Turkish Forum

Category: News

  • The Kurdish terror showed their ugly face once again

    The Kurdish terror showed their ugly face once again

     

    The Kurdish terror showed their ugly face once again

    by raiding of a Turkmen house 

     

     

     

    On the 5th of November 2008 a group of U.S. force accompanied by Kurdish security forces that are known as Asayish have raided the home of a Turkmen citizen Nazim Suleiman Begoglu in the Turkmen city of Kirkuk, district of Althbat “

    According to the member of the family who was present in the house during the raid, the U.S. force, accompanied by a group of Kurdish security forces “Asayish” broke doors in the house at around half an hour after mid-night.

    They entered the house after smashing the main gates and doors then they arrested two of their sons Nabil Nazim Suleiman, aged thirty years and his brother Zakaria Nazim Suleiman of twenty-eight years respectively and who worked in a shop selling electrical appliances in downtown Kirkuk.

    During the raid on the Turkmen home by the US occupied forces that accompanied by the Asayish. The Asayish were wearing Balla Clava, with a Kurdish flag on the arm of their uniform and they spoke with a different Kurdish accent.

    The Asayish and American forces destroyed their furniture, contents of the house, smashed doors and windows and randomly fired bullets using automatic machine guns inside the house in order to terrify the innocent unarmed Turkmen family.

    They moved all the members of the family into a single room and they tied their hands behind their backs and faced to the wall. The children and the females were body searched and this is utterly unacceptable in the culture and the tradition of the Islam and the in the Turkmen culture especially. This criminal act was implemented on the hand the Asayish and US forces despite the assurances that were given from the central government and officials not to raids the homes of the citizens without having warrant issue.

    According to the information that has been released, the raided forces have requested from the frightened Turkmen family to show them their savings and jewellery, the family did so under the force of a gun. As the result of this US forces and Asayish stole their savings and jewellery during the raid and this matter should be urgently investigated by the US occupied forces in Kirkuk who are mainly responsible for the safety, security and the stability.

    After the incident the Turkmen family have approached the police in Kirkuk, political organizations and the Kirkuk governor Mustafa Abdullrahman who is a Kurd and being appointed by the USA forces for help and assistance.  A promises and assurance were given to the Turkmen family by the Kirkuk governor to investigate the incident and to secure their release but unfortunately no proper action has been taken to secure their release.

    The arbitrary arrests of the two brothers, Zakaria and Nabil Nazim Suleiman Begoglu by the Asayish and US occupied forces are a clear violation of human rights. They are still detained and being imprisoned by the occupied forces and no one knows where they are imprisoned. The most striking thing is that, the family of the detainees have not been given any reason for their arrest and have not been given access for a lawyer.

     

    Turkmen of Iraq call upon the Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri AlMaliki, Turkish President Abdullah Gul, Journalists Union, all Iraqi and international organizations defending the human rights and freedom to move immediately to the authorities of the Iraqi government at the highest levels for the protection of the Turkmen, Arabs and Assyrian from the Kurdish oppression that are carried by Kurdish terror forces that is known as Asayish in North of Iraq and also calls for the removal of the Asayish from Turkmen city of Kirkuk and to be replaced with forces from the central government and consisting of Arabs, Turkmen, Assyrians  and Kurds

     Mofak Salman

    Turkmeneli Party Representative for Both Ireland and United Kingdom

    msalman@eircom.net


    [1] Turkmen: The Iraqi Turkmen live in an area that they call “Turkmenia” in Latin or Turkmeneli” which means, “Land of the Turkmen. It was referred to as “Turcomania” by the British geographer William Guthrie in 1785. The Turkmen are a Turkic group that has a unique heritage and culture as well as linguistic, historical and cultural links with the surrounding Turkic groups such as those in Turkey and Azerbaijan. Their spoken language is closer to Azeri but their official written language is like the Turkish spoken in present-day Turkey. Their real population has always being suppressed by the authorities in Iraq for political reasons and estimated at 2%, whereas in reality their numbers are more realistically between 2.5 to 3 million, i .e. 12% of the Iraqi population.

    [2] Turkmeneli is a diagonal strip of land stretching from the Syrian and Turkish border areas from
    around Telafer in the north of Iraq, reaching down to the town of Mendeli on the Iranian border in Central Iraq. The Turkmen of Iraq settled in Turkmeneli in three successive and constant migrations from Central Asia, this increased their numbers and enabled them to establish six states in Iraq.

    [3] Asayish is an unrecognized and illegitimate force that is utilized by both Kurdish parties to terrorize innocent civilian people. They are used to kidnap and kill people who defy the Kurdish aspiration for establishing a Kurdish state.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • THE RISE OF THE TURKMEN

    THE RISE OF THE TURKMEN

    Wander through Kirkuk city today and the presence of the large Turkmen population is very visible. Ever since they began migrating to Iraq following the Islamic conquest of parts of north-east Asia (Turkmenistan), the Turkmen have assumed a prominent position as traders, but today as the status of Kirkuk becomes increasingly disputed, they are assuming a more political role as well.

    Saeed Al-Bayyati, the owner of a cloth shop in al-Jumhouriya street says that Turkmen are “traders, fathers like sons.” Inviting us to stroll down Kirkuk’s main commercial streets shop names and banners are widely written in Turkmen. “They are not specialized in one kind of goods but they ‘control the market’”, said Saeed, telling jokes about rich Turkmen and their reputation for being frugal with their money. “They are not really tightfisted… but those who trade know that money brings money,” he said.

    While Turkmen live beyond the disputed city of Kirkuk, the city constitutes their political centre and is known as the “heart of the Turkmen.” In February 1987, the British Inquiry magazine estimated the total number of Shiite and Sunni Turkmen across Iraq to stand at about half a million. But today there are no reliable statistics and the last official census accepted by the different ethnicities is over 50 years old. The 1957 census gave a figure of half a million Turkmen across all of Iraq, stating that they constituted the second largest group in Kirkuk after the Kurds. Iraqis are now waiting for the census which the government has said it will conduct in 2009 to determine the ratios of ethnicities and minorities including Turkmen in the “new Iraq.”

    Today, Shiite Turkmen live in the cities of Mosul, Tall Afar and Toz Khurmatu in the province of Salahuddin and Taza district of Kirkuk province, while the majority of the Sunni Turkmen live in the district of Kifri in Diyala and in the city of Kirkuk. However, there are no sectarian sensitivities between Shiite and Sunni Turkmen on the social level with mixed marriages in Kirkuk a regular occurrence. According to a Turkmen school teacher “while Iraq witnessed a sectarian war, nobody heard of a Shiite Turkmen killing a Sunni Turkmen. This has given us the strength that we need now.”

    However, this social cohesion is not reflected in Turkmen politics with both Sunni and Shiite parties in existence.

    On the Shiite side, there are several parties linked to the United Shiite Iraqi Alliance, the largest Arab parliamentary bloc. But, Turkmen influence is limited and the biggest Shiite Turkmen party, the Islamic Union, only holds one out of the alliance’s total 128 parliamentary seats. In Kirkuk’s provincial elections, they only won one seat occupied by Tahseen Kihya.

    On the Sunni side, things are different. Unlike the Shiites, the bloc pushes for strong relations with Turkey and opposes the Kurds. The Turkmen Front, founded in 1995 with direct support from Turkey, is the umbrella of several large parties including the Turkmen National Party and the Independent Turkmen Party and occupies eight seats in the provincial council. For many observers, the Sunni parties are more reflective of the real Turkmen position because the Shiite parties have to subjugate their views, especially on the issue of Kirkuk, to the view of the larger Iraqi Shiite Alliance.

    Based on information from the last election, the Turkmen Front represents about 35% of the Turkmen in Kirkuk, a relatively low ratio considering the Front’s persistent efforts to strengthen its relations with the Turkmen population by helping the poor, distributing financial and food aid, providing health care and sending the most needy to hospitals in Turkey to receive health care at the party’s expense.

    Finally, Turkmen parties within the Kurdish region represent a third trend within the Turkmen political spectrum. These parties – the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the Turkmen Union Party, the Brotherhood Party and the Shorouq Party – call for the annexation of Kirkuk to Iraqi Kurdistan and for that reason they do not have real representation in Kirkuk. Since 2003 these parties have kept a low profile but Turkmen parties based in Kirkuk call them “puppets” of Kurdish leaders and say they are being used to further the Kurdish agenda of securing control of Kirkuk.

    The one common feature uniting these political parties is that none of them call for or aspire to Turkmen self-rule and none of them say that Kirkuk is absolutely a Turkmen city. Instead, they call for the joint administration of the city with Kurds and Arabs. There is also no doubt that a majority of the Turkmen oppose the potential annexation of the city to the Kurdish region.

    While most of the Turkmen parties are keen to put their own ethnic flag – a white crescent moon – over their buildings, they do so on a flagpole shorter than that holding the Iraqi flag as a symbol of their respect for the central government.

    Posted by
    Mofak Salman

  • Turkish universities to open Armenian language departments

    Turkish universities to open Armenian language departments

    Trakya and Nevşehir universities will accept a total of 40 students in the department.

    In a move to contribute to Turkish-Armenian ties, Turkey’s Higher Board of Education, or YÖK, will open Armenian language and literature departments at Turkish universities, the Anatolia News Agency reported Friday.

    Trakya and Nevşehir universities will accept a total of 40 students in the department. Boğaziçi University has been teaching Armenian language since last year.

  • Turkish Filmmakers Visited The Civilitas Foundation

    Turkish Filmmakers Visited The Civilitas Foundation

    A group of Turkish filmmakers visited The Civilitas foundation on December 4. Ten young filmmakers, visiting Armenia to participate in the Second Turkish- Armenian Workshop on “Cinema as Means of Cross-Border Dialogue and Mutual Understanding”.

    The workshop, initiated by the Golden Apricot International Film Festival, was a partnership between the Yerevan festival and the Anadolu Kültür Association of Turkey, as well as the Armenian Writers Union.

    The Turkish filmmakers and the organizers met with Civilitas founder Vartan Oskanian, and members of the Civilitas staff.

    Mr. Oskanian welcomed the initiative and spoke of the importance of such initiatives.
    He noted that the purpose of the workshop is to promote civil and cultural dialogue between Armenia and Turkey via means of cinema, encouraging cooperation and mutual recognition among Armenian and Turkish professionals.

    “There is a great deal of misunderstanding and mistrust between Turkey and Armenia. And if the governments of both countries are seriously thinking of normalization of relations, the civil societies in both countries should push the process forward.What better medium than cinema to bring people together,” Mr. Oskanian said.

    The Turkish filmmakers, many of whom already have working ties with their Armenian colleagues, said that one of their main goals of the cooperation is a possibility to work together on a joint project.
    “You, the filmmakers, should be able to explain to your government by means of cinema, that for the development of the region, for the normalization of the relations between the two people, opening the border is vital” Mr. Oskanian explained.

  • Dealing with Pakistan After Mumbai

    Dealing with Pakistan After Mumbai

    Dealing with Pakistan

    After Mumbai

    Dec 4th 2008
    From The Economist print edition

    Even though the terrorists probably came from Pakistan, India should continue to keep its cool

    AP

    PEOPLE in India are describing last week’s terrorist attack on Mumbai as India’s September 11th. In many ways, the comparison is apt. Although the death toll, at about 190, is a fraction of the number killed in America, this brutal attack on a business capital has traumatised an entire country.

    But if the attack on Mumbai is like September 11th, India needs to learn from America’s mistakes. The 19 al-Qaeda hijackers changed history seven years ago. Had they not felled the twin towers, America would not have invaded Afghanistan or Iraq. The easiest way for India to play into the hands of those who sent the ten terrorists to Mumbai would be for India to consider a military response against Pakistan.

    It is probable that the terrorists did embark from Pakistan. The testimony of the surviving attacker, the fact that the band arrived by sea, and American intelligence all point that way (see article). A prime suspect is Lashkar-e-Taiba, one of several groups based in Pakistan that are officially banned but suspected of receiving quiet encouragement from parts of the Pakistani state to wage jihad in the disputed territory of Kashmir and, increasingly, in Afghanistan as well.

    When terrorists attacked the seat of India’s Parliament in December 2001, the two countries mobilised their armies and came close to war. This time India has shown admirable forbearance. There has been remonstrance but no sabre-rattling.

    But forbearance alone cannot be a long-term answer to the problem of Pakistan. The Mumbai plot is only the latest indication that this huge, nuclear-armed country is not under the full control of its newly elected government. When President Asif Ali Zardari said after the carnage in Mumbai that he would take the strictest action against any guilty individual or group “in my part of the country”, it was perhaps a slip of the tongue. But the implication is true: large tracts of Pakistan, notably the tribal areas abutting Afghanistan, are under the control of local tribesmen, the Taliban, al-Qaeda or a mixture of all three.

    The fighting in the tribal areas and the killing last year of Benazir Bhutto misleads outsiders into calling Pakistan a failed state. If that were truly so, America’s policy of bombing al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan might make some sense—as might Indian military intervention in Pakistan. But it is not that simple. Most of Pakistan is quite firmly under the state’s control. However, just as the state does not control all the country, nor does Mr Zardari control all the state. The ultimate arbiters of foreign and security policy in Pakistan have long been the army and intelligence services.

    The army’s top brass seem in tune with their president in seeing Islamist terrorists as the most dangerous enemy facing Pakistan. But for some soldiers and spooks, the manipulation of the jihadists on Pakistan’s soil remains a rational instrument of foreign policy. Although it is America’s ally, Pakistan maintains links with the predominantly ethnic-Pushtun Taliban in Afghanistan, as a hedge against the day America leaves and a way to thwart a perceived Indian plan of strategic encirclement. The insurgency in Kashmir, likewise, is seen as a means of bogging down the old enemy, India. For those in Pakistan who think this way, the warming of relations between America and India—especially the rewriting of global proliferation rules to forgive India for building a bomb—looks like a menacing change that needs to be countered.

    The vengeance trap

    To understand these motives is not to condone them. India has every right to demand that Pakistan stops letting its territory be used as a terrorist haven and to track down those responsible. But these demands have to be accompanied by a balanced strategy that bolsters Mr Zardari and weakens the argument of his generals, not (as in the case of those American bombing raids) the other way round. It should include inducements, such as Indian flexibility over Kashmir, as well as pressure. Pakistan’s army would presumably like nothing better than an excuse to give up its demoralising battle against fellow Muslims in the tribal areas and redeploy against the traditional Hindu enemy in the east. India must not fall into that trap.

  • Obama’s Turkish Partners

    Obama’s Turkish Partners

    A democratic Turkey that has respect in Muslim capitals is exactly what the West needs.

    By Mustafa Akyol | NEWSWEEK

    Published Dec 6, 2008
    From the magazine issue dated Dec 15, 2008

    For years Ankara’s foreign policy was fixated on a few narrow topics—how to handle the Greeks, the Kurds and Armenians—and Turkish policymakers seemed unable to solve even these chronic problems, let alone the problems of others. But these days Turkey has tackled such regional concerns with a new gusto—making the first real headway on the Cyprus issue in decades, for instance—while playing a far larger role in global affairs. In May Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government mediated indirect peace talks between Syrian and Israeli officials in Istanbul. The talks are now ongoing, and further meetings have reportedly been scheduled. Erdogan also recently stepped forward to offer help to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to deal with Iran, which Turkey’s prime minister and many others expect to be Obama’s biggest foreign-policy challenge. On November 11 Erdogan told The New York Times his government was willing to be the mediator between the new U.S. administration and Tehran. “We are the only capital that is trusted by both sides,” he reiterated later in Washington. “We are the ideal negotiator.”

    This surge of interest in becoming something of a global peacemaker is in part the result of the ongoing process of Turkish democratization. The nation’s old elite consisted of the more isolationist Kemalists, the dedicated followers of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who established a republic without democracy in 1923 to westernize and secularize the nation. For many decades to come, society remained divided between the dominant Kemalist center and the more traditional periphery it kept under its thumb. But things fundamentally changed after the election victories of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2002 and 2007. The “other Turkey” was now out of the periphery and into power, and while it proved to be more religious than the old elite, it also proved to be more pro-Western, and more committed to the European Union accession bid than its growingly xenophobic secular rivals.

    This was not simply a convenient tactic, as some have argued. Turkey’s conservative Muslims had been undergoing a silent reformation since the 1980s, as evidenced by the country’s growing “Islamic bourgeoisie,” which sees its future in global markets, not Sharia courts. Ideas about the compatibility of Islam and liberal democracy flourished, as recently evidenced by headscarved women rallying in the streets for civil liberties for all.

    Meanwhile, Ahmet Davutoglu, an erudite scholar who became Erdogan’s chief adviser, outlined a new foreign-policy vision. Turkey had unwisely denied its cultural links with the Middle East for decades, he argued, but the time had come to turn Turkey into a “soft power” that exports peace, stability and growth in its region. Hence came the rapprochement in recent years and months with Greece, Lebanon, Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan and most recently Armenia, where President Abdullah Gül paid an ice-breaking visit in September.

    Kemalist Turks dislike this “neo-Ottoman” approach, which prescribes closer relations with other Muslim nations. When Erdogan greets his Arab counterparts “in the name of God,” they are horrified and argue that the country’s secular principles are under threat. And to garner support from Westerners who are concerned about political Islam, for good reasons, they try to depict the AKP as Taliban in sheep’s clothing. But, in fact, a democratic Turkey that has respect in Muslim capitals, that can speak their language and that is willing to use this leverage for peace and reconciliation is exactly what the West needs.

    Some in the West fear this approach as well, taking notice of AKP’s interests in Islam and the rampant anti-Americanism in Turkey, and sometimes conflating and confusing the two. Yet that anti-American wave is a reaction to the Iraq War and its aftermath. By empowering the Kurds in the north, the post-Saddam era unleashed the deepest of all Turkish fears: the emergence of a Greater Kurdistan. In other words, anti-Americanism is almost a derivative of anti-Kurdism, and, not too surprisingly, is strongest in the nationalist circles, which include the Kemalists. These groups, represented by the two main opposition parties, deride the AKP as American puppets and Kurdish collaborators. A 2007 bestselling book, whose Kemalist author was covertly financed by the military intelligence, even argues that both Erdogan and former AKP member President Gül are actually covert Jews who serve “the elders of Zion” by undermining Atatürk’s republic.

    Turkey’s new elites are not covert Jews as some fringe Kemalists fantasize, of course. But neither are they creeping Islamists as smarter Kemalists portray. In fact they are Muslim democrats, who can both take Turkey closer to becoming a true capitalist democracy and inspire other Muslim nations to follow a similar route. For sure, they need to combat ugly nationalism inside their borders and take continued steps toward deepening liberal reforms. With such a combination of sound domestic leadership and visionary foreign policy, they would be ideal partners for the Obama administration in its own effort to reach out to the troublesome actors in the Middle East.

    Akyol is a columnist for Istanbul-based Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review.

    © 2008

    Source: Newsweek, 6 December 2008