Turkish Forum

Category: EU Members

European Council decided to open accession negotiations with Turkey on 17 Dec. 2004

  • Turkey Becomes a Rogue State By Rejecting European Court’s Verdict

    Turkey Becomes a Rogue State By Rejecting European Court’s Verdict

    The European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) issued on May 12 its largest judgment ever against any country, ruling that Turkey had to pay $123 million as compensation to relatives of missing Greek Cypriots and residents of a Greek enclave in Northern Cyprus.

    The Cyprus vs. Turkey lawsuit was filed in 1999, twenty five years after the Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus. In 2001, after ruling that the Turkish government had violated numerous articles of the European Convention on Human Rights, ECHR postponed making a determination of the penalty to be assessed to Turkey.

    That decision came earlier this month, when the 17 judges of ECHR’s Grand Chamber issued their final judgment. By a vote of 16 to 1 (the Armenian and Cypriot judges voted with the majority, while the Turkish judge was the lone dissenter), ECHR ruled that the intervening 13 years had not invalidated the court’s 2001 judgment, as claimed by Turkey. By a vote of 15 to 2, ECHR held that the Turkish government had to pay $41 million, plus any tax and interest (if not paid within three months) for 1,456 Greek Cypriots missing as a result of Turkey’s invasion of Cyprus in 1974. By another 15 to 2 votes, ECHR judges decided that Turkey had to pay an additional $82 million plus any tax and interest (if not paid within three months) for damages suffered by residents of the Greek Cypriot enclave of Karpas peninsula in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus.

    Right before the court’s judgment, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made a vain attempt to derail ECHR’s anticipated negative decision by warning that a ruling against Turkey would undermine the ongoing negotiations to reach a settlement on the Cyprus conflict. The court rightfully ignored Davutoglu’s threat and went on to issue its firm judgment in favor of Cyprus.

    Having failed to bully the judges, Davutoglu disdainfully declared that Turkey rejects the verdict of Europe’s top human rights court and boasted that his country will refuse to pay the $123 million in damages.

    Davutoglu should be reminded that ECHR’s “Grand Chamber judgments are final” — not subject to appeal — and “all final judgments are transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of their execution,” according to the court’s records.

    Turkish Foreign Minister’s arrogant declaration will certainly come back to haunt his government in the not too distant future. All members of the Council of Europe, without exception, are obligated to comply with ECHR’s rulings. The court’s judgments are binding on all member states. During the past several decades, Turkey has lost hundreds of judgments in the European Court and has paid, whether it liked it or not, countless millions of dollars in penalties. Turkey has no other choice, if it wants to remain a member of the Council of Europe. There have been some ECHR cases where Turkish officials had initially vowed that they would not pay the assessed penalties, but eventually fully paid the required compensation plus interest.

    If the Turkish government sticks with Davutoglu’s boastful rejection, not only Turkey could be stripped of its membership in the Council of Europe, but also forfeit its slim chance of joining the European Union!

    Member states of the Council of Europe do not have the right to decide whether they are willing to abide by ECHR’s judgments. Otherwise, why would 47 European countries collectively spend almost $100 million a year to maintain a court if its judgments are meaningless or subject to voluntary compliance?

    Recently, Turkish leaders have gone on a rampage flaunting domestic and international laws, by jailing a record number of journalists, firing on peaceful demonstrators in Gezi Park, beating family members of a mine explosion victims, making anti-Semitic statements, threatening to expel the US Ambassador, and waving a finger at Pres. Obama in the White House!

    The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers should not tolerate a rogue member state which is a major violator of human rights. The Council should put Turkey on notice that unless it makes immediate arrangements to pay the $123 million penalty, it would be expelled from the Council of Europe and have its assets in third countries seized to enforce the court’s judgment.

    Europe should take a firm stand on this judgment, as there will be many more such verdicts against Turkey on Cyprus and possibly someday on Armenian restitutional and territorial demands….

  • UNITED WE WEEP, DIVIDED WE SLEEP

    UNITED WE WEEP, DIVIDED WE SLEEP

    DUMBBELLS (English slang for stupid fools)

    DÜMBELEKLER (Turkish slang for stupid fools)

    I sing what was lost and dread what was won,
    I walk in a battle fought over again,
    My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
    Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
    They always beat on the same small stone.

    Willam Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

     

    I read the news today, oh boy. Here’s what Reuters said:
    “Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan has applied to Turkey’s constitutional court on Friday to challenge the alleged violation of his and his family’s rights by social media, a senior official in his office told Reuters.”

    Isn’t it grand, this so-called rule of law. The prime minister is correct in his action. Long ago his family’s rights were well-established as were his. When the fox owns the chicken coop every day the menu-du-jour is chicken. We and the world know the quality of those who rule this sad country.

    But who’s to argue? Not the sheep…if they whimper, they’re next. And besides, they’re well-bribed with food and coal and things magical from the bountiful Ankara sky. They have indeed learned to deeply love their Big Brother. They repay with their pathetic ballots. So, who? Perhaps young people who, like all young people everywhere, thought they had a future? Sorry. Enough of them have died and been maimed. Maimed by the prime minister who now frets about his and his family’s rights. Hah! So surely it will be the political opposition who once thought they had a patriotic responsibility, even a cause? No cause. No thought. No brains. No nothing. The military? The ones with the soundest, strongest emotional and ethical legacy? Nope. Folded up like a cheap suit. Hardly a whimper. Generals now bow their heads to thieving politicians. Cowardly submissive stuff like that makes one wonder if they ever received an education (and at taxpayer expense). Atatürk? Huh? Please, we must not speak aloud of such things. So who’s left to argue? Media? Ha! Sold-out. Universities? Ha! Ha! Expounding on pet obscurities, historical quirks, dead poets and deader laws and what once was and now will never be. There is no time left for history and literature and law and medicine and philosophy and too many more words. Speaking of which, what about writers? Well, who reads? The world is too much with all of us, and we are all too late.

    So who will care? Care enough to act, to really act? To stand up and say that this is enough. That the people will no longer be governed by a corrupt political process. Nor by numbskull, repetitive political opposition parties nor by America’s CIA gangsters? Is that too much to ask?

    It seems so. Time grows short. Another crooked election is coming, this one presidential. One way or another the same small people will throw the same big stones at us. Ah Turkey, the saddest country with the saddest people with the saddest stories. Always beating on, always being beaten. Ah, dear Turkey, Atatürk’s children deserved so much more. So did Atatürk.

    James (Cem) Ryan
    Istanbul
    19 April 2014

     

    “A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”

    Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

    jefferson

     

     

  • Caribbean states demand reparations from European powers for slave trade

    Caribbean states demand reparations from European powers for slave trade

    Most of the Caribbean nations have adopted a single plan to solicit from former slaving nations an apology, more aid and damages for 300 years of slavery, which they say have hobbled their economies and public health

    slavery
    Sugar Plantation Slaves 1858 engraving of slaves in the British West Indies working the sugar cane Photo: Lordprice Collection/ Alamy

    By Philip Sherwell, New York

    A coalition of Caribbean countries has unveiled its demands for reparations from Britain and other European nations for the enduring legacy of the slave trade.

    The leaders of 15 states adopted a wide-ranging plan, including seeking a formal apology from former colonial powers, debt cancellation, greater development aid as well as unspecified financial damages for the persisting “psychological trauma” from the days of plantation slavery.

    The series of demands to be made of former slaving nations such as Britain, France, Spain, Portugal and The Netherlands were agreed at a closed-door meeting of the Caribbean Community (Caricom) in St Vincent and the Grenadines.

    The Atlantic slave trade took place from the 16th through to the 19th centuries.

    The group hired Leigh Day, the British law firm, to push their claims after the company secured a £20 million compensation award for Kenyans who were tortured by colonial authorities during the Mau Mau rebellion in the 1950s.

    The reparations debate has long simmered in the Caribbean where many blame slavery for modern ills, ranging from economic weakness to health epidemics such as diabetes and hyper-tension allegedly caused by their ancestors’ poor diets.

    Caricom is pushing for increased technological assistance as it says European powers shackled the region during the world’s industrialisation by confining it to producing and exporting raw materials such as sugar.

    The plan also demands an increase of aid for public health and educational and cultural institutions such as museums and research centres.

    And it calls for the creation of a “repatriation programmes” to help resettle members of the Rastafarian movement in Africa. Repatriation to Africa has long been a central belief of Rastafarians.

    Martin Day, of Leigh Day, said he would request a meeting with European officials to seek a negotiated settlement, but would pursue a legal complaint if Caribbean nations are not satisfied with the outcome of any talks.

    It has been 180 years since Britain abolished slavery but the demand for an unqualified apology remains as controversial as the calls for financial damages.

    In 2007, Tony Blair, the then prime minister, expressed “deep sorrow and regret” for the “unbearable suffering” caused by Britain’s role in slavery but stopped short of a formal apology. His words angered many in the Caribbean as inadequate and resonating of legal caution.

    The British government, which currently contributes about £15million a year in development to the Caribbean, said that it has not been presented with the demands, but has consistently signalled opposition to financial reparations.

    “The UK has been clear that we deplore the human suffering caused by slavery and the slave trade,” a Foreign Office spokesman said. “However we do not see reparations as the answer. Instead, we should concentrate on identifying ways forward with a focus on the shared global challenges that face our countries in the twenty-first century.”

    But Professor Verene Shepherd, the chairman of Jamaica’s reparations committee, told The Daily Telegraph last month that British colonisers had “disfigured the Caribbean”, and that their descendants should now pay to repair the damage.

    “If you commit a crime against humanity, you are bound to make amends,” she said. “The planters were given compensation, but not one cent went to the freed Jamaicans”.

    The Caricom nations highlighted the region’s enduring troubles as well the suffering of the victims of the trade in humanity and the profits made by the slaving powers.

    “The transatlantic slave trade is the largest forced migration in human history and has no parallel in terms of man’s inhumanity to man,” their claim reads. “This trade in enchained bodies was a highly successful commercial business for the nations of Europe.”

    www.telegraph.co.uk, 11 Mar 2014

  • Turkish Origin Special Forces Martial Arts Trainer Will Be Training FBI

    Turkish Origin Special Forces Martial Arts Trainer Will Be Training FBI

    avciSalih Avci is one of the chief trainers of the SEK (Spezialeinsatzkommandos, the special response units of the German state police forces), MEK, ZUZ (the SWAT unit of the German Customs Service, and GSG 9 (the elite counter-terrorism and special operations unit of the German Federal Police) in Germany as well as various other special forces ranging from the American Rapid Response Teams to the special police of one of China’s biggest provinces.

    He started training in Wing Tsun in 1980 in the European Wing Tsun Organization (EWTO). In 1986, he attained the 1st technician degree. In 1997, he left EWTO to found WTEO (Wing Tsun-Escrima Organization).

    Avci is still the world chief trainer of the organization. Today, WTEO has more than 15000 students, excluding law enforcement forces. There are more than 70 schools of WTEO alone in Germany and several others in Holland, Turkey, France, Austria, Spain, Jordan, Italy, Sudan, Greece and La Reunion.

    Salih Avci will be training FBI agents with his own techniques which is a mixed between Chinese origin ‘Wing Tsun’ and Philippians origin ‘Escrima’

    Salih Avci’s unique approach to the combat art lies in the practical application of his techniques to disarm and arrest without the use of excessive force or weapons, even in life-threatening situations. Salih Avci does not focus solely on unarmed techniques. He has developed traditional short and long stick techniques to be used efficiently and practically without causing unnecessary harm to the person being arrested. A general-purpose tool for protection, disarming and arresting was the result of Salih Avci’s practical modification of the “tonfa”, which is used by the police.

    Apart from the realistic application and professional use of self-defence and arresting techniques for civilians and officials, Salih Avci trains actors and fight choreographers for film and television.

    Salih Avci married in 1993 and he and Mrs. Bilgi now have four sons and two daughters.

    Sources: Amerikali Turk, Wikipedia and Contributed by Tolga Cakir

  • Press Statement: The European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders

    Press Statement: The European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders

    MEMO
    MEMO

    Statement from the European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a joint declaration and on the resumption of the negotiations

    European Commission – MEMO/14/103   11/02/2014

     

    Statement from the European Union on the agreement reached by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a joint declaration and on the resumption of the negotiations

    The President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, issued today the following statement:

    The European Union welcomes the agreement announced today by the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders on a Joint Declaration, which lays a solid foundation for resumption of negotiations for a fair and viable comprehensive settlement of the long-standing Cyprus problem. This Joint Declaration should help them to swiftly address matters of substance and to achieve rapid results in the negotiations. President Barroso and President Van Rompuy congratulate and salute the courage the two leaders have shown in agreeing it.

    At the time of accession of Cyprus, the European Union declared its readiness to accommodate the terms of a settlement in line with the principles on which the Union is founded. As previously announced, the European Commission is keen to play its part in supporting the negotiations, conducted under UN auspices and to offer all the support the parties and the UN find most useful. As the negotiations resume, President Barroso’s personal representative will contribute actively to the search for constructive solutions in compliance with the EU acquis to overcome outstanding problems. In parallel, the European Commission will also step up its efforts to help the Turkish Cypriot Community prepare for implementation of the acquis.

    The European Union also supports the efforts to reach an agreement between the two parties on a package of Confidence-Building Measures which can help to create momentum towards a settlement to the benefit of Cypriot people. The European Union stands ready to look creatively at how to contribute to this objective in the prospects of a final settlement.
  • Britain’s visa rules are a mess

    Britain’s visa rules are a mess

    uk passport
    According Mary Dejevsky at the Chatham House, entry rules to the UK are a mess.
    Mary Dejevsky is a columnist for The Independent, February 2014
    The World Today, Volume 70, Number 1

    Simple for the wealthy, a source of anger and resentment for the rest

     

    At least all those non-EU citizens wanting to live and work in the European Union now know where Malta stands. If they have a spare €650,000, plus more for dependents, they will be able to treat the whole family to Maltese passports. In so doing, they will effectively buy full access to all 28 EU countries – and the right to visit many others visa-free.

    However Malta’s move is viewed – and Brussels is not happy, but currently has no mechanism to prevent it – there is virtue in clarity.

    According to Chatham House for a brief period, a limited number of rich people will be able to obtain citizenship of an EU country by contributing to a Maltese development fund. Such paid-for provisions are not unheard of: Britain and others already offer a path to citizenship for £1 million-plus investors.

    But Malta’s scheme, as originally concieved, differs in having no residence requirement. It really is offering a passport of convenience.

    Some might reasonably object that the fuss about Maltese passports ignores the ease with which members of the global elite – aside from those expressly blacklisted – are already able to cross borders. It is the rest, including the new middle classes of the emerging economies, for whom visa restrictions are burdensome. And frustrated applicants reserve some of their most bitter complaints for Britain.

    The point was made pithily a few years ago by the Russian liberal politician, Grigory Yavlinsky, when he spoke at Chatham House. After making a plea for Britain to relax visa restrictions on Russians, he remarked with heavy sarcasm that there were some Russians, including those with dubious pasts, for whom entry to the UK was no problem.

    To judge by my inbox, the ill-feeling generated by the British visa system has only increased. Many complaints are about delays, costs and carelessness with crucial documents. But recurrent themes are the supercilious attitude of officials and a perception that the rules are applied both inflexibly – formulaic box-ticking – and arbitrarily.

    In recent months, I have learnt of several individuals from former Soviet states whose applications to visit relatives for a short stay have been turned down, even though they have visited regularly over several years. I have also attended conferences where featured speakers have received their visas late or not at all.

    Unfavourable comparisons are made with other EU countries in the Schengen zone – the 22 EU members which have abolished passport controls at their common borders – or even with the United States.

    Part of the explanation may be the ambivalence and sheer muddled thinking that often seems to prevail at the very top. On the one hand, the British Government has an electoral mandate for a sharp reduction in immigration. Yet its toughest talk concerns prospective new arrivals from Romania and Bulgaria – about whom it can actually do nothing.

    On the other hand, it is keen to attract ever more overseas (non-EU) students, while refusing them the right to stay after graduation.

    Looking enviously across at France, it also wants many more tourists, especially those, such as high-spending Chinese, of whom France attracted six times more than Britain last year.

    To this end, the Chancellor, George Osborne, recently proposed simplifying the visa rules for Chinese business people and tour groups if they were also applying for a visa from one of the Schengen countries. France has since gone one better by providing a 48-hour service. The race for the Chinese yuan is on.

    However, Britain’s efforts to be competitive have only introduced more inconsistencies. Membership of Schengen has been rejected by successive UK governments on the grounds that it would mean contracting out border security to other EU countries. Yet, as is now tacitly acknowledged, nonmembership puts Britain at a disadvantage in the tourism stakes. So it has come close to accepting the Schengen visa process in practice, but only for well-heeled Chinese.

    One consequence could be resentment on the part of others, including those from the Commonwealth and the former Soviet Union. Individual visitors – relatives, artists, performers or academics – already feel they receive short shrift. Positive discrimination for Chinese business people and shoppers could only make matters worse.

    UK visas are a particularly sore point among Russians, with the British authorities stressing security concerns, and Moscow insisting that any liberalization be reciprocal. It would be facetious to suggest that the new arrangements for Chinese could be extended to others – by requiring, say, sponsoring organizations, to include generous shopping vouchers with their invitations.

    But should the way to a British visa really lie through Harrods? There must be a more equitable, less mercenary, way.

    Mary Dejevsky is a columnist for The Independent