Category: Regions

Turkey wants end to Canada’s stance on Armenian genocide

Mike Blanchfield, The Canadian Press

Published Sunday, April 7, 2013 12:40PM EDT

OTTAWA — Turkey’s ambassador to Canada says the Harper government’s decision to brand the killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide may be hindering a potentially lucrative trading relationship.

Ambassador Tuncay Babali made clear in a wide ranging interview with The Canadian Press that Canada’s position on the First World War-era slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians still carries a sting for his country.

But that doesn’t mean Turkey doesn’t want to press on with forging a deeper economic relationship with Canada, ideally a free trade agreement to compliment the current Canada-EU free trade talks once they are completed, he said.

Thousands of people march to mark the death of 1.5 million Armenians in the former Ottoman empire, in Los Angeles, Tuesday, April 24, 2012. (AP / Nick Ut)

Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/turkey-wants-end-to-canada-s-stance-on-armenian-genocide-1.1227732#ixzz2PqZIHhWZ

Thousands of demonstrators march to mark the death of 1.5 million Armenians in the former Ottoman empire in Los Angeles in this 2012 file photo. (AP / Damian Dovarganes)

“I’m a true believer in the potential of our two nations. Canada has a lot to offer Turkey and Turkey in return has a lot to offer Canada,” said Babali, noting that Canada’s internal Foreign Policy Plan has identified Turkey as a key country of focus.

“It cannot be business as usual while accusing a nation of genocide. It’s a serious allegation. It needs to be substantiated, legally, historically.”

Babali said he suspects Canada is not engaging as quickly as Turkey would like because the genocide issue is still hanging over relations.

“There is a pacing issue here,” he said. “We want results. We want action. We want concrete steps forward. Talking about positive things is ok, but it takes two to tango.”

The $2.5 billion in two-way trade between countries “is far from the potential” of what Turkey predicts would result from deeper economic ties: $10-$15 billion within five years, he said.

He said Turkey would like to open free trade talks with Canada.

But on the genocide question, Babali said Turkey would like to see a gesture from Canada that the government is “trying to leave this behind us.”

A significant gesture would be a “high level” visit by Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird to Turkey. Baird cancelled a planned trip in November, Babali said, because of an important cabinet meeting in Ottawa.

Babali was also encourged by Baird’s plans to travel to the West Bank on the weekend to discuss future Canadian aid contributions to the Palestinian Authority.

He suggested Canada can do more in the Middle East peace process, even though Turkey is well aware of Ottawa’s strong support of Israel.

“I think aid is important. To keep the channels open. You have to hear both sides. Canada has leverage that can play in those issues as well. It should be used in a stronger way.”

Babali praised the efforts of Baird for mending fences with Turkey, including the personal friendship he has forged with his counterpart, Ahmet Davutolu, who visited Canada this past September.

“We have good room to manoeuvre here after our minister’s visit. But it takes two to tango,” he said.

“If there is a political will from the Canadian side to move forward and improve our relations further, to live up to the promise and potential, we need concrete steps.”

Canada’s Parliament voted in 2004 to recognize the events of 1915 to 1923 as a genocide carried out by Ottoman Turks during the Armenian uprising.

The Harper government formally adopted that position after winning power, a decision that angered Ankara and sparked the temporary withdrawal of its ambassador from Ottawa.

Turkey has lobbied hard internationally to block the genocide designation, although many other countries have used the term.

In 2010, when the U.S. Congress abandoned a plan to declare the killings a genocide, Davutolu said ties could have been harmed between the two countries had “common sense” not prevailed.

Last year, when France passed a law that makes it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide, Turkey responded by suspending military, economic and political ties.

Last summer, Canada took steps to heal the rift with Turkey. It unveiled a cone-shaped metal-and-wood monument dedicated to Col. Atilla Altikat, the country’s military attache gunned down in Ottawa, allegedly by Armenian terrorists, 30 years earlier.

That appeared to go a long way towards bridging the gap between the two countries, both NATO allies.

Babali reiterated what Davutolu said during his visit — that Turkey would like to strike a joint commission with Armenians to discuss the historical facts surrounding the issue.

During the visit, Baird did not back away from his government’s earlier position, but said he appreciated the sensitivities at play.

Babali said Turkey wants deeper economic ties with Canada, and it appears the country is open for business despite any bitterness over the Armenia policy.

In the next 10 years, Turkey will launch 150 infrastructure projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars, many in the transportation sector. Babali cited Bombardier Inc. and SNC-Lavalin as potential investors.

He also said there are also opportunities for Canadian companies in his country’s developing nuclear energy program and in shale gas exploration.

via Turkey wants end to Canada’s stance on Armenian genocide | CTV News.

April 8, 2013
Turkey denies French-Japanese JV win nuke bid

Turkey declined reports on Thursday that a French-Japanese consortium has won a tender to build the country’s second nuclear power plant, asserting it was “too early to comment.”

Japan’s Nikkei business daily reported on Thursday that the Japanese Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and France’s Areva SA have won an order to build Turkey’s second nuclear power plant, a project expected to cost around $22 billion. Representatives from Areva and Mitsubishi Heavy were unavailable immediately to comment, but Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz rushed in on Thursday to deny that such a deal existed.

“It is too early to make such comments. … We cannot yet say the race for [who will build] our second nuclear power plant is over,” Yildiz told a private news channel on Thursday.

Turkey has been in negotiations with South Korea, China, Japan and Canada for the construction of a second nuclear power plant in the Black Sea province of Sinop. An agreement was reached with Russia in 2010 to build the first plant in Mersin’s Akkuyu district.

Reiterating the Turkish government’s reluctance to offer a state guarantee for the nuclear project’s financing, Yildiz said South Korea was eliminated due to this condition, while more focused talks continued with Japan and China. “I think we are now closer to finalizing the talks with these two countries than ever,” said the energy minister.

This is not the first time Turkey has insisted on “risk sharing” in the months-long Sinop nuclear bid. Observers argued Yildiz’s statements were meant to further heat up competition between the bidders so that they would agree to relatively more favorable terms.

Ongoing rapprochement between Ankara and Paris as the latter decided to lift its block on Turkey’s EU accession negotiations along with improving ties with Japan remains a key factor in the alleged nuclear deal.

Nikkei on Thursday said Turkey’s Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources had informed Japanese government and corporate officials of the decision to award them a deal to build four pressurized water nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of about 4.5 gigawatts in Sinop, a province on the Black Sea coast.

The paper added that the Turkish government had approached Japan about a summit meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in early May, after which it is likely to officially grant preferred negotiating rights to the Mitsubishi-Areva consortium. It added construction is set to start in 2017, with the first reactor slated to come online by 2023, and France’s GDF Suez SA will operate the plant.

Energy-poor Turkey aims to have three nuclear power plants, all of them operational by 2023, its centennial. It is anticipated to overtake Britain as Europe’s third-biggest electricity consumer within a decade.

Meanwhile, Yildiz on Thursday asserted the government will stick with plans to increase oil trade with Iraq’s north while a possible natural gas pipeline from Israel to flow through Turkey into world markets was “on the table.” “All countries in this region are aware Turkey is the key, most feasible corridor for similar energy transfer projects.”

via Turkey denies French-Japanese JV win nuke bid.

April 7, 2013
Turkey wants to be in Arab trade bloc

Turkish Finance minister Mehmet Simsek delivers a speech during the Turkish Arab Economic Forum opening ceremony on April 4 2013.

DOHA: Turkey yesterday proposed to become part of a common market with the Arab world, as Qatar said there were more than 25 Turkish companies operating in its territory and the collective volume of their business had reached a staggering $20bn.

Speaking of the Arab world, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a key Turkish-Arab economic meet in Istanbul yesterday: “Today, we are rediscovering each other again”.

He said a common market comprising his country and the Arab world was the need of the hour. “We must remove all barriers that exit between our people and our countries,” said Davutoglu.

The Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, H E Dr Khalid Al Attiyah, represented Qatar at the Turkish-Arab Economic Summit. Addressing it, he said over 25 Turkish companies were based in Qatar and their total business volume had reached $20bn.

Al Attiyah said he was surprised that when Turkey was trying for membership of the European Union, some in the Arab world were critical and said the country was drifting away from the Arabs.

Now, when it is coming closer to the Arab world, it (Turkey) is being accused of trying to revive its Ottoman heritage, said Al Attiyah.

THE PENINSULA & AGENCIES

April 7, 2013
Turkey to have representative at German neo-Nazi trial, envoy says

Turkey will have an official representative in the court room for the upcoming trial of neo-Nazis accused of killing 10 people – eight of them Turks, the Turkish ambassador to Germany said.

But even before getting under way on April 17, the trial has come under intense criticism, after Turkish journalists failed to get reserved seats in the Munich court.

The court has held firm to its decision that media seats will only be guaranteed to the 50 journalists, mainly Germans, who had applied by email on a first-come-first-served basis during a three-hour time slot.

In an interview with dpa, Huseyin Avni Karslioglu, Turkey’s ambassador to Germany, said his country “fully trusts the German judiciary” but disapproved of the way it allocated seats.

“The trial is also meant to restore people’s trust. They want to know what really happened … so with issues affecting the press, the court should show a bit more sensitive behaviour,” he said.

Members of the self-styled right-wing National Socialist Underground (NSU) are to go on trial for the execution-style murders of 10 men with Turkish or Greek roots and a German police woman between 2000 and 2007, as well as bomb attacks and bank robberies.

There is only one surviving member from the three alleged neo-Nazi killers. Two male gunmen, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boenhardt, died in an apparent murder-suicide in 2011 after they were cornered inside a camper van by police following a bank robbery.

Their alleged female accomplice, Beate Zschaepe, 38, who lived with the two men for years, is being tried on murder and terrorism charges, along with four of their alleged supporters.

Karslioglu said he would attend the start of the trial, with other Turkish officials later taking his place.

“In Germany, a terrorist cell of neo-Nazis committed a gruesome series of murders, and the victims were almost all Turks,” said the diplomat. “As an ambassador, it is my duty to accompany the bereaved.”

Turks are the largest ethnic minority group in the country, estimated to number about 3 million.

For years police and some newspapers labelled the killings the “doner murders”, a reference to Turkish kebabs that suggested immigrant gang wars were behind the shootings.

The case has badly shaken Germany’s security establishment, which has faced severe criticism for failing to exchange key information while keeping neo-Nazis as paid informants.

Compounding the scandal, security services have admitted to shredding files on neo-Nazi groups, leading to the resignations of several senior security officials.

Now many fear that the damage will be compounded when Germany starts what has been billed as the trial of the decade in a 1970s-era court room expected to be too small, given large media interest and the many witnesses and victims’ relatives.

Source: GNA

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April 7, 2013
Turkey sends terrorists into Syria: President Assad

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has accused Turkey of harboring terrorists and transferring them into his country.

“Turkey’s government officially harbors terrorists and sends them into Syria. They’re also crossing over from Jordan,” Assad said during an interview with Turkish TV station Ulusal Kanal, which was aired on Friday.

Damascus says Ankara has been playing a key role in fueling the unrest in Syria by financing, training, and arming the militants since violence erupted in the Arab country in March 2011.

The Syrian president also warned that if his country “is partitioned, or if terrorist forces take control of the country, there will be direct contagion of the surrounding countries.”

Assad also referred to the infiltration of terrorists from some other neighbors of Syria and said, “Of course, not necessarily all these countries are doing it on purpose. Iraq, for example, is against the infiltration of terrorists, but it has special circumstances, and cannot control its borders. In Lebanon, there are some different factions that help people who want to infiltrate Syria.”

Assad also slammed the Arab League for its recent decision to give Syria’s seat to its foreign-backed opposition coalition.

“The Arab League lacks legitimacy. It’s a league that represents the Arab states, not the Arab people, so it can’t grant or retract legitimacy,” Assad said.

On March 26, the Arab League handed Syria’s seat to the so-called National Coalition during a two-day summit held in the Qatari capital, Doha.

The Arab League also authorized its member states to send all means of what it called self-defense, including weapons, to the foreign-sponsored terrorists inside Syria.

Many people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed in the violence in Syria.

The Syrian government has said that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and that a very large number of the militants operating in the country are foreign nationals.

Several international human rights organizations have accused the foreign-sponsored militants of committing war crimes.

DB/HN/HJL

via PressTV – Turkey sends terrorists into Syria: President Assad.

April 7, 2013
Why you can never get bored of Turkey’s agenda

Turkey is a country that could be a goldmine for any journalist. The agenda of the country is full of such a wide range of issues that even a seasoned Turkish observer can be overwhelmed, let alone a foreigner. This also makes Turkey an interesting case to follow. One day we debate the accuracy of a TV series on life in the Ottoman palace following criticism by the prime minister, the next day we find ourselves in the middle of a debate on abortion and even C-sections.

I’d like to provide you a synopsis of some of the issues that dominated the domestic agenda of Turkey in recent weeks:

Wise men committees: Hardly anyone could trace this debate to its origins, but all of a sudden Turkey began to discuss the lists of names that could be included in the “wise men” group that could facilitate the settlement process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Although government members talked vaguely about a suggestion to form such a group to “convince public opinion on the negotiations,” in the prime minister’s terms, and no names have been uttered by any official authority, lists of names appeared in many mainstream newspapers of the country. Among the names that were obviously randomly picked were liberal columnists and Kurdish intellectuals, but also an actor named Kadir Inanir, who is highly irrelevant to the issue. Aside from his one recent comment in favor of peace in an interview, nobody really knows what his contribution could be. When a deputy prime minister finally announced that no names were determined yet, the discussion slowed down. However, in the meantime social media in particular focused on a debate on possible names rather than the details of the process. Given how we handled even the potential formation of such a group, I have strong doubts that it could serve any good. Both the process and the idea of wise men are critical issues that deserve to be discussed with a serious attitude. When formed, the wise men committee should include people that not only intellectuals could welcome, but the overall population could respect and listen to.

Apology: Just one day after the country witnessed the historic “peace call” at Nevruz (a spring festival particularly celebrated by Kurds in Turkey), Israel’s long-awaited “apology” has come. Barack Obama brokered the peace between Turkey and Israel just before he ended his visit to the latter. Turkey announced that all of its conditions to normalize relations after the fatal Mavi Marmara raid by Israeli forces that ended in the killing of nine Turks in international waters in 2009 were met.

The “apology” was considered a diplomatic victory of Turkey by many, but a debate has emerged over why Israel actually apologized three years after the incident. Some argue that it was somehow connected to Syria or Iran while Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu dismissed this. Amid these scenarios, something that could probably only happen in Turkey took place on the streets of Ankara. The mayor of the capital from the governing AK Party decorated the streets of Ankara with billboards expressing “gratitude” to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his victory over Netanyahu. This act almost unanimously was considered as an election investment of the mayor to be considered as a candidate by the prime minister in local elections next year while taking its place in the long record of idiosyncrasies in Turkish politics.

Press freedom: Turkey cannot be considered a fully liberal democracy yet. Accordingly, it has problems in the implementation of laws in interpreting terrorism, which results in the imprisonment of people advocating for the terrorist organizations (this is subject to reform currently). However, it would be an injustice to the country to consider it in the league of China in terms of freedoms.

I believe the biggest obstacle in the way of complete freedom of press is the media ownership by big business owners. Due to their economic interests in state tenders and all, more often than not owners of the media in Turkey impose an internal censorship on columnists.

Of course, the intervention of the prime minister in the media and his telling newspaper owners whom to employ is not acceptable either. However, in a country where a businessman calls the prime minister and asks whom to appoint as the editor-in-chief to his newly bought newspapers (Vatan and Milliyet), the burden remains on the shoulders of the latter. Most recently, veteran journalist Hasan Cemal was fired from Milliyet after his final column criticizing the problematic structure of media ownership in Turkey was not published in the paper (it was later published by Internet media). It is still not totally clear whether the prime minister’s criticism of his previous column on the settlement process scared the owner, the Demiroren family, and led to Cemal’s layoff.

Mosque on Camlica Hill: On Saturday the construction of the long-debated mosque on Camlica Hill started. Despite a project contest, many, including me, argued that a bad copy of an Ottoman mosque on a hill would be a betrayal of the city’s rich heritage.

Along with the mosque, projects to redesign Taksim Square and a hideous bridge on the Golden Horn are in progress. Even as an Istanbulite, I have no idea who proposes offers and decides on such projects that will leave a permanent mark on the city.

Anything that will have an impact on a historic city like Istanbul should be decided by a major consensus after careful deliberation of experts and public opinion. However, we live in a system run by “fait accompli” mentality.

April 7, 2013