Kamil Pasha

From Roger Cohen’s opinion piece in The New York Times:

… Turkey [is a] a conservative country fast-forwarded to Westward-looking secularism in the 1920s by the founder-hero of the modern republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and now grappling with the place in that republic of an ascendant political Islam.

I like this fight. It has its crude, misleading labels — the “secular fascists” of the Kemalist establishment in one corner against the “Islamofascists” of the ruling Justice and Development (AKP) party in the other — but it is open and vigorous. The crisis of Islam could use a broader dose of Turkish give-and-take.

The latest round came this month when Turkey’s highest court rebuffed Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the AKP leader and an observant Muslim with an Islamist past, on a matter of high symbolism.

It ruled that Erdogan’s legislation, passed in February, allowing women attending state universities to wear head scarves in observance of their Muslim beliefs violated secular principles enshrined in the Constitution.

My reaction to this is twofold. First, women of college age should be allowed to wear what they like in accordance with their personal convictions. In that sense the court’s ruling is unacceptable.

Second, the secular foundations of modern Turkey have been essential to creating this most permissive of Muslim societies; they should not be compromised without a fight, especially in a Middle Eastern environment where democracy is rare and Islamism potent. In this perspective, the court’s ruling is a salutary challenge to the AKP to keep proving its liberal credentials.

On balance, I side with the court. I’m confident that in the medium-term, Turkish women will win the right to wear headscarves wherever. I’m less confident that the creeping Islamization fostered by the AKP is accompanied by an unshakeable commitment to secular democracy, as Erdogan insists.

Let the party pay its dues, if necessary in repeated confrontations with the court. Turkey is a laboratory of a moderate Muslim democracy; do not rush the experiment. It’s easier to don a veil than remove it. Reversibility is not Islam’s forte.

For the full article, click here

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Excerpts from Newsweek article on Turkey (click for full article):

Turkey’s Constitutional Court recently overruled its National Assembly and declared that two constitutional amendments passed in February were in fact unconstitutional. The Assembly is entitled to amend the Constitution with a 65 percent majority, and the judges conceded that I’s had been dotted and T’s crossed. They just disliked the  amendments’ content. In the next three months, the court will also decide whether Turkey’s AK Party government, duly re-elected with an overwhelming majority last July, shall continue to govern. If they decide no, they will dissolve the AK Party and ban its leaders, the prime minister and president included, from politics. The situation is now the very definition of a constitutional crisis, and anyone who thinks Turkey’s future important should worry.

The court’s recent action is legally bizarre and arguably unconstitutional itself….

The real issue is whether those who voted to approve the Constitution in 1982 had any moral right to impose unamendable clauses on their descendants. Few true democrats would think so. It is one thing to make amending a constitution hard, quite another to render it impossible. Remember, too, that the plebiscite approving today’s Constitution was conducted under military tutelage. There is little doubt that today’s judges reflect the original, controlling intent of 1982’s generals…. [JW: see my comment below]

Almost certainly there will be new elections, and they will vote for a successor party, which is permissible under Turkish law. Legally, too, a banned Erdogan can run as an independent and even remain prime minister….

Sooner or later the two real powers in the land—the generals and the people—will speak. The generals have made it clear they side with the court. After all, they have crushed four governments since 1960 and this would merely be a fifth. On previous occasions a majority of Turks would probably have backed military intervention, had they been asked. Today polls say a clear majority is opposed. This makes the present political situation unprecedented.

Nor could the generals necessarily rely on the Army. In 2003 and 2004 some senior four-star generals planned a coup, but the idea apparently found little support among their juniors…

[JW: note the following excerpt from a Today’s Zaman article about a week ago: The [opposition] CHP claims that the current Parliament does not hold the authority to make comprehensive changes to the Constitution and that a new constitution can only be written by a founding Parliament. CHP leader Deniz Baykal had earlier said that such a constitution could only be written after the end of a coup period or a war for independence.]

Tags: AKP closure case, Politics, Religion // 1 Comment »

Photos from Zaman

A diverse crowd of thousands of people (Zaman claims 20,000) marched in Istanbul on Saturday to support democracy and to protest the coup that many believe is occurring as a result of the Constitutional Court case against the ruling AK Party. A variety of non-governmental organizations were represented and the march occurred without incident. The march was not covered in most Turkish newspapers except Islam-friendly Zaman. (For the article in Turkish, click here)

Photo from The New York Times The signs reads: In 1980 we were small, but now you are. [referring to the 1980 military coup]

The New York Times, however, covered the march and the issues surrounding it in a long article on Sunday. Click here for full article. Here is an excerpt:

On Saturday evening, a diverse crowd of several thousand people marched in central Istanbul, blowing whistles, banging drums and carrying round, pink signs that read, “Make Noise Against Coups.”

“This is the first time that people are speaking out against coups,” said Hilal Kaplan, a graduate student shaking a soda can filled with corn. “People were really angry. It filled up in us over all those years and now it’s coming out.”… (more…)

Tags: AKP closure case, Headscarf Debate, Politics, Rights // 1 Comment »

Click for:

The 2008 Amnesty International Turkey Report

2008 Human Rights Watch: Turkey  Report

2008 Reporters Without Borders Turkey Report

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While statistics regarding torture while in detention shows a decrease, pre-detention torture continues, that is, mistreatment while not “officially “detained. Yesterday passersby saw a wounded man lying in front of the wall of the Taksim Teaching and Research Hospital in Istanbul. Most walked on, but one good Samaritan woke the man and discovered that he was Abdoullah Mouhammed Jamal, an African immigrant who had been in Turkey just over a year. While making a phone call in a public booth, he explained, police approached him and asked for his passport. He told them he didn’t have one, but had a residence permit, which unfortunately had expired two months ago. He suggested they bring him to the Kumkapi Foreigners’ Guesthouse to ask about his status. Instead, he said, the police beat him with a hammer and left him badly wounded on his head and body. “Maybe because I’m a Muslim the police let me go without killing me,” Jamal suggested.

click here for article in Turkish

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YouTube Ban

A court order blocking access to popular video-sharing Web site YouTube that has been in place for one-and-a-half months was rescinded on Tuesday night; however, the Web site remained open only for several hours as it was banned again around 10 a.m. Wednesday morning. Turkey’s frequent YouTube bans, often caused by videos deemed insulting to the nation’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk… places the country alongside China, Pakistan and Thailand, the only three countries in the world that have banned YouTube so far.… Since January of this year, hundreds of Web sites have been blocked. (click for article)

Singing Ban

From the New York Times:

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A defense lawyer says three members of a school chorus accused of singing a Kurdish rebel song during a U.S. tour have been acquitted by a Turkish court.

Lawyer Baran Pamuk says the court ruled that his clients, aged 15-18, didn’t intend to put out propaganda on behalf of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Pamuk says he believes a juvenile court trying six younger members of the chorus is likely to drop the charges.

The nine were charged with spreading separatist propaganda after returning from the tour during which they allegedly sang a song called ”Enemy,” regarded as a rebel song, in San Francisco. Pamuk said Thursday that prosecutors have launched an investigation into the director of the children’s chorus.

Publishing Ban

A Turkish publisher has been sentenced to five months in prison for publishing a book by a British author about a mass killing of Armenians in 1915. Ragip Zarakolu was found guilty of “insulting the institutions of the Turkish Republic” under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) on Tuesday. The controversial article was recently amended under pressure from the EU to ensure freedom of speech in Turkey. This is the first high-profile verdict to be handed down since then. Zarakolu’s sentence seems to confirm campaigners’ fears that changes to the law were merely cosmetic. In April it became a crime to insult the Turkish nation, rather than Turkishness. But insulting the Turkish nation is still punishable by up to two years in jail. Zarakolu was brought to trial for publishing a book by British author George Jerjian on the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

Turkey denies the killings were genocide, saying both Turks and Armenians were killed, and the issue remains highly sensitive.

Reading the verdict, the judge told Zarakolu he had insulted the Turkish republic and its founders. His own defense — that he had the right to criticize — was rejected. (click for article)

Speech Ban

The trial of singer Bülent Ersoy, who is charged with having made anti-military remarks during a TV program earlier this year, started in Istanbul yesterday. In a TV program broadcast on Feb. 24, Ersoy, a transsexual singer, said that if she were to have a son, she would not let him fight in other people’s wars, referring to the increasing number of soldiers killed fighting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorists. A jail term from nine months to nearly three years was demanded for the singer… The Public Prosecutor … had indicted Ersoy on grounds that her remarks were intended to “make the public detest military service,” a crime under the Turkish Penal Code (TCK). The indictment states that Turks place great importance on military service and referred to the saying “Every Turk is born a soldier.”

News Ban

A Turkish military court on Friday banned the broadcast of stories regarding terrorism, except those handed out to media organs.

The General Staff’s military prosecutor launched an investigation after real-time intelligence images, which were classified, were broadcast on a TV channel. The prosecutor demanded that broadcasts should be ended until the investigation –launched within the scope of an article regulating “crimes against state secrets” –was finalized. (click for article)

Tags: Rights // 3 Comments »

What is Ergenekon?

Over the past few months, the Turkish police have arrested a diverse group of shadowy figures, including former military officers, secret police, prosecutors, and others, accused of plotting to overthrow the Turkish government, preparing to assassinate the Turkish Nobel Laureate writer Orhan Pamuk, and of being involved in the murder of other prominent Turkish figures, including last year’s killing of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

The issue around which this gang organized its activities was the protection of Turkish blood and identity against foreign powers whom they believe to be acting against Turkey through its Armenians, Christians, and other minorities (Kurds, for instance) and through missionaries. The group, thought to have ties high up in the state apparatus (the Turks call this shadowy network the “Deep State”), also dislikes the present Muslim-inspired elected government (ergo the coup attempts). It calls itself Ergenekon after the origin myth of the Turks in which a gray wolf showed them the way out of their legendary Central Asian homeland Ergenekon. The gray wolf has long been a symbol of the ultranationalists.

Update:

The indictment against the Ergenekon gang is about to be submitted to court. According to press reports, prosecutors and police officers in the case have allegedly been threatened, sometimes by senior members of the judiciary, and over 400 cases have been filed by the court against the media for discussing details of the case.

From Murat Yilmaz’s column:

… Attempts to intimidate judicial figures committed to doing their job following an indictment in the Semdinli case in which a public prosecutor was disbarred after pursuing charges against a soldier are now being made in the Ergenekon case, which so far has nearly 50 suspects under arrest and awaiting trial. Threats ranging from removal from office to murder are made against prosecutors who investigate the case…

Some judicial figures — some retired and some still in office — openly threatened the prosecutors and police officers, implying that they will share the fate of Ferhat Sarikaya, the prosecutor removed in the Semdinli case. That the list of those who made such threats includes [a prominent judge] known for his extensive role in the Constitutional Court’s decision on the 367-quorum case [that impeded the election of Abdullah Gul as president] and the filing of the AK Party closure case, shows the seriousness of the situation….

to read the entire column, click here (for an account of the threat against Sarikaya, read my blog entry for February 22)

Tags: Deep state/Ergenekon, Politics, Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

Photo from Zaman

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) submitted its final written defense in the closure case filed against it to the Constitutional Court on Monday. The AK Party turned in its defense statement ahead of the deadline in an attempt to speed up the legal process to avoid lingering ambiguity. Media reports have claimed that the AK Party has already completed preparations for a new political party to be created in the event that the party is closed, although officials from the ruling party have denied such reports.

Turkey’s top prosecutor filed a case against the governing AK Party in March, demanding the party’s closure, as well as a ban on 71 former and current members from political activities, over allegations that the party has become a “focal point of anti-secular activities.”

In its introduction, the 98-page defense statement argues that the prosecutor’s indictment was formulated by ideological and political motives rather than legitimate legal concerns. …

It also argued that the prosecutor’s understanding of the concepts of democracy and secularism did not live up to the universally accepted understanding of these concepts. It argued that the prosecutor was defending secularism as a lifestyle rather than as a healthy separation between religion and state affairs. …

The defense statement also noted that banning the AK Party would be a violation of precedent cases heard by the European Court of Human Rights. It also argued that shutting down the AK Party would be a violation of the freedom to establish organizations. …

For the full article, click here.

For a longer article “Closure Case Built on Evidence Found Through Google”, click here.

For a copy of the AKP’s written response (in Turkish), click here: akparti_savunmasi1.doc

Tags: AKP closure case, Politics // 2 Comments »

On April 16, Professor Henri Barkey’s gave the 2008 Campagna-Kerven Lecture on Modern Turkey at Boston University: “Where have Old Friends Gone? US-Turkish Relations Since the Iraq War”. To see a video of his well-received lecture, click here.

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A couple of years ago, a young professional woman I met told me the story of how her family lost a parcel of land overlooking the Bosphorus on the Asian side that had been in her family for generations. Men with guns came and threatened to harm them if her father didn’t sign the property over to them. The family went to the police who told them that this was a mafia matter and they could do nothing about it. The police suggested that they hire a rival mafia to protect themselves. After some demonstrations of violence on the part of the men who wanted their property, the family signed it over, receiving no compensation. But because the document shows a “legal sale”, they have no recourse in court. The property is gone.

I have heard of a number of similar cases where either police or municipal officials did nothing to protect the property owner or were even part of the scam themselves. This has been going on for years.

Apparently one of these gangs has now been arrested, along with a corrupt official. They preyed on elderly non-Muslim property owners on the Asian side of Istanbul, kidnapping their children and threatening to kill them if the property wasn’t signed over. If the family resisted, the child would be killed. Corrupt doctors were on hand to sign off on ‘death by natural causes’. But even if the family signed over the property, they would still be killed — the witness to the crime would simply ‘disappear’. (click here for article)

Tags: Istanbul, Uncategorized // Add Comment »