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US NGO calls Turkey only ‘partly free,’ cites declines in freedoms

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Turkey is only a “partly free” country due to a serious decline in civil liberties and political rights, U.S. nongovernmental organization Freedom House has said in its annual Freedom in the World report.

The report underlined the decline of civil liberties in Turkey as a major development, while sharply criticizing the rule of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“[Erdoğan’s] government has jailed hundreds of journalists, academics, opposition party officials and military officers in a series of prosecutions aimed at alleged conspiracies against the state and Kurdish organizations,” the report said.

Turkey was labeled “partly free” by the report, receiving a score of 3/7 on political rights and 4/7 on civil liberties.

Partly free countries are defined by the group as nations “in which there is limited respect for political rights and civil liberties,” an “environment of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic and religious strife,” as well as single-party dominance in the political landscape.

Partly free countries include Togo, Uganda, Tanzania, Tunisia, Guatemala, Malawi, East Timor, Ecuador and others.

Defense Secretary Nominee Sen. Chuck Hagel Owes Apology to Armenian-Americans

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BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN

Most political observers predict a contentious hearing in the Armed Services Committee and later in the full Senate on the confirmation of former , President Obama’s nominee as the next Secretary of Defense.

During his 12 years in the Senate, Hagel, a Republican, managed to offend a slew of constituencies, including conservative Senators of his own political party, as well as Jewish Americans, Armenian-Americans, Cuban-Americans, and gays.

In order to appease his critics and secure Senate’s confirmation, Sen. Hagel has been busy in recent days issuing retractions and apologies to various groups.

Upon learning of Hagel’s nomination, Jewish-American organizations harshly criticized him for being soft on Iran and hard on Israel, and for stating that “the Jewish lobby” in the United States “intimidates a lot of people.”

Sen. Hagel responded by telling The Lincoln Journal Star on January 7 that his record demonstrates “unequivocal, total support for Israel” and endorsement of tough economic sanctions against Iran. There is “not one shred of evidence that I’m anti-Israeli, not one [Senate] vote that matters hurt Israel,” Hagel told the newspaper.

The nominee also backed down from his opposition to ambassadorial nominee James Hormel in 1998 whom he had called “openly, aggressively gay.” He issued an apology last week to gay rights groups, stating that his earlier comments were “insensitive.”

However, the nominee for Defense Secretary remains unapologetic regarding his highly insensitive remarks on the Armenian Genocide.

During a press conference in Yerevan on June 2, 2005, Sen. Hagel expressed his opposition to a pending congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide: “Historians and others should deal with it. But, I don’t think that the United States Government should become involved in the issue based on a resolution or any other way. What happened in 1915, happened in 1915. As one United States Senator, I think the better way to deal with this is to leave it open to historians and others to decide what happened and why.” This happens to be the exact position of the denialist Turkish regime on the Armenian Genocide.

Sen. Hagel went on to tell Armenian journalists: “The fact is that this region needs to move forward. We need to find a lasting peace between Turkey and Armenia and the other nations of this region. I am not sure that by going back and dealing with that in some way that causes one side or the other to be put in difficult spot, helps move the peace process forward.” These comments were simply intended to cover-up the Turkish crime of genocide.

Sen. Hagel’s pronouncements against the recognition of the Armenian Genocide are highlighted by his expressions of admiration for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, who continued the genocide initiated by the predecessor regime. It is not surprising that the Ataturk Society of America presented Sen. Hagel, the Ataturk Society’s Leadership Award on May 19, 2005, two weeks before going to Armenia and endorsing the Turkish government’s views on the Armenian Genocide.

Hurriyet newspaper quoted Sen. Hagel as making the following highly laudatory statement about the Father of modern Turkey in a 2008 speech: “Ataturk is one of the most valuable leaders of the 21st century. Children in the United States know nothing about this great leader. They should teach about him in schools and write about him in history books. Ataturk played a leading role in shaping today’s world.”

Armenian-Americans and human rights activists, who are deeply concerned about Hagel’s nomination, were quoted in an article by Adam Kredo in Washington Free Beacon titled, “Chuck Hagel has an Armenian Problem.” Here are some of their statements:

  • “We remain troubled by former Senator Hagel’s acceptance of Ankara’s gag-rule on American honesty about the Armenian Genocide,” ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian stated.
  • “We expect a rigorous confirmation process which will also serve as an opportunity for Senator Hagel to forthrightly acknowledge the U.S. record on the Armenian Genocide,” stated Bryan Ardouny, Executive Director of the Armenian Assembly of America.
  • “On the eve of the Holocaust, Hitler mockingly asked, ‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ Not Chuck Hagel, apparently,” stated Rafael Medoff, Director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies.
  • “What Chuck Hagel said in his press conference in Armenia in 2005 regarding the genocide of Armenians by Turks is shameful,” said Walter Reich, former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “In his forthcoming confirmation hearings, senators should confront him with what he said and should expect him to address it.”
  • Hagel’s opposition to U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide “betrays a shocking lack of moral leadership,” stated Thane Rosenbaum, Fordham University Law Professor.

Unless Sen. Hagel apologizes for his “insensitive” remarks on the Armenian Genocide, Armenian-Americans should urge the Senate to block his confirmation.

From Susurluk to Paris

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BY HRAYR S. KARAGUEUZIAN

The Susurluk scandal refers to the events surrounding the peak of the Turkey–Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) conflict, in the mid-1990s. It is considered a scandal because it indicated a close relationship between the government, the armed forces, and organized crime. The relationship came into existence after the National Security Council (MGK), Turkey’s highest body of authority conceived the need for the marshaling of the nation’s various “resources” to combat the separatist, Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The scandal surfaced with a car crash on November 3 1996, near Susurluk, in the south-eastern province of Balıkesir, Turkey. The scandal revealed relations between criminal networks, the police, and the government in Turkey. When a government car crashed, found at the scene were: Abdullah Catli, internationally wanted alleged murderer; chief police officer Huseyin Kocadag; and Sedat Bucak, a deputy for the True Path party (DYP) the political party of then Prime Minster Tansu Ciller. A sinister alliance of political representatives with gangsters in combating the Kurds was hence exposed.

Fast forward to 2013; three Kurdish women were murdered execution style in the Kurdish Information Center in Paris on January 11. One of the three murdered women, Sakine Cansiz, was a close companion of Andullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of PKK. She was present when the PKK was founded in the late 1970s and spent years in the Diyarbakir Prison, notorious for the systematic torture that took place there, and later went on to become an important PKK representative in Europe.

Who Is Responsible? The question of who was behind the killings of the three Kurdish women remains unanswered at the present. However, the lessons of the past indicate a clear role for the Turkish “deep state” in assassination plots. The examples Hrant Dink who was trying to assemble and catalog the identity of Turkish citizens of Armenian descent thus bringing forward the memory of the Gencoide, the recent assassination of a teacher in an Armenian School in Turkey all point to an organized assassination rather than an ordinary killing. Surprisingly, Dink’s case was initially dismissed as an organized murder. However, most recently the prosecutor’s office of Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals has asked the top court to overturn the rulings as an “ordinary killing,” arguing that the assassination was “organized.”

“Anything is possible,” says the Turkish journalist Saruhan Oluç . “Both opponents of the peace process within the PKK, or Turkish right-wing extremists linked to the security apparatus who oppose an agreement with the Kurds, are potential perpetrators.” A politically correct discourse would be to suggest an “internal Kurdish struggle” as PM Erdogan did without wasting time. However he did not dismiss a more sinister possibility. Erdogan, with his Islamist agenda is a different breed of politician compared to his late mentor Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan. Erdogan is credited in dismantling of a military plot Balioz (Sludge hammer) designed to topple his government, However, Erdogan’s selective pursuit of justice is devoid of a high moral compass. He is after the truth that brings him more power and against issues that bring forward the memory of the Genocide. “That’s how it is here,” says the journalist Saruhan Oluç. “A positive step [i.e., talks with Ocalan] has barely been made before another setback takes place.” The journalist was referring to the recent “opening” by the Turkish PM Erdogan, who had sent a representative to ostensibly discuss possible ways of ending the lethal violence with the PKK leader Ocalan.

The question was and remains: Which Turkish government can be trusted, the “deep” or the “not so deep”?

Mexican Court Rejects Azeri dictator Haydar Aliyev Monument

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MEXICO CITY—Mexico’s Federal Administrative Court dismissed a complaint filed by Azerbaijan’s Embassy to prevent city authorities to dismantle and remove a statue of Azeri dictator Haydar Aliyev from a park at the center of the city, reported the Cronica newspaper.

The court’s decision paves the way for the statue’s removal.

The statue was erected over the summer, after the Azeri government invested a reported $10 million in renovation of the park and the statue. The giant statue had raised concerns with citizens and protests from activists who decried the city’s decision to house a statue of a known dictator along such figures as Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi.

In late November, a three-person panel appointed to investigate the erection of the statue in the city’s Reforma Boulevard recommended that the statue be removed, prompting Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Mexico Ilgar Mukhtarov to threaten retaliation against the Mexican government, including the closure of Baku’s representation in Mexico.

The Azerbaijani Embassy appealed the commission decision to the district court requesting an injunction to stay the decision to remove the statue.

In November, Muktarov also said Azerbaijan would cancel $4 billion in investment projects for Mexico, saying if the then Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard “decides to remove the monument, we will cancel the projects, close the embassy, it would hurt the relationship between the two countries, and it would not be good for his image to be the person who prevented a $4-billion investment.”

Greece-Armenian 2013 military cooperation project signed

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January 14, 2013 | 19:44

This Monday, a delegation led by the head of Greek National Defense main Headquarters’ International cooperation directory, General of brigade Evangelos Constas visited Armenia.

The press service of Armenian Defense Ministry informs that in the framework of the visit the delegation has meet with the first Deputy Minister of Defense D. Tonoyan and Defense Policy department head L. Ayvazyan. During the meetings, the results of cooperation in 2012 were concluded and new agreements have been made toward the cooperation in 2013.

Ayvazyan and General of the brigade Constas have signed an agreement between the Defense Ministry of Armenia and National Defense Ministry of Greece, on the military cooperation program of 2013, which intend a number of initiatives in military technical cooperation, military training of the staff and experience exchange.

Armenian, Azeri Foreign Ministers to meet in late January?

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January 14, 2013 – 19:34 AMT

Armenian Foreign Ministry provides no information as to the possible meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers Edward Nalbandian and Elmar Mammadyarov /b>, scheduled for late January.

In conversation with a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter, RA Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan said details on the meeting will be released in the due course.

According to Azerbaijani media outlets, Mammadyarov told a Baku press conference that a meeting with Edward Nalbandian is due Jan 28 in Paris, with the format not specified yet.

OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs hinted at the possible ministerial meeting in early December.

Asked whether a meeting with Mr. Mammadyarov should be expected, Mr. Nalbandian noted that the meeting could be held, if necessary

These people are not terrorists, BDP head says at Paris protest

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ISTANBUL

Three members of the  Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), recently found murdered in Paris, were conducting civil politics and were not terrorists, the Kurdish-focused Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) head said today during a protest held in the French capitol.

Responding to earlier comments issued by Turkey’s prime minister to French President François Hollande demanding an explanation as to why France’s leader was meeting with terrorists, Selahattin Demirtas called the murdered women ‘people who conducted civil politics.’

“Those should not be the kind of statements that a prime minister striving for peace makes,” Demirtas said. “These people are not terrorists. They were conducting civil politics. Instead of questioning that you should be working to solve these murders, these massacres. That is what the prime minister of Turkey should be doing right now.”

Thousands of Kurds and PKK supporters gathered in Paris today, including Diyarbakir Deputy Leyla Zana.
European PKK representatives, Zubeyiz Aydar and Remzi Kartal were also present at the protest.

The crowds chanted slogangs of revenge, according to daily Hürriyet.

Death in Paris puts spotlight on Kurdish insurgency’s female warriors

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Published January 11, 2013

Associated Press

ANKARA, Turkey –  The photograph shows a young woman in guerrilla fatigues, long hair tied back, toting a machine gun. She stands next to Abdullah Ocalan, the feared leader of Turkey’s separatist Kurd militants — testimony to her senior role in the insurgency.

The scene was a guerrilla training camp at the height of the Kurdish rebellion. The woman was Sakine Cansiz — the exiled Kurdish activist who was found shot dead along with two other women on Thursday in Paris.

Cansiz, who went by the nom de guerre “Sara,” was legendary among Turkey’s Kurds as a founder of the separatist movement, a champion of women’s rights and an unbreakable warrior who endured years of torture in a Turkish prison. A 2007 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara, released by the secret-spilling Wikileaks website, shows that U.S. officials had identified Cansiz as one of the outlawed PKK’s top two “most notorious financiers” in Europe and wanted her captured to stop the flow of money to the rebels.

And her life and death put the spotlight on a seeming paradox: Women have played a prominent leadership and combat role in the insurgency of an ethnic group known for its conservative, male-dominated values.

The 55-year-old Cansiz was found at a Kurdish information center in Paris with multiple bullet wounds to the head. Two other Kurdish activist women lay dead beside her. French authorities called the attack an execution and hundreds of angry Kurds immediately gathered outside the building claiming the killings were a political assassination.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. Kurdish activists blamed Turkey for the deaths while some Turkish officials pointed at a possible feud between factions within the PKK, the Kurdish acronym for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

The killings come at a time when Turkey has resumed talks with jailed rebel leader Ocalan in a bid to persuade the group to disarm and end the nearly 29-year-old conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people. Some speculate that the slayings may have been an attempt to derail peace efforts.

Cansiz and Ocalan’s now-estranged wife, Kesire Yildirim, were the only two women among a core group that founded the PKK in a village in southeast Turkey in 1978. The organization has since grown into one of the world’s bloodiest separatist groups, where women make up around 12 percent of the estimated 5,500 fighters.

Details about Cansiz’s early years are sketchy. Turkish and Kurdish reports say she became a Kurdish and youth activist in the mainly-Kurdish province of Elazig in the 1970s before helping to found the PKK at a “congress” while in her early 20s. She was arrested during Turkey’s 1980 military coup and thrown into a prison in the city of Diyarbakir that was infamous for torture and ill-treatment, according to Ahmet Deniz, a PKK spokesman.

After her release in 1991, she spent time in PKK camps first in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, which was controlled by Syria at the time, and later in northern Iraq, where she led and organized the group’s women’s wings, Deniz said.

The PKK’s female fighters made headlines in the mid- 1990s through a series of suicide bombings that killed dozens of security force members and civilians. Some posed as pregnant women, disguising bombs strapped to their bellies.

Ocalan was initially wary of women members within the PKK, fearing they would distract male fighters. He changed his mind and actively sought to recruit women in the 1990s — partly for ideological reasons.

Inspired by Marxist ideology, Ocalan was convinced that more freedom for Kurdish women would help bring down the feudal, clan-based system that still reigns in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast region, according to Necati Alkan, an author of a book on women within the PKK.

Alkan said Ocalan’s motto was: “Free women amount to a free land and a free land amounts to freedoms.”

In the mid 1990s, at the height of the conflict between the PKK and the Turkish security forces, an estimated 20 to 25 percent of the group’s fighters were women, according to Nihat Ali Ozcan, a terrorism expert at the Ankara-based Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey.

“Sometimes they fought alongside the men as part of a major attack, other times they fought alone,” Ozcan said.

In March, Turkish security forces killed 15 women Kurdish rebel fighters in a clash in a forested area in southeast Turkey, believed to be the largest one-day casualty toll for women guerrilla fighters. A Turkish security official, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government rules, said security forces did not realize they were fighting women until all were killed and they recovered the bodies.

Women undergo the same rigorous training as men in camps in the mountains of northern Iraq, but train and live separately from male comrades. The PKK bars relations between female and male fighters, fearing a weakening of the cause.

According to Ozcan, the PKK has executed fighters “who fell in love” — for breaking the groups’ strict rules.

To some Kurdish women, joining the PKK was an escape from Kurdish culture’s rigid social mores — forced marriages, honor killings and other restrictive practices that remain rife in the southeast. Many others joined the PKK inspired by a dream of a separate state for Kurds or to avenge Kurds killed, imprisoned or tortured by Turkish security forces.

The PKK originally set out to fight for a separate state for Kurds, who make up an estimated 20 percent of the Turkish population. It later revised its goal to autonomy and greater rights for Kurds, including the annulment of Kurdish language bans imposed in the 1980s.

A series of European Union-backed reforms have widely expanded cultural rights and freedom for Kurds in recent years: A state television station broadcasts programs in Kurdish, students can now chose to learn Kurdish in schools, and there are plans to allow detainees to defend themselves in Kurdish in courts.

Cansiz is believed to have moved to Europe in the mid-1990s, becoming a leading activist for Kurdish women’s rights. Unconfirmed Turkish media reports say she was dispatched to Europe following a dispute with some PKK leaders in northern Iraq.

Cansiz received asylum from France in 1998, according to Devris Cimen, head of the Frankfurt-based Kurdish Center for Public Information.

The Wikileaks cable suggests that Cansiz and another PKK member, identified as Riza Altun, were the PKK’s key financiers in Europe, helping to funnel “upward of US$50-100 million annually” to the organization. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and its allies, including the United States.

“We must redouble our efforts to shut down the financial flows from Europe into PKK headquarters” in northern Iraq, the cable reads. “We need to narrow our focus by identifying and going after the two top targets of Riza Altun and Sakine Cansiz.”

The cable suggests that the PKK raises money in Europe through fundraising and business activities as well as drugs, smuggling and extortion.

“We can help by … coordinating with law enforcement and intelligence counterparts in Europe, to ensure these two terrorists are incarcerated,” it says.

The co-leader of a pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey, however, eulogized Cansiz for her bravery. “She spat at the face of her torturers and her oppressors,” Gultan Kisanak said Thursday.

In a 2011 documentary, Cansiz recounted the torture she suffered in the now shut Diyarbakir prison — including a beating endured while being forced to wade through “neck-high sewage water.”

Teacher in İstanbul Armenian school killed

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11 January 2013 / TODAY’S ZAMAN, İSTANBUL ,
A computer science teacher working for an Armenian school in İstanbul’s Kadıköy district was killed on Friday.

Şahin was living alone in the district’s Caferağa neighborhood, and had not shown up at school since the Orthodox Christmas, which is celebrated on Jan. 7. Worried about him, his friends broke down his door and found him dead. His throat had been slit by a knife.

The İstanbul Police Department’s homicide bureau determined during their inspection at the scene of the incident that there were signs of struggle.

Şahin’s body was taken to the morgue of Göztepe Education and Research Hospital after an examination by experts and a public prosecutor.

Police have launched an investigation into the incident.

Şahin’s neighbors told the police that they do not think Şahin had such serious problems with anybody that would lead to his murder. He was a happy and easygoing man, they said.

Şahin divorced three years ago and has one daughter.

Initial reports also said that the police found bullets in Şahin’s body.

In the most recent two attacks against Armenians, an 87-year-old Armenian woman in the Samatya neighborhood of İstanbul’s Fatih district was wounded by a burglar who broke into her apartment and stole her jewelry along with some other valuable possessions in December. Again in late December, an 84-year-old Armenian woman was murdered in her apartment in Samatya. The act is believed to have been a hate crime because a cross was carved into her chest with a sharp object.

3 Kurdish Women Assassinated in Paris

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PARIS (Combined Sources)—Three Kurdish women were shot dead in Paris in killings that appeared politically motivated, police and other sources said Thursday.

The bodies of the women were found at the Information Center of Kurdistan, a police source said. The center has close links to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

The dead include Sakine Cansiz, one of the co-founders of the PKK, currently in negotiations with Ankara to establish a cease fire. The two others victims were Kurdistan National Committee (KNC) representative and head of the Kurdish institute Fidan Dogan, and activist Leyla Soylemez.

The French interior minister Manuel Valls said the three were “summarily executed.”

“There is no doubt this was politically motivated,” center employee Berivan Akyol told French broadcaster iTele.

Firat reported that two of those killed were shot in the head and one in the stomach, and that the murder weapon was believed to have been fitted with a silencer.

“A couple of colleagues saw blood stains at the door. When they broke the door open and entered they saw the three women had been executed,” French Kurdish Associations Federation Chairman Mehmet Ulker was quoted as saying by Firat.

Turkish broadcasters cited police as saying the women had links to the PKK.

The Turkish government and the jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan on Tuesday agreed on a framework for a plan to end the Kurdish-Turkish conflict envisioning Kurdish disarmament in exchange for increased minority rights, the Turkish Radikal reported.

The newspaper said senior intelligence officials had held meetings with PKK chief Abdullah Ocalan in his island jail near Istanbul, yielding a four-stage plan to halt the conflict.