Turkish Forum

Tag: uludere

  • Turkey Islamists a cause of concern for EU diplomats

    Turkey Islamists a cause of concern for EU diplomats

    ISTANBUL European Union diplomats are expressing growing concern at what they see as the increasingly militant stance taken by Turkey’s ruling Islamists.

    stefan falle

    They accuse Ankara of using probes into alleged plots against the government as a tool to jail and silence opponents and compromise the country’s secular credentials by introducing Holy Quran studies in public schools.

    Other measures include lowering the age at which parents can send their children to Islamic religious schools, increasing pressure on those criticising Islam and restricting abortion.

    Turkish authorities accuse the so-called Ergenekon network of being behind several plots to overthrow the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    Dozens of retired or serving senior military figures, intellectuals, lawyers and journalists put behind bars.

    On Thursday Stefan Fuele, European commissioner for enlargement, cited this and other obstacles in the way of Turkey’s membership bid while in Istanbul for talks.

    “I have used this meeting to convey our concerns about the increasing detention of lawmakers, academics and students and the freedom of press and journalists,” he said.

    Changes due to take effect when the new academic year starts this autumn will also have ruffled feathers. The Islamist-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government is introducing Holy Quran lessons.

    And from the end of primary school, more parents will be able to opt out of the secular education system and send their children to Islamic religious schools. Previously these schools could not recruit children under the age of 15: now children as young as 11 will be allowed to attend.

    There is concern too over plans by state broadcaster TRT to launch a religious channel and proposals for prayer rooms in newly built public buildings such as creches, theatres and even opera houses.

    “A series of recent moves show that the conservative tendency has the upper hand and faces no opposition,” said Marc Pierini, a former head of the EU diplomatic team in Turkey.

    “Civil society exists, but it is hardly audible,” said one Ankara-based diplomat.

    “The media are for the most part directly or indirectly controlled by the AKP and the opposition is powerless,” the diplomat added.

    Plans to restrict the abortion laws and other moves that critics say will would make Islam a more visible part of daily life are added areas of concern.

    Comments last month by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he compared abortion to a botched attack by the military that killed 34 civilians last December, brought a sharp response from a senior EU diplomat.

    Erdogan had said of abortion: “You either kill a baby in the mother’s womb or you kill it after birth. There’s no difference.”

    And in a emotive reference to the attack in Uludere, in which Turkish warplanes killed civilians they had mistaken for Kurdish separatists, he said “every abortion is an Uludere.”

    “Some politicians made comparisons that are not appropriate,” Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, head of the EU delegation in Turkey, told journalists.

    Agence France Presse

    via Oman Tribune – the edge of knowledge.

  • Turkey: Twitter Cuts Two Ways

    Turkey: Twitter Cuts Two Ways

    Social media has been a boon for democratization forces around the world, most notably in the Middle East and North Africa. But a recent tragedy in Turkey helps highlights the fact that social media also has a potentially dark side for democratization efforts.

    Uludere 35 cenaze toreni

    On the night of December 29, 2011, the Turkish military launched an airstrike along the Turkish-Iraqi border against what it believed to be militants belonging to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. In reality, military officers were targeting local villagers engaged in smuggling cigarettes. The case of mistaken identity left 35 individuals dead, many of them teenagers.

    Social media played a crucial role in relaying news of the tragedy to the outside world, circumventing the military’s usual veil of secrecy. Within hours, local Kurds had posted graphic photos of the victims on Twitter; statements from family members followed soon afterwards. By comparison, mainstream Turkish media didn’t start providing coverage until hours later, after a press briefing from Army officers.

    “[I]f Twitter did not exist, I am sure we would have heard about it, like two or three days later,” said political activist Cigdem Mater, referring to the tragic air strike. “And we would never know much about it.”

    As elsewhere, social media is expanding Turkey’s information space. “We witness self-censorship and self-policing by television channels and also newspapers,” commented Yaman Akdeniz an associate professor of law at Istanbul’s Bilgi University and the founder of the online watchdog CyberLaw.org.uk. “This has resulted in society turning to other forms of news gathering from social media, and people have started to act as journalists themselves.”

    Ironically, the lightning speed with which information made it out of Uludere — the site of the December attack, in one of Turkey’s most isolated, least developed areas — was made possible by the Turkish army itself. Government forces in the area rely heavily on mobile-phone communications, a legacy of the army’s decades-long campaign to contain the PKK’s insurgency.

    While there is no question that Twitter, Facebook and other social networking platforms are opening up Turkish society in general, all the information sharing may be driving people apart, specifically Kurds from Turks. Twitter is making possible for the circulation of far more details than ever before about clashes between Turkish security forces and PKK militants, usually within hours of the incidents. Social media is also spreading personal details about those killed in armed confrontations. Such information is fanning passions on both sides, but it is especially disillusioning for Kurdish youths, said Ertuğrul Kürkçü, an MP for the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party.

    “[Young Kurds] are losing any faith in living together with Turks,” Kürkçü said. They perceive a lack of respect “from both the government and society,” a mix that contributes to an enmity even deeper than “that of the former generations,” he alleged.

    In such a polarizing atmosphere, the manipulation of news or the distribution of false reports on social media is becoming a growing concern. “I think there is a danger of Twitter being used to provoke people,” warned political activist Mater, “For example just two weeks after Uludere, there was a Tweet saying there was a massive operation by the Turkish army against the PKK, and the news spread through Twitter, everyone was talking about it. But checking through our Kurdish sources it turned out not to be true.”

    “There is a strong danger of provoking people through Twitter because no one knows if the news is true or not,” Mater added. “Of course, Twitter is important, but it does have risks.”

    Turkey could turn out to be an important proving ground for identifying the limitations of social media, and developing ways to address them. The country is among the region’s frontrunners in developing mobile telephony and Turks now rank among the world’s top users of social media — eighth for Twitter (4 million users) and fourth for Facebook usage (nearly 30 million subscribers), according to comScore Inc., a company that specializes in digital analytics.

    Ferocious competition among Turkey’s three privately owned mobile phone operators, which offer subscribers cheap smart phones, plays a role in encouraging social media usage. Nearly a quarter of the country’s 65.3 million mobile phone users own a smart phone, the fourth-highest rate in Central and Eastern Europe, the European Travel Commission reports. In addition, half of Turkey’s population of 74.7 million is under the age of 29, a demographic mix that suggests social media usage will maintain strong growth.

    Social media seems especially important for Kurdish youth. Akdeniz, the Bilgi University law professor, worries that social media will become a casualty in the government’s 30-year campaign against the PKK. “Polarization is going to be a huge problem in social media, and it will be difficult to address,” he said. “I fear the next level by the government will involve prosecution. …Then perhaps people might start getting worried about using these micro- blogging sites or social media platforms.”

    Officials are already on record as being concerned about the use of the Internet to spread what they see as terrorist propaganda. Officials have tightened the parameters of free speech on the web, and thousands of websites are already blocked in Turkey under court orders. Individuals have also been prosecuted for posting comments on the Web that are deemed hate speech, especially comments on religious matters.

    It’s not clear whether existing laws and regulation apply to social media platforms, such as Twitter.

    via Turkey: Twitter Cuts Two Ways | EurasiaNet.org.

  • BDP blames US & Israel for deadly Turkish airstrike

    BDP blames US & Israel for deadly Turkish airstrike

    Mehdi Gholizadeh, Press TV, Ankara

    AIR UAV Heron Canada lgSome of the main political parties in Turkey are pointing the finger at the US and Israel over a botched airstrike that had killed around 34 civilians in the southeast of the country last month.

    The victims were targeted by Turkey’s F-16 fighter jets as they were initially believed to be members of the armed separatist group of Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK, but were later confirmed to be a group of local smugglers.

    The airstrike was widely believed to be the result of an intelligence failure.

    Turkey’s pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, the BDP, has called on the government to declare the source of intelligence that had led to the deadly attack. A senior member of the party has criticized the US ambassador to Turkey who had said the source of the intelligence should be kept secret.

    Following the US ambassador’s remark, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition party, Republican People’s party, advised Turkish journalists to ask from the Israeli embassy about the source of the intelligence. He had earlier urged Ankara to openly declare whether it obtained the intelligence from Israel or the US.

    The controversy over the reported role of Israeli and US drones in the deadly airstrike comes as some politicians have called for an immediate end to what they call Turkey’s intelligence reliance on Israel and the US.

    Turkey uses Israel’s Heron drones and the US Predator drones for gathering intelligence in its fight against the PKK, but the credibility of the intelligence obtained by the drones has been questioned by some politicians in the country.

    Turkish government has vowed that it will carry out an investigation into the airstrike, mainly by closely reviewing four hours of footage related to the airstrike.

    via PressTV – BDP blames US & Israel for deadly Turkish airstrike.

  • ‘U.S. drone targeted civilians in Turkey’

    ‘U.S. drone targeted civilians in Turkey’

    A U.S. Predator drone had reportedly fired the first bomb in an airstrike that killed 35 Kurdish civilians in southeastern Turkey last month.

    c 330 235 16777215 0 images stories jan02 09 03 turkey1In its main headline on Sunday, Turkish Aydinlik newspaper quoted “credible sources” as saying that the US drone had launched the airstrike by targeting the victims.

    The report added that Turkey’s F-16 fighter jets had arrived at the scene between 16 to 18 minutes later.

    In December, Turkey said that its warplanes mistakenly targeted Kurdish smugglers, thought to be members of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist group, in the village of Ortasu in the southeastern province of Sirnak close to the border with Iraq.

    According to the report, the U.S. drones that have been stationed in Incirlik Airbase in southern Turkey are completely directed by US personnel in Nevada and Turkish Armed Forces have no control over them.

    The U.S. delivered four Predator drones to Turkey last year, as part of Washington’s gesture of support to the Turkish fight against PKK terrorists.

    More than 45,000 people have lost their lives since the PKK launched an armed campaign against Ankara in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast in 1984.

    (Source: Press TV)