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Category: Middle East & Africa

  • Turkish soap opera flop takes Arab world by storm

    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

  • Mediation between Armenia and Turkey would be a multi-dimensional gain for Iran

    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.

  • Ahmadinejad in Turkey next month

    Ahmadinejad in Turkey next month

    President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is expected to pay an official visit to Turkey at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul.

    The visit would take place late in August and diplomatic sources in Ankara have declared that a date for the visit will be set soon, Turkish Daily reported on Friday.

    During the meeting agreements would be signed to further strengthen economic ties between the two neighboring countries.

    In May, Ahmadinejad in a meeting with Turkish State Minister Kursad Tuzmen said the two countries have the potential to turn into major economic powers in the world.

    The Turkish state minister said that the trade volume between the two countries could reach U.S. $20b by the end of 2011.

    (Source: Press TV)

  • HURRIYET ENGLISH: Foreign minister says Turkey wants to normalize relations with Armenia

    HURRIYET ENGLISH: Foreign minister says Turkey wants to normalize relations with Armenia

    July 25, 2008

     

    Compiled by Sonay Kanber , ATAA Research Associate
    E-mail: assembly@ataa.org     
    HURRIYET ENGLISH:  Foreign minister says Turkey wants to normalize relations with Armenia

    Turkey is willing to normalize its relations with the neighboring Armenia, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said late on Thursday.

    Turkey wanted to create an atmosphere of dialogue with Armenia, Babacan told a press conference in New York.  

    “Turkish president, prime minister and foreign minister sent letters to their Armenian counterparts after recent elections in Armenia, and these letters aimed to open a new door of dialogue with the new (Armenian) administration,” he was quoted as saying by the Anatolian Agency.

    As a signal of efforts to revive relations between the two countries, Turkish and Armenian officials held a series of secret meetings in the capital of Switzerland on July 8. This meeting Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s proposal for “a fresh start” with the goal of normalizing relations with Turkey and opening the border.

    Sargsyan also invited Turkish President Abdullah Gul to watch a football match between the two country’s national teams on Sept 6 to mark “a new symbolic start in the two countries’ relations”. Turkey has been evaluating this invitation.

    Although Turkey is among the first countries that recognized Armenia when it declared its independency, there is no diplomatic relations between two countries as Armenia presses the international community to admit the so-called “genocide” claims instead of accepting Turkey’s call to investigate the allegations, and its invasion of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory despite U.N. Security Council resolutions on the issue.

    The foreign minister said that Turkey’s aim was to have zero problems with its neighbors. “Naturally, we are also expecting some concrete steps from the other party,” he said. [link to article]
    HURRIYET ENGLISH:  Turkey Lobbies for Council Membership

    He is actually in New York City to lobby for Turkey’s candidacy for a non-permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council.

    Turkey would work hard till the last minute to secure a non-permanent seat at the Security Council, Babacan told at the conference, adding there was a lot of hope for Turkey to attain a non-permanent seat at the Council.

    “However, it is important to work hard till the last minute to secure a non-permanent seat,” Babacan said.

    “It is likely that the election for the non-permanent seat at the U.N. Security Council would take place in October 2008. We would attend the U.N. General Assembly meetings in September with Turkish President Abdullah Gul. Both President Gul and I would have many bilateral talks. We would continue lobbying for Turkey’s non-permanent membership in the U.N. Security Council,” Babacan said.

    The U.N. Security Council is composed of five permanent members – China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, and ten non-permanent members. Turkey competes with Austria and Iceland for the term of 2009-2010.

    Ten non-permanent members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms and are not eligible for immediate re-election. Turkey held a seat in the Security Council in 1951-52, 1954-55 and 1961.

    Turkey would need the votes of 128 countries out of a total of 192 countries in order to be elected as a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

    Babacan also said he saw the appointment of Alexander Downer, Australia’s former foreign minister as the new U.N. special representative for Cyprus, as an important signal that the organization would more closely and seriously deal with the Cyprus problem.

    “The U.N. should intervene in settlement of Cyprus problem,” he also said. He added Turkey wished wish that comprehensive talks would be launched in Cyprus soon. [link to article]

    IHT:  Turkey’s broadening crisis

    Turkey is facing a domestic political crisis that not only threatens the country’s internal stability but could weaken its ties to the West and exacerbate instability in the Middle East.

    In February, the Turkish public prosecutor forwarded a 161-page indictment to the Constitutional Court that calls for the governing Justice and Development Party, or AKP, to be closed down and for 71 of its leading politicians, including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, to be banned from politics for five years. The indictment charges that the party violated secularism, a fundamental principle enshrined in the Turkish Constitution. The Constitutional Court starts final hearings in the case on Monday.

    While the evidence is flimsy, most Turks, including leading members of the AKP, expect that the Constitutional Court, a bastion of secularism, will vote to close the party. Indeed, the AKP has already begun to make preparations for its dissolution.

    Closing the AKP will not eliminate the party as an important force in Turkish political life. The party will simply re-emerge under a new name, as its predecessors Refah and the Virtue Party did when they were banned. However, closure would likely have a number of damaging side effects.

    One would be in Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. Under the AKP, Turkey has emerged as an important diplomatic actor in the region – as its successful effort to act as a broker in peace talks between Israel and Syria recently underscored. Without the AKP, Turkey’s active diplomatic engagement in the Middle East is likely to diminish and the United States would lose an important partner in trying to stabilize this volatile region.

    Another unwanted side effect would be in Turkey’s relations with its Kurdish minority. The AKP enjoys strong support among the Turkish Kurds. In elections last summer the party doubled its support in the Kurdish areas of the Southeast. If the AKP is closed, the main beneficiary is likely to be the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has been conducting terrorist attacks against Turkey from sanctuaries in Northern Iraq. Moreover, the main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party, is also likely to be closed. Thus the Kurds would have no political vehicle to express their interests except through the PKK.

    In addition, Turkey’s rapprochement with Iraq could lose valuable momentum, while the hand of those forces in Turkey pushing for stronger military action against the PKK in Northern Iraq is likely to be strengthened. This could lead to an escalation of tensions between Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government in Northern Iraq, undercutting American efforts to promote better ties between the two entities.

    Finally, closure of the AKP is likely to increase strains in Turkey’s relations with the European Union. Opponents of Ankara’s EU membership will use the closure as a pretext to intensify their opposition, while supporters will find it harder to make the case for Turkish membership.

    At the same time, banning the party could undercut efforts to promote reform and democracy in the Middle East. Many moderate Islamists in the Middle East are likely to see the party’s closure as proof that it is impossible to achieve their political goals by democratic means and could turn to more radical solutions.

    So far the United States has avoided taking sides, expressing support for both secularism and democratic processes. However, given the negative strategic consequences likely to flow from the closure of the AKP, the Bush administration should encourage the Turks to find a compromise before the crisis does untold damage to Turkey’s democratic credibility and international reputation and further complicates Ankara’s prospects for EU membership.

    If, after all that, the AKP is still closed, the United States should avoid taking punitive measures. That would only strengthen the hand of the hard-line nationalists and further weaken Turkey’s ties to the West. Instead, American officials should continue to nudge Turkey toward bolder reforms that will strengthen internal democracy and bolster the qualifications for EU membership. In the long run, this is the best way to ensure the emergence of a stable, democratic Turkey closely anchored to the West.

    F. Stephen Larrabee, co-author of “The Rise of Political Islam in Turkey,” holds the corporate chair in European Security at the RAND Corporation. [link to article]
     
    AFP:  Cyprus leaders discuss peace talks plan

    NICOSIA (AFP) – Rival Cypriot leaders met on Friday aiming to set a date for peace talks to end the island’s 34-year-old divide, with the Turkish Cypriots hoping for a deal by the end of this year.

    President Demetris Christofias, a Greek Cypriot, and Turkish Cypriot leader Mehmet Ali Talat met at the UN-controlled Nicosia airport in the buffer zone amid hopes both sides will announce a September start for full peace talks.

    On Thursday Talat said he wanted intensive negotiations.

    “Our objective is to reach a settlement in a short time… I believe we can make it by the end of 2008,” he told Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.

    “Starting from September, we have four months… This much time is sufficient. It can be extended a little bit if necessary, but resolving the Cyprus question in a short time must be our primary objective.”

    The international community remained cautious ahead of Friday’s meeting, but the United States and Britain have both boosted diplomatic links with the two sides.

    The lack of a Cyprus settlement is viewed as a major stumbling block to Turkey’s European Union ambitions.

    UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wants direct negotiations to start soon, and he has named Australia’s former foreign minister Alexander Downer as his special envoy for Cyprus.

    Downer, 56, is expected to be present if a renewed peace initiative is launched in earnest.

    An agreement between Christofias and Talat, both regarded by the international community as “pro-settlement,” is seen as the best chance for peace since a failed UN reunification blueprint in April 2004.

    On July 1 they agreed in principle on single citizenship and sovereignty in a reunified island and vowed to meet on July 25 for a “final review” of preparatory negotiations before launching peace talks proper.

    Christofias has warned against outside pressure for a quick-fix settlement, saying it would only backfire, and has refused to accept deadlines or restrictive time frames.

     

    He was elected president in February on a platform of reviving reunification talks which went nowhere under his hardline predecessor Tassos Papadopoulos.

     

    Initial euphoria at the prospects of a settlement dampened as both sides found the going sluggish at the committee level over the sensitive issues of property, territory, sovereignty and security.

     

    Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when Turkish troops occupied its northern third in response to an Athens-engineered Greek Cypriot coup seeking enosis, or union with Greece.

     

    Thousands of Greek Cypriots living in the north fled south and Turkish Cypriots fled north, with both communities abandoning property.

     

    Displaced Greek Cypriots outnumbered Turkish Cypriots by about four to one — roughly the same proportion as the 1974 population.

     

    The Turkish Cypriots nationalised Greek Cypriot land and property and most of it was distributed to Turkish Cypriots displaced from the south and to settlers from Turkey.

     

    The two leaders reached a landmark agreement on March 21 to begin fully fledged peace talks after four years of virtual stalemate following the 2004 rejection of a UN peace plan by the Greek Cypriots.

     

    They met again in May and decided to review progress made by the technical committees.

     

    The Greek Cypriots say real progress at the committee stage must be achieved if face-to-face talks are to have any chance of success, while the Turkish Cypriots say any difficulties can be resolved at the negotiating table. [link to article]

    REUTERS:  Turkish court convicts former Kurd party head- agency
     
    ISTANBUL, July 24 (Reuters) – A military court on Thursday sentenced the former leader of Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party to one year in jail for evading military service by deception, state-run Anatolian news agency said.

    Nurettin Demirtas had resigned as leader of the Democratic Society Party (DTP) in April to do his military service, which he had previously avoided on health grounds.

    Prosecutors had accused him of using fake health reports to avoid being called up.

    “The air force military court sentenced the former DTP leader Nurettin Demirtas to one year in prison for ‘seeking to avoid military service by deception’,” Anatolian said.

    No further details were immediately available.

    Military service usually lasts about 15 months in Turkey and is obligatory for all able-bodied Turkish men. Turks who dodge military service usually receive stiff punishment.

    Prosecutors, who say the DTP has links with the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrilla group, were seeking a 2-5 year prison sentence for him. He had rejected the charges.

    Demirtas is not a member of parliament but was elected head of the party last November. A new leader has been elected since he stood down in April.

    The DTP is facing a Constitutional Court case brought by prosecutors seeking its closure over alleged links to the PKK. The party rejects the charges.

    The PKK took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of creating a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey. Some 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict. (Reporting by Daren Butler, editing by Mary Gabriel) [link to article]
     
    AP:  Turkish stretch of railway linking Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan launched
     
    The presidents of Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan have launched the construction of the Turkish stretch of a railway linking their nations.
     
    The US$600 million rail line will connect the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, with the eastern Turkish city of Kars, via the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

    The project is one of several linking oil-rich Azerbaijan and Central Asia with Turkey and European markets while bypassing Russia.

     

    A groundbreaking ceremony in Kars Thursday marked the start of the 50 mile (76 kilometer) Turkish section of the 110 mile (180 kilometer) railroad.

     

    “We are launching the iron Silk Road,” Turkey’s Abdullah Gul said. “It will link China in Asia to London.”

     

    The Silk Road was an ancient Asian trading route. The railway will be operational in 2011. [link to article]

    XINHUA: Turkey’s free trade volume increases in first half of 2008

    ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) – Trade volume in Turkey’s free zones increased 12 percent in the first half of 2008 compared with the same period of 2007, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported on Friday.

    Turkey‘s trade volume reached 13.3 billion U.S. dollars in this period, according to the report.

    The report said that trade volumes in the first half of 2008 were 3.2 billion dollars in Istanbul Leather Free Zone, 2.05 billion dollars in Aegean Free Zone, and 1.9 billion dollars in Istanbul Ataturk Airport.

    According to figures released by Foreign Trade Undersecretariat, trade volume of Istanbul Leather Free Zone was 3.06 billion dollars, while it was 2.1 billion dollars in Aegean Free Zone and 1.6 billion dollars in Istanbul Ataturk Airport in the first six months of 2007.

    Highest trade volume was recorded with OECD and EU countries with 4.9 billion dollars in the first half of 2008.

    Trade volume with 25 EU-states was 4.03 billion dollars, and 932.2 million dollars with OECD countries.

    Free zones take place within borders of a country, but regulations regarding customs, tax, foreign exchange, price, quality and standards are not applied in these zones. [link to article]

    HURRIYET ENGLISH:  Turkey seeks support of UN’s Ban for Council seat

    Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan asked U.N. Secretary General to support the country’s bid for a non-permanent seat at the Security Council, as he continued his lobby efforts in New York.

    Babacan met Ban in New York late on Wednesday.

     

    The U.N. Security Council is composed of five permanent members – China, France, Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States, and ten non-permanent members. Turkey competes with Austria and Iceland for the term of 2009-2010.

     

    Ten non-permanent members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms and are not eligible for immediate re-election. Turkey held a seat in the Security Council in 1951-52, 1954-55 and 1961.
    The two also discussed Cyprus and Iraq in their meeting, as Babacan reiterated Turkey’s parameters for a solution in the Cyprus issue, the state-run Anatolian Agency reported.

     

    Ban said he closely monitored Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s visit to Iraq, and added his visit was a successful one.

     

    Erdogan paid earlier this month an official visit to Iraq to boost mutual political and economic relations, as the first Turkish prime minister to visit the neighboring country after 18 years.

     

    Babacan also held talks with the representatives of Jewish establishments in the United States, and informed them on the election procedure on non-permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the agency added. Jewish lobby traditionally are among the biggest supporters of Turkey.

     

    The representatives also told Babacan that they were closely following Turkey’s policies on Iran’s nuclear works.

     

    Turkish foreign minister also had meetings with representatives of Arab League and Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in New York. The representatives told Babacan that they appreciated Turkey’s efforts for establishment of a prosperous Middle East. [link to article]

    XINHUA:  Iranian president to visit Turkey late August

    ANKARA, July 25 (Xinhua) — Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to pay a visit to Turkey next month at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul, Turkish Daily News reported on Friday.

    Ahmadinejad’s potential visit has been on the agenda for a longtime but could not be finalized due to both the international crisis over Iran’s nuclear program and Turkey’s presidential and general elections that took place last year, according to the report.

    The two neighboring countries have boosted economic, trade, energy and security ties in recent years and the energy ministers of the two sides recently signed a preliminary agreement on transferring Iranian natural gas through Turkish territory and allowing Turkish companies to develop three Iranian natural gas fields in southern Iran.

    A couple of documents focusing on economic relations would be signed during the presidential visit, the report added.

    Turkey‘s close energy and trade ties with Iran are not welcomed by the United States, which argues that they would encourage Iran not to cooperate with the international community to solve the nuclear program issue.

    Turkey, on the other hand, says that its close ties with Iran allow it to dispatch the international community’s message to Tehran as openly as possible.

    Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said earlier that Turkey has no formal mediation mission but described the country’s role as “one that is, in a sense, consolidating and facilitating” the negotiations between Iran and the six major powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

    Babacan will meet his Iranian counterpart Manuchehr Mottaki next week in Tehran on the eve of the summit of non-aligned countries. [link to article]

     

  • The French Fuhrer: Genocidal Napoleon was as barbaric as Hitler, historian claims

    The French Fuhrer: Genocidal Napoleon was as barbaric as Hitler, historian claims

    By Christopher Hudson
    Last updated at 11:46 PM on 24th July 2008

    Three days after the fall of France in 1940, Napoleon, lying in his marble tomb in Paris, received a visit from his greatest admirer.

    Adolf Hitler, on his one and only visit to the French capital, made an unannounced trip to the tomb in Les Invalides.

    In his white raincoat, surrounded by his generals, Hitler stood for a long time gazing down at his hero, his cap removed in deference.

    Dictator: Napoleon was responsible for thousands of executions

    He was said later to have described this moment as ‘one of the proudest of my life’.

    The next day, during his official sightseeing tour of Paris, Hitler again visited Napoleon’s tomb to salute him.

    Conscious that his hero was known to the world simply as Napoleon, Hitler boasted that he would not need a rank or title on his gravestone. ‘The German people would know who it was if the only word was Adolf.’

    Throughout the war, Hitler had sandbags placed around Napoleon’s tomb to guard against bomb damage.

    Wooden floorboards were laid across the marble floor of Les Invalides so that they would not be scarred by German jackboots.

    Until recently, the French would have been incensed by any comparison between Napoleon and Hitler.

    But to their rage and shame, new research has shown that France’s greatest hero presided over mass atrocities which bear comparison with some of Hitler’s worst crimes against humanity.

    These reassessments of Napoleon have caused anguish in France. Top politicians backed out of official ceremonies to mark what was possibly Napoleon’s greatest victory, the battle of Austerlitz, when Napoleon’s Grande Armee defeated the combined armies of Austria and Russia in just six hours, killing 19,000 of their adversaries.

    A street in Paris named Rue Richepanse (after Antoine Richepanse, a general responsible for atrocities in the Caribbean) has recently had its name changed to Rue Solitude.
    Hitler

    Admiration: Hitler had a great respect for Napoleon – and perhaps his killing ways, it has now emerged

    During his reign as Emperor, concentration camps were set up and gas was used to massacre large groups of people.

    There were hit squads and mass deportations. And all this happened 140 years before Hitler and the Holocaust.

    Claude Ribbe, a respected historian and philosopher and member of the French government’s human rights commission, has been researching Napoleon’s bloodcurdling record for some years.

    He accuses him of being a racist and an anti-Semite who persecuted Jews and reintroduced widespread slavery just a few years after it had been abolished by the French government.

    The most startling of these findings, the attempted massacre of an entire population over the age of 12 by methods which included gassing them in the holds of ships, relate to the French Caribbean colony of Haiti at the turn of the 19th century.

    In Ribbe’s words, Napoleon, then First Consul, was the man who, for the first time in history, ‘asked himself rationally the question how to eliminate, in as short a time as possible, and with a minimum of cost and personnel, a maximum of people described as scientifically inferior’.

    Haiti around 1800 was the world’s richest colony, a slave-powered export factory which produced almost two-thirds of the world’s coffee and almost half its sugar.

    The black slaves were lashed and beaten to work and forced to wear tin muzzles to prevent them from eating the sugar cane.

    If the slaves were fractious, they were roasted over slow fires, or filled with gunpowder and blown to pieces.

    When the slaves began to fight for their freedom, under the leadership of a charismatic African military genius called Toussaint L’Ouverture, Napoleon sent 10,000 crack troops under the command of his brother-inlaw, General Leclerc, to crush Toussaint and restore slavery.

    In 1802, a vast programme of ethnic cleansing was put in place. Napoleon banned inter-racial marriages and ordered that all white women who’d had any sort of relationship with a black or mulatto (person of mixed race) be shipped to France.

    He further commanded the killing of as many blacks in Haiti as possible, to be replaced by new, more docile slaves from Africa.

    The French troops were under orders to kill all blacks over the age of 12. However, younger children were also killed – stabbed to death, put in sandbags and dropped into the sea.

    The Haitians fought to the death for independence, which they finally declared in 1804.

    Prisoners on both sides were regularly tortured and killed, and their heads were mounted on the walls of stockades or on spikes beside the roads.

    Non-combatants, too, were raped and slaughtered. According to contemporary accounts, the French used dogs to rip black prisoners to pieces before a crowd at an amphitheatre.

    Allegdly on Napoleon’s orders, sulphur was extracted from Haitian volcanoes and burned to produce poisonous sulphur dioxide, which was then used to gas black Haitians in the holds of ships – more than 100,000 of them, according to records.

    The use of these primitive gas chambers was confirmed by contemporaries. Antoine Metral, who in 1825 published his history of the French expedition to Haiti, writes of piles of dead bodies everywhere, stacked in charnel-houses.

    Auschwitz victims: Did Hitler learn genocide from Napoleon?

    ‘We varied the methods of execution,’ wrote Metral. ‘At times, we pulled heads off; sometimes a ball and chain was put at the feet to allow drowning; sometimes they were gassed in the ships by sulphur.

    ‘When the cover of night was used to hide these outrages, those walking along the river could hear the noisy monotone of dead bodies being dropped into the sea.’

    A contemporary historian, who sailed with the punitive expedition, wrote that: ‘We invented another type of ship where victims of both sexes were piled up, one against the other, suffocated by sulphur.’

    These were prison ships with gas chambers called etouffiers, or ‘chokers’, which asphyxiated the blacks, causing them terrible suffering.

    Even at the time, there were French naval officers who were appalled at this savagery, claiming they would rather have braved a court martial than have forgotten the laws of humanity.

    But from the Emperor’s point of view, gassing was a way of cutting costs. Ships continued to transport prisoners out to sea to drown them, but corpses kept being washed up on beaches or tangled in ships’ hulls.

    Toussaint, who called himself the Black Napoleon, was kidnapped after accepting an invitation to parlay with a French general and shipped back to France in chains, where he died of pneumonia after being imprisoned in a cold stone vault.

    Guadeloupe, an island to the east, suffered a similar fate to Haiti’s.

    Once again choosing not to recognise France’s abolition of slavery, Napoleon in 1802 promoted a comrade of his, Antoine Riche-panse, to the rank of General, and sent him with an expeditionary force of 3,000 men to put down a slave revolt on the island.

    During his purge, General Richepanse slaughtered any men, women and children he encountered on his route to the capital. Then he worked through a plan of extermination apparently approved by the First Consul.

    A military commission was set up to give what followed a veneer of legality. Some 250 ‘rebels’ were shot in Guadeloupe’s Victory Square. Another 500 were herded down to the beach and shot there.

    Richepanse and Lacrosse, the former colonial governor now restored to power, thought of piling up the dead in vast mounds to intimidate the islanders, but gave up the plan for fear of starting a disease epidemic.

    Instead, using a technique which the French were to copy during the Algerian War, they sent death squads into every part of Guadeloupe to track down farmers who were absent from their homes.

    These men were treated as rebels. A bounty was promised for each black man captured, and the rebels were summarily shot or hanged. The ferocity of the repression sparked another uprising, which Lacrosse subdued with the most barbarous methods yet.

    ‘Being hung is not enough for the crimes they have committed,’ he said. ‘It is necessary to cut them down alive and let them expire on the wheel [prisoners were bound to a cart wheel before having their arms and legs smashed with cudgels].

    ‘The jails are already full: it is necessary to empty them as quickly as possible.’ In this he was successful, hanging, garotting and burning the rebels and breaking their limbs on the wheel.

    Lacrosse developed possibly the most fiendish instrument of slow execution ever created.

    The prisoner was thrust into a tiny cage and had a razor-sharp blade suspended between his legs. In front of him was a bottle of water and bread, neither of which he could reach.

    He was stood in stirrups, which kept him just above the blade, but if he fell asleep or his legs tired, he was sliced by the blade. Neither fast nor economical, it was pure sadism.

    After four months in Guadeloupe, the French lost patience with the islanders, and the ferocity of their repression reached new heights.

    Blacks with short hair were shot out of hand, since the expeditionary force considered short hair to be a sign of rebellion. Orders were given that ‘the type of execution should set a terrifying example’.

    The soldiers were encouraged ‘to cut open insurgents, to strangle and to burn them’. French officers spoke proudly of creating ‘torture islands’.

    In a letter to Napoleon, his brother-in-law Leclerc wrote: ‘It is necessary to destroy all the negroes of the mountain . . . do not leave children over the age of 12.’

    Ribbe, in his work in progress, sees continual affinities between Napoleon and Hitler. He argues that many of Napoleon’s actions were later echoed in Nazi Germany, right down to his enthusiasm for slavery reflecting the grim message ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (‘Work Sets You Free’), which appeared over the gates of Auschwitz.

    Napoleon, like Hitler, also used his own army like cannon fodder when the occasion demanded.

    His retreat from Moscow in 1812 squandered the lives and courage of 450,000 soldiers of the Grande Armee; many of them were found frozen to death while embracing each other to harvest a last flicker of warmth, in what was one of the bitterest winters in living memory.

    Nothing shows more clearly the contempt the Emperor showed for his minions than the bulletin announcing the destruction of his Army.

    Napoleon blamed his horses and ended by declaring that his health had never been better.

    As theatres for Napoleon’s callousness, Haiti and Guadeloupe were too far away to attract much public notice, let alone condemnation.

    Syria was a different matter. In the war between France and the Ottoman Empire (most of it modern-day Turkey), Napoleon led the siege of the ancient walled city of Jaffa, whose harbour he needed as a vital shelter for his fleet.

    The city fell on the fourth day, whereupon Napoleon’s troops ran amok through the town, slaughtering Christians, Jews and Muslims indiscriminately.

    To escape the slaughter, part of the garrison locked themselves into a large keep.

    Napoleon sent his officers, who negotiated their surrender and marched them back to the French camp.

    Rations were short, so Napoleon now decided that he had been too magnanimous.

    For three days he kept the 4,000 mostly Turkish prisoners with their arms tied behind their back; then the massacre began.

    Somewhere between 2,500 and 4,000 men were slaughtered there and then, either by shooting them or by running them through with bayonets.

    Shortly afterwards plague broke out, decimating the troops on both sides. With real courage, Napoleon led his general staff on a tour of the plague-infested hospitals.

    It did not deter him from suggesting to the doctors that seriously ill French troops who could not be evacuated should be given a fatal dose of the opiate laudanum. The doctors forced him to back down.

    From Jaffa, Napoleon marched to Acre, a city constructed on a peninsula and therefore impregnable, given that there was British control of the seas. Napoleon launched seven major assaults; each one failed. Marching back to Cairo, Napoleon left 2,200 of his troops dead, and 2,300 more seriously ill or wounded.

    As far as Napoleon was concerned, these wounded were already dead men. Most of them he left behind, knowing that the Turks would cut off their heads as soon as his army left. They did their best to follow his retreat, crying out not to be abandoned.

    They straggled along, their throats parched in the debilitating heat, which reduced their cries to a croak. Injured officers were thrown from their litters and left to die in the dunes.

    Soldiers were abandoned in the cornfields, which were still smouldering in the devastation of crops and villages ordered by Napoleon. In all, some 5,000 Frenchmen lost their lives.

    If Hitler learned any lessons from Napoleon, one must have been that victory required callousness, not just in the leader but in those around him.

    ‘Like those working in the Nazi system, the French carrying out Napoleon’s killing did so with little thought to morality,’ Claude Ribbe says today. ‘There was no sense of good or evil: it was just a matter of getting a difficult job done. In the end, the killing methods had to be efficient and cheap.’

    So is Napoleon to be feted as a great leader or denounced as a dictator? A poll published in Le Figaro in 2005 found that nearly 40 per cent of Frenchmen regarded Napoleon as ‘a dictator who had used all means to satisfy his thirst for power’.

    However, considering what was done in Napoleon’s name in Haiti and Guadeloupe, there is one memorial which deserves to be added.

    Next to the unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe should be erected the Tomb of the Unknown Slave.

    • Le Crime de Napoleon, by Claude Ribbe (Editions Priv & Egrave;).

    Source: www.mailonsunday.co.uk, 24th July 2008

  • Turkey to mediate Iran-West talks

    Turkey to mediate Iran-West talks

    MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Goncharov) – On his way back from the inconclusive Geneva talks between Tehran and the Iran Six over the disputed Iranian nuclear program, Tehran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili stopped in Ankara and held talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babajan.

    Babajan, who also met with his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki that same day, flew to Washington after the talks ended.

    Tehran, which must reply to the Iran Six proposals offering the required amount of enriched uranium and state-of-the-art technology to Iran in exchange for freezing its enrichment activities by August 2, must accept the offer or face all-out political isolation.

    “We are in the strongest possible position to demonstrate that if Iran does not act then it is time to go back to that (sanctions) track,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in her first comments after Washington broke from its usual policy and joined nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva on Saturday.

    Iranian religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, reportedly barred President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from making any decisions on the national nuclear program. On July 23 Ahmadinejad, who was obviously taken aback by Western demands, said Iran would not deviate by one inch from its nuclear program.

    It is therefore unclear whether Ankara will manage to save the situation and find a compromise.

    Turkey has already said it would not take part in official talks, and that its main objective was to tone down the negotiators’ positions. It would be an understatement to say that Ankara and Tehran can profit from an alliance.

    Turkey, which is still on track to become a member of the European Union, wants to score additional points, while Iran is playing for time. And no mediator can join the talks overnight.

    Ankara wants Iran to assist in solving the Kurdish problem in Iraq, while Tehran would like to pump natural gas to Europe via Turkey. Moreover, Turkey is ready to mediate peace talks between Israel and Syria. Iran wants to mediate negotiations between Turkey and Armenia and between Armenia and Azerbaijan, another South Caucasian state patronized by Ankara.

    The concerned parties will be unable to compromise on the Iranian nuclear program unless they heed the interests of Egypt, Israel, Jordan and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

    A regional conference could be convened to discuss the Iranian nuclear program, enabling everyone to speak their mind on the issue, while the United States and the EU would deal with Israel.

    Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit recently said Iran would be unable to solve its nuclear problem without the support of regional states, and that Tehran should also pay attention to their interests.

    Each time the international community starts discussing the Iranian nuclear program, the Arab world reiterates its support for Tehran’s right to develop civilian nuclear facilities. This ambiguous stand implies that the Iranian nuclear program may have military implications.

    Washington still prefers to negotiate separately with Arab countries. On July 21, Rice met in the UAE with the foreign ministers and other officials of the six Arab monarchies of the Gulf, namely, Bahrein, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Saudi Arabia, as well as Jordan, Egypt and Iraq, briefing them on the nuclear stand-off with Iran.

    Under Secretary for Political Affairs William Burns was scheduled to brief Rice on the results of the July 19 Geneva talks involving chief EU foreign policy negotiator Javier Solana and Saeed Jalili, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, during her stay in Abu Dhabi and to assess prospects for subsequent negotiations with Tehran.

    Joint U.S.-French-British naval exercises in the region are strong evidence that Iran may face political and economic isolation.

    Washington is now pursuing a more active policy with regard to the Iranian nuclear program, because it does not want the next administration to tackle this issue. Most importantly, major European powers, namely Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, have also started getting tough on this issue.

    Consequently, Ankara will have trouble mediating the talks between Iran and the West. More to the point, the outcome and the long-term situation in Iran will still depend on Tehran.

    The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.