Category: Middle East & Africa

In Turkey, Syria poses a new test for Erdogan’s authority – The Washington Post

By Anthony Faiola, Sunday, November 4, 12:12 AM

Adam Berry/Getty Images – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Berlin. His plans to transform Turkey into a model of Muslim democracy face increased threats, both internal and external.

ANKARA, Turkey — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has emerged during the past decade as a transformative leader of Turkey, pledging to make his country a model of Muslim democracy while presidingover an economic miracle of China-like growth and building a new brand of neo-Ottoman clout in the Middle East.

A convergence of challenges are rocking this nation that straddles two continents, with the escalating crisis in neighboring Syria leaving the Islamist leader struggling among foreign allies and within his own electorate to muster support for a more forceful international response.

Many observers still see Turkey as a model for the budding democracies in the Muslim world. But thousands from the secular opposition here faced water cannons and tear gas last week during a protest against what they decry as Erdogan’s increasingly religious and autocratic bent in a nation where the separation of church and state were once a jealously guarded nationalist ideal.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s once-roaring economy is slowing, and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party is staging its most audacious attacks since the 1990s.

And though Erdogan’s backers in the ruling Justice and Development Party routinely unfurl banners saying, “welcome, great master” when he lands in town, that same term is being co-opted by his field of critics, who are wielding the words against him with sarcastic derision.

“He is now experiencing the most difficult time of his premiership, with a number of things happening at once,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, head of the Ankara-based think tank Center for Strategic Communication and a former national legislator from Erdogan’s ruling party.

Once imprisoned for reciting an Islamic poem in an institutionally secular nation, Erdogan is now in the midst of his maximum third term as premier after a decade that saw him tame an activist military establishment, including scores of acting and retired soldiers and brass jailed as coup plotters.

Having come to power during the onset of the Iraq war, he is now facing his greatest strategic test because of the 20-month-old conflict in neighboring Syria, particularly in the days since stray Syrian shells crossed the border and killed five Turks last month.

In the immediate aftermath, Erdogan appeared to put this nation on war footing. Turkish forces returned fire and intercepted a Damascus-bound Russian transport plane, seizing its cargo. Parliament has granted Erdogan the authority to deploy troops and stage airstrikes on Syrian soil.

Turkish tanks are still trained on the Syrian frontier, and the military is on standing orders to respond with two rounds of mortar fire for every one Syrian shell that lands on Turkish territory. But the specter of any serious Turkish intervention is ebbing with Erdogan toning down rhetoric and refraining from steps that could morph Syria’s civil war into a full-blown regional conflict.

More tempered response

Political insiders here say Erdogan’s call for more aggressive action to bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad down has backfired, in part because of a lack of support from Washington, which is now calling on the Turks to offer a more tempered response.

via In Turkey, Syria poses a new test for Erdogan’s authority – The Washington Post.

more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/in-turkey-syria-poses-a-new-test-for-erdogans-authority/2012/11/03/12c5cfce-2445-11e2-92f8-7f9c4daf276a_story.html

November 4, 2012
Public opposition prevents Turkey from attacking Syria

PanARMENIAN.Net – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would attack Syria right today, if not the hindering factors, Istanbul-based Agos weekly former employee said.

As Diran Lokmagyozian told a news conference, Turkish public mainly stand against Turkey’s attacking Syria, while the country is concerned with its interests only.

“The same happened in case of Iraq, as the U.S. sought for Turkish intrusion into the country. However, Turkey had other claims that disfavored the U.S. interests,” Lokmagyozian said, adding that Turkey seeks for becoming a leader in the region.

via Public opposition prevents Turkey from attacking Syria – journalist – PanARMENIAN.Net.

November 4, 2012
Turkey does not pay gold for Iranian gas, finance minister

Turkey does not pay for natural gas from Iran in gold, Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek said on Thursday.

Until August, Iran imported large amounts of gold from Turkey before the United Arab Emirates took the lion’s share in the following months, official figures show. However, it is widely speculated that gold exported to the UAE continues on to Iran.

State-run Halkbank is responsible for the Iranian payment issue, Simsek said, adding that gold exports to Iran are mainly from exchange offices and Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, the traditional heart of the jewelry trade.

The Central Bank of Iran banned all gold exports without its explicit approval to avoid a shortage of the precious metal, The Associated Press reported.

A senior Central Bank official, Mohammad Reza Naderi, was quoted by the semi-official Mehr News Agency on Oct. 31 as saying that the new restriction was imposed due to currency fluctuations.

According to Iranian law, the export of coins made from precious metals previously did not require a permit from the Central Bank, but current economic conditions have resulted in a decision to require Central Bank licenses for the export of such goods, Lebanon’s Daily Star reported.

Iran’s currency, the rial, lost about 50 percent of its value earlier this month. The currency’s nosedive has been blamed on a combination of government mismanagement and the bite from tightened sanctions imposed regarding Iran’s nuclear program, which the West fears is aimed at producing a nuclear weapon.

Iran denies the charge, insisting its uranium enrichment program is only for peaceful purposes such as fuel generation.

via Turkey does not pay gold for Iranian gas, finance minister – Tehran Times.

November 4, 2012
Turkey signs $350m Iraq oil drilling deal

ANKARA: Turkey has signed a $350m deal on drilling 40 oil wells in the southern Iraqi Basra area and is in talks with Baghdad on drilling 7,000 wells across Iraq, Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said yesterday. Details of the timeframe or companies involved were not immediately available.

Turkey’s growing energy involvement in Iraq comes despite tensions with Baghdad over Ankara giving refuge to Iraq’s fugitive Vice President Tareq Al Hashemi, who was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for a second time on Thursday.

Iraq has also asked Turkey to stop attacking Kurdish rebel forces sheltering across the border in northern Iraq, a Kurdish autonomous region over which Baghdad has little control and with which Ankara has forged close ties in recent years.

“We are continuing work with the central government on opening 7,000 wells across Iraq as a whole,” Yildiz told a news conference in the Turkish capital.

He also told reporters talks were being held with the Turkish treasury on holding initial public offerings (IPO) for state-owned oil firm TPAO and state pipeline company Botas, with a TPAO offering planned first.

Separately, Yildiz warned that the government would review Italian energy firm ENI’s investments in Turkey if it went ahead with plans to explore for natural gas in Cyprus. Cyprus said on Tuesday that it would start negotiations with ENI, South Korea’s Kogas, France’s Total and Russia’s Novatek on the potential development of natural gas fields off the Mediterranean island. Turkey, which has been at diplomatic loggerheads with Cyprus for decades, claims the island has no authority to explore for gas offshore.

reuters

via Turkey signs $350m Iraq oil drilling deal.

November 4, 2012
UEFA President Michel Platini: Remove UEFA 2013 European Under-21 Championship from Israel

It took three months of hunger strike and the near death of a Palestinian footballer, Mahmoud Sarsak, held for three years without charge or trial under the ‘Unlawful Combatants Law’, which is itself illegal under international law, for the Israeli authorities to agree to a release deal in July 2012. We continue to be alarmed that Olympic squad goalkeeper Omar Abu Rois and Ramallah player Mohammed Nimr are also being held by Israel without charge. We maintain that a state which holds sportsmen as political prisoners is unfit to host an international sporting event. We, therefore, call on UEFA to withdraw the honour of hosting the 2013 European Under-21 championship from Israel.

Petition Letter

I’ve just signed the following petition addressed to: UEFA President Michel Platini.

—————-
Remove UEFA Under-21 Championship 2013 from Israel

An earlier letter to you signed by eminent figures including former football legend Éric Cantona, filmmaker Ken Loach, Michael Mansfield, QC, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and writer Alice Walker (1), addressed racist oppression in Israel as exemplified by the treatment of Palestinian footballer, Mahmoud Sarsak, and called for an end to Israel’s impunity. We are grateful for any interventions you made on Sarsak’s behalf, and welcome news of a deal that saw the footballer released on 10 July 2012.

It took huge international pressure and condemnation in response to three months of hunger strike by Mahmoud Sarsak to force the Israeli authorities to agree to this deal. This is a sportsman who has been held for over three years without charge or trial under the ‘Unlawful Combatants Law’, which is illegal under international laws (2). Sarsak felt so strongly about the injustice of his case that he was willing to die to highlight Israel’s ongoing human rights abuses.

As pointed out to you in a June 2012 letter from Palestinian Football Association President Jibril Rajoub, in addition to Sarsak, Olympic squad goalkeeper Omar Abu Rois and Ramallah player Mohammed Nimr are also being held by Israel without charge. Rajoub makes clear in his letter the importance of UEFA not giving Israel the honour of hosting the next UEFA European Under-21 Championship in June 2013, when “For athletes in Palestine, there is no real freedom of movement and the risks of being detained or even killed are always looming before their eyes”.

UEFA’s response to this urgent plea by Palestinians and their supporters is that “football – and sport in general – are building bridges between nations and communities and that political matters should not interfere with the practice of the game.”

UEFA should understand that this argument rings hollow in the ears of Palestinians, footballers and others, who are victims of Israel’s discriminatory regime. Sport cannot build bridges when a government wields state power to imprison and oppress a specific community. The idea that politics can be separated from sport in this situation is clearly untenable. For Israel, sport, and culture generally, are tools to be used to divert attention away from the state’s persecution of the Palestinian population of Israel and the occupied territories – a population equal in numbers and just as passionate about football as their Israeli counterparts but denied access both as participants and spectators.

Have you considered how the besieged 1.2 million Palestinians in Gaza will gain entry to the four Israeli stadia earmarked for the Under-21 games next year? Or how the population of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem will negotiate their way through checkpoints and across Israel’s apartheid wall to watch the games?

You stated in your response to Rajoub: “We cannot hold the Israel FA responsible for the political situation in the region or for legal procedures in place in its country.”

We cannot accept the contention that a national football association that has tolerated years of discrimination and suffering on the part of Palestinian players and football-lovers can be acquitted of its share of responsibility. Not only are prominent Palestinian players held as political prisoners, but on 20 June, a 12-year-old boy kicking a football around near his family home in Gaza became the latest in a sad catalogue of child victims of the Israeli military (3).

Where are the IFA’s public denunciations of such crimes? There are none.

We join Palestinians and people of conscience all over the world in calling on UEFA to withdraw the European under-21 Championship from Israel next year, and to deny it such privileges until such time as the State of Israel complies with international law and ceases its human rights violations.

1.

2.

3.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

Change.org

November 1, 2012
New jobs for Ugandans in Turkey

By Patrick Jaramogi

Trade between Uganda and Turkey has been bolstered further following the signing of an agreement between the Turkish Trade Union (HAK-IS) and the National Organisation of Trade Unions (NOTU) from Uganda.

The two leading trade unions agreed to boost cooperation in the areas of socio- economic life of the citizens of the two nations.

Mahmut Arslan president of HAK- IS signed on behalf of the Turkish government while Usher Owere signed on behalf of NOTU.

“We are aiming at developing bilateral relations to exchange information and experiences of works of confederations,” said Owere Usher Wilson NOTO chairman General.

He said following the signing of the agreement in Turkey last week, NOTO and HAK-IS agreed to exchange trade delegations to learn more about labour life and trade union activities.

“We shall provide and exchange consultation services as well as training of experts of the two unions this new opportunity will create more employments for Ugandans in Turkey,” said Owere.

The two trade unions also agreed to ensure good social security for the workers of the two countries by following up on recent developments of policies in each country.

Owere noted that following the global economic crisis, many workers, the world over were facing challenges due to massive job losses.

“As a result of the world economic troubles, millions of workers are losing jobs at a terrific speed. In the developing countries; Uganda in particular, the informal sector is increasing while the formal sector is shrinking,” said Owere.

He told the Turkish unionist that Government had deliberately refused to effect the Minimum wage legislation arguing that Minimum wage is a disincentive to foreign investment.

“Trade Union Movement is operating in a very unfavorable environment. We are currently having an agenda of re-branding ourselves, recruit more members and have a voice that the Government can respect. But we have still have challenges,” he said.

via New jobs for Ugandans in Turkey.

October 31, 2012