Category: Europe

Icelander in prison in Turkey

Machine Translation from Icelandic to English

David Orn Bjarnason, 28-year-old Icelander living in Sweden, was on Friday arrested in Turkey. Turkish authorities accuse him of smuggling antiquities; that will go through the land of marble stone, which he bought in a market in Turkey. Thora Birgisdóttir, wife of David, said his wait three to ten years in prison and eight to 24 million penalty. David will be brought before a judge in Turkey tomorrow.

“I’m really numb and do not know properly how I feel. This is like the movie and I thought this sort of thing could not happen to someone, “says Thor standing in Sweden. “I just want to hear him and know how he feels, samviskubitið is killing me over to go to sleep right here in our bed every night without any idea whether that be to beat him out there. I do not even know if he has a bed! I do not know anything! All out of some damn rock! I do not know if I get to see him again, and how tough it is out there. I have to say to a four-year-old boy in our father would not come home and the boy refuses to go on the plane with her grandparents. Daddy is not coming home. ”

Roared them on police station

Thora says he does not know if she can go out to meet him, “if there is a warrant of arrest against me or what. We just wait and see how he gets on the court tomorrow. Agent has done nothing to help us. The guide, which is equipped, just came and yelled at us in the police station we should have to present us with rules governing the country. He was just a talker and bored and so he did just that. He helped us nothing. I do not know how prisons are out there and this uncertainty damages the person. ”

From Turkey. AFP

Thora and David Orn were reportedly dry for a trip to Turkey with a travel agent Tom Travel. Included in the trip was a tour guide, hotels and more. “We went by way of the narrator in our view based Romans. Since we bought this stone for any woman in any of these markets, which are at this point. David has always been interested in history and wanted to acquire such a stone, “said Thora.

“We never thought that we could not buy this and take us out of the country. The guide who was with us never mentioned it. When we went up to the airport took us through the bag description before tékkuðum us into. Then a policeman came and went between me and David, and they took away the stone. From there I went with us to the police station where we waited for an hour, “said Thora.

“You can go – he will remain”

“When we went to ask about why we were kept, we were told that they were to evaluate the stone. So, I was ordered to go on a plane and leave David behind. We had child care for our children, three in Sweden who were self flight to Iceland so we had to get home to our children. Then the police officer handed me my pass and said, “You may go. He must leave. “I had then just take the bag and leave David behind. He was talking to his mom for 20 seconds on the phone, the phone was ripped from him in this Turkish prison he is. All he could say was that it was prepared to mistreat him and that he did nothing that was said to him and knew nothing of what he was in prison. ”

The Foreign Ministry had reportedly Thora interpreter to call the prison and then was able to talk to him and calm him a bit. “Then he went before a judge, where everyone expected that he would get a fine and able to go, but the judge said he should go to jail and that tomorrow (Monday) would be doomed if he went on a three to ten years imprisonment or would have to pay eight to 24 million in fines. So we are just waiting to get to know how big the shock will be, “said Thora.

“I do not know how prisons are there, I do not know how many he’s in a cell, I do not know if he’s been beaten up or if he has a bed to sleep on. Foreign Ministry knows basically nothing and gets nothing to know. David’s parents are coming to Sweden to attend the two youngest of our children, so I just have to pack up the apartment and cancel the job and go back to Iceland. I should not be here and is just one and you need all the support you gain under such circumstances. ”

Thora says that all who were with them on the trip was in shock and not understand why it would have reacted that.

Will be charged with smuggling

“The report we received from the Foreign Office said he is charged with smuggling of Antiquities. We were not smuggling anything. The stone was near the top of luggage panniers so it’s completely crazy that we intended to smuggle something. Are there tour operators to work like this, it locks people into the country and sell it as something it can not buy to make a little, and see behind innocent people in jail, “said Thora.

“I am one of three children and I can not pay the fines, which he could get. I own nothing. No one will ever lend me anything. I just do what I have with me right now. He needs the book to attend this off. ”

Not only “marble case”

Flag of Turkey. AP

Anna Lilja Þórisdóttir
[email protected]

Incidents such as what happened in Turkey on Friday, when the Icelandic man was arrested and brought into custody because he planned to take a marble stone of the country, seem fairly frequent, but we simply search online you can find some similar examples.

As far as can be found not sell Icelandic travel agency package tours to Turkey, but the Norwegian travel wish-Travel sells trips from here to the Turkish riviera. Icelander, David Orn Bjarnason, on behalf of the German travel agency Travel Tom.

According to data from the Office Wanted-Travel in Iceland, the company has sold Norwegians Turkey Tours for years. It is not specifically stated to them that there buying trips to Turkey not to take stones from the land, provided that no traveling by their experienced a similar situation.

“This is not something we feel we need to specify,” says spokesman wish-Travel.

In terms of the travel company says that a traveler duty to enforce the regulations in the country and go in terms of Icelandic travel agency generally provides that a passenger is obliged to comply with laws and regulations of public authorities in the countries where they travel.

Some have experienced a similar situation and David

We simply search online found a few reports of travelers who have been in similar situations and David. For example, had a four-person Chinese family to spend six more days in Antalaya in Turkey last year after they wanted to go with a marble stone of the country. Stone they had bought at the market. There was a young Spaniard arrested at the airport in Antalya in Turkey last summer after two marble stones were found in his luggage.

The same can be said about the Swedish diplomat who had planned to go with a small marble stone out of the country last spring. There was a Swiss police officer arrested last summer when the stone was found in his bag.

via Icelander in prison in Turkey – mbl.is.

March 11, 2013
Greece, Turkey Can’t Agree On Sea Deal

Only days after Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras went to Turkey to meet his counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan to try to resolve differences over gas and oil exploration in the sea between the countries, a further breach has developed. The newspaper Kathimerini reported that Greek Foreign Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos and his Turkish peer, Ahmet Davutoglu are going to have to keep negotiating.

They said they were hopeful of a resolution, usually viewed as diplomatic language to mean the differences are difficult to overcome but they want to put a positive spin on it for the public. They told the newspaper in separate interviews they would keep talking although Greece is insisting on using international law regarding the seas that Turkey does not subscribe to. Ankara wants a bilateral agreement for the creation of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the Aegean.

The foreign ministers of Greece and Turkey told Sunday’s Kathimerini in separate interviews that they are hopeful the two countries can resolve their differences in the Aegean, although Athens is using international law as its guideline for the creation of an exclusive economic zone (EEZ), while Ankara wants there to be a bilateral agreement.

“We are in discussions and searching for common ground because both sides understand how great the benefit would be if we are able to delineate the continental shelf between us from Evros to Kastellorizo,” said Avramopoulos.

“We have some different views and approaches to how the exclusive economic zone or other sensitive issues are defined,” Davutoglu said. “We know there are differences of opinion. The important thing is whether we will let these be an obstacle, like a Berlin Wall, which is not sustainable, logical or ethical.”

Turkey argues that Greek islands close to its coast should not be taken into account when determining the economic zone and that the median line of the Aegean should be set as a boundary. Greece claims the Law of the Sea means that all islands must be taken into account when setting out the EEZ.

“We are operating based on our planning and strategy, with the framework of our sovereign rights as derived from international law,» said Avramopoulos. “Nobody should doubt our willingness and determination to defend this. International law is our gospel.”

“Of course international law and national sovereignty form the backbone of these negotiations but… the best way to solve these problems is through bilateral dialogue because the Aegean is a particular case with thousands of islands and at the same time is part of the wider Mediterranean,” said Davutoglu.

“Turkey has the longest coastline in the Mediterranean,” he added. “Nobody can expect Turkey to remain landlocked due to certain measures. We can find a solution whereby all these islands and Turkey’s interests as the country with the longest coastline in the Mediterranean can be taken into account. These are not conflicting positions.”

Greece recently sent a diplomatic note to the United Nations complaining that Turkey had issued permits to a state-run company to search for gas and oil in areas covering the Greek continental shelf. Avramopoulos was adamant that Athens would resist any attempts by Turkey to go ahead with such plans.

“It has been proven that unilateral moves, which are outside of the framework of international law, do not help and should be avoided,” he said. “We will not accept actions that challenge our sovereign rights. Such a development would have serious consequences for our bilateral relations at a time when both sides are trying to create a basis for cooperation in many areas.”

Davutoglu indicated that Ankara had no intention of causing rifts with Greece or of taking advantage of any weaknesses caused by its economic crisis. “We want to see a strong, stable and prosperous neighbor next to us. Some extremists in Greece or Turkey may think this is a zero-sum game but I can assure you that it is quite the opposite,” he said.

“In the 60s, 70s, 80s and even 90s, this mentality existed but things have changed now. Young Greeks watch Turkish soap operas and Turks go to Greek islands for holidays,” added the Turkish foreign minister.

via Greece, Turkey Can’t Agree On Sea Deal | Greece.GreekReporter.com Latest News from Greece.

March 11, 2013
Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey: The Syrian refugees at Europe’s gateway

A letter from the border.

BY REBECCA OMONIRA-OYEKANMI

A Syrian women and her son wait for help to erect their tent at a refugee camp in Bab al-Salam on the Syria-Turkey border. Photograph: Getty Images

A question for the European politicians thrashing out a plan to provide“assistance” to Syria: if a bedraggled Syrian escapes the war, if he escapes the chaos of the refugee camps in Iraq or Jordan or Turkey, if he arrives tired but hopeful on your doorstep, what will happen to him?

Reporting at the European Union’s most porous borders where Greece and Bulgaria merge with Turkey I was struck by the story of a Syrian refugee who risked drowning to avoid the clasp of the EU’s tortuous asylum and immigration system.

After relating the story of how he was deposited on the banks of Turkey by border patrol officers in Greece, I assumed my interview with Farouk, a Syrian refugee, was finished. It was twilight, and the shabby cafe on the edge of the tiny Bulgarian village was empty. I sat at the head of a small wooden table scribbling into the silence as a dozen pair of striking eyes, various shades of green, watched me curiously. They were all Syrian, thrown together by the war. The two teenage boys were awkward, goofy grins even as they imitated the sound of bombs. The old man, stooped and pot-bellied, eyed me suspiciously. Farouk’s friend spat furiously in Arabic, insisting that he keep quiet. They ate from a large dish of sunflower seeds. I swallowed the remains of a thick, bitter Bulgarian coffee, clumps of sugar clung to the tiny shot-sized glass. “So after that you travelled from Turkey to Bulgaria? How did you cross the border?” I asked.

“No, that’s another story.” We ordered more coffee and Farouk told me about his second “push-back”.

Following his encounter with the border police on River Evros in Greece, Farouk went back to his smuggler, who sent him to the Aegean Sea. He was packed into a large wooden boat bound for Italy with more than 100 other people. Very soon they lost control of the boat, and could do little as it spun in the middle of the ocean between Turkey and Greece. “After three or four hours people started to throw up,” he said. “There was a problem inside the boat, the water started to enter. Everyone was scared and thinking about dying. We had suffered too much.”

On this occasion the Greek maritime police tried to rescue them, but the appointed captain of the boat, another Syrian refugee, deliberately thwarted the attempt. “He had a problem with Greece because he had been caught in Greece before,” said Farouk. Rather than find himself back in Greece, the desperate captain threw an anchor into the sea, which caught on something solid, so even as the Greek officers tried to pull the boat to safety it would not budge and looked certain to capsize. Farouk’s rising terror was compounded by the screams of his fellow passengers, among them young children.

It was the Turkish maritime police that eventually saved them. One of their officers jumped aboard the boat, wrested control from the captain, and steered the boat back to Turkey. All the while the refugees cheered, clapped and sang, “Long live Turkey”.

What made the Syrian captain risk the lives of everyone on the boat to avoid Greece?

The fingerprints of any non-European person who has travelled “unofficially” across borders are taken on arrival in any European Union country. If you want to make a claim for asylum, under the EU’s Dublin II regulations you must do so in the first EU country you enter. There is a European database containing the fingerprints of all irregular migrants and refugees (Eurodac) to track their movements. If you try to make a claim in another EU country, your fingerprints will pop up on a central database indicating the country of entry, and you will be deported back there.

Dublin II could only work if each and every EU country operated an efficient, fair and humane asylum and immigration system. Most EU countries appear to have coherent structures in place, but in reality all over Europe there are hundreds of genuine refugees and children detained in prisons or holding centres, sometimes for months, living in extreme poverty, and stuck in limbo for years while their applications are processed.

From the signing of the European Convention on Human Rights more than 60 years ago to the first tentative steps towards a common asylum system in Dublin in 1990, every piece of EU legislation on asylum and immigration policy has reiterated the continent’s commitment to freedom and justice for all. Indeed when the European Council met to discuss a common asylum system at Tampere in 1999, it was said that to deny those from less free and democratic societies would be to betray Europe’s liberal traditions. But the poor implementation of the current system means Europe is edging toward the betrayal of those traditions, and why a terrified Syrian refugee would rather drown than go back to Greece.

Greece is a tragic example of where Europe’s common asylum system is failing. Up to November last year 26,000 refugees and irregular migrants entered Greece illegally, with Syrians the largest group after Afghans. Around 90 per cent of all migrants and refugees entering Europe unofficially enter through Greece, which embodies the worst of the differing national asylum and immigration systems across the European Union’s 27 member states. Greece’s system had already collapsed before its financial problems hit. By 2010 the backlog for asylum claims had crept towards 70,000; Médecins Sans Frontières declared the state of immigration holding centres “medieval”; and a quarter of a million undocumented migrants and refugees haunt the city of Athens alone trapped in various states of destitution, unable to leave legally because of the Dublin II regulations.

Najib tried to escape his Greek nightmare several times. The 25-year-old Afghan made it as far as Germany, where he lived for one year before he was caught and told to leave within 10 days. He went to the Netherlands; they sent him back to Germany, where he spent a month in prison before being deported back to Greece, the country of his first fingerprint. Confined to Athens, Najib contends with daily harassment from the police and Golden Dawn. When a Golden Dawn supporter beat him up, he went to the police, who asked for his ID, and on seeing his temporary residence permit was out of date, jailed him for 10 days.

I don’t know what happened to the captain who panicked, but others on the boat were forced to go back to the Aegean Sea. Many could not afford to find a safer passage. They drowned when their boat sank killing 60 people on 6 September last year.

Shaken, Farouk decided to stick to land for the rest of his journey, and hoping for a warmer European reception elsewhere, he crossed the border into Bulgaria.

March 10, 2013
Turkey to Become Europe’s Strongest Economy by 2050

Baku-APA. Turkey will emerge as the strongest economy in Europe by 2050, Turkish President Abdullah Gul said on Saturday, APA reports quoting RIA Novosti.

Turkey is similar to Sweden, while many economic indicators, such as growth, unemployment and budget deficit are better than in the EU, Gul said in an interview with Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, two day before his official visit to Stockholm.

Gül will visit Sweden at the invitation of King Carl XVI Gustaf in the first ever state visit by a Turkish head of state to the country.

According to Anatolia News Agency, Gul will attend the opening ceremony of the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies. During his two-day visit, he will address the Swedish parliament.

Gül will be accompanied by a delegation of more than 100 businessmen.

via APA – Turkey to Become Europe’s Strongest Economy by 2050 – President.

March 10, 2013
Greece backs Istanbul’s 2020 Olympic bid

ISTANBUL — Greece has offered its support to regional rival Turkey’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics.

The prime ministers of both countries signed an agreement pledging to cooperate on Istanbul’s latest bid for the games.

The accord was signed by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras following meetings in Istanbul on Sunday and Monday.

In a joint declaration, the leaders said they are committed to “engage in cooperation with regard to the technical and related aspects in the organization of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.”

The agreement said the two sides will “explore ways of enhancing the benefits of the Olympics for the two countries as well as for the entire Balkan and Black Sea region” if Istanbul wins the bid.

Greece, the home of the ancient Olympics and birthplace of the modern games, last hosted the Olympics in Athens in 2004.

Istanbul, bidding for a fifth time, is competing against Tokyo and Madrid for the 2020 Games. The International Olympic Committee will select the host city in Buenos Aires on Sept. 7.

“The ties between Turkey and Greece have been strengthened today, thanks to the power of the Olympic movement to build bridges,” Istanbul bid leader Hasan Arat said. “The closer cooperation between our countries will be a valuable and lasting legacy of our bid.”

Greece and Turkey mounted a joint bid for soccer’s 2008 European Championship, which was awarded to Austria and Switzerland.

Turkey and Greece nearly went to war three times between 1974 and 1996. Relations between the uneasy NATO allies have improved greatly since the late 1990s, but Athens and Ankara remain at odds over a broad range of issues, including war-divided Cyprus, Aegean Sea boundaries, and illegal immigration.

Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press

via Greece backs Istanbul’s 2020 Olympic bid – ESPN.

March 10, 2013
Greek Maritime Claims Rock Boat With Turkey

By ALKMAN GRANITSAS and STELIOS BOURAS

ATHENS—Greece has renewed its territorial claims over a broad swath of disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean where the indebted country hopes to find vast oil and gas deposits—a plan that risks sparking a confrontation with Turkey.

Over the past several weeks, senior government officials have made a series of public statements—both at home and abroad—pointing to an almost two-decade-old international treaty granting those rights, one Greece hasn’t asserted until now. Athens also has been building support in other European capitals and stepping up a diplomatic campaign at the United Nations.

This week, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras broached the topic with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a meeting in Istanbul where he called on Turkey to respect Greece’s rights under international law. So far, Ankara, which says those resources belong to Turkey and has warned for almost 20 years that any effort to draw new boundaries could lead to war, has called for further dialogue.

Mr. Erdogan told Greek state television on Monday that “we’re approaching the issue with hope and without prejudices as we continue to work on territorial waters and Aegean-related matters. So long as the sides approach this matter with goodwill, there’s no reason not to get results.”

For Greece, the stakes are enormous. An estimated €100 billion ($130 billion) of undersea hydrocarbon reserves—if proven—could ease the country’s crippling debt burden and make Greece a significant energy supplier for Europe, which wants to reduce its dependence on Russia. Mounting evidence of those reserves, along with recent moves by Cyprus to assert its own claims, have raised the stakes even further.

Those reserves “will mean, clearly, wealth for Greece, wealth for Europe, a significant improvement in Europe’s energy security and a significant enhancement in Greece’s geopolitical role,” Mr. Samaras said in a recent speech to a business conference.

For now, Greece is proceeding cautiously to avoid confrontation and is using U.N. procedures to gradually build its case. Athens’s end goal is clear: Greece hopes to gain international recognition for the exclusive use of a 200-nautical-mile zone around the country, basing its claims on the fact that it is a signatory to the U.N.’s Law of the Sea treaty and Turkey isn’t.

To date, 165 nations and territories—including the European Union—have ratified the treaty. The U.S., which helped negotiate the pact in the 1980s, hasn’t ratified it but generally recognizes its provisions. Last summer, the Obama administration attempted to pass the treaty through the Senate, but fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed.

Athens “is eager to assert its rights, but we don’t want to do anything that creates turbulence in the region,” said a senior Greek government official. “For now, we are proceeding slowly” through legal channels.

One such step came in late January, when Greece’s foreign minister lodged a formal complaint at the U.N. after Turkey said in April that it would issue exploration licenses in a disputed area south of the Greek island of Rhodes.

Turkey has said Greece’s counterclaims “have no basis in international law” and said it would take reciprocal steps at the U.N.

In an interview with a Turkish newspaper this week, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said energy issues shouldn’t be a source for tension in bilateral relations and said Ankara had no imminent plans to issue those licenses. “Don’t we know any exploration creates a controversy? Of course we know,” he told the Hurriyet newspaper.

The next move for Greece, government officials said, would likely be another submission to the U.N. formally delineating Greece’s nautical coordinates. That would be a prelude to declaring an exclusive economic zone under the provisions of the sea treaty.

Under terms of the 1994 treaty, Greece is entitled to extend its territorial rights to as many as 12 nautical miles from shore—double the six it now claims—and an exclusive economic zone of as many as 200 miles. Athens has refrained from doing so. In 1995, the year Greece ratified the treaty, Turkey’s parliament declared that any unilateral move to assert such claims would constitute a cause for war.

At issue is the complex geography in the Aegean Sea that separates Greece from Turkey. After the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, Greece was given sovereignty over most of the islands that dot the Aegean and form a continuous archipelago between mainland Greece and Turkey.

Under the present limit, Greece claims more than 40% of the Aegean as its own, compared with less than 10% for Turkey. By widening the limit to 12 miles, more than 70% of the Aegean and its seabed would be in Greek territory. A 200-mile exclusive economic zone would mean Greek claims also stretched far into the Mediterranean—enveloping Turkey—and reaching as far as Cyprus in the southeast.

Geologists believe there are oil and gas deposits in the north Aegean, where drilling first began on a small scale in the early 1980s. More recently, a bonanza gas find off Israel’s coast in 2010, a second find off Cyprus since then, and various surveys have indicated that oil and gas is to be found in the eastern Mediterranean.

Encouraged, Greece began hunting for hydrocarbons late last year in less-contentious areas west and south of the country. The government, which is struggling under a €300 billion debt burden, aims to auction off exploration licenses for those areas toward the end of this year.

In February, French President François Hollande, during a visit to Athens, appeared to back Greece’s position by referring to the country’s legal rights under the Law of the Sea treaty.

“The presence of gas deposits that can, first, be found, and then subsequently exploited, represents an opportunity for Greece and for Europe; and I believe that here, international law, the Law of the Sea, will prevail,” he said.

—Emre Peker in Istanbul contributed to this article.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323978104578332352776971978

March 9, 2013