Category: News

By Gareth Jenkins
Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Early on the morning of July 1, the Turkish police detained 24 hard-line secularists during a series of raids in Ankara and Istanbul. Those taken into custody included retired General Sener Eruygur, the former commander of the Turkish Gendarmerie; retired General Hursit Tolon, the former commander of the First Army; Sinan Aygun, the head of the Ankara Chamber of Commerce; and Mustafa Balbay, the Ankara representative of Cumhuriyet daily newspaper (NTV, CNNTurk, July 1).

The Turkish media reported that several of the arrests came during police raids on offices belonging to the Association for Ataturkist Thought (ADD), a secularist NGO that was founded in 1989 to promote the ideals of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), who founded the modern Turkish republic in 1923. The ADD is currently headed by General Eruygur. In the spring of 2007, the ADD was one of the main organizers of a series of mass public protests in which hundreds of thousands of secular Turks took to the streets in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to prevent the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) from appointing Abdullah Gul as the country’s president.

It is thought that those taken into custody on July 1 are being held on suspicion of links to a shadowy Turkish ultranationalist group known as Ergenekon (see Terrorism Focus, January 29). The group first came to public attention in June 2007, when the Turkish police discovered 27 hand grenades and a small quantity of explosives in a house in the Istanbul suburb of Umraniye. Subsequent investigations eventually led to the arrest in January of retired Gendarmerie General Veli Kucuk, the alleged founder and leader of Ergenekon, and 12 associates.

During the 1990s in particular, General Kucuk was heavily involved in operations, mostly targeting members and supporters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), conducted by the network of covert groups and organizations known collectively in Turkish as the derin devlet or “deep state.” Kucuk retired from active service in 2000. He later turned his attention to the threat he believed the AKP posed to the principle of secularism enshrined in the Turkish constitution as one of the defining characteristics of the Turkish republic. Documents leaked to the Turkish media suggest that Ergenekon planned to conduct a campaign of violence to destabilize the AKP government and perhaps trigger a military coup.

Ergenekon has been a gift to the AKP and its supporters in the Islamist media, who have used Kucuk’s presence to try to portray the group as being controlled by the Turkish military. Even though Ergenekon was unraveled before it could launch its campaign of violence, it has also been used by Turkish Islamists to bolster a tendency toward denial and willful ignorance when it comes to violence staged in the name of Islam. Since the arrests in January, the Islamist press has regaled its readers with a string of revelations quoting unidentified sources as attributing nearly every recent act of Islamist violence in Turkey to Ergenekon.

In truth, Ergenekon appears to have been mostly composed of “deep state” has-beens and wannabes. Despite the presence of experienced covert operatives such as Kucuk, it was very shoddily organized with little attention given to even the most basic tradecraft. There is no doubt that serving and retired members of the Turkish military were personally acquainted with Kucuk. It is even possible that some individuals were aware that he was organizing something and were sympathetic to his aims. But there is no evidence to suggest that the Turkish military was behind Ergenekon. Indeed, it is likely that, if one of the most powerful and best equipped militaries in the region–and one with a long history of covert operations–were to attempt to mastermind a violent campaign to destabilize a civilian government, it would have armed its operatives with something more effective than a single crate of grenades.

Nevertheless, the AKP-controlled Interior Ministry, which is responsible for police operations, has devoted considerable resources to the Ergenekon investigation in the apparent hope of discrediting the staunchly secularist Turkish military. The Turkish authorities have traditionally been reluctant to use any designation that could be interpreted as implicitly associating Islam with terrorism. As a result, both violent Islamist organizations and potentially violent secularist groups are described as “rightist” and fall within the remit of the same department in the anti-terrorism branch of the Turkish police. Over the last six months in particular, the Interior Ministry has been diverting so many resources to the Ergenekon investigation that members of the “rightist” department in the police are now having difficulty monitoring much more dangerous violent Islamist groups.

The detentions of July 1 will further strengthen the impression among many secularists in Turkey that the AKP is more concerned with its ideological struggle against hard-line secularists than with law and order. Even if Eruygur and Tolon are subsequently proved to have been linked to Ergenekon, no one seriously imagines that they posed an imminent danger to public security. Most extraordinarily, the detentions came only hours before Public Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya was due to deliver his final presentation in the ongoing case before the Constitutional Court for the closure of the AKP (see EDM, March 17). The detentions will probably be seized upon by the AKP media to try to bolster the AKP’s democratic credentials; but for many others, they will merely reinforce doubts about the AKP’s interpretation of democracy. At a time when the Turkish economy is already looking increasingly fragile, it is difficult to understand why, even if there were evidence against those taken into custody, the Interior Ministry would conduct the raids on a day when Turkish markets were going to be highly vulnerable to any suggestion of an escalation in tension. Not surprisingly, the Turkish financial markets went into freefall as soon as the news of the detentions broke.

The Turkish media reported that both Eruygur and Tolon were seized from the military lodgings where, not least for security reasons, most high-ranking military personnel live after retirement. Whatever motive the Interior Ministry may have had, there is no doubt that the vast majority of the Turkish officer corps will regard the timing and manner of the detentions as a direct invitation to a trial of strength. It is not a challenge that is likely to be ignored. Even if the AKP eventually wins, which is not a foregone conclusion, the price in terms of social and political stability could be very high.

GE selects Turkey to be its healthcare base

GE Healthcare decided to combine the Eastern and Asian markets, or EAGM, into a single “International Diagnostic Imaging” operation. As it gathers its units located in Central Asia, Middle East, Africa, Russia and Commonwealth of Independent States, or CIS, under the GE EAGM title, the company will start managing its operations from Istanbul, officials from GE Healthcare and Turkey’s Investment Support and Promotion Agency, told members of the press during a joint meeting held Friday.

Focusing mainly on the equipment and service markets, GE EAGM is aiming to accelerate GE’s growth in equipment and services markets in the region. The EAGM region, which accounted for more than $600 million in revenue in 2007, is expected to double the figure to $1.2 billion by 2010, thanks to the new structuring. GE appointed Richard di Benedetto as the chairman and chief executive officer of GE Healthcare International’s EAGM region.

GE Healthcare, which is a leader in the development of a new paradigm of patient care, focuses on medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, disease research, drug discovery and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies.

United Kingdom-based GE Healthcare is the first GE business segment headquartered outside the United States.

bianet.org 

Women React To The Religious Directives On “Sexual Life”

The Director of Religious Affairs puts some directives about sexual life on its internet site. The women find them discriminating. They say people take them seriously and therefore they need to be careful in what they say about women.

Bia news servıce
28-05-2008

Nilüfer ZENGIN

Kızbeş Aydın, the head of Çiğle Evka2 Women’s Culture House Association (ÇEKEV), Zozan Özgökçe from Van Women’s Association and Ayşegül Kanat, a feminist from Adana, are upset at the information about sexual life located at the internet site of the Director of the Religious Affairs. The religious directives found on the internet site say the following:

“The women communicating with strange men should speak in a manner that will not arouse suspicion in one’s heart and in such seriousness and dignity that they will not let the opposite party misunderstand them, that they should not show their ornaments and figure and that they should cover in a fine manner; and that these are the orders. His highness the Prophet Mohammed did not think kindly of women who put on perfumes outside their homes and go strolling and saw this as immoral behavior.”

“Male violence is legitimized”
We asked women about the speech of the Director of the Religious Affairs regarding the woman, sexuality and “morality”…

Kızbeş Aydın, the head of Çiğle Evka2 Women’s Culture House Association:

“The Director of the Religious Affairs is not an institution authorized to give opinions on matters involving religious affairs. Therefore, I do not find these explanations appropriate. These explanations work directly towards deepening the sexual inequality and they become part of the discrimination directed at women.”

“These explanations provide the groundwork for the violence against women, they legitimize it, and they justify the implementation of violence with excuses such as “she has perfume” or “she dressed up provocatively” .

“Both men and women take into consideration”
Zozan Özgökçe from Van Women’s Association:

“These kinds of explanations are obstacles, preventing things from changing. Both men and women take into consideration what the Director of the Religious Affairs say. Yesterday 81 müftis, religious officials knowledgeable in Muslim law, met in Van in eastern Turkey. Their words are taken very seriously. Therefore, they need to be about universal stuff.

Unfortunately, the men are one of the factors that we are backward. In Van a woman had gotten a divorce, but his husband was not divorcing her through religious procedure. We went to a mufti and he said how he could interfere in someone else’s chastity, that is, sexual morality [and one’s honor in most cases]. Some people see muftis as solution providers.”

“You know men give their seats to women in the buses. In Van, the women do not sit on these seats right a way, waiting for man’s warmth on the seat to go away. This is certainly scary. This has nothing to do with humanity, nor religion. In Van, we come across comments like ‘let us go ask Müfti’ a lot.”

“Neighborhood pressure is increasing” 
Ayşegül Kanat, a feminist from Adana:

“There should be such an institution as the Director of the Religious Affairs, but if Turkey is defined as a mosaic [of different cultures] then all the religions must be represented in this institution; the atheist as well.”

“These explanations are very dangerous. People start seeing them as scientifically proven information and they create pressure on us [the women]. The Religious Affairs is at a very influential position. Their comments are accepted without discussions and this increases the neighborhood pressure.”(NZ/ GG/TB)