Tag: Zionism

Armenian Jewish Coalition Garners Support for Genocide Recognition

By Andy Turpin
Mirror-Spectator Staff

LEXINGTON, Mass. — In anticipation of the House of Representatives’ Res. 252 to recognize the Armenian Genocide, members of the greater Boston Armenian and Jewish communities have formed an Armenian Jewish Coalition (AJC) and presented an online petition to garner support for the immediate passage of the resolution.

Lexington resident and Armenian National Committee (ANCA) member Laura Boghosian is the co-chair of the AJC alongside Rabbi Howard L. Jaffe of Lexington’s Temple Isaiah.

“It started with Rabbi Jaffe and myself and I brought in Dikran Kaligian [ANCA Eastern Region chairman] and we began a Steering Committee,” Boghosian said. “Most of the members who are from the Jewish community are from Temple Isaiah but crucial to helping us are Senior Rabbi Ronne Friedman and Rabbi Elaine Zecher of Temple Israel of Boston.”

She explained, “From the Armenian community I wanted to cast a wide net. Involved in the coalition right now are Ruth Tomassian [executive director] from Project SAVE, Marc A. Mamigonian [director of programs and publications] from NAASR [the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research] and Sona Petrossian from the Newton Human Rights Commission.”

“It started with a dialogue group and we had a series of three meetings where we broke into discussion groups. Most of the Jewish community members thought there was not enough education about the Armenian Genocide and not enough known about its history amongst the Jewish community,” she added.

As for the coalition’s timeline she noted, “We started in the spring of 2008 and the meetings went through November. The outcome was that we should have some kind of Action Committee to come out of the group. The dialogue group itself was a reaction to the 2007 controversy of the Anti-Defamation League’s denial of the Armenian Genocide in its ‘No Place for Hate’ program school curriculums.”

Boghosian prasied Jaffe’s staunch support for the coalition, adding, “He felt that recognizing the Armenian Genocide was the right thing to do and I really appreciated that because he was motivated to act on his principles.”

She added that, “In May of 2008 during their Shoah [Holocaust] commemoration ceremony, they invited the Armenian community and Armenian historian Richard Hovanissian to speak about the parallels between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide, after which [Prof.] Henry Theriault spoke to the temple’s men’s group about the impact of denial.”

Boghosian said the AJC’s petition is the first of the groups actions to be publicly undertaken. “The coalition is important because it demonstrates there’s a grassroots effort in the Jewish community to recognize the Armenian Genocide and a core belief by both sides that human rights, not political expediency, need to govern US foreign policy,” she said.

Another AJC member, Herman Purutyan of the Armenian Assembly of America, said of his involvement in the group, “I see this collaboration not ending here but continuing to raise awareness of the denial going on and I think other efforts will come forth in the future from this after the petition.

“I think I personally bring into the conversation the Armenian Assembly’s participation through my own relations with that group. Although the Assembly is not a formal participant in the coalition, they have formally endorsed the petition,” he added.

Jaffe stated that in 2007 he was largely unaware of the complexities and far-reaching scope of the denial of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey and the events’ power over aspects of various geo-political relations, noting, “I had no idea of the entrenchment of this issue in the politics of Jewish organizations.”

He explained that to his surprise, “I actually found out through mutual friends that my remarks in favor of the ADL were offensive to those in the Armenian community and Laura Boghosian and others in the Armenian community helped educate me more on the subject. It was a very important encounter on both sides.”

Speaking about Temple Isaiah’s inclusion of members of the Armenian community into its 2008 Shoah commemoration, Jaffe said that, “as a result of that relationship we brought in Richard Hovannissian to speak about the history and dynamics of the Armenian Genocide and its denial. That was unprecedented for us since most of our speakers on that occasion and in the
Temple are exclusively Shoah related, and he spoke beautifully. A substantial number from the local Armenian community around Lexington attended the commemoration as well.”

Jaffe went on to say that the Armenian Genocide recognition and education issue, “was very important to me and continues to be and there’s still an active amount of healing that needs to be done between the local Armenian and Jewish communities after the events of the ADL and the ‘No Place for Hate’ separation.”

As for the next steps to be taken by the AJC in their grassroots campaign to further the cause of Armenian Genocide recognition Jaffe stated, “Future efforts are indefinite at this point. We in the Jewish community are taking our cues from those activists in the Armenian community that really are more educated on the issues of what needs to be done next.”

He added, “We’ve been officially ignored by the mainstream Jewish organizations, many of which continue to deny the Armenian Genocide. This is unfortunate because the larger organizations need to take on this issue, especially because there are those in the Jewish community to which it really matters.”

March 7, 2010
Who is Axel Springer?

Reconciliation between Jews and Germans

Bound together in friendship: Commitment to the reconciliation between Jews and Germans

Axel Springer, who founded his company in 1946, had a very close friendship with the State of Israel and the Israeli people. The reconciliation between Jews and Germans and standing up for the vital rights of the Israeli people were fundamental convictions for him, which governed his actions and which became manifest in the Essentials of his publishing house .

The company and its employees remain true to these principles even today and continue the traditional friendship with multifarious commitment.

Thus in 2003 for example, the “Ernst-Cramer-Fellowship” was established, which grants young German journalists a working stay in Israel and young Israeli journalists a working stay in Germany. More Information on the Ernst Cramer Fellowship can be found at the website of the International Journalists’ Programmes .

Moreover Axel Springer supports institutions and projects to cultivate Jewish life in Germany and to intensify contacts between Germany and Israel.

The Spree-Aviv.de website illustrates how even young Axel Springer employees live the commitment to Israel as a matter of course: For this tribute was paid to young trainee journalists from the Axel Springer Academy in May 2008 for the web project www.spree-aviv.de which they had initiated and designed themselves. The independent jury of experts in the Internet category of the Axel Springer Prize for young journalists valued their project as an “outstanding service”, because the website brings the user closer to Jewish life in Germany in a particular appealing and entertaining way at the same time making an important contribution to the reconciliation between Germans and Jews.

Source: http://www.axelspringer.de/en/artikel/Reconciliation-between-Jews-and-Germans_40889.html

November 21, 2009
‘CIA and Mossad paying $1,000 to Christian converts in northern Iraq’

Iran’s Fars news agency claimed Tuesday that the CIA and the Mossad were actively promoting Christianity in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

According to the report, the Americans and Israelis were offering $1,000 to any youngster willing to convert to Christianity.

The news agency further claimed that several Christian organizations had translated the Bible into Kurdish and were distributing them to young Kurds.

Source: www.jpost.com, Aug 4, 2009

CIA, Mossad Promoting Evangelism in Northern Iraq

TEHRAN (FNA)- The US and Israeli spy agencies are trying to promote evangelism in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, sources said.

According to a series of information obtained by FNA, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Israeli Secret Services (Mossad) are striving to promote Christianity among the youth in Iraq’s northern region of Kurdistan.

According to FNA dispatches, the two intelligence agencies have also allocated heavy funds for the task and pay $1,000 to every young person who turns to Christianity.

The plot began from the very beginning of US military aggression against Iraq and occupation of the country after ousting former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and even earlier, sources said.

Head of the Islamic Group in Kurdistan Ali Bapir warned about the development, saying, “The international organization for evangelism in Iraq will pay 1,000 US Dollars to those who convert to Christianity.”

Member of the Islamic Unity Movement of Kurdistan Babakr Ahmad told FNA, “Islamic parties have felt the danger. Unfortunately, the international Christian organizations are actively promoting Christianity given their available huge funds.”

Kurds who have recently embraced Christianity hold annual meetings in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdistan autonomous region.

Ali Bapir strongly criticized the authorities of Kurdistan autonomous region for their inaction in the face of the development and for issuing the required permission for holding such meetings.

According to FNA dispatches, other evangelist institutions like ADS Institution are funding translation of Bible into the Kurdish language.

An informed source from the evangelist institution in Arbil told FNA on the condition of anonymity that the main mission of the institution is distribution of Bible in Kurdish language.

The source said the manager of the institution is a British who uses an alias name, “Eskandar” (Alexander), to escape identification.

The source underlined that the institution’s books are coming from England and Greece and that the translated books are distributed among the people for free.

Source: english.farsnews.com, 2009-08-04

August 20, 2009
Kurdish mag sparks wrath by urging Jews to return

Dawood Baghestani, Iraqi Kurdish editor-in-chief of "Israel-Kurd", holds a copy of the magazine in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. The newly launched monthly magazine has caused a stir in northern Iraq after calling on Jewish Kurds to return to the region. (AFP/File/Safin Hamed)

by Abdel Hamid Zebari

ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) – A new magazine in Iraq’s Kurdistan region has caused furore among conservative Muslims with a rousing call for Jews to leave Israel — and come back to Iraq.

The magazine, “Israel-Kurd”, is the brainchild of Dawood Baghestani, the 62-year-old former chief of the autonomous northern region’s human rights commission.

The glossy, full-colour monthly in Kurdish and English has a lofty mission: to help solve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict by convincing more than 150,000 Kurdish Jews living in Israel to return to Iraqi Kurdistan, Baghestani told AFP.

“The biggest reason behind the complexity of the Palestinian problem is the unjust practices of Arab regimes against the Jews — there are more than 1.5 million Jews originally from Arab countries in Israel,” Baghestani said.

“If the Jews had not been subject to an exodus, the Palestinians wouldn’t have been either,” he said, referring to the flight of 700,000 Palestinians from the newly created Jewish state in 1948 during the first Arab-Israeli war.

“If the situation in our new federal and democratic Iraq, and particularly in Kurdistan, becomes stable, then many Jews would want to return and reduce the number of Jewish settlements in Palestine.”

The latest edition of the 52-page magazine, which has a circulation of around 1,500 copies, features a woman draped in an Israeli flag on the cover.

Inside are stories about Kurdish Jewish traditions and photographs from the first half of the twentieth century, as well as arguments on how a return of Jews would help to build a wealthy and strong Kurdistan.

But many people in Iraq are not buying the argument.

“I’m suspicious. I don’t see the point of this kind of publication,” said Zana Rustayi, a representative of the Islamist Jamaa Islamiya party in the regional assembly.

“The Kurds are part of the Muslim nation, and Kurdistan is part of Iraq.”

Iraq has no relations with Israel, and the country was an implacable foe of the Jewish state under the regime of former dictator Saddam Hussein, who was overthrown by the US-led invasion in 2003.

A Sunni member of parliament in Baghdad, Mithal Alusi, was suspended from parliament and threatened with charges last year after visiting Israel for a conference. The decision was later overturned by the constitutional court.

Dawood Baghestani, Iraqi Kurdish editor-in-chief of 'Israel-Kurd', reads a copy of the magazine in Arbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region. The newly launched monthly magazine has caused a stir in northern Iraq after calling on Jewish Kurds to return to the region. Photo:Safin Hamed/AFP

Kurdistan does have a warmer history with the Jewish state, however. Many of the current crop of Kurdish leaders have visited Israel in past decades.

Jews lived in Kurdistan for centuries, working as traders, farmers and artisans.

But the creation of Israel and the rise of Arab nationalism in the mid-twentieth century dramatically altered the situation, spurring most of Kurdistan’s Jews to leave.

Baghestani — who has been to Israel four times, including on a clandestine trip in 1967 — denies that he works for the Israelis.

“What I am asking for is enshrined in the constitution: every Iraqi has the right to return to one’s homeland. Jews who were Iraqi citizens were subject to injustice,” he said.

“If every Arab country allowed the Jews to return, ensured their safety and gave them back their land,Palestinian refugees would be able to return to their territory because Israel would not need so much land.”

Mahmud Othman, a Kurdish Coalition MP in Baghdad, disputes this. He says that while relations with Israel may be a nice idea, such a move would not be pragmatic for a region ringed by other Muslim states.

“Kurdistan needs the Arabs. We are living in an Arab country and we are federal region within Iraq. We don’t need a relationship with (Israel), we need a relationship with Arabs, we need a relationship with Iran, we need to be close to Turkey,” Othman said.

“I haven’t heard of any Jews in Israel trying to return to Kurdistan. I think they’re better off there.”

Source: news.yahoo.com, Aug 12, 2009

Southern commander Zvika Zamir teaching a Kurdish fighter how to assemble a Galil rifle (1969)

Source: www.nrg.co.il, ג’קי חוגי | 10/8/2009

August 13, 2009
Once Labeled An AIPAC Spy, Larry Franklin Tells His Story

In an Exclusive Interview, Talk of Antisemitism and Betrayal

By Nathan Guttman

Speaking Out: Larry Franklin, the former Pentagon analyst at center of AIPAC case, tells his side of the story to the Forward.

WASHINGTON — Former Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin recently quit his job cleaning the restrooms at his local church in West Virginia. He still keeps his weekend job, mopping the floors at a nearby Roy Rogers restaurant. In recent years, Franklin also has gained experience in parking cars, digging trenches and cleaning cesspools. In between, he has been searching for a publisher for his book — a manual for saving America from the Iranian threat.

On June 30, Franklin marked the fifth anniversary of his meeting with FBI agents, in which he first learned he was a suspect in what would later be known as “the AIPAC case,” referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Along with Franklin, two of the Washington lobby’s senior officials were charged with violating the seldom-used federal Espionage Act of 1917.

Although charges against the two other key players, former lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were ultimately dropped in May, Franklin pleaded guilty early on as part of a plea agreement and is preparing to serve his reduced sentence of 100 hours of community service and 10 months in a halfway house.

Franklin’s narrative of his ordeal, which started off with him being described on national news as the “Israeli mole” in the Pentagon, reflects a mixture of naiveté, frustration with government bureaucracy and a deep belief that his views must be heard, even if it meant breaking the rules. In retrospect, it was a practice in humility for the devout Catholic military analyst.

“I’ve learned a lot by crawling on the ground,” the 62-year-old father of five said in his first interview since the affair began in 2004. The lessons that Franklin has learned from his experience include the capacity by his colleagues and partners for — as he sees it — betrayal, and the persistence, he has concluded, of deep-rooted antisemitic sentiment in certain quarters of America’s intelligence community.

“I was asked about every Jew I knew in OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense], and that bothered me,” Franklin said. His superiors at the time were both Jewish: Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, whom Franklin believes was a target of the investigation. “One agent asked me, ‘How can a Bronx Irish Catholic get mixed up with…’ and I finished the phrase for him: ‘with these Jews.’” Franklin answered, “Christ was Jewish, too, and all the apostles.” “Later I felt dirty,” he added.

Bound until recently by a plea agreement that barred him from speaking to the press, Franklin has refrained until now from telling his side of the story. But in the Washington office of his attorney, Plato Cacheris, Franklin seemed eager to share his experience. Cacheris, who took on Franklin’s case pro bono, intervened time and again to warn his client against revealing information that is either classified or under a seal imposed by the court. Franklin was quick to agree, calling Cacheris his “angel” who saved him from prison.

In exchange for his cooperation with federal prosecutors, Franklin was initially sentenced to 12.5 years in prison as part of his plea agreement. But before entering his plea in 2005, he was approached by two people who suggested he fake his suicide and disappear to avoid testifying in court. At the request of the FBI, to which he immediately reported the encounter, Franklin had several follow-up conversations on the phone with one of them. “I thought I was in a movie,” Franklin said of the episode. Details of the event are still under court seal, and Franklin declined to identify the individuals who approached him or to offer further details.

Franklin, who speaks seven languages and holds a doctorate in East Asian studies, tends to weave historical references easily into his discourse, from ancient Greece to the modern days. His concern is intense.

Some in the government, he believes, “had some fantasy of a conspiracy” that had continued, unabated, after the 1985 arrest and 1987 conviction of Pentagon intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard on charges of spying for Israel.

According to Franklin, the investigators he dealt with believed “that Pollard had a secret partner, a mole, probably in the OSD.” This quest to expose the mole, Franklin said, was, in part, “energized by a more malevolent emotion — antisemitism.”

In part, it was also fed by a deep suspicion toward Israel. “In the intelligence community,” he said, “you refer to Israelis as ‘Izzis’ and it doesn’t have a pleasant connotation. They can’t get away with kikes, so they say Izzis.” This suspicion became clear to Franklin as he learned of the way investigators viewed activists of the pro-Israel lobby.

He said it was made clear to him by the FBI that Rosen, then AIPAC’s foreign policy director, was the target of the investigation and had been followed by the FBI for years. “The bureau told me Rosen was a bad guy,” he said. Believing that he himself had “done wrong,” Franklin agreed to cooperate with the FBI investigation.

This cooperation culminated in a June 26, 2003, meeting at an Italian restaurant in Arlington, Va., where Franklin was sent by the FBI to carry out a sting operation against the AIPAC lobbyists. Before his meeting with Weissman, agents wired Franklin with microphones and transmitters and provided him with a fake classified document alleging there was clear life-threatening danger posed to Israelis secretly operating in Iraq’s Kurdish region. Passing on the information would help seal the case against the AIPAC staffers.

“At the time, I believed they were guilty,” Franklin said of Weissman and Rosen. Yet he still came to the meeting with mixed feelings. He put the document on the table, but hoped Weissman would not reach out for it. “And when he did not take the document, I did breath a silent sigh of relief,” he recalled. In retrospect, Franklin sees that moment as “one I am not proud of.”

Though Weissman didn’t take the document, he read its content, which was allegedly classified, and the sting operation succeeded. Weissman hurried back to AIPAC headquarters with the supposedly classified information disclosed it to Rosen, who subsequently relayed it to an Israeli diplomat. Even without Weissman taking the actual paper, prosecutors, who were wiretapping all the players, felt they had enough of a case to press charges against both Rosen and Weissman for communicating national defense information.

Franklin said he felt betrayed by the two former AIPAC staffers. He believed that he was sharing information with them so that they could pass it to other government officials, and was disappointed to learn they conveyed it to Israeli diplomats and to the press. “I do think they crossed a line when they went to a foreign official with what they knew was classified information,” Franklin said.

Rosen told the Forward in response: “Franklin did not expect us to warn the Israelis that they would be kidnapped and killed? That’s like telling officials of the NAACP that there is going to be a lynching, but don’t warn the victims, because it is a secret.”

For Franklin, ties with Rosen and Weissman were instrumental. He had grown frustrated with decisions made by his Pentagon bosses on Iraq and Iran, believing that regime change in Iran was the course America should pursue.

Franklin warned that Americans “would return in body bags” from Iraq because of Iranian intervention, and called for a preliminary show of force against Iran before invading Iraq, but got no response. Viewing the AIPAC lobbyists as well connected, Franklin bypassed his superiors and asked Rosen to convey his concerns on Iran to officials at the National Security Council, to whom he believed the influential lobbyist had access.

“I wanted to kind of shock people at the NSC,” he said, “to shock them into pausing and giving another consideration into why regime change needed to be the policy.” Franklin’s attempt to reach out over the heads of his bosses was unsuccessful and eventually got him in trouble. In the June 11 sentencing session at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Judge T.S. Ellis showed little sympathy for Franklin’s explanation of the reasons that led him to disclose the information. “Secrets are important to a nation. If we couldn’t keep our secrets, we would be at great risk,” Ellis said.

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com

Source: www.forward.com, July 01, 2009, issue of July 10, 2009.

July 10, 2009
Is Soner Çağaptay Walking the tightrope between morality and subservience?

Op-Ed

[An open letter to Newsweek]

Is Soner Çağaptay Walking the tightrope between morality and subservience?

by MEHMET YILMAZ*

As an enthusiastic Newsweek reader, I would like to express my disappointment over a recent article titled “Behind Turkey’s Witch Hunt,” written by Soner Çağaptay

I would like to state at the outset that this article has surely cast doubt on your credibility as a renowned journal, for anybody who is familiar with the societies and politics of Turkey and the United States would instantly notice that most of the author’s arguments are flawed and were written with less than benevolent intentions. Evidently, by penning this article, the author has tried to ingratiate himself with certain circles in Turkey that have been trying to dilute and obscure the ongoing Ergenekon case, in which a significant number of white-collar people have been arrested for their alleged involvement in various terrorist activities, aiming to ultimately overthrow the government by plotting a military coup.

The author’s main argument is that the current Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government is trying use the Ergenekon case as a means to curb freedoms and more importantly to edge out people who seem to be opposing the AK Party’s policies. The author indicates that there is a symbiotic relationship between the AK Party and the Gülen movement, a pacific spiritual social movement which the author wrongly calls a “tarikat” (Islamic order), and that the Turkish National Police Department is nothing but a tool for the realization of the AK Party’s goals. The author implies that: i) The National Police Department works under the command of the AK Party government; and ii) The Gülen movement supports the AK Party; so iii) The Gülen movement must also support — and since it is a powerful movement, it must control — the National Police Department. Doubtless, the syllogism here is way too simplistic, lacking credible evidence to substantiate it. Still, in an effort to undergird his arguments, the author uses some statistical data selectively and manipulates them to serve his purpose. Such efforts indeed run counter to his expected goal as one cannot help but think that this article is nothing but a manifestation of the author’s lack of moral and ethical scruples. For example, in regards to the number of people who are under surveillance, he wrote the following: “On April 26, Turkey’s justice minister said that police intelligence listens to the private conversations of 70,000 people; almost one in every 1,000 Turks lives under police scrutiny today. In the United States, that ratio is one in 137,000.” The author is wrong about the numbers as evidenced by the justice minister’s response at the Turkish Parliament to an interpellation vis-à-vis the number of wiretappings. In his response, the justice minister stated that he has no statistics regarding the number of wiretappings and instead sufficed to say that 12,888 recordings from the years 2006, 2007 and 2008 had been destroyed.

Although the abovementioned ratio, not the numbers, were articulated by Fethi Şimşek, president of the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB), there are two problems with the citation of Mr. Şimsek’s statement. First, the author used the information in a self-serving manner, disregarding the fact that Mr. Şimşek also said the number of wiretappings in Turkey is not beyond European standards. Second, not only in this quote but throughout the article, the author deliberately used the term “police” in the discussions of surveillance of people’s private communications, when he is expected to know as a “Turkey expert” that the National Police Department is not the only organization involved in surveillance activities in Turkey. For instance, in Turkey all interceptions of wire, oral and electronic communications follow a legal process, i.e., applications are processed by the TİB; accordingly, not only the National Police Department, but also the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the gendarmerie are granted permission to implement these interceptions. In addition, in order to listen to the private conversations of 70,000 people simultaneously, there would be a need for 70,000 people. Since the number of officers in the National Police Department is about 200,000 and the majority of them are not involved in intelligence activities, it is practically impossible for all wiretappings to be done by the police.

Moreover, in recent years there has been a significant improvement with regard to Turkish law enforcement agencies’ adherence to democratic policies and implementation, due perhaps, largely, to these agencies’ conspicuous efforts to adapt themselves to the globalizing world, as well as to the positive influence of the democratic reforms made for EU accession. Contrary to Çağaptay’s portrayal of the situation in Turkey, I feel confident in saying that the common perception among people in Turkey is that the National Police Department, especially, has been working meticulously to make sure that all wiretappings and other surveillance activities are done within the confines of the law. In fact, this kind of work in turn has borne fruit in the sense that the National Police Department was able to capture documents and tapes containing private information, conversations and video recordings that belong to nearly 2,500 prominent Turkish citizens. These data were illegally stored by an army general while he was working as the head of intelligence at the gendarmerie who aimed most probably to use those recordings for blackmailing purposes, or in other words, for his own “witch hunting.” In parallel, he was arrested based on his involvement in the Ergenekon group, allegedly a terrorist organization. But somehow, the author and the like choose to remain aloof to these facts and still try to obscure the Ergenekon case by saying that it is not possible to plot a coup with the “few” bombs that were found by the police, while the numbers indeed are flabbergasting.

On the other hand, the author mentions that the ratio with regard to the people under surveillance is one in 137,000 in the United States while it is one in 1,000 in Turkey. This, however, is another demonstration of fact distortion by the author, given that in Turkey almost all interceptions are done because of terrorism-related crimes, whereas by a simple Google search, a careful and well-intentioned person would realize that people involved in terrorism-related crimes are not included on the list of people under surveillance in the United States.

In fact there is an enormous body of literature, as well as serious debate, over the issue of unlawful wiretapping in the United States, which has reached alarming levels, especially after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City. What is ironic, as much as stunning, is not only the distortion of the facts about the figures in the US, but also the author’s comparison of Turkey with the United States in the first place. For the notorious civil rights violations under the rubric of “pre-emptive” anti-terrorism measures by the quondam US administration led by former President George W. Bush left indelible marks on the US’s image as a benign hegemon or the leader of the free world, and his successor, President Barack Obama, the man of hope, and his security team’s efforts to restore that tarnished image seem only to be exacerbating the damage caused by his predecessor.

To give an example, despite some positive initial attempts with regard to upholding individual rights and freedoms, President Obama has lately started to recoil from that position as he has recently suggested the notion of “prolonged detention” on a perilous premise that prolonged detentions are necessary for some people who cannot be incarcerated for their past crimes because the evidence may be tainted. When the euphemisms are stripped away, what President Obama suggested is “indefinite detention without charges” or “preventive incarceration,” which is nothing but the continuation of the same old policies of the Bush administration. Thus, as the author has been living in the United States for a long time and following the sociopolitical developments of the country as an expert at a well-known think tank, his indifference to the omission of terrorist-related crimes from the above-mentioned list and his selective usage of the data seem to be more than carelessness on the part of the author.

All in all, while the author’s intention, by singling out the police from the group of organizations involved in the interception of private communications in Turkey, seems to serve his attempt to endear himself to the known circles via building a case by creating a link between the police and the Gülen movement — i.e., the former is controlled by the latter — you can rest assured that his unsubstantiated arguments have done nothing but marred the impartiality and credibility of your publication. Moreover, I have to admit that given the author’s perception of the Gülen movement, i.e., he claims not to share the sinister view of “most Turks” about this movement’s spiritual message, the abovementioned link that the author suggests between the police and the Gülen movement perplexes more than it clarifies the reader about the nature of that supposed link. While trying to manipulate the reader by portraying the movement as a pernicious one, mentioning that the court filed a case against Gülen and that Gülen left Turkey and settled in the US, he does not mention that Gülen was acquitted of the charges of creating an illegal organization for the purpose of overthrowing Turkey’s secular state and replacing it with one based on Shariah. This, too, stands as another example of the author’s selective use of information.

On a penultimate note, I would like to attract your attention to the author’s attempt at offering remedies, which is even more problematic, as he suggests that “there is a way out of this conundrum if the AK Party turns Ergenekon into a case that targets only criminals.” Clearly, the author presents nescience, or simply acts pretentiously, about the notion of the independence of the judiciary and advocates instead the kibitzing of the ruling party with the ongoing legal process.

Finally, as I urge you to triangulate the information presented in the articles of this author that you plan to publish in the future in your magazine, I hope that you will take this letter merely as constructive criticism.

*Mehmet Yılmaz is the assistant editor-in-chief of Zaman daily.

Source: www.todayszaman.com, May 27, 2009

May 27, 2009