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Turkey: Normalizing Hate

March 13, 2016

Turkey: Normalizing Hate, Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, March 13, 2016

(Breaking news: Obama, Cruz and Rubio have issued a joint statement blaming Trump. What? OK. Not yet. — DM)

♦ [T]hey have launched an investigation against me in accordance with article 301 because I mentioned ‘peace, brotherhood, and human rights’ in my statement to the press. Hundreds of lawsuits have been brought against lawyers and members of opposition in Turkey because they talked about peace and brotherhood.” — Ilhan Ongor, Co-President of the Adana branch of the Human Rights Association.

♦ Starving or murdering civilians does not, apparently, constitute a crime in Turkey, but speaking out about them does.

♦ Insulting non-Turkish and non-Muslim people has almost become a social tradition in Turkey. Prejudice and hate speech have become normalized.

♦ What makes this hate speech even more disturbing is that these people — Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and Jews, among others — are the indigenous peoples of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Thrace, where they have lived for millennia. Today, as a result of Turkey’s massacres, pogroms and deportations, they have been turned into tiny communities.

According to the 2015 statistics of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), 28 lawsuits were opened by applicants against member states regarding their violations of freedom of expression. Ten of those applications (complaints) were made against Turkey’s violations of freedom of expression. Turkey ranked first in that category.

Turkish law professor Ayse Isil Karakas, both a judge and elected Deputy Head of the ECHR, said that among all member states, Turkey has ranked number one in the field of violations of free speech.

“619 lawsuits of freedom of expression were brought at the ECHR between 1959 and 2015,” she said. ” 258 of them — almost half of them — came from Turkey and most were convicted as violations of freedom of expression.”

For a country that fancies itself a candidate for EU membership, that is quite a record. Actually, when it comes to deciding what thoughts are warmly tolerated and what thoughts are severely punished, Turkey is extraordinary. If the statement involves Jew-hating for instance, it is welcomed by many.

Seyfi Sahin, a columnist in the Islamist pro-government newspaper Vahdet, wrote on January 31:

“I believe that the gorillas and chimpanzees living in the forests in northern Africa today are cursed Jews. Those are mutated, perverted people.

“Believe me, this view is stronger and more scientific than the Darwin theory. We Muslims, and those who believe that, do not have the banks, the money, the organizational power in the world of science, or the propaganda power to scream those truths.

“But we have our wisdom, our faith and our Allah. Alhamdulillah (Praise be to Allah).”

In an attempt to back up his “views,” Sahin mentioned that he is also a medical doctor, and quoted Koranic verses 2/65, 5/60 and 7/166. “Those verses are signs that monkeys descended from human beings,” he said. “Allah always tells the truth.”

Throughout his entire piece — which has been widely “liked” and shared on social media — he tried to “prove” his claim that monkeys come from Jews, and his newspaper saw no harm in publishing it. Yet, no one has yet brought him to account for his libelous insults. Who knows? He might even be given an award for this piece.

However, much of the Turkish public and the Turkish state are not so tolerant and welcoming when human rights issues — especially Kurdish issues — are discussed.

According to reports, two lawsuits were filed on January 3 against Sibel Ozbudun, an author and retired associate professor of anthropology known for her writings about minority rights. The indictment claims that through her social media posts, Ozbudun has committed the crime of “openly inciting people to commit an offense” and “making propaganda of the PKK.” The lawsuits were filed after the police received an e-mail from someone denouncing Ozbudun for her posts.

One of the pieces of “evidence” of the prosecutors is a verse, popular in Turkey, shared by Ozbudun on her Facebook page: “I want the country be divided — henchmen, sycophants and slimy ones to one side; honorable, dignified, laborious, patriotic people to the other.”

On another occasion, on December 30, a Turkish instructor and a member of the Social Rights Association, Cise Atalay, during a lecture at Amasya University mentioned human rights abuses. A student called the police; Atalay was arrested for “terrorist propaganda” on the spot. Next, her home and office were searched.

The student who called the police is not alone. Turkish state authorities also regard requests for human rights as “terrorist propaganda” or “insulting the Turkish state.” On January 7, an investigation was launched against the co-president of the Adana branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD), Ilhan Ongor, for violating Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, which makes it illegal “to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions.”

On November 11, apparently, Ongor had issued a press release in which he said, “Today, in Silvan, a crime against humanity is being committed by the state. They are trying to make the massacres ordinary.” He had been criticizing the recent military attacks against Kurds during a curfew imposed on the Kurdish district of Silvan.

The military attacks had caused starvation, civilian deaths and massive destruction. After his criminal investigation, Ongor said that “People’s right to life is violated while the judiciary is trying to suppress human rights and defenders of freedom.”

“Interestingly, they have launched an investigation against me in accordance with article 301 because I mentioned ‘peace, brotherhood, and human rights’ in my statement to the press. Hundreds of lawsuits have been brought against lawyers and members of opposition in Turkey because they talked about peace and brotherhood.”

Starving or murdering civilians does not constitute a crime in Turkey, apparently, but speaking out about them does.

In Turkey, if someone utters the most vicious or threatening remarks about Armenians, Greeks, Jews, Christians, Kurds, Alevis or other members of a minority, he is never condemned by the state or held to account. But those who speak of human rights abuses, or criticize the state for its violent, repressive actions, will most probably be accused of violations.

After a group of Turkish soldiers and Kurdish PKK guerillas were killed in battle on September 8, the principal consultant of President Tayyip Erdogan and former Chairman of the Constitutional Commission of Turkey’s Parliament, Burhan Kuzu, wrote in his Twitter account:

“So far, thousands of terrorists have been bumped off. This will continue. The corpses of the dead terrorists should definitely have autopsies. Many of them will be found to be uncircumcised. Wake up, my Kurdish brother, wake up now!”

Kuzu seems to be trying to legitimize the killings of PKK members because being uncircumcised implies being Christian or non-Muslim. He also seems to think that the PKK members are not Muslims, and that any non-Muslim deserves to be “bumped off.”

Evidently jumping to conclusions about the possible political leanings of dead people based on their genitalia, and saying that because of their religious background they deserve to be killed, is perfectly acceptable in Turkey. What is more alarming is that Kuzu, who made these statements, is a constitutional law professor.

In 1996, at Turkey’s parliament, the interior minister at the time, Meral Aksener, and a current MP from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), said that the leader of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party), Abdullah Ocalan, was “Armenian semen.” She then clarified the remark by saying, “I did not refer to the Armenians living in Turkey. I referred to the Armenian race in general.”[1]

Humiliating statements about non-Turkish or non-Muslim people are common and popular, even among political circles, but if one makes critical statements about the state policies, one might be prosecuted, or end up in prison — due to the vagueness of Turkey’s “terrorism” laws.

Because of several articles in the Turkish penal code, many individuals face prosecution as if they were actually fighting the government as “members” of the armed Kurdish PKK, and are often sentenced accordingly.[2]

Many peaceful demonstrators have also faced prosecution for exercising their right of freedom of expression, if they shout slogans, hold up banners, or make statements to the press.

The latest victims are the peace activists who demanded an end to the recent military siege in Turkey’s Kurdistan. On December 27, activists from western Turkey started a journey towards Diyarbakir in an attempt to oppose the military siege and civilian deaths in the region. Calling their action “We are walking towards peace,” they arrived in Diyarbakir on December 31 — to be attacked by the police. Four were injured and twenty-four were taken into custody, accused of “carrying out acts on behalf of a terrorist organization.”

1508

In December, peace activists walked to the city of Diyarbakir in Turkish Kurdistan in an action they called “We are walking towards peace.” When they arrived, they were attacked by the police. Four were injured and twenty-four were arrested, accused of “carrying out acts on behalf of a terrorist organization.” (Image source: JINHA)

The state tradition of violating the freedom of expression goes back to the foundation of the Turkish republic in 1923. The new regime established by the Republican People’s Party (CHP) — with its laws and “independence tribunals” — totally crushed any kind of political opposition and freedom of opinion.

The 1925 Law on the Maintenance of Order gave the government that founded the Turkish republic extraordinary authority through which it could suppress all kinds of opposition and ban any group or publication it viewed as threatening its authority.

In 1926, all major national newspapers except Cumhuriyet and the official Ankara daily, Hakimiyet-i Milliye were closed.[3]

In another autocratic policy, the “independence tribunals” were founded in 1920 — and functioned periodically until 1929 — to prosecute the dissidents of the government and hand down swift capital punishment for them.

“The members of the independence tribunals were chosen from the parliament,” wrote the historian Ayse Hur.

“But those members — except for the prosecutors — were not jurists. On the doors of the tribunals were written ‘Independence tribunals are afraid of Allah only’ and they were not responsible for their rulings but all of the civilian and military bureaucrats were responsible for the executions of punishments without delay.

“No evidence was needed to give rulings. It was very rare that the defendants had lawyers. There was neither time for that nor lawyers courageous enough. The rulings were given in accordance with the personal convictions of judges and those who were tried did not have a right of appeal. The punishments (and hangings) were carried out right away. The rulings were given and executed so swiftly that sometimes the wrong people were hanged instead of real defendants.”

“By the time the independence tribunals were disbanded two years later,” wrote professor Michael M. Gunter, “more than 7400 Kurds had been arrested, 660 had been executed, hundreds of villages had been destroyed, and thousands of other Kurds had been killed or exiled.”[4]

The tribunals were legally closed down in 1929, but the laws concerning independence tribunals remained in force until 1949. They continued functioning as the nightmare of the opponents of the regime until the end of the one-party regime of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in 1950.

Sadly, the new Turkish regime founded in 1923 did not aim to foster a culture of free opinions and free debate. And the rest of Turkey’s history has mostly been about repeated violations of freedom of expression. Almost all opinions that are different from the state’s official ideology are targeted, criminalized and repressed.

Turkey has pursued discriminatory and violent policies towards minority groups, but discussing those policies often constitutes a crime.

Omer Asan, a Turkish author and publisher, was accused by Turkish courts of “spreading separatist propaganda” through “Pontus, Pontic Culture,” a book he wrote. The title means “sea” in Greek, and is a historical Greek designation for the territory located in the eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. The inhabitants of Pontus were some of the very first converts to Christianity. From 1914 to 1923, out of approximate 700,000 Pontic Greek Christians, as many as 350,000 were killed by Muslim Turks in a genocidal campaign. Almost all the rest were driven out of their homes during the forced population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

That act marked the end of one of the ancient Greek civilizations in Asia Minor. The ancient region known as Pontus has been almost totally Turkified and Islamized up until today.

The book was, among other things, the subject of a television program in which a theology professor accused Asan of “being a traitor friendly to Greece” and of “wanting to reintroduce Orthodox Christianity to a Muslim region.”

In January 2002, the National Security Court ordered the seizure of the book.[5]

In March, 2002 the State Security Court brought criminal proceedings against Asan. He was charged with disseminating separatist propaganda by asserting that there were still some communities influenced by Pontic Greek culture in the province of Asan’s hometown, Trabzon, and the surrounding area.

In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights convicted Turkey of violating Asan’s right to free speech.

Why is Turkey disturbed by critical thoughts, questions and books, but not by those who call Armenians “sperm,” Jews “monkeys” or who talk about the private parts of dead Kurds? Insulting non-Turkish and non-Muslim people has almost become a social tradition in Turkey. Prejudice and hate speech have become normalized.

What makes this hate speech even more disturbing is that these people — Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and Jews, among others — are the indigenous peoples of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Thrace, where they have lived for millennia. Today, as a result of Turkey’s massacres, pogroms and deportations, they have been turned into tiny communities.

After committing crimes against these native people, Turkey not only denies the realities of this history, but insults and threatens the remaining members of those groups. It also represses whoever would like to discuss these issues. The only people who seem to enjoy “freedom” completely are those engaging in hate speech.

Citizens of other countries who live in Turkey are also exposed to prohibitions on free speech.

Norma Cox, an American academic who worked as a lecturer at Turkish universities during the 1980s, was deported and banned from re-entering Turkey by order of the Turkish Ministry of the Interior in 1986, 1989 and 1996. She has been unable to return to Turkey ever since.

The Ministry of the Interior claimed that Cox had been expelled and banned because of her separatist activities against national security, “namely statements she had made about Turks assimilating Kurds and Armenians, and Turks forcing Armenians out of the country and committing genocide.”

Cox’s application to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said: “Expressing opinions on Kurdish and Armenian issues at a university, where freedom of expression should be unlimited, could not be used as a justification for any sanctions, such as the ban on her re-entry into Turkey.”

In 2010, the ECHR convicted Turkey of violating Cox’s freedom of expression.[6]

While hate speech and racism are warmly tolerated and even promoted by state authorities, free debate on Turkey’s social and political issues such as the Kurdish question and the PKK, Armenian genocide, history of Anatolian and Pontic Greeks, and the Christian roots of Anatolia, among others, are criminalized.

Turkey thereby systematically violates Turkish citizens’ freedom of information or right to know, a right recognized by the United Nations.

The researcher Lisa Reppell, who analyzed Turkey’s cases in the ECHR, wrote:

“The category in which Turkey stands out most significantly is freedom of expression. … Though by number of incidences, freedom of expression judgments are a smaller percentage of Turkey’s judgments, violations of this category are much more common in Turkey than in any other member state. Out of a total of 544 judgments handed down by the Court between 1959 and 2013, 41 percent of all freedom of expression violations have come from cases against Turkey.”

Turkey is a mental prison. In Turkey, knowledge of history and respect for human rights are neither valued nor popular; hatred, bans and discrimination are.

Despite Turkey’s unchanging pattern of violating freedom of expression, the country was officially recognized as a candidate for full membership of the European Union in 1999, and is a part of the “Western Europe” branch of the Western European and Others Group (WEOG) at the United Nations.[7]

For decades, Europe has treated Turkey almost as if Turkey were a part of Europe. Turkey, however, has never behaved like a modern European state or even a state that truly aspires to be one.

Perhaps Turkish authorities in charge of the country’s tourism affairs should prepare more truthful videos or posters. They might say: “Come to Turkey, where Asking for Peace is a Crime., but Asking for Uncircumcised People To Be Killed Is Normal.”

Or: “Watch your books and remarks! We Are So Sensitive That Even the Mention of Greeks and Christians Offends Us.”

Another poster could say, “In This Country, Recognizing the Armenian Genocide Is a Crime but Calling Someone “Armenian Sperm” is Just Fine. Welcome to Turkey!”

_________________

[1] “Armenian semen” is one of the most popular swear words in Turkey, often used for Kurds, as well. Kurds, or Kurds who request national rights, are “accused” of being Armenian. Many people in Turkey, including military personnel openly refer to Kurds or Kurdish activists as “Armenians,” “dirty Armenians,” “Armenian bastards,” “Armenian sperm” or “Armenian semen.”

[2] For more details, see: “Protesting as a Terrorist Offense: The Arbitrary Use of Terrorism Laws to Prosecute and Incarcerate Demonstrators in Turkey,” by Human Rights Watch, November 1, 2010.

[3] “The History of Turkey”, by Douglas Arthur Howard, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.

[4] “The A to Z of the Kurds”, by Michael M. Gunter, Scarecrow Press, 2009.

[5] For details about Asan’s case at ECHR, please see: European Court of Human Rights, 840; 27.11.2007 Asan V. Turkey.

[6] Cox’s application to the ECHR also said:

“[T]he Ministry’s allegations against her had not been proved. Even assuming that she had said those things at the university, she had remained within the permissible limits of criticism. Furthermore, she had never been prosecuted for having expressed those opinions. The action taken against her by the Ministry had therefore been devoid of any legal basis.”

For details about Cox’s case at ECHR, see “Case of Cox v. Turkey“, Application no. 2933/03, 20 May 2010

[7] In 1987, Turkey’s application to accede to the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union (EU), was made. Since 1963, Turkey has been an associate member. Turkey became a member of the Council of Europe in 1949; the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1961; and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in 1973. It was an associate member of the Western European Union from 1992 to its end in 2011. It also signed a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995.

Categories: Erdogan, Foreign policy, Freedom, Turkey
Tags: Erdogan, Foreign Policy, Freedom, Turkey

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Turkish Gov’t Bans Int’l Women’s Day March Due to ‘Security’

March 7, 2016

Turkish Gov’t Bans Int’l Women’s Day March Due to ‘Security,’ Clarion Project, Meora Svorsly, March 7, 2016

TUrkey-Womens-Day-Protesters-HP

Turkish women defying a ban on marching for International Women’s Day are met by police. (Photo: Video screenshot)

Turkish women, defying a ban issued by Istanbul’s governor prohibiting demonstrations marking International Women’s Day demonstrations, took to the streets en masse to call attention to the challenges faced by women in Turkey.

The demonstrations, three days ahead of the official March 8 commemoration, were met by a brutal police force, which fired rubber bullets into the crowd and shoved and arrested demonstrators.

“We have always said that we would never leave the streets for the March 8 demonstration, and we never will. Neither the police nor the government can stop us,” protester Guris Ozen said, speaking to told Reuters. “You see the power of women. We are here despite every obstacle and we will continue to fight for our cause.”

Women also defied the ban in Ankara, where protestors were similarly manhandled by police officers.

The official reason cited for the demonstration ban was security concerns, but with increasing frequency and brutality, Turkey’s Islamist ruling party – under the direction of President (and former prime minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan – has cracked down on any and all institutions not in line with his Islamist agenda.

In the past, Erdogan has drawn ire for commenting that Islam defines the role of women as motherhood, adding “You cannot explain this to feminists because they don’t accept the concept of motherhood.” In an earlier comment, he told a delegation of women’s rights activists “I don’t believe in equality between men and women.”

His deputy prime minister, Bulent Arinc, was met with derision after saying that women should refrain from laughing in public because it’s immodest.

The current demonstrations sought to call attention to the dire position of women in Turkey, which was ranked 130 out of 145 states in the 2015 Global Gender Gap Index and last in Europe and Central Asia.

In addition, it has been reported that 40% of women in Turkey suffer from violent abuse from a spouse or family member. The report, compiled by Turkey’s Ministry of Family and Social Policy, had been long suppressed.

Violence against women in Turkey has skyrocketed since Erdogan came to power. According to the Turkish Ministry of Justice, from 2003, when Erdogan took power, until 2010, there was a 1,400 percent increase in the number of murders of women.

In 2014, there were at least 287 cases of women being murdered because they asked for a divorce.

According to the U.N., Turkish women are 10 times more likely to be victims of domestic violence than women in any other European country.

Professor Aysel Çelikel, head of the Support for Contemporary Living Association, or ÇYDD, cited the root cause behind the alarming rise in violence against women saying, “Women’s rights are going backward as much as [Islamist] conservatism is increasing in society.”

The sickening footage of women being abused by plain-clothed and uniformed police (see video below) is an indication of how far Turkish women will need to push back to obtain their rights.

In the words of one protester, “You see the power of women. We are here despite every obstacle and we will continue to fight for our cause.”

Turkish women will need to dig in for a long and hard fight.

Watch women defy the ban on demonstrations in honor of International Women’s Day. Note: The plain clothed men in the video footage are almost entirely police.

Categories: Erdogan, Islam and human rights, Islam and women, Turkey
Tags: Erdogan, Islam and human rights, Islam and women, Turkey

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Turkey and Saudi Arabia hit back for the Obama-Putin Syrian pact

March 5, 2016

Turkey and Saudi Arabia hit back for the Obama-Putin Syrian pact, DEBKAfile, March 5, 2016

Zaman_4.3.16

Headline of last issue of Turkey’s Zaman before government takeover

Turkey and Saudi Arabia have taken separate steps to break free from Washington’s dictates on the Syrian issue and show their resistance to Russia’s highhanded intervention in Syria. They are moving on separate tracks to signal their defiance and frustration with the exclusive pact between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin which ostracizes Riyadh and Ankara on the Syrian question.

Turkey in particular, saddled with three million Syrian refugees (Jordan hosts another 1.4 million), resents Washington’s deaf ear to its demand for no-fly zones in northern and southern Syria as shelters against Russian and Syrian air raids.

Last year, President Reccep Erdogan tried in desperation to partially open the door for a mass exit of Syrian refugees to Europe. He was aghast when he found that most of the million asylum-seekers reaching Europe were not Syrians, but Muslims from Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, in search of a better life in the West. Most of the Syrians stayed put in the camps housing them in southern Turkey.

Even the Turkish intelligence agency MIT was hard put to explain this setback. According to one partial explanation, organized crime gangs of Middle East dope and arms smugglers, in which ISIS is heavily represented, seized control of the refugee traffic heading to Europe from Libya, Iraq and Syria.
This human traffic netted the gangs an estimated $1 billion.

Turkey was left high and dry with millions of Syrian refugees on its hands and insufficient international aid to supply their needs. No less painful, Bashar Assad was still sitting pretty in Damascus.

Finding Assad firmly entrenched in Damascus is no less an affront for Saudi Arabia. Added to this, the Syrian rebel groups supported by Riyadh are melting away under continuing Russian-backed government assaults enabled by the Obama-Putin “ceasefire” deal’

The oil kingdom’s rulers find it particularly hard to stomach the sight of Iran and Hizballah going from strength to strength both in Syria and Lebanon.

The Turks threatened to strike back, but confined themselves to artillery shelling of Syrian areas close to the border. While appearing to be targeting the Kurdish YPD-YPG militia moving into these areas, the Turkish guns were in fact pounding open spaces with no Kurdish presence. Their purpose was to draw a line around the territory which they have marked out for a northern no-fly or security zone.

Saturday, March 5, President Erdogan proposed building a “new city” of 4,500 square kilometers on northern Syrian soil, to shelter the millions of war refugees. He again tried putting the idea to President Obama.

The Saudi Defense Minister, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman put together a more high-risk and comprehensive scheme. Its dual purpose is to hit pro-Iranian Hizballah from the rear and forcied [Sic] the two big powers to treat Riyadh seriously as a player for resolving the Syrian imbroglio.

The scheme hinged in the cancellation of a $4 billion Saudi pledge of military aid to the Lebanese army, thereby denying Hizballah, which is a state within the state and also dominates the government, access to Saudi funding. But it also pulled the rug from under Lebanon’s hopes for combating ISIS and Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front, which have grabbed a strip of Lebanese territory in the northern Beqaa Valley.

The Saudi action, by weakening the Lebanese military and its ability to shore up central government in Beirut, risks tipping Lebanon over into another civil war.

The London Economist commented that this Saudi step against Lebanon seems “amateurish.” Under the young prince (30), “Saudi Arabia sometimes acts with bombast and violence that makes it look like the Donald Trump of the Arab World,” in the view of the magazine.

But the Saudi step had a third less obvious motive, a poke in the eye for President Obama for espousing Iran’s claim to Middle East hegemony. Resentment on this score is common to the Saudi royal house and the Erdogan government.

As a crude provocation for Washington, the Turkish president ordered police Friday, March 4, to raid Turkey’s largest newspaper Zaman, after an Istanbul court ruling placed it under government control.

The newspaper released its final edition ahead of the raid declaring the takeover a “shameful day for free press” in the country. A group of protesters outside the building was dispersed with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons.

Zaman is owned by the exiled Muslim cleric Felhullah Gulen, who heads the powerful Hizmet movement, which strongly contests Erdogan government policies. A former ally of the president, the two fell out years ago. In 1999, after he was accused of conspiring to overthrow the government in Ankara, Gulen fled to the United States.

Today, the exiled cleric runs the Hizmet campaign against the Turkish president from his home in Pennsylvania, for which he has been declared a terrorist and many of his supporters arrested.

The takeover of Zaman was intended both as a blow by Ankara against Muslim circles opposed to the Erdogan regime and as an act of retaliation against the United States, for harboring its opponents and sidelining Turkey from Obama administration plans for Syria.

Oddly enough, the Turkish president finds himself in a position analogous to Egyptian President Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi, who is at war with the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement which enjoys Obama’s support.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has his own dilemmas. Struggling to keep his balance while walking a tight rope on the Syrian situation between Israel’s longstanding ties with Washington and handling the Russian tiger lurking next door, he is in no hurry to welcome Erdogan’s determined overtures for the resumption of normal relations.

Turkey is in trouble with both major world powers and, after living for five years under hostile abuse from Ankara, Israel does not owe Erdogan a helping had for pulling him out of the mess.

Categories: Assad, Egypt, Erdogan, Foreign policy, Iranian proxies, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood, Nursa Front, Obama - Middle East, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Russia - Turkey, Saudi Arabia
Tags: Assad, Egypt, Erdogan, Foreign Policy, Iranian proxies, Israel, Muslim Brotherhood, Nursa Front, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Russia - Turkey, Saudi Arabia

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Turkey has the right to conduct operations in Syria, elsewhere to combat terror threats:

February 21, 2016

Turkey has the right to conduct operations in Syria, elsewhere to combat terror threats: Erdoğan

ISTANBUL – Anadolu Agency

Sunday,February 21 2016

Source: Turkey has the right to conduct operations in Syria, elsewhere to combat terror threats: Erdoğan – MIDEAST

AA Photo

AA Photo

Turkey has the right to conduct operations not only in Syria but also any other place in which there are terrorist organizations that target Turkey, said President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“Turkey has every right to conduct operations in Syria and the places where terror organizations are nested with regards to the struggle against the threats that Turkey faces,” Erdoğan said Feb. 20, during the event “UNESCO City of Gastronomy: Gaziantep,” which was organized to celebrate the inclusion of Turkey’s southeastern province of Gaziantep on the list of UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network in the gastronomy category.

Erdoğan’s remarks came one day after he and U.S. President Barack Obama talked on the phone for more than an hour regarding the latest developments in Syria and Turkey.

During his address on Feb. 20, Erdoğan said the situation had “absolutely nothing to do with the sovereignty rights of the states that cannot take control of their territorial integrity.”

“On the contrary, this has to do with the will Turkey shows to protect its sovereignty rights,” he said. “We except attitudes to prevent our country’s right [to self-defense] directly as an initiative against Turkey’s entity – no matter where it comes from.”

Erdoğan said the point Turkey has reached is a place of self-defense and that no one had the right to restrict that right.

“The place where we have come is a point of self-defense. No one can restrict Turkey’s right to self-defense in the face of terror acts that have targeted Turkey; they cannot prevent [Turkey] from using it,” Erdoğan said.

Turkey has been shelling targets belonging to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the military wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey sees as a terrorist organization due to its links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), in Syria since Feb. 13.

Turkey and the U.S. differ on the designation of the PYD and YPG and relations between the two NATO allies have been tense for more than a month. While Turkey regards the two groups as a terrorist organization, the U.S. sees the PYD and YPG as an important partner in its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria.

“Turkey will use its right to expand its rules of engagement beyond [responding to] actual attacks against it and to encompass all terror threats, including PYD and Daesh in particular,” Erdoğan said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

His remarks came after a suicide bomb attack in the Turkish capital Ankara killed 28 people and wounded 61 others on Feb. 17.

The Turkish government stated that the Ankara attack was carried out jointly by a YPG member – a Syrian national identified as 1992-born Salih Neccar – and PKK members.

The YPG denied the attack, while the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) claimed the attack, saying it was carried out by an operative named Abdülbaki Sönmez.

Erdoğan said that while Turkey was defending itself, they would treat anyone that stands in Turkey’s way as a “terrorist and treat them accordingly.”

“I especially want this to be known this way,” he added.

Erdoğan also lashed out at countries where similar terror attacks have taken place, criticizing them for severely reacting to the attacks when it was their country at stake but “preaching only patience and resoluteness” when it comes to Turkey.

This is “disingenuous,” Erdoğan said.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Erdogan, Islam, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Jihad, Middle East, Middle East War, PYD, Russia, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey, USA, YPG

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From Hitler to Erdogan: Liberal Passivity in the Face of Another Rising Fascist Empire

February 19, 2016

From Hitler to Erdogan: Liberal Passivity in the Face of Another Rising Fascist Empire

By Saladdin Ahmed

Thu, 18 Feb 2016, 01:07 PM

Source: From Hitler to Erdogan: Liberal Passivity in the Face of Another Rising Fascist Empire — The Jerusalem Post

Had Hitler been confronted in Spain, the world could have been spared World War II, saving many millions of lives both in Germany and elsewhere. Instead, international passivity in the face of Hitler’s aggressions in Spain from 1936 to 1938 emboldened him to invade the rest of Europe and launch his genocidal campaigns. Today, 80 years on, Erdogan is building a similar fascist front, and the revolution in North and West Kurdistan stands alone in its uncompromising opposition to that Neo-Ottoman project.

In 1936, the fate of the anarcho-communist revolution against fascists and nationalists led by Franco was met with similar indifference on the part of foreign governments. The struggling republic, which was born after the fall of the monarchy only five years prior, had the sympathy of liberal governments in the West (with the exception of some Catholic and conservative fractions that sympathized with the nationalists), but it was a cowardly sympathy completely lacking in action.

Progressive intellectuals around the world recognized that the Spanish Civil War would be a turning point in history, that it was the last hope to stop fascism from spreading to all of Europe. Yet, in spite of the tens of thousands of volunteers who joined the International Brigades, not a single Western government came to the aid of the poorly-armed revolutionaries. This continued even as Hitler and Mussolini ordered warplanes to bombard Barcelona and Madrid on daily bases and openly shipped weaponry and troops to bolster Franco’s forces. As the Munich Agreement proved, as late as October 1938, France and Britain were still trying to avoid any confrontation with Hitler, preferring to submit to his bullying politics.

Today’s Middle East and North Africa share striking parallels with late 1930s Europe. It is a region teeming with fascism, albeit of an Islamist persuasion, and at the very heart there is again a powerful populist leader with a deadly vision for the world.

Notwithstanding the influence of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, Erdogan is for Sunni Islamism what Hitler was for fascism. Turkey under Erdogan has been the single most powerful ally of Sunni Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas to Al-Nusra and the Islamic State. Moreover, Erdogan’s popularity among Sunni Islamists of all backgrounds exceeds that of any other populist leader, and, to make things worse, his agenda has gone largely unnoticed, especially amidst the chaos in Iraq and Syria.

While Kurds and their allied progressive forces struggle to stop this rise of Islamism, the West has done little more than yield to Erdogan’s bullying politics with bad faith, hoping that he would one day stop supporting the Islamic State and other Islamist forces. Passive solidarity or sympathy alone will not enable Kurds and allied forces to stop Islamists in Syria. This is particularly the case given that Turkey, with the silent approval of NATO, continues to use all its power to destroy Kurds in both Turkey and Syria, just as Nazi Germany was directly involved in suppressing the ant-fascist revolution in Spain.

If the world remains reluctant to stop Erdogan, the impending disaster will indeed be comparable to World War II. While his two-faced politics with the liberal West – again resembling those of Hitler from 1936 to 1938 – continue for the time being, Erdogan’s imperialist Caliphate is already taking shape. At the same time, his politics of blackmailing the European Union with the refugee crisis and the United States with the prospect of (largely unmaterialized) support in the war on the Islamic State have proven extremely effective.

Erdogan intends to establish an Islamist empire by 2023, and if the popular support he enjoys at present is any indication, the coming empire will have the backing of the vast majority of Sunni Islamists. Turkey’s genocidal campaign against Kurds is therefore just the beginning. With time, the world will no doubt realize that Erdogan is a fatal threat to international peace; unfortunately, however, it will likely be too late. Just as world leaders were too late in putting a stop to Hitler in 1939, just as they failed to support Catalonian, Basque, and Spanish progressives, not to mention Jews, the world today stands idly by as the revolutionaries in Kurdistan confront NATO’s second largest army.

saladdinahmed.com

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Erdogan, Islamic Jihad, Islamic slaughter, Islamic State, Israel, Jihad, Middle East War, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Terrorism, Turkey, USA

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Russian-Turkish clash building up over Syria

February 14, 2016

Russian-Turkish clash building up over Syria, DEBKAfile, February 14, 2016

Turkish-self-propelled_howitzers_13.2.16

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan clearly took a calculated risk when he ordered a two-our cross-border artillery bombardment Saturday, Feb. 13 of Syrian army forces positioned around the northern Syrian town of Azaz and the Kurdish YPG militia units which two days earlier took control of the former Syrian military air base of Minagh some six kilometers from the Turkish border.

Kurdish troops backed by the Russian air force seized that base last week from rebel militias as part of the operation for cutting the rebel groups under siege in Aleppo from their supply routes. The Turkish bombardment was therefore an indirect attack on the Russian forces backing pro-Assad forces against the rebels in the Syria war.

Erdogan knows that Moscow hasn’t finished settling accounts with Turkey for the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 on Nov. 24 and is spoiling for more punishment. After that incident, the Russians deployed top-of-line S-400 ground-to-air missile batteries and advanced Sukhoi Su-35 warplanes to their base in Latakia near the Turkish border. Ankara therefore limited its strike to a two-hour artillery bombardment from Turkish soil, reasoning that a Turkish warplane anywhere near the Syrian border would be shot down instantly.

Emboldened by the delay in the Russian response, the Turks took another step: Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu threatened the Kurdish YPG militia with more attacks if they failed to withdraw from the Menagh air base.

Although the Turkish prime minister had called on “allies and supporters” to back the operation against the Russian-backed Syrian Kurds, Washington took the opposite line by urging Turkey, a fellow member of NATO, to desist from any further attacks.

Washington’s concern is obvious. An outright clash between Turkey and Russia would entitle Ankara to invoke the NATO charter and demand allied protection for a member state under attack.

The Obama administration would have had to spurn this appeal for three reasons:

1. To avoid getting mixed up in a military clash between two countries, just as the US kept its powder dry in the Russian-Ukraine confrontation after Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in February 2014.

2. To avoid upsetting the secret Obama-Putin deal on the allocation of spheres of influence in Syria: the Americans have taken the regions east of the Euphrates River, and the Russians, the west.

The Kurdish YPG militia forces near Aleppo and the city itself come under the Russian area of influence.

3. Regional tensions were tightened another notch Saturday by Russian comments: Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said that his country and the West have “slid into a new Cold War period,” and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a third World War is actually underway -“I call this struggle a third World War by other means.,” he said.

Washington will avoid any action that risks further stoking this high state of international tension, but will act instead to de-escalate the cross-border Turkish-Russian confrontation over Syria.

All eyes are now on Moscow, Much depends on Russia’s response to the artillery bombardment of its Syrian and Kurdish allies. It is up to Putin to decide when and how to strike back – if at all.

Categories: Assad, Erdogan, Foreign policy, Iranian proxies, Kurdish fighters, NATO, Obama - Middle East, Russia - Syrian war, Russia - Turkey, Turkey
Tags: Assad, Erdogan, Foreign Policy, Iranian proxies, Kurdish fighters, Nato, Russia - Syrian war, Russia - Turkey, Turkey

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Turkey planning $5 billion for Gaza seaport

February 5, 2016

Turkey planning $5 billion for Gaza seaport, Israel National News, Ari Yashar, February 5, 2016

In the midst of ongoing normalization talks with Israel, Turkey is planning to invest $5 billion in reconstructing the Hamas stronghold of Gaza including a seaport – which Israel has fiercely opposed due to the blatant threat of weapons smuggling.

The Turkish Hurriyet Daily News on Friday reported that a team of the Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) announced the expensive rebuilding plan, which is being prepared by the Center for Multilateral Trade Studies at the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV).

The plans to reconstruct the Hamas-held region came after meetings with Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas officials, as well as Israeli officials.

“As the Turkish business world, we can fulfill this work,” said TOBB chairman Rifat Hisarciklioglu, who led the group. TEPAV claims that by 2020, Gaza will be “unlivable” with no drinking water left.

Indicating the subversive nature of the plan, TEPAV Executive Director Guven Sak said, “we made a strategic plan. A Gaza port will be one of the most important projects in this plan.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has rejected the idea of a port or lifting the maritime blockade on Gaza, which is meant to block the influx of weapons and which is fully legal according to international law, contrary to the claims of Israel’s opponents. Surprisingly, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel (Jewish Home) in December called to build a seaport in Gaza.

The matter of the naval blockade has been a key sticking point in the reconciliation talks with Turkey, which continues to firmly support the Hamas terrorist organization. Turkey also continues to host Hamas terrorists, including those planning attacks in Israel.

With Israeli permission

Regarding the Turkish plan, TEPAV’s Sak said, “Turkish contractors will be an important part of this project,” while Hisarciklioglu said, “our contractors are materializing world-class works. They rank second in the world.”

The group met with Israeli officials unnamed in the report, and also met with Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah as well as several PA ministers and officials, in addition to Hamas officials and the Gaza Chamber of Commerce.

Israel gave the Turkish team permission to visit Gaza and plan the project according to the report, in an apparent sign of the growing rapprochement between the two states.

“It is not possible to go to Gaza without the permission of Israel,” said Hisarciklioglu. “But we did this. This is an indicator that the tensions between Turkey and Israel are easing.”

Israel’s normalization talks with Turkey have caused outrage in Egypt, where officials have urged Israel not to normalize ties.

Turkish defense sources revealed in December that Turkey is primarily interested in rapprochement so as to buy Israeli military hardware, with Ankara interested in buying more advanced Israeli drones as well as reconnaissance and surveillance systems for its fighter jets.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in December also said that Turkey is only interested in the normalization talks so as to “benefit…Palestine and Gaza.”

Senior Israeli security sources for their part said they doubt Turkey is serious about rapprochement, noting on the crisis in ties with Russia – a key gas supplier for Turkey – that apparently prompted the desire for natural gas trade with Israel as Ankara hurts financially.

Bilateral ties disintegrated in the infamous 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla incident, when IDF soldiers were forced to board the Turkish ship that had ignored repeated warnings to stop its attempt to breach the maritime blockade on Gaza.

The soldiers were brutally attacked by IHH Islamist extremists on board wielding knives and metal bars, and had no choice but to open fire, killing ten of the IHH members on board. After an investigation, Israeli authorities discovered the vessel to be carrying no humanitarian aid, despite the flotilla’s claims that it was on a “humanitarian” mission.

Categories: Egypt, Erdogan, Flotilla to Nowhere, Gaza Seaport, Hamas, Israel, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority
Tags: Egypt, Erdogan, Flotilla to newhere, Gaza Seaport, Hamas, Israel, Netanyahu, Palestinian Authority

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Turkey’s All-Out War on Kurds and Media

January 28, 2016

Turkey’s All-Out War on Kurds and Media, Gatestone Institute, Uzay Bulut, January 28, 2016

(Oh, nonsense. According to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the Middle East would be a place of happiness and tranquility if Israel simply ended her occupation of Palestine and committed suicide. Turkey good, Israel bad. Besides, Turkey is a valued member of NATO. /sarc — DM)

♦ On January 20, Turkish police opened fire at a group of civilians who were holding up white flags as they tried to remove the dead and wounded from the street in Cizre, one of the Kurdish towns under Turkish military siege. The Turkish police murdered two people from the group and wounded 12 others.

♦ As the military siege and attacks in Turkey’s Kurdistan intensify with each passing day, the Kurdish media are under a new wave of repression — through arbitrary arrests, psychical violence or blocks on their website content.

♦ “Our only aim today was to share what had happened in Van with the public in a healthy way. Today it was not us, but the people’s right to information that was taken into custody. We will not be silent.” — Reporter Bekir Gunes (from IMC TV), on Twitter. He was taken into custody for trying to report on the murders, but later released.

Since August, Turkey has been bombing and destroying its Kurdistan region in the same pattern: The Turkish government first declares curfews on Kurdish districts; then Turkish armed forces, with heavy weaponry, attack Kurdish neighborhoods and everyone living there. Much of this slaughter is presumably due to the Kurds having gained a large number of seats the latest elections — thereby preventing Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan from attaining the super-majority he sought in order to change the Constitution and become “Sultan” for life, to rule as an autocrat. Kurds are also now asking for their right to rule themselves in their native lands, where they have lived for centuries.

Curfews in 19 Kurdish towns (from August 10, 2015 to the present) have penned Kurds in and enabled Turks to murder them more easily. So far, according to the Diyarbakir Branch of the Human Rights Association (IHD), in the past few months, 170 civilian Kurds have been killed. Of these, 29 were children, 39 were women and 102 were men. At least 140 people were wounded; some have lost eyes, legs or arms; others are the victims of brain trauma.

On January 20, Turkish police opened fire at a group of civilians who were holding up white flags as they tried to remove the dead and wounded from the street in Cizre, one of the Kurdish towns under Turkish military siege. The Turkish police murdered two people from the group and wounded 12 others.

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On Jan. 20, Turkish police in Cizre opened fire at a group of Kurdish civilians who were holding up white flags as they tried to remove the dead and wounded from the street. The Turkish police murdered two people from the group and wounded 12 others.

Refik Tekin, a cameraman of IMC TV and an award-winning journalist, was among the wounded but kept filming the attack even after he was shot. He is now in a hospital.

“The state implements a policy of subjugation on the Kurdish demand for a political status. It has become clear once again that this problem is not about ditches [which some Kurdish youths have dug, over objections by officials, to try to stop the progress of the Turkish troops]. The state attempts to annihilate the Kurdish demand for political status by using the ditches as an excuse,”said Raci Bilici, the head of the Diyarbakir branch of the Human Rights Association.

As the military siege and attacks in Turkey’s Kurdistan intensify with each passing day, the Kurdish media are under a new wave of repression — through arbitrary arrests, psychical violence or blocks on their website content.

On January 1, police used water cannons and tear gas against local people marching from central Diyarbakir to the district of Sur to protest the curfews. Meanwhile, masked Turkish police detained Baran Ok, a cameraman of Kurdsat News Channel. Ferat Mehmetoglu, the local representative of Kurdsat, kept trying to explain to the police that Baran Ok was his cameraman. Disregarding Mehmetoglu’s pleas, the masked police drove off at high speed. At one point, after Mehmetoglu had gotten in front of the police vehicle, he barely avoided being run over when the officers drove off with his cameraman.

Meanwhile, the Dicle News Agency (DIHA) alleged that it obtained a restricted and official document, signed by the local Tank Battalion Command (part of the Turkish armed forces). The document instructs the Turkish armed forces operating in Kurdish towns and offers impunity: “No personnel shall forget not even for a moment that any personnel’s restraint from using arms for fear of prosecution might have very grave consequences, result in martyrs on our side; endanger the survival of the state and nation, [and] help traitors, terrorists and enemies of the state feel more powerful,” it said in part.

A day after DIHA covered this alleged document; its website was blocked for the 28th time by the Turkish Telecommunications Authority (TIB).

On January 5, Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP Ferhat Encu, in a parliamentary motion, asked Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu about the document. He has not yet received a reply. No Turkish authority has so far either confirmed or denied the existence of such a document.

Kurdish journalists are also exposed to physical violence. On January 5, the special operations police forcibly gathered 37 people from their homes and took them to an indoor sports hall. One of them was Nedim Oruc, a journalist who had extensively covered the military assaults against the Kurdish town Silopi.

At first, no information could be obtained about Oruc who, according to DIHA news agency, had been battered, dragged on the ground and kidnapped by police in an armored vehicle. As a result of the public pressure brought to bear by the Twitter hashtag #NedimOrucNerede Where is Nedim Oruc), Silopi Security Directorate admitted that Oruc was in custody. He is now in Sirnak Prison.

The same day, the police raided a student dormitory and houses in the province of Van. The all-female, pro-Kurdish Jin (Women’s) News Agency reporter and university student Rojda Oguz and many other students were arrested. Rojda is now in Van prison.

“The Turkish public has a right to information from a variety of sources and perspectives, but the government is clearly trying to stifle pro-Kurdish news outlets with these arrests,” said Nina Ognianova, Europe and Central Asia Program Coordinator of Committee to Protect Journalists. “We call on Turkish authorities to release Nedim Oruç and Rojda Oğuz without delay and to stop harassing and obstructing journalists.”

On January 9, the “Women for Peace” group staged a demonstration in Izmir’s Bornova district to protest the recent military siege and attacks against Kurdish districts. Police detained theEvrensel reporter Eda Aktas, along with 12 others, while she was reporting on the protest — on the grounds that the press statement of the protesters violated the article 301 of the penal code, which makes it illegal “to insult Turkey, the Turkish nation, or Turkish government institutions.”

On January 5, in Silopi, three female Kurdish politicians — Sêvê Demir, Pakize Nayir, and Fatma Uyar — were murdered by state forces.

On January 10, in Izmir, when the Kurdish Congress of Free Women (KJA) organized a protest to commemorate the slain politicians, the police attacked the protestors, and detained 35 — including Dilek Aykan, the co-head of the Izmir branch of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

The police also prevented Serfiraz Gezgin, a reporter from the Kurdish DIHA agency, and Hatice Erhan, a reporter from the left-wing magazine Kizil Bayrak, from filming the police crackdown. Other journalists just barely stopped police from detaining Gezgin and Erhan.

For months, the Turkish armed forces have been using hospitals and schools as military quarters, threatening, and even murdering medical personnel, and forcing thousands of Kurds to flee their native lands.

The state violence in Turkish Kurdistan escalates daily: On January 10, Turkish soldiers murdered 12 Kurds at close range in the province of Van. The office of the governor of Van announced that 12 PKK members were killed in the province. Photos of the slain Kurds were shared on the social media, apparently by Turkish security forces. A YouTube account called “Special Operations Team,” for instance, published a video entitled “The carcasses of the PKK – Van/Edremit” showing the bodies of slain Kurds, with upbeat music playing in the background.

Reporter Bekir Gunes, and cameraman Mehmet Dursun, working for IMC TV, were trying to follow up on news concerning the murders, but were prevented from doing so by the police. Both were taken into custody and released 11 hours later. “Our only aim today was to share what had happened in Van with the public in a healthy way,” Gunes wrote on his Twitter account. “Today it was not us, but the people’s right to information that was taken into custody. We will not be silent.”[1]

According to the 2015 World Press Freedom Index of Reporters without Borders, Turkey, out of 180 states, ranked 149.[2] “Turkey’s ‘underlying situation’ score,” it wrote, “covering such areas as cyber-censorship, lawsuits, dismissals of critical journalists and gag orders — actually worsened, showing that freedom of information continues to decline.” [3]

Lately, pressures on free speech and free press have been gaining new momentum in Turkey. The latest victim was a Turkish comedian and television host, Beyazit Ozturk (“Beyaz”) known for being apolitical and pro-establishment.

Beyaz found himself in the midst of violent threats after a teacher from Diyarbakir phoned into his popular live chat show and called for an end to violence in the region. She said: “Children are dying here. All of these bomb sounds, bullet sounds… People — especially babies and children — are struggling with a lack of water, with starvation. Please show some sensitivity. See us, hear our voice, extend your hand to us. Please let no more people die. Let no more children die.”

Beyaz thanked the caller, said that he too supported her message of peace and asked the audience to applaud her.

Kanal D [Channel D], the mainstream TV channel broadcasting the show, issued a statement saying they were tricked into allowing the caller on. The television channel’s officials added: “Dogan TV and Kanal D have always been on the side of the state from day one.”

The Turkish ministry of national education started an exhaustive hunt to find the caller. They said that no teacher with that name admitted to having called the show.

The teacher on the phone had not even said who killers were, but for some unfathomable reason, the Turkish nationalists, including state authorities, appear to have taken the remark personally, and interpreted it as an “insult to Turkish security forces” and “terrorist propaganda.”

Beyaz thereupon received a negative reaction from Turkish nationalists, and even death threats on social media. Many Twitter users and pro-government media outlets accused him “of allowing PKK propaganda on his show” and “not showing the required reaction to the caller.”

A popular hashtag said: “Beyaz! Apologize from the Turkish Police!”

A masked individual, allegedly a special operations police officer, posted on YouTube a video entitled, “We will not forget,” threatening Beyaz for allowing a caller from Diyarbakir to say on his show that children are dying.

In the end, Beyaz appeared on Kanal D again, apologizing:

“I am a son of a police officer. Whatever the entire Turkish nation thinks about that place [Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast], I also have the same thoughts. Of course, with all our hearts and souls, we want the terrorist organization to lay down its arms and this issue to be resolved as soon as possible. May Allah make it easy for all of our security forces in the southeast. We are on the side of our state and our nation.”

Finally, the police found the “criminal.” Ayse Celik, the art teacher who phoned in, is now being prosecuted for “making propaganda for the terrorist organization”. Eleven lawyers in the province of Antep who declared their support for the Celik’s message are also being prosecuted for “terrorist propaganda.”

This is the level of political and social pressure that a TV personality — who has had nothing to do with political activism throughout his entire career — is exposed to, in response to the most innocent and humanitarian wishes for peace uttered by a caller on his show. Imagine the enormity of the pressure on Kurds and journalists who try to expose the real crimes Turkey is committing against its Kurdish minority.

_______________________

[1] On January 10, which marks the Working Journalists Day in Turkey, Murat Verim, a Kurdish reporter of Dicle News Agency (DIHA), was detained following a police raid on his home in Mardin’s Dargecit district. On January 12, gendarmerie special operations forces attacked Mursel Coban, a journalist and photographer, as he was reporting on the funeral of the youths murdered in the Sur district of Diyarbakir. Coban said that the police beat him and tried to detain him, while threatening him with “disappearance.”

[2] In 2014, Turkey ranked 154 in the list. “Turkey’s rise in the index must be put in context,” wrote Reporters Without Borders. “It was due above all to the conditional release in 2014 of around 40 imprisoned journalists who nonetheless continue to face prosecution and could be detained again at any time.

[3] In another mass arrest on December 20, 2011, 58 people (many of whom were Kurdish journalists) were taken into custody in a police raid on their offices or houses in 8 provinces.

Categories: Erdogan, Human rights, Kurds, Media, Turkey
Tags: Erdogan, human rights, Kurds, Media, Turkey

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A new US-Russian-Turkish military buildup over Syria: In unison or at odds?

January 25, 2016

A new US-Russian-Turkish military buildup over Syria: In unison or at odds? DEBKAfile, January 25, 2016

TurkishAirBase480

The US and Russia are in the process of a military buildup in the Kurdish areas of northern Syria. It is ranged along a narrow strip of land 85 km long, stretching from Hassakeh in the east up to the Kurdish town of Qamishli on the Syrian-Turkish border. Facing them from across that border is a parallel buildup of Turkish strength. This highly-charged convergence of three foreign armies athwart a tense borderland is reported here by DEBKAfile’s military sources. It is too soon to determine whether the three armies are operating in sync or at odds, especially in view of the bitter relations between Moscow and Ankara.

US Forces

American Special Operations troops and Air Force attack helicopters landed first at Remelan airport. They are the first US troops to operate from a ground base in Syria, accommodated in living quarters built for them in advance by a US engineering corps unit. The airport runway has been widened for US warplanes.

American Special Operations troops and Air Force attack helicopters landed first at Remelan airport. They are the first US troops to operate from a ground base in Syria, accommodated in living quarters built for them in advance by a US engineering corps unit. The airport runway has been widened for US warplanes.

Russian Forces

Next came two Russian military missions on Jan. 16. One group, led by a general and consisting of air force and Special Operations officers, is preparing to take over a small abandoned base in Syrian army-controlled territory just 80 km from the new US facility at Remelan, and adapt it for Russian use.

The other group, which consists of intelligence officers – some from Russia’s FSB federal security service, the FSB – indicates that Moscow has decided it is high time for professionals to protect the classified information moving around the Russian Task Force in Syria and safeguard it from reaching the wrong hands. .

The abandoned base is less than 3.5 km from the Turkish border, and would act as a Russian barrier between US forces in northern Syria and the Turkish border contingents.

Turkish Forces

This Russian deployment set off alarm bells in Ankara, and so the Turkish army responded with the third troop buildup, arraying tanks and mobile artillery on the border across from Qamishli.

Over the weekend, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan stated, “We have said this from the beginning: we won’t tolerate such formations (in northern Syria) along the area stretching from the Iraqi border up to the Mediterranean.”

At the same time, US Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday, Jan. 23, that the U.S. and Turkey are prepared for a military solution against ISIS in Syria should the Syrian government and rebel-opposition forces fail to reach a peace agreement during its upcoming meeting in Geneva.

However, Ankara views its war on terror as focused on both Kurdish separatists and ISIS, which is subjecting Turkey to multi-casualty attacks.

DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources note that Turkey’s military options are very limited. Its leaders know they dare not put a foot wrong because the Russian force in Syria is just waiting for an opportunity to avenge the downing of a Russian Su-24 warplane by the Turkish air force on November 24.

Another group of actors stirring the pot in northern Syria is the Kurds, particularly the YPG militia, the only fighting force in Syria capable of defeating ISIS, which has been reinforced by the Iraqi autonomous Kurdish region’s Peshmerga, as well as the outlawed Turkish PKK Kurdish organization.

At this stage, it is impossible to determine how this triple buildup will play out tomorrow – how far the US and Russia are in concert, at what point they may decide to vie for footholds in the Kurdish region of northern Syria and how far the Turks are clued into the joint US-Russian strategy for bludgeoning ISIS.

Categories: Erdogan, Foreign policy, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, Obama and Iran, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Syria, Obama and Turkey, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Turkey
Tags: Erdogan, Foreign Policy, Islamic State, Kurdish fighters, Kurds, Obama and Iran, Obama and Islamic State, Obama and Syria, Obama and Turkey, Putin, Russia - Syrian war, Turkey

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Russian Media Outlets Slam Turkey: Discuss Option Of Nuclear Attack On It, Accuse President Erdogan Of Supporting ISIS

January 19, 2016

Russian Media Outlets Slam Turkey: Discuss Option Of Nuclear Attack On It, Accuse President Erdogan Of Supporting ISIS, MEMRI, January 19, 2016

The Russian-Turkish conflict is reflected not only in the military, political and economic tension between the two countries but also in the Russian media, which expresses extreme hostility towards Turkey and its president.

This is evident, for example, in articles in English published recently on the Russian websites NEO[1] and Pravda.[2] One of these articles cites “a leading military expert” as saying that, in the event of a war between the two countries, “Russia will have to use nuclear weapons immediately, because the existence of the nation will be at stake.” The others focus on Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, presenting him as an enabler and supporter of the Islamic State (ISIS) and calling him a “madman” and a “murderer.” One even suggests that Turkey was “a prime mover in the [November 13] Paris attack.”

The following are excerpts from the articles.

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The Russian bear stamps out terror, but Erdogan prepares to stab it in the back (Sputniknews.com, November 24, 2015)

‘It Would Be A Mistake For Russia Not To Use Nuclear Weapons’ In A War With Turkey

A Pravda.ru article titled “‘Scenarios For Real War Between Russia And Turkey” states:

“The possibility of a full-fledged war between Russia and Turkey has been a talk of the day for conspiracy theorists, analysts, couch warriors and experts on international politics for several weeks already… Let’s assume that a real war sparks between Russia and Turkey (NATO) – what kind of war would it be? What results would it bring?

“Politonline.ru^{^[3]}discussed the topic with leading military experts that follow various approaches to international armed conflicts.

“A leading expert of the Center for Military and Political Studies,^{^[4]}Mikhail Alexandrov, is convinced that in case of a real war, Russia will have to use nuclear weapons immediately, because the existence of the nation will be at stake.

“‘It would be a mistake for Russia not to use nuclear weapons in this case,’ [he said]. ‘The West and Turkey will try to drag us into a war such as the Crimean war, where escalation will be slow, combat actions in the Caucasus will erupt, and the Russian group in Syria will be destroyed. The West will be helping Turkey – there will be military units and state-of-the-art aviation deployed there. It will be a war of the wearing-out strategy’, he said.

“‘From my point of view, should the war with Turkey start, it must be a determined, ambitious and quick war. Russia will have to strike a nuclear blow on main infrastructure and military targets in Turkey immediately’…

“‘During the first few hours of this war, Russia must destroy the entire military infrastructure of Turkey’, Mikhail Alexandrov said. ‘One does not even have to use ballistic missiles in this strike – Iskander-M with nuclear warheads would be enough. As soon as the military infrastructure is destroyed, the Russian troops will go and take the area of the straits’, he added.

“‘The West will not even have time to do anything. European countries will be so horrified that they will not even dare to intervene. The Americans will face a choice – either they begin a strategic nuclear war against Russia or not. As a result, Russia will take the area of the straits, and the rest will be left to Turkey’, said the expert.

“In turn, non-nuclear scenario of a hypothetical possibility, but deputy head of the Tauric information-analytical center at Russian Institute for Strategic Studies,^{^[5]}Sergey Ermakov, suggested a non-nuclear scenario.

“‘Hopefully, the real conflict will not happen. Using nuclear weapons is an extreme option. As for a regional war, there are non-military tools in the region. There are many anti-Turkish players in the region. In the case of a military conflict, the Kurds will rip the region to pieces, so for Turkey, a war is a game not even with the zero, but with a negative sum’, he said.

“‘If Turkey provokes the conflict, NATO may not resort to the fifth article. Aggression is one thing, but a country asking for a conflict and pulling NATO into it is another thing. In such cases, NATO tries not to get involved’, Sergei Ermakov said.

“‘No one wants to get involved in a direct military conflict with Russia. This conflict is fraught with a nuclear war and a global tragedy’, he added.”^{^[6]}

‘The Leader Of The Turkish Nation Is Not Just An Islamist, He’s A Supporter Of International Terrorism”

An article on NEO titled “What Fate Awaits Turkey?” states:

“It is now clear that Tayyip Erdogan’s political career is heading to a closure, slowly but surely. He had a chance of saving it if he had the courage to immediately offer his apologies to Moscow after the downing of the Russian Su-24 bomber over Syria, that was in fact heading away from Turkey, not toward it.

“Instead, he got tangled in a web of ridiculous lies and explanations, all while being rude to Russia. On top of it all, he framed Washington, by trying to excuse the actions of the Turkish Air Force with alleged orders he personally received from Barack Obama at the G20 summit held in Antalya.

“But even with his back against the wall, Turkey’s President proved to be stubbornly shortsighted, which forced Russia to go even further by uncovering the role Turkey and Erdogan’s family played in the smuggling of stolen Syrian oil, which is a direct violation of the UN Security Council Resolution that was adopted on February 12, 2015. This means that the Turkish state is directly responsible for the sponsorship of international terrorism, which, according to the UN, should be punished in a particularly harsh manner.

“But what’s even more grave – the president has publicly disgraced himself before the country. His had already been steadily losing his position, but once he dropped his mask, his ratings started falling abruptly. It turns out that the leader of the Turkish nation is not just an Islamist, he’s a supporter of international terrorism.

“Now we are presented with a situation in which the AKP leader and the sitting Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu who are largely secured by the victory for the ruling party, has obtained as much influence as the president. And after the downing of Russia’s bomber he strengthened his positions even more, even though he decided not to distance himself publicly from the president. It’s safe to assume that he’s just quietly waiting for a perfect opportunity to strike a mortal blow. He’s nothing short of a dangerous contender that is prepared to replace Erdogan at any given moment.

“But the deposing of Erdogan is a relatively positive scenario. Those who remember Turkish history should know that Erdogan is hated by the military command of the Turkish Armed Forces, which has traditionally played a crucial role in the maintaining of country’s stability… The army is not getting any revenues from the illegal oil smuggling, so, should the ties between ISIL and Ankara be maintained, the military command, while enjoying the support of NATO allies, can launch a coup d’etat and return to the power they had three decades ago. But this scenario won’t satisfy local Kurds and other ethnic and religious minorities, who have experienced the cruelty of the army in the suppression of their rights first hand.

“Turkey is going to be plunged into political chaos, when the ruling AKP will find itself opposed by both the army and the legal opposition, along with 22 million Kurds led by the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). In this case, the civil conflict could result in the collapse of the Turkish state with the Kurdish areas (the entire South-East Anatolia) breaking away, seeking ways to create an independent Kurdistan that will absorb certain areas in Syria in Iraq, changing the whole balance of power in the Middle East.

“Whatever happens, one thing is clear: Tayyip Erdogan will be forced to answer for his stubbornness, inability to respect others, dictatorship, corruption, and connections with ISIL. And above all, he must answer to the people of Turkey. And also to Russia for the cowardly attacks that claimed the lives of two Russian soldiers who fought valiantly against terrorism.”^{^[7]}

‘Turkey May Well Have Been A ‘Prime Actor’ In The Paris Attack’

Another NOE article, titled “Mad King Erdogan’s Oil Lies,” stated: “Erdogan is claiming he stole no oil. He has threatened to resign if he receives proof. There is little doubt that Erdogan is insane, those who have been watching his dance of death with ISIS have known this all along.

“However, while Erdogan talks only of oil, there are other issues to note as well. First of all, let’s talk about arms shipments that cross Turkey and move into Syria and Iraq. By Erdogan’s claim of total innocence, we must assume that ISIS, al Qaeda and the other openly terrorist groups that make up 95% of those fighting against Iraq and Syria are operating without any outside supplies.

“Where Erdogan’s wild claims fail is simple as looking at a map. When Russia publishes surveillance photos of not just hundreds but thousands of oil trucks, how can there be denial? The roads that these trucks use only go to Turkey.

“They don’t go anyplace else, there is no place else. There is absolutely no vehicle traffic between the Turkish occupied areas of Iraq and Syria, and we might as well call them that, and the areas under control of the legitimate governments in Baghdad and Damascus.

“What is support of terrorism if it isn’t trading oil for arms or, moreover, trading oil and the other loot of Iraq and Syria, for the cooperation of Turkish politicians and, just perhaps, their European and American friends as well.

“Yet no one considers that Turkey may well have been a ‘prime actor’ in the Paris attack. Would Erdogan have downed a Russian plane if it weren’t for the Paris attack? What about the Russian airliner downed over Syria? When you add MH17 and examine what is now known, that Ukraine and Turkey have been working closely together all along, with ISIS troops joining Kiev forces against NovoRussians, do we see a pattern?”^{^[8]}

‘Turkey’s “Leader” Should Be Charged With Murder’

A Pravda.ru article titled “Turkey: Treacherous Turncoat,” stated:

“Turkey’s ‘leader’ should be charged with murder. The sanctimonious West is in denial. NATO, partly complicit if not the instigator, vows to defend the murderer. Washington, which knows every detail, feigns ignorance. Why is there no Western condemnation in absence of Turkey’s compunction?

“Turkey, though paying lip service to Obama’s ‘coalition of the coerced’ to at long last fight ISIS in Syria with military force, is loath to do so. More important Turkey has its political/economic motives to do just the opposite: not lift a finger (against ISIS). That is because, as President Putin already disclosed to Russia’s Western ‘partners’ at the G20 Summit, Turkey is in reality a turncoat. Russian military intelligence provided the evidence: Turkey, including its President, are really aiding and abetting the ISIS terrorists. Detailed satellite images show that Turkey provided the egress for the stolen oil that ISIS has been trucking in and through Turkey.

“From there the contraband, once brokered by the Turks, is sold elsewhere. The ‘buyers’ list includes Israel, the European Union and as some have suggested, even America. The scale and the scope of the covert theft equates to over 50 million barrels. Moreover, Turkey has profited from this nefarious heist for almost four years. Russia has more proof. The laundered money trail flows straight to the Turkish President’s palace. Using a labyrinth of the Erdogan’s financial network including his own son, the ill-gotten gains are then spirited outside the country.

“While the Kurds fight ISIS, Erdogan courts the terrorists by providing them military cover. Russia, now wiser as to Erdogan’s true colors, should endeavor to be ever more vigilant in its Syria campaign as to joining the West’s coalition of ‘partners’.

“That same portent applies to the newest ‘partners’: Hollande and Cameron. The two turkeys are even bigger U.S. vassals. Neither one is trustworthy. Syria’s war is about oil; both Putin and Assad know that well.”^{^[9]}

Endnotes:

[1] NEO (New Eastern Outlook) is the journal of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Oriental Studies, a leading research institution dealing with Asian and African countries and cultures. NEO presents itself as follows: “We cover political and religious issues, economic and ideological trends, regional security topics and social problems. We are committed to develop NEO into a notable international networking platform offering unbiased expert opinions and open dialogue among all thinking people worldwide regardless of their nationality, race or religion… We are focused on creating a new culture of partnership where opinions influence decisions.” (Journal-neo.org, “About” section, accessed January 12, 2016).

[2] Pravda.ru is a pro-government news and opinion website. According to its former Director General, Vadim Gorshenin, it is the successor of Pravda, the official mouthpiece of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party. It was founded by prominent members of Pravda’s editorial staff who left it in 1999, and today it is privately owned by Pravda.ru Holding, of which Gorshenin is the head. Its current Director General, Inna Novikova, is Gorshenin’s wife.

The Pravda website publishes in four languages: Russian, English, Italian, Portuguese, and has more than 200,000 visitors daily. According Gorshenin, the English version is the second most popular English-language Russian website, after Russia Today (Pravda.ru, September 16, 2013).

[3] Politonline.ru is a political website, part of the Pravda media network.

[4] The Center for Military-Political Studies is a division of the Russian foreign ministry’s Moscow State Institute of International Relations. The center studies trends and affairs in the domains of defense policy, weaponry, military industry, military cooperation and state security (Eurasian-defence.ru).

[5] The Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISS) is a research center established by the President of the Russian Federation. Its main task is to inform various Russian state institutions on the political, economic and socio-political situation in the Black Sea countries and Mediterranean region (En.riss.ru).

[6] Pravdareport.com, December 8, 2015. The Russian version of the article was published on Politonline.ru on November 27, 2015.

[7] Journal-neo.org, December 7, 2015. The author, Peter Lvov, is described by NEO as a Ph.D in political science.

[8] Journal-neo.org, December 7, 2015. The author, Gordon Duff, is described by NEO as a U.S. Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War and a senior editor and board chairman of the Veterans Today website.

[9] Pravdareport.com, December 16, 2016. The author’s name is given as “Montresor.”

Categories: Erdogan, Islamic State, Putin, Russia - Turkey, Russian nukes, Turkey
Tags: Erdogan, Islamic State, Putin, Russia - Turkey, Russian nukes, Turkey

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