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Netherlands plans to officially ban Turkish politicians’ election campaigns

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Netherlands ban Turkish politicians

Netherlands ban Turkish politicians

People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the largest coalition partner of the Dutch government headed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte has started preparing a law to ban Turkish politicians’ election campaigns in the Netherlands, Ahval news agency reports, citing BBC Turkish Service.

Bente Becker a member of the parliament from VVD, told local media that foreign politicians who run election campaigns disrupt the peace in the Dutch society and said that, like Germany, the Netherlands needed a legislation to ban the election campaigns of Turkish politicians offically.

Coalition partner Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) strongly supports VVD’s proposal, BBC Turkish said.

In Mar. 2017, during the Turkish campaign to change the constitution to a presidential system, the Netherlands refused to allow Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu’s plane to land in the country.

Family and Social Policy Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya came from Germany by road to hold a rally in response, and was declared persona non grata and escorted by police out of the Netherlands.

As a response, Turkey denied entry to Dutch Ambassador to Turkey and the Netherlands decided to officially withdraw its ambassador to Turkey in Feb. 2018.

Terrorist State of Turkey’s parliament committee bans “genocide” “Kurdistan” word

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Turkey ban Genocide and KurdistanTurkish parliament’s constitutional committee adopted amendments on changes in regulations proposed by the ruling Justice and Development party.

Representatives of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party and Republican People’s Party slammed the bill which was finally adopted.

New regulations suggest using sanctions in case of insult or accusations against the history of the Turkish people and the common past of the people living in Turkey. In such a case, for example, deputies can be removed from meetings and deprived of 2/3 of their salaries. In this context, the words “genocide” and “Kurdistan” can be a reason for punishment.

Iraq bans importing Turkish tomatoes, the decision will not apply to Kurdistan

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HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— In a bid to boost local tomato production, the Iraqi government announced the decision to stop importing tomatoes from Turkey.

“The tomato products of Najef and Karbala have considerably increased and it needs more support to boost the local product,” read a statement from the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources.

The statement adds that these two provinces “could meet the domestic demand of [all] the Iraqi provinces as well.”

This decision will not apply to the Kurdistan Region, Rudaw reported.

From Turkey, Iraq according to government statistics had imported tomatoes valued at $98.5 million in 2014, $82.8 million in 2015 and $88 million in 2016.

Iraq is the second country after Russia which decided to halt tomato regional imports from Turkey.

Turkey is the fourth largest tomato exporter in the world fulfilling 6.9 percent of global demand, according Turkish Agricultural Chambers Union (TZOB).

Following the Russian ban, Turkish farmers had sought out alternative markets, mainly in Iraq, Belarus, Georgia and Saudi Arabia, the TZOB said in a statement in March.

Iraqi parliament bans hoisting of Kurdish flags in Kirkuk

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The Iraqi parliament has voted to ban the hoisting of Kurdish flags over government buildings in the northern city of Kirkuk.

The lawmakers on Saturday passed a bill to prohibit the hoisting of the flag of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in Kirkuk days after the the Kirkuk Provincial Council decided to raise the regional flag next to the Iraqi national flag in front of some buildings.

The controversial move was swiftly met with ire in Baghdad as Kirkuk is not part of the semi-autonomous region.

Turkey, Iraq’s northern neighbor which has its own issues with Kurds and is in the midst of a crackdown on Kurdish militants, also condemned the flag hoisting.

A day after the council gave the go-ahead, Ankara that the decision would not help Iraq’s future stability, especially at a time when Baghdad was seeking unity in the fight against Daesh Takfiri terrorists.

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“We don’t approve of the voting held by the regional administration,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the state-run TRT Haber television news network in Ankara on Wednesday.

On March 28, Arabs and Turkmens residing in Kirkuk protested against the move, describing it as unconstitutional.

Kurds and other officials rejected the claim, saying the Iraqi constitution had not explicitly banned the flag hoisting. They also argued that the move was normal and that Kurdistan flags had already been hoisted in Turkish cities of Istanbul and Ankara. They also justified the move as a response to demands by the majority of Kurds living in the city.

The Saturday bill also banned the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) from seeking any direct benefit from the sale of oil in Kirkuk, noting that the income from Kirkuk’s oil belonged to all Iraqis and that it should be equally distributed among the KRG and other Iraqi provinces.

Kurdish officials have been at odds with Baghdad over the share of oil income from Kirkuk as part of the crude produced in the area passes through the pipelines operated by the Kurds.

Kurdish members of the Iraqi parliament left the session in protest to the ratification of the bill.

Laptop ban hits Dubai for 1.1mln weekend travellers

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Dubai: Dubai International Airport and its flag carrier Emirates began implementing a ban on laptops and tablets on direct flights to the US Saturday, on one of the busiest travel weekends of the year.

Around 1.1 million people are expected to pass through the world´s busiest international airport as the city marks UAE spring break, Dubai Airports said.

An estimated 260,000 travellers were expected to pass through each day from Friday through Monday. Dubai International Airport expects 89 million passengers this year.

The United States announced a ban on all electronics larger than a standard smartphone on board direct flights out of eight countries across the middle East. US officials would not specify how long the ban will last, but Emirates told AFP that it had been instructed to enforce it until at least October 14.

The ban also covers all electronics sold at Dubai Duty Free, Dubai Airports CEO Paul Griffiths told local radio earlier this week.

Government-owned Emirates operates 18 flights daily to the United States out of Dubai.

Adding to the complication on Saturday, a number of flights out of Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports were delayed due to thunderstorms, including an Emirates flight to Houston.

Travellers using 10 airports across the Middle East and North Africa are subject to the ban, including Istanbul´s Ataturk International Airport and Qatar´s Hamad International Airport.

And while the ban has sparked anger across the region for again targeting majority-Muslim countries, some increasingly wary travellers shrugged off the latest restriction.

“It´s a rule. I follow the rules,” said Rakan Mohammed, a Qatari national who flies from Doha to the US two to three times a year.

“The bigger problem for my family is the no smoking. On a long flight, they become restless after three hours.”

Britain has also announced a parallel ban, effective Saturday, targeting all flights out of Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Lebanon.

Abu Dhabi, home to UAE national carrier Etihad Airways, is one of the few international airports with a US Customs and Border Protection Facility, which processes immigration and customs inspections before departure.

“When guests land in the US, they arrive as domestic passengers with no requirement to queue for immigration checks again,” read a statement emailed to AFP.

The bans have come under criticism for targeting majority-Muslim countries. The US ban in particular has raised eyebrows for covering airports from which US airlines do not operate direct flights.

The United States and Britain have cited intelligence indicating passenger jets could be targeted with explosives planted in such devices

European Parliament President bans distribution of Turkish Daily Sabah at parliament

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The president of the European Parliament has banned the distribution of Turkish pro-government English language Daily Sabah at parliament, upon the request of a Dutch MEP, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on March 23.

President Antonia Tajani ruled for the ban on the daily under the roof of the parliament in Brussels following an “investigation” after a demand from Jeroen Lenaers, a member of the European Parliament from the Christian Democratic Appeal Party.

Marjory van den Broeke, the director of the European Parliament’s Press Department, confirmed the ban.

Without elaborating on the main motive, she stated that the demand originated from some members of the parliament “who had been disturbed by the publishing line of the paper.”

Founded in 2014, Daily Sabah had been distributed at the European Parliament only on Tuesdays.

Lenaers had demanded the distribution ban on Daily Sabah in a letter penned to President Tajani last week.

The letter came after the newspaper published a headline reading “EU acts as if Dutch attack on democratic rights never happened,” over the barring of two Turkish ministers from entering the Netherlands for the April 16 referendum campaign.

The Dutch politician also stated that the daily “spread hate” with its reporting on sympathizers in the Netherlands of the U.S.-based Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, accused of masterminding Turkey’s failed July 2016 coup attempt.

Lenaers’ demand had drawn an angry reaction from President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who said those who did not allow Daily Sabah’s distribution at the European Parliament would “face the consequences.”

“There are people who do not want to let Daily Sabah into the European Parliament. They are issuing motions for that. All this will bring a reprisal. If they do not let a national and native newspaper in there, you will see reprisals in Turkey,” Erdoğan said at a rally in Istanbul on March 19.

EU court allows ban on headscarf in workplace

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Private firms are justified on certain grounds to bar a female employee from wearing a headscarf or veil, according to the European Court of Justice. The top court was ruling on cases in France and Belgium.

The court issued a complicated judgement Tuesday on two cases, involving a veil-wearing software engineer in France and a headscarf-wearing receptionist in Belgium, centered on the EU-wide law known as the anti-discrimination or equal treatment Directive 2000/78.

“An internal rule of an undertaking [firm] which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination,” the court said.

Discrimination if firm lacks internal, neutral rule

“However, in the absence of such a rule, the willingness of an employer to take account of the wishes of a customer no longer to have the employer’s services provided by a worker wearing an Islamic headscarf cannot be considered an occupational requirement that could rule out discrimination,” the court added.

The Luxembourg-based court’s ruling came on the eve of the Netherland’s parliamentary election in which migration has been a key issue.

Ruling anchored in EU charter

To ensure full participation of citizens within the EU, including economic life, the EU’s Directive 200/78 prohibits “any direct or indirect” discrimination.

The directive stems from the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights adopted in 2000 as well as its much older Convention on Fundamental Rights and Freedoms dating back to Rome in 1950.

Article 9 of the 1950 convention says everyone has the right to “manifest his religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.”

Article 10 of the younger charter also underpins the right to religious practice but in Article 16 it also states that enterprises have the “freedom to conduct a business in accordance with Union law and national laws.”

Contrary legal opinions

Advocates general to Europe’s top court had delivered contrary views on how to interpret the directive and prior judgments by top French and Belgian courts of appeal.

Eleonore Sharpston said the French employer of design engineer Asma Bougnaoui, who was dismissed in 2009 for wearing a veil while advising a Toulouse client, should “give way” to the right of the individual employee to manifest her religion.

Sharpston concluded that there had been discrimination on the grounds of religion or belief, adding that “it seems to me particularly dangerous to excuse the employer from compliance with an equal treatment requirement in order to pander to the prejudice” based on the argument “our customers won’t like it.

‘Neutrality,’ argued Belgian employer

In the case of receptionist Samira Achbita, another EU court advocate general Juliane Kokott concluded that her wearing a headscarf at a Belgian security firm did “not constitute direct discrimination based on religion” in terms of the directive “if that ban is founded on a general company rule prohibiting visible political, philosophical and religious symbols in the workplace.”

“Such discrimination may be justified in order to enforce a policy of religious and ideological neutrality,” concluded Kokott.

The firm had dismissed the receptionist in 2006. She then began Belgian court proceedings against wrongful dismissal, backed from 2009 by the Belgium Center for Equal Opportunities.

Two higher Belgian labor courts subsequently dismissed her claim. In 2015, Belgium’s Court of Cassation stayed proceedings and referred the case to the European Court of Justice.

ipj/rt (dpa, Reuters, AFP)

Trump signs revised travel ban excluding Iraq

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WASHINGTON,— U.S. President Donald Trump signed a revised executive order on Monday banning citizens from six Muslim-majority nations from traveling to the United States but removing Iraq from the list, after his controversial first attempt was blocked in the courts.

The new order, which takes effect on March 16, keeps a 90-day ban on travel to the United States by citizens of Iran, Libya, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It applies only to new visa applicants, meaning some 60,000 people whose visas were revoked under the previous order will now be permitted to enter.

Immigration advocates said the new ban still discriminated against Muslims and failed to address some of their concerns with the previous order. Legal experts said it would, however, be harder to challenge because it affects fewer people living in the United States and allows more exemptions to protect them.

Trump, who first proposed a temporary travel ban on Muslims during his presidential campaign last year, had said his original Jan. 27 executive order was a national security measure meant to head off attacks by Islamist militants.

It sparked chaos and protests at airports, where visa holders were detained and later deported back to their home countries. It also drew criticism from targeted countries, Western allies and some of America’s leading corporations before a U.S. judge suspended it on Feb. 3.

“As threats to our security continue to evolve and change, common sense dictates that we continually re-evaluate and reassess the systems we rely upon to protect our country,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters after Trump signed the new order.

Dutch anti-Islamist politician Geert Wilders calls for ban on Turkish cabinet visits

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Populist leader Geert Wilders has slammed a planned event in The Netherlands in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Wilders is hoping to come out on top in the country’s next general election.

With just 10 days until the Netherlands elects its next government, Wilders delivered a statement to reporters in which he slammed plans by Turkish officials to campaign in the European country.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other Dutch officials have already criticized plans to hold the rally in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam.

“They should not come here and interfere with our domestic problems,” Wilders told reporters, referring to the Turkish officials planning to attend the rally.

He went on to call for a ban on the politicians from entering the country, saying in English, “If I would be prime minister today I would declare – until at least the half of April when they have the referendum – I would call the whole cabinet of Turkey persona non-grata for a month or two, not allowing them to come here.”

Wilders, who officially launched his campaign in February, also said the Dutch government was weak for not banning the rally and referred to Erdogan as an “Islamo-fascist leader.”

Vying for votes

Wilders’ far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) led opinion polls for several months, with around 20 percent support, which was seen as enough to lead a multi-party coalition, if only the other parties hadn’t ruled out a deal with Wilder’s party. But the PVV has lost ground in recent weeks.

In the most recent poll released on Wednesday, it now trails Rutte’s conservative liberal VVD by 16.3 percent to 15.7 percent.

Wilder’s who last month launched his campaign denouncing what he called “Moroccan scum who make the streets unsafe,” has previously being fined for inciting racial hatred.

The controversial MP suspended campaigning for a few days last week after one his security officials was arrested on suspicion of passing classified information about Wilders to a Dutch-Moroccan crime gang.

The firebrand lawmaker, who has courted controversy with his hardline anti-Islam, anti-immigrant stance and incendiary insults against Moroccans and Turks, has long been under 24-hour police protection.

He promised to return to campaining this weekend on an anti-immigration and anti-EU platform.

The 53-year-old has vowed that if elected he will pull the Netherlands out of the EU, ban the sale of Korans, close mosques and Islamic schools, shut Dutch borders and ban Muslim migrants.

Austrian chancellor suggests EU-ban on campaigning by Turkish politicians

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An EU-wide ban on Turkish politicians’ campaigning in the bloc has been suggested by Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern. Turkish Economy Minister Nihat Zeybekci still plans to visit Turkish voters in Germany.

Kern told the German newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” that Europe should protect its individual member nations from President Erdogan’s outspoken drive to win over expatriate Turks ahead of April’s Turkish referendum on boosting his constitutional powers.

The latest strains in EU-Turkish relations center on Ankara’s arrest of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel and rejections on security grounds by the German towns of Guggenau, and Frechen near Cologne, of gatherings at which visiting Turkish ministers were to have made campaign appearances.

Austria’s chancellor said an EU-wide ban on Turkish politicians’ campaigning inside Europe would ease Turkish pressure on individual EU nations such as Germany.

“A joint approach by the EU to prevent such campaign appearances would be sensible,” Kern said.

Press freedom, ‘foreign word’

Kern also slammed Erdogan’s plan, saying “the introduction of a presidential system would further weaken the constitutional state, constrain the separation of powers and contradict the values of the European Union.”

Press freedom had become a foreign word in Turkey and human rights are being trampled on, Kern added.

He demanded Ankara immediately free the German-Turkish correspondent of the conservative German newspaper “Die Welt,” as well as numerous other journalists and scientists detained since last year’s coup attempt in Turkey.

Yucel had reported on Turkey in an independent and critical manner, Kern said.

Erdogan: ‘German agent’

On Friday, Erdogan accused Yucel of being a “German agent” and supporting the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) through his reporting.

Meanwhile, Turkish Prime Mnister Binali Yildirim said he had had a long phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Her office has yet to comment on the contents of the call.

Merkel did, however, defend the decision of local officials obligated to uphold social freedom.

Those decisions were “taken by municipalities, and as a matter of principle, we apply freedom of expression in Germany,” she said.

Stephan Meyer, interior affairs spokesman for Merkel’s Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), said the “export” of Turkey’s internal conflict to Germany should “not be tolerated.”

Germany’s new Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel of the center-left Social Democrats, which governs with Merkel, warned against a further escalation of recriminations.

“We should not wreck the foundations of the friendship between our countries,” Gabriel wrote in a guest article published by another German Sunday newspaper “Bild am Sonntag.”

Opposition Greens party politician Claudia Roth warned that appearance bans would turn out to be counter-productive.

“Then we best demonstrate most clearly the difference between us and an autocracy on its way to dictatorship when we show that freedom of opinion, freedom of assembly and, of course, press freedom applies to all,” Roth said.

More than one million Turks living in Germany are eligible to vote in Turkey’s referendum in April. They are among three million persons of Turkish origin living in Germany. Half of them have German citizenship.

Netherlands chastised

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, speaking in Antalya, western Turkey, also chastised the Netherlands after authorities in Rotterdam banned a Turkish rally planned for next week.

On Dutch radio, Deputy Prime Minister Lodewijk Asscher rejected accusations that the Netherlands was restricting free speech.

“We believe that the Dutch public space is not the place to conduct another country’s political campaign,” Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in a statement on Facebook on Friday.

“We will go where we want to go, we will meet with our citizens and we will have our meetings,” said Cavusoglu in response to Rutte’s post.

ipj/jlw (Reuters, AFP, dpa)