This summer Linx Danismanlik is once again hosting a week of free English conversation for those who would like to improve their English speaking abilities. There will be English conversation groups every evening from Tuesday June 30 until Friday July 3 at the Aden Hotel in Kadikoy. On July 4 there will be a boat trip on the Bosphorus for any who would like to attend. These groups will be personally led by native English speakers from America and the United Kingdom as well as experienced speakers of English from other countries.
Please join us for these fun activities and improve your English at the same time! If you would like more information, please email linxdanismanlik@yahoo.com. Or call Steve Van Sloten at 0534 297 1917.
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Ilya Kramnik) – A Turkish military delegation has come to Russia to discuss the possible acquisition of Mi-28 attack helicopters. This is not the first time the two countries have discussed cooperation.
In the 1970s and the early 1980s, Turkey bought 32 used AH-1P/S Cobra attack helicopters in the United States and later upgraded them to the AH-1F specifications. The Turkish army still has 23 AH-1P/S Cobras. However, Turkish military authorities started thinking about replacing them in the mid-1990s.
During the subsequent tender they considered several models of combat helicopter, including the Ka-50-2 Erdogan, a version of the Russian Ka-50 Black Shark developed by Russia and Israel for Turkey. Unlike the Ka-50 where the pilots sit side-by-side, the seats in the Erdogan are placed in tandem as in the U.S. Cobra chopper.
However, Turkey did not choose the Kamov helicopter for political reasons, such as growing U.S. influence in Turkey and, conversely, the lack of Russian influence. Also, Russia could not then guarantee the timely production of the required number of new helicopters or post-sale service. Lastly, the Ka-50 was not mass-produced even for the Russian army at that time.
An updated Cobra with new weapons and equipment was the most probable winner in the Turkish tender, but the contract was eventually awarded to a European producer, the Anglo-Italian AgustaWestland, which proudly proclaims to be “a total rotorcraft capability provider.”
AgustaWestland, announced as the winning bidder in March 2007, pledged to assemble 50 T129 prototypes in Turkey. However, the first T129 will be rolled out only in 2015, whereas Turkey needs choppers now to fight Kurdish militants.
The purchase of seven used AH-1W SuperCobras in 2008 has not solved the problem either. Turkey needs modern attack helicopters to fill the gap until 2015 and for several more years while its pilots learn to fly the T129 choppers.
As a result, Turkey has decided to purchase Russian machines. It has opted for the Mi-28N Night Hunter, which, unlike the Ka-50, has been mass-produced since the 1990s and is supplied to the Russian Armed Forces.
Turkey may buy between 12 and 32 helicopters within two or three years. It is unclear if it wants the choppers with or without top-mounted radar, which is an extremely expensive option.
The Turkish military had once considered buying the Mi-24 Crocodile, which has several common structural elements with the Mi-28. The Mi-17 multirole helicopter is currently used in Turkey for military, police and civilian purposes.
Significantly, the Mil helicopters have for years been used in similar terrain in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Middle East. Moreover, Russia’s influence and relations with Turkey have grown dramatically and many contradictions in bilateral ties have been smoothed over since the 1990s.
Therefore, Turkey could buy the Mi-28, whose track record over the past 20 years and the initial results of its combat use show that this highly versatile helicopter could remain on combat duty even after T129 assembly start-up in Turkey.
And the final touch: the protection and combat payload specifications of the T129 are below those of the Mi-28.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
The West can learn a lot from Ankara’s perspective and democratic successes.
By Helena Cobban
Adana, Turkey – As President Obama looks for partners in the Muslim world, he should consider listening to the government of Turkey as much as he listens to Egypt’s president. He could learn a lot from Turkey about how a smart Islamist party can be a valued participant in a democracy.
Turkey, a NATO ally, has been ruled since 2002 by a moderate Islamist party – the Justice and Development Party (AKP) – that has proved its commitment to democracy and pluralism at home and to an active, nearly always nonviolent, engagement in diplomacy abroad. And that’s why the record of the AKP in Turkey is so compelling.
At home, after the party first won power, grass-roots supporters tried to leverage that victory to ban alcohol sales in some Turkish cities. The judiciary struck down those regulations – and the national government complied with the ruling.
Later, the national government tried to lift the country’s longstanding ban on admitting scarf-wearing women to universities or to jobs in government. Once again, the courts struck down the proposal. And once again, the government complied without a protest. (That, though the wives of both the prime minister and the president always wear head scarves in public.)
In 10 days of travel, in three Turkish cities and vast swaths of countryside, I saw Turkish women wearing clothes that ranged from skimpy Western dress topped by tumbling – sometimes bleached-blond – hairdos, to a stylish version of Muslim hijab that involves an elegantly tied head scarf over a mid-thigh tunic and jeans, to the baggy black coverup of the ultrapious.
Most Turkish women are near the middle of that spectrum, and in many places young women with and without head scarves mingle easily, chatting and laughing together.
Regarding domestic affairs, one professor in Istanbul told me, “If you’re a politically liberal Turk who cares about women’s rights, the rights of the Kurdish minority, and religious minorities here, you couldn’t find a better party than the AKP.” I heard versions of that voiced by several other strongly secular Turks.
Back in early April, Mr. Obama came to Turkey and delivered a first important address to the Muslim world. Turks seemed delighted that he had included their country on his first trip abroad as president, and nearly all appreciated the respectful way he addressed the concerns of Turks and other Muslims.
On June 4, he gave another major address to the Muslim world in Cairo. Egypt, like Turkey, is a historic center of Muslim life. But the Turkish government follows policies that are much more in line with Obama’s inclusive, diplomacy-focused approach to international affairs.
Turkey’s two AKP governments have maintained good ties with Europe and with all Turkey’s neighbors – including Greece, Iran, Georgia, Iraq, and Syria. In 2007-08, Ankara also undertook an important mediation effort between Israel and Syria.
But Ankara fell afoul of the Bush administration in Washington for a number of reasons. Most significantly, in 2003, Ankara – like many other NATO allies – strongly opposed the US invasion of Iraq, and it refused to allow Washington to launch part of the invasion from Turkey.
The Bush administration also objected to the good ties the AKP maintained with Syria and – after the hard-line faction won the Palestinian elections in 2006 – with Hamas.
While George W. Bush was president, he seemed to ascribe little value to the inclusive and generally de-escalatory policies the AKP government has pursued at home and in the broader Middle East. He preferred instead an approach to the Middle East that sharpened divisions between the two groups he defined as “moderates” and “extremists.”
In the former group were the notoriously anti-democratic governments of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In the latter, any government or party that seemed to support Iran, regardless of whether – like Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah – they might have proved their popular support in democratic elections.
Indeed, in the Bush years, Washington worked actively to overthrow both Hamas and Hezbollah, and maintained what one Bush White House official has described as “a state of quasi-war” with Syria.
Several Bush-era officials openly questioned whether the electoral victories of Hamas and Hezbollah actually “proved” that a party could be both dedicated to Islamist principles and democratic rule over the longer term. Turkey’s experience provides intriguing evidence that it can.
Obama should value Turkey’s views on regional affairs. He may not be ready yet to go along with all the advice he receives from the AKP government in Ankara. But Ankara has much valuable experience that it can share with its NATO ally.
Helena Cobban is a former Monitor correspondent. Her latest book is “Re-engage! America and the World after Bush.”
Travel Age West magazine, which has been published for the past 40 years on the West side of America gave Turkey the Travel Age West Wave (Western Agents’ Vote of Excellence), which is an annual award given to those deemed by Travel Age West to be the best in tourism. Turkey has been given the ‘Best Vacation Value, Europe’ award. The award was given by the editor board of the magazine. The award ceremony is to take place on the 4th of June, in Los Angeles at the 4 seasons hotel. With the global financial crisis having a profound effect on the tourism sector, it is very important that Turkey has been given this award.
The chief editor, Kenneth Shapiro, visited the New York Culture and Promotion Attaché and informed Hasan Zöngür that Turkey was chosen for the award. Shapiro stated that ‘Turkey’s cultural richness and the diversity and quality of service the service sector made it an exceptional European destination.’
Man who killed guard at Holocaust museum has links to BNP
• White supremacist injured in Washington gunfight
• Records show 88-year-old was at fundraising events
Matthew Taylor and Daniel Nasaw
F.B.I. investigators examining a bullet-riddled door at the entrance of the Holocaust Memorial Museum, where a gunman entered the building and shot and killed a security guard. New York Times
A white supremacist who killed a security guard at a Holocaust memorial museum in the US has links to the British National party, which gained two MEPs in last week’s European elections.
Thousands of visitors fled the museum in Washington on Wednesday after James von Brunn opened fire, killing a security guard. In the gunfight that followed, the 88-year-old was shot, and is now in a critical condition in hospital.
Yesterday it emerged that Von Brunn, a longtime antisemite, had attended meetings of the American Friends of the British National party (AFBNP), which was set up to raise funds from far-right activists in America.
Mark Cotterill, who ran the US-based organisation before it folded in 2001, said: “He did attend meetings. I have just checked my database and he is down as ‘meetings only’, so he was not a major donor, although he may have put some money on the plate when it was passed round.”
The AFBNP treasurer, Todd Blodgett, also told the Washington Post that he and Von Brunn had attended fundraising meetings in Arlington County. The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, spoke to at least two AFBNP meetings and said the money raised by the organisation made a “significant contribution to the BNP’s [2001] general election campaign”.
Yesterday a spokesman for the party said: “You get a lot of people coming to meetings but I don’t think you can blame us for that. Even if he did go to meetings, it was nothing to do with us.”
However, anti-racism campaigners said Von Brunn’s links to the BNP underlined its extremist agenda. “It is clear that Nick Griffin is at the centre of an international network of white supremacists,” said Dan Hodges, of Searchlight. “The BNP must explain the full extent of his organisation’s links with this antisemitic gunman.”
The far-right party gained its first two MEPs in last week’s European elections – Griffin in the north-west and former National Front leader Andrew Brons in Yorkshire and the Humber.
During the campaign, photographs emerged of Griffin alongside the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard Stephen “Don” Black, who was banned from the UK by the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith. He was also criticised for defending a BNP leaflet that said black and Asian Britons should be referred to as “racial foreigners”.
Yesterday Von Brunn was charged with murder and killing in the course of possessing a firearm at a federal facility, both capital offences under US federal law; police said hate crime charges were also possible.
At a press conference in Washington, Cathy Lanier, the Washington police chief, said security guard Stephen Johns was shot when he opened the door of the museum for Von Brunn. Other guards opened fire, and Von Brunn slumped to the ground.
In his car, officers found a notebook with a handwritten note saying, “You want my weapons, this is how you’ll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews,” according to a court affidavit.
Von Brunn’s .22-calibre rifle held 10 more bullets and investigators found more in his car and at an apartment in nearby Annapolis, Maryland, that he shared with his son and his son’s fiancee.
Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office, said Von Brunn was known to the police as an antisemite and a white supremacist, who had a website that espoused hatred against African-Americans, Jews and others.
“We know what Mr Von Brunn did at the Holocaust museum. Now it’s our responsibility to determine why he did it,” said Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office. “We have to ask ourselves did all these years of public display of hatred impact his actions.”
A self-described artist, advertising man and author, Von Brunn wrote an anti-semitic treatise, Kill the Best Gentiles, decried “the browning of America” and claimed to expose a Jewish conspiracy “to destroy the White gene-pool”.
In 1983 Von Brunn was convicted of attempting to kidnap members of the US federal reserve board. At the time, police said he had wanted to take the members hostage because of high interest rates and the nation’s economic difficulties. On the website, Von Brunn blames his six-year imprisonment on “a Jew judge” and “Negro jury”.
Last night civil rights groups said they had been monitoring Von Brunn for decades.
Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Centre’s intelligence project, said: “He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil. He’s an extreme antisemite.”
Turkey wishes liberation of the occupied lands of Azerbaijan.
Turkey will not open borders with Armenia, unless the lands are liberated, said Turkish ambassador to Azerbaijan Hulusi Kilic, speaking at the round table on the topic “Azerbaijani-Turkish relations in the regional geopolitical context” organized in the Center of Strategic Studies.
“20% of Azerbaijani lands have been under Armenian occupation for already 18 years. Evil wishers attempted to make the two fraternal states argue, spread information about the possible opening of the Turkish-Armenian border. Yet Prime Minister’s visit to Azerbaijan has made the situation clear.
The world got convinced that Turkey will never leave Azerbaijan and open borders with Armenia unless the territories are liberated from occupation”, noted the ambassador.
Turkey will not open borders with Armenia, unless the lands are liberated, said Turkish ambassador to Azerbaijan Hulusi Kilic, speaking at the round table on the topic “Azerbaijani-Turkish relations in the regional geopolitical context” organized in the Center of Strategic Studies.