Category: Turkey

Turkey Puts Generals on Trial as Erdogan Curbs Army (Update2)

By Ben Holland

July 20 (Bloomberg) — Two of Turkey’s most senior retired generals went on trial today in a case that may determine whether Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan succeeds in reining in the political power of his country’s military.

Sener Eruygur and Hursit Tolon, along with 54 other suspects including journalists, academics and business leaders, are accused of belonging to a group prosecutors say tried to undermine Erdogan by destabilizing the country with armed attacks. Tolon appeared at the court outside Istanbul while Eruygur didn’t attend, the official Anatolia News Agency said. The court set a date of Aug. 6 for the next hearing.

The case is a sign that Erdogan is gaining the upper hand in a six-year power struggle with an army suspicious of his Islamist background. It may strengthen the prime minister’s push to get Turkey into the European Union, which requires civilian control over the military.

“Turkey is coming to a historic crossroads and there’s a determination to confront the army,” said Akin Birdal, an opposition lawmaker and human-rights activist who was jailed by the military when it seized power in a 1980 coup. “Other NATO countries cleaned up their security forces after the Cold War, and Turkey needs to follow this through.”

The first Islamic country President Barack Obama visited, Turkey is NATO’s only Muslim member and a contributor to the alliance’s force in Afghanistan battling the Taliban.

New Law

The trial is a turnaround from two years ago, when the army initially blocked Erdogan’s presidential nominee, Abdullah Gul, 58, roiling markets. It also comes two weeks after Gul approved legislation allowing civil courts to try active military officers. While that law may not affect the case against Ergenekon, the group at the center of the trial, it could mean more civil scrutiny of the military in the future.

Birdal, of the Democratic Society Party, was one of the first people to make use of the new law. He filed charges on July 14 against Cevik Bir, a former deputy chief of general staff, accusing him of inciting nationalist gunmen who shot and severely injured Birdal in his office at the rights association in 1998. Bir hasn’t yet responded to the charges.

At stake, says Erdogan, is who runs a country that in the past half-century has suffered three coups by an army that sees itself as the guardian of Turkey’s secular system.

“Turkey isn’t a police state, it’s not an army state, it’s a democratic and secular state under the rule of law,” the prime minister said at a police graduation ceremony on July 7.

More Arrests

Not everyone accepts Erdogan’s interpretation of the case. Main opposition leader Deniz Baykal of the Republican People’s Party accuses the government of using the investigation to intimidate critics rather than to strengthen Turkey’s democracy.

“The more arrests we’ve seen, the more people whose only crime was opposition to the government were targeted,” said Soner Cagaptay, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “And they’re not reforming in other EU areas: press freedom, gender equality, religious freedoms.”

Erdogan, 55, has chipped away at the military’s powers since coming to power in 2003. He ended army control over the National Security Council in 2003 and ignored objections that same year from the generals to his plan for pursuing the reunification of Cyprus.

The premier refused to back down when the army opposed Gul’s presidential nomination. He called an election and won with 47 percent of the vote, then successfully named Gul again for the post.

Markets Plunge

The dispute caused the benchmark ISE-100 stock index to plunge 7 percent in two days. Since Erdogan’s re-election, the index has lost 56 percent of its value, matching the 57 percent decline of the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. After average annual gross domestic product growth of about 7 percent in Erdogan’s first term of office, the economy expanded 1.1 percent in 2008. It will probably contract 5.1 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Erdogan has been negotiating with the fund since May 2008 over lending for the country of 72 million. Foreign direct investment in the first five months of the year fell 52 percent from a year earlier to $3.6 billion, central bank data show.

“Differences between the army and government remain the major political risk” for investors in Turkey, said Nurhan Toguc, chief economist at Ata Invest in Istanbul.

The probe of Ergenekon began in 2007 and culminated 12 months ago with the arrest of Tolon and Eruygur, who were initially jailed and then released pending trial. All suspects deny the charges. Prosecutors filed an indictment against another 52 people today, the Anatolia agency said, without identifying any of them.

Suicide Threat

Opposition parties say Erdogan should change the army- designed 1982 constitution to allow trial of the generals who seized power in 1980. The 92-year-old Kenan Evren, the coup’s leader, told reporters he would commit suicide if brought to trial.

Though the Ergenekon case has been under way since last year, Tolon and Eruygur were indicted later and hadn’t been included in the trial until today. The hearing is taking place in a custom-built courtroom, the country’s largest, at Silivri in the outskirts of Istanbul.

It was constructed after judges were forced to delay the first trial session in October, because the hundreds of suspects, witnesses, lawyers and reporters couldn’t fit into the court.

To contact the reporter on this story; Ben Holland in Istanbul at bholland1@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 20, 2009 11:43 EDT
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics?pid=newsarchive&sid=a9Sle48If4.U

July 22, 2009
Israel Seeks Backing for Iran Strike ‘Within the Year’
Report:

Israel is reportedly willing to make concessions in peace negotiations with the Palestinians in return for international backing for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Times of London quoted an unnamed British official who said the deal could allow Israel to launch an attack on Iran “within the year.”

The Times report said Israel “was prepared to offer concessions on the formation of a Palestinian state as well as on its settlements policy and ‘issues’ with Arab neighbors, in exchange for international backing for an Israel operation in Iran.”

One European diplomat declared, “Israel has decided to place the Iranian threat over its settlements.”

The British newspaper also stated that the recent passage of two Israeli navy ships through the Suez Canal was a message to Iran and should be seen as serious preparations for a strike on Iran.

According to a report in the German weekly Stern, Germany’s foreign intelligence agency believes Iran is capable of producing and testing an atomic bomb within six months, much sooner than most analysts estimate.
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Obama: ‘Absolutlely’ no US green light for attacking Iran

By HERB KEINON AND HILARY LEILA KRIEGER
The US has “absolutely not” given Israel a green light for a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, US President Barack Obama said Tuesday.

Washington Times: Fearing rejection, Israel won’t seek US OK for possible attack against Iran

Obama was qualifying comments Vice President Joe Biden had made Sunday that left the impression the US would not stand in the way of an Israeli action.

“We have said directly to the Israelis that it is important to try and resolve this in an international setting in a way that does not create major conflict in the Middle East,” said Obama, currently in Russia, during a CNN interview.

Obama said it was “very important that I’m as clear as I can be, and our administration is as consistent as we can [be] on this issue.”

RELATED

Analysis: Is the PM shifting Obama’s attention to Iran?

Editorial: Biden’s signal

The president said that Biden had simply been stating the “categorical fact” that “we can’t dictate to other countries what their security interests are. What is also true is that it is the policy of the United States to resolve the issue of Iran’s nuclear capabilities in a peaceful way through diplomatic channels,” he said.

On Sunday, Biden was asked on ABC’s This Week whether the US would stand in the way militarily if Israel decided to take out Iran’s nuclear program.
The US “cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do,” he said.

“Israel can determine for itself – it’s a sovereign nation – what’s in their interest and what they decide to do relative to Iran and anyone else,” he said.

Israel had no formal comment on either the Obama or Biden remarks.

Nevertheless, the IDF has taken into consideration the possibility that it will not receive US permission to fly over Iraq on the way to Iran, and has drawn up an operational plan for this contingency. While its preference is to coordinate with the US, defense officials have said in the past that Israel was preparing a wide range of options for such an operation.

The Washington Times reported Tuesday that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his top deputies had not formally asked for US aid or permission for a possible military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, since they feared the White House would not approve.

The report quoted two unnamed Israeli officials.

An anonymous senior Israeli official was quoted as saying that Netanyahu was determined that “it made no sense” to press the matter after the negative response former US president George W. Bush.

Bush gave the prime minister’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, a negative answer when he asked early last year for US assistance for possible military strikes on Iran.

“There was a decision not to press this because it was probably inadequate for the engagement policy and what we know about Obama’s approach to Iran,” the official said.

Yaakov Katz contributed to this report.
July 21, 2009
The Pope’s Secret War on Radical Islam, Full Details
The Great Crusader

Pope Benedict XVI’s historic visit to the United States comes at a critical time for the Roman Catholic Church and the West.

His visit comes as the Church grapples with a growing secularist trend in the U.S. and Europe – and a rising global threat from militant Islam.

Newsmax magazine’s special report “The Great Crusader” reveals the behind-the-scenes effort the Pope is making to revitalize the ancient Church for its present battle and the important role he sees the United States and her people playing.

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This exclusive Newsmax report explores:
- Hidden agenda: why the U.S. is “crucial” to the Catholic Church
- What Benedict sees as the “central problem of our faith today”
- The real story: Benedict’s path to the papacy
- Troubles in the U.S. Church – dwindling mass attendance
- Benedict’s take on the sexual abuse crisis within the Church
- America’s most famous Catholic dissenter – Mel Gibson
- Is Benedict the last “European Pope”?
- Benedict and the abortion issue in the U.S.
- The Pope’s experiences with German Nazis
- Benedict’s plans for China’s “underground” Catholics
- No coincidence: this is an election year and Hispanic Catholics are key
- The rise of Islam in Christian Europe: the Church’s plan
- Why Benedict rues the Second Vatican Council
- The birth of Catholicism’s “charismatics”
- The decline of American priests and nuns
- Benedict’s amazing popularity in Rome
- Why the Pope “snubbed” the Dalai Lama
- The “astonishing” growth of Catholicism in Africa
- “Cafeteria Catholics” who ignore some Church teachings
- American evangelicals and the Catholic Church
- Why Benedict’s moves could lead to a “civil war” within Catholicism
- And much, much more
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This edition of Newsmax magazine is not to be missed.

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- Small nukes are on campus
- World Bank corruption hurting the poor
- Do-it-yourself medical tests
- States challenge the Electoral College
- Deadline looms for digital TV: Are you ready?
- U.S. horses slaughtered in Mexico for food
- Drug smugglers go underwater with submarines
- Schwarzenegger to Pentagon: Return Humvees
- U.S. meat: Send in the clones
- When a predator lives next door
- Schools teach kids about guns
- Bill Buckley in 1965: how he discovered the Reagan Democrats
- C-SPAN’s Brian Lamb talks to Newsmax
- High-tech device eases water woes
- Tour America’s favorite ballparks
- Apple juice does a body good: heart and mind
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July 21, 2009
Kathleen Kennedy Attacks the Pope for Obama

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, has sparked controversy — and outrage — by writing that President Barack Obama reflects the views of American Catholics better than the Pope.

In a column for Newsweek magazine’s Web site, Kennedy Townsend — eldest of Robert Kennedy’s 11 children — asserted: “Obama’s pragmatic approach to divisive policy . . . and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more closely than those vocal bishops and pro-life activists.”

She noted that while Obama and Pope Benedict XVI “disagree about reproductive freedoms and homosexuality,” American Catholics “know Obama’s on their side. In fact, Obama’s agenda is closer to their views than even the Pope’s.”

Among the voices decrying Townsend’s column is Judie Brown, president and co-founder of the American Life League, a pro-life organization.

Writing for CNSNews, she calls Townsend’s views “misguided” and states: “‘Reproductive freedoms,’ for those unfamiliar with the culture of death’s propaganda, is a code phrase for abortion on demand, sex instruction in schools, birth control for kids, and all manner of bizarre propositions that help the purveyors of smut to define the human person as an animal incapable of self-control . . .

“One can easily tell that her thought process has little to do with Catholic identity and, in fact, is contrary to all that is Catholic. There is no other explanation for her inane claim that President Obama is somehow more in tune with American Catholics than the Pope.”

Townsend goes on to say that the Church hierarchy “ignores women’s equality and gays’ cry for justice because to heed them would require that it admit error and acknowledge that the self-satisfied edifice constructed around sex and gender has been grievously wrong.”

She also cites the Pope’s recent encyclical “Charity in Truth,” claiming it gives “moral credence to Obama’s message.”

But Brown counters, “In fact, the encyclical’s message is something else entirely . . .

“Without respect for the human person, it is impossible to bring about a just society, and in a just society, there is no room for heinous crimes such as abortion. This is the underlying theme of the entire encyclical, which Kennedy Townsend apparently overlooked entirely.”

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Kennedy Townsend urges youth to get into politics

By Steve Hinnefeld 331-4374 | shinnefeld@heraldt.com

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend reflects on the level of
individual involvement in politics Thursday before speaking
at a dinner for Ivy Tech’s O’Bannon Institute for Community
Service. Townsend is a former Maryland lieutenant governor
and daughter of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy. David
Snodgress | Herald-Times

“It’s great that record numbers of young people are involved in community service through volunteer activities”, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend said.

But it’s a shame that so many steer clear of another means of civic engagement: political activity and government service.

“Government is where we make our most solemn common decisions,” she said. And when it’s attacked as unworthy, “that hurts our ability to build a strong community.”

Townsend is the oldest child of the late Sen. Robert Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy and a niece of John F. Kennedy. She was in Bloomington Thursday to speak at a fundraiser dinner for the O’Bannon Institute for Community Service at Ivy Tech Community College.

She was lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995 to 2003 and counts as one of her primary achievements that she helped make community service a requirement for high school graduation.

But she said it’s disappointing that students who boast of their volunteerism — planting trees, tutoring children, delivering meals to the elderly — often won’t dirty their hands with politics.

“I think that’s a loss of talent and energy and vision,” she said.

Townsend, a Democrat, attributed the nation’s turn against politics, in part, to strategy by some Republicans. She recalled when Ronald Reagan said government was the problem, not the solution.

“If you’re good and bright and smart, why do you go to the place where the problem is?” she said.

Her new book, “Failing America’s Faithful,” is based on a related theme, she said. It argues that churches have “shrunken God” through a narrow focus on sex and abortion.

She tells how, in 1968, the television interviewer David Frost asked both her father and Reagan, “Why are we on Earth?” Reagan talked about freedom and individual salvation. Robert Kennedy talked about making life better for others.

“There it is in a nutshell,” she said. “Do I care primarily about me? Or do we care about community?”

July 21, 2009
ISTANBUL: A Tale of Two Cities

It’s a city of constrasts, brought together by east and west, Islam and Christianity.
(…)
The people of Istanbul are tolerant by nature … which explains why the mostly Muslim city harbours a significant Jewish presence as well as Greek-Orthodoxy.
(…)
It’s a crossroads between north and south, east and west.
(…)
THE PRESENT PERSPECTIVE: Istanbul is Turkey at its most Western There’s little about the labyrinthine backstreets of the Balat district of Istanbul that suggests anything other than working-class Turkey. Cramped, poor and undeniably Muslim, the area supports the view that Turkey is being invaded by its own peasants, who, leaving the vast plains of Anatolia behind them, bring to the cities their traditional ways and fervent Islamic beliefs.

Amidst all this lie two of Istanbul’s oldest synagogues, their congregation long since departed for Istanbul’s richer residential suburbs. Nevertheless, they’re still in use and one, the Ahrida, is being completely renovated.

Such freedoms subscribe to a more rational view of Turkey which sees it as a living demonstration that a Muslim country can also become a prosperous thriving democracy.

When the majority of the Jews arrived 500 years ago, Istanbul was the thriving capital of the Ottoman Empire. Expelled from Spain during the Inquisition, 200,000 Jews arrived under the protection of Sultan Beyazit II. The 29,000 remaining constitute some of the oldest and most respected families in Istanbul.

“We have been killed the world over, but here in Turkey it was different,” says Nedim Yahya, Co-ordinator of the Quincentennial Foundation of Istanbul, set up to celebrate 500 years of Turkish Jewry. “We want to remind the world that people of different religions, including Muslims and Jews, can live together. A hundred years ago, our language and way of dressing was different, but today they are not.”

Today, any difference lies between Muslims – between the sophisticated, established residents and the new arrivals from the countryside. On the one hand there are women dressed in robes and head scarfs, washing clothes on the streets outside their makeshift houses; on the other are the majority, those women who enjoy all the privileges of their Western sisters, hold down powerful jobs, dress and move about freely. The smart shopping streets around Bayazit Square could be found in any European city, yet the thriving markets and bazaars are distinctly eastern.

Istanbul might be Turkey at its most Western, yet the country as a whole is by no means a land of sheiks and whirling dervishes. Turkey’s quick departure from its old eastern ways was one of the major achievements of Kemal Mustapha – Ataturk, or Father of Turkey. When he, along with the Young Turks, ousted the last of the sultans and formed the Republic of Turkey in 1922, it was with the intention of forming a secular, Westernised state. He began by banning the fez, the most obvious symbol of Islam, and looked west to Europe for allegiance and north to Moscow for industrial inspiration.

Sixty years later, his legacy lives on and even though the call to prayer is regular and penetrating, Islam has as much bearing on day-to-day business in Istanbul as the Church of England does in Britain. But despite Ataturk’s endeavours, Western perception of Turkey is often clouded by the knowledge that its population 98 per cent Muslim and that it is irrevocably oriential.

Things have changed in Istanbul over the last decade. Commerce has flourished profitably within the Ottoman infrastructure, after the military coup of 1980 made way for the leadership of Turgut Ozal in 1983. With Teatcher as his role model, Ozal encouraged free trade and commerce which the Turks took to with alacrity. He disbanded the state-owned industries set up by Ataturk and made him self president in 1989, stemming the unwelcome attention that the growing fortunes of his family had attracted.

There’s an overriding feeling of stability in Istanbul, confirmed by the result of last year’s multi-party election when the present Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel was elected. Despite a somewhat tarnished past – he was ousted by the military coup in 1980 – Demirel heads a government intent on allying with the EC, an ambition hindered by Turkey’s shady human-rights record. The elections also dispelled another Western worry, that Turkey would turn towards Islam, but the Islamic undamentalist party made little impression on the electorate. In the mind of Nadim Yahya, It’s not a worry.

“In the last 50 years the fundamentalist party hasn’t grown one iota. In the election they got about 7 per cent of the vote. And then I feel few of them are voting out of conviction. Erbakan {head of the fundamentalist party} was my schoolmate, we studied side by side for six years. He has no religious conviction. He has found a platform and he’s using it.

“The fundamentalists are supported by a couple of extremists who want Turkey to be like Iran. When I’m asked if I’m concerned about the rise of fundamentalism, I say no. It’s the Muslim world of Turkey that’s concerned.”

In Balat his confidence seems to be justified. An unassuming gate leads off a side street into the quiet courtyard of Yanbol synanogue. Inside, a roof painting depicts scenes of a Macedonian town of the same name, home to the people who founded it centuries ago. And Istanbul remains a place where such antiquated symbols of Judaism can survive alongside the 20th-century mosques, where an ever-increasing influx of peasants can bring a time-honoured tradition to the most progressive of Muslim cities.

WORLD, BBC Magazine of Mankind, November 1992

July 21, 2009
In Memoriam | Walter Cronkite (1916-2009)

July 18, 2009

Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. (November 4, 1916 – July 17, 2009) was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years (1962-81). During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited in viewer opinion polls as “the most trusted man in America” because of his professional experience and kindly demeanor. Cronkite died on July 17, 2009, at the age of 92 from cerebrovascular disease, described by his son as complications from dementia.

Walter Cronkite was an instrumental leader in the international press freedom movement. “From putting his own life on the line to cover the battlefields of World War II to challenging the ‘thugs’ who physically harassed his reporters on the floor of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Walter Cronkite knew firsthand the challenges journalists face bringing news to the public, and he never forgot them,” said Paul Steiger, CPJ chairman.[1]
Mavi Boncuk |
In 1995, Walter Cronkite helped persuade Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller to drop charges against Reuters correspondent Aliza Marcus, [2] who faced prison for reporting on counterinsurgency strikes against Kurdish rebels.

In a 2006 interview for the magazine, Dangerous Assignments, Cronkite recalled CPJ’s efforts on behalf of Turkish journalists: “The committee’s long-running efforts to persuade several consecutive governments in Turkey to adopt basic democratic principles of free speech and free press. resulted in wide recognition of our devotion to these freedoms. It’s an enduring effort and I’m proud to say that (former chairwoman and current board member) Kati Marton and I were early representatives of the committee, dispatched to try to relieve the Turkish leadership’s incredibly repressive treatment of the press.”
[1] The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to promote press freedom worldwide by defending the rights of journalists to report the news without fear of reprisal.

[2] Aliza Marcus, one of the first Western reporters to meet with PKK rebels, wrote about their war for many years for a variety of prominent publications before being put on trial in Turkey for her reporting. Based on her interviews with PKK rebels and their supporters and opponents throughout the world-including the Palestinians who trained them, the intelligence services that tracked them, and the dissidents who tried to break them up-Marcus provided an in-depth account of this influential radical group in Blood and Belief The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence. ISBN: 9780814795873 | 368 pages | Release Date: 4/01/2009

July 20, 2009