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Tag: Recep Tayyip Erdogan

12th president of Turkey

NEO-CONS AND GENOCIDE-DENYING CORRUPT LACKEY POLITICIANS SHOULD BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

By Appo Jabarian

USA Armenian Life Magazine
March 24, 2010

In early March, the political wrangling between the righteous and
corrupt politicians in Washington before, during and after the voting
by the House Foreign affairs committee sparked a series of articles
critical of genocide-denying corrupt U.S. politicians both in the
House and the White House.

In a 12 March article in Huffington Post, Stephen Zunes wrote that
failure to acknowledge the genocide “is a tragic affront to the
rapidly dwindling number of genocide survivors as well as their
descendents. It’s also a disservice to the many Turks who opposed
the Ottoman Empire’s policies and tried to stop the genocide, as
well as the growing number of Turks today who face imprisonment by
their U.S.-backed regime for daring to publicly concede the crimes
of their forebears. For example, Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist
who … was prosecuted and fled into exile to escape death threats
after making a number of public references to the genocide.

“Some opponents of the resolution argue that it is pointless for
Congress to pass resolutions regarding historical events.

Yet there were no such complaints regarding resolutions commemorating
the Holocaust, nor are there normally complaints regarding the
scores of dedicatory resolutions passed by Congress in recent years,”
added Zunes.

Opponents of the resolution also falsely argue that its passage by the
Congress can harm the U.S.-Turkey relations. “The United States has
done much greater harm in its relations with Turkey through policies
far more significant than a symbolic resolution acknowledging a
tragic historical period. The United States clandestinely backed
an attempted military coup by right-wing Turkish officers in 2003,
arming Iraqi and Iranian Kurds with close ties to Kurdish rebels in
Turkey who have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Turkish
citizens. The United States also invaded neighboring Iraq. As a result,
the percentage of Turks who view the United States positively declined
from 52 percent to only 9 percent,” asserted Zunes.

The Obama administration, also controlled by the neo-cons, insists that
“this is a bad time to upset the Turkish government.

However, it was also considered a ‘bad time’ to pass the resolution
back in 2007, on the grounds that it not jeopardize U.S. access to
Turkish bases as part of efforts to support the counter-insurgency
war by U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. It was also considered a ‘bad
time’ when a similar resolution was put forward in 2000 because the
United States was using its bases in Turkey to patrol the ‘no fly
zones’ in northern Iraq. And it was also considered a ‘bad time’
in 1985 and 1987, when similar resolutions were put forward because
U.S. bases in Turkey were considered important listening posts for
monitoring the Soviet Union during the Cold War. For deniers of the
Armenian genocide, it’s always a ‘bad time,’” he pointed out.

In 1981, at a time when the neo-cons failed to control the White
House, President Ronald Reagan brushed off strong diplomatic protests
from Turkey and used the term genocide in relation to Armenians,
yet U.S.-Turkish relations did not suffer.

How come U.S. acknowledgement of the Jewish Holocaust does NOT upset
the German government, which also hosts critical U.S. bases?

“Obama is sending a message to future tyrants that they can commit
genocide without acknowledgement by the world’s most powerful
country.” In 1994, the Clinton administration “refused to use the word
‘genocide’ in the midst of the Rwandan government’s massacres of over
half that country’s Tutsi population, a decision that contributed to
the delay in deploying international peacekeeping forces until after
the slaughter of 800,000 people. … The Obama administration’

s
position on the Armenian genocide isn’t simply about whether to
commemorate a tragedy that took place 95 years ago. It’s about where
we stand as a nation in facing up to the most horrible of crimes,”
confronted Zunes.

In a March 16 HuffingtonPost.com article, titled “Why the Armenian
Genocide Matters,”, Writer of words and music, rider of waves, world
traveler Robbie Gennet wrote: “You may ask yourself why the Armenian
genocide currently matters, or more accurately, why Turkey is so
resolute against it being recognized as such. One would think after
almost a hundred years, an official apology for killing or displacing
2 million Armenians would be a welcome and long overdue occasion for
Turkey to make peace with Armenia. … Germany has made great steps to
publicly acknowledge and profusely apologize for the Jewish Holocaust,
even paying reparations, making holocaust denial and the display of
symbols of Nazism a criminal offense and establishing a National
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Berlin. But Turkey? They won’t even
allow the US to label the Armenian genocide as such or acknowledge
it in any way. Here is why: land.”

She outlined: “Take a look at a map of pre-genocide Armenia here, here
and here. What you will notice is that a huge chunk of what is now
Turkey was then considered Armenia. If the 1915 Turkish actions were
indeed recognized as a genocide, current day Armenia could potentially
petition for the return of its land. Note that this may even include
the area known as Cilicia, a separate but ethnically connected entity
bordering the Mediterranean Sea that dates back to the Kingdom of
Cilician Armenia in the early part of the second Millenium. These
historically grounded lands could rightfully be considered Armenian if
they could establish that they were unlawfully taken from them via the
genocide. The evidence is there and so is the history. Armenia itself
was officially named way back in 512 BC when it was annexed to Persia,
while Cilicia was established as a principality it 1078. After years
of struggle under Turkish, Kurdish and Mongol rule, the Ottoman Empire
ruled Armenia from 1453-1829, after which the Russian Empire ruled
through the rest of the 19th century. After the Genocide and WWI,
what’s left of Armenia was annexed by Bolshevist Russia and became
part of the Soviet Union from 1922-1991, after which Armenia declared
its independence. But let’s back up for a moment for a glimpse at
what happened during WWI”.

She revealed: “In 1913, three so-called Young Turks took over the
Turkish government via a coup with a goal of uniting all of the
Turkic peoples in the region and creating a new Turkish empire called
Turan with one language and one religion. They wanted to expand their
borders eastward but standing in their way was historic Armenia. Hence,
the Armenian Genocide.”

Gennet asserted: “Judging from Turkey’s recalcitrance to discuss or
acknowledge it, that stain may never go away. But that doesn’t mean
it will ever be forgotten, no matter how much Turkey wishes it would
fade into history. Though they would like to take advantage of the
world’s collective amnesia, the internet has made it impossible to
forget and erase” the facts of the genocide by Turkey. In answer to
Adolph Hitler’s infamous quote, “Who still talks nowadays about the
Armenians?” she rebutted: “We all do, Mr. Hitler, and long after your
genocidal dreams have faded, long after the last survivors of those
inflicted generations have passed, they will not be forgotten.”

Turkish writer Lale Kemal interestingly wrote in Today’s Zaman:
“Turkey has currently been paying the price of sweeping under the
carpet its chronic and historic problems, such as the events of 1915,
in which, it is claimed, over 1 million Armenians were subjected
to a genocide campaign under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, the
predecessor to modern Turkey. … The Armenian Diaspora has moved
tobring this topic to the agenda of the Spanish Parliament after the
regional Catalonian Parliament passed a bill recognizing the events
as Armenian genocide. … The adoption of the genocide resolution
by the Committee on Foreign Affairs has already set an encouraging
example for Sweden to be followed by Britain.”

Speaking of the Turkish-occupied Armenian lands, Kemal wrote: “But
Ankara believes that adoption of such a resolution by the full US House
would have a snowball effect, raising the danger that Armenians will
initiate legal measures seeking land and compensation from Ankara.”

“While awareness of anti-Semitism is fortunately widespread enough
to marginalize those who refuse to acknowledge the Holocaust,
tolerance for anti-Armenian bigotry appears strong enough that it’s
still considered politically acceptable to deny their genocide,”
lamented Zunes.

The U.S. congressional mid-term elections in November is the number
one source for pre-occupation among the incumbent congressional
candidates in battle-ground districts and states.

Armenian Americans and their friends across the nation should move to
politically punish the deniers. Denial of the crime of any genocide –
from Turkish-occupied Western Armenia and Cilicia to Darfur, should
be made politically unaffordable. The neo-cons and their lackeys do
not understand the language of morality. But they readily comprehend
the language of deterrence.

March 26, 2010
More than 100 protesters took to the streets of Istanbul on Friday, March 19, 10

demonsration against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul on March 19, 2010

Ermeni forumlarindan ulasan bilgiler:

Turks Forum <turksforum.nl@gmail.com>

A demonsrator holds a placard reading ”You are not alone” during a demonsration against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul on March 19, 2010. Protestors took the streets accusing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of racism over his threat to deport illegal Armenian workers in a row over the recognition of Armenian claims of a genocide by Ottoman Turks.
Photograph by: Bulent Kilic, AFP/Getty Images

. com/news/ Turks+protest+ Armenian+ deportation+ threat/2703368/ story.html
tar.com/news/ Turks+protest+ Armenian+ deportation+ threat/2703368/ story.html
http://rawstory. com/news/ afp/More_ than_100_ protest_Turkish_ PM_s__03192010. html

Agence France-Presse – March 19, 2010 4:03 PM

A demonsrator (C) holds up a placard that reads, “You are not alone”‘ during a demonsration on Istiklal Avenue, in Istanbul. More than 100 protestors took to the streets of Istanbul Friday, accusing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of racism over his threat to deport illegal Armenian workers.
e.ca/Article. aspx?ID=77481&L=en

ISTANBUL – More than 100 protesters took to the streets of Istanbul Friday, accusing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of racism over his threat to deport illegal Armenian workers.

Between 100-150 demonstrators marched along the Istiklal Avenue, the main commercial street on the European side of the city, carrying banners with the inscription “You are not Alone” in Turkish, English, Armenian and Kurdish, an AFP photographer said.

“Tayyip should be deported! A world without nations, borders and classes,” chanted the demonstrators gathered at the call of a non-governmental organization campaigning for immigrants’ rights.

A statement, distributed to the press, accused Erdogan of treating Armenian immigrants as a pawn in Ankara’s protests against some foreign parliament’s recognition of Armenian claims of genocide by Ottoman Turks.

“We strongly condemn Erdogan . . . and those who share his racist and discriminatory mentality,” the statement added.

The demonstration ended peacefully.

In comments criticized at home and abroad, Erdogan said his government could expel thousands of illegal Armenian workers if foreign parliaments continue to pass votes branding the World War I-era massacres of Armenians as genocide.

Resolutions recently voted to that effect in the United States and Sweden “adversely affect our sincere attitude” towards illegal Armenians, Erdogan told the BBC Turkish service on Tuesday.

“There are 170,000 Armenians in my country. Of these, 70,000 are citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000 . . . If necessary, I may have to tell them to go back to their country . . . I am not obliged to keep them here,” he charged.

The exact number of illegal Armenians in Turkey are unknown, but researchers say there are between 10,000 to 20,000 of them, adding that Turkish authorities tend to inflate the figures to put pressure on Armenia.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin perished in a systematic extermination campaign during 1915-1918 as the Ottoman Empire fell apart.Turkey categorically reject the genocide label and argues that the toll is grossly inflated.

March 25, 2010
The Gulen Movement: Paradigms,Projects, and Aspirations

From: <alerts@conferencealerts.com>

The Gulen Movement: Paradigms,Projects, and Aspirations
11 to 13 November 2010
Chicago, United States

The Divinity School at the University of Chicago, in conjunction
with Niagara Foundation, as part of its continuous commitment
to ground breaking research and critical reflection, announces
an interdisciplinary conference.

The deadline for abstracts/proposals is 15 June 2010.

Enquiries: coordinator@chicagogulenconference.org
Web address:
Sponsored by: University of Chicago Divinity School and Niagara
Foundation

—————————————————————-
This announcement is distributed via Conference Alerts.
We aim to provide correct and reliable information about
upcoming events, but cannot accept responsibility for the text
of announcements or for the bona fides of event organizers.
Please feel free to contact us if you notice incorrect or
misleading information and we will attempt to correct it.
—————————————————————-

March 23, 2010
Turkey’s state-dominated past goes up in smoke

The protests in Ankara have been going on since December

By Jonathan Head
BBC News, Ankara

Kenan and his colleagues huddled around a wood-fired stove, rubbing their hands to ward off Ankara’s bitter winter chill, and sipping tea.

They were angry, so angry that it was difficult to get them to speak one at a time.

“Our prime minister is crazy”, said Kenan, “he’s such a bully. You can’t run a state like this.”

The seven men in Kenan’s tent were tobacco workers from Izmir.

All around them, filling Sakarya Street – normally the site of central Ankara’s main market – were other tents, each from a different district of Turkey.

Adana, Adiyaman, Batman, Bitlis… more than 50 places represented in all.

The protest started in December when the government announced that more than 10,000 workers, in what was left of the once-dominant state tobacco monopoly Tekel, would lose their jobs.

Most are manual labourers from the tobacco distribution centres – the state-owned tobacco processing factories were privatised and sold to British American Tobacco two years ago.

Sustained protest

The remaining workers have been offered alternative employment in the state sector, but only on short-term contracts, without benefits and at much lower wages.

The state’s role should be to provide basic services, and the word ‘basic’ is important here

Bulent Gedikli
Economic advisor and MP

With thousands joining their regular street protests, it has been the most sustained industrial unrest to confront the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he was first elected in 2002.

A group of men from Batman in the south-east explained what this meant for them.

“My salary is 1,400 lira ($950) a month”, said one.

“Under the new contract I would get only half that. They give us 11-month contracts so we never know if we will have a job the next year. We cannot see any clear future for ourselves.”

The government argues that it is being generous in conceding even this much.

After all, it points out, unemployment has hit 14% in Turkey, and millions of people earn even less than the salaries these tobacco workers are being offered.

Driven by business

“The state should not be a manager, it should not be involved in trade or running companies”, says Bulent Gedikli, a member of parliament from the governing AK Party (AKP) and an economic advisor to the prime minister.

“The state’s role should be to provide basic services, and the word ‘basic’ is important here.”

The AKP’s new headquarters towers over its surroundings

From its shiny new headquarters that towers over the squat, 1930s buildings of Ankara, the AK Party is projecting a very different vision of Turkey than the one envisioned by the country’s founding father, Ataturk.

Often described as Islamist because of the conservative religious habits of its leaders, the party is actually driven at least as much by business as by faith.

Prime Minister Erdogan is more of a Margaret Thatcher than an Ayatollah Khomeini.

“The AKP is in favour of the market, against state enterprises – they have a prejudice that everything the market does is proper and just and successful”, says Professor Burhan Sanatalar, an economist at Istanbul’s Bilgi University.

“The revenue side is also very important to them”, he says.

“From the 1980s to 2008 privatization generated around $36bn, and 70% of that has been received during the AKP’s period in government.”

“Statism”

The AKP’s approach has helped generate impressive economic growth over the past decade, and spawned hundreds of successful new private businesses.

Tekel workers say they will no longer vote for the AKP

But in a country where the state has dominated so much of life since the founding of the Turkish republic 87 years ago, it has also come as a shock to many Turks.

Back in 1931 Ataturk announced his “Six Arrows” – the six principles that he believed should underpin the character of the nation.

One was “statism”, a belief that the state should play a leading role in Turkey’s economic development.

Even as late as the mid-1990s, more than half a million people were employed by state enterprises, about 20% of the industrial workforce.

One of the areas brought under state management was tobacco and alcohol, in the huge monopoly known as Tekel.

Once the country’s most important agricultural crop, by 1980 the tobacco monopoly employed more than 50,000 people.

However that number dropped as the government sold off manufacturing plants to multinational corporations.

Ataturk and raki

Not far from where the Tekel workers were holding their sit-in, stands the first factory built in Ankara on the orders of Ataturk, at the start of his mission to modernise and industrialise his country.

Now it is deserted, awaiting a buyer. But you can still see the giant wooden barrels that indicate what it once was – a Tekel distillary.

The Tekel distillery – now deserted – was Ankara’s first factory

A keen drinker of raki – an aniseed spirit popular in Turkey – Ataturk’s choice for his country’s first step into the industrial age also reflected his determination to push back the influence of Islam.

Upstairs they still preserve the rooms, and their art deco furniture, where the great man used to sit with his friends and colleagues, drinking and planning his new state.

You can hold the large tin ladle with which he sampled the produce.

Back on Sakarya Street, the last beneficiaries of that statist dream queued up at soup kitchens set up by volunteers to support the protest.

A few days after my visit they suspended their sit-in, still hoping to wring more concessions from the government.

The wave of public sympathy for the Tekel workers has certainly caught the government off-guard, but it will not budge from its basic position.

The workers will lose their health and other benefits, and they will lose their job security.

Many of the disillusioned Tekel employees say they voted for the AKP in the last two elections – never again, they say.

But they are a diminishing force in today’s Turkey.

The days when millions of Turks could expect the state to look after them seem to be over.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8579872.stm

March 23, 2010
Turkey’s Political Revolution
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

OPINION EUROPE MARCH 22, 2010

Ankara’s civil-military struggle has global significance

By MORTON ABRAMOWITZ AND HENRI J. BARKEY

An unprecedented political drama has been unfolding in Turkey, leading toward the elimination of military tutelage over the country’s political life. Prosecutors recently arrested some of Turkey’s most senior military leaders, both active and retired.

How this civil-military struggle evolves is critically important for Turkey’s future, but also has global significance. If the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is successful in tapering Turkey’s escalating political polarization, avoiding petty religious issues, and enhancing its own democracy, the impact in the Islamic world, however intangible, could be enormous. Turkey’s friends can help by both making it clear where they stand, and by holding AKP’s feet to the fire.

Shortly after the 2002 AKP electoral victory, elements of the Turkish military, including senior commanders, began worrying that the AKP would transform Turkey from the secular democracy inherited from Ataturk to a more religious and authoritarian state. Some, as we now know, began plotting against the new government. Their fears turned out to be correct, not because the AKP has turned Turkey into an Islamic state—it has not and is not likely to—but because it has gone very far in eliminating the military’s role in Turkish political life. That is an extraordinary achievement, although it is not AKP’s alone. Rather, it is the result of a profound and long-coming societal change—namely, the emergence of a conservative and pious middle class.

Shaken by the arrests, a tough response from the Turkish military cannot be ruled out. Senior judges and prosecutors remain squarely in the military’s camp even if their subordinates do not, and the military may rely on the Turkish judiciary to somehow check the AKP, as it has tried to do before. Even if that succeeds, it would be a Pyrrhic victory and, in the end, be unlikely to change the course of Turkish politics’ steady civilianization. The Turkish military will, of course, not lose its importance. It is a formidable force in an unstable area and Turks cherish its patriotism and its contributions to the country’s security. It will retain much of its independence and remain a thorn in the side of the AKP. But its days as a kingmaker of governments are coming to an end.

The military’s past attempts at interfering in political issues, ranging from the selection of the president to judicial processes, have served to undermine its own legitimacy, while helping the AKP win a second electoral victory in 2007. Still, the paralysis and distraction engendered by the court cases against the military have also taken a toll on the AKP. The party remains the most popular and powerful, but it is more vulnerable than ever, with its poll numbers dropping.

The AKP has done much to modernize and democratize Turkey—something only a pious and conservative party could have achieved. However, its increasingly combative style and its modus operandi of picking domestic fights rather than carrying out meaningful economic and political reforms have helped reduce its popularity. Its all-powerful prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has turned into an increasingly authoritarian leader, contemptuous of criticism. Mr. Erdogan’s proclaimed activist foreign policy in the Middle East, especially his softness on the Iranian nuclear program and harshness on Israel, has won him domestic and occasional foreign plaudits, but it has also contributed to his sense of invincibility. Neither will his international efforts, however popular at home, compensate for rising unemployment and stalled reform efforts. A party cannot live by foreign policy alone, especially when it also sets the stage for serious overreaching and the alienation of friends and allies. Mr. Erdogan’s remarkable outburst threatening to expel all “100,00 Armenians living illegally in Turkey” in retaliation for the adoption of resolutions in some countries recognizing the 1915 Armenian Genocide, is likely to call into question Turkey’s sincerity in reconciling with its neighbor Armenia, and has even earned him criticism at home.

Turks will make up their own minds about how to deal with the AKP. Turkey’s tragedy has been the absence of a serious opposition to challenge the AKP. The resulting vacuum has usually been filled by the military. The inability of the opposition to focus effectively on economic or judicial reforms may be a major boon to the ruling party, but it has seriously undermined Turkish democracy.

Despite Turkey’s impressive strides under AKP rule and the praise it has received from the West, the U.S. and other Western countries still have to put their money where their mouths are. While a genuinely free-market party, the AKP is not a liberal party in the traditional sense—Mr. Erdogan rules his party with an iron fist. Nor does the AKP appear to have much time for the needs of those who oppose it. It has ignored the legitimate fears of pro-secular groups, especially women, and it is intent on subduing the media rather than reforming it. It has also yet to effectively tackle the major cleavages in Turkish life: It made a start on the Kurdish issue but has lost its appetite; has long ignored the need to overhaul its authoritarian constitution and unfair election practices; and has failed to make clear to the public whether it is a truly secular party, as it proclaims.

Turkey will only move forward if the AKP reshapes itself and acts on its promises to make Turkey a better-functioning democracy. That will not be easy, since politics in Turkey have been a zero-sum game this past decade. The West has praised the AKP until now, but it does Turks no favors by shying away from declaring that major changes are essential for Turkey to be a part of the EU and the wider democratic world. If the AKP doesn’t hear and heed that message, it may engender precisely what Turkey’s Western friends would loathe to see: The re-emergence of an authoritarian society, or even the military’s political comeback.

Mr. Abramowitz, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, was American Ambassador to Turkey from 1989 to 1991. Mr. Barkey is a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a professor of international relations at Lehigh University.
March 22, 2010
Turkey to lodge lawsuit against states, recognizing Armenian genocide

03/22/2010

Turkish oppositional parties’ MPs from National Unity and Republican People’s Party intend to come up with a lawsuit against the states, that recognized Armenian Genocide of 1915 in Ottoman Empire, Turkish Hurriyet reads.

The final decision on the matter should be made by Turkish government, that is yet silent.

According to the Republican MP Sukru Elekdag, international court should give a precise response to Turkey about its fault. He reckons that both countries’ parliaments break assumption of innocence, accusing Turkey of the genocide: “I suppose that if we achieve the international out-of-court settlement, extensive work should be done to establish our case.”

He deems the states, that already recognized the fact of genocide should realize the meaning of the word and determine whether one state can accuse the other of such a crime.

S.T.

News from Armenia – NEWS.am

March 22, 2010