighted by corruption and
accusations of misrule, is also embroiled in a dispute with the judiciary --
another pillar of the orthodox establishment.
BAD MEMORIES
The military has ousted four governments of
various political hues since 1960, although the army says the days of coups are
now over.
While the chances of another coup are seen as
remote, anxiety is growing over what the generals might do next and what
strains the situation might put on the armed forces' leadership.
Turkey's NATO allies, particularly the United
States, want the overwhelmingly Muslim nation to mature as a democracy.
Its prospects of entering the EU depend partly
on ending the special status that made the arrest of military personnel, still
less a former force commander, by civilian authorities inconceivable until
recently.
Tensions were triggered by an unprecedented
police swoop on Monday that detained around 50 serving and retired officers.
A court late on Wednesday ordered five
officers, four of them retired and including former Rear Admiral Feyyaz Ogutcu, to be sent to jail
pending trial. Another two were released.
The most senior detainees, retired Air Force
Commander Ibrahim Firtina and ex-navy chief Ozden Ornek, are being held at
police headquarters in Istanbul and are expected to be brought to the court for
questioning on Thursday.
The other seven officers charged in the early
hours of Wednesday consisted of four admirals, two retired and two serving, a
retired brigadier-general and two retired colonels.
Pending a formal indictment, the detainees are
accused of belonging to a terrorist group and of attempting to overthrow the
government by force.
Six officers were released from custody on
Tuesday after questioning. It was unclear if they would face charges.
LOW MORALE
The army leadership has said previously that
probes into a series of alleged coup plots is hurting morale in the ranks.
In a characteristically veiled and brief
statement on its web site on Tuesday, the General Staff said its top commanders
had met to "assess the serious situation that has arisen."
"What do you mean? Are you going to carry
out a coup?" said a headline in Taraf, a
low-circulation newspaper that has broken several stories of alleged coup
plots.
The current investigation into the so-called
"Sledgehammer" plan, allegedly drawn up in 2003, was triggered by a
report in Taraf last month. The military has said the
plan was just a scenario drawn up for an army seminar.
Retired military officers are among around 200
people indicted over separate plots by a far-right group known as Ergenekon.
Critics say that trial is being used to target political opponents, an
accusation the government rejects.
Blood feuds and gun violence plague Turkey's
southeast
May 5,
2009
By Daren Butler – Analysis
BILGE, Turkey (Reuters) - "I wish fire upon the houses of those who set
the fire in my house," said 75-year-old Sultan Celebi.
"They ruined us all. I want for them the biggest punishment that is
possible."
Celebi's words, uttered after an armed attack on a
village wedding robbed her of four children, three daughters-in-law and one
grandchild, amply illustrated the depth and bitterness of bloodfeuds,
clan rivalries and vendettas in largely Kurdish southeastern Turkey; an
unending cycle of violence and revenge.
Forty-four people were killed on Monday in one of the worst attacks involving
civilians in Turkey's modern history. The massacre, perpetrated by masked men
with automatic rifles and hand grenades, must put pressure on Ankara to address
the root-causes of instability in the region, long a hindrance to Turkey's
European Union membership quest.
The mass killing was, according to local residents, the culmination of a long
family feud.
Sixteen women, including the bride, and six children were killed in Monday's
attack in Bilge, a village of a few hundred people in the Turkey's conservative
heartland.
While the scale of Monday's killing has shocked this Muslim country of 70
million, experts say dozens are killed in rural Turkey every year in
"blood for blood" vendettas passed from generations over land
disputes, grazing rights or matters of family honour.
Experts say the problem, which is more acute in the Kurdish southeast, is
aggravated by unequal land distribution, power struggles in a feudal-style clan
system and a decision by the government to set up well-armed village militias
against Kurdish rebels.
"The modern...republic (of Turkey) was supposed to create a nation of
citizens, but it has betrayed its ideals in the southeast," said Dogu Ergil, an academic and
expert on Kurds.
"This is a combination of tribalism, love for guns and tradition gone
awfully wrong," Ergil told Reuters.
Local residents said the feud within the extended Celebi
family in Bilge dated back to a land conflict in the mid-1990s.
The attack, which witnesses said was carried out by several gunmen, came after
the father decided to marry off his daughter to a man in the nearby city of
Diyarbakir, passing over a groom from one part of the quarrelling Celebi family.
REFORM PRESSURE
There are some 60,000 state-sponsored village guards throughout Turkey's
southeast, who fight alongside state security forces against Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK) rebels. Critics say the region is awash with guns.
Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based analyst, said village guards have used their
weapons many times to settle blood feuds.
Human rights groups have long called on the government to disband the village
guards, whom they say are an unaccountable force; but disbanding them is not
that easy.
"There are entire villages in the southeast where being a village guard is
the only way of subsistence. The economy of entire villages is dependent on
these forces so it's a serious social-economic problem as well," Jenkins
said.
Critics say the state encouraged tribal loyalties by creating a system of state
patronage to counter the rising influence of the separatist PKK guerrillas in
the 1980s.
"The government committed the grave mistake of creating peace and order by
setting up a system of local notables and giving them weapons," Ergil said.
The massacre in Bilge, and the culture that lay at its roots, will likely add
grist to the mill to those in Europe who say Turkey is too poor and too
backward to join the bloc.
The government has said it has improved the rights of women, especially in the
conservative southeast, where honour killings are
common, but Brussels wants more to be done.
"We are feeling a great sorrow as a nation. Such a primitive cruelty that
opened deep cuts in our conscience is inexplicable," President Abdullah
Gul said in a statement.
"Everybody should think seriously about tradition, blood feuds and
animosity standing before human life in this era we are living in. Individual
and institutional efforts should be made not to allow this kind of incident to
happen again."
On Tuesday, bulldozers were busy in Bilge digging out graves to bury the dead
as women wailed nearby in the rain.
"This village is cursed," a 19-year man said." (Additional
reporting by Thomas Grove and Paul de Bendern;
Writing by Ibon Villelabeitia;
Editing by Ralph Boulton)
Turkey's Turn From
the West
By Soner Cagaptay
The Washington Post
Monday, February 2, 2009
Turkey is a special Muslim country.
Of the more than 50 majority-Muslim nations, it is the only one that is a NATO
ally, is in accession talks with the European Union, is a liberal democracy and
has normal relations with Israel. Under its current government by the Justice
and Development Party (AKP), however, Turkey is losing these special qualities.
Liberal political trends are disappearing, E.U. accession talks have stalled,
ties with anti-Western states such as Iran are improving and relations with
Israel are deteriorating. On Thursday, for example, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan walked out of a panel at Davos, Switzerland, after chiding Israeli
President Shimon Peres for "killing people." If Turkey fails in these
areas or wavers in its commitment to transatlantic structures such as NATO, it
cannot expect to be President Obama's favorite Muslim country.
Consider the domestic situation in
Turkey and its effect on relations with the European Union. Although Turkey
started accession talks, that train has come to a halt. French objections to
Turkish membership slowed the process, but the impact of the AKP's slide from
liberal values cannot be ignored. After six years of AKP rule, the people of
Turkey are less free and less equal, as various news and other reports on media
freedom and gender equality show. In April 2007, for instance, the AKP passed
an Internet law that has led to a ban on YouTube, making Turkey the only
European country to shut down access to the popular site. On the U.N.
Development Program's gender-empowerment index, Turkey has slipped to 90th from
63rd in 2002, the year the AKP came to power, putting it behind even Saudi
Arabia. It is difficult to take seriously the AKP's claim to be a liberal party
when Saudi women are considered more politically, economically and socially
empowered than Turkish women.
Then there is foreign policy. Take
Turkey's status as a NATO ally of the United States: Ankara's rapprochement
with Tehran has gone so far since 2002 that it is doubtful whether Turkey would
side with the United States in dealing with the issue of a nuclear Iran. In
December, Erdogan told a Washington crowd that "countries that oppose
Iran's nuclear weapons should themselves not have nuclear weapons."
The AKP's commitment to U.S. positions
is even weaker on other issues, including Hamas. During the recent Israeli
operations in Gaza, Erdogan questioned the validity of Israel's U.N. seat while
saying that he wants to represent Hamas on international platforms. Three days
before moderate Arab allies of Washington, including Egypt, Jordan and Saudi
Arabia, gathered on Jan. 19 in Kuwait to discuss an end to the Gaza conflict,
Erdogan's officials met with Iran, Syria and Sudan in Qatar, effectively
upstaging the moderates. Amazingly, Turkey is now taking a harder line on the
Arab-Israeli conflict than even Saudi Arabia.
For years, Turkey has had normal
relations with Israel, including strong military, tourist, and cultural and
commercial ties. The Turks did not emphasize religion or ideology in their
relationship with the Jewish state, so Israelis felt comfortable visiting,
doing business and vacationing in Turkey. But Erdogan's recent anti-Israeli
statements -- he even suggested that God would punish Israel -- have made
normal relations a thing of the past. On Jan. 4, 200,000 Turks turned out in
freezing rain in Istanbul to wish death to Israel; on Jan. 7, an Israeli girls'
volleyball team was attacked by a Turkish audience chanting, "Muslim
policemen, bring us the Jews, so we can slaughter them."
Emerging anti-Semitism also
challenges Turkey's special status. Anti-Semitism is not hard-wired into
Turkish society -- rather its seeds are being spread by the political
leadership. Erdogan has pumped up such sentiments by suggesting Jewish culpability
for the conflict in Gaza and alleging that Jewish-controlled media outlets were
misrepresenting the facts. Moreover, on Jan. 6, while demanding remorse for
Israel's Gaza operations, Erdogan said to Turkish Jews, "Did we not accept
you in the Ottoman Empire?" Turkey's tiny, well-integrated Jewish
community is being threatened: Jewish businesses are being boycotted, and
instances of violence have been reported. These are shameful developments in a
land that has provided a home for Jews since 1492, when the Ottomans opened
their arms to Jewish people fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. The Ottoman
sultans must be spinning in their graves.
The erosion of Turkey's liberalism
under the AKP is alienating Turkey from the West. If Turkish foreign policy is
based on solidarity with Islamist regimes or causes, Ankara cannot hope to be
considered a serious NATO ally. Likewise, if the AKP discriminates against
women, forgoes normal relations with Israel, curbs media freedoms or loses
interest in joining Europe, it will hardly endear itself to the United States.
And if Erdogan's AKP keeps serving a menu of illiberalism at home and religion
in foreign policy, Turkey will no longer be special -- and that would be
unfortunate.
Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for
Near East Policy, is the author of "Islam Secularism and Nationalism in
Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk?"
Bombing kills 5 in Turkish resort town
Two foreigners among dead; new attack
raises alarm in nation's tourism industry.
The Associated Press
Sunday, July 17, 2005
ANKARA, TURKEY – A bomb tore apart a minibus in a popular Aegean
beach resort town Saturday, killing at least five people, including two
foreigners, in the second explosion in a week aimed at Turkey's vital tourism
industry.
The blast in the coastal city of Kusadasi,
a favorite destination for British, Irish and German tourists, reduced the bus
to a scorched, twisted heap of metal.
A man's charred body was shown in news photos
draped over the remains of a seat and an injured woman lay on the road, just a
few yards from the beach. Civilians rushed to the bus after the attack and
carried the injured away from the burning wreckage.
Police boosted security in the town, searching cars
as they entered and patrolling the town's center with dogs.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack. Kurdish
rebels have carried out bombings in Aegean resort towns but a Kurdish rebel
commander, Zubeyir Aydar,
condemned Saturday's explosion in a statement to the Germany-based Mesopotamian
News Agency, which often carries rebel statements. The statement could not be
verified.
Leftist and Islamic militants also are active in the
country, a member of NATO and one of Washington's most important Muslim allies.
Police initially said a female suicide bomber carried
out the attack after a woman's torso was found torn apart on the bus,
indicating she had been carrying the bomb. But authorities later said
explosives had been planted on the bus and more evidence was pointing toward a
bombing rather than a suicide attack.
One British citizen was killed and five were wounded,
the British Foreign Office said, another blow to Britain after the July 7 bus
and subway bombings in London that killed more than 50 people.
Separately, a regional governor said an Irish tourist
and two Turks were also killed in the blast in Kusadasi,
45 miles south of the port city of Izmir. A fifth person killed has not been
identified.
The attack - the second to hit a
resort town in under a week - caused alarm in Turkey's lucrative tourist
industry, which had expected to welcome more than 20 million visitors this year
and take in some $19.5 billion, a 50 percent increase over revenues in 2004.
European mission unearths torture
claims in Turkey
· Reports follow launch of EU membership talks
· Ankara dismisses findings
as 'silly stories'
Helena Smith in Athens
Monday October 10, 2005
A European parliament delegation
visiting Turkey to check on its progress in human rights has found
"shocking" reports of murders and mutilations, a British MEP said
yesterday. The findings, which come a week after Brussels launched membership
talks with Turkey, highlight the scale of progress the predominantly Muslim
country needs to make in its quest to join the European Union.
Richard Howitt, part of the mission
by the parliament's seven-member human rights subcommittee, told the Guardian:
"What we heard was shocking. There were accounts of soldiers cutting off
people's ears and tearing out their eyes if they were thought to be Kurdish separatist
sympathisers ... You can't hear these things without
being emotionally affected."
The MEP, Labour's
European foreign affairs spokesman and a champion of Turkey's EU accession,
said the abuses had been corroborated by human rights organisations.
A trip by the group to Turkey's Kurdish-dominated south-east had also confirmed
allegations that security forces were reverting to tactics from "the bad
old days", although statistics showed that instances of torture had fallen
by around 13% since last year. Indiscriminate shootings, widespread
extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and instances of masked men raiding
homes in the night were reported to have made a comeback.
"Our sources were very
credible and the evidence was corroborated by all the different groups we spoke
to," said the MEP. "They left me in no doubt of the veracity of the
claims."
But Turkey's foreign ministry
spokesman, Namik Tan, called the claims "silly
stories". "They are purely fictitious. They have nothing to do with
the truth. You won't find anyone who is credible in Turkey saying such
things."
Mr Howitt
said that in September alone 95 people had been arbitrarily arrested in Van, a
town near Iran. Among them was Yusuf Hasar, a
19-year-old suspected Kurdish rebel sympathiser whose
body was found last week after being arrested by police the previous day. The
violations have coincided with an upsurge of violence in Turkey's troubled
south-east. Armed clashes have intensified since rebels lifted a unilateral
ceasefire in June last year.
The delegation, whose findings will
form the basis of a report that will feed into Turkey's membership
negotiations, was equally appalled by reports of violence against women and
allegations of body organs being removed by security forces. Mazumber, a group representing the relatives of torture
victims, told the MEPs that vital organs were routinely removed from the bodies
of ethnic Kurds, presumably as part of the illicit trade in people trafficking.
Mr Howitt
said it was essential the abuses be confronted before Ankara got into the
nitty-gritty of the talks.
Since assuming power in 2002,
Ankara's modernising Islamist government has won plaudits
for overhauling the penal code, abolishing the death penalty, dismantling
once-dreaded state security prisons and increasing cultural rights for ethnic
minorities. But Turkish human rights defenders still speak of a pervasive
"culture of violence" in the country's police, security and judicial
forces.
EU to highlight Turkish torture issue
01.11.2005
By Andrew Rettman
Turkey must stop torture, allow freedom of
worship and limit the powers of the military in the next two years if it is to
join the EU by 2015, according to a draft European Commission proposal seen by
the Financial Times.
The paper on "principles, priorities and conditions" of Turkish EU
membership contains 150 short-term targets for Ankara and will be finalised later this month.
The draft says Ankara must have "zero tolerance" against torture,
must "adopt a law comprehensively addressing all the difficulties faced by
non-Muslim religious minorities and communities ...establish full parliamentary
oversight of military and defence policy" and
"ensure the independence of the judiciary".
The new document will be used to guide negotiations once they get fully under
way in late 2006 or in 2007.
The EU has already begun screening Turkish legislation for compliance with
European law in the field of science, culture and education after agreeing to
start accession talks on 3 October.
The negotiating mandate is one of the toughest ever imposed on a candidate
country, giving member states wide scope to use national vetos
in closing any of the 35 chapters of the membership process.
The mandate also states the EU can suspend talks if it finds "a serious
and persistent breach...of the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for
human rights and fundamental freedoms and the rule of law".
Cultural revolution
The issue of European values is set to come to
the fore in the accession process due to its strong impact on public opinion in
both Europe and Turkey.
Earlier this month, French president Jacques Chirac caused a stir by saying the
country will have to undergo a "major cultural revolution" in order
to join the EU.
Reports indicate that public support for EU membership is waning in Turkey
itself, while a Eurobarometer study in September showed that just 35 percent of
Europeans back Turkish accession and 84 percent believe Turkey must
"respect systematically human rights" to move ahead.
Turkey adopted a new penal code abolishing the death penalty in June this year
and has been a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights since 1954.
But international human rights organisations continue
to ask painful questions about the country's European credentials.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg upheld a ruling in May that
the Kurdish minority leader Abdullah Ocalan was denied a free trial.
Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders are also worried about
article 301 of the new penal code, which forbids insults against the
"symbols of the state's sovereignty and the honour
of its organs" and could be used to gag the press.
The trial in December of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk over his open discussion
of Turkey's Kurdish and Armenian massacres last century will thrust the
European values debate into the spotlight as well.
BERLIN -- The European Union official overseeing
Turkey's admission to the 25-nation bloc warned yesterday that Turkey's
prosecution of a bestselling author for insulting ''Turkishness" could
damage the country's chances of joining the EU.
''It is not Orhan Pamuk who will stand trial,
but Turkey," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in an unusually
blunt statement released in Brussels. ''This is a litmus test of whether Turkey
is seriously committed to freedom of expression and to reforms that enhance the
rule of law."
Pamuk, 53, Turkey's best-known novelist, is
expected to go on trial today for stating in a Swiss magazine interview what
most historians regard as unassailable facts: That some 1 million Armenians
were slaughtered by Turks in the 1915-1918 genocide and that thousands of
ethnic Kurds have lost their lives in more recent civil strife in modern
Turkey.
The case has stirred outrage across Europe,
where there is deepening opposition to allowing Turkey -- whose population is
largely Muslim and whose landmass lies almost entirely in Asia -- to join an
economic and political confederation whose most basic membership requirement is
a commitment to democracy and to such values as freedom of speech.
Membership is considered vital to Turkey's
economic future. The admission process is expected to take years.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is among the
European leaders opposed to granting admission to Turkey, partly because of the
country's poor human rights record and wavering attitudes toward democratic
principles, including the idea that citizens have a right to criticize the
government and national institutions.
Such activist organizations as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch have criticized Turkey for bringing
criminal charges against Pamuk and dozens of other writers and scholars for
allegedly defaming ''Turkishness and Turkish national institutions,"
usually for making public remarks about historical events considered strictly
taboo.
The cases, brought by prosecutors, come even as
the government in Ankara has proclaimed a greater dedication to individual
freedoms in its effort to join the European Union.
''From the world-renowned poet Nazin Hikmet in the 1930s to Orhan Pamuk today, Turkish
judges have prosecuted and imprisoned the country's greatest writers,"
Holly Cartner, director for Europe and Central Asia
for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement from Istanbul. ''A Turkish judge
has to make a truly strong declaration to prove those days are over."
But prosecutors appeared determined to press
ahead with a high-profile prosecution despite the international uproar -- and
despite the warnings from Europe. Rehn's statements marked the first time that
the EU has unequivocally linked Turkey's hopes for EU membership to an attack
on free speech that has drawn criticism across the Western world.
''The trial of a novelist who expressed a nonviolent
opinion casts a shadow over the accession negotiations between Turkey and the
EU," said Rehn, who is Finnish. ''Considering the number of recent
prosecutions, it appears that [Turkey's] new penal code does not provide
sufficient protection for freedom of expression."
Pamuk, author of such highly praised
bestsellers as ''Snow" and ''My Name is Red," has had his works
translated into 30 languages.
At least 60 other Turkish writers, scholars,
and publishers presently face charges under Turkey's recently revised ''Article
301," according to Amnesty International. Among other things, the modified
penal code makes it a criminal offense to criticize ''Turkishness,"
national institutions, or the founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal -- known
as ''Ataturk."
If convicted, Pamuk faces up to three years
behind bars, although most analysts believe it extremely unlikely
he will be imprisoned if found guilty in Sisly
Primary Court No. 2 in Istanbul. But a guilty verdict -- even one accompanied
by a paltry fine -- would send a shocking message to European nations watching
closely as Turkey strives to modernize both its political system and its
economy.
''Pamuk's conviction or a postponement of his
trial would signal a serious reverse to recent reforms in Turkey," Cartner said.
Charges were brought against Pamuk after he
angered Turkish nationalists, fundamentalist Muslims, and many ordinary Turks
by saying in a February interview with Switzerland's Das Magazin
weekly that
''thirty thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these
lands."
Although few historians doubt that hundreds of
thousands of Armenians were killed in Turkey, discussion of the topic remains
largely off-limits in Turkey and the government denies that such a genocide
occurred. The taboo was lifted slightly this year when Istanbul's Bilgi
University hosted a cautious conference on the ''Armenian question" -- a
gathering that triggered angry protests.
''What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in
1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation -- it was a
taboo," Pamuk told the BBC. ''But we have to be able to talk about the
past."
Pamuk's other allusion was to the killing of
thousands of ethnic Kurds during clashes between Turkish armed forces and
Kurdish insurgents in the 1980s and 1990s. The exact numbers of casualties
remain unclear,
and many Turkish civilians also died at the hands of avowed Kurdish ''freedom
fighters," but there is no doubt many innocent lives were lost.
Many Turks, however, believe that Pamuk
insulted the nation.
''He overstepped the mark," nationalist
organizer Kemal Kerincsiz told Turkish reporters.
''Orhan Pamuk should not have played with history, and with the sentiments of
Turks."
Shooting kills priest in Turkey
An Italian Catholic priest has been
shot dead outside his church in north-east Turkey.
Police in the Black Sea port of
Trabzon said they were searching for a teenage boy seen fleeing from the scene
of the attack on Sunday.
It was unclear if the shooting was
connected to widespread Muslim outrage over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Turkish broadcaster NTV identified
the priest as Andrea Santore and said he died from a
single shot to the chest.
Turkey has seen regular protests in
recent days over the Danish caricatures of Muhammad.
Leaders of the overwhelmingly
Muslim country have condemned the pictures, but have also called for calm.
The Istanbul-based Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew, who is the spiritual head of the world's Orthodox
Christians, and other non-Muslim clerics in Turkey have also criticised the images.
Several Italian newspapers have
reprinted the pictures, saying they are defending freedom of expression.
Turkey restricts
viewing of "Brokeback Mountain"
Associated Press, THE JERUSALEM POST
Mar. 16, 2006
Turkey's Culture Ministry has restricted the
viewing of the Oscar-winning gay romance "Brokeback Mountain" to
viewers over the age of 18, saying that the movie violated public morals, a
ministry official said Thursday.
The restriction reflects the sensitivities in
overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, where homosexuality is largely a taboo subject.
The movie ratings subcommittee of the
Culture and Tourism Ministry restricted the viewing of "Brokeback
Mountain" before its opening in Turkey next Friday, the ministry official
said on condition of anonymity. Turkish officials cannot speak to the press
without prior authorization. The subcommittee ruled that the movie would harm
public morals, the official said.
Majority of Turks Oppose Hijab Ban, Back Gov't
IslamOnline.net & News Agencies
ANKARA — The majority of Turks are
satisfied with the performance of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
government and are opposed to the official ban on hijab in public offices and
universities, according to a poll published on Wednesday, June 14.
The poll, conducted by Isik and Sabanci universities in
Istanbul, found that two thirds of the 1,846 people polled in more than 20
towns and cities support Erdogan's efforts to ease hijab ban on students and
civil servants, Reuters reported.
The mainly Muslim country of 72 million
has a strongly secular political tradition. In 1997, President Ahmet Necdet Sezer issued a decree
banning hijab in state-run institutions, including schools and universities.
Hijab-donned women were also banned from frequenting any social clubs
affiliated to the military institution. Even veiled journalists have been
repeatedly prevented from covering news conferences inside government
institutions. Many in Turkey's military, academic and judicial establishment
view this ban as a key pillar of Turkey's secular order. Islam sees hijab as an
obligatory code of dress, not a religious symbol displaying one’s affiliations.
Conservative
The poll, conducted in March and April,
showed that the majority of Turks were more conservative on social and moral
issues. Three fifths of those interviewed attributed failure in life to a lack
of religious faith. Nearly a third said boys and girls should be taught in
separate classes at school. They also opposed allowing their Muslim daughters
to marrying non-Muslims. Nearly half of the respondents said tourists spoil
Turkish morality and harm its culture. They voiced unease with the spectacle of
naked or near-naked tourists soaking up the sun at Turkish resorts. Nearly a
third of those polled expressed dissatisfaction with the democratic process in
the country. More than half said they were happy with the government of the
ruling Justice and Development party.
Turkey faces a general election by
November 2007. Forty percent of those polled said they would prefer a
military-led government and nearly a third expressed dissatisfaction with the
democratic process. Turkey's powerful armed forces traditionally rank as the
institution most respected by Turks. The military has ousted democratically
elected governments four times in the past 50 years but has seen its powers
trimmed by EU-backed reforms.
The poll also confirmed falling support for
joining the 25-member euro club, down to 57 percent from 74 percent a few years
ago. The European Union and Turkey officially kickstarted on Monday, June 12,
the long-awaited accession talks, the most important cornerstone of membership
process, after EU foreign ministers overcame last-minute objections from
Cyprus. Turkey has been trying to join the European club since the 1960s.
TODAY'S
COLUMNIST
By Tulin
Daloglu
May 9, 2006
ANKARA, Turkey. --
"Let those wearing headscarves go to Arabistan,"
Turkey's former president, Suleyman Demirel, said
recently. Yet when I arrived in Ankara's Esenboga
international airport last week, I thought for a second that no unveiled women
remained in the capital of this Muslim nation. Hundreds were returning from
umrah — visiting the sacred lands in Saudi Arabia. Some even had black hijab,
showing only a glimpse of their eyes. The baggage claim was chaos, and at the
exit gate the passengers were outnumbered by nearly twice as many loved ones waiting
to pick them up. Most of them wore a shalwar — a very loose pant, with a skirt
on top of it. All wore dark colors.
It would have been a moment of truth if Mr. Demirel
could see these people arriving in their homeland rather than leaving it. When
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was elected almost four years ago, he
didn't bring them from Arabistan; he just encouraged
them not to hide any longer. I would argue that even the black hijab is not a
threat to the secular republic. It is, after all, just a piece of fabric. The
problem is the mindset that puts women under the black hijab.
The problem is uneducated
people pushing and shoving while doing something simple like passing through
passport control and collecting their bags. The problem is men ordering women
around: "stay," "don't move anywhere," "pick that
luggage up and bring it here."
Mr. Demirel should be the last person to advise any
Turkish nationals to go anywhere but Turkey. As one of the longest-serving
public officials, he should question how he and the politicians of his
generation let the secular republic down, jeopardizing the aim of Westernizing
the country. He should question how the first lady of the first revolutionary
Muslim nation in the region was accustomed not to shake men's hands because it
is not religiously "appropriate," but advised to break that rule in
the course of her state duties.
Turkey's so-called secular and Western politicians did not prioritize either
the education or the rule of law as they should have. They let the economy down
and introduced corruption. And they are exactly the ones who allowed political
Islam to emerge and are responsible for the backward image of women wearing
hijab and headscarves in today's Turkey.
While Turkey had its domestic troubles, Europe exploited its vulnerabilities.
Before awakening to the presence of radical Muslim terrorists and ideology,
European policies helped feed and encourage political Islam in Turkey. After
September 11, French President Jacques Chirac defended secularism by banning
all religious symbols from public and government places. Previously, France
slammed the Turkish Republic by challenging a Turkish deputy who wanted to be
sworn in while wearing her headscarf. Leyla Sahin, a
medical student who was expelled from Istanbul University in 1998 because she
insisted on wearing the headscarf to class, lost her appeal — in the aftermath
of horrendous terrorist attacks on America — when the European Court of Human
Rights ruled that the state has a right to protect the public's interest and
its secular nature.
However, before September 11, Europeans viewed political Islam differently than
the Turkish Republic that was trying to challenge it. They have a different,
Christian history. But the Islamists challenged the secular nature of the new
republic from day one. "All these problems do occur because of different
interpretations of the principles of secularism," Turkish Parliament
spokesman Bulent Arinc said recently.
Evidently, Europe's former approach to Islamist groups is partly responsible
for the confusion. Otherwise, the Turkish Republic's stand on the issue before
September 11 seem to be in perfect alliance with Europe's decisions after
September 11. Europe should have known that political Islam, conducted in the
absence of women, has an ideology quite different than the freedoms they
pretend to defend in the name of human rights or freedom of religion.
Before September 11, Europe condemned Turkey by not respecting freedom of
religious expression. Before September 11, they never dared question the
responsibilities of the religious elites being open-minded to the standards of
today's and tomorrow's education. They did not question the content of some
so-called religious practices and culture. What's more, Turkey's so-called
secular former presidents and prime ministers should question why Turkish
emigrants have trouble adjusting to the European way of life, and why the
Indians, with their distinct culture and religion, face no similar negative
tension in foreign societies. India is a rising power, from its nuclear journey
to its competition with Silicon Valley.
Turkey, however, is wasting time trying to solve the controversy over "a
piece of fabric" on women's heads. With women making up just 4 percent of
parliament's membership, men evidently make the final decisions over their
affairs.
Failing a miracle that would take this matter out of the political arena, there
is no hope that the issue will be solved in a peaceful manner soon. The
question is, will the increasingly veiled masses be able to change the spirit
of the secular republic?
Tulin Daloglu is
the Washington correspondent and columnist for Turkey's Star TV and newspaper.
A former BBC reporter, she writes occasionally for The Washington Times.
A tense time for a papal visit
Turkey, which doesn't recognize the
Roman Catholic Church, is still rankled by Benedict's comments on Islam.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer
November 25, 2006
'It's a kind of preemptive
intolerance: Don't let it flourish because it might take over. Everyone is
afraid of something.'— Mustafa Akyol - Writer and expert on interfaith
relations, on why the vast majority of the Turkish people mistrust
Christianity.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY — To reach
Turkey's most important Roman Catholic church, a visitor must scour a
traffic-choked street to find the metal doors, walk down a flight of stairs,
cross a courtyard and finally step into the consecrated basilica.
Inside the Holy Spirit Cathedral here, the lights remain low until a minute
before evening Mass, and then reveal frescoed ceilings with gold-trimmed
arches, 22 crystal chandeliers and blond-marble columns. On this night, 14
worshipers dot the pews.
In the Turkish capital, Ankara, the only Catholic church is even more discreet:
It is marked simply by a French flag.
When Pope Benedict XVI travels to Turkey next week, he will be making his first
trip to a predominantly Muslim country at a moment of diplomatic fragility.
He also will be traversing some of the most ancient and revered milestones of
Christianity, in a land where Christianity is disappearing and where non-Muslim
minorities complain of systemic discrimination, harassment and violence against
them.
It is a complex agenda. The pope's main purpose is to meet with the
Istanbul-based spiritual leader of the world's 250 million Eastern Orthodox
Christians in a show of ecumenical solidarity. But he must also use the visit
to attempt to repair the damage from comments he has made that cast Islam in a
negative light.
Among Turkey's nearly 70 million Muslims, reaction to Benedict's visit ranges
from disinterest to intense anger. A man opened fire early this month on the
Italian Consulate in Istanbul, telling police later that he wanted to
"strangle" the pope. A nationalist gang called the Gray Wolves is
staging regular demonstrations protesting the pontiff's arrival.
Among the estimated 100,000 Christians who live in Turkey, there is hope that
Benedict's presence will cast light on their difficulties.
The Roman Catholic Church is not legally recognized in Turkey. It functions
largely attached to foreign embassies; its priests do not wear their collars in
public.
Most Christians in Turkey are of the Armenian, Greek and other Orthodox
denominations, and although most of these are recognized in the Turkish
Constitution as minority communities, they face severe restrictions on property
ownership and cannot build places of worship or run seminaries to train their
clerics.
Such hardships make it almost impossible for Christians to sustain and expand
their communities, advocates say. The Greek Orthodox, for example, have
dwindled to no more than 3,000, just 2% of the community's size in the 1960s.
Fueled by a vitriolic, and growing, potion of nationalism and Islamic
radicalism, spasms of violence have led to the killing of one priest this year,
the beatings of two others and the burning of a Christian prayer center.
Christian tombstones are often vandalized and property frequently confiscated
by authorities.
Turkey has come under repeated criticism from Western human rights
organizations and the Vatican for its failure to promote religious freedom.
Turkey is an Islamic but secular country; in reality, this means that all
religious activity, including mosques and imams, is controlled by the
government.
"Obviously, more needs to be done to promote religious freedom for all
denominations," Ali Bardakoglu, president of
Turkey's powerful Religious Affairs Directorate, said in an interview. But he
defended the government's treatment of minorities, contending that Christians
and other non-Muslims do not face serious problems.
Bardakoglu was one of the most emphatic critics of
Benedict after the pope delivered a speech in Regensburg, Germany, in September
that denounced Islamic violence and quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor who
disdained Islam and its prophet, Muhammad. Adding insult to injury, as far as
many Turks were concerned, the emperor was defending Constantinople, cradle of
Orthodox Christianity, against the Muslim conquest that gave the city its name
today: Istanbul.
Bardakoglu said the pope was welcome in Turkey
despite the speech, which touched off outrage throughout the Muslim world. And
although he said he accepted Benedict's subsequent explanations, Bardakoglu did not appear completely appeased.
"It is unfortunate that there are circles within Western society that
attempt to blacken the name of our religion and are infected with
Islamophobia," he said. "The role of the Vatican and the pope should
be to help fight stereotypes. Rather than open debate, they should be seeking
to heal wounds."
In a remarkable gesture, the pope will meet with Bardakoglu,
the country's top religious figure, at his ministry, a modern, imposing
building on Ankara's outskirts, on the first day of his Turkey visit. Bardakoglu's directorate commands a huge budget and
oversees all of Turkey's imams.
Originally, the Vatican expected Bardakoglu to call
on the pope at the Vatican Embassy, as protocol would have dictated. But the
Turks refused. After a series of negotiations, the pope agreed to go to Bardakoglu. "It is a gesture of goodwill," a
senior Vatican official said.
The pope's controversial presence in Turkey represents a balancing act for the
government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which regards itself a vital
bridge between the West and East, a way for Westerners to deal with a modern
and democratic Islam. But it also cannot appear too cozy with a pontiff who, in
the view of many, is not fond of Muslims or Turks.
Erdogan is not scheduled to receive Benedict,
citing a previous commitment to attend a NATO summit in Latvia on Tuesday and
Wednesday. And there is no plan for the prime minister to see him off when the
pope departs Dec. 1.
Both the Vatican and Turkish officials said this was not a snub, but Erdogan
told visiting reporters in Istanbul last month, "You can't expect me to
arrange my timetable according to the pope."
The frictions are rooted in history. The Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region
for more than six centuries, was relatively tolerant of Jews, Christians and
other non-Muslims. But before and during World War I, Western powers
collaborated with Christian and other minorities to bring down the Ottomans. In
the carnage that followed, as many as 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered, a
similar number of ethnic Greeks expelled and 1 million Turks deported from
Greece.
The 1923 Lausanne Treaty founded the Republic of Turkey and recognized
minorities. But deep mistrust persists, and even today among ardent
nationalists, Christians are seen as a potential fifth column.
"It's a kind of preemptive intolerance: Don't let it flourish because it
might take over," said Mustafa Akyol, a writer and expert on interfaith
relations. "Everyone is afraid of something."
Akyol, a Muslim, said he once wrote a column advocating that the museum of St.
Sophia, or Aya Sofya, in Istanbul be returned to its
original use, that of a church. The response was harsh: He was threatened and
castigated as a "secret Greek." The pope is scheduled to visit St.
Sophia, built in the 6th century as a Byzantine church and converted to a
mosque in the 15th century by the Ottomans.
The mere rumor that the pope might say a prayer at the site has led to a bit of
hysteria. Islamic newspaper Milli Gazete, in a
front-page commentary last week, lashed out at the government for permitting
the "Crusaders" to plan to bless the former church in a brazen
attempt to "revive Byzantium."
For their part, Turkish officials have sought to minimize the pontiff's main
mission on this trip: to worship alongside Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I,
head of the world's Orthodox Christians. The coming together of the two
religious leaders is meant as a bridging of the 1,000-year-old rift between the
two ancient branches of Christianity.
Such frictions notwithstanding, Turkey, compared with many Muslim countries, is
relatively hospitable to non-Muslims. But its failure to make more progress on
freedom-of-religion issues has been an important stumbling block in its
years-long campaign to join the European Union.
It is EU pressure that has nudged Ankara along in easing some of the
restrictions on minorities; for example, a Protestant group in Istanbul has for
the first time been allowed to open a church.
"The EU reforms give people a sense of hope that there is light at the end
of the tunnel," said Greek Orthodox Father Alexander Karloutsos.
"It's been very dark here."
Turks near coup
By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor Emeritus
April 30, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 30 (UPI) -- Turkey is currently one of the most important
hubs of the diplomatic universe. Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf flew in
for the weekend for fence-mending talks with his neighbor, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai. They might just be in time to witness a military coup.
The Turks have also been playing a crucial role
in the discreet talks about a new dialogue between Iran and the United States,
and last week hosted a meeting between the European Union's top diplomat, Javier
Solana, and Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of
Iran, underlining Turkey's growing diplomatic profile. Both Solana and Larijani
made a point of praising Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul for his
diplomacy and publicly welcomed his candidacy to become Turkey's new president.
And yet half a million Turks took to the
streets Sunday to protest Gul's candidacy, just as 300,000 had been on the
streets a week earlier to protest the prospect of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan becoming the next president.
Even more ominously, the Turkish military has
signaled its own deep disapproval of either Erdogan or Gul getting the top job
because, despite the overwhelming electoral mandate of their AK (Justice and
Development) Party, the two politicians are moderate Islamists.
Gul's wife, Hayrunissa,
wears a headscarf, a controversial symbol of her faith in a Turkey that was
founded and run as a completely secular state. And the Turkish military, which
has mounted three coups in the last 35 years, sees itself as the custodian of
the country's secular constitution as laid down by the founder of modern
Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.
"It is observed that some circles who have
been carrying out endless efforts to disturb fundamental values of the Republic
of Turkey, especially secularism, have escalated their efforts recently,"
said a formal statement from the Turkish military last week. "The problem
that emerged in the presidential election process is focused on arguments over
secularism. Turkish Armed Forces are concerned about the recent situation.
"It should not be forgotten that the
Turkish Armed Forces are a party in those arguments, and absolute defender of
secularism," the statement went on. "Also
the Turkish Armed Forces (are) definitely opposed to those arguments and
negative comments. It will display its attitude and action openly and clearly
whenever it is necessary."
And yet Erdogan's government has been one of
the most successful in modern Turkish history. The economy is booming. The EU
has accepted Turkey as a candidate for membership and opened formal accession
negotiations. Turkey, a veteran NATO member, has peacekeeping troops in Lebanon,
has good relations with Iran and Israel and also with much of the Arab world,
and in general has played a highly responsible role in the region.
All of this is now at risk in the growing row
over the next presidency. Erdogan backed away from the post after seeing the
scale of the opposition to him, and possibly recalling his own time in prison
after what the military saw as an inflammatory Islamist speech. (He had quoted
a poem that included the lines: "the minarets shall be our bayonets.")
As a result, the internationally popular and very diplomatic Foreign Minister
Gul became the presidential candidate, and the AK Party's dominance should
easily ensure him the required 367 votes in the 550-seat parliament.
At least that was the case until the military
spoke, until the secular opposition parties boycotted a parliamentary vote that
would have seen Gul installed, and until the 500,000 pro-secular demonstrators
took to the streets Sunday.
Turkey is now in the throes of a full-blown
political crisis, and a military coup cannot be ruled out.
"The president must be loyal to secular
principles. If I am elected, I will act accordingly," Gul pledged at his
nomination for the presidency.
The problem for secular Turks is that a Gul
presidency would mean that the Islamists, however moderate and pro-democracy,
would control the presidency, the government, the parliament and the judiciary
-- appointed by the president. That would leave only the military as a bastion
of traditional secular values.
"Turkey is secular and will remain
secular," chanted the hundreds of thousands who protested in Istanbul
Sunday. Significantly, they also chanted: "We want neither Sharia, nor a
coup, but a fully democratic Turkey."
The opposition parties, and also the military,
apparently want the country's Constitutional Court to intervene and call for
new elections. The likelihood is that Erdogan and Gul would win another
majority in Parliament, although possibly not enough to secure the two-thirds
vote required to elect a president.
That could mean a compromise. But it would be a
compromise secured through a threat of military intervention, casting a dark
shadow over Turkey's democratic credentials and giving a strong boost to those
in the EU who oppose Turkish entry. And that would leave Turkey with few places
to turn but back to the Middle East and the Islamic world. The West is left
with the unhappy choice of welcoming a moderate Islamist Turkey living under
constant threat of military coup or losing one of its few friends in a
dangerous neighborhood.
There is one other option, which could be even
uglier. Some Turkish observers speculate that the military might drop its
opposition to Gul's presidency if they are given the green light to crush the
renewed threat of Kurdish nationalism and the prospect of a sovereign Kurdish
state that could attract their own Kurdish minority. This would mean an
invasion of northern Iraq, where the autonomous Kurdish provinces are one of
the few success stories of modern Iraq. Of all three options, this could be the
most dangerous.
Plotters seized as
tension mounts in Turkey
(CNN-July 1, 2008) -- Political tensions rose
Tuesday across Turkey as police seized two retired generals, a prominent
journalist and others accused of plotting to overthrow the government and
prosecutors undertook a court case to ban the Islamic-rooted ruling
party.
The developments dramatize the sharp and
serious political tensions between the country's Islamic-rooted ruling party --
the Justice and Development Party, or AKP -- and its outspoken critics from the
nation's secularist establishment.
Since autumn, police have been arresting and
jailing people accused of being part of Ergenekon, an alleged plot to overthrow
the government. During the effort, there has been harassment of journalists,
and news reports have said many people are being held without charge.
On Tuesday, police made 22 arrests in Ankara,
Istanbul, Antalya and Trabzon, according to Turkey's semi-official Anadolu
Agency, which said its information came from prosecutors. Three other people
were being sought, the agency said.
Those seized include former generals Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur; Mustafa Balbay of the Cumhuriyet newspaper; Sinan Aygun, leader of the Ankara Trade Organization; and Ecument Ovali, a college
professor. The newspaper said police conducted a search at its Ankara
headquarters.
This came hours before a Turkish prosecutor
presented evidence in a court case that would ban the AKP because of its
alleged involvement in what prosecutors call anti-secularist activities, such
as its failed support for toppling the ban on Muslim
headscarf at universities.
Turkish secularists believe the AKP is intent
on undermining the secular constitution and nature of the modern Turkish state
and on intimidating political opposition. The popularly elected AKP believes
the effort to disband the party is a political move and says it is promoting
democracy and pursuing goals that would bring Turkey into the European Union.
This is the second time Cumhuriyet has been
targeted with accusations of involvement in Ergenekon. In the spring, police
briefly held the newspaper's editor, Ilhan Selcuk.
"We spoke with our lawyers after Balbay was taken away ... about these operations happening
now as the chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya,
started presenting his verbal explanations in the constitutional court," Arcayurek said.
"We don't know if this is a special
treatment, or a coincidence. But I can say on behalf of everyone at Cumhuriyet
newspaper, including editor in chief Ilhan Selcuk, we
cannot be guilty of anything else but loving our country very much and
protecting its rights. They cannot find anything else against us."
Turkey, a strong U.S. ally and NATO member, is
a democratic state and has long been regarded as a bridge from Asia and Europe
and from the West to the Muslim world.
Although it is a predominantly Muslim nation,
Turkey has taken the trappings of religion out of public life, in accordance
with the policies of Kemal Ataturk, the revered founder of the modern Turkish
republic.
Ovali made reference to
Ataturk when he spoke to reporters watching him being detained in Trabzon.
"I am being found guilty of loving Ataturk
and the republic," he said.
Wolfgang Piccolo, an analyst for the Eurasia
Group, said in a report Tuesday that the timing of the arrests and the high profile
of those seized reflects the political nature of the Ergenekon probe.
"Coming a few hours before the first
hearing in the closure case against the AKP, the arrests will further reinforce
the already widely shared impression in Turkey that the operation is part of
the power struggle between the AKP and the hard-line
secularists, most notably the military," he said.
6 Die in Attack on U.S. Post in Turkey
New York Times
By ALAN COWELL and SEBNEM ARSU
July 10, 2008
PARIS — A group of unidentified gunmen opened
fire on Turkish security guards outside the United States Consulate in Istanbul
on Wednesday, the Turkish authorities said, and at least three police officers
and three assailants were killed in a brief gun battle. Officials said that a fourth
assailant escaped.
The late-morning attack was the first on a
diplomatic mission in the city since 2003 when 62 people were killed in
assaults on the British consulate, a bank and two synagogues. While the motives
behind this attack were not immediately clear, Turkish officials described the
gunmen as terrorists.
“Turkey struggles and will struggle against the
mentalities that organize and stand behind these attacks until the very end,”
President Abdullah
Gul said in a statement. “Everyone, after all, has seen that nothing
can be achieved through terror.”
In a televised news conference, Istanbul’s
governor, Muammer Guler,
said one of the police officers died at the scene and two others died of bullet
wounds in a hospital. One of the officers was part of the consulate security
detail, while the other two were traffic police officers. Another police
officer and a tow-truck driver were also wounded.
“Three policemen were martyred and three
attackers were killed,” Mr. Guler said. He added
later that, while the authorities were waiting for final confirmation of the
identity of the assailants, all three were believed to be Turkish citizens.
Ross Wilson, the United States ambassador in Turkey, said that none of the dead
or injured were Americans.
Later, the Turkish interior minister, Besir Atalay, said that two of
the slain attackers had been traced through their fingerprints. Speaking to the
Anatolian news agency, he identified them as Erkan Kargin,
26, from the eastern town of Bitlis, and Cinar Bulent. Both, he said, had records of petty crime.