Guns Again in Turkey

June 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Kurdistan Tribune reports, sources unknown, that the PKK attacked a Turkish security outpost in the south eastern corner of Turkey.

The PKK had vowed to attack more Turkish military posts in revenge for the recent new wave of  arrests and harassment of Kurdish activists across the north of Kurdistan.

Followed, naturally enough, by  a bombing raid on Kurdish areas by the Turkish military.

The NY Times reports that Turkish ground troops went in hot-pursuit over the border into Iraq:

NTV, a private television network, said 600 Turkish ground troops chasing the attackers pushed 2.5 miles into northern Iraq, where the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant separatist group known as the P.K.K., is based. The group has long battled the Turkish government for autonomy in the predominantly Kurdish southeast.

Local media also reported Turkish air deployments and artillery fire in the mountainous border area.

The militant strike, which started in the early hours of Wednesday, mainly in Hakkari Province, lasted for about four hours. It came a day after a blast in Bitlis, another southeastern province, that killed five policemen and three civilians.

Hurriyet Daily, from Istanbul, reports on the attack and counterattacks, with statements coming from the main political parties.

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Turkey Expells Syrian Diplomats

May 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

“Turkey expelled Syria’s charge d’affaires and other diplomats on Wednesday, joining an international campaign to isolate President Bashar al-Assad’s regime after a weekend massacre of more than a hundred people in a Syrian village.

“Ankara, one of the most outspoken critics of the Syrian regime, also signaled new, unspecified sanctions to be added to existing ones. “The sanctions we put into effect earlier may take on a different form. We are working on them. We will make them public once they are decided upon,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters in Ankara. Erdoğan said the decision to expel the Syrian diplomats was a response to the massacre of 110 people, including dozens of children, in Houla. “We could not remain silent in the face of this,” he said. “Remaining silent in the face of oppression, tolerating oppression, amounts to oppression itself.”

Today’s Zaman

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Turkey’s Prime Minister: Abortions are Like Bombing Civilians

May 30, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey not only announced his opposition to abortions within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, which has been the law since 1983, he did it using incendiary language and added to it the utter confusion of opposition to cesarean births and the paranoia of ultra nationalism.

“I am a prime minister who opposes Caesarean births, and I know all this is being done on purpose. … “I know these are steps taken to prevent this country’s population from growing further. I see abortion as murder, and I call upon those circles and members of the media who oppose my comments: You live and breathe Uludere. I say every abortion is an Uludere.”

Uludere refers to an attack by the Turkish air force on Kurdish smugglers moving from Iraq into Turkey. Although it happened under his government, and Erdogan first defended the attacks, saying the US did not aid them with drone photos but his military had decided on their own, he has since claimed that apologies had been made to the victims. it would seem an enormous increase in admission of guilt to link the raids to his view of abortion as callous and unjustified murder.

[More on the raids and the confused government response.]

Women’s groups have mobilized and protested his remarks and promise to change the long-standing law. Some have been camping outside his office.

Protesters camped outside the Prime Minister's office in Istanbul

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Turkey and Iraq — Cold War Coming

May 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

From DW

“Ankara’s refusal to extradite Sunni politician al-Hashemi to Iraq has heightened tensions between Turkey and Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government. The crisis adds to concerns over a Sunni-Shi’ite “Cold War.”

Turkey’s relations with its neighbor Iraq – already tense – were further strained last week when Ankara refused to extradite fugitive Iraqi Vice-President Tareq al-Hashemi.

Al-Hashemi, a Sunni, fled his country early last month after the Shi’ite-led Iraqi government accused him of supporting terrorists and running death squads. Now he faces prosecution in Baghdad at a trial that has been delayed several times, but is due to begin on May 15. “  read all

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News from Turkey

May 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Still digesting a three week trip to Turkey I’ve been attentive to news from and about the people and the country.  The New York Times offers an opinion piece about moderate Islam from Mustafa Akyol, a writer I’ve run across in Turkey’s Hurriet Daily, and has impressive credentials beyond that.

His piece, Can Islamists be Liberals, starts with the evidence that democracy is taking hold even among those who have long condemned it, especially in Egypt.  He then takes up Fareed Zakaria’s warning in his book “The Future of Freedom,” about ‘illiberal democracies, ” and moves on to looking at Turkey’s recent seeming advances but rise in the fears of co-optation by the governing moderate Islamists.  Particularly good for those who have recently formed attachments to Turkey, and wish for its growth into tolerance and wide-spread personal freedom.

*

Sunday night, CBS’ Sixty Minutes had a revealing piece on a Turkish Imam, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the Poconos, and has a wide following across the Muslim world.  His preaching seems across the board, conciliatory and non-inflammatory.  He himself has met with major leaders of other religious traditions.  However, the source of his wealth, the web of schools he sponsors — even as they succeed with the toughest students– has raised questions.

In all the reading I’d done before going to Turkey, I’d never run across his name, or any comments on this influence on Turkish politics.  He’s on my study list, now.

 

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Marine Problems In Turkey

May 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The celebrated Sea of Marmara, part of the Turkish Straits between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean is in an ocean of trouble, according to the latest report from the Turkish Marine Environment Protection Association.  Fed by the Black Sea, which itself is on life-support, the Sea of Marmara, as measured by the catastrophic plunge in  the  fish species  –   down from 127 in the 1970s to four or five today — is barely breathing.

Nearly 90 percent of the pollution in the seas is caused by domestic and industrial waste. Rivers such as the Danube, Dnieper and Dniester are the main polluters of the Black Sea, with the Danube in the lead, most experts agree. “Nearly 60 percent of the water of the Black Sea comes from the Danube, around 20 percent from rivers such as the Dnieper and Dniester, while around 15 percent originates from rivers in Turkey,” Professor Cem Gazioğlu from İstanbul University’s Institute of Marine Sciences and Management has told Sunday’s Zaman, drawing attention to the dominant share European rivers have in the pollution of both the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara.

Today’s Zaman

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Western Economies Need Serious Reform: Turkey

May 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It is a wonderful turn of the tables when the lecturer becomes the lecturee — in this case the United States and well developed Europe, who for decades have been demonstrating the uses of carrots and sticks to make other countries model themselves  into smaller images of presumed success.  Something funny happened in 2008 when the paragons of well-being and economic scientism blew up, wounding the well-off and leaving a ringing in the ears all over the world.

Turkey now, has some words of wisdom for the old masters of the universe: mind your own business, and if you need an example, we’ll show you ours.


Growing like gangbusters, Turkey says Western economies need ‘serious reforms’

Deputy Turkish Prime Minister Ali Babacan, a former foreign minister and Turkey’s point-man for economic policy … speaking at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University …  said neither the US nor the eurozone countries have yet to deal with the underlying causes of the global economic slowdown: a weak financial sector, weak corporate balance sheets, risky public financial positions.

Babacan contrasted the Western economic turmoil, with Turkey’s booming economy which he said grew at 9.2 percent growth rate in 2010, and 8.5 percent in 2011.

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May Day in Istanbul

May 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Just back from 3 weeks in Turkey (and 1 without internet connection) and my eyes sweep the news for what is going on there. Dang! This would have been interesting to participate in. Taksim Square, when we were there, was the end of a touristy street-car run up Istiklal St, and filled with week-end strollers.

Tens of thousands of union members and leftist political activists gathered Saturday for the first legally-sanctioned May Day celebration in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square in 30 years.

Participants included relatives of at least 34 people killed when clashes erupted in Taksim between leftists and police on May Day in 1977. May Day rallies have been banned in Taksim Square since army generals swept into power in a military coup in 1980.

And from Huriyett Daily News, in Turkey, this.

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Iraq and Turkey: Two Spitting Cats

April 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

This morning on  Ataturk Cadessi in Antalya I stopped to watch two cats in a spitting stand off.  The smaller was making noises I had never supposed cats could make.  The larger was standing frozen, inches away from the noise and fangs.  I don’t know what the dispute was about, most likely the favored place under the side-walk table, where food might be handed down from on high.

Two Feuding Cats, Antalya, Turkey

I couldn’t help but thinking of the morning’s headlines, in which PM Nouri Al Maliki of Iraq lashed out at Turkey’s PM,  Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had recently hosted Maliki’s Sunni rival,  Tareq al-Hashemi, who has left the country after being accused of running death squads, as well as playing footsie with  Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan northern Iraq.

Baghdad: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has branded Turkey a “hostile state” with a sectarian agenda, the latest in a series of bitter exchanges between the neighbours.

Al Maliki was responding to comments made by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday in which Erdogan accused the Iraqi leader of fanning tensions between the country’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds with his “self-centred” ways.

“The recent announcements by Erdogan represent another return to flagrant interference in Iraqi internal affairs,” Al Maliki said in a statement on his website.

“His announcements have a sectarian dimension. To insist on continuing these internal and regional policies will harm Turkish interests and make it a hostile state for all.”

GulfNews

The bad feeling is confirmed in another article from a reporter who accompanied Erdogan to the recent Qatar conference, ostensibly about trade and development but actually focused on the Syria problem.

“We have no intention of interfering in Iraq’s internal affairs. It was Maliki himself who asked Turkey to enter Iraq economically,” Erdoğan said. “Others come from 10,000 kilometers away and interfere in Iraq. You go and talk to them. Iran calls you and you go there. But when it comes to Turkey you make these remarks,” he said, referring to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the close cooperation between Maliki, who is Shiite, and Iran. “It is not important what al-Maliki says. He cannot come between us and our Iraqi brothers. The Iraqi people do not share his views. Al-Maliki should note this very well. His merciless attitude is out of keeping with democracy. He refers to us stoking sectarian trouble. We have no such problem.” Erdoðan indicated that it appears that al-Maliki himself has a sectarian problem “in his own inner world.”

HurrieyetDaily

 

The streets aren’t filling with anxious citizens over this.  Syria is a much closer and more pressing problem.  It does show that Turkey is part of the broad mix of strong Middle Eastern countries, which the others must pay attention to.

Back on the sidewalk, the bigger, white cat slowly turned his head away from the confrontation, all the rest of his body still frozen in immobility — as if finally showing boredom with the whole thing, but ready as an unsprung trap to deal with any nonsense.

 

My bet is that Turkey is the bigger cat.

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Turkey: April 23 Children’s Day Festival

April 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The main street of Antalya, Turkey is flooded with children dressed in red and white, or in the case of the very young, costumes to fit their imaginings.  Middle School units set the pace with drum corps; young and old are hawking the national flag to accompany the spontaneous ebullience of the moment or to sign approval of the latest exhortatory speech.

Antalya Drums on Children's Day

Of course this isn’t a children’s day with centuries of tradition, purely to celebrate the sweetness and aspirations of the young, as in Japan. It was created by modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk, who combined it with commemoration of the opening of the first Assembly after Independence from its post WW I occupiers, England, France and Italy.

Though attaching itself to UNESCO’s Year of the Child in 1979 and urging other countries to join the Day of the Child, it remains from its conception, a political –not to say indoctrination– patriotic celebration.

Following the 1980 General’s Coup the gatherings were guided from the streets into large stadiums for more concentrated “enthusiasm.” According to reports of a recently passed law, today will be the last such stadium celebrations.

April 23 celebrations, which mark National Sovereignty and Children’s Day, are being held in stadiums for the last time today as part of new regulations on national day celebrations, the Sabah daily reported on Sunday.

In January the Ministry of Education cancelled festivities for May 19, the anniversary of the beginning of the War of Independence, in stadiums, citing disruptions in education. Following this decision, the presidency held meetings attended by officials representing various ministries to discuss the introduction of new regulations to all national day celebrations.

A consensus was reached to change the law that governs all national celebrations to get rid of what are widely considered totalitarian rituals introduced during the 1980s junta, to generate a more peaceful and civilian atmosphere during the celebrations.

Today’s Zaman

Everywhere we turn we are quite struck by the Turkish people –in the process of becoming a nation they have not yet been.  The push and pull of secular vs Islam, or Ataturk’s legacy vs the claims of now are sometimes pubic and visible, more often subtle and only lightly marked changes of attitude.  We often see a daringly dressed young woman holding hands with her modestly covered mother, laughing and strolling down the wide pedestrian avenues, or fully covered women pushing strollers with a child dressed like any western kid, pacifier included.

Whether the move to return the neo-authoritarian stadium rallies to more spontaneous and decentralized celebrations is an honest one, carried out by representatives aware of the dangers of mass events, or is a move to weaken the ties of secular patriotism to eventually be replaced by religious enthusiasm and a return to the stadiums won’t be known for another election cycle or two.  But, at least we see a grappling with the reality of mass events and the dangers inherent in them.

When, in the United States, will there be a discussion, much less laws passed, about our mix of patriotic praise of military might with large sporting events?

Flags for Sale

 

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