Turkish Forum

Category: Turkey

  • The £1bn (that’s right) new hotel in Turkey

    The £1bn (that’s right) new hotel in Turkey

    mardanTurkey is on everyone’s holiday radar right now because it’s one of the few destinations where a pound might just buy more than a chip wrapper this summer.

    At least, that’s how most Brits are viewing the country. Turkey’s tourism chiefs see things somewhat differently. They are busy transforming a section of its southern seaboard into a European Dubai.

    The object of their attentions is Antalya — an hour’s plane ride from Istanbul, down on a ragged cliff edge of the Mediterranean and piled high with the sort of bleak tower blocks that we spent the 1960s building and the 1980s bulldozing.

    Granted, not the most promising launch pad for a razzmatazz resort, but then you need bifocal beer goggles to declare most of Dubai pretty, too. And Antalya is already home to several hotels that seem to rely more on steroids than star ratings.

    There’s the Marmara, the world’s first revolving hotel; the Kremlin Palace, a lifesize replica of the Russian seat of government; and, in nearby Belek, the Adam & Eve, which claims to be the world’s sexiest hotel.

    So far, so far out, but Antalya comes of high-kicking age (or toe-curling, depending on your disposition) in June, with the unveiling of the Mardan Palace. It will be Europe’s most expensive hotel, a billion-dollar baby (well, $1.4 billion, to be precise).

    From the outside, it looks like Soviet Barbie’s wedding cake, with endless layers of white and gold. Inside, that Midas touch means more than 10,000 square metres of gold leaf, aided and abetted by 500,000 crystals and 23,000 square metres of Italian marble.

    The pool is one of the largest in the Med: five acres of fresh water with a sunken aquarium stocked with 2,400 fish as its centrepiece. It is spanned by bridges based on designs by Leonardo da Vinci and has gondolas to take guests from one end to the other, a trip that takes half an hour (though the boats do move slowly).

    There are musicians to serenade spa-goers into the traditional Turkish hammam, and in the waterside Italian restaurant, your little darling will be banging his spoon against a pasta bowl from a service by Hermès that cost £1.35m. In short, the owner will be absolutely furious if he hasn’t spent as much money as is humanly possible.

    He being first-time hotelier Telman Ismailov, president of the Russian group AST, and a man not known to stint. In 2006, he reportedly paid Jennifer Lopez £1m to sing Happy Birthday to him at a party for his 50th. Ismailov pointed his private jet (naturally, it’s painted gold) in the direction of Antalya to holiday so often that his butler remarked it would make better financial sense to build rather than continue renting villas. He might have been right if Ismailov had restricted himself to, say, five or six bedrooms instead of 560.

    But the gondoliers? The crystals? The gold? It all sounds incredibly tacky, doesn’t it? Some of it is. The laser shows and fountain displays are very Vegas, the pole-dancing platforms in its three-storey nightclub may prove a tad too Moscow for most, and the private spa suite, which is accessed through a water­fall and costs £1,500 an hour to rent, has a hideous champagne bar that is 100% cupid corny.

    Other aspects are downright offensive: the fur coats in its version of Istanbul’s famous Grand Bazaar; the toothless sharks in its swim reef; and the 9,000 tons of sand dredged from Egypt to ensure the private beach is silky soft.

    But there are also areas that, while jaw-droppingly lavish, are really quite beautiful. The lobby, for example, may be almost the size of a football pitch but it wears those vast proportions with a serene elegance. It has been based on Istanbul’s 19th-century Dolma­bahce Palace, which was built as the last hurrah of the sultans.

    There are wonderful baroque, rococo and neoclassical influences amid its Ottoman indulgences.

    The concept is that, like Istanbul, the hotel provides a bridge between Europe and Asia. The lobby and the Dolmabahce bedrooms represent the Ottoman empire, off to one side is the European wing, to the other, the Anatolian. Each is decorated in keeping, so the Ottoman bedrooms are the most ornate — lots of mahogany, dark reds and intricate fittings.

    The European rooms are crisp and contemporary, and the Anatolian wing is moodier, with walnut, gold and lashings of lush velvet. There are suites, of course, with the usual ridiculous price tags (up to £13,000 a night), and completely unnecessary facilities, including huge £45,000 TVs, grand pianos and private pools, but they do have glorious views over the Taurus Mountains… and The Kremlin (the neighbouring hotel).

    And it’s the first time I’ve come across remote controls for the lavatories.

    Although it won’t open until June 1, the hotel has been in practice mode for months. I visited with eight weeks to go and operations were impressively smooth. The staff don’t have the white-gloved prissiness of the Burj al Arab or the robotic tendencies of that other billion-dollar extravaganza, the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, where I was constantly wished a “Majestic Palace Experience”.

    At Mardan, they look you in the eye and smile and speak like real people. It is not particularly polished, but a more informal approach seems appropriate for a beach resort.

    There are 10 restaurants, from sleek Japanese to swanky Russian, headed by Michelin-trained chefs from the country of the cuisine’s origin. I tried the Thai, Italian, Turkish and seafood and found the dishes consistently very good and generally well priced (with mains between £10 and £13).

    One note of caution: Turkey might be cheap, wine in Turkey is not. A glass of champagne costs a gobsmacking £36.50 and you won’t get a bottle of vino for under £30. Blame it on the 250% import taxes and the fact that Turkish customs withhold six bottles of every vintage for “testing”.

    As the Mardan’s wine cellar contains Château Lafite Rothschild 1996 retailing at £2,120 a bottle, that means some Turkish official somewhere probably woke up one day with one hell of an expensive hangover.

    If you like to conjugate Latin verbs in your free time, this probably isn’t the place for you, but if you secretly enjoy a bit of wanton excess on holiday — or are happy to turn a blind eye to it — bling Antalya-style is considerably cheaper than the Dubai version, and a couple of hours closer to home, too.

    Timesonline

    Hotel website: www.mardanpalace.com

  • Gordon Brown meets Holocaust survivors and condemns the British National Party

    Gordon Brown meets Holocaust survivors and condemns the British National Party

    bnp

     

     

    Gordon Brown got on board with the Mirror’s Hope not Hate bus yesterday, where he met Holocaust survivors and condemned the British National Party.

    The Prime Minister warned: “There is no answer to our problems in parties that practise policies of prejudice or racism or anti-semitism.

    “The unfortunate thing about the BNP is that this is their essence – policies of persecution and discrimination.”

    The bus was at the South Bank in London as it ended a 15-day tour of the country, fighting racism and fascism and rejecting the far-right BNP in Thursday’s European and county elections.

    Mr Brown met Holocaust survivors Ben Helfgott and Zigi Skipper, both 79, and Normandy veteran Kenneth Riley, 85, along with Harry Potter actor Jason Isaacs.

    Ben, who was 10 when Hitler invaded his native Poland, said: “These people, the BNP, are Holocaust deniers. They don’t give anyone any respect, so they deserve only condemnation.”

    Zigi, also Polish, survived the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

    He said: “I would like to thank the Hope not Hate campaign for standing up against hatred. I believe the British will not be kidded by the BNP’s lies.”

    Normandy hero Ken said. “I fought the Nazis before and I’ll fight them again. Britain’s not the place for fascists.”

    Jason, 43, said: “I’m in huge admiration for what these men have lived through. The BNP are the opposite of what being British is all about.”

    Turning to Ken, he added: “This man here has the medals and knows the sacrifice made during the Second World War in the name of fighting fascism. All we need to do is to raise our voices.”

     

    By Ros Wynne-Jones 2/06/2009

    Mirror

  • Germany Gives Up on Anti-Turkey Stance

    Germany Gives Up on Anti-Turkey Stance

    Conservative Party in Germany Gives Up on Anti-Turkey Stance

    By JUDY DEMPSEY

    Published: June 1, 2009

    BERLIN — As citizens across Europe prepare to vote this week for a new European Parliament, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc has abandoned its attempt to create a wedge issue out of Turkey’s potential entry into the European Union.

    The change in approach is an acknowledgement by conservatives that they have more to gain by appealing to Germany’s 690,000 Turkish voters than by alienating them with blunt talk about the political and cultural differences separating Turkey and the rest of the E.U.

    The conservatives view the parliamentary balloting, which starts on Thursday, as a barometer for the federal elections in September and realize that they need every vote they can get if Mrs. Merkel is to be re-elected. Though Mrs. Merkel spoke out against Turkey’s E.U. ambitions as recently as last month, the bloc has since refrained from making Turkey’s entry, or E.U. enlargement in general, a major issue in the campaign.

    “The time is over for a Christian Democratic party in Germany to adopt an anti-Turkey campaign,” said Gerhard Hirscher, an analyst at the Hanns Seidel Foundation, which is affiliated with the Christian Social Union, the sister party of Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democrats. “The foreign policy experts in the party have made it clear they do not support the idea of using the European Parliament elections to campaign against Turkey joining the E.U. Turkey is an important country. More importantly, every vote matters in September.”

    Turks who have acquired German citizenship are eligible to vote for the European Parliament and in the federal elections.

    The softening stance on Turkey in Germany differs from that of several of its European neighbors. In France, Turkey-bashing has become fashionable during campaigning for the European Parliament and starts at the top with President Nicolas Sarkozy, an outspoken opponent of Turkey’s entry to the E.U. In the Netherlands, the director Geert Wilders, whose film “Fitna” features Muslims insulting Islam and the Koran, is using his opposition to Islam to try to get elected to the European Parliament.

    The Freedom Party of Austria has a slogan that states, “No to Turkey.” In Bulgaria, which joined the E.U. in January 2007, the nationalist party National Union Attack is using anti-Turkish slogans in its campaign.

    Likewise, Mrs. Merkel’s conservative bloc once believed that it could gain political advantage by tapping into a growing disillusionment with enlargement, while also pointing out the costs and difficulty of incorporating a large Muslim country into a mostly Christian grouping. But that stance appears to have given way to political reality. According to the first poll conducted among Germany’s Turks, more than 55 percent of eligible Turkish voters would opt for the Social Democrats if elections were held now, with 23 percent saying that they would vote for the Green Party and only 10 percent selecting Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the Christian Social Union.

    “The majority of German Turks, who by their fundamental positions are religious and conservative, during elections reward the Social Democrats and the Greens because of their integration policies,” said Joachim Schulte, director of Data 4U, which carried out the survey three months ago.

    Though the need for votes may have altered the campaign strategy, it does not seem to have essentially altered Mrs. Merkel’s attitudes toward Turkey. She has consistently advocated a “privileged partnership” for Turkey — meaning that it would be granted substantial benefits but barred from membership, thus denying Turkey the right to vote on E.U. matters. But Mrs. Merkel has never tried to stop E.U. negotiations with Turkey, which opened in 2005.

    Her party’s election manifesto for the European Parliament elections specifically mentions that when it comes to meeting the E.U. criteria for membership — including equality between men and women, protection of minorities and freedom of religion — Turkey has “fulfilled” none of these conditions.

    “A privileged partnership and not full membership for Turkey in the E.U. is the right solution,” the manifesto states.

    Source:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/world/europe/02iht-germany.html?ref=world

  • GREEK OCCUPATION OF IZMIR AND ADJOINING TERRITORIES

    GREEK OCCUPATION OF IZMIR AND ADJOINING TERRITORIES

    SAM PAPERS No. 2/99 /.. / REPORT OF THE INTER-ALLIED COMMISSION OF INQUIRY
    (MAY-SEPTEMBER 1919) | ÇAGRI ERHAN | Ankara – April 1999
    Report of the Inter-Allied Commission of Inquiry (May-September 1919)
    by the Members of the Commission; Adm. Bristol, the US Delegate – Gen.
    Hare, the British Delegate – Gen. Bunoust, the French Delegate – Gen.
    Dall’Olio, the Italian Delegate. The statements in defense of the
    Greek government presented by Col. Mazarakis.

    “Unfortunately, the first day of the Greek occupation was not only
    consisted of robbery, burglary and plunder. According to Allied
    sources, the Greek occupation forces and civilian
    Greeks killed 300 to 400 Turks on 15 May 1919. More than 2,500 Turks,
    some even as young as 14 years of age, were subjected to arbitrary
    detention. The Turkish population was subjected
    repeatedly to rape, beating, insults and torture.” (40)

    (40) Documents on British Foreign Policy, (ed. E.L. Woodward and Rohan
    Butler), First Series, vol. I, (London: His Majesty’s Stationery
    Office, 1947), p. 241.

    [ GREEKOCCUPATIONOFIZMIR.pdf 520K ]

  • Turkey – not a bridge too far for EU

    Turkey – not a bridge too far for EU

    A Conservative government would promote continued European Union expansion to Turkey and the Balkans despite the party’s calls for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, George Osborne has revealed.

    Speaking at Keele University in Staffordshire, the shadow chancellor insisted that Turkey was a part of Europe as well as a being a bridge to Asia. Without the Lisbon Treaty being passed, no further EU enlargement can take place.

    But Osborne said: “We are passionate advocates of enlargement, we should continue with that agenda. One of the great successes of the EU was to bring countries into an alliance; it was a fantastic achievement.”

    The Tories would lobby the EU to return national control of employment and social laws. They would also propose a £1bn reduction in the supranational body’s budget and 25 per cent less regulation from Europe, said Osborne.

    “We need to get more for less out of the EU – it remains too introverted and too centralised, it does not communicate with citizens and the Lisbon Treaty is a step too far,” he added. “Europe has become disconnected from the people and we want to give citizens a voice in EU institutions.”

    The Labour Party’s European election manifesto focused on attacking alleged Tory cuts to public services. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said: “Labour has a clear plan for a prosperous British future and more than ever we need the jobs that depend on the EU.”

    Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg claimed that “Labour’s arrogance had messed up Britain’s relationship with other European countries” while the Conservatives were with UKIP in thinking that the UK could combat the recession, climate change, international crime and terrorism “on its own”.

    Public Service June 02, 2009

  • GULEN: Behind Turkey’s Witch Hunt

    GULEN: Behind Turkey’s Witch Hunt

    The Ergenekon case exposes the power of a shadowy Islamic brotherhood that controls the Turkish police.

    By Soner Cagaptay | NEWSWEEK Published May 16, 2009 From the magazine issue dated May 25, 2009
    In which country does a liberal woman who educates poor girls worry about her safety when she goes home at night? Pakistan, Afghanistan-right-but also add Turkey now. In an early-morning raid on April 13, Turkish police arrested more than a dozen middle-aged liberal women working for the Society for Contemporary Life (CYDD), a nongovernmental organization that provides educational scholarships to poor teenage girls. The arrests were part of the Ergenekon court case, in which police have arrested hundreds of people, including Army officers, opponents of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, renowned journalists, artists and now these women, charging them with plotting to overthrow the government.

    When the case opened in 2007, AKP watchers saw it as an opportunity for Turkey to clean up corruption, such as security officials’ involvement in the criminal underworld. But the case is much more than that. It is a tool for the AKP to curb freedoms, and more than anything else illustrates the power of the Gülen tarikat (Islamic order) that now controls the Turkish police and, you guessed it, educational scholarships for the poor.

    The Gulen tarikat emerged in Turkey in the 1970s under the charismatic leadership of Fethullah Gülen, a respected imam. While tarikats serve as brotherhoods of solidarity much like orders in the Roman Catholic Church, the Gülen tarikat suggests blending conservative Muslim values with a modern lifestyle. Most Turks have a sinister view of the spiritual message of this tarikat that I do not share. Thanks to missionary and volunteer work, the Gülen tarikat obtained social and political power globally over the decades. It has business lobbying groups and think tanks in Washington and Brussels, owns universities, banks, TV networks and newspapers around the world, and operates schools in which more than 2 million students receive education, many with full scholarships.

    The tarikat gained political power in Turkey in the 1990s through its support of various political parties. In return, it gained appointments to key positions in the police and Education Ministry. Its growing power was checked in 1997 when the Turkish military issued a declaration against the then-ruling Islamist Welfare Party (RP) warning that its policies violated Turkey’s secular Constitution. Ensuing demonstrations and a media campaign brought down that government. Soon after, the Turkish courts filed a case against Gülen, alleging he was trying to take over Turkey by asking his followers to “move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers.” Gülen left Turkey, settling in the United States.

    When the AKP, established out of the RP’s ashes, came to power in 2002, the Gülen tarikat experienced a revival. It supported the AKP; in return, its members received government contracts and took charge of the police and its domestic intelligence arm. The recent arrests demonstrate the power of the Gülen tarikat: the police wiretapped liberal women, and only later asked the prosecutor to arrest them. They were questioned for days, and released without charges. Their police files, testimonies and details from their private lives were leaked to Gülen tarikat-owned media. These media described the women as members of a terrorist group and cast the CYDD’s president, Türkan Saylan, in a negative light for having been born to a mother of Christian-Swiss origins-a bothersome spin given that the Gülen tarikat’s rhetoric promotes interfaith dialogue.

    Saylan, a 74-year-old cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy, was questioned and many CYDD members have since been released, but the damage to their reputations and their work in secular education is done. The case has become a show trial, helping the AKP and the Gülen tarikat pressure the liberals and tarnish their reputations. On April 26, Turkey’s justice minister said that police intelligence listens to the private conversations of 70,000 people; almost one in every 1,000 Turks lives under police scrutiny today. In the United States, that ratio is one in 137,000.

    The Ergenekon case has become a witch hunt. If you have doubts, call a friend in Turkey and ask for an opinion of the case. Your friend will respond with details of the weather. The last time people were afraid to discuss a public court case in the West was during the McCarthy trials in the U.S. Though it is in accession talks with the European Union, Turkey is devolving into a similar state of fear. Sad as it is, there is a way out of this conundrum if the AKP turns Ergenekon into a case that targets only criminals, and the Gülen tarikat lets go of its control over the Turkish police and truly becomes a spiritual movement.

    Cagaptay, A senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Is the author of Islam Secularism and Nationalism in Modern Turkey: Who Is a Turk? (2006).

    © 2009

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    TODAYS ZAMAN

    Çağaptay distorts facts over Ergenekon trial in Newsweek article
    Wednesday, 20 May 2009 09:21
    An article that appeared in Newsweek magazine, penned by Soner Çağaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was claimed to have been full of errors and misinformation. In a piece titled “Behind Turkey’s Witch Hunt: The Ergenekon case exposes the power of a shadowy Islamic brotherhood that controls the Turkish police,” many allegations raised by Çağaptay proved to be false or misleading.

    Çağaptay strives to diminish the importance of the ongoing Ergenekon trial — a case in which prosecutors allege a clandestine criminal network plotted to create chaos in the country through high-profile killings, thereby inviting a military coup to overthrow the government. The investigation has so far exposed an abundance of guns and ammunition stored in hideouts, along with assassination plots against leading personalities, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk.

    Claiming that all those who were arrested and charged are opponents of the current Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, Çağaptay argues that the government is on a witch hunt similar to that of the Joseph McCarthy-era trials in the US. He fails to note that those who have been charged with crimes during the Ergenekon investigation are naturally the “opponents” of the current government. After all, they are all charged with the crime of seeking to overthrow that government.

    Fact-checking Çağaptay’s allegations

    1. FALSE

    Police investigated liberals.

    1. TRUE

    Police investigated ultranationalists who plotted to kill leading liberals including Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

    2. FALSE

    The Turkish courts filed a case against Gülen.

    2. TRUE

    Yes, the case was filed but later dismissed. The 9th Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals unanimously voted to clear Gülen of all accusations against him on the grounds that “there was no certain and credible evidence showing without a reasonable doubt” that Gülen was guilty.

    3. FALSE

    Türkan Saylan, the late chairman of the Support for Modern Life Association (ÇYDD), was interrogated by the police.

    3. TRUE

    She was never arrested and never questioned by the police

    4. FALSE

    Police files, testimonies and details from the private lives of those arrested were leaked to Gülen tarikat-owned media.

    4. TRUE

    As a result of investigative journalism, many media outlets published information regarding the case. The diary of Mustafa Balbay, an ultranationalist columnist who allegedly plotted with military officers to topple the government, was published by liberal newspapers belonging to the Doğan Media Group.

    5. FALSE

    Police listened in on private conversations.

    5. TRUE

    Not exactly. Police can only listen in to phone conversations after obtaining approval from the prosecutor’s office that got the approval from the court in the first place.

    6. FALSE

    The Gülen movement is a tarikat (Islamic order).

    6. TRUE

    No such thing. Turkish courts had dismissed “tarikat” allegations and cleared Mr. Gülen of being a leader of such an order.

    7. FALSE

    Ergenekon is a tool for the AK Party to curb freedoms.

    7. TRUE

    Ergenekon is the first-ever civil trial of coup plotters in Turkey.

    8. FALSE

    Although it is in accession talks with the European Union, Turkey is devolving into a similar state of fear.

    8. TRUE

    EU officials have repeatedly lent its support to the Ergenekon case and asked for thorough investigation into any criminal activity.

    Çağaptay falsely states in his article that the Ergenekon case is against liberals in Turkey. In fact, the very targets of the Ergenekon ultranationalist plotters were liberals themselves, as was evident in the case of assassination plans targeting Pamuk. Some in the case are charged with being responsible for carrying out kidnappings and assassinations of liberal Kurdish intellectuals in southeastern Turkey. The sheer support of the Ergenekon trial by liberal columnists and writers in Turkey shows the case has their full backing.

    The author also describes the Gülen movement as a tarikat, a definition that was rejected by Fethullah Gülen, a respected Muslim scholar, himself as well as in a court of law. Çağaptay said: “The tarikat gained political power in Turkey in the 1990s through its support of various political parties. In return, it gained appointments to key positions in the police and Education Ministry.” An investigation into allegations that the Gülen community was organizing within the Turkish police was terminated without further review in 1992 by the Ankara State Security Court’s (DGM) Chief Prosecutor’s Office.

    It should also be noted that last year the 9th Chamber of the Supreme Court of Appeals unanimously voted to clear Gülen of all accusations against him on the grounds that “there was no certain and credible evidence showing without a reasonable doubt” that Gülen was guilty. The ruling was appealed, but the appeal was dismissed by the Supreme Court of Appeals, the statement said, noting that the acquittal ruling was confirmed beyond doubt as every legal step had been exhausted.