Mississauga-Erindale MP Bob Dechert recently travelled to Turkey to meet with religious leaders and visit two Syrian refugee camps.
Dechert in Turkey. Mississauga-Erindale MP Bob Dechert (left) and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney visit a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey. Supplied photo
Dechert, who also serves as parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, joined Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney in meetings with Turkey’s chief rabbi, Rav Isak Haleva. He leads the 25,000 members of the Jewish community across the country.
“It was an honour to be able to meet with such important and influential spiritual leaders in the region,” said Dechert in a release. “Our meetings in Turkey allowed us to demonstrate our government’s foreign policy emphasis on the protection and promotion of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law around the world.”
Dechert also visited two Syrian refugee camps on his trip.
“As the violence in Syria continues, the government of Turkey is doing a commendable job to help those who have been forced to flee their homes,” said Dechert. “I’m glad that I was able to see firsthand the work that is being done in Turkey and I’m also proud that our government has helped assist, through contributions to the Turkish Red Crescent, these meaningful and necessary projects.”
via Mississauga Article: MP takes trip to Turkey, visits refugee camps.
Syria’s permanent UN representative Bashar Jaafari.
Photo: AFP
Syria has accused Turkey of ‘economic terrorism.’ Ankara has used the “suffering of the Syrian people for piracy” and stolen from Aleppo almost 1.5 thousand units of pharmaceutical and industrial equipment, said Syria’s permanent UN representative Bashar Jaafari.
According to him, “these criminal acts directed against factors of development and welfare of the Syrian people ought to be duly condemned.”
The diplomat expressed confidence that the UN Security Council should urge Turkey to “return the stolen property” and pay compensation.
Voice of Russia, RIA
via Syria has accused Turkey of ‘economic terrorism’: Voice of Russia.
15 January 2013 – The head of the United Nations food relief agency today expressed her gratitude to the people and Government of Turkey for their support of Syrians seeking refuge from the continuing violence affecting their country.
“It’s because of the compassionate response of the Turkish people and World Food Programme’s (WFP) strong partnership with the Government of Turkey that we have been able to rise to the challenge of assisting so many Syrians in need of food assistance during this ongoing humanitarian crisis,” said WFP’s Executive Director, Ertharin Cousin, in a news release.
Her comments came at the end of a three-day trip to the country during which she met with Turkish officials in Ankara and Istanbul followed by a visit to the Kilis refugee camp – the first of its kind in the country – situated along the Turkish-Syrian border.
Accompanied by the Turkish Minister of Economy and other high-level government officials, Ms. Cousin met with Syrian refugees in Kilis, listening to their accounts of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria that forced them to flee.
According to a recent update released by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the past two weeks have seen 3,266 Syrians admitted to Turkey from the borders as the Syrian conflict has continued to escalate. Now in its 23rd month, the violence has claimed more than 60,000 lives, mostly civilian, while hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been displaced.
“These families have gone through very difficult moments, losing their loved ones and worrying about the people and homes they left behind,” Ms. Cousin said.
“We have a commitment to continue to support Syrian refugees – whether in Turkey or in the other neighbouring countries – with some of them in very precarious conditions this winter,” she added, referring to the harsh weather conditions which have further exacerbated the living conditions for refugees in the region.
During her visit, the WFP chief also stopped at one of the camp’s supermarkets and met women using their WFP-sponsored electronic food cards to purchase fresh food for their families.
The voucher system – which the UN agency plans to expand to assist a further 100,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey by June 2013 – allows refugees to shop for the food they want and prepare it to their liking.
In addition to Turkey, Syrians are also taking refuge in Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt. The UN estimates that up to a million Syrian refugees will need help during the first half of 2013.
via United Nations News Centre – On visit to region, UN official praises Turkey for support to Syrian refugees.
Turkey’s multi-billion-dollar gold sales to neighboring Iran could put the country on a collision course with its close ally, the United States, when high-ranking diplomats from the two countries hold talks in Washington.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan shakes hands with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at an Economic Cooperation Organization Summit in Baku in 2012. Despite international pressure on Turkey to stop selling gold to Iran, the two countries’ gold trade for 2012 equaled more than $11 billion. (Photo: Turkish Prime Minister’s Office.)
Turkish Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu was scheduled to be in Washington from January 14-16 for discussions with State Department officials, including US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns. The gold sales were expected to come up during the talks, which will cover a broad range of Middle East-related topics. But a senior Turkish official told EurasiaNet.org that Turkey itself did not intend to raise the gold-for-gas issue.
“We have no plans to talk about it, but the US can bring it up,” said the source, who requested anonymity.
Through the first six months of 2012 Turkey’s gold trade with Iran totaled $6.5 billion, according to various news reports. For the entire year, the value of the gold shipped to Iran from Turkey is estimated at $11-12 billion, according to industry analysts and media accounts. Worldwide in 2010-11, Turkey had total exports of gold and precious gems worth about $4 billion.
The massive 2012 gold transfers are part of the Turkish payment for its gas imports from Iran, which meets 18 percent of Turkey’s annual demand of 50 billion cubic meters. The arrangement makes Iran the country’s second-largest supplier after Russia.
The sales, made through Switzerland and Abu Dhabi, have “become probably the most important source of income to Iran and . . . have allowed Iran to use gold as its main currency for securing necessities from abroad,” commented consultant Attila Yesilada of the Istanbul-based research consultancy Global Source Partners.
The flow of gas and gold now must maneuver around a US ban introduced this year on the sale of precious metals to Iran; the latest tactic in Washington’s effort to curtail Iran’s nuclear research efforts. Authors of the legislation named Turkey as one of its prime targets. Most Turkish financial institutions have offices in the United States, and thus could be liable for prosecution; a powerful incentive for Turkish compliance with the ban.
So far, Ankara has striven to show that it is not cowed by the ban. “We are only bound by sanctions passed by the UN Security Council and not by unilateral sanctions by individual countries,” said Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Selcuk Unal in December.
Nonetheless, for all the tough words, Ankara previously has avoided confrontations with Washington over Iran, and “abided by all US legal measures against Tehran,” commented Inan Demir, chief economist at the privately owned Finansbank.
In a possible gesture to Washington earlier in January, Turkish customs officials grounded a Turkish-owned cargo plane, en route from the United Arab Emirates to Iran, after it made an emergency landing at Istanbul’s Sabiha Gökçen airport. The Turkish media widely reported the plane was carrying 1.5 tons of gold and had arrived from an African country.
The dispute over gold transfers is putting Ankara in a tight spot. Iranian gas is crucial to Ankara’s efforts to diversify its gas imports. The Turkish government is reluctant to increase its already heavy dependency on Russia for energy.
One solution increasingly being touted is the age-old practice of bartering, a measure already used by India to buy oil from Iran. A Turkish diplomatic source acknowledged that a barter deal could be brokered. “Turkish government agencies will be looking into this. We need to support economic growth with all countries, including with Iran, in this challenging world economic climate,” the official said.
A business network already exists in Turkey to facilitate such trades. Over 2,000 Iranian companies now operate in Turkey, most of which have been set up in the past few years, according to the government.
Bartering has the added bonus for Turkey that, unlike gold, which it has to import, any products it barters would be locally produced. The question, though, remains of whether Turkey has a sufficient amount of tradable and desirable goods to cover their Iranian energy bill.
“The problem now is neither Ankara nor Washington knows what Iran is using its gold for; it might be buying necessities — medicine, food. Or maybe [it is] financing [Syrian President Bashar] Assad’s forces or Hezbollah in Lebanon in … some terror acts,” speculated Global Source Partners’ Yesilada. “With barter, that is completely removed from the equation because you can’t buy arms with jam.”
There remain other alternatives for Turkey, liquefied gas from Arab Gulf States, but that is more expensive. A cheaper option is from the neighboring semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region, but any new pipeline would take at least a year to build. Deep divisions between the Iraqi Kurds and the central government in Baghdad over the distribution of the country’s energy riches, further complicates the issue. For now it seems Ankara will be looking for new creative ways of paying for its Iranian gas.
Editor’s note:
Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.
via Turkey: What is Iran Doing with Turkish Gold? | EurasiaNet.org.
Turkey blocked Cyprus and Israel’s affiliation with the International Agency for Renewable Energies (IRENA), Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Minister Taner Yildiz said, Anadolu agency reported on Tuesday.
The Minister said that voting on admission of new members to the IRENA was held in the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi. Given that Turkey is a member of the agency, the country was able to oppose the adoption of Cyprus and Israel to membership in IRENA.
The International Agency for Renewable Energies (IRENA) was established in January 2009 at its founding conference in Bonn. The event was attended by over 120 countries.
IRENA is the first organization on the intergovernmental level with the power to stimulate the development of renewable energy sources. The Agency aims to take its rightful place in the global energy sector, along with the IAEA and IEA.
The organization’s charter is signed by 141 States (47 African, 37 European, 33 Asian, 15 representing the American continents, 9 – Australia and Oceania), and the European Union. The charter was ratified by 75 states and the EU by June 2, 2011.
The main activities of the agency include the provision of consulting services, the creation of framework conditions for the use of renewable energy sources, as well as financing and provision of appropriate technology for their application.
via Turkey blocks membership of Israel and Cyprus in International Agency for Renewable Energy – Trend.Az.
Iran’s Ambassador to Turkey Bahman Hosseinpour says the volume of trade transactions between Tehran and Ankara can reach as high as USD 100 billion per year.
Explaining the upward trend in the bilateral trade between Iran and Turkey over the past years, Hosseinpour said the many capacities of the two countries can be further explored to boost the trade transactions to USD 100 billion per year.
“For the first time, the value of trade between Iran and Turkey will exceed USD 21 billion this [Iranian calendar] year (started March 20, 2012),” Hosseinpour said on Monday.
The value of the Iran-Turkey trade surpassed USD 16 billion in 2011. The two countries plan to increase the level of their bilateral trade volume to USD 30 billion by 2015.
Commenting on the US-led sanctions against Iran, Hosseinpour said, “There is no doubt that Western governments, particularly the US, are exerting pressure on Turkey to decrease its trade ties with Iran and these pressures are continuing.”
He added, however, that “despite the West’s and the US’s pressure on Turkey, we have succeeded to come up with ways to increase the [bilateral] trade volume.”
The illegal US-engineered sanctions have been imposed on Iran based on the unfounded allegation that the Islamic Republic is pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Iran rejects the allegation, arguing that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
YH/HMV/HJL
via PressTV – Iran-Turkey trade can reach $100bn per year: Iran envoy.
