Turkish Forum

Category: Non-EU Countries

  • Met Chief Accused Of Racism

    Met Chief Accused Of Racism

    Accused: Sir Ian Blair

    The UK’s most senior policeman has been accused of a racist campaign against one of his closest colleagues.

     

    According to a source close to Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, his legal representatives formally submitted his employment tribunal claims on Friday night.

    They include allegations that Scotland Yard Commissioner Sir Ian Blair and other senior members of the Met played a role in a campaign of harassment and discrimination against him.

    The source said: “Ghaffur is very unhappy because the Met is briefing against him.”Details of the claim will not be available to anyone until next week.”Sir Ian has rejected the claims and said he has a “long, honourable and occasionally blood-stained record on the championing of diversity”.

    A Metropolitan Police spokesman said he was not aware any papers had been lodged.No one at the tribunal was available to comment.It is the first time an officer of such seniority has sued the Met and it threatens to plunge the force’s leadership into crisis.

    Mr Ghaffur is understood to be claiming hundreds of thousands of pounds in loss of earnings and damages.A rift between the two senior officers emerged in June with news of an allegedly damning dossier of evidence prepared by Mr Ghaffur.

    Colleagues said the officer, who is responsible for Olympic security preparations, has been treated “extremely poorly”.Attempts to head off a full-scale employment tribunal with mediation failed after the two parties could not even agree the terms for talks.

    It emerged earlier this week that Mr Ghaffur was bugged and photographed as part of an investigation into another senior officer.Officers recorded meetings between Mr Ghaffur and Commander Ali Dizaei in 2000 and 2001 as part of an ill-fated corruption inquiry.

    Mr Dizaei was cleared of perverting the course of justice and fiddling his expenses at the Old Bailey in 2003.

    Sir Ian has already been forced to defend his record on diversity at an employment tribunal this year.

    Commander Shabir Hussain, another of his most senior colleagues, claimed he was repeatedly overlooked for promotion in favour of white candidates.

    The 45-year-old officer has alleged racial discrimination against the Metropolitan Police Authority, its chairman Len Duvall and Sir Ian.

    A decision by the tribunal panel is expected within the next month.

    Sky News

    Link:

  • Police in crisis after jury rejects £10m terror case

    Police in crisis after jury rejects £10m terror case

    Sean O’Neill, Security Editor

    Police and prosecutors were locked in crisis meetings last night after what they believed to be the strongest terrorism case ever presented to a court was rejected by a jury.

    At the end of a £10 million investigation and trial lasting more than two years, jurors were unable to decide whether or not a group of British Muslims were part of a plot to blow transatlantic airliners out of the sky.

    The outcome of the case – which featured al-Qaeda-style martyrdom videos made by six defendants – will be seen as a severe blow to Britain’s anti-terrorist effort.

    Three men were convicted of conspiracy to murder, but the jury was deadlocked on the central allegation, that terrorists planned to use liquid bombs to destroy aircraft en route from Heathrow to cities in the United States and Canada.

    The jury’s indecision in the face of a detailed Crown case raises questions about the public perception of the terror threat that could undermine government attempts to introduce further security legislation.

    The Crown Prosecution Service indicated that it was likely to seek the retrial of seven men in an attempt to prove that there was a plan to attack aircraft and kill thousands of people.

    The discovery of the plot, in August 2006, led to a global security clamp-down at airports that paralysed international travel.The alert resulted in restrictions on carrying liquids in cabin baggage that remain in force and are unlikely to be relaxed.

    Retrials are being sought even though the jury at Woolwich Crown Court convicted three of the eight defendants of conspiracy to murder.

    Prosecutors met to discuss their options amid concern that the jury could not decide on a separate charge specifying that airliners had been the targets of that conspiracy.

    The jurors also failed to reach verdicts on serious terrorist charges against four other men, who had recorded al-Qaeda-style suicide videos and admitted charges of conspiring to cause a public nuisance.

    Another defendant, described in court as a shadowy figure with terrorist connections, was acquitted of all charges and cannot be retried.

    The jurors deliberated for 52 hours, but their discussions were disrupted by a two-week holiday, frequent sickness breaks and other commitments.

    Scotland Yard refrained from comment last night, but the senior officers of their disappointment over the outcome of the case.

    Andy Hayman, former assistant commissioner for special operations, said: “This was one of our strongest cases – there will have to be an intensive debrief. But now is not the time for that, now is the time to prepare for retrials.”

    A CPS spokesman said: “The jury found there was a conspiracy to murder involving at least three men but failed to reach a verdict on whether the ambit of the conspiracy to murder included the allegation that they intended to detonate IEDs (improvised explosive devices) on transatlantic airliners in relation to seven of the men. It is therefore incorrect to say that the jury rejected the airline bomb plot.”

    The men convicted of conspiracy to murder were Ahmed Abdulla Ali and Tanvir Hussain, both 27 and from Walthamstow, northeast London, and Assad Sarwar, 28, of High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. The four men on whom the jury failed to reach verdicts were Ibrahim Savant, 27, Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, Waheed Zaman, 24, and Umar Islam, 30.

    Mohammed Gulzar, 27, from Birmingham, was acquitted on charges of conspiracy to murder and conspiring to murder by blowing up aircraft. He had vigorously denied any involvement. The Crown had alleged that Mr Gulzar, who arrived in Britain using a false name during July 2006, was a key figure in the alleged airline plot but the jury rejected that case.

    Home Office sources said that Mr Gulzar would be the subject of a control order and it is expected that he will be questioned by police in connection with a serious criminal offence committed in Birmingham in 2002. Another key figure in the plot, Rashid Rauf, is on the run in Pakistan after escaping from custody.

    Four further trials related to the alleged airline plot are pending.

    Source: business.timesonline.co.uk, September 9, 2008

  • Boris keeps Turks waiting

    Boris keeps Turks waiting

    Syed Hamad Ali

    Published 10 September 2008

    Ankara’s man in London explains why his country’s place is at the heart of Europe and how after all that talk of Turkish roots Boris still hasn’t found time to meet him

    Did you know Boris Johnson’s great grandfather was a liberal Turkish journalist called Ali Kemal alive during the dying days of the Ottoman empire? Well of course you did. London’s new Tory mayor banged on about his roots a fair bit during this year’s election campaign.

    But the centuries old ties between Turkey and the UK go much deeper than Johnson’s ancestry. Just ask Turkey’s ambassador to the UK, Mehmet Yiğit Alpogan: “Turkey’s membership of the European Union is one of the projects that the Turkish public opinion pay attention to and in that respect the support that Great Britain gives to Turkey is very much welcomed and appreciated.”

    So has he actually met Johnson? “I am waiting for that appointment to happen,” says Alpogan, who seemed just a tiny bit disappointed a request to London’s mayor has yet to be taken up.

    “I know that he is a very busy person and it will be my pleasure to be able to meet him, get together with him, and talk about many things including this past life.” A suitably diplomatic take on the whole matter.

    But if he does feel let down Alpogan can perhaps take some heart from the UK government’s strong support of Turkey’s aspiration to join the European Union. An attitude which contrasts sharply with the more reserved reaction of some of the other EU states such as France and Austria.

    “Turkey’s place is in Europe,” says Alpogan. “There is no question about this.” And the current UK foreign secretary, David Miliband, agrees. In a Telegraph article last year he expressed his approval of Turkey’s accession, highlighting among others the pressing energy benefits: “Turkey is an increasingly important transit route for oil and natural gas, with 10 per cent of the world’s oil flowing through the Bosporus.”

    The Foreign Secretary’s predecessor, Jack Straw, had gone even further and had equated membership as a means towards deflecting a “clash of civilisations”.

    Boris Johnson, too, has spoken in favour of Turkey’s accession to the EU. “We would be crazy to reject Turkey,” wrote Boris Johnson in his book ‘The Dream of Rome’, “which is not only the former heartland of the Roman empire but also, I see, one of the leading suppliers of British fridges.”

    Indeed the UK is the second largest export market for Turkey. For the UK investor also, Turkey is important.

    Yet the question of Turkey’s EU membership is controversial. Polls indicate many citizens across Europe do not approve the move.

    The situation is not helped by opposition from French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his alternative offers of a Mediterranean Union or a referendum over EU accession.

    “If the Europeans say that European Union is a Christian club they are thereby making a discrimination,” says Alpogan. “They are committing a grave mistake. Of course Turkey wouldn’t have a place in such a European Union. But I don’t think that the European public opinion thinks this way … we hope that this understanding will continue to prevail and the European Union will be a place where the alliance of civilisations will be represented.”

    One of the apparent reasons citizens of European states fear Turkish membership of the EU is the prospect of mass immigration.

    The ambassador points, however, towards other countries in Europe whose migrants returned to their home countries sometime after joining the EU, such as the Spanish, Greeks and now the Polish.

    “For a short while it might be true,” admits Alpogan. “But with the investment, economic activity and other developments that come with EU membership, soon these people would go back – at least that is what the history of the European Union shows us and that is how it is proven.”

    Maybe, but that argument may fall on deaf ears in a Europe already brimming with debates over whether immigration has gone too far in this corner of the globe.

    Yet there is one more twist to this whole accession debate. Who is to gain more from this membership, Europe or Turkey? A quick look at Turkey on the world’s map shows just why this nation of 80 million is considered so crucial. Yes it is about trade and access to energy but it is also about regional influence.

    Turkey is the bridge between Europe and Asia.

    And the ambassador is quick to highlight the “geo-strategic” and “geographical” benefits that lie in store for the European Union were Turkey to become a member.

    Then there’s Turkey’s relationship with Central Asian, through a shared Turkic cultural and linguistic heritage with many of those countries, may potentially prove to be the most useful one for Europe in the future given the region being a major fuel reserve for the world.

    But, of course, most European visitors to Turkey go there for one purpose – their holidays.

    According to the ambassador two million British tourists head to Turkey each year and the figures are on the rise at the rate of 10-20 percent. “We have already 20,000 British families who have come and settled in Turkey or have a second home in Turkey,” says Alpogan. “Of course we are very glad to have them there and they are another strong link between the two countries.”

    Indeed although he may not have found the time to meet with the Turkish ambassador, Boris Johnson, just a fortnight after winning the election for mayor in May, disappeared off to the south western coast of Turkey for a break with his family.

    The trip did not go un-noticed by the local media, with the Turkish Daily News reporting that the London mayor’s ancestral ties with their country and Islam would “hopefully be beneficial for Turkey and certainly his choice of holiday destination can only be seen as advantageous for Turkish tourism.”

    Perhaps. Although it may be that it has the reverse effect. Only time will tell.

    Source: www.newstatesman.com, 10 September 2008

  • Slave trade heads to Israel

    Slave trade heads to Israel

    By Mona Alami

    JERUSALEM – Israel continues to be a favorite destination for the trafficking of women for the sex industry – also known as the white slave trade – and for a form of modern slavery where migrant laborers from developing countries are exploited.

    The US State Department placed Israel in Tier 2 position in its 2007 Trafficking in Persons report. Also, an Israeli court ruled against the country’s work visa policy which forces foreign workers into indentured labor with a single employer.

    “Israel was only upgraded to Tier 2 last year,” said Romm Lewkowicz, a spokesman from Israel’s Hotline for Migrant

    Workers, an advocacy group which defends the rights of foreign workers.

    The US State Department divides countries into three tiers. Tier 1 is for countries that have successfully implemented measures to control trafficking (most Western countries fall into this category). Tier 2 is for countries that are trying to eradicate this modern day slavery but still fail to meet the necessary standards. Tier 3 is reserved for countries that have not addressed the issue at the most basic level.

    In 2006, Israel was on the US State Department’s Watch List for people trafficking.

    “This position falls between Tier 2 and Tier 3. The US applies economic sanctions to those countries which fall into Tier 3, but as we have a strong economic relationship with the US, Israel was given a warning and placed in a slightly higher category,” said Lewkowicz.

    The Israeli government has also faced sharp criticism from the US for its so-called binding work visa policy which effectively binds foreign migrants – mostly from developing countries and former Soviet Eastern bloc countries working in certain industries such as construction, labor, homecare and agriculture – to the employer stated on their visa.

    “The issuance of these visas is subject to the workers staying with the same employer stated on the visa, and if this condition is broken then the migrant worker is deemed illegal and liable for deportation without having a chance to fight the case in court,” said Sigal Rosen from Hotline.

    This has encouraged unscrupulous employers to withhold payment and extort employees, knowing they can always replace them and escape penalized.

    One of the more notorious cases was the Turks for Tanks deal of 2002. According to the deal, the Israeli military industry (Ta’as) upgraded about 200 tanks for Turkey for US$687 million, in one of the country’s biggest arms export deals. As part of the agreement, 800 Turkish workers were granted permits to work in construction in Israel, after being placed through the Turkish employment agency Yilmazlar.

    One of Yilmazlar’s contractors, Shaheen Yelmaz, arrived in Israel in 2006 dreaming of helping his father pay off his mounting debts after being promised a good job in Israel for $1,400 a month – a fortune by Turkey’s standards where unemployment is high.

    On arrival his passport and mobile phone were taken away and he and other Turkish workers were accommodated in squalid conditions.

    “We were not allowed to leave the premises in the evenings, and were only allowed out on our day off. And we were not paid for the first three months,” said Yelmaz.

    The Turkish Embassy was unwilling to intervene because of the lucrative deal with Israel.

    Yelmaz and his fellow contractors, most of them with little education, were coerced into signing blank documents before leaving Turkey that virtually ensured their dependency on Yilmazlar.

    “We were also told by our Israeli employer that if we were unhappy we could leave. The police would then arrest us as illegals and we would be deported,” said Yelmaz.

    Following a number of similar cases, Hotline and other Israeli human rights organizations petitioned the Israeli High Court. The court acknowledged the inequity of the system, but ruled that Yilmazlar’s contract with the Israeli defense industry was unique, and the company’s contract with Israel was limited.

    However, the court did rule in 2006 that Israel’s binding visa policy in general was illegal, and ordered the state to establish an alternative. Rosen says they are still waiting for a final response from the state.

    Yelmaz was subsequently deported to Turkey, $15,000 in debt, and Israel’s contract with Yilmazlar was renewed.

    “While the situation of indentured laborers remains serious, the white trade trafficking has improved somewhat,” said Lewkowicz. “Since the US State Department put Israel on its Watch List in 2006, the number of women trafficked to Israel has declined, and it is now against the law to traffic in women. Furthermore, the government now grants prostitutes a one-year rehabilitation visa. However, the bureaucracy involved means the granting of these visas is often problematic.”

    But new problems have arisen. “Israel is no longer solely an importer of prostitutes but has become an exporter of them too. Last year we discovered a new business where Israeli women were being trafficked to the UK and Ireland to work in the sex industry,” Lewkowicz said.

    Prostitution has also gone underground in Israel. “Before it was openly done on the streets, now many of the players have resorted to working from private apartments, following a police and government crackdown on the trafficking,” he added.

    According to the Jerusalem-based Task Force on Human Trafficking (TFHT), approximately 1,000 of the estimated 10,000 prostitutes in Israel are minors.

    Immigrants from the ex-Soviet bloc countries, some involved in the Russian mafia, manage about 20% of the trade, while the remainder are Israelis, says Lewkowicz.

    A Global Terrorism Analysis report published by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation states that many of the trafficked women are smuggled in from Egypt’s Sinai by Bedouins who have also been involved in arms smuggling.

    The industry has proved very lucrative for the human traffickers, with each woman sold in Israel bringing in anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000.

    But the state also earns a tidy profit from the white slave trade, according to Hotline.

    Service providers, such as taxi drivers transporting prostitutes, lawyers who represent the clients, landlords who rent out their premises as brothels, all pay income tax, and this ultimately arrives in the state’s coffers. Not to mention the cases of corrupt police officers who have also lined their pockets through bribery.

    (Inter Press Service)

    Source: Asia Times Online, Sep 5, 2008

  • Whirling Dervishes of Turkey at the Edinburgh Festival

    Whirling Dervishes of Turkey at the Edinburgh Festival

    Festival Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival, 4 September 2008On TV, when I got home, Seth Lakeman was blazing through his set at the Cambridge Folk Festival. Blazing, high octane intensity; that’s what I had expected from the Whirling Dervishes. Instead, imagine the choir of the Sistine Chapel appearing on a theatre stage and not just singing liturgy but presenting the whole missal, smells and bells included. It is difficult to convey the sense of incongruity between the expressly spiritual content of tonight’s performance and the expressly secular setting in which it took place. The chair applause – the normal racket of seats snapping up as people rise to leave – seemed unnecessarily urgent, but in Edinburgh there is always the next show to go to.

    This year’s festival theme has been ‘artists without borders’, inviting audiences to ‘create their own pathway’ through the fare. A number of Mediterranean cultures have featured in the mix, and it is noticeable how fluid the musical currents are, even when fixed to ideas and ide

    Whirling Dervishes of Turkey at the Edinburgh Festival – MusicalCriticism.com (Concert review).

  • Edinburgh festival: Istanbul Music and Sema Group

    Edinburgh festival: Istanbul Music and Sema Group

    Edinburgh Playhouse

    Closing the Edinburgh International festival dance programme, this concert of Turkish classical and Sufi music climaxes with a still sacred religious ceremony little changed since its conception in the 15th century.

    There is essentially only one repeated movement to review – the whirling. And this spinning is performed, rather surprisingly given the dance billing, for only a short period in the second half. Pre-interval, the group concentrates on ancient music performed on delicately beautiful traditional instruments and five deeply male voices. There are readings from religious texts too. Delivered in English, they are sincere but add little.

    So, the slow build-up to the whirling lasts nearly two thirds of the evening. The rhythms are soporific and mystical, the words sung low and sonorous, the verses many and repetitive. Hypnosis seems the aim. Much of the six-part Sema ceremony consists of walking in circles, gesturing and bowing with respect. Meanwhile, a moth dances in the lights above.

    When the dervishes finally treat us to the main attraction, their billowing white full-length skirts (the ego’s shroud) are freed from black cloaks (the grave) and transcendence is gentle and without extravagance. One hand turned to the sky and God, and the other to earth, their tall fez-like hats (the ego’s tombstone) tilt to one side in unison. It is as simple as that. A beautiful, poetic, meditative gesture. The only concession to performance are pink, blue and orange spotlights catching each turn.

    [Edinburgh festival dance review: Istanbul Music and Sema Group, Edinburgh Playhouse – This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday September 02 2008 on p36 of the Features & reviews section. It was last updated at 00:57 on September 02 2008]

    Source: www.guardian.co.uk, September 2 2008