Category: Middle East & Africa

Turkey joins the race for Africa’s resources

Written by Allan Odhiambo

July 28, 2008: Turkey has become the latest emerging economy to join the scramble for Africa’s fortunes with a continent-wide investment conference to be held in Istanbul.

Turkey joins the race for Africa’s resources

The move, mainly seen as driven by the increasing pressure to find resources the country needs to power its fast growing economy, also promises additional investment and trade inflows for Africa.

The summit, to be held between August 18 and 21, is being organised with the help of the African Union and will be the first of its kind for both parties.

“We will look at the future of our relationship with a view to strengthening and diversifying it,” Turkish Foreign Affairs minister Ali Babacan said when he met an AU delegation last week.

Closer ties with Africa is particularly critical to Turkey — the Euro-Asian state with few natural resources — whose economy is undergoing a transformation from heavy reliance on agriculture and manufacturing to a globally inclined one driven by the services sector.

In the more recent past, as the Kenyan economy recovered from a deep slump at the turn of the millennium, Turkey has become one of the key source markets for consumer goods such as textiles, carpets, furniture and electronics for the newly rich.

A steadily growing economy is also seen to be critical to the realisation of Turkey’s ambition to become a member of the European Union — a goal it has been pursuing for nearly a decade.

This need to sustain growth and manage an economy in transition has seen Turkey’s trade ties with Africa more than double in the past five years from $5 billion in 2003 to $12 billion last year.

Istanbul says the goal is to increase this volume of trade to $30 billion by 2010. Data from the department of external trade indicates that Turkey’s direct investments in Africa hit the $500 million mark last year and is expected to grow.

For Kenya, Turkey’s ambitions for closer ties with Africa has yielded a steady growth in the value of the bilateral trade that stood at $90 million last year. Under the existing bilateral trade agreement, Turkey exports a wide range of consumer goods to Kenya including hazelnut, minerals, chemical fertilisers, resins, polymer bags and textile.

Emerging Asian giants

Kenya mainly exports tea, hemp and arts and crafts to Turkey, and also benefits from a wide range of technical cooperation projects under the Turkish International Co-operation Agency (TICA).

If successful, a trade and investment deal with Africa will see Turkey join the ongoing battle between India and China for big investments mainly in Africa’s natural resources extraction.

The two emerging Asian giants have also made multi-million shilling acquisition deals or green field investments in telecommunication, tourism, energy, technology, commodities and construction.

Turkey recently stepped up its expansion in Africa with the May 2007 admission as a non-regional member of the African Development Bank.

China’s President Hu Jintao (centre) Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (left) and President of the Republic of Congo Denis Sassou-Nguesso at the China-Africa Summit in Beijing in November 2006.

The bank, which is one of the top financiers of development and infrastructure projects in Africa, gives Turkey a good platform from where to open new areas of co-operation. Turkey has made inroads into Africa’s transport sector with scheduled flights of its national flag carrier Turkish Airlines to regional hubs of Addis Ababa, Khartoum, Lagos and Johannesburg.

Istanbul also plans to venture into Africa’s maritime sector with investment in key facilities such as the Port of Mombasa to spur trade in the hinterland.
Besides, Turkey is already involved in multi-million dollar humanitarian and development assistance to a number of African countries through TICA.

Major beneficiaries of this assistance include Sudan, Ethiopia and Senegal. TICA says plans are underway to move into new areas of development cooperation such as health, water sanitation, education, technical training, environmental protection and transportation.

Funds for Africa

Turkish humanitarian and development assistance to Africa has been growing steadily with the Official Development Assistance (ODA) totalling $700 million in the last three years.

“To this end, we have set up several dedicated funds for Africa. The latest initiative is the allocation of $50 million to finance development in Africa over the next five years,” Mr Babacan said.

Istanbul has also recently set up a $20 million development financing pool for the Least Developed Countries (LDC), Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Land Locked Developing Countries (LLDC).

In return, Turkey is looking for political support from Africa to realise her dreams of winning a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council.

“We see our prospective membership in the security council as an opportunity that will allow us to contribute even further to the achievement of our common objectives under the UN,” the minister said.

Turkey’s candidature for the UN seat is for the 2009 to 2010 term. Turkey served for a one-year term in the Security Council in 1961. India too pegged its economic support for Africa to backing for a permanent seat in the expanded UN Security Council, signalling Africa’s growing influence in global agenda.

Intense lobbying for UN reforms that would open the door for greater representation of the developing world in key global institutions has been ongoing since the mid 1990s.

Those in the race for a permanent seat at the Security Council include Germany, Japan, Egypt, Brazil, and South Africa. Successful countries will join US, China, Britain, France and Russia in the exclusive club of members who wield veto power at the UN.

Joint trade pacts

India has already announced plans to offer preferential market access to 50 developing countries, 34 in Africa. The arrangement covers 94 per cent of India’s total tariff lines and provides preferential market access on tariff lines that comprise 92.5 per cent of global exports of all least developed countries.

The scheme covers several products of interest to Africa including cotton, cocoa, aluminium, copper, cashew nuts, sugar, ready-made garments, fish fillets and non-industrial diamonds.

India further pledged to offer additional lines of credit amounting to $5.4 billion both bilaterally and to the regional economic communities of Africa.

Trade experts would be looking up to what Turkey would offer African nations to win their confidence in pursuing further joint trade and co-operation pacts.

In the last five years, Kenya’s imports from India have risen from Sh14 billion in 2002 to Sh38 billion in 2006 while China’s have increased from Sh6 billion to Sh27 billion making them increasingly important trading partners. Kenya’s exports to these countries remains under Sh4 billion.

July 28, 2008
Isolated Armenia leans on Iran

By Robin Forestier, BBC News, Yerevan

Deep in the cellar of the Noy Brandy factory in Yerevan, Armenia, there is a pungent, but not unpleasant

Noy Brandy's wine-tasting sessions are popular with Iranian tourists

smell of ageing, fortified wine.

On an upturned wooden cask sit a dozen glasses, and a bottle of 1944 sherry. The company’s wine-tasting sessions are popular with tourists and most of them, according to tour guide Anna, come from Iran.

“Ten metres underground, they think Allah is out of range,” she smiles. “They don’t want to taste the wine, they want to drink it.”

Across town, Omid Mojahed is one such Iranian looking for more than just a taste of Armenia. He is a 28-year-old student and an entrepreneur at heart.

He spends most of his time away from his books, working on his businesses, which include a travel agency working exclusively in the Iranian market.

“In summer I think that 90% of tourists are Iranian. Armenia is so close by and has attractive things – cafes and nightclubs, and beautiful Lake Sevan.”

Omid has also just opened a Persian restaurant, catering for locals as well as Iranian expats, keen for some home cuisine.

Gathered at the bar around a smoking pipe, a group of Iranian students are relaxing after their exams.

Twenty-year-old Mehdez explains that Armenia is popular with thousands of young people who cannot get a place in Iran’s over-subscribed higher education system.

“I chose to study in Yerevan because it’s an easier situation. Here we have more freedom,” she says.

“But of course anything that we do here, we can do in Iran – just not in public.”

Geographic isolation

Part of that freedom includes an increasingly liberalised economy, and that makes Armenia attractive to foreign investment.

The Armenian capital is hardly an international economic powerhouse, but there are signs that Iranian investors sense an opportunity.

On one street, many of the stores are Iranian-run. One of them is owned by Muhammad Rahimi.

Muhammad Rahimi benefits from Armenia's dependence on Iran

He started trading household goods 10 years ago. Business, he says, gets better and better. Practically every item he sells – from pots and pans to air-fresheners – has been imported from Iran.

Like many of his compatriots, Muhammad benefits from Armenia’s geographical isolation.

War with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s led to the closure of its borders with Azerbaijan and an unsympathetic Turkey.

That leaves landlocked Armenia looking towards Georgia to the north, and Iran to the south.

“Georgia, economically, is worse than Armenia,” says Alexander Iskandarian, director of the Caucasus Media Institute.

“But Iran has a population of 70 million and it has oil and gas. It’s rich by regional standards, so you should have normal relations with them. It’s dangerous not to do so.”

Yet trade turnover between the two countries remains modest, at just $200m (£100m) a year, according to the economic department at the Iranian embassy.

US disapproval

That has not stopped the United States from expressing concern about Armenia’s ties with its neighbour. Those ties include the new Iran-Armenia gas pipeline, frequent bilateral talks and state visits, not to mention a sizeable Armenian minority in northern Iran.

In this year’s Country Reports on Terrorism, the US state department said warming relations between the two countries made Armenia “reluctant to criticise publicly objectionable Iranian conduct”.

The little country courts the Americans, Europeans and Russians. It is a difficult balancing act to follow.

But Armenia’s unique relationship with the regional power – Iran – is one it cannot afford to abandon.

Iranian students say they enjoy more freedom in Armenia

Moreover, the two countries are united by a shared sense of isolation from the rest of the world.

“Let’s not forget that Armenia is in a virtual blockade. We attach great importance to our relations with Iran. One can choose one’s friends but not one’s neighbours,” says Armen Movsisyan, Armenia’s minister of energy.

For those Iranians who have chosen to make a home in Armenia, geopolitics may not be foremost in their minds, but they are equally as pragmatic as the politicians.

“I’m no expert in international relations. All I know is we always had good relations with Armenia and that’s why I like working here,” says the trader Muhammad Rahimi.

Back in his restaurant, Omid Mojahed has no plans to leave while the going is good.

“Everything will be okay for me here, that’s why I prefer to stay,” he says.

“I like Armenian people, and it’s difficult for me to want to leave my friends. When you come to Yerevan for a month, you will stay in Yerevan forever!”

Source: BBC, 24 July 2008

July 28, 2008
Jordan set to launch huge water project

AMMAN (AFP) — Thirsty Jordan announced on Sunday that a Turkish firm will begin work next week on a near-billion-dollar project to supply the capital with water from an ancient southern aquifer.Water Minister Raed Abu Soud said GAMA Energy will next Sunday launch the 990-million-dollar plan to extract 100 million cubic metres (3.5 billion cubic feet) of water a year from the 300,000-year-old Disi aquifer 325 kilometres (200 miles) south of Amman.

Infrastructure work on the much-delayed project in the desert kingdom is expected to take around four years, the state-run Petra news agency quoted Abu Soud as saying.

This will include using 250,000 tonnes of steel and digging 55 wells to pump water from Disi to Amman, where per capita daily consumption of its 2.2-million population is 160 litres (42 gallons), he said.

Jordan’s overall population of nearly six million is growing by almost 3.5 percent annually, and it is one of the world’s 10 most water-impoverished countries, relying mainly on rainfall to meet its needs.

“A radical solution to Jordan’s chronic water problems is the Red-Dead Canal project, expected to provide Jordan with 500 million cubic metres (17.5 billion cubic feet) of water” annually, Abu Soud said.

He was referring to a multi-billion dollar plan to build a massive canal to channel water from the Red Sea to the slowly evaporating Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, and to construct a desalination plant.

The demand for water is constantly rising in Jordan, which has seen an influx of around 750,000 Iraqi refugees since the US-led invasion of its eastern neighbour in 2003.

Current water consumption is some 900 million cubic metres (31.5 billion cubic feet) per annum.

The water ministry says Jordan, where 92 percent of the land is desert, will need 1.6 billion cubic metres (56 billion cubic feet) of water a year to meet its requirements by 2015.

Source: AFP, 27 July 2008

July 27, 2008
Turk who saved Jews from Auschwitz remembered

RHODES, Greece (AFP) — Dozens of families from around the world gathered Saturday on the Greek island of Rhodes to pay tribute to the man who in 1944 saved 40 Jews from being deported to a Nazi concentration camps.

Selahattin Ulkumen, Turkish consul general on the island in 1943, is remembered for his role in saving the Turkish Jews by persuading a German general to release them the day before they were due to be transported to Auschwitz.

Nearly 2,500 Jews from Rhodes and the nearby island of Kos were deported on July 24, 1944. All but 150 perished in the Nazi gas chambers or concentration camps.

However, some months later Ulkumen persuaded the German general on the island to release the 40 Turkish Jews, by reminding him of Turkey’s neutrality.

“I was 13 years old and I can still picture the long discussions in front of us between Selahattin Ulkumen and the German general,” said Sami Modiano, one of the deportees who survived.

Ulkumen’s 64-year-old son, Mehmet, joined the commemoration and was presented with a plaque by the president of the Central Jewish Council of Greece, Moisis Constantinis.

Ulkumen was arrested at the end of 1944 by the Germans after Turkey sided with the Allies. The Turkish consulate on Rhodes was subsequently bombed and his wife, pregnant with Mehmet, and two employees were wounded. His wife died a week after giving birth.

None of the Holocaust survivors ever returned to live on the island.

An attempt to re-establish the Jewish community there in the 1950s by settling families from different Greek regions did not have much success and the island’s Jewish population currently stands at no more than 40, said secretary of the Rhodes Jewish community Carmen Levi.

Concentration camp survivor Stella Levi said she made the journey to her birthplace from her home in New York every year.

This tribute “is a historic moment for the Jews of Rhodes,” she said.

Once dubbed “Little Jerusalem” Rhodes took in several hundred Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century who joined those already on the island.

Between the two world wars, the Jewish population of the island reached about 6,000.

Some 67,000 Greek Jews perished in the Holocaust, 86 percent of the country’s entire Jewish community.

Source: AFP, 27 July 2008

July 27, 2008
Turkish soap opera flop takes Arab world by storm

By Farah al-Sweel

RIYADH (Reuters) – A Turkish soap opera that flopped when first broadcast in its native Turkey three years ago has taken the Arab world by storm, provoking a flood of Gulf Arab tourists to Turkey that even includes royalty.

“Noor” became an immediate hit when Saudi-owned MBC satellite television began airing it earlier this year, partly because of its unconventional usage of colloquial Arabic dubbing — and because its blond-haired, blue-eyed leading man had women swooning.

Turkey is expecting the number of Saudi tourists this year to top 100,000, including King Abdullah’s wife Hissa al-Shaalan, who has been the subject of YouTube videos showing her swanning through the markets and sweet-shops of Istanbul.

“From 41,000 (tourists) last year to 100,000 this year — the same year this show became phenomenally successful,” said Turkish diplomat Yasin Temizkayn. [sic.] “It’s more than just a coincidence.”

Spanish-language soap operas have been shown on Arab television in the lucrative Saudi and Gulf markets in recent years with classical Arabic voice-overs.

But with “Noor” — the main character whose name means “light” — the names of the characters in the original Turkish soap “Gumus” have been swapped for Arabic, and Syrian vernacular has replaced the formal classical Arabic of modern media and religion.

“I don’t like all that Maria Mercedes nonsense,” says Dania Nugali, 16, referring to a popular Mexican soap. “I feel like I am in Arabic literature class when I watch Mexican shows. But when I watch Noor, I definitely feel that it is entertainment.”

Yet the main pull has been the co-star Muhannad, 24-year-old Turkish actor and model Kivanc Tatlitu.

“It seems most viewers are female,” said Hana Rahman, who runs an Arab entertainment blog (waleg.com). “They’re so swept away by the main character. He’s become a heartthrob here! He has even caused divorce cases in Saudi Arabia.”

The drama, which made poor ratings when first shown in Turkey in 2005, centres around a family whose patriarch strives to ensure his sons focus on the family business and maintain cohesion without straying into romantic temptation.

“We made the series with a Turkish audience in mind,” Tatlitu told al-Arabiya Television during a recent visit to Dubai. “The fact that it has amassed such a following in the Arab world just proves how much our cultures have in common.”

Many Saudi women explained their devotion to the show as a form of escapism from stifling, love-less marriages.

“Our men are rugged and unyielding,” quipped a 26-year-old house-frau who preferred to remain unnamed. “I wake up and see a cold and detached man lying next to me, I look out the window and see dust. It is all so dull. On Noor, I see beautiful faces, the beautiful feelings they share and beautiful scenery.”

(Editing by Summer Said and Mary Gabriel)

Source: Reuters, Jul 26, 2008

[2]

Saudi cleric slams Turkish soaps as “wicked”

RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia’s top religious figure has slammed Turkish soap operas as “wicked” and “malevolent”, despite the wild popularity of one show, a paper said on Sunday.

Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Al al-Shaikh told a seminar in conservative Saudi Arabia this week that Arabic television channels airing the soaps were un-Islamic.

“Any channel that helps to further perpetuate the popularity of these shows is ultimately a warrior against God and his Prophet,” he said in comments cited by al-Watan newspaper.

“It is not permitted to watch Turkish series … They are replete with wickedness, evil, moral collapse and war on virtues that only God knows the truth of.”

He said he was speaking in the name of the Higher Council of Religious Scholars, the government body charged with advising on religious affairs.

It was not clear what specific objection the Mufti had to the programmes. Saudi clerics demand gender segregation in public places and women are not allowed to drive cars.

They have previously objected to young Saudis taking part in popular music talent shows along the lines of American Idol.

The show “Noor” this year became an overnight sensation in the Arab world when it was first aired on Saudi-owned satellite channel MBC. It it was a flop when first shown in Turkey in 2005 with the title Gumus.

It has since spurred a large number of Gulf Arab tourists to visit Turkey, including the Saudi first lady Princess Hissa Al-Shaalan. Its blonde and blue-eyed star Kivanc Tatlitu has become a heart-throb for many Arab women.

Source: Reuters, Jul 27, 2008

July 27, 2008
Mediation between Armenia and Turkey would be a multi-dimensional gain for Iran

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ While Turkey has intensified its mediation efforts in the Middle East, Iran has volunteered to take on a similar challenge to break the ice between Ankara and Yerevan.

“The possibility of such an initiative by Iran is highly optimistic,” Arif Keskin, a specialist on Iran at the Eurasian Strategic Research Center, or ASAM. Explaining that a possible mediation would be a multi-dimensional gain for Iran, Keskin said this is what has likely driven the country to make such an attempt. “Iran is the sole country rescuing Armenia from its isolation within the region. Armenia is currently under geopolitical siege, surrounded by countries like Turkey and Azerbaijan with whom it has long-standing problems.”

“For Iran, Armenia has major strategic importance as well,” he said. “Iran wants to establish good relations with non-Turkish elements in the region, especially with Armenia. Its Azeri minority is a major concern. Therefore to alienate Turkey from Azerbaijan through an Armenian-Turkish reconciliation would be to its benefit,” he said.

“Iran could not solve the problems between Turkey and Armenia. Moreover it is not clear how sincere Ankara is for a rapprochement with Yerevan. The establishment in Turkey does not want any change in bilateral relations,” he said. “Previous mediation efforts by Iran between Azerbaijan and Armenia resulted in Baku’s losing territory. It is disputable how impartial Iran can be, or to whose advantage it would work. It is unlikely that it would defend the Turkish thesis against Armenia,” he said.

“Iran wants to give the message to the West that it can act within their parameters, that it is a stability factor in the region, not vice versa,” said Keskin. He said, however, that the initiative raises many questions in terms of Turkey. “I do not think that it was Ankara who asked for such a move from Iran. Turkey is disturbed by the depth of Iran-Armenia relations. Therefore it is definitely Iran’s own initiative.”

According to Keskin, the Turkish government has to explain itself publicly in terms of its recent relations with Iran. “It is not just this mediation effort. Let’s take Ahmedinejad’s planned visit for example. What could Turkey gain from the visit of such a radical figure? Sure AKP (Justice and Development Party) would have gains in domestic terms. But it is a very risky visit otherwise,” he added, the Turkish Daily News reports.

July 27, 2008