General Ilker Basbug, new chief of the Turkish General Staff, says a pluralistic democracy requires the preservation of secularism. He considers Turkish-US relations “excellent” and calls for fair EU treatment of Ankara’s membership bid.
By Ayhan Simsek for Southeast European Times — 01/09/08
General Ilker Basbug became chief of the Turkish General Staff last week and gave a key speech to outline his views on secularism, the nation-state and globalisation.
A months-long power struggle in Turkey between the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and secularists led by the military focused attention on the turnover of the military’s top position.
Basbug, in a long-awaited address, expressed the military’s commitment to democracy and democratic principles but raised concern over the increasing Islamisation of society under the AKP.
“Part of our society fears a new cultural identity and lifestyle in Turkey under the domination of religion emerging. These fears should be taken seriously,” Basbug said.
Commander of the Turkish Land Forces in the past two years, he firmly advocates preservation of the secular, unitary character of the Turkish nation-state.
“General Basbug took over the most difficult position at a most difficult time,” veteran liberal columnist Mehmet Ali Birand wrote in the daily Milliyet. Birand credits the general for possessing “outstanding qualifications” at such a time.
According to Birand, Basbug is renowned for his deep knowledge of political-military issues and realism.
During the handover ceremony, the scholarly Basbug cited philosopher Jurgen Habermas in emphasising the need to preserve the nation-state against the challenges of globalisation.
Leading actors of globalisation try to strengthen their national structures to address the challenges of globalisation. We cannot ignore that this holds true for the United States and the European Union member-states as well, he stressed.
Weighing the nationalism principle and Kurdish issue, Basbug signalled support for expanding cultural rights for Turkey’s ethnic Kurds but ruled out any move to confer “group rights”, which he said would undermine the nation-state structure.
Like many top-ranking Turkish generals, Basbug has a NATO background. He served as chief of logistics and infrastructure at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium, and as commander of the 1st Armoured Brigade in Istanbul.
During his first address as the top Turkish commander last week, he described military relations with the United States as “excellent” and praised US help in countering the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Army. “Turkish-American relations are deeply rooted and built on common values,” he said.
He had a message for the EU as well. Basbug called on Brussels to give Ankara the treatment enjoyed by other EU membership candidates.
He pointed to the EU’s strategic needs and warned the 27-member bloc’s influence would end in the Balkans, falling short of the Caucasus and the Middle East, if it did not admit Turkey. Besides, he said, Turkey is the most powerful secular democracy in the region.
Turkish journalists said the military signaled one expected and one surprise act in this new era after the remarks delivered by Turkey’s newly appointed chief of General Staff, Gen. Ilker Basbug.
Basbug was expected to stress the principle of secularism as the basis of the Turkish Republic, while in a surprise statement he described the “cooperation” with the United States in the fight against terrorism as “excellent”, Murat Yetkin from Radikal daily said on Saturday.
“Our cooperation with the U.S. army is on a perfect level. It is one of our most important duties to preserve this cooperation since Turkey-United States relations have gained further importance,” Basbug said on Thursday when officially hold the top post of the Turkish army.
He warned on threats to secularism and stressed the importance of fight against terrorism
No previous chief of general staff has depicted relations between Turkey and United States in this way, Yetkin added.
Semih Idiz, Milliyet daily’s coloumnist also said that Basbug remarks regarding U.S were surprising since they were mentioned in a time when the anti-Americanism is high in Turkish society.
While Fikret Bila, Milliyet daily’s columnist, citing his interview with the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party, Deniz Baykal, said Basbug had made some important and positive statements, but that these assessments would have no influence.
Turkish riot police capture protestors after a Kurdish rally in the south-eastern province of Diyarbakir in November 2007 GALLO/GETTY
Many ethnic Kurds and Turks hope that an ongoing investigation into an undercover organisation may help explain hundreds of unsolved murders, disappearances and bombings which rocked Turkey in the early 1990s.
State prosecutors allege that a highly-secretive group – ‘Ergenekon’ – was responsible for many unsolved, high-profile killings in Turkey in recent years.
These include the murders of leading journalists, such as Hrant Dink, assassinated in January 2007, and Ugur Mumcu, killed in 1993.
Prosecutors also allege that the group was behind plans to destabilise Turkey and pave the way for a military coup to unseat the current government. Some 86 people have so far been detained in the case, including media, political and retired military figures.
“The Ergenekon case is very, very important,” Hasan Fendoglu, an advisor to Recip Tayyip Erdogan, the former prime minister, told Al Jazeera.
“It is the first case of its kind in the Republic of Turkey in 40 years. If we can solve this case, we will have made some major progress in human rights,” Fendoglu, who also heads the Human Rights Presidency, the official human rights body, added.
But there are fears that political pressures may derail what many are calling the most important Turkish criminal investigation in years.
Troubled southeast
While many of the high-profile assassinations happened in Istanbul and Ankara, most of Turkey’s unsolved murders and disappearances of the last two decades have centred in the country’s troubled southeast.
This region has an ethnic Kurdish majority and has been the scene of continuing conflict between Turkish security forces and fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who have led a violent campaign for independence. More than 30,000 people have been killed in this conflict so far.
Interest in Ergenekon is therefore high in the southeast and in Diyarbakir, its regional capital. Many are hoping that the case will help solve decades-old murders and disappearances.
One such unsolved disappearance concerns Mecit Gundem, a farmer from the ethnic Kurdish village of Hazro.
He has not seen his father since 1991.
“The jandarma [paramilitary rural police gendarme force] came to our village at 4am,” he told Al Jazeera.
“They came to our house and took away my father, Ibrahim, right in front of many witnesses. But when we went to the jandarma station later that morning and asked for him, they told us he wasn’t there.”
Since that day, no one has heard anything of Ibrahim. “We kept asking, but they just told us they didn’t know anything about him, or whether he was dead or alive,” Mecit said.
Death squads
Dink was gunned down in front of his office in January 2007 AFP
But the Ergenekon case may have offered a fresh clue.
“One day a few weeks ago, there was an article in a newspaper that caught my eye,” he says.
“It said that according to a file that had come to light because of the Ergenekon investigation, there was a death squad operating in my region back in the 1990s.”
“The file said that this squad had operated on the instructions of a secret group within the state, which ordered it to kill anyone they suspected of involvement with the PKK. It said too that this group killed a man from Hazro the same day my father disappeared, along with many others from other places.”
Mecit is now pushing local human rights lawyers to take up the case again.
One such lawyer is Muharrem Erbey, chair of the Diyarbakir branch of Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD).
“Ergenekon is extremely important for Kurdish society,” he says.
“Why?” He points to a row of five portraits on the wall of his office.
“They are all human rights activists killed by Ergenekon. We have lost many, many people over the years to them.”
The IHD in Diyarbakir also has files on some 1,285 people who were allegedly arrested by the police, the jandarma, the army and other security forces since 1991 – and were never seen or heard from again.
“The state used groups like Ergenekon to kill Kurdish activists, intellectuals and businessmen,” he says. “The group became very strong as the conflict intensified. Ergenekon grew out of the Kurdish issue.”
The “deep state”
Some analysts see Ergenekon as just one part of the ‘deep state’ – a shadowy network of groups responsible for many killings and disappearances over the years.
“The heyday of the deep state was the 1990s, when it was vastly powerful,” says Gareth Jenkins, Turkey analyst with the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation.
“The deep state was never a single, structured organization, but a web of groups and networks, some of which were autonomous, others of which sometimes cooperated with each other. The unifying factor was not central control but shared immunity from prosecution.”
Others dispute any official culpability though. “Our police stations and security services have all been doing their work properly here,” Cemal Husnu Kansiz, the deputy governor of Diyarbakir, told Al Jazeera.
“If there are any specific cases of disappearances or killings then they always follow them up. In this instance, there are no specific human rights problems in Diyarbakir.”
This is not a widely-held view in the region, however. Tahir Elci, a local lawyer, recalls another case he was involved in, this time from 2001.
“Two local politicians in Silopi [a nearby town] from the pro-Kurdish party, HADEP, were called to the local jandarma station in the middle of the day,” he says.
“They went there by car and were never seen again. We asked after them, and the jandarma said, ‘yes, they came, then left, we don’t know what happened’.
“We took the case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, who ruled in our favour – that Turkey had failed in its responsibilities towards the two men. We still haven’t found them. The jandarma commander in the area at the time, Levent Ersoz, refused to testify.”
Ersoz has also now been indicted by state prosecutors in the Ergenekon case, charged with being a key member of the group. A warrant for his arrest was issued on August 14, when his whereabouts were unknown.
The jandarma would not comment on any of these cases.
“On Ergenekon, we cannot comment on an ongoing case – we will just have to wait and see,” Kansiz told Al Jazeera.
Politically motivated?
Police believe recent violence has also been the work of Ergenekon AFP
Many hope though that the Ergenekon case will reveal more connections to the disappeared of the southeast, as well as to cases in other parts of Turkey.
Yet there are also concerns that the Ergenekon file may be politically motivated and badly put together.
“All the people who have been accused so far are also known for their anti-government stance,” says Onur Oymen, spokesman for the Republican People’s Party, Turkey’s main parliamentary opposition.
“In the indictment, sometimes you also find the same person mentioned as a member of Ergenekon and then later mentioned as someone Ergenekon wanted to kill.”
At the same time, others worry about the ability of the judiciary to successfully investigate and prosecute such cases.
“One of the issues is how will the justice system deal with Ergenekon when there are major question marks over the judiciary and the pressure – political pressure – that can be brought to bear on it,” says Emma Sinclair-Webb of the international group, Human Rights Watch.
Yet officials remain confident.
“It is impossible for political pressure to be brought to bear in this,” says Fendoglu. “The courts are completely independent of the government.”
Meanwhile, Mecit has a simple request.
“I just want to know what happened to my father. I want to know where and how he was killed. My whole family just wants to know.”
Linsey McNeill loved the museums and bazaars of the Turkish capital, but it was the beaches of the Princes’ Islands that finally won over her kids
Linsey McNeill
The Observer
A ferry passes topkapi palace with the Princes Islands in the distance in Istanbul, Turkey. Photograph: Dominic Whiting/Alamy
My seven-year-old son slumped onto the heavily patterned carpet of Istanbul’s Blue Mosque and looked up at me with a crumpled face. ‘Mum, it’s just a big empty room,’ he moaned. I turned to his sister Emelye, nine, who, a little earlier, had seemed intrigued by the sound of the mullah calling Muslims to prayer. ‘Look at all the beautiful tiles on the walls,’ I whispered. Em shrugged before collapsing onto the carpet next to Luke.
Day two of our trip to Istanbul and things were not looking good. Over the road, inside the Hagia Sofia Museum, the children had played hide-and-seek around the giant columns for 10 minutes before pleading to leave.
They had been eager to go to the Grand Bazaar, though probably because I had told them it was ‘like the Arndale Centre, but older’. When they failed to find a Turkish branch of ToysRus in the ancient alleyways Luke wailed: ‘This place is full of rubbish.’ Only a refreshing glass of mint lemonade at the historic Fes Cafe and the sight of a man selling spinning tops for two lira (less than £1 of his pocket money) cheered him up.
A suggestion of a cruise along the Bosphorus had resulted in collapsed shoulders and cries of ‘Boring!’ though the children could have watched the men fishing from the Galata Bridge, next to where the boats depart, for hours.
ANKARA (Reuters) – Nobel Prize-winning Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk published a new book in Turkey on Friday, his first since obtaining the award.
“Museum of Innocence” is a love story about a rich man and his poor, distant relative set in present day Istanbul, Pamuk’s native city, his publisher Nihat Tuna told Reuters.
Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize in 2006, is a controversial writer in Turkey despite his popularity and big sales.
Elephant Talk Communications, an international telecom and multimedia content distributor, is set to expand its international telecom network and converged services for information and communication technologies (ICTs) by entering into Turkey.
ET Turkey will be based in Istanbul and will offer traditional telecom services, Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) and Mobile Virtual Network Enabler (MVNE) solutions, including streaming and data services. MVNEs provide infrastructure, systems integration and management services that enable MVNOs to offer services that improve relationships with their customers or end-users.
“Turkey’s large population of 70 million, the country’s liberalizing telecom market, and its bridge position between continents provides interesting opportunities for Elephant Talk,” said Steven van der Velden, CEO.
Elephant Talk (ET), in addition to providing its wide range of telecom services to the attractive local market, will also use this latest addition to service its current customer base wanting to expand into new and emerging markets.
