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Tag: Recep Tayyip Erdogan

12th president of Turkey

  • Erdogan Tells WSJ Ready to Sign Protocols, Regardless of Moldova Outcome

    Erdogan Tells WSJ Ready to Sign Protocols, Regardless of Moldova Outcome

    ERDOGAN3

    ANKARA (WSJ)–The Wall Street Journal Tuesday afternoon reported that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an interview that the signing of the Armenia-Turkey protocols was not dependent on progress of talks to be held Thursday in Moldova between the Armenian and Azeri presidents.

    “The agreement will be signed on Oct. 10. It doesn’t have anything to do with what happens in Moldova,” Erdogan told the Wall Street Journal Sunday.

    Erdogan also said the two processes — a resolution of the Karabakh conflict and rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia — remain linked, and that a positive outcome in Moldova would help overall. Turkish officials have continued to indicate the border could take longer to open than the three months set out in the three-page protocol.

    The Turkish leader said the only obstacle to signing the deal on Saturday would come if Armenia seeks to alter the text. “This is perhaps the most important point — that Armenia should not allow its policies to be taken hostage by the Armenian diaspora,” Mr. Erdogan said. Much of Armenia’s large diaspora opposes the protocol.

    A spokesman for Armenia President Serzh Sarkisian declined to comment on whether Armenia would seek changes to the protocol. He said the government would make a statement on “steps” concerning the protocol soon.

    Visit www.wsj.com for the complete article.

  • (ECO) ISTANBUL IS A BRIDGE BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS, ERDOGAN

    (ECO) ISTANBUL IS A BRIDGE BETWEEN CIVILIZATIONS, ERDOGAN

    ETurkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday Istanbul was a bridge not only between continents but also between civilizations, cultures, economies and commercial regions.Speaking at the inauguration of the annual meetings of IMF and World Bank in Istanbul, Erdogan said that he welcomed all to Turkey and Istanbul with warm regards. Turkey and Istanbul hosted the annual meetings of IMF and World Bank in
    1955. Turkey hosts the meetings again after 54 years. I would like to express the happiness of my people and myself over welcoming you, the distinguished guests, to Istanbul one more time, Erdogan said.
    I hope that the meetings in Istanbul would be beneficial at a time when we
    are going through a critical process as far as global economy is concerned,
    Erdogan underlined. You are now on lands that invented the first currency in history. I would like to use this opportunity to remind you that you are also in a city that spreads on two continents, Erdogan said. The Bosphorus Strait connects Asia to Europe. I am confident that the city
    of Istanbul, a city which unites civilizations, cultures and economies, will be
    the host for a meeting that will leave a mark on the global economy and will help us bring together our strengths and experiences, Erdogan said.Erdogan stressed that strong policy measures have yielded positive results
    in the world. This is a pleasing development. However, we must not let go precautions in our economies, Erdogan said.There is a need to re-evaluate the distribution of roles and responsibilities in the global economy, Erdogan noted.
    I, once again, want to welcome you all to Turkey and Istanbul and hope that
    you will enjoy the beauties of an unique city Istanbul, Erdogan also said.

    AA

  • Turkish- and Armenian-American reactions to protocols

    Turkish- and Armenian-American reactions to protocols

    From: Javid Huseynov [javid@azeris.com ]

    I think the reactions shown by Turkish-American and Armenian-American organizations to protocols reveal some important structural differences worth noting.

    Turkish-American organizations (much like Azeri-American ones, by the way) remain strongly in line with the concurrent foreign policy of originating nation (i.e., Turkey, Azerbaijan, etc.). This is the most fundamental deficiency in diaspora, inability to have an independent decision making mechanism based solely on community’s view and thinking. Ultimately, such approach visibly turns diaspora into another tool of executing the foreign policy of home government, makes organizations dependent (including economically) on foreign country, lowers their significance in influencing the politics of the host nation, the United States.

    The reaction of Armenian diaspora shows exactly the opposite. It’s a strong and independent decision-making unit, able to influence the foreign policy of the United States, independently of Armenia, with or without its existence, and Sarkisian calculated this well too. Unlike Turkish reaction, the Armenian approach is driven by ideology and “soft power” not by state’s foreign policy, which makes Armenians so much more successful in achieving their goals on every front. And I hope both Turkish- and Azeri-American organizations can learn from this experience and have their own voice in future.

  • Abandoning Ataturk

    Abandoning Ataturk


    Soner Cagaptay
    Newsweek
    September 19, 2009

    In the 18th and 19th centuries, the Ottoman Empire, having suffered military defeats at the hands of Europe, realized it could match its rivals only by becoming a European society itself. So it embarked on a program of intense reforms. In 1863, Sultan Abdulaziz established Darussafaka, the empire’s first high school with a secular Western curriculum in Turkish. In the early 20th century, Kemal Ataturk followed through on the sultan’s dreams, making Turkey a staunchly secular state. Institutions such as Darussafaka, my alma mater, thrived.

    Not now. Last month, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) decided to start a training academy for imams in Darussafaka’s iconic, 130-year-old former campus, abandoned by Darussafaka for a new facility in 1994. Such a step would have been unfathomable even two years ago. But it’s a sign of how the era of Ataturk and Abdulaziz is coming to an end.

    Since coming to power in 2002, the Islamist AKP has transformed Turkey. Bureaucrats in Ankara now feel compelled to attend prayers lest they be bypassed for promotions. Religious observance has become a necessity for those seeking government appointments or lucrative state contracts. The AKP firmly controls the country’s executive and legislative branches and is extending its power by appointing sympathetic judges, university presidents, and the heads of major civil organizations. The party has used legal loopholes to raise the share of Turkey’s media held by pro-AKP businessmen from 20 percent to about 50 percent.

    The increasingly marginalized secular elite is largely to blame for its own downfall. After 1946, when Turkey became a multiparty democracy, the country ran on autopilot. Turkey’s secular establishment grew fatigued and stopped doing what it takes to maintain popular support. After the collapse of communism, Turkey’s working and lower-middle classes largely abandoned the left. Rather than cultivate them, secular parties waited for the masses to come to them. The AKP, by contrast, went to the people, establishing a vast, Tammany Hall-style network to distribute jobs and benefits while preaching traditional Islamist values. The result was its historic 2002 victory.

    Ataturk’s followers also neglected key institutions. Consider Darus-safaka. After the school moved to a new campus in the suburbs in 1994, the elite let the handsome, 19th-century buildings with a Bosporus view lay fallow for 15 years. Not one secular business, NGO, or university took interest in them.

    And consider the media. While nonreligious and liberal Turks continue to rely on newspapers — the old media — to get their message out, the Islamists have taken over the new. They now dominate the Internet, using a proliferating number of sites to spin news with an anti-Western and pro-AKP twist. This helps shape ordinary Turks’ attitudes. When the global economy collapsed in 2008, for example, these Web sites placed blame for the crisis on a supposed transfer by Lehman Brothers of $40 billion to Israel. Islamist Web sites have also played a major role in shaping the debate around the Ergenekon case, branding liberal and secular opposition figures as “terrorists” for allegedly supporting a coup plot against the AKP government and intimidating some into submission.

    Not only do Turkey’s secular forces seem to regard politics as a 9-to-5 job, they also lack a positive vision. The AKP, on the other hand, works around the clock. And while they may seek to undermine Ataturk’s reforms, no one can accuse the Islamists of lacking vision.

    This doesn’t mean that secular Turks should give up the game. Instead, they need to learn from their opponents. This means reengaging in retail politics, from grassroots activism to canvassing to voter drives. Secular Turks also need to assert a positive vision for their country’s future. In years past, the sultans, and then Ataturk, used Europe as their model. Secular Turks must update this vision today, defining a liberal, 21st-century Turkey. And they must make that vision more appealing than the AKP’s; otherwise, the people will choose the Islamists. And who can blame them?

    Soner Cagaptay is a senior fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute.

    View this op-ed on our website.
  • ERGENEKON – Dangerous Intrigues in Istanbul

    ERGENEKON – Dangerous Intrigues in Istanbul

    Eric Margolis

    Veteran journalist and Author

    Posted: September 15, 2009 03:28 PM
    Read More: Ataturk, Ergenekon, European Union, Istanbul, Istanbul-Floods, Turkey, Turkey Floods, Turkey Trial, Turkish Muslisms, World News

    The name “Ergenekon” may not be familiar to non-Turks, but this murky political affaire has riveted Turkey’s 70 million people.

    Thirty-three members of a neo-fascist group called Ergenekon have been on trial, accused of murder, terrorism, and trying to overthrow the elected government. The trial was temporarily suspended after the courthouse was flooded out during torrential rains that inundated Istanbul last week, leaving 31 dead.

    This fascinating trial has been exposing the workings of the `deep state,’ a powerful cabal of retired and active military officers, security forces, gangsters, government officials, judges, and business oligarchs that has long been the real power in this complex nation.

    Turkey’s military vigorously denies any links to the Ergenekon.

    The `deep state’ advocates extreme Turkish nationalism and revived Pan-Turkism, or Turanism, the unification of all Turkic peoples from Turkey to the Great Wall of China.

    Its extreme right-wing members are bitterly anti-Islamic, and violently oppose any admission of guilt for the mass killing during World War I of many of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenians. Most Turks insist the killings occurred in the chaos of war and insurrection. Armenians call it the 20th century’s first genocide.

    Turkey’s hard right also opposes improving relations with neighbors Armenia and Greece, or making any more concessions to Turkey’s sizable Kurdish minority.

    Ergenekon’s plotters stand accused of plans to assassinate officials of PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Part(AKP), a democratic, modernizing movement advocating Islamic principles of fairer wealth distribution and social welfare.

    While AKP is a moderate, centrist party, Turkey’s secularists, without any serious evidence, claim it is the spearhead of a radical Islamic movement. The real issue is as much about the secularist’s right to protect their long-enjoyed economic and social privileges as it is about religion.

    The plotters reportedly hired hit men to kill leading liberal intellectuals, including acclaimed writer, Orhan Pamuk, and may have murdered a prominent Armenian-Turkish journalist and three Christians. They also oppose Turkey’s entry into the EU as a threat to `Turkishness.’

    What makes this case particularly interesting is that Ergenekon may well be linked to Gladio, a secret, far right underground group created in the 1950s by the US and NATO during the Cold War as a `stay behind’ guerrillas to resist Soviet invasion or Communist takeovers. Gladio had a network of agents and caches of arms across Europe with secret links to NATO intelligence services.

    Gladio staged numerous bombing attacks and assassinations during the 1970s and ’80s in a effort to promote far right coups in Italy, Belgium, and Turkey, where it remains active.
    A cell was even recently uncovered in Switzerland.

    In Italy, Gladio members played a key role in the P2 Masonic Lodge’s plot to overthrow the government. The Vatican’s Banco Ambrosiano, its head, Roberto Calvi, and Italian military intelligence, were also involved this intrigue.

    The Ergenekon plot is one facet of the intense struggle between Erdogan’s Islamist-lite reformists and Turkey’s 510,000-man armed forces which sees itself as defender of the anti-religious, westernized secular state created in the 1930’s by Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey.

    Turkey’s generals are closely allied to the deeply entrenched secularist oligarchy of business barons, judges, university rectors, media groups, and the security services that has made Ataturk’s memory and anti-religious values into a state philosophy.

    Turkey’s right-wing generals have overthrown three governments and ousted a fourth. The Turkish military establishment is traditionally close to the US and Israel, with whom it’s had extensive military, arms and intelligence dealings.

    Until PM Erdogan’s election, the military was Turkey’s real government behind a thin façade of squabbling elected politicians, a fact lost on western observers who used to urge Turkey’s “democratic” political model on the Muslim world.

    An intensifying struggle is under way between the two camps. On the surface, it’s “secularism versus Islamic government.” But that’s just shorthand for the fierce rivalry between the military-industrial-security complex and Erdogan’s supporters, many of whom are recent immigrants to the big cities from rural areas, where Islam remains vital in spite of eight decades of government efforts to stamp it out or tightly control it.

    Right-wing forces recently got allies in the Appeals Court to lay spurious corruption charges against Turkey’s respected President, Abdullah Gul. The Erdogan government struck back by levying a US $2.5 billion tax fine on the powerful Dogan media conglomerate that has been a fierce critic and enemy of the prime minister. Both foolish acts injure Turkey’s image as a modern democracy.

    Erdogan has been Turkey’s best, most popular prime minister. He has enacted important political, social, legal and economic reforms, and has drawn Turks closer to Europe’s laws and values. He stabilized Turkey’s formerly wild finances and brought a spirit of real democracy to Turkey. The EU keeps warning Turkey’s growling generals to keep out of politics.

    After 50 years of trying, Turkey still can’t get into the European Union. Europe clearly wants an obedient Turkey to protect its eastern flank and fend off more troublesome Muslims, but not an equal partner and certainly not a new member, even though Turkey is as qualified for the EU as Bulgaria or Romania.

    Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s Nicholas Sarkozy, both leaders of Europe’s anti-Muslim right, keep saying no to the Turks. The EU wants no more farmers – and productive, lower cost ones at that – and no more Muslims.

    • Turkey
    • European Union
    The name “Ergenekon” may not be familiar to non-Turks, but this murky political affaire has riveted Turkey’s 70 million people. Thirty-three members of a neo-fascist group called Ergenekon have be…
    The name “Ergenekon” may not be familiar to non-Turks, but this murky political affaire has riveted Turkey’s 70 million people. Thirty-three members of a neo-fascist group called Ergenekon have be…

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  • Erdogan Puts Turkey on the Move

    Erdogan Puts Turkey on the Move

    Whether it’s handling the Kurdish question, trade with Iraq, internal security, or other issues, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is working hard in many arenas, offering Turkey’s leadership in the region, and enhancing life for the Turks, notes Patrick Seale.

    After a long and bitter stalemate, broken only by bloody clashes, the Turkish government and the Kurdish Revolutionary Workers party (PKK) seem at last to be moving towards a political settlement.

    This month, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and the PKK leader Abdallah Ocalan, now serving a life-sentence in an island prison ever since his arrest in 1999, have both spoken of the need for a negotiated end to the conflict — a conflict which has claimed more than 40,000 lives since the PKK launched an armed rebellion against the Turkish state 25 years ago.

    On both sides, this indicates a striking change of tone, as well as a willingness to breach long-standing taboos. Indeed, both Erdogan and Ocalan have announced their intention shortly to publish suggestions about how reconciliation can be achieved. There seems even to be some sort of competition between them over who will first come up with a credible peace plan.

    Earlier this month, Erdogan held a four-hour meeting with key ministers to discuss the Kurdish questions. Interior Minister Besit Atalay said that “If it can solve this problem, Turkey will free itself from shackles.” Erdogan has also sought the views of the United States and Iraq.

    Meanwhile, conciliatory remarks have also been made by Murat Karayilan, who took over the PKK leadership from the jailed Ocalan. In an interview with the French daily Le Monde (16-17 August), conducted in the Qandil mountains of northern Iraq, Karayilan declared: “The two sides must lay down their arms…We have not been separatists for more than ten years.

    “The solution lies within the actual borders [of Turkey], but only if Turkey adopts the norms of European democracies… What is required is recognition of Kurdish identity, and of cultural and political rights… For the moment, however, the State only lists what it will not do: no freedom for Ocalan, no education in the Kurdish language, no autonomy. Why cannot Kurds be educated in their own language?”

    Several factors account for the more promising climate between Turkey and PKK, a hard-line Marxist movement, which until recently did not hesitate to resort to terror. The anticipated departure of U.S. forces from Iraq is creating a new situation for all the interested parties — for the Iraq Government in Baghdad, for the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil, and for the PKK in their mountain camps.

    Soon to be deprived of U.S. protection, Masud Barzani’s KRG is in need of good relations with both Ankara and Baghdad. It knows that it will eventually have to reach an amicable agreement with Baghdad over the future of Kirkuk, an oil-rich province it covets — or risk a war in which it may not come off best against the well-trained and re-equipped Iraqi army.

    The PKK, in turn, fears that it will be sacrificed on the altar of Turkish-KRG relations, which are improving by the day, fuelled by booming cross border trade. Ankara is evidently wooing the KRG, having decided that Masud Barzani’s administration in Erbil is a potential ally against the wild men of the PKK. There are plans to open Turkish consulates in Iraqi Kurdistan.

    Turkey’s leaders, for their part, are well aware that if their country is to play its ambitious role as an energy hub between Central Asia and the Caucasus on the one hand and Western Europe on the other, peace in Kurdish-inhabited eastern Anatolia is a must.

    An important factor in the equation is Prime Minister Erdogan’s gradual demilitarisation of Turkey’s political system. Step by step, he has managed to tame the once all-powerful Turkish armed services which, since the creation of the Turkish Republic by Mustafa Kemal in 1923, have carried out several coups d’etat and often acted like a state within the state.

    A recent reform, much encouraged by the European Union, was the adoption of a law under which members of the armed services, accused of grave crimes, can be tried by civil rather than by military courts. The military’s influence in politics has also been reduced by the appointment of a civilian to head the National Security Council.

    Needless to say, the armed service chiefs are the fiercest opponents of reconciliation with the PKK, a movement against which they have waged a pitiless struggle for a quarter of a century. Thus, Erdogan has had to curtail the independent political power of the military to allow his opening to the PKK to have a chance of success.

    A significant development has been the arrest since 2007 of dozens of retired military officers, businessmen, academics, and other secular opponents of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AP). They have been accused of membership of a shadowy organisation of extreme nationalist views, known as the Ergenekon network. At a series of trial this summer, some of the alleged members, including two senior general, Hursit Tolon and Sener Eruygur, have been accused of seeking to destabilise the government by planning violent attacks.

    Prime Minister Erdogan and his close colleague President Abdallah Gul — who shares his Islamic background — have pioneered a revolution in relations with Turkey’s immediate neighbours, Iran, Iraq and Syria, as well as with the Arab states of the Gulf. Turkey is seeking a greatly expanded role in Middle East affairs — as a trading partner, a peace broker and a bridge to Europe.

    According to Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Turkish-Iraqi trade was worth $7bn dollars in 2008 and is due to soar to $20bn by the end of 2010. A clue to the new warmth is Turkey’s decision to release more Euphrates water to both Syria and Iraq, which have faced severe droughts. Iraq is in its fourth consecutive year of drought and has recorded its lowest harvest in a decade.

    This has occurred at a time when the Erdogan government’s relations with Israel have cooled. A large majority of Turks — and Erdogan himself — were outraged by Israel’s brutal war on Gaza at the beginning of the year, and by its continued oppression of the Palestinians. In contrast, the Turkish army has long had close ties with Israel, buys Israeli defence equipment, and allows the Israel Air Force to exercise in Turkish airspace.

    Meanwhile, the Emir of Qatar, Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani — who has himself pioneered an activist foreign policy in the region and beyond — paid a two-day visit to Turkey this week. Two hundred Turkish companies will be exhibiting their products at the Qatar International Exhibition Center next October. Turkey’s trade with Qatar grew from $132m in 2005 to $1.32bn in 2008.

    Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

    Copyright © 2009 Patrick Seale

    Source: www.middle-east-online.com, 21.08.2009