Masked people in guerrilla outfits hold up a poster of of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan as they demonstrate during the Nowruz celebrations in southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, March 21, 2014.
Dorian Jones
June 27, 2014 6:05 PM
DIYARBAKIR, TURKEY —Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant militants continue to score victories across Iraq. For neighbor Turkey, there is growing concern over ISIL’s growing power, particularly in its predominantly Kurdish southeast, which borders Iraq and Syria.
In Diyarbakir, as in the rest of Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast, many Kurds are religious.
That, analysts say, and decades of economic underdevelopment and conflict, with the Kurds fighting for minority rights, have helped make the region a fertile recruiting ground for organizations like ISIL.
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Already more than dozen young Kurds from Turkey have died fighting for ISIL in neighboring Iraqi and Syria, according to Muammer Akar, a Diyarbakir city counselor and prominent member of Turkey’s ruling AK Party.
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Besides local factors, the region – like the rest of the Middle East – is paying the price for years of religious rivalry between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite Iran, he said, adding that ISIL is attracting a growing number of recruits.
Saudi Arabia has spent a significant amount of money here developing a radical form of Sunni Islam called Wahhabism to counter Iran’s influence. Over the years, many Kurdish youths were attracted and have become increasingly radical and closer to committing violence.
Akar claims funerals in the region for ISIL militants draw large numbers and have become a powerful recruiting tool for the Islamic group.
But critics are accusing the ruling AK Party, which has its roots in Islam, of turning a blind eye to ISIL activities on Turkey’s border with Syria because of the party’s opposition to the Syrian regime, and because ISIL is fighting Syrian Kurds, who have declared a secular autonomous state on Turkey’s border.
Ankara fears its own restive Kurdish population could make similar demands for autonomy. It has accused the Syrian Kurdish leadership of links to the PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish state for minority rights for decades.
Two hours drive from Diyarbakir, in the town of Cizre, located near the Tukrish, Syrian and Iraqi borders, Deputy Mayor Kadir Konur accuses the ruling party of going beyond tacit support of ISIL.
He said ISIL’s resources come from Turkey, citing what he said are numerous instances of trucks leaving Turkey with arms for groups like ISIL.
Many people on Cizre’s streets appear to share such concerns, especially for the plight of Syrian Kurds just across the border.
“We are very pessimistic because of ISIL and all the massacres they’ve done in Syrian Kurdistan, he said. The killing of women and children. It is very clear that many ISIL fighters cross the border from Turkey and the AK Party allows this,” said a man on the street interviewed by VOA.
Escalating charges
Suspicions of Turkish government involvement with ISIL have been heightened by an anonymously released video showing Turkish soldiers intercepting two Turkish trucks allegedly carrying Syria-bound weapons. The soldiers manhandle Turkish intelligence officers who are in cars escorting the trucks. According to prosecutors, the arms were being sent to radical Islamic groups fighting in Syria.
The government claims the trucks were only carrying aid and strongly denied allegations of gun-running, pointing out that it has designated ISIL a terrorist group. But the prosecutors and soldiers investigating the trucks have now been charged with spying.
Diyarbakir city counselor and AK Party member Muammer Akar said his own party may not be aware of the dangers Turkey is facing.
“Ankara doesn’t see the danger, as they are dealing with so many other issues, but we do,” said Akar. “It’s only a matter of time before ISIL targets Turkey; since they see us as a country of heretics, they will attack our big western cities.”
ISIL videos aimed at Turkish and Kurdish youths continue to appear on the Internet, calling them to join the jihad. Observers are increasingly asking if — or when — the war to create an Islamic state will come to Turkey.
Security officials at a checkpoint in Helmand Province, which has experienced an aggressive insurgent push.Credit Watan Yar/European Pressphoto Agency
KABUL, Afghanistan — In one of the most significant coordinated assaults on the government in years, the Taliban have attacked police outposts and government facilities across several districts in northern Helmand Province, sending police and military officials scrambling to shore up defenses and heralding a troubling new chapter as coalition forces prepare to depart.
The attacks have focused on the district of Sangin, historically an insurgent stronghold and one of the deadliest districts in the country for the American and British forces who fought for years to secure it. The Taliban have mounted simultaneous attempts to conquer territory in the neighboring districts of Now Zad, Musa Qala and Kajaki. In the past week, more than 100 members of the Afghan forces and 50 civilians have been killed or wounded in fierce fighting, according to early estimates from local officials.
With a deepening political crisis in Kabul already casting the presidential election and long-term political stability into doubt, the Taliban offensive presents a new worst-case situation for Western officials: an aggressive insurgent push that is seizing territory even before American troops have completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The battle in Helmand is playing out as, about 1,500 miles to the west, Iraq is losing ground to an insurgent force that advanced in the shadow of the American withdrawal there. The fear pulsing through Afghanistan is that it, too, could fall apart after the NATO-led military coalition departs in 2016.
Already, areas once heavily patrolled by American forces have grown more violent as the Afghan military and the police struggle to feed, fuel and equip themselves. The lackluster performance of the Afghan Army so far in Helmand has also evoked comparisons with Iraq, raising questions about whether the American-trained force can stand in the way of a Taliban resurgence.
Officials in Helmand say the answers may come soon enough.
“The Taliban are trying to overrun several districts of northern Helmand and find a permanent sanctuary for themselves,” said Hajji Mohammad Sharif, the district governor for Musa Qala. “From there, they pose threats to the southern parts of Helmand and also pose threats to Kandahar and Oruzgan Provinces.”
BAGHRAN
FARAH
PROVINCE
ORUZGAN
PROVINCE
AFGHANISTAN
DETAIL
PAKISTAN
INDIA
MUSA
QALA
KAJAKI
NOW ZAD
HELMAND
PROVINCE
KANDAHAR
PROVINCE
SANGIN
Sangin
Helmand
River
Kandahar
Lashkar Gah
AFGHANISTAN
25 Miles
Officials from the government and the international military coalition flew to Helmand on Friday to assess the situation. The military has sent in reinforcements, though early reports from residents indicate that those forces had made little headway in pushing the Taliban back. The police have fought ferociously to protect their areas and, in at least a few cases, succumbed only after running out of ammunition.
While the government claims that none of the checkpoints attacked by the Taliban have fallen, district elders and villagers say otherwise, characterizing the situation as approaching a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of residents are believed to have been displaced in the fighting.
“I see the people running everywhere with their women and children to take shelter,” said Hajji Amanullah Khan, a village elder. “It is like a doomsday for the people of Sangin. We do not have water, and there is a shortage of food.
“The price of everything has gone up because the highways and roads have been blocked for the last week.”
Northern Helmand is a small region with a history of troubles. Despite the recent Taliban gains, the area is far from lost.
With its austere deserts interrupted by dense lines of foliage hugging the Sangin River, the district has long been marooned in a sea of Taliban support. It is also squarely in the heart of poppy country, a vital and growing source of income for the insurgents.
Though positioned at a significant crossroads into the northern Helmand area, with access to neighboring provinces, Sangin also carries great symbolic weight. The Taliban have repeatedly used the area to make a statement about the limits of Afghan and Western government strength, and local officials fear a similar approach now.
“The Taliban are planning to create problems in several northern Helmand districts to pave the way for their fighters to operate freely in the area and pose threats to Kandahar, Helmand and Farah Provinces,” said Muhammad Naim Baloch, the provincial governor in Helmand.
Only now, the task to secure the district has fallen exclusively to the Afghans, and it is providing an early test of the forces the international coalition has spent years training to take over the fight.
Last summer in Sangin, Afghan forces got their first taste of what that fight would look like. Struggling to keep the Taliban at bay, they lost checkpoints, hard-fought ground and more than 120 men.
The government shuffled commanders, but it hardly mattered. By the end of the fighting season, the cowed Afghan Army unit there was mostly unwilling to leave its base to confront the threat. Late last year, reports of a deal between a local army commander and the Taliban began to surface, driven in part by attrition rates of nearly 50 percent and the near constant threat of death.
Given the debacle last summer, the military’s lack of preparedness so far this year is all the more striking. Police officers ran out of ammunition, and in some cases bodies could not be recovered because of the fighting. Even though Helmand is the only province with an entire corps dedicated to it, the army has struggled to defend it.
The fighting this summer appears to be worse. In just one week, the security forces appear to have sustained almost half the casualties they suffered in all of last summer, though reports differ on the exact toll.
Last Saturday, as many as 600 Taliban insurgents stormed checkpoints through portions of Sangin, claiming wide tracts of land. On Sunday, the militants attacked the neighboring district of Now Zad. Violence erupted in Musa Qala on Monday, when the Taliban again stormed police checkpoints but were prevented from reaching the district center.
The assault on Sangin seems the most concerted. On Friday night, according to the district governor, the Taliban advanced on the district center itself. The army repelled the attack through the district bazaar, while the police stopped an attempted breach from the north.
“Only the district center is under the control of government,” said Hajji Amir Jan, the deputy chief of the Sangin district council.
Though exact data is nearly impossible to obtain, in part because there is no longer a coalition footprint in the area, the extent of the attack offers a new perspective through which to view the Taliban’s ambitions, especially now that the militants no longer fear the dreaded American air support that has for years prevented them from massing in large groups.
Although the military denied any collusion between the army and the Taliban, those questions have started to re-emerge because most of the casualties have been suffered by the local and national police forces rather than by the army.
“The Taliban are not powerful enough to resist all of the Afghan forces,” Mr. Amir Jan said. “Sangin is not an easy district to control, and the Taliban have strong sanctuaries, but the Afghan National Army is just securing highways, and they are not really after the Taliban.”
Coalition officials were reluctant to comment on the battles in Helmand because the fight now belongs to the Afghans. The United Nations, however, urged caution and respect for the lives of civilians.
“The high number of civilians killed and injured in these ongoing military operations is deeply concerning,” said the secretary general’s special representative for Afghanistan, Jan Kubis.
Residents described a hellish scene for those trapped in the area. Some have started to question whether the fight, and its toll on the people, is even worth it.
“If the government is unable to control and secure the lives of the ordinary people, I suggest they leave it to the Taliban,” said Matiullah Khan, a village elder in Sangin. “We are tired of the situation and would rather die than continue living in these severe conditions. It has been like this forever.”
President Petro O. Poroshenko spoke at the signing ceremony of the trade deal between Ukraine and the European Union in Brussels.
Credit Michel Euler/Associated Press
BRUSSELS — Dealing a defiant blow to the Kremlin, President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine signed a long-delayed trade pact with Europe on Friday that Moscow had bitterly opposed. He then declared he would like his country to one day become a full member of the European Union.
In so doing, Ukraine’s new leader, a billionaire confectionary magnate, has in effect raised a risky bet on the West that has cost his country hundreds of lives and the loss of the Crimean peninsula to Russia and has set off a low-level civil war in its eastern border region.
By signing the trade pact at the Brussels headquarters of the European Union, Mr. Poroshenko revived a deal whose rejection last November by his predecessor, Viktor F. Yanukovych, set off months of pro-European protests in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, and pushed the West into its biggest test of wills with Russia since the end of the Cold War.
The unrest toppled Mr. Yanukovych and drove pro-Russian activists in Crimea and the eastern region of Donetsk to demand annexation by Russia.
“This is a really historic date for Ukraine,” Mr. Poroshenko, who won Ukraine’s presidential elections in May to fill a post left vacant when Mr. Yanukovych fled to Russia in February, said at a news conference here.
In a dig at Mr. Yanukovych, he said he had signed the agreement with the same pen that his toppled predecessor would have used to sign the same pact, before he changed his mind under pressure from Moscow and set up his own downfall.
The completion of the association agreement between the European Union and Ukraine marked a severe setback for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and his oft-repeated goal of reasserting Russian influence in the “near abroad,” Moscow’s term for the territories of the former Soviet Union.
“The big loser in all this is Putin,” said Amanda Paul, a researcher at the European Policy Center, a Brussels research group. “He has gone out of his way to create problems internally in Ukraine but only pushed Ukraine further into the arms of the West than it ever would have gone before. It totally backfired for Putin.”
Moldova and Georgia, two other former Soviet lands that Moscow had pressured not to stray too far from its orbit, also signed agreements with the European Union on Friday. In Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, citizens celebrated with a large public concert, which was broadcast on all major domestic television channels.
There was jubilation as well in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, after the signing of the agreement. By late afternoon on Friday, several hundred people had gathered in Independence Square, the focal point of months of street protests, many carrying blue balloons with yellow paper stars affixed to them — replicating the European Union flag — and released them into the air.
After weeks of statements by Mr. Poroshenko vowing to seal the agreement, the Kremlin was well-prepared and immediately began to lay the groundwork for retaliatory measures, including the withdrawal of preferential treatment for Ukrainian exports to Russia under prior agreements between former Soviet republics.
Within minutes of the signing ceremony, the news agency Interfax quoted Russia’s deputy foreign minister as warning that “serious consequences” would follow. The remark was an ominous sign of the vexation caused in Moscow by the tilt toward Europe of lands that Russia, first under czarist and then Soviet rule, for centuries considered its own.
In Moscow, Mr. Putin blamed the months of crisis in Ukraine on Western leaders, saying they had forced Kiev to choose between Russia and the European Union.
“The acute crisis in this neighboring country seriously troubles us,” Mr. Putin said after a ceremony to receive the credentials of foreign diplomats. “The anti-constitutional coup in Kiev and attempts to artificially impose a choice between Europe and Russia on the Ukrainian people have pushed society toward a split and painful confrontation.”
Though spurned, Moscow retains enormous influence in Ukraine. It reminded Kiev of this earlier this month by suspending deliveries of natural gas following a long-running dispute over price. Russia has denied any hand in the violence in eastern Ukraine but has been accused by the West of supporting pro-Russians rebels with guns, money and manpower from across the border in Russia.
Given the ferocity of the Kremlin’s campaign to prevent completion of the accord between Ukraine and Europe, the reaction by senior officials on Friday was relatively muted, reflecting not only acceptance of the inevitability of Mr. Poroshenko’s signing but also the changed circumstances following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, where it has a naval base.
“In the Kremlin, they are calming down and trying to assess the results of this frenzied state of affairs over the last couple of months,” said Konstantin Sonin, vice rector of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. “I think we make too much rationalization of what the Kremlin does. I think they were very much driven by events.”
One of Mr. Putin’s major objections to closer political and economic relations between Ukraine and the West was widely understood to be a concern about NATO expansion, and the risk that would pose to Russia’s military interests in the Crimean peninsula.
Russia has long viewed the European Union as a stalking horse for NATO but, in a move that could help allay such concerns, NATO foreign ministers decided in Brussels earlier this week that a summit meeting in September will not approve offering Georgia a formal step to membership.
There is no chance of the European Union admitting Ukraine, Georgia or Moldova as members any time soon. Public opinion in Europe is hostile to any further expansion of a 28-nation bloc that is already widely seen as too big and too unwieldy.
All the same, Europe’s allure to so many people in former Soviet territories has infuriated Moscow, not the least because it contrasts so starkly with the cool reception given Mr. Putin’s efforts to form a rival economic bloc, the Eurasian Union, which is to start up next year. It so far has only three takers, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
Far from concluding a period of tumult, the completion of the trade deal, which still needs approval from the Ukrainian Parliament, could further stoke tensions both inside Ukraine and between Moscow and the West.
Senior Russian officials quickly began warning that Russia’s businesses and economy could suffer, as their markets could be flooded with low-cost goods from Europe that skirt tariffs by first being shipped through Ukraine, which will be exempt from most European duties. Other experts have dismissed those concerns, saying Russia is quite adept at identifying and intercepting such goods as they cross the border.
European leaders, meeting Friday at a summit in Brussels dominated by wrangling over who should lead its executive arm for the next five years, announced that they would not immediately impose additional sanctions on Russia for its interference in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But, they said in a statement that additional sanctions were being prepared and could be deployed “without delay” if Russia does not do more to curb violence in eastern Ukraine.
Europe, like the United States, has so far limited its sanctions to an asset freeze and travel ban against a narrow group of Russian political and military figures involved in the March annexation of Crimea.
European leaders set a deadline of next Monday for pro-Russian militants to leave borders posts seized from Ukrainian personnel, to release all hostages, agree to procedures for the verification of a cease-fire and accept “substantial negotiations” on a peace plan proposed by Mr. Poroshenko.
In eastern Ukraine, in the embattled regional capital of Donetsk, Aleksandr Borodai, a rebel leader from Russia, told reporters that pro-Russian militias were willing to extend a truce until Monday. The Ukrainian government later agreed to do so.
June 26, 2014 – 2:58pm, by Alexander Christie-Miller
A slowing economy and rising healthcare costs, coupled with a possible crackdown on physicians’ moonlighting, could reverse gains made by Turkey’s decade-long overhaul of its healthcare system.
Broadening access to high-standard healthcare has been lauded as a key achievement of the Justice-and-Development-Party (AKP) government since it came to power in 2002. In 2003, only 24 percent of Turks from the poorest 10 percent of society had health insurance, according to a survey of 25,290 households by the Turkish Statistical Institute. In 2011, that figure had risen to 85 percent of 3,551 households surveyed. Correspondingly, overall satisfaction levels with healthcare among queried households increased from 39.5 percent to 75.9 percent.
But now, economic trends are pointing to a rockier future. “There’s been a significant increase in healthcare expenditure at a rate well above the rate of GDP growth, and that can’t continue forever,” said Martin Raiser, World Bank country director for Turkey.
Healthcare expenditure increased by 11 percent per year between 2002 and 2011, according to Raiser. Over the same period, Turkey’s average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth was around 5 percent. The World Bank recently reduced its growth-predictions for 2014 from 3.5 percent to a mere 2.4 percent. Economists widely predict lower growth rates over the coming years as well.
That slowdown likely could increase unease within the medical profession; some doctors claim a government effort to prevent state employees from moonlighting in privately owned medical facilities risks driving the best-qualified physicians out of the state sector.
In 2014, base monthly salaries for doctors and specialists working in state hospitals were 3,456 liras ($1,612) and 4,187 liras ($1,953), respectively, according to an announcement by the Ministry of Finance. (Performance related-bonuses can increase these amounts substantially).
Later this year, Turkey’s Supreme Court is expected to rule on an appeal by the government in a 2010 case, in which a lower court struck down an amendment to prevent doctors at university hospitals from working privately.
Macit Arvas, a gynecological oncologist at Cerrahpaşa, a prestigious university-affiliated medical facility in Istanbul, says he will quit the hospital where he has worked and taught for 34 years if the Supreme Court reverses the earlier annulment and upholds the law. “It would not be possible to go on working at the university hospital if they go through with this. The problem is making enough money,” Arvas, 61, told Eurasianet.org at the private doctor’s office where he works evenings, and as a specialist in a university hospital earns an above-average salary.
A similar moonlighting ban at non-university state hospitals has already driven many of the most experienced physicians to work full-time in the private sector, where salaries can be up to 10 times higher than those paid by the state, he added.
Ali Çerkezoğlu, head of the Istanbul Medical Association, agrees. “When the government brought in the restriction on working privately, they did not increase public sector pay,” Çerkezoğlu said.
“Many doctors escaped to private hospitals, especially successful and experienced doctors, and the result has been that the quality of care in the state hospitals has been decreasing.”
Currently, oncologist Arvas performs an average of one or two operations a day, mainly on cervical and uterine tumors.
“If people like me leave the university hospital, people without a lot of money will not be able to get proper healthcare—that’s the effect you’ll see,” he said. Government reforms have opened up university hospitals to citizens who could never have afforded them in the past.
Arvas also fears that an exodus of talent could drive down the quality of teaching, leading to a longer-term decline in professional standards.
In response to questions from EurasiaNet.org, a statement from the Ministry of Health asserted that the opposite was the case. It claimed that doctors’ part-time private work cut into their public and university commitments and, as a result, led to lower standards.
“This practice has negatively affected the education of assistants and the patient care services, and has opened the way to discontent in the service field,” the emailed statement read. “It becomes more difficult for doctors in their practices to focus on their job with the divided attention [caused by working privately].”
For now, both the government and Arvas are holding their breath for the Supreme Court ruling on moonlighting. The Health Ministry affirmed that the government will abide by the court’s decision.
Raiser, the World Bank director, who described Turkey’s healthcare advances of the past decade as “remarkable,” predicted the days of satisfied patients may be drawing to a close. Turkey will have to work harder to improve care in the future, he added. “Turkey will need to prepare for a situation in which the next generation will be assuming that healthcare access will be there and will increase their demands,” he said.
Around 300 officers in the Turkish military were jailed in 2010-2011 over an alleged coup to overthrow the Turkish government. The controversy over the arrests is still on-going, with all officers still in jail released earlier this month pending a retrial. In an interview with EUROPP’s editor Stuart Brown, Dani Rodrikdiscusses the case, the impact it has had on Turkish politics, and why it would be a mistake to interpret the removal of the military from politics in this way as a process of democratisation.
You have written and spoken a great deal about the criminal cases pursued against figures in the Turkish military in relation to the alleged ‘Sledgehammer’ plot to overthrow the Turkish government. For those who lack an understanding of these events, why were they so important for the country?
It was a rather remarkable experience where the military and the secular elites, who seemed to be so powerful in governing Turkey, effectively lost control in a short space of time. This happened between 2007 and 2011, roughly speaking. On the one hand, superficially this is a good thing because the military don’t belong in politics, but on the other hand the manner in which this transition was accomplished through Kafkaesque trials based on bogus evidence has left a very unhappy legacy for the Turkish polity going forward.
The allegation was that the 300 or so officers who were put on trial had planned an elaborate coup in 2003. We now know that the planning documents which described this attempted coup were forged. There is no substance to the so called ‘Sledgehammer’ coup, which in fact never existed and is a figment of the imagination of the forgers who prepared this plan.
The political alliance that made this possible was an alliance between the Gülen movement and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. They also received very important legitimising support from much of the intelligentsia as well, which mistakenly interpreted what was happening as a process of democratisation.
In terms of the overall purpose, there were several motivations. It was aimed at hitting the military and was also partly payback for the perceived persecution by the military of religious conservative groups in Turkey. It was a very successful method whereby the military and the secular establishment could be put on the defensive and effectively deprived of their power. What’s unfortunate is that the demilitarisation of Turkish politics had to take place using such dirty tricks.
You’ve mentioned that this was interpreted by some figures, including those outside Turkey, as a process of democratisation. Is there any basis behind this interpretation?
The purpose of demilitarisation is to pave the way for democracy. If the manner in which demilitarisation occurs does not pave the way for democracy, and instead entrenches forces whose modus operandi is fundamentally undemocratic, then what you get is not democracy, but simply another kind of authoritarianism.
That’s exactly what has happened in Turkey. The political groups which have been strengthened – the Gülen movement and the AKP – are currently operating under fundamentally undemocratic methods. Anyone can see that today Turkey is as far away from democracy as it has been in quite some time. It’s therefore very difficult to talk about democratic gains under the current context.
What has been the wider legacy of the trials, particularly in terms of the recent protest movements which have taken place in Turkey?
I think these political trials have entrenched a highly authoritarian style of governance. This is evident in the way that Erdoğan behaves and that’s certainly an important legacy of the events. There is plenty of opposition to Erdoğan – and the Gezi movement and some of the events that happened after the Soma mining disaster are evidence of that.
Unfortunately, this grassroots opposition currently finds no counterpart in organised political movements or in the existing political parties. Until such an organised political movement emerges, which spans the traditional divides in Turkey and which is at once secular democratic and liberal, it is difficult to see how the current political dominance of the AKP can be overcome.
Another aspect of this whole situation is the question of why so many people outside Turkey, including Turkey’s friends in Europe and the United States, misread what was going on so badly. I think the answer is that it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish a shift in power from one dominant group to another from a process of democratisation. This is because this shift comes with a certain loosening of the old taboos and restrictions associated with the old dominant elites.
So early in the process it was understandable to some extent that what was essentially a power grab by the AKP and the Gülenists was viewed as democratisation. But I think that since 2011 the West has made a serious mistake in failing to see the wide range of abuses that the Turkish regime has been engaged in.
To require the Secretary of State to provide an annual report to Congress regarding United States Government efforts to survey and secure the return, protection, and restoration of stolen, confiscated, or otherwise unreturned Christian properties in the Republic of Turkey and in those areas currently occupied by the Turkish military in northern CypruS
===========NEWS FROM HELLENIC SOURCES==========
Hellenic American Leadership Council
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Thursday, June 26, 2014 |
BREAKING NEWS: HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE “HAS THE BACK” OF CHRISTIAN MINORITIES IN TURKEY AND OCCUPIED CYPRUS Turkish Caucus attempts to gut bill fail; Committee adopts
Turkey Christian Churches Accountability Act
WASHINGTON, DC – The House Foreign Affairs Committee took a resounding stand in favor of religious freedom this morning, adding a new way to pressure Turkey to return thousands of stolen Christian holy sites.
Introduced by Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA) and Ranking Democrat Eliot Engel (D-NY), H.R. 4347 requires the Secretary of State to provide an annual report to Congress regarding United States Government efforts to survey and secure the return, protection, and restoration of stolen, confiscated, or otherwise unreturned Christian properties in the Republic of Turkey and in the Turkish occupied northern part of Cyprus. H.R. 4347 was amended to include Congressman Gus Bilirakis’ Resolution calling for the immediate reopening of the Halki Theological Seminary. An amendment by the co-chair of the Turkish caucus that would have gutted the Act was decisively defeated, and the Act was adopted by voice vote.
“Despite overly generous claims of ‘progress’, the truth is that religious freedom and human rights have suffered setbacks over the past few years in Turkey,” said HALC Executive Director Endy Zemenides. “As Congressman Chris Smith said before the Committee, the ‘sword of Damocles hangs over these Christian minorities. We thank Chairman Royce, Congressman Engel and their Committee for — as Congressman Smith put it — rising up to “get the backs’ of these minorities.”
HALC worked closely over the past year with the Armenian National Committee of America, which spearheaded the advocacy efforts on H.R. 4347. “Americans of Armenian, Greek and Assyrian heritage – the descendants of those subjected to genocide by Ottoman Turkey from 1915-1923 and whose churches continue to be held captive by the Turkish Government – join with friends of all faiths in welcoming Committee passage of the Royce-Engel Turkey Christian Churches Accountability Act,” said ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian. “The adoption of this measure sends a strong signal to Ankara that it must stop its anti-Christian conduct and start coming to terms with its moral, material, and legal obligations to Armenians, Syriacs, Cypriots, Pontians, and other victims of Turkey’s still unpunished genocidal crimes.”
H.R. 4347 builds on a 2011 measure (H.Res.306) spearheaded by Chairman Royce and then House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Democrat Howard Berman (D-CA) calling upon the government of Turkey to honor its international obligations to return confiscated Christian church properties and to fully respect the rights of Christians to practice their faiths. Years of advocacy on the opening of Halki Theological Seminary and Congressman Bilirakis’ previous legislative efforts also helped pave the way for H.R. 4347.
The full text of the legislation will be posted at www.hellenicleaders.com as soon as the amendments are incorporated.
