The Turkish government has signed an agreement with the Union of Muftis of Russia (SMR) to train imams and mullahs for Russian mosques. The SMR leadership hailed this decision because of what it described as the secular nature of Turkey and hence that country’s understanding of what Islam should be in a country like Russia (www.interfax-religion.ru/islam/?act=news&div=27334).
Category: News
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No restriction for expansion of Iran-Turkey ties: president
Tehran, Nov 17, IRNAPresident Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Sunday evening that there is no obstacle in the way of further expansion of Tehran-Ankara all-out cooperation.
In a meeting with the visiting Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler, he expressed hope that bilateral relations would further boost in all areas.
Terming his August visit to Turkey as a crucial and determining visit, the president said the visit was in line with the two countries mutual interest.
During Ahmadinejad’s visit to Turkey, a joint statement was issued by the two sides stressing the importance of energy in economic development of the two states.
The two sides agreed to promote the level of cooperation in the fields of energy, gas and oil to the highest level and try to finalize agreements signed between the two capitals in 2007 and 2008 to this end.
Guler expressed his satisfaction with the current level of cooperation between the two neighboring states.
He reiterated that Ankara attaches great importance to expansion of ties with Tehran.
The Turkish energy minister further called for materialization of the agreements reached between the two sides.
Guler, heading a delegation, arrived in Tehran Saturday evening to finalize a gas accord with Iranian officials.
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Turkey, a land of paradoxes
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 (UPI) — Turkey is a land of many paradoxes. While the Kemalist notions of secularism and the separation of mosque and state are taken seriously, at the same time the state provides funds for the building of mosques, keeps the Sunni clergy on the state’s payroll and allows school textbooks that teach that being a Sunni Muslim is part and parcel of the Turkish identity.
No less of a paradox is how Ankara hopes to adhere to the European Union as it promotes one branch of Islam while ignoring minorities, such as the Alevis, who constitute roughly 10 percent to 15 percent of the country’s population.
Still, Turks take their secularism to heart to the point that often the word “secularism” does not convey the sense of urgency felt in post-Ottoman Turkey to describe the notion of keeping religion separate from politics, as intended by Mustapha Kemal (Ataturk), the founder of modern-day Turkey. Instead, Turks often borrow the word “laicite” from the French.
Numerous factors play a part in making Turkey into the land of contradictions that it is today. Certainly its geographic location, as a nation straddling the borders of East and West, sitting along the periphery of the Judeo-Christian West and the Muslim Levant and beyond, counts for something. Turkey was a co-founder of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, whose charter defines its members as “Islamic countries committed to preserving Islamic principles, ethical, social and economic values.”
Writing in the October-November issue of the journal Survival published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in an article entitled “Turkey’s Latest Crisis,” Gareth Jenkins, an analyst based in Turkey, reports that “claims by opponents of the (ruling Justice and Development Party), or the AKP, that it wants to establish an Islamic state are probably exaggerated. But the AKP’s denials that it has a religious agenda are equally misleading.”
Yet, as Jenkins reminds us, “Women who believe the Koran requires them to cover their heads in public are banned from working in the civil service and are even forbidden from studying at universities on the grounds that doing so would be a violation of the secular nature of the Turkish state.”
And although Shariah law prohibits the lending of money for profit, there is hardly another country in either the East or the West with as many banks and as many branches of these banks.
Turkey’s cross-cultural exposure and its geographic position have resulted in some unique geopolitical assets.
Turkey, possibly more so than any other nation in Europe or the Middle East, understands the mindset of both the European and Levantine cultures. And as one of the rare countries in the region to enjoy relations with both the Arabs and Israel, Turkey in recent years has become involved in trying to mediate between Syria and Israel on the one hand, and Iran and the West on the other.
“Turkey is becoming more active in geopolitical affairs,” said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a news conference in Washington last Friday.
“Turkey,” said Erdogan, “could also play a positive role if it were to act as a mediator in the stalled negotiations between Iran and the West over the controversial nuclear dossier.
“We are ready to be the mediator,” said the Turkish prime minister. “I do believe we could be very useful.”
Ankara announced earlier this year that it had begun to play an informal role in the talks between Iran and the group of six leading powers trying to talk Iran out of its nuclear ambitions — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.
Replying to this reporter’s question, Erdogan reaffirmed that Turkey was not prepared to accept the possibility that Iran — right next door — could acquire nuclear weapons, but he did not elaborate as to what steps Turkey might take in that regard.
Erdogan said: “The world is going through a global political and economic crisis.”
Keeping in line with its paradoxical identity crisis, since Erdogan’s ruling party, the AKP, or the Justice and Development Party, came to power in 2002, as Jenkins reminds us, despite its Islamist leanings, there has been an absence of any explicit pro-Islamic legislation. Rather, there has been a “battery of liberalizing reforms” passed in hope of appeasing the European Union and gaining entry into the Brussels club, something Ankara has been pushing for almost 20 years now.
But continued refusal from some European countries, particularly France under the leadership of President Nicolas Sarkozy, who remains ardently opposed to Turkey’s accession to the EU, risks pushing Turkey off the fence and into the Islamist camp. At a time when the West needs all the friends it can get, alienating the Turks to the point where they would turn away from Europe and begin looking eastward once again would be an unforgivable mistake.
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(Claude Salhani is editor of the Middle East Times.)
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Memorandum to President-elect Obama, re: Turkey
Mark R. Parris, Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy
INTRODUCTIONAs your Administration undertakes the Herculean task of restoring America’s footing and leadership abroad, some countries will be able to help-or-hurt-more than others. Turkey has the potential to place high on either list.
Under your predecessor, US-Turkish relations have been chronically dysfunctional, punctuated by periodic near and real disasters. We have to do better. That will require prompt steps to correct conceptual and structural handicaps that have harmed our approach to Turkey for decades, but which have become acute in recent years.
People wave Turkish national flags as they visit the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Reuters/Umit Bektas
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“Ergenekon” play and totalitarianism nightmare on Turkey
“Ergenekon” play and totalitarianism nightmare on Turkey
Niyaz Yagublu
Ben Azerbaycandan bir araştırmacı ve yazar olarak Türkiyemizde olup bitenleri dikkatle izliyorum. Türkiyemizde cereyan eden olayların genelde hangi politikalardan kaynaklandığına Azerbaycan kamuoyunda aydınlık getirmek istiyorum. Türkiye ile bağlı bir sıra yazılarım yayımlanmıştır. Kendim Azerbaycan Milli Bilimler Akademisinde çalışıyorum, “Development Watch” Research Center-in başkanıyım. Size ingilizce bir yazımı gönderiyorum.Niyaz Yagublu
“Development Watch” Research Center
Başkan
www.qaraoyneli.azeriblog.com
________________________________________________________________________“Ergenekon” play and totalitarianism nightmare on Turkey
July 1, 2008 sequel of the “Ergenekon” scenario, which began in January, has illuminated a host of hidden, ominous issues. The AKP (Party of Justice and Development) is successfully moving forward the government’s policy of infiltration into all the structures of the Turkish state, with the purpose of regime changing according to the “Moderate Islam” model, designed in overseas.
Resorting to the detention of high rank retired generals and civil society activists, including a great number of academicians and journalists, is evaluated as a response to Prosecutor General of Turkey Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya’s demand to close the ruling AKP due to its attempts to overthrow the existing secular regime. However the counter‐measures of AKP through judicial authorities namely at the final stage of the investigation of the aforementioned appeal, was an expected step. The abuse of methods and facilities, which has judicial authority within a constitutional state by AKP against its rivals, is simultaneously meant to demonstrate their strength in the psychological war between executors of the “Moderate Islam” project and secular state supporters. Download -
Turkey in free-fall
By Robert M Cutler
MONTREAL – Turkey’s stock markets, reflecting a stalling economy and doubts over International Monetary Fund loans in the run-up to polls next year, have intensified a year-long plunge, with a key benchmark tumbling more than 36% in barely 11 weeks.
The ISE National 100 equities index has taken a 36.8% hit from its level at the end of August, the last time I reviewed the country’s economic and financial situation (See Turkey has a rough road ahead, Asia Times Online, August 28, 2008). At just above the 25,000 level, it is now down 56.8% from its all-time high of mid-October 2007.
The ISE 100 is now in a short-term trading range between the low 24,300s and the mid 29,300s, but will sooner rather than later break out of this range on the downside. The next support level is in the 19,000-20,000 range, after which a medium-term recovery should kick into gear that could take it back as high as 30,000.
However, it is more than likely that the recovery will be followed by another decline of indeterminate but substantial proportion. Any fall in the index significantly below 20,000 in the meantime will signify that that medium-term recovery is foregone and the further steep falls are to be expected.
The domestic economic outlook justifies this pessimism. Declines in industrial production steepened in September to 5.5%, the biggest drop since 2002, from a 4.1% fall in August. With car manufacturers such as the local units of Ford and Toyota temporarily closing plants, and textiles manufacturing plunging 17.6% in September, the government’s 2009 spending plans based on 4% economic growth are now looking unrealistic, according to analysts.
The economy expanded 1.9% year-on-year in the second quarter, down from 6.7% in the first quarter. Meanwhile, the central bank has kept its benchmark interest rate at 16.75%, more than four times the level in the euro zone, as it tries to bring down an inflation rate the central bank said this month could exceed 11% at the end of 2008.
The government plans to increase key spending 17% next year as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party prepares for municipal elections due to be held by March.
Foreign confidence in the economy plays a disproportionate role in Turkey’s stock market. Morgan Stanley estimates that foreign investors hold 16.5% of domestic debt stock and 72% of the free float in the stock market itself.
International financial players, as well as domestic business interests, accordingly, are strongly in favor of Turkey signing a new agreement with the IMF, which is considered an important lever in encouraging further economic reforms.
Turkey’s last agreement with the IMF, involving US$10 billion, expired in May. It was the most recent in a series of stand-by agreements beginning in 1999 that have been nearly universally viewed as an “anchor” instilling the discipline necessary to implement successive reform agendas, many of which would bring the country further into line with European Union standards.
The government has continually claimed that it is bringing its economic, legal and financial structure into line with EU norms only because this is to the benefit of Turkey itself. Negotiations for Turkey’s accession to the EU are stalled in a number of key fields and the trading bloc has as yet no power to impose conditionality on the country’s reforms. Turkish public opinion in favor of accession, meanwhile, has recently declined.
Turkey’s business community has been calling for another loan deal to help to limit the fallout from the global financial crisis. There is also concern in the national and international banking sectors that only an IMF agreement can supply the incentive for further reform and greater fiscal discipline. The IMF, meanwhile, admits that Turkey is better able than in the past to deal with external shocks, thanks to more diverse export markets and a flexible exchange rate.
Perhaps partly because the present domestic financial crisis is not of Turkey’s own making, the government has hesitated to explore possibilities for a precautionary stand-by agreement with the IMF, of the sort that Ukraine and Hungary have recently concluded.
The absence of a precautionary agreement would not necessarily cut Turkey off entirely – it could conceivably receive up to US$8.8 billion under the Short-Term Liquidity Facility that is dedicated shoring up emerging markets. Still, Erdogan would prefer to put off any agreement until after the local elections in March so as to avoid giving his political opponents any additional momentum in their criticism of his policies.
To increase government spending in the run-up to the local elections. Erdogan would like to take the state unemployment fund and label it as revenue, but an agreement with the IMF could tie his hands in this respect.
As a result, he may request a currency swap agreement from the US Federal Reserve Bank, of the sort that it has extended to other countries lately. While these funds might be intended to ameliorate the current-account deficit, there would be nothing to prevent the government from using them, in the place of existing state revenues, for expenditures in view of the upcoming local elections.
The IMF and Turkey are expected to hold further talks during this weekend’s summit of industrial and developing nations in Washington.
Even so, “It is not very easy to say whether there will be an agreement with the IMF or not,” Deputy Prime Minister Nazim Ekren said last week, according to a Reuters report.
Robert M Cutler (http://www.robertcutler.org) is Research Fellow, Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, Carleton University, Canada.
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