Turkish Forum

Tag: Chomsky

  • Turkish prosecutors to investigate academics over Erdoğan petition

    Turkish prosecutors to investigate academics over Erdoğan petition

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    Turkish prosecutors to investigate academics over Erdoğan petition

    All Turkish nationals named in the protest, which was also signed by foreign intellectuals including Noam Chomsky, could face jail if convicted

    Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
    Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had been urged to abandon a military crackdown against Kurdish separatists. Photograph: Kayhan Özer/AP

    Matthew Weaver and agencies

    Turkey has launched an investigation into academics who signed a petitioncriticising the military’s crackdown on Kurdish rebels in the south-east that angered President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

    More than 1,200 academics from 90 Turkish universities calling themselves “Academicians for Peace”, as well as foreign scholars, signed the petition last week calling for an end to the months-long violence.

    Entitled “We won’t be a party to this crime”, the petition urged Ankara to “abandon its deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region”.

    Kaynak: Turkish prosecutors to investigate academics over Erdoğan petition | World news | The Guardian

  • Noam Chomsky urges Turkey to pursue Kurdish peace

    Noam Chomsky urges Turkey to pursue Kurdish peace

    Reuters/Reuters – U.S. linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky pauses while addressing the audience at the National Autonomous University’s Educational Investigation Institute (UNAM) in Mexico City in this September …more

    ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The American left-wing philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky urged Turkey on Friday to end its “malignant” war with Kurdish rebels, saying recent peace efforts offered a real chance of a settlement.

    Chomsky, whose writings have in the past caused trouble for his Turkish publisher, said the growing independence of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and the possibility that Syria’s Kurdish zone could break away if Syria’s civil war worsens meant Turkey must confront its own Kurdish problem fast.

    Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is backing talks with Abdullah Ocalan, head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and says he is sincere about trying to end a war with the PKK that has claimed more than 40,000 lives since 1984.

    “Turkey must find its place if, of course, it can heal its internal sores, and none is more malignant than the perennial Kurdish issue,” Chomsky said in a talk at Bosphorus University.

    “There do appear to be some real prospects with recent negotiations despite criminal efforts to disrupt them,” he academic said, referring to the assassination of three Kurdish activists in Paris last week.

    Chomsky also criticized Turkey’s practice of jailing journalists, especially those from Kurdish media.

    Reporters Without Borders calls Turkey the world’s biggest prison for journalists, with 72 jailed as of December.

    Chomsky’s publisher was accused of violating anti-terrorism laws and “insulting Turkishness” for printing criticism by Chomsky of Turkey’s handling of the fight against the PKK. The cases, stemming from 2002 and 2006, resulted in acquittals.

    Turkey, the United States and the European Union consider the PKK a terrorist organization.

    Chomsky, professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was speaking at a lecture in honor of journalist Hrant Dink, who published an Armenian-Turkish newspaper until his murder on January 19, 2007.

    Chomsky called Dink a “brave martyr of freedom”.

    (Reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Kevin Lif

    via Noam Chomsky urges Turkey to pursue Kurdish peace – Yahoo! News.

  • Noam Chomsky to visit Istanbul on Dink’s death anniversary

    Noam Chomsky to visit Istanbul on Dink’s death anniversary

    YEREVAN, JANUARY 17, ARMENPRESS. On the occasion of the 6th anniversary of Hrant Dink’s death various events are being organized in Turkey. As reports “Armenpress” Armenian “Agos” periodical states that prominent American intellectual, linguist, and historian Noam Chomsky will visit Turkey to partake in Hrant Dink’s commemoration ceremonies.

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    On January 18 renowned American intellectual Noam Chomsky will partake in the conference entitled “Hrant Dink: Human Rights and Freedom of Speech”, which is organized by the Department of Political Science and International Relations of Boğaziçi University in Istanbul.

    Previously “Agos” stated that on the occasion of the 6th anniversary of Hrant Dink’s murder his friends will organize a march dedicated to the memory of the Armenian editor, as they used to do before. The march will launch in Şişli districts of Istanbul at 13:30, January 19 and will go on to the “Agos” editorial house, where Hrant Dink was assassinated. Turkish organization “Say No to Racism and Nationalism” has also announced about organizing special meetings dedicated to Hrant Dink”s memory.

    via Noam Chomsky to visit Istanbul on Dink’s death anniversary | ARMENPRESS Armenian News Agency.

  • Chomsky: EU won’t accept Turkey because of racism

    Chomsky: EU won’t accept Turkey because of racism

    “I always felt Europe was more racist,” Chomsky tells Turkish newspaper; says Turkey has made human rights improvements.Chomsky

    European racism is the main reason why Turkey will not be accepted into the EU, says Noam Chomsky according to Turkish newspaper, Today’s Zaman.

    “Europe can claim with some justification that Turkey has not satisfied all of the human rights conditions. On the other hand, I don’t really think this is the reason. …I think it is plain racism,” Chomsky said in an interview with the newspaper on Sunday.
    RELATED:
    The value of free speech

    Chomsky said a recent statement by German Chancellor Angela Merkel – that Muslims in the country must accept that Germany’s culture is based on Christian and Jewish values – was “a pretty extreme and racist statement from a major political figure in Europe.”

    Germany is one of the European countries which has had a “rightwing backlash against Muslim immigrants” and, “It is the background reason why Turkey is unlikely to be accepted into the EU, even if it meets all the human rights standards,” said Chomsky in Today’s Zaman.

    The newspaper reported that Turkey tried to join the EU in 2005, but the process has been slow amid arguments in Europe that Turkey cannot join the EU because of “cultural differences.”

    Chomsky added that there are worse human rights violators among European countries and pointed to Britain which participated in the war in Iraq.

    “Has Turkey done anything like that? On the contrary, it refused to participate in the invasion. That’s a much higher level of observance of human rights and even international law…I always felt Europe was more racist,” he said.

    The MIT professor visited İstanbul on Friday to participate in an international conference on the freedom of expression, and said he had seen great improvements in Turkey’s approach to human rights, especially in its treatment toward the Kurds.

    Chomsky also commented on the Israeli raid on the Gaza flotilla in May, condemning Israel and saying it can continue to perform such actions because of US support.

    The Jerusalem Post

  • Chomsky on Israel: “Sheer Criminal Aggression, with no Credible Pretext”

    Chomsky on Israel: “Sheer Criminal Aggression, with no Credible Pretext”

    Noam Chomsky on Israel and the Gaza Flotilla Attack: “Sheer Criminal Aggression, with no Credible Pretext”

    CHICAGO, Illinois – June 2 – Professor Noam Chomsky, renowned foreign policy analyst and bestselling author of Hegemony and Survival and most recently of Hopes and Prospects (Haymarket Books) offered the following statement to Egypt’s Al-Ahram regarding Israel’s justification for it’s attack on humanitarian aid boats headed for Gaza and the broader context regarding the economic blockade which the activists aboard the ships were attempting to break. Chomsky, who is Jewish, was recently detained at the Israeli border and barred from entering the West Bank for a planned speaking engagement, provoking an international debate, and outrage over the issue of free speech in Israel.

    Hijacking boats in international waters and killing passengers is, of course, a serious crime.  The editors of the London Guardian are quite right to say that “If an armed group of Somali pirates had yesterday boarded six vessels on the high seas, killing at least 10 passengers and injuring many more, a Nato taskforce would today be heading for the Somali coast.” It is worth bearing in mind that the crime is nothing new.
    For decades, Israel has been hijacking boats in international waters between Cyprus and Lebanon, killing or kidnapping passengers, sometimes bringing them to prisons in Israel including secret prison/torture chambers, sometimes holding them as hostages for many years.

    Israel assumes that it can carry out such crimes with impunity because the US tolerates them and Europe generally follows the US lead.
    Much the same is true of Israel’s pretext for its latest crime: that the Freedom Flotilla was bringing materials that could be used for bunkers for rockets.  Putting aside the absurdity, if Israel were interested in stopping Hamas rockets it knows exactly how to proceed: accept Hamas offers for a cease-fire.  In June 2008, Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire agreement.  The Israeli government formally acknowledges that until Israel broke the agreeement on November 4, invading Gaza and killing half a dozen Hamas activists, Hamas did not fire a single rocket. Hamas offered to renew the cease-fire.  The Israeli cabinet considered the offer and rejected it, preferring to launch its murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead on December 27.  Evidently, there is no justification for the use of force “in self-defense” unless peaceful means have been exhausted.  In this case they were not even tried, although—or perhaps because—there was every reason to suppose that they would succeed.  Operation Cast Lead is therefore sheer criminal aggression, with no credible pretext, and the same is true of Israel’s current resort to force.

    The siege of Gaza itself does not have the slightest credible pretext.  It was imposed by the US and Israel in January 2006 to punish Palestinians because they voted “the wrong way” in a free election, and it was sharply intensified in July 2007 when Hamas blocked a US-Israeli attempt to overthrow the elected government in a military coup, installing Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan.  The siege is savage and cruel, designed to keep the caged animals barely alive so as to fend off international protest, but hardly more than that.  It is the latest stage of long-standing Israeli plans, backed by the US, to separate Gaza from the West Bank.

    These are only the bare outlines of very ugly policies, in which Egypt is complicit as well.

  • Chomsky: Palestine and the region in the Obama era: the emerging framework.

    Chomsky: Palestine and the region in the Obama era: the emerging framework.

    Date: 29.10.09
    Time: 14:00
    Location: Logan Hall, Institute of Education, Bedford Way
    Speakers:
    Prof. Noam Chomsky – Professor Emeritus in Linguistics at MIT; world renowned author and leading intellectual
    Tariq Ali – Historian, Author and well known political commentator

    The Imperial College Political Philosophy Society, in association with Palestine societies at UCL, SOAS, Goldsmiths, LSE, Imperial and Kings, proudly present one of the greatest political philosophers of all time: MIT Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky, for what could be his last trip to London.

    The Imperial College Political Philosophy Society

    To Watch the video:

    Chomsky: Palestine and the region in the Obama era: the emerging framework. from ICU Political Philosophy Society on Vimeo.

    Chomsky: Palestine and the region in the Obama era: the emerging framework. from ICU Political Philosophy Society on Vimeo.