Turkish Forum

Category: Regions

  • US ambassador says Istanbul attack was terrorism

    US ambassador says Istanbul attack was terrorism

    US Ambassador Ross Wilson told reporters in Ankara :

    “It’s an obvious act of terrorism, This was an attack on an American diplomatic establishment. The persons who lost their lives are Turkish citizens and we are very sad about that.

    We remain a close friend and ally of Turkey. We’ll not be deterred in any way by terrorists who are seeking to strike at us or at US-Turkish relations, our countries stand together in the fight against international terrorism…. We will confront this as we have confronted similar problems in the past.”

  • Six dead in attack outside U.S. consulate in Istanbul

    Six dead in attack outside U.S. consulate in Istanbul

    From the Associated Press
    2:30 AM PDT, July 9, 2008
    ISTANBUL, Turkey — Istanbul’s governor says an armed attack against a police guard post outside the U.S. consulate in Istanbul left three attackers and three policemen dead.

    Gov. Muammer Guler says the attackers’ identities are under investigation.

    A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman says there were no reports of casualties among American consulate employees in Wednesday’s attack.

    The spokeswoman says “at least one assailant opened fire on the Turkish police guard post area near the main entrance to the consulate.” She requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

    Source :

    Read More in Turkish :

  • After meetings in Turkey, Foxman says fallout over ‘genocide’ flap is ‘behind us’

    After meetings in Turkey, Foxman says fallout over ‘genocide’ flap is ‘behind us’

    JPost.com » International » Article

    Jul 7, 2008 23:04 | Updated Jul 7, 2008 23:11

    After meetings in Turkey, Foxman says fallout over ‘genocide’ flap is ‘behind us’

    By HERB KEINON

    The controversy and fallout over the Anti-Defamation League’s statement last year that Turkish actions toward Armenians during World War I was “tantamount to genocide” is “behind us,” ADL National Director Abe Foxman said Monday in Jerusalem, where he arrived from Ankara and a series of meetings with Turkey’s leadership.

    Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti Defamation League.
    Photo: Ariel Jerozolimski

    Last August, Foxman – who was in a dispute in the Boston area over the ADL’s position on the Turkey-Armenia issue – infuriated Turkish leaders by issuing the following statement: “We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. (the US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time) that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide.

    If the word ‘genocide’ had existed then, they would have called it genocide…

    “Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States.”

    The Turks viewed this as a reversal of the organized Jewish community’s position on the issue, and warned that Turkish-Israeli ties could be harmed if the American Jewish organizations did not work – as they had done in the past – to ensure that the US Congress did not pass a resolution characterizing the massacre of Armenians during World War I as genocide.

    The legislation was eventually removed from the table after US President George W. Bush, and numerous former secretaries of state and defense, wrote letters saying that passing the legislation would harm American interests.

    “They were angry,” Foxman said of the Turkish response to the ADL’s statement last year. “But I think today there is an understanding of where we were, and that we were opposed to Congressional legislation, and that we stood very firm that that was not the way to resolve the issue, and that there is nothing cataclysmic about using the ‘genocide’ word.”

    Foxman, who met with President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and other key government figures, said his message was that the Turks should be “proactive” and try to help today’s Armenia as part of an effort to resolve the historic affair.

    “In the conversations I had with all of them I said there is a need to be proactive, that they need to deal with live Armenians, and strengthen the relationship between Turkey and Armenia, and by strengthening the relations today – frontier issues, opening borders – it will place the historical issue in the background and be much easier to deal with,” Foxman said.

    By the same token, Foxman said that the Armenian community in the US should understand that pressure to use “certain words they want us to use is not going to help one Armenian.”

    Rather, Foxman said, one of the ways the American Jewish community can help the Armenians it to “help convince the Turkish government to normalize relations” with Armenia.

  • Iraqi Kurds Out-Lobby Iraqi Arabs In Washington

    Iraqi Kurds Out-Lobby Iraqi Arabs In Washington

    By Andrew Tilghman – July 4, 2008, 2:22PM

    This week, we learned that the White House knew about last year’s deal between Texas-based Hunt Oil and the Kurdish Regional Government.

    Apparently the threat it posed to the fragile negotiations in Baghdad didn’t concern the president as much as he suggested in public.

    The Kurds have made a lot of friends in Washington during the past few years — especially among Republicans.

    It’s a relationship that’s bolstered by aggressive lobbying by the Kurds. The Kurdish Regional Government has 11 active contracts with U.S. lawyers and lobbyists, according to the State Department’s database maintained under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The Kurds have been shelling out far more money on K Street than any other group or government in Iraq.

    A key ally for the Kurds is the firm Barbour Griffith Rogers, the lobbying shop founded by Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, formerly head of the Republican National Committee. BGR receives $700,000 a year from the Kurdish Regional Government. Their agreement says the firm will “arrange meetings” with U.S. media and government officials.

    The firm has a separate agreement with the Kurdistan Democratic Party for a $262,500 annual fee, according to the FARA database.

    The Kurdish Regional Government also has a deal with the Republican-linked firm Russo, March and Rogers for running a “media campaign” and a “public relations campaign.”

    The Washington Post last year also noted the Kurds efforts to reach out to evangelical Christians.

    In the past year, the Kurds have spent more than $3 million to retain lobbyists and set up a diplomatic office in Washington. They are cultivating grass-roots advocates among supporters of President Bush’s war policy and evangelicals who believe that many key figures in the Bible lived in Kurdistan. And they are seeking to build an emotional bond with ordinary Americans, like those forged by Israel and Taiwan, by running commercials on national cable news channels to assert that even as Iraq teeters toward a full-blown civil war, one corner of the country, at least, has fulfilled the Bush administration’s ambition of a peaceful, democratic, pro-Western beachhead in the Middle East.

    The Kurds are probably watching this year’s campaign very closely.
    Source:
  • European Commission awards €5m in scholarships to Turkish Cypriots

    European Commission awards €5m in scholarships to Turkish Cypriots

    By Maria-Christina Doulami

    AROUND 120 Turkish Cypriot students and teachers have been awarded scholarships by the European Commission, a press release announced yesterday.

    This allows them to study an undergraduate or postgraduate programme or engage in research in any of the other 26 Member States of the EU for the duration of maximum one year.

    The EU Scholarship programme will run for three consecutive academic years, from 2007-2010 and its total value amounts to €5 million. The grants are financed from the European Union Aid Programme for the Turkish Cypriot community.

    The aim of the programme is “to give Turkish Cypriot students and teachers additional educational opportunities that will increase their knowledge in their own technical field while giving them the experience of studying and living in another EU Member State” said the announcement.

    The main objective stated by the press release is “to bring the Turkish Cypriots closer to the EU and Europe closer to the Turkish Cypriot community.”

    This opportunity will allow the 122 grantees to return to Cyprus after the completion of their studies and “contribute to the social and economic development of the Turkish Cypriot community” said the press release.

    A former grantee summarises this unforgettable experience as “a new world” and says that “this scholarship gives me the opportunity of living at the standards of any other European citizen, makes me feel financially secure and lets me concentrate fully on my studies”.

    “I feel that I am exploring new horizons, questioning, gaining new perspectives, making new friends.”

    Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2008

    Source: Cyprus Mail, 5 July 2008

  • Who Are the Jews of Europe?

    Who Are the Jews of Europe?

     

     

    Who Are the Jews of Europe?

    The Istanbulian, Personal Chronicles of a Turkish Journalist, Emre Kizilkaya

    Turkish professor Faruk Sen, the head of the Center for Turkish Studies Foundation in Essen, had been temporarily suspended from his duties for describing Turks as the “New Jews of Europe” in an article he wrote for a Turkish business daily.

    In the article, he was passionately defending the rights of Turkish Jews, while making a parallelism between the current situation of Turks in Germany.

    German authorities, were very quick to react. They were alleging that Prof Sen was insulting Jews, but actually the real intention was solely political.

    So this was another cover-up, similar to “the ostrich dialectic” which is being systematically adopted by German authorities after every xenophobic arson in the country.

    Social democrat Prof Sen was being a victim of such a political conspiracy, mainly organized by CDU politicians who can do anything to stop the staining of Germany’s image especially about its rising xenophobia, even when its all based on facts.

    The comparison of Prof Sen was surely using an exaggeration to make its article’s headline more shocking, but when some opportunist politicians made him a scapegoat, it becomes a necessity for every sane people to defend him at all costs. Good that Jewish communities of Germany and Turkey have intervened to do it and now there is a chance that he would protect his chair.

    As a conservative politician and the authority whose vote would be crucial for the fate of Prof Sen Armin Laschet, Integration Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, has already voiced his opinion: He wants to sack Prof Sen, but this can be changed.
    * * *
    It is reported today that Britain’s first Muslim minister has used a similar expression.

    Shahid Malik, the minister in the Department for International Development (Dfid), attacked the growing culture of hostility against Muslims in the United Kingdom, saying that many feel targeted like “the Jews of Europe”.

    Proving that the situation of Muslims in Britain in general is similar to Turks in Germany in particular, he says something important:

    “Somehow there’s a message out there that it’s OK to target people as long as it’s Muslims. And you don’t have to worry about the facts, and people will turn a blind eye.”

    Herr Armin Laschet should read Malik’s sentences and understand that if he punishes Prof. Sen, restricting his freedom of expression wrongly, there would be more blind eyes in Germany.

    But even if Prof Sen is ultimately fired, I strongly believe in German courts which would most likely to reinstate him to his job anyway.