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Iraqi Kurdistan chief on rare visit to Baghdad Read more: why Now?

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BAGHDAD (AFP) –

The president of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, Massud Barzani, visited Baghdad on Sunday for the first time in years for landmark talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on an array of disputes.

photo_1373207708548-1-HDBarzani met Maliki, after which the two held a joint news conference in the capital’s heavily-fortified Green Zone — a major change from last year, when the Kurdish leader was advocating the premier’s removal from office.

The improvement in relations between the Kurds and the federal government is a rare bright spot for Iraq, which has been hit by a wave of violence that has killed more than 2,400 people this year, and long-running protests by Sunni Arabs who accuse the Shiite-led government of marginalising their community.

“We discussed disputes and we agreed to work on passing frozen laws in the parliament, especially the oil and gas law,” Maliki said, referring to long-stalled legislation governing the exploitation of Iraq’s rich energy resources.

Barzani said his message was to send a message saying “we are brothers and we are keen to communicate and collaborate.”

“We agreed to cooperate and work together and to face everything that threatens Iraq and the (Kurdish) region, and we consider this a national duty,” he added.

Barzani admitted that there are “problems and different opinions between the (Kurdish) region and the federal government” in Baghdad.

But “today there is real political willingness to solve the problems,” he said.

Kurdish leaders want to incorporate a swathe of land stretching from Iraq’s eastern border with Iran to its western frontier with Syria into their autonomous region over the objections of Maliki’s government.

The federal and regional governments also disagree over the apportioning of oil revenues. Baghdad has also been displeased with the Kurdish region for signing contracts with foreign energy firms without its approval.

Diplomats and officials say the dispute over territory is one of the main long-term threats to Iraq’s stability.

The at-times lighthearted atmosphere of the news conference contrasted sharply with tensions that marked the relationship so far between Barzani and Maliki.

Last year, Barzani was a leading critic of the premier, advocated his removal from office and said that Maliki could not be trusted with F-16 warplanes that are on order from the United States.

Later in 2012, the establishment of the Tigris Operations Command, a federal military command covering disputed territory in the north, drew an angry response from Kurdish leaders.

And a deadly firefight during an attempt by Iraqi forces to arrest a Kurdish man in a disputed town pushed tensions higher, with both sides deploying military reinforcements.

But more recently, the two sides have moved to patch up their differences.

Kurdish ministers and MPs ended a boycott of the cabinet and the parliament in May, which was begun in March over objections that the new federal budget did not allocate enough money to pay foreign oil companies working in the region.

And in June, Maliki chaired a landmark cabinet session in Arbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region, and the two sides agreed to form joint committees to deal with disputes.

Kurdistan’s deputy prime minister Emad Ahmed said in a statement on the region’s official website that Barzani’s visit was a follow-up to Maliki’s trip to Arbil.

Barzani was to be accompanied by Ahmed, as well as the ministers in charge of natural resources and the Kurdish peshmerga security forces, the statement said.

 

Armenia celebrating Vardavar feast

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PanARMENIAN.Net – Armenia is celebrating Vardavar, one of the nation’s favorite holidays.

In the Armenian Church, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ is celebrated 98 days following Easter.

164828The Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the five main “Tabernacle” feasts of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Holy Church. It commemorates the transformation or the “transfiguration” that came over Jesus while He was praying. Christ’s face shone like the sun and his clothes became a radiant and gleaming white. The Apostles Peter, James and John witnessed that event which occurred on a high mountain named Tabor.

In the Armenian Church, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord Jesus Christ is celebrated 98 days following Easter. Although now a Christian tradition, Vardavar’s history dates back to pagan times. The ancient festival is traditionally associated with the goddess Astghik, who was the goddess of water, beauty, love and fertility.

The festivities associated with this religious observance of Astghik were named “Vartavar” because Armenians offered her roses as a celebration (“vart” means “rose” in and “var” mean “rise”), this is why it was celebrated in the harvest time.

According to the legend, the Armenian “showering roses” goddess of love and beauty sowed the seeds of love in all the Armenian country, and her beloved fearless Vahagn guarded the seeds from the forces of evil. That is why pilgrims always place bouquets of roses on a sacred place on the feast day and sacrificed in Astghik’s temple.

The holiday is related to the Great Flood, as well. In memory of the flood Noah, who found his refuge on Mt. Ararat, ordered his sons to pour water on each other. Thus water and roses became symbols of the national feast.

The Monday following the Feast is a Memorial Day.

Mursi ouster in Egypt dents Turkey role model claims

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Erdogan’s new ottoman empire is crumbling before it start. Will he be the next?

AFP, Ankara

Turkey’s assertive foreign policy, promoting itself as a role model for the Muslim world, has received a setback after the military intervention that unseated Egypt’s Islamist president Mohamed Mursi, analysts say.

1-dentTurkey’s Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), which faced down the most widespread protests in its 10-year tenure, had forged close alliance with Mursi and his Muslim Brotherhood.

The Egyptian army’s ouster of the country’s first democratically elected leader has raised eyebrows in Ankara, which has ambitiously promoted itself as a regional powerhouse and model democracy in the Middle East.

“Working myself in the Middle East, I doubt there ever was a global ‘Turkish model’ in the eyes of the Egyptians,” Marc Pierini, a scholar at Carnegie Europe, told AFP.

“The only model Egyptians see in Turkey is the economic policy where Turkey has indeed achieved both discipline and growth since 2001,” he said.

Under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s control, seen as increasingly authoritarian, the AKP has won three election victories in a row since 2002 having presided over a burgeoning economy, ending an era of rocky and unstable coalition governments punctuated by military coups.

Once Israel’s closest ally in the Muslim world, Erdogan’s government has taken advantage of an Arab vacuum in the wake of popular uprisings in the region to foster its soft power and a supposedly successful model of blending democracy with Islam.

At his party’s annual congress in September, Erdogan told a crowd packed in an Ankara sport hall: “We have shown everyone that an advanced democracy can exist in a predominantly Muslim country. We have become a role model for Muslim countries.”

Mursi was among more than 100 foreign guests at that congress which gave Erdogan the ticket for party leadership for a third and final time as the Turkish strongman is expected to run for president in elections next year.

A day after the army ouster of Mursi, Erdogan cut short a holiday to hold an emergency meeting with his intelligence chief and ministers.

On Friday, he condemned the Egyptian army intervention, saying: “Those who rely on the guns in their hands, those who rely on the power of the media cannot build democracy…. Democracy can only be built at ballot box.”

Ozdem Sanberk, a veteran diplomat and former foreign ministry undersecretary, believes that Turkey has not lost its credentials to become a role model “but the AKP’s foreign policy diagnosis toward the Muslim world has proved to be wrong.”

“In the Middle East… Turkey has been alienated. It is clear as of today that Turkey does not know the Middle East unlike it claims,” he told AFP.

Turkey’s key Middle Eastern allies, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, were quick to congratulate Mursi’s successor, caretaker president Adly Mansour.

Under the AKP’s rule, Turkey established partnership councils with Syria, Iraq and Egypt.

But now Turkey has cut off ties with Syria, after its former ally President Bashar al-Assad’s deadly crackdown on popular dissent.

It is also bogged down in tensions with Iraq after refusing to hand over fugitive Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, found guilty of running death squads.

“It’s very risky to make diplomacy in the Middle East,” said Sanberk.

“The reason is that relations are being established not with the peoples but with the dictators and when the rug gets pulled right from under dictators, problems emerge.”

Despite their harsh criticism of the army’s actions, Turkish leaders hinted they would not break ties with the new leadership emerging in Egypt after the military uprising.

“Mursi failure, AKP’s unique success”

 

Analysts said what happened in Egypt after days of bloodshed and protests demanding Mursi’s resignation, would put the AKP and Erdogan on the defensive, especially after mass anti-government demonstrations by mainly secular Turks opposing creeping Islamism and the government’s increasingly authoritarian agenda.

Henri Barkey, professor of international relations at Lehigh University, insists though that the AKP remains a formidable party “and still an effective one.”

“In some ways Mursi’s failure demonstrates and emphasizes AKP’s unique success,” he told AFP.

Erdogan’s AKP has sought to curb the powers of the military, which has long considered itself as the self-appointed guardian of Turkish secularism and staged four coups in half a century, throwing hundreds of army officers behind bars for alleged coup plots.

But the number one lesson from Mursi’s failure that all governments and movements need to heed is that confining democracy to elections does not work, according to the analysts.

“The interim lesson we can take from the last 12 months in Egypt is that the ballot box cannot resolve the country’s complex issues without being complemented by an inclusive dialogue between the various segments of the society,” Pierini said.

Rebels clash with Qaeda-linked opposition group in Syria

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Reuters, Beirut

Rebels clashed with an opposition unit linked to al-Qaeda in northern Syria, activists said on Saturday, in a deadly battle that signals growing divisions among rebel groups 1-rubleand rising tensions between locals and more radical Islamist factions.

The rebel infighting comes as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have made gains on the battlefield and drawn comfort from the downfall this week of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, which under ousted President Mohammed Mursi had thrown its weight behind the Syrian opposition.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the new al-Qaeda franchise announced by the head of global network’s Iraq leader, has been quickly working to cement power in rebel-held territories of northern Syria in recent months.

ISIS units have begun to impose stricter interpretations of Islamic law and have filmed themselves executing members of rival rebel groups whom they accuse of corruption, and beheading those they say are loyal to Assad.

Syria’s two-year revolt against four decades of Assad family rule has degenerated from a peaceful protest movement into a bloody civil war that has killed more than 100,000 people.

As fighting drags on and resources grow scarce, infighting has increased both among opposition groups and militias loyal to Assad, leaving civilians trapped in increasingly volatile and fragmented areas.

The latest internecine clashes happened in the town of al-Dana, near the Turkish border, on Friday, local activists said. The opposition group known as the Free Youths of Idlib said dozens of fighters were killed, wounded or imprisoned.

A report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group, said that the bodies of a commander and his brother, from the local Islam Battalion, were found beheaded. Local activists working for the British-based group said the men’s heads were found next to a trash bin in a main square.

The exact reason for the clashes has been hard to pin down, but many rebel groups have been chafing at ISIS’s rise in power. It has subsumed the once dominant Nusra Front, a more localized group of al-Qaeda-linked fighters that had resisted calls by foreign radicals to expand its scope beyond the Syrian revolt to a more regional Islamist mission.

‘Persona glory and worldly aims’

Residents of rebel-held territories in the north once welcomed hardline Islamist groups, even those linked to al-Qaeda which often included radical foreign militants with experience of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Town leaders would say the hardline groups were better organized, less corrupt and set up administrative councils to keep electricity running and food supplies coming in.

But locals are growing more wary of the groups, particularly ISIS, as they impose their austere interpretations of Islamic law. Some say the groups have beaten or executed residents seen as defying them.

Protests against radical Islamist groups are becoming more common. The Observatory said the al-Dana clashes were set off at an anti-ISIS protest when some Islamist militants fired at the demonstration.

But other activists in Idlib province, where al-Dana is located, argued that the clashes were more about local power struggles than demonstrations.

ISIS units are believed to be buying up land and property in some parts of Idlib and Aleppo province, and they also have tried to control supplies of wheat and oil in other rebel areas.

Islamist groups that support al Qaeda posted statements on Facebook and Twitter saying that they had not started the clashes and had not tried to impose their will on locals.

“The Islamic State has been running many missionary activities in al-Dana, through religious guidance and counselling and posting road signs that exhort the virtues of morality, while also working to keep the city safe and offer conflict resolution,” a statement in the name of ISIS read.

The Free Youth Movement of Idlib, an activist group, lambasted both the Qaeda militants and the local rebel group that fought them.

“The two sides are fighting over power, as if the regime had already fallen … Do not paint one side as better than the other,” it said.

“These fighters were part of two groups who are battling on the front line, but they are doing it for personal glory and worldly aims. Martyr after martyr from both groups are falling each day on the front lines… God keep us away from chaos and temptation.”

President of Venezuela Offers Asylum to Snowden

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President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said on Friday that he had decided to offer asylum to the former American intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden, who is wanted by the United States on charges of revealing classified government information.
Mr. Snowden’s applications to more than 20 nations have generated a barrage of negative responses. He is believed to be holed up in the transit area of an international airport in Moscow.

Uyghurs Fighting in Syria, Central Asia’s Terror Threat & More! (Turkey’s involvement in recruiting Central Asian militants and funneling them into Syria,)

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BFP: Friday, 5. July 2013 by Christoph Germann

The Great Game Round-Up brings you the latest newsworthy developments regarding Central Asia and the Caucasus region.  the struggle for influence, power, hegemony and profits in Central Asia and the Caucasus region between a U.S.-dominated NATO, its GCC proxies, Russia, China and other regional players.

0705_GGR1In the wake of the recent terror campaign in China’s autonomous region of Xinjiang, the Global Times published an interesting article about the arrest of Muslim Uyghur Memeti Alili and the connection between unrest in Xinjiang and the proxy war in Syria [emphasis mine]: Xinjiang terrorists finding training, support in Syria, Turkey From a foreign student studying in Istanbul to a soldier receiving training in Syria’s Aleppo, to a terrorist plotting attacks in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, 23-year-old Memeti Aili said he felt like his dream was turned into a nightmare. Memeti Aili was recently caught by the police when returning to Xinjiang to complete his mission to “carry out violent attack and improve fighting skills” assigned by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM). ETIM is a terrorist group that aims to create an Islamist state in Xinjiang, which works alongside the East Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association (ETESA), an Istanbul-based exile group. … Istanbul-based? Considering Turkey’s involvement in recruiting Central Asian militants and funneling them into Syria, this is hardly surprising. Last year the Global Times already provided more information about ETIM and ETESA:

 

Confronting an Elected Dictator: Popular Mobilization in Turkey

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Yunus Sözen is a member of Antikapitalist Eylem (Anticapitalist Action) in Turkey.

Mass demonstrations and harsh governmental crackdowns are not new in Turkish political history, however, although the current demonstrations in Istanbul and throughout Turkey were initiated by socialists, there is no doubt that we are experiencing something strikingly different this time, displayed by not only the visible lack of erdomorsi_headlinenewpolitical experience of a significant number of the demonstrators but also the sheer number and incredible resiliency of the demonstrators in the face of massive and injurious tear gas assaults of the police. What is the cause of this massive social explosion in a country where there is no sign of economic crisis, and where the government was elected in 2011 with 50% of the votes?

To better understand what is happening, let’s start with a discussion of the relationship between elections and democracy. Athenian democrats devised their democratic system without elections because they believed that elections are the oligarchic method of selecting the leaders, and mechanisms that prevent the formation a political class (like the lottery and rotation systems) are the only democratic ways to select the rulers. Because, Athenian democrats believed that elections not only have an intrinsic class bias, but elections also provide the rulers autonomy from the ruled; that is, they make it possible for rulers to be able to do whatever they please. Indeed, the only reason why modern liberal representative government centered around elections is not simply an oligarchic system is because it is also a system that provides tools for the ruled, including methods of participation other than elections, freedoms for the opposition, and checks on the rulers. Although these tools are still severely inadequate, they do make it more challenging for the rulers to do whatever they wish and they do force rulers to respond to citizens to an extent. However, if elections start to become the only institution of a modern representative government, then elections merely become a tool for authoritarian rule by bolstering the executive branch with popular approval.

The historic demonstrations centered around the resistance in Istanbul’s Gezi park is exactly about the grievances caused by the dictatorship of an executive branch that is reinforced by the electoral approval. Specifically, Gezi park resistance is one those instances where both the class character of the state and the oligarchic nature of electoral authorization became blatantly obvious. Firstly, it signifies the class character of the state in a way that will not escape even the most crude Marxist analysis. Gezi is a public park at the political and social epicenter of the city, Taksim, and the government decided to replace the park with a shopping mall. When activists started to resist by not evacuating the park, the government sent in its police to fight for the conversion of a public park into a mall. To put it even more bluntly, the state blindly used its instruments of violence to serve the interests of capital, and to covert a collective good into private property. However, Gezi also demonstrates the oligarchic character of a political regime based solely on electoral authorization. Because, in the 2011 elections, nobody voted for the government to convert the public park in Taksim into a mall or any of the other governments incursions into the social sphere, yet short of specific mandates, and clear instructions on how to rule, the government had the legal right to rule as it pleases. However, despite their electoral mandate, this type of unilateral action may not have happened in a better functioning representative system which provides the ruled with other instruments of participation and opposition than elections. Because, even though its democratic content is limited, in a liberal representative government citizens would have some access to policy making, there would be a level of transparency and free public debate, and there would be legal scrutiny over the issue. In Turkey on the other hand, no such limits are in place given the AKP’s unprecedented accumulation of power since 2007.

The AKP has now not only eliminated the well-known historical challenge from the army, but it has also taken control of the high courts, and then slowly but surely, using its popularity, eradicated all oppositional freedoms. Concretely speaking, Erdogan’s policy could not be confronted by the non-existing oppositional media, and it could not be challenged by the judiciary that is now under the control of the executive, i.e. the ruling party. Therefore, when Erdogan wanted to turn a public space, where citizens can engage in free and equal interactions, into a right-wing conservative space, where customers focus on the acquisition of goods, there were no other way to stop him except by the force of numbers.

However, the hundreds of thousands of people out protesting are not resisting the police and subjecting themselves to the massive use of tear gas and brute force just because of the injustice at Gezi park, or just because of the fact that Erdogan is an authoritarian leader. These protests happened because in addition to Erdogan’s on-going attacks on oppositional groups (seculars, Alewites, Kurds, socialists and others), including purging them from positions of power, and criminalizing and imprisoning them en mass for various reasons, he deepened to an unprecedented extent his neoliberal and extremely conservative exclusionary social policies. To name a few of the most recent ones, last year, without much debate, the whole education system was reconfigured to better serve not only the needs of capital but also in Erdogan’s words, ’to raise a more religious generation’. Last month, in a country where per capita alcohol consumption is by far the lowest among OECD countries, strict alcohol consumption restrictions passed, which were defended by Erdogan as follows: ’why is it defensible for you to accept a law passed by two drunkards [according to many signifying Ataturk and Inonu], but the law that is the imperative of religion becomes something that you need to deny…if you want to drink, buy your drink and go drink it in your own home’. Last week, the AKP enlarged its assault on women rights by making the morning after pill a prescription drug, and a couple of days ago Erdogan later approved of an announcement made in Ankara metro warning against kissing in public. Many of these regulations would be very difficult to implement if previously existing checks were still place. For example, the constitutional court might strike a few of the legal changes, or the council of the state would limit or remove some of the others. Considering the lack of avenues for voice and the lack of obstacles against Erdogan’s power, these and many other similar policies, combined with his symbolically exclusionary and suffocating speeches, have apparently made a great many non-supporters feel not only completely powerless and frustrated, but also very angry.

This anger has now become embodied in massive demonstrations, where hundreds of thousands of people are taking back the autonomy that the government enjoys. In short, if the reason for the rebellion is the sense of powerlessness, lack of control over their own lives, the immediate result is perhaps the sense of power large sectors of the population are enjoying for the first time. For now, they have taken control of their city and of their lives. As a result, we are now part of a truly democratic moment. This is an experience that goes way beyond the ’democratic rights’ enjoyed within liberal representative democracies, which at its best is a democracy tamed for the requirements of capitalism and the modern state. Therefore, in a counter-intuitive way, we probably owe this democratic explosion to the lack of democratic checks on the power of the electorally authorized executive. For Erdogan, on the other hand, before our very eyes we are witnessing the transformation of his image from a leader who is powerful, popular, and if a little impulsive, still reflective of the values of the ’Turkish nation’, into a tyrant who is so greedy and drunk with power that although he has the votes, he cannot manage the country effectively anymore. He is indeed trapped in a dictatorial dilemma: if he caves into the current demands, he will lose the perception that he is all that powerful; if he does not cave in at all, he will have to rely on coercive power to the degree that he will turn into a cruel tyrant. So far he has taken the second route, still belittling and criminalizing the demonstrators, hoping that the next elections in less than a year will result in a way to dissipate the democratic euphoria. However, although this is one of those instances where the statement that ‘politics is open-ended’ is indeed the reality, it appears that sustained mobilization is the only course of action that will help satisfy both democratic and socialist goals.

Yunus Sözen is a member of Antikapitalist Eylem (Anticapitalist Action) in Turkey.

The Hidden History of Gezi Park

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– By Vicken Cheterian –

The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his defence of the project of building a new shopping centre and luxury apartments at the place of Gezi Park in Istanbul, said something symbolic: the reconstruction plans, which supposedly would resurrect the architecture of an old military barracks based on the architecture of a gezi_parki_81464032519th century Ottoman building, would amount to “respecting history.”

History is a sensitive question in Turkey, even controversial, and it has done much to forget its own history. So it’s surprising to see such a fierce struggle now being waged in its name. Amid the host of media reports, documentaries etc, only a very few recalled that the park had a history. The Prime Minister could have remembered, for example, that the architect of the original barracks built in 1806 was Krikor Balian, an Armenian belonging to a famous family of architects who were in the service of the Sultans.

To mention the architect of the old artillery barrack that Erdogan is aiming to re-construct is not a secondary issue. It is the part of Turkish and Ottoman history that modern Turkish politicians have invested enormous efforts to erase and forget: the participation of religious minorities, such as Greeks, Assyrians, Jews, but especially Armenians, in the country’s cultural, economic and political life.

More important than the architect though is the memory of a former Armenian cemetery left to oblivion. The place in which Gezi Park stands, where the Turkish Prime Minister now wants to build a shopping mall and a mosque, was once an Armenian cemetery. In 1551, following an epidemic, the land was given to the Armenian Church by Sultan Suleyman. It was later enlarged and walled. In 1837 Surp Haop (Saint James) Armenian Hospital was constructed next to it, and continues to function. On the ground of the cemetery a church, Saint Gregory the Illuminator, was also built. And between 1919 and 1922 a monument dedicated to the Armenian victims of 1915 was erected. The cemetery was confiscated in 1930, on the pretext that the Armenian Church did not have a property title for the cemetery. The Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul, Mesrob Naroyan, attempted to reclaim the cemetery through the courts, arguing that Turkish law permitted ownership after fifteen years of uncontested occupation. But the court supported the government decision, and imposed a heavy fine on the Church.

The government allowed only two weeks to remove the graves. Some were taken to the Sisli Armenian cemetery, most were left behind. The cemetery was then taken over by the authorities, which sold off the tombstones. Some of the remaining marble stones were later used to build the staircases and fountain of Gezi Park while the confiscated land was sold to private businesses — the Turkish radio company TRT offices, and luxury hotels such as the Divan Hotel, Hyatt, and Hilton.

No one expected the small, environmentalist protest that started to protect the 600 trees of Gezi Park to become a nation-wide protest against the policies of Erdogan. “The movement started as environmental issue and for the protection of cultural heritage. The reason it grew was because of police violence,” said Sevil Turan, the co-spokesperson of the Turkish Greens. The way the movement started was unbelievable, Turan said. “I did not imagine so many people would join the protest movement. People came because they were so angry with the government, but at the same time they were so calm, there was no violence.”

“You captured our graveyard, but you can’t capture our park!” A youth movement called Nor Zartonk (Armenian for “new awakening”) raised this slogan. Sayat Tekir, its spokesperson, said that “from the first day we were at Gezi Park.”

This movement resembles the mobilization that followed the assassination of Hrant Dink, bringing together people from all horizons. Dink was a Turkish-Armenian journalist and chief-editor of bilingual weekly Agos, who was assassinated in Istanbul in 2007. Over a hundred thousand people came out on the streets for his funeral.

The Gezi Park mobilization was equally diverse: various Turkish political trends (a militant wrapped in the red Turkish flag walked hand-in-hand with another dressed in a flag with the image of Abdullah Ocalan). Leftists and nationalists, Turks and Kurds, environmentalists and anti-capitalists, all came together to oppose what they saw as increasing authoritarianism of the new Turkish strongman.

Nor Zartonk started as an email discussion forum back in 2004, made up of Turkish Armenians. But people remained fearful of taking political action, said Tekir, because of the traditional fear Turkish Armenians have lived in since 1915. “The assassination of Hrant Dink was the motor that pushed us to action. We organized conferences and discussions on the Armenian question, minorities in Turkey, relations with the European Union, etc., but also took part in demonstrations. They were part of the mobilization against the closing down of the Emek movie theatre where, like Gezi Park, municipal authorities wanted to build a shopping centre. Like Gezi, Emek has a secret story: It was confiscated from its Jewish owners during the second world war.

On the second week of the latest demonstrations, a group of anti-racism activists wanted to erect a monument at Gezi Park referring to the 1919 monument there dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Armenian genocide. They also wanted to name one of the streets adjacent to the park “Hrant Dink Caddesi.” They carried banners on which it was written: “Burdayiz Ahparig!” — we are here, brother!

Tekir said: “Until recently, the Armenian community in Turkey were frightened and closed in upon themselves, the result of a series of massacres and repression that started in the late Ottoman period and continued under the Republic. We want to ask for our rights, to claim a democratic society.”

Erdogan’s answer to the “Occupy Gezi” movement came in his usual defiant manner, unmoved by the thousands of citizens demonstrating against his projects in the face of police repression. “A mosque will be built in Taksim,” he said, then added that “he did not have to receive permission from the main opposition leader or a ‘few marauders’ for the projects.” After returning from a tour in North Africa, the Prime Minister was even harsher in his announcements: “These protests must end immediately. No power but Allah can stop Turkey’s rise. The police are doing their duty. These protests, which have turned into vandalism and utter lawlessness must end immediately.”

Sevil Turan said: The “AKP has become so strong, it sees there is no political alternative. Erdogan wants to leave behind him a monument on Takism Square, build a new, conservative culture. The Prime Minister remained silent [over the fact] that this was an old Armenian cemetery.”

For Turan, Gezi Park has introduced a new political culture: “It was an experience of direct democracy.” Tekir agrees: “Those who entered the park, and those who went out of it weren’t the same people anymore. Gezi became a laboratory for political formation.”

Le Monde diplomatique

Vicken Cheterian is a journalist based in Geneva.

 

Gezi protesters set to ‘enter their park,’ again

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ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

Taksim Solidarity Platform is set to “enter” Gezi Park on Saturday, July 6, despite police having cordoned off the area, while another group will stage “the First Annual Gas n_50131_4Man Festival” on the Asian side’s Kadıköy the following day.

The platform has announced that it will be in Gezi to serve the notice of the Istanbul first Regional Court’s June 6 decision which canceled the controversial Taksim pedestrianization project and the Artillery Barracks project.

The Taksim Square pedestrianization project and the Artillery Barracks project have lost their legal grounds, according to the initiative.

“We have not given up our demands and gains,” read their statement, which called on all Gezi protesters to meet in Taksim at 7 p.m. to show solidarity.

Gas Man Fest

Kadıköy, on Istanbul’s Asian side, will also witness another protest on Sunday. The “Man Made of Tear Gas” Festival is set to take place on July 7 in the district, bringing together the “rebellious” crowds and a set of artists scheduled to perform at the event.

The festival flyer states that the form of protesting has changed over time, and that a new form of demonstration “for an independent and democratic Turkey” has turned all parks and streets into festivals “with the demand of freedom.”

The festival is set to host a series of artists, including Bulutsuzluk Özlemi, Kurtalan Ekspres, Cem Adrian and the Boğaziçi University’s Jazz Choir. A fashion show will also be among the festivities of the event.
The anti-government protests that were kicked off by severe police intervention against a small, peaceful group protesting mall plans in place of Taksim’s Gezi Park, received a severe blow when police forces cleared out the park after a days-long occupation by protesters.

Despite this, the movement refused the die down and instead spread to parks nationwide and individual forms of protest erupted around the country.

Security officials are continuing to launch raids in various cities, detaining people over alleged vandalism during the protests.

15 detained

Fifteen people were detained for allegedly harming private property and using Molotov cocktails while attending the Gezi protests, in what became the third wave of raids against the movement.

Security forces raided 17 locations simultaneously in four different cities, with İzmir as the focus of the operation. Istanbul, Manisa and Batman were the remaining the cities.

The suspects were detained over allegedly acting on behalf of terrorist organizations, harming private property, using Molotov cocktails and provoking the people during their time attending the anti-government protests.

Forces confiscated documents allegedly related to criminal organizations and CDs.

Two other operations were conducted on June 20 and June 24, during which 27 people were detained, 24 of whom were subsequently arrested by the court.

Some 2.5 million protesters hit the streets across Turkey since the unrest began on May 31 over the attempt to demolish Istanbul’s Gezi Park, which quickly turned into nationwide mass anti-government protest. Only in two cities did people not attend protests, while 79 cities witnessed large-scale protests, the Interior Ministry’s record of protests said, according to daily Milliyet’s report.