Turkish Forum

Category: Turkey

  • The Tragedy of the Ottomans: Muslims in the Balkans and Armenians in Anatolia

    Admir.pdf
    Arisan-Violence as a Means of Nation Building The Case of the Balkans 1890 1913.pdf
    Brad-Armenians and the Cleansing of Muslims 1878 1915 Influences from the Balkans.pdf
    Hakan-Reading the Eastern Question through the Prism of Orientalism Hubris Founding Genealogy and James Bryce.pdf
    gunn2019.pdf
    Igor-The Balkan Wars An Expected Opportunity for Ethnic Cleansing.pdf
    Intro-The Tragedy of the Ottomans Muslims in the Balkans and Armenians in Anatolia.pdf
    Senadin.pdf
    taras2019.pdf
    Uzer-Ömer Seyfettin.pdf

  • Will Turkey ever acknowledge the Armenian genocide? No, not for the next 1000+ years.

    Will Turkey ever acknowledge the Armenian genocide? No, not for the next 1000+ years.

    Pulat Tacar

    Harun Resit Aydin, history lover
    Answered Apr 10
    Will Turkey ever acknowledge the Armenian genocide?

    No, not for the next 1000 years.

    And don’t take this as a cruel statement, I’m saying you the deadly truth about the situation not my own feelings.

    You’ll mostly hear about the narrative ‘’I like the Turks, they are good, but their political rulership..they’re refusing to acknowledge the genocide..’’

    Well, nothing could be more wrong. Exactly during this government time, some of his advisors came to the idea that it’s possible to settle this issue for all at once and forgot that this subject has a whole more than ‘’let’s shake hands finally’’, which ranges from Turkish and Armenian lobby groups who spend millions and billions for the advertisement of their narrative, states who are at stake with Turkey and use this incident for their own goals and the sentiments on both sides. And like expected, it backfired a lot for the political leaders and they took a ‘’u-turn’’ as soon as possible.

    That means, a politician represents in a large majority his own people, he is a guy who comes from the same streets of the same country and lives among these people. And his only chance to survive is to represent as much as possible the sentiments of his people and need to be very careful that he doesn’t play too much on these feelings.

    What made this whole subject a ‘’no-go’’ in history and turned it to a eternal denial are two incidents:

    1- The existence of the Holocaust and the aftermath results

    2- That people especially after the second world war for the first time came out with that narrative and tried to connect it to the Holocaust or tried to draw a parallel.

    If these two incidents would not happen, nobody would even bother about this situation in Turkey much and it would be solved much easier.

    So why I’m saying this and what is the sentiment in Turkey?

    I’ve told in another answer of mine the sufferings of my own family during this time:

    Harun Resit Aydin’s answer to What caused Turkey to initiate the Armenian Genocide?

    And there are around 300–500 k victim families in Turkey, who during the first world war suffered in the hands of Armenian militias. These families have carried these horrible memories with themselves over decades and told their kids, just like it was the case on the Armenian side who left their soil. Exactly here the main problem is that the whole subject is discussed very wrong over decades.

    The Turkish people think this:

    1. We have not killed the Armenians like it was the case of the Jews in Nazi Germany just because we felt so, but because we were attacked in thousands in our villages and lived the most horrible things..
    2. Why then only WE should apologize when we have lost also thousands of people due to the Armenian Terror.

    Obviously, the Armenians because of their numbers have suffered later more losses than the Turks (even that is flawed very much, Kurds were in these regions in majority, just like my fathers Kurdish family, the Turks more in minority), but they look it from the perspective

    ‘’being called a murder and on the top of it not even getting acknowledgment of their own death tolls and a sorry for that..’’

    That’s maybe less present in the urban areas of the metropols in Turkey where there are some people who want to accept the ‘’Armenian Genocide’’ because no one in their family has lived it during that time and the story is very far to them, but boy, if you come to Anatolia and speak with people who have lost their entire families into the brutality of these incidents, you’ll realize that this incident will be never ever recognized in the next 1000 years and anyone in the politics, who even mention this, can forget to rule Turkey

    Therefore, my only thought is for a solution, that both sides say openly that they commited massacres on both sides and apologize at the same time and maybe open a memorial about it in these respective countries together or this incident will continue to be spoken from one side and the others will just ignore it and move on.

    And honestly, despite the fact that my family has lost so many members during this crime and an entire village was wiped out, I totally forgot it and forgive. It’s so much in past, that nobody anymore remembers and none of us had to do something with it. I really don’t understand why we keep accusing each other about ancient things when we today losing so many kids and innocent people into war where we actually need to step in and help out.

    I feel for all the victim families from both sides during these difficult times.

    Thanks.

  • We Can Make the Post-Coronavirus World a Much Less Violent Place

    We Can Make the Post-Coronavirus World a Much Less Violent Place

    The pandemic has decreased some kinds of crime and increased others. But the world is much safer than it used to be, and we know how to make it even safer.

    By Robert Muggah, Steven Pinker

    Protesters at a vigil for murdered social leaders in Bogotá, Colombia, on July 6, 2018. JOAQUIN SARMIENTO/AFP via Getty Images

    The world is convulsed by the novel coronavirus, but that is not the only pathogen that afflicts us. Criminal violence is also endemic, contagious, and highly virulent. More than 464,000 people were killed in homicides in 2017 (the last year for which we have reliable data), at least five times as many as were killed in war. Millions more suffer from physical and psychological injuries left by domestic abuse, gang fights, and extrajudicial violence.

    The coronavirus pandemic will surely affect the patterns of this violence, but how? Conventional wisdom suggests that times of great stress produce more violence, but the data doesn’t bear that out: During the horrific Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919, neither the United States nor Britain experienced a significant increase in violence. Homicide rates actually fell during the Great Depression of the 1930s. They also declined during the recession that began in 2007.Conventional wisdom suggests that times of great stress produce more violence, but the data doesn’t bear that out.

    With nighttime curfews and enforced quarantines keeping people off the streets and out of the bars, some forms of violent crime are dropping quickly in North America and parts of Latin America. But with people cooped up and getting agitated, domestic abuse appears to be increasing. Cybercrime is rising as well. And in countries such as Mexico that are beset by organized crime, homicide rates have spiked to record highs—which suggests a breakdown of public order as the pandemic spreads.

    The longer-term prospects are even less clear. A major worry is what will happen if food prices rise when supply chains break down. The price of basic food products is a life-or-death issue for the more than 60 percent of the world’s population who depend on the informal economy. There are also fears of increased social disorder when governments violently enforce lockdowns and quarantines, as they are doing in Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. In the Philippines, the president has issued shoot-to-kill orders for those protesting the lockdown. Meanwhile, in Brazil, El Salvador, and Italy, gangs and mafia groups are imposing their own curfews to keep the virus from spreading.

    But the potential for certain forms of violence to escalate in the wake of the pandemic should not blind us to the fact that the world, on average, has become a much safer place. Most countries experienced sharply declining rates of lethal violence over the past two decades. Just as importantly, we are starting to understand, based on evidence from around the world, which kinds of policies and programs actually work to diminish violent crime, and which don’t. Armed with this evidence, we have the power to reduce violence further—whether it is caused by the pandemic or not.

    The scale of these reductions in lethal violence has been stunning. Between 1990 and 2015, North America halved its homicide rate, which is now close to historic lows in the United States and Canada. European countries also registered sharp drops. In Asia, the homicide rate was was 38 percent lower in 2017 than in 2000. Declines of more than 50 percent were recorded in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Sri Lanka.

    In many cities and neighborhoods, the drop in homicides has been staggering.

    In many cities and neighborhoods, the drop in homicides has been staggering.

    In the United States, most of the 30 largest cities are much safer today than a few decades ago. New York recorded more than 2,200 murders in 1990, but barely 300 in 2019. Washington, D.C., experienced a drop from more than 700 homicides in 1990 to just 163 in 2019. Other North American and Western European cities have followed a similar trend.Good news even comes from some of the world’s most violent places. The onetime murder capital of the planet, Medellín, Colombia, experienced a dizzying decline of lethal violence, from a high of 266 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in the early 1990s to 30 per 100,000 in 2015, a fall of nearly 90 percent. Bogotá’s homicide rate fell from 81 per 100,000 in 1993 to roughly 17 per 100,000 in 2015. São Paulo, a notoriously homicidal city, is currently registering the lowest homicide rate since records began.

    Notwithstanding these improvements, homicide rates remain stubbornly high in Latin America and the Caribbean. The region still registers a third of the world’s homicides, even though it contains less than 9 percent of the world’s population. Of the 50 most murderous cities in the world in 2016, 43 were in Latin America and the Caribbean.

    Why has life in so many places become so much safer? As so often happens, there are many causes, and they are not easy to separate with confidence. Individual violence is largely a young man’s game, and societies with a higher proportion of teens and young adults tend to have higher levels of violent crime. By contrast, countries with older populations such as Japan, Italy, and Germany are often more peaceful.

    But a country’s age distribution changes slowly and cannot explain a halving of violence in a decade by itself. When we compare regions, violence is statistically correlated to the level of inequality, perhaps because men at the bottom of a steeply unequal income distribution become more sensitive to social status and react violently to minor affronts. But that hypothesis cannot explain why violence is poorly correlated with inequality over time: Violence has dramatically decreased even as income inequality has increased in many countries.

    It may not be inequality in income that predicts violence but inequality in protection against violence by institutions. In A Savage Order, the security expert Rachel Kleinfeld observes that in the most violent societies, the state acts as a security force for elites rather than a universal guarantor of peace. When societies begin to entrust their protection in a capable police force and justice system, they come to enjoy more law and order for all.Political leaders need to decide that homicide reduction is an achievable goal, not a campaign slogan or source of pork-barrel spending.

    A common thread in regions that have reduced violence is larger and better-trained police forces targeted at reducing violence in the places where it is worst. Social and political solidarity are essential parts of this virtuous circle. When political leaders enlist police and communities as partners in enforcing norms that sanction delinquent behavior and promote collective safety, violent crime declines.

    The virtuous circle of crime reduction often starts when cities and regions set clear targets spanning multiple election cycles and administrative fiefs. Political leaders need to decide that homicide reduction is an achievable goal, not a campaign slogan or source of pork-barrel spending, and commit adequate resources to the task. Implementing these plans requires sustained buy-in from mayors, police chiefs, and civic and business leaders.

    The policies and programs must be selected on the basis of reliable data showing that they work, rather than on fads, slogans, or utopian hopes of extirpating root causes such as poverty and racism. Police must be seen not as antagonists but as service providers delivering what everyone in the community wants: safer streets and homes. And because criminal violence is so concentrated—we know from the data that a small number of neighborhoods and perpetrators account for a large share of the violence—successful crime reduction must focus resources on the places that are most violent.

    These efforts can draw on a growing body of evidence about what works and what doesn’t. In his book Bleeding Out, which reviews a literature of thousands of studies on violence reduction, the criminal justice researcher Thomas Abt shows that one of the most effective tactics is hot-spot policing, which homes in on the cities, neighborhoods, and street corners where violence is most rampant. A complementary proven strategy is focused deterrence, which singles out the most aggressive gangs and individuals and sends them the clear message that they will be punished for committing violence and rewards them (with jobs, training, and other opportunities) for refraining from it.

    When potential troublemakers are identified, another strategy whose effectiveness is clear from evidence is cognitive behavioral therapy. These interventions are designed to override the maladaptive thought habits and impulsive behavior that cause criminal delinquency, and to teach strategies of self-control that can stop an escalation into aggression before it begins. They include training in anger management and social skills, together with counselling in strategies that are explicitly designed to prevent recidivism.

    These good habits can be reinforced by engineering urban environments with fewer temptations to resist—with earlier bar closings and fewer dark streets, secluded corners, and abandoned buildings. According to the sociologist Patrick Sharkey, urban renewal and local mobilization efforts to reclaim parks, city blocks, and open plazas in the United States played a pivotal role in reducing crime and victimization.

    Just as important as knowing what works is knowing what doesn’t.

    Just as important as knowing what works is knowing what doesn’t.

    Aggressive, zero-tolerance policing, three-strikes-and-you’re-out mandatory sentencing, police-led drug awareness programs, so-called scared-straight interventions exposing young children to prisons and inmates, firearm buybacks, and slum clearance programs are either ineffective or make things worse.The goal of preventing people from killing each other in large numbers is not just desirable but achievable. The goal of reducing the global homicide rate by 50 percent by 2030—about 6.5 percent a year—has been embraced by Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a coalition of governments, national and international organizations, and foundations and private sector partners.

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    The first order of business is to double down on evidence-based interventions in the most dangerous countries, cities, and neighborhoods, capitalizing on our knowledge of what works and what doesn’t, and on the fact that lethal violence tends to concentrate in a few areas and among a small number of people. When the right measures are applied in the right places, homicide and other forms of violent crime can drop quickly.

    The moral value of looking at data is not just that it’s the only basis for choosing policies that actually save lives. Quantifying goals for reducing violence is also ethical because it treats all lives as equally valuable. Actions to prevent the greatest number of murders prevent the greatest amount of human tragedy. As the pandemic reminds us, there is no more important goal than saving lives.

    Robert Muggah is the founder of the Igarapé Institute and SecDev Group. He is the author (with Ian Goldin) of Terra Incognita: 100 Maps to Survive the Next 100 Years, to be published in August 2020 by Penguin.

    Steven Pinker is the Johnstone family professor of psychology at Harvard University and author, most recently, of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Twitter: @sapinker

  • Outgoing USAID Chief Says Pandemic Underscores Importance of Foreign Aid

    Outgoing USAID Chief Says Pandemic Underscores Importance of Foreign Aid

    In an interview, Mark Green says this is no time to be slashing assistance to the developing world or global health.

    By Robbie Gramer

    |

    U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Mark Green speaks at the Najas Palace in Quito, Ecuador, on May 15, 2019. Cristina Vega/AFP via Getty Images

    On April 10, U.S. President Donald Trump’s top foreign aid official stepped down from his post in a long-planned departure, saying the coronavirus pandemic shows how critical U.S. assistance to global health organizations has become, especially in the developing world.

    In an interview with Foreign Policy, Mark Green, the outgoing administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), raised alarms about how refugees and displaced populations will be affected by the pandemic and reflected on the Trump administration’s repeated attempts to cut funding for foreign aid.

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    “Less resources mean we can do less. It’s not magic, right? It’s not a mystery,” he said. “It’s a reminder to us, the challenges that we see, that the investments that we make, particularly health infrastructure investments, may not have immediate tangible payoffs, but they are an essential part of a long-term strategy.”

    With Green’s departure, some in the aid community fear for USAID’s future, particularly as it grapples with how to respond to the second- and third-order knock-on effects from a pandemic that has infected more than 1.9 million people, killed over 119,000, and brought the global economy to its knees. While the virus has ravaged developed countries, many experts fear that the world’s least developed countries—where USAID conducts its most important humanitarian work—will be next.

    Green said he was worried most about how the pandemic would impact people displaced by conflict worldwide. “We have 71 million or so people displaced around the world in nearly every corner of the world. People are in motion. People are vulnerable. And so, I think they are particularly vulnerable to some of the challenges from COVID-19,” he said. “Finding ways to be able to reach out and help those communities will be an essential part of not just getting the outbreak under control but ending the pandemic.”

    Green was something of an anomaly in the Trump administration. For over two and a half years, he managed the multibillion-dollar foreign aid agency without the level of scandal or political drama that came to dominate other agencies. He outlasted a secretary of state, defense secretary, and multiple national security advisors, along with a raft of other top administration officials who were sacked or resigned amid scandal and controversy.

    He took over an agency that, at least on paper, looked like a prime target for the cadre of anti-establishment populist insurgents that helped propel Trump to the White House; “America First” seemed entirely at odds with the long-standing U.S. practice of delivering billions of dollars in aid to foreign countries.

    To the surprise of many veteran foreign aid experts, USAID has emerged relatively unscathed—at least compared with other federal agencies that were dragged into scandals or even the president’s impeachment trial. Green oversaw a reorganization of the agency to streamline its bureaucracies—a stark contrast to the State Department’s fumbling attempts to enact its own reforms—and bipartisan pushback in Congress fended off yearly proposals to substantially slash USAID’s budget.

    All the while, Green pulled off the increasingly rare feat of maintaining good ties with both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill without drawing the ire of a famously mercurial and combative president. Green, a former Wisconsin Republican congressman and U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, was no stranger to the world of international aid when he was tapped to be Trump’s USAID chief.

    He also balanced ties between the aid community—chock-full of Trump critics—and powerful figures in the administration who repeatedly tried to gut funding for diplomacy and foreign aid, according to six current and former USAID officials.

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    “He protected and fought really hard for USAID budgets internally,” said Nicole Widdersheim, a former National Security Council staffer and USAID official.

    “Honestly I think, compared to what the baseline expectations were for what would happen to USAID under a Trump administration, what Mark’s been able to achieve was really a best-case scenario,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior USAID official under President Barack Obama now at the Center for Global Development.

    Green, who had been in the job since August 2017, did not offer any rebukes or veiled swipes at the president during the interview. He said the pandemic underscored the importance of U.S. foreign aid for global health programs—though the Trump administration proposed cuts to global health programs in its federal budget proposal released this year.

    “I think the crisis that we’re all facing right now should serve as a reminder that these kinds of investments are important—not just for our partners, they’re important for us,” Green said.

    Green’s tenure at USAID had its rocky and politically perilous moments. The administration tried to pare down U.S. foreign aid through bureaucratic maneuvering when the aid cuts were rejected by Congress. USAID also caught criticism from international aid organizations focused on women’s rights for its hard-line stance on sexual and reproductive health, arguing that the administration’s anti-abortion stances hampered international efforts to improve women’s health, particularly in developing countries. Senior administration officials have rejected these criticisms.

    USAID also faced political pressure and a controversy in 2018, when Vice President Mike Pence’s office pressured the agency to divert aid funds to Christian minorities in Iraq. USAID staffers felt that the administration’s efforts to influence apolitical procurement processes could violate constitutional restrictions on favoring one religion over another and could also inflame sectarian tensions in Iraq, as ProPublica reported.

    One top career USAID official, Maria Longi, was reportedly removed from her post following pressure from Pence’s office. The move angered many rank-and-file USAID officers, who felt she was being unfairly scapegoated, according to several current and former USAID officials.

    Green declined to comment on Longi’s case but lauded the work USAID had done in Iraq. “I would never comment on internal personnel matters of this agency,” he said. “What I can say is I’m a big fan of the work that we’re doing in places like northern Iraq. And I think that we have crafted tools and initiatives that are helping very vulnerable communities respond and rebuild after suffering the worst kinds of assaults and discrimination and persecution by violent extremists, most notably ISIS.”

    Some of the administration’s sharpest critics still offered praise for Green as he departed his post, including Sen. Bob Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has publicly sparred with Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in the past. “Faced by an Administration that has relentlessly sought to cut foreign development and humanitarian relief programs it incorrectly views as charity, I sincerely appreciated Administrator Green’s commitment to defending programs and funds that are proven to advance U.S. national security, help lift up the world’s most impoverished, and build resilient and prosperous communities that in turn promote global stability,” Menendez said in a statement after Green’s departure was announced.

    Green will become the new president of Arizona State University’s McCain Institute for International Leadership, named after late Republican Sen. John McCain. The former president of the institute, Kurt Volker, was Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and stepped down following the impeachment investigation.

    Trump has appointed John Barsa, a well-connected Trump appointee in USAID overseeing Latin American issues, as acting head of the agency with Green’s departure. The move surprised some at USAID; Green’s deputy, Bonnie Glick, was passed over for the job of acting administrator in favor of Barsa in a break with tradition.

    Green said he had no idea who might replace him as head of USAID after Barsa and had no conversations on that topic with the White House.

    He praised Barsa as a “quick study.” He also offered a piece of advice for his successor: “The advice I have is that we have a great team of professionals, and we should trust them and do everything we can to enhance their work and opportunities.”

    Three people are in the running to replace Green as head of the agency, according to several current and former officials familiar with the matter. This includes Jim Richardson, Pompeo’s former chief of staff during his time in Congress, as Devex first reported. Richardson, who served at USAID earlier in the Trump administration, is now director of U.S. foreign assistance resources at the State Department. Former Republican Rep. Ed Royce, the former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is also in the running for the job, as is Florida Republican Rep. Ted Yoho. “The congressman has expressed interest in the position and thrown his name into the running for USAID administrator,” a spokesman for Yoho told Foreign Policy. The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment on the next USAID administrator nominee.

    The outgoing USAID chief also dismissed the fears that the agency wouldn’t be able to handle the coronavirus crisis once he left. “I don’t worry about USAID’s ability to respond,” Green said. He cited the agency’s newly established task force to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, which is led by Ken Staley, a doctor and veteran policy official who served as the administration’s global malaria coordinator beginning in 2018.

    Other veteran USAID officials said the agency needed a new full-fledged administrator as soon as possible, as fears mount over how the international aid agency can manage humanitarian crises and conflicts in the midst of a pandemic.

    They said Green’s push to reform USAID, including streamlining its bureaucracy and better aligning its budget and policy shops, would help the agency better respond to the current crisis.

    “It’s kind of rewiring the circuit board to make sure it works better and more efficiently, and that is not sexy,” Konyndyk said. “Often the biggest frustrations are these kind of stupid structural or administration holdover structures that don’t make any sense anymore but are impossible to fix because no one ever wants to invest the political capital in fixing them.

    “I have a lot of respect for the fact that with the tenure [Green] had, he tried to focus on actually making the agency run better. Not everybody comes in and tries to do that.”

    The administrator position—which requires presidential nomination and Senate confirmation—now joins a raft of other key senior posts in the administration that are filled by lower-level officials in an acting capacity. “Timely and comprehensive nominations have been a challenge for this administration,” said Lester Munson, a former senior Senate staffer and USAID official now at the BGR Group, a government relations firm.

    “It’s critically important that USAID have leadership right now and strong leadership and that it be given the authority and power to take off and do what it can do very well,” said Gayle Smith, a former USAID chief under Obama and head of the ONE Campaign, a global health advocacy organization. “On the one hand, it’s challenging that there’s no confirmed administrator. On the other hand, this agency knows how to deal with complex crises.”

    Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RobbieGramer

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  • china owns 1/3 of italian industry…Amazing Read About what went on Italy

    china owns 1/3 of italian industry…Amazing Read About what went on Italy

    Kimden: Richard DeGraff [mailto:dickdegraff
    From: Leon Whitney <lee.whitney>

    Cheerio???

    Interesting take on the Chinese!!

    ITALY’S COMMUNIST RECIPE FOR DISASTER by Giacomino Nicolazzo

    (Giacomino Nicolazzo is one of Italy’s most beloved writers. Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, he lives in a small village in Lombardy where he writes his books.)

    Montecalvo, Lombardy, Italy, March 24, 2020.

    As I sit here in my involuntary isolation, it was just reported that overnight 743 more people died and 5.249 new cases have been reported. This brings the total cases of infection to 69,176 and the body count to 6,820. We take relief in knowing that 8,326 people have recovered so far. (Numbers as of 3/24, 8:30pm in Italy.)
    Most towns here in Italy, from the upper reaches of the Alps to the ancient shores of Sicilia and Sardenia, while not deserted, are closer to being ghost towns than the bustling centers of tourism, business and daily life they were just a few weeks ago.
    Stores and shops have been shuttered. Restaurants and coffee shops no longer serve customers. Schools, universities, sporting arenas…even our museums and theaters…all closed. Even the Vatican City has closed its gates and armed patrols monitor the 20 foot tall walls that protect it!
    Streets and roads are now empty for as far as the eye can see. Normally they would be filled with crazed Italian drivers in tiny cars and scooters (the ones that sound like demonic insects) darting here and there, reaching the limits of centrifugal force on our roundabouts. In the piazze of our towns and cities, there are now officially more pigeons than people.
    Many of us know someone who has been infected and recovered. Some of us know someone who did not recover…now they are dead. But everyone knows someone who has been affected by this microscopic monster in one way or another.
    Sixty million of us are in lockdown…it is like a war zone here. We are being held prisoner in our own homes by an unseen enemy that sneaked in unnoticed…by most of us. As you will read in just a few more minutes, there were those who knew something like this was coming…or at least they should have.
    So who is to blame? With all this craziness swirling like a whirlpool at our feet, I just had to find the blame answer. And so I have spent my free time (of which I have a lot in these days) digging and researching. I was literally shocked to discover how this has come to be.
    I am not going to bore you with talk of Patient ‘0’ who spread it to Patient ‘1’ and how mathematics efficiently explains the rapid expansion of infection. No…I am going to tell you how (as I see it) the virus came to Italy.
    It has everything to do with communists. Allow me to explain.
    Beginning in about 2014, Matteo Renzi, the imbecile ex-mayor of Firenze (Florence) acting as the leader of the Partito Democratico (synonymous with the Italian Communist party), somehow managed to get himself elected as Italy’s Prime Minister. To give you a proper frame of reference, Matteo Renzi was so far left, he would make Barack Obama look like Barry Goldwater!
    At the same time that Renzi was leading Italy into oblivion, strange things were happening in Italy’s economy. Banks were failing…but not closing. Retirement ages were being extended…for some reason the pension funds were dwindling or disappearing. The national sales tax we call IVA (Value Added Tax) rose from 18% to 20%, then to 21% and again to 22%.
    And in the midst of all this financial chicanery, the Chinese began furiously buying up Italian real estate and businesses in the North.
    Now the reason I mention Renzi and the Chinese together is that strange things were also going on between the governments of Italy and China. A blind eye was being turned to the way the Chinese were buying businesses in the financial, telecommunication, industrial and fashion sectors of Italy’s economy, all of which take place in Milano.
    To be brief…China was getting away with purchases and acquisitions in violation of Italian law and EU Trade Agreements with the US and the UK…and no one in either of those countries (not Obama in the US or Cameron in the UK) said a thing in their country’s defense. As a matter of fact, much of it was hidden from the public in all three countries.
    In 2014, China infused the Italian economy with €5 billion through purchases of companies costing less than €100 million each. By the time Renzi left office (in disgrace) in 2016, Chinese acquisitions had exceeded €52 billion. When the dust settled, China owned more than 300 companies…representing 27% of the major Italian corporations.
    The Bank of China now owns five major banks in Italy…all of which had been secretly (and illegally) propped up by Renzi using pilfered pension funds! Soon after, the China Milano Equity Exchange was opened and much of Italy’s wealth was being funneled back to the Chinese mainland.
    Chinese state entities own Italy’s major telecommunication corporation (Telecom) as well as its major utilities (ENI and ENEL). Upon entry into the telecommunication market, Huawei established a facility in Segrate, a suburb of Milano. It launched is first research center there and worked on the study of microwaves which has resulted in the possibly-dangerous technology we call 5G.
    China also now owns controlling interest in Fiat-Chrysler, Prysmian and Terna. You will be surprised to know that when you put a set of Pirelli tires on your car, the profits are going to China. Yep…the Chinese colossus of ChemChina, a chemical industry titan, bought that company too!
    Last but not least is Ferretti yachts…the most prestigious yacht builder in Europe. Incredibly, it is no longer owned by the Ferretti family.
    But the sector in which Chinese companies invested most was Italy’s profitable fashion industry. The Pinco Pallino, Miss Sixty, Sergio Tacchini, Roberta di Camerino and Mariella Burani brands have been acquired by 100%.
    Designer Salvatore Ferragamo sold 16% and Caruso sold 35%. The most famous case is Krizia, purchased in 2014 by Shenzhen Marisfrolg Fashion Company, one of the leaders of high-priced, ready-to-wear fashions in Asia.
    Throughout all of these purchases and acquisitions, Renzi’s government afforded the Chinese unrestricted and unfettered access to Italy and its financial markets, many coming through without customs inspections.
    Quite literally, tens of thousands of Chinese came in through Milano (illegally) and went back out carrying money, technology and corporate secrets.
    Thousands more were allowed to enter and disappeared into shadows of Milano and other manufacturing cities of Lombardy, only to surface in illegal sewing shops, producing knock-off designer clothes and slapping ‘Made In Italy’ labels on them. All with the tacit approval of the Renzi government.
    It was not until there was a change in the governing party in Italy that the sweatshops and the illegal entry and departure of Chinese nationals was stopped. Matteo Salvini, representing the Lega Nord party, closed Italy’s ports to immigrants and systematically began disassembling the sweatshops and deporting those in Italy illegally.
    But his rise to power was short-lived. Italy is a communist country…socialism is in the national DNA. Ways were found to remove Salvini, after which the communist party, under the direction of Giuseppe Conte, reopened the ports. Immediately, thousands of unvetted, undocumented refugees from the Middle East and East Africa began pouring in again.
    Access was again provided to the Chinese, under the old terms, and as a consequence thousands of Chinese, the majority from Wuhan, began arriving in Milano.
    In December of last year, the first inklings of a coronavirus were noticed in Lombardy…in the Chinese neighborhoods. There is no doubt amongst senior medical officials that the virus was brought here from China.
    By the end of January 2020 cases were being reported left and right. By mid-February the virus was beginning to seriously overload the Lombardy hospitals and medical clinics. They are now in a state of collapse.
    The Far-Left politicians sold out and betrayed the Italian people with open border policies and social justice programs. One of the reasons the health care system collapsed so quickly is because the Renzi government (and now continued under the Conte government) redirected funds meant to sustain the medical system, to pay for the tens of thousands of immigrants brought in to Italy against the will of the Italian people.
    If you remember the horrible earthquake that decimated the villages around Amatricia, in the mountains east of Rome in 2015, you would also remember how the world responded by sending millions of dollars to help those affected.
    But there is a law in Italy that prevents private donations to charitable Italian organizations. All money and donations received must be turned over to a government agency, who in turn is to appropriate the funds as needed. But that agency is corrupt just as are all the others.
    Most of the money never reached a single victim in the mountains. The Renzi government redirected the vast majority of those funds to pay for the growing immigrant and refugee costs.
    As the economy worsened under the burden of illegal immigration, compounded by gross government spending and incompetence, unemployment rose quickly…especially among young people. The unemployment rate for men and women under age 35 is close to 40%.
    So more money was diverted from the health care system and used to pay what is known here as guaranteed income. Whether you work or not you are paid here, especially if you belong to the PD! The government simply raises taxes on those who do work.
    Let me give you a quick example of the height of insanity to which Italian taxation has risen. If you live in a building that has a balcony or balconies…and any of those balconies cast a shadow on the ground, you must pay a public shadow tax! I will say no more!
    The point I am trying to make here is that not only did the Chinese bring the virus to Italy (and the rest of the world) it was far-Left politics and policies that facilitated it.

    This should hopefully be a warning to Americans that while they work to rid themselves of the China Virus, they should just as vehemently endeavor to rid their government of any politician that circumvents the Constitution and ignores the laws of the land…plain and simple.

  • From Prominent Turkish Philanthropist to Political Prisoner

    From Prominent Turkish Philanthropist to Political Prisoner

    Acquitted in February in one trial, Osman Kavala was rearrested before he could even walk free. Now he faces indefinite jail time.

    Osman Kavala, a businessman and philanthropist, in Istanbul in 2015.
    Credit…Associated Press

    By Carlotta Gall

    ISTANBUL — During a tumultuous day in court in February, the Turkish businessman and philanthropist Osman Kavala was unexpectedly acquitted of trying to overthrow the government and then rearrested before he could walk free.

    He described it as the best day of his life.

    “We were acquitted,” he told his lawyers, referring to the eight others tried with him.

    Never mind that the two years he had already spent in solitary confinement had been extended indefinitely — this time on specious charges of supporting a 2016 coup. He was happy that at least in one case, he and 15 others had been given the chance to show that the original charges against them were baseless.

    “Nothing can affect that composure and attitude,” Murat Celikkan, a campaigning journalist and longtime friend and colleague, said of Mr. Kavala. “I would be furious, but in all the procedures he never raised his voice once.”

    Mr. Kavala has become the most prominent political prisoner in Turkey, and as he himself ruefully acknowledged after his rearrest, his case is a prime example of the state of injustice in Turkey today under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    His case is just one of half a million prosecutions underway amid a government crackdown since an attempted coup in 2016, but it is one of the most confounding.

    Best known for his good deeds, he has been variously accused of espionage, links to terrorist groups and trying to overthrow the government. Even seasoned lawyers, well used to decades of political trials in Turkey, have described the various charges against him as “ridiculous.”

    Mr. Kavala, 63, grew up and lives in Istanbul. He comes from a family of tobacco traders who moved from the town of Kavala in northern Greece to Istanbul in the 1920s as part of the population exchange between the two countries after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

    He studied management at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara and economics at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. He went on to study for his doctorate at The New School for Social Research in New York, but broke off his studies when his father died in 1982.

    At 26, he returned to Istanbul and took over the Kavala Group of companies. In 1988 he married Ayse Bugra, a social scientist.

    He soon began diversifying the family business, following his own interests. He co-founded the Iletisim Publishing Company, which became an important vehicle for democratic ideas at a time, after the military coup of 1980, when there was a dearth of democratic institutions in the country.

    He became increasingly interested in environmental issues and civic rights. He abandoned a hotel development in southern Turkey after watching the movie “Turtle Diary” and learning that the beach was an important nesting site for turtles.

    “He did it very easily,” Ms. Bugra recounted in a recent interview. “There was no hesitation.” He co-founded an environmental organization, TEMA, among others.

    The most troubling issue in Turkey from the late 1980s was the conflict in the southeastern part of the country between the Turkish army and Kurdish separatists, which degenerated into a brutal ethnic conflict against the Kurdish population. When the armed conflict ended a decade later, Mr. Kavala began the work that has become his lasting legacy.

    “We started talking about the healing powers of art and culture,” Ms. Bugra said, “and he started thinking about taking culture to different parts of Turkey.”

    That idea grew into the founding of Anadolu Kultur, an organization that supports arts and cultural collaboration, and takes exhibitions and performances all around the country.

    He supported an arts space in Diyarbakir, the biggest Kurdish city in the southeast; cultural memory projects for Yazidis, Kurds, Armenians and other minorities; and a program to encourage a normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia.

    In between came a 1999 earthquake that killed 17,000 people and had a galvanizing effect on Turkish society. Humanitarian and civic organizations took off.

    “That was an important moment for the country as a whole,” Ms. Bugra said. “That was the first time we saw a civil society mobilization. It was something spontaneous.”

    Mr. Kavala began building temporary housing. And he became one of the leading philanthropists in the country, well known among embassies and international donors, and an energetic supporter of civic and human rights groups.

    Among the many organizations he helped found was the Open Society Foundation in Turkey, the organization created by the Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros to support democracy and transparency around the world.

    The nonprofit sector flourished during Mr. Erdogan’s first decade in power from 2002, as Turkey was pursuing peace with the Kurds and instituting reforms to further its accession to the European Union.

    The arrival of more than three million refugees fleeing the war in Syria from 2011 was another milestone in her husband’s life, Ms. Bugra said. He was visiting the southern city of Gaziantep, working on a project for Syrian refugees in October 2017, when he was detained. Police boarded his plane in Istanbul and led him off before passengers were allowed to disembark.

    What has taxed Mr. Kavala and his friends the most in the 29 months since his incarceration is the question of why he has been singled out so harshly.

    The answer may be simply: everything he stands for.

    He represents the leftist-leaning, secular elite, which in Turkey’s polarized society is the opposite of the president and his supporters. They are from religiously conservative, Islamist circles that were long sidelined from power.

    “Osman represents another culture,” said Asena Gunal, who runs his flagship organization, Anadolu Kultur. “Someone who is open, cultured, who speaks English, can talk to foreigners, active in society. Something they see as dangerous.”

    As he spent 16 months in detention without knowing the charges against him, the pro-government news media and even Mr. Erdogan himself accused him of nefarious connections, including being part of a so-called Jewish conspiracy led by Mr. Soros.

    Some analysts say his work with Armenians and Kurds is hated by elements in Turkey’s security establishment. Others have described him as victim of an internal power struggle in Mr. Erdogan’s cabinet.

    “It’s really hard to see people talking about him who don’t know him,” Ms. Gunal said. “He is a nice person trying to be nice to people.”

    The indictment, when it was finally revealed, charged him with trying to overthrow the government by financing and organizing protests in 2013 that began as an occupy movement of Gezi Park in Istanbul’s Taksim Square to prevent the construction of a shopping mall.

    Mr. Erdogan, who has grown increasingly authoritarian, insists the protests were not a spontaneous social movement, as they were widely seen at the time, but an effort to oust him from power.

    “This is not an innocent uprising,” he told his parliamentary group the day after Mr. Kavala’s rearrest. “Behind the curtain there are those Soros-like types who meddle in some countries.”

    He added that he had thwarted a “maneuver” to have Mr. Kavala released.

    Interpreting the president’s comment, Mr. Celikkan, Mr. Kavala’s friend and colleague, said it did not bode well for Mr. Kavala. “Unless the president leaves office, dies or changes his mind, he is going to stay in prison forever,” he said.

    Mr. Kavala sees his case as driven by politics — in other words, Mr. Erdogan’s desire to stay in power.

    In answers to questions sent to him in jail through his lawyers, he said judges and prosecutors were acting in line with the political discourse. “As a result of this, legal norms are being eroded and many people are in prison unfairly,” he wrote.

    “As I am the lead actor in the fiction of the indictment and also the only arrested defendant of the case, I believe my situation is seen as a striking example of punishment for political reasons,” he wrote.

    The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg found in December that the Turkish courts had held him without reasonable cause.

    “His detention was intended to punish him as a critic of the Government,” the court concluded in a statement, “to reduce him to silence as an NGO activist and human-rights defender, to dissuade others from engaging in such activities and to paralyze civil society in the country.”

    Osman Kavala
    Osman Kavala