Swedish MP about suing Erdogan: No lessons seems to have been learnt from the past

July 13, 2017 By administrator

YEREVAN. – The legal complaint filed by Swedish lawmakers against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is based on the report from the high representative for human rights in the UN and their report for what happened 2015-2016, as well as internal human rights organizations in Turkey, Swedish MP Carl Schlyter said.

Swedish lawmakers are accusing Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crime. It is said that the suit relates to the conflict in Turkey’s Kurdish majority south-east.

“Our complaint is based on the reports regardless of the affected ethnic groups, however the most frequent reports during this time was targeting the Kurds,” he said in an e-mailed response to Armenian News-NEWS.am inquiry.

“Regarding the historic genocide targeting mainly Armenians, Turkey must abolish its current denial laws and to gain respect internationally admit the truth,” MP said.

Another imitator of the legal complaint, Riksdag member Annika Lillemets also said she supports Armenian Genocide recognition.

“Regarding your last question about the Armenian Genocide, I would like to refer to the decision by the Swedish Parliament 11 March 2010, acknowledging it as a genocide. We fully support that decision,” she said in an e-mailed letter.

Back in March 2010 majority of Swedish parliament voted in favor of resolution describing the mass killings of Armenians and other Christian minorities in modern Turkey by the end of World War I as genocide. Motion passed the vote after heated debates with 131 votes against 130.

“It needs to reconcile and reflect in order to be able to establish working relations with its neighbors and to make sure the thought of repeating it never returns. That is why we are worried today, no lessons seems to have been learnt from the past,” Mr. Schlyter added.

Swedish lawmakers file genocide complaint against Erdogan

July 12, 2017 By administrator

Five Swedish lawmakers have filed a legal complaint accusing Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, Local.se reported quoting AFP.

It is said that the suit filed by MPs from the Left and Green parties relates to the conflict in Turkey’s Kurdish majority south-east.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim is also mentioned in the suit. According to the Swedish law adopted in 2014, the country’s courts can judge cases of alleged crimes against humanity regardless of where they have been committed or by whom.

If prosecutors decide to launch an investigation, Erdogan could risk an arrest warrant in Sweden, the lawmakers said.

The lawmakers also hope that their colleagues from other European countries would follow their lead.

Why Trump should not swap prisoners, Erdogan wants to swap pastor Brunson being held in Turkey’s prison for Zarrab

July 8, 2017 By administrator

Erdogan wants to swap Brunson for Zarrab By Merve Tahiroglu and Eric S. Edelman

Eric S. Edelman is a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Merve Tahiroglu is a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Rumors are swirling in Washington about a potential prisoner swap with Turkey. The Turks want the United States to release a Turkish-Iranian millionaire awaiting trial in Manhattan, in return for which they might free a North Carolina pastor being held in a prison in Izmir. Both men are accused of threatening national security. Yet a trade would be a grave mistake, one that would help Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to export his contempt for the rule of law to the United States.

Reza Zarrab, the Turkish-Iranian businessman, was arrested upon his arrival in Miami in March 2016 for conspiring to evade international sanctions against Iran. Zarrab, who owns businesses in Turkey, Dubai and China, is believed to have laundered money and gold from Iran at the height of the U.S.-led sanctions regime in 2012-2013. In December 2013, Zarrab was arrested in Turkey as part of a historic corruption scandal that implicated several ministers and businessmen with close ties to Erdogan’s government. Under legally dubious circumstances, Zarrab was eventually released. But the federal indictment filed by then-federal prosecutor Preet Bharara, in many ways echoing the findings of the 2013 Turkish prosecutor’s investigation, put Ankara’s role in Tehran’s underground economy back in the spotlight.

Pastor Andrew Brunson’s case is of a totally different nature. He is accused of membership in “an armed terrorist organization” — the so-called “Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization” that Ankara blames for Turkey’s failed coup last July. (Fethullah Gulen, a former Erdogan ally turned mortal foe, is a Muslim cleric who has lived for many years in the United States.) Before his arrest, Brunson lived with his family in Turkey for 23 years without incident. He is now among the more than 50,000 people in Turkey arrested on similar charges in the past 11 months. Brunson’s lawyer has decried the utter lack of evidence in the pastor’s case.

President Trump appears to be keen to achieve Brunson’s release. He reportedly brought up the issue three times in his first meeting with Erdogan in May, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with Brunson’s wifewhile visiting Turkey in March. Turkish officials, however, prefer to highlight Zarrab’s case with their American counterparts.

And the stakes have only gotten higher. In March, U.S. authorities arrested another Turk connected to the case, the banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla. Zarrab and Atilla could reveal at trial new information implicating Erdogan or his family in the sanctions-avoiding scheme.

Trump may find a diplomatic deal with Ankara for Brunson appealing. After all, one of his few diplomatic accomplishments since taking office was securing the release, during the visit of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, of charity worker Aya Hjiazi, an American citizen who had been jailed in Cairo for three years. But trading a peaceful faith leader imprisoned on spurious charges in exchange for a sleazy middleman accused of corrupting a foreign government on behalf of Iran would only help Erdogan suborn the rule of law in the United States as he has done in Turkey.

Since he first came to power in 2002, Erdogan has systematically undermined his country’s fragile legal institutions by staging show trials featuring his “enemies.” Zarrab owes his freedom in Turkey to a blatant political intervention in the judicial system. Within weeks of the 2013 anti-corruption operation, the government replaced all law enforcement officials involved in the investigation. Within months, all the cases were dismissed and all the suspects freed.

Since the coup attempt, Erdogan has effectively ruled by decree. Government critics risk arbitrary detention on dubious terrorism charges. More than a dozen opposition parliamentarians are in jail. As Ankara prepares to transition from a parliamentary to a presidential system, the lines between Turkey’s executive, legislative and judicial branches are becoming even more blurred.

The Turkish president also appears intent on extending his authoritarianism to American shores. While Erdogan watched, his bodyguards viciously beat protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington in May. When the State Department expressed concern, the Turkish Foreign Ministry had the effrontery to summon U.S. Ambassador John Bass to protest the actions of the D.C. Metropolitan Police. And this was not the first assault of its kind in Washington. During Erdogan’s 2016 visit, his bodyguards roughed up protesters in front of the Brookings Institution when Erdogan arrived to speak. These attacks occurred while Erdogan’s lobbyists in Washington have been working full-time to achieve a “diplomatic” deal to spring Zarrab as the price for improving U.S.-Turkish bilateral relations.

Trump should intensify the diplomatic effort to secure the release of Brunson — but not by negotiating a prisoner swap for Tehran’s bag man in Turkey. Erdogan’s efforts to undermine the U.S. legal system shouldn’t be rewarded. For Turks who are trying to protect what’s left of their country’s democracy, it’s the least that Washington can do.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2017/07/07/why-trump-should-not-swap-prisoners-with-erdogan/?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.ca1122deaa93

G20 Wherever Erdogan goes Hell break lose, Hamburg Burning, 76 police officers injured

July 7, 2017 By administrator

76 police officers injured including two helicopter pilots blinded by laser during anti-G20 riots in Hamburg.

Thousands of demonstrators from across Europe descended on the port city ahead of the summit, attended by Donald Trump and Theresa May.

Several hundred hard-left activists called “Black Block” have been making headlines in Hamburg for clashes with police at the G20 summit. But the name represents less of an organized group and more of a protest tactic.

As the July 7-8 summit kicked off on Friday, demonstrators clad in black clothing, hats and face masks, joined in protests blocking streets and bridges. The night prior, the masked activists hurled beer bottles at security forces and set several cars on fire.

Hamburg police identified them as members of the so-called “Black Block” – the name given to a segment of protesters within a larger demonstration who conceal their identities with dark clothing – making it harder for authorities to identify individuals and to prosecute.

The “Black Block” generally comprises hard-left activists – autonomous anarchists who want to put an end to capitalism and seemingly replace it with a libertarian system where money and the state have no power.

The “Black Block” tactics of the movement rose to prominence in the 1980s during violent protests in West Germany against nuclear power plants and squatter evacuations.
Read more: Who’s who in Hamburg’s G20 protests

The term is also a catch-all title for protesters from different groups that have a range of aims and tactics and who come together to carry out a shared aim at the protest.

Although those who are involved in a “Black Block” section are united under the color of their clothing and a singular aim, the individual beliefs within the bloc can vary widely

Ankara criticizes German art depicting Erdogan as a dictator

July 5, 2017 By administrator

Ankara has slammed an art installation located outside the German Chancellery in Berlin that depicts Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a dictator.

The installation shows a car with a black-and-white banner showing pictures of Erdogan, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Do you want this car? Kill dictatorship,” it reads.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said the installment only served to incite violence, while also slamming German police’s lack of intervention.

“The expression on the banner…makes a direct call to violence,” said the foreign ministry.

The incident occurred a few days before Erdogan is set to travel to Germany for a G20 summit, and after German officials rejected a request by the Turkish president to address ethnic Turks in Germany.

Relations have soured between Berlin and Ankara since a failed coup in Turkey in July last year. Germany has repeatedly criticized Turkey for a massive crackdown that was launched right after the coup, saying the action has been carried out beyond the rule of law.

The two countries have also clashed on several other issues, including Germany’s alleged support for Kurdish opponents and a referendum in Turkey last April, which gave Erdogan sweeping new powers.

Germany is home to some three million ethnic Turks. The country allowed in the Turks in the 1960s and 1970s as part of its massive post-war “guest worker” program. Erdogan held his last speech to members of the community in May 2015 in the city of Karlsruhe.

Germany’s MFA warns Erdogan against even appearing at Turkish consulate Video

July 4, 2017 By administrator

German MFA Germany’s Foreign Ministry warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan against even appearing at a Turkish consulate or speaking via web video link during his visit to Germany for G20 summit,

Commenting on a suspected rumors that the Turkish president would defy the German government, Martin Schaefer said that doing so “would be an affront to the clearly expressed will of the government and a violation of German sovereignty.”

According to him, the government of Germany had options for influencing such actions.

Germany doubles down on Erdogan rally ban during Hamburg G20

July 3, 2017 By administrator

Germany doubles down on Erdogan rally Berlin lawmakers have sought to quash rumors Erdogan still plans to host a rally on German soil during the G20 summit. Such a rally could be used to stoke support for a prospective vote to reintroduce the death penalty.

Underlining just how sour relations between Germany and Turkey had become, a German foreign ministry official warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday against even appearing at a Turkish consulate or speaking via web video link, when he arrives in Germany later this week for the G20 summit.

Last week, the German government denied a request from Ankara to allow Erdogan to address Germany’s Turkish community.

Responding to suspected rumors that the Turkish president would defy the German government, Martin Schaefer said that doing so “would be an affront to the clearly expressed will of the government and a violation of German sovereignty.”

Schaefer said that, while he couldn’t impose an outright on Erdogan speaking at a Turkish consulate, the government had options for influencing such actions.

Germany restricts political campaigns by foreign officials

Berlin’s rejection came onthe back a new law introduced last week that bans non-EU leaders from campaigning on German soil within three months of polls in their country. Foreign officials will also need to file a request with the German government to hold any kind of political event in the country.

The new law was introduced after a handful of Turkish politicians campaigned in Germany ahead of a referendum vote in April expanding Erdogan’s powers. Turkish residents in Germany were allowed to take part in the vote.

However, a number of local German authorities blocked Turkish lawmakers from speaking, citing security concerns. The move left Erdogan infuriated by what he described as “Nazi era tactics.”

The Turkish president is currently pushing a referendum to reintroduce the death penalty in Turkey. In this instance, Germany has said that its residents will not be allowed to participate in the controversial vote. The European Union has also warned that any such referendum would effectively end its bid to join the bloc.

Unveiling their manifesto ahead of September’s federal election, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, along with their Bavarian sister party, said on Monday that they rejected full Turkish membership to the EU.

Turkey bemoans speaking ban

Ankara decried the German government’s decision to reject Erdogan’s speaking request on Monday. The President’s spokesman accused Berlin of using “hostility towards Erdogan as way of making political gains” ahead of September’s federal election.

Spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said that even if the President wasn’t able to see his compatriots this week, “we will always be with them, in another place, at a different time and through some other means.

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, also accused Germany of trying to sour tensions between the two countries. “Unfortuantely, some German lawmakers use animosity towards Turkey and especially animosity towards Erdogan for their own internal politics.

Berlin and Ankara have clashed on a number of other issues in the past year, including the detention of a German-Turkish journalist and the decision to refuse German delegates from visiting Bundeswehr troops stationed at a Turkish airbase.

dm/bw (Reuters, dpa, AFP)

Imagen Erdogan champions press freedom abroad while 160 journalists are in Turkey’s jail

July 1, 2017 By administrator

Erdogan champions press freedom By Pinar Tremblay,

On June 22, Qatar received a list of 13 demands the Saudi-led coalition said must be met before they lift the regional blockade against Qatar. On June 27, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told the media that he supports Qatar’s refusal to discuss such demands. When asked about the most crucial items on this list for Turkey — requesting the closure of the Turkish military base in Qatar and ending any Turkish-Qatari military cooperation — Erdogan said these kinds of demands were against international law. Then he shrewdly brought the subject to another point on the list, which is not even remotely related to Turkey: the closure of Al Jazeera, Qatar’s state broadcaster. Erdogan said, “There is [global] talk of press freedom. Now I call upon all the global media networks, what are you waiting for? What are you good for? Right now, media freedoms of an international outlet [of Al Jazeera] are at risk, its activities are to be suspended. You [global media organizations] must make noise. But they are quiet.”

Erdogan’s sudden and angry outburst in defense of the Qatari network is perplexing for a couple of reasons. First, it is wrong: Al Jazeera’s reporting on June 23 shows that Erdogan is not even following the news. Several media outlets and rights groups have voiced their concerns about the demand that violates Al Jazeera’s freedom of expression. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called upon the Saudi-led coalition not to include Al Jazeera in their list of demands to normalize relations with Qatar. Daoud Kuttab, an International Press Institute (IPI) executive board member and Al-Monitor columnist, wrote a searing piece in The Washington Post opposing the attempt to silence Al Jazeera. Interestingly, Al Monitor’s columnist Kadri Gursel, who is IPI’s chair for Turkey and also an executive board member, is one of the jailed journalists in Erdogan’s Turkey.

It is rather ironic that on June 28, government-funded Anadolu Agency acknowledged and tweeted about UN Special Rapporteur David Kaye’s report in support of Al Jazeera, yet Kaye’s multiple warnings on press freedom and human rights in Turkey have been diligently ignored by the pro-government media for years.

To make matters more complicated, Erdogan’s love for the network is quite a change of heart. In 2011, Al Jazeera Turk was set up with high hopes and a significant amount of investment in Istanbul. It was gradually shut down in May 2017 because it failed to receive permission to launch properly and was only able to broadcast over the internet with a rather limited audience in Turkey.

One of the little-known causes for this failure was the fact that the Turkish government was not pleased with its broadcasting policies. Its first Turkish investor, Vural Ak, had a big budget and wide-ranging plans of even launching a sports channel for Al Jazeera Turk.

However, these dreams were not realized, as Vural Ak quit in early 2012 allegedly due to Al Jazeera’s insistence on referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party as a resistance organization, not a terrorist group.

During the last couple of years, Al Jazeera Turk was known for its pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) broadcasting and dwindling viewership. Al Jazeera’s record in Turkey regarding freedom of expression is also mixed. For example, in 2013, there were allegations that eight journalists were fired from the network due to their tweets. With dozens of pro-AKP networks, Erdogan had little to no use for a foreign media outlet that he could not fully control. Another important point is that if Erdogan really believed in the Al Jazeera network, why did he not provide the support for the outlet to survive in Turkey? So could it really be about freedom of expression?

To put this question into perspective, we can take a brief look at the dramatically worsening situation in the Turkish media. Reporters Without Borders announced Turkey’s ranking as 155th among 180 countries in its 2017 Press Freedom Index. Turkey has regressed four levels in the last year and 56 in the last 12 years.

The data on Turkish journalists present a more depressing picture with each passing day. About 160 journalists are in jail, with more than 150 media networks permanently shut down by emergency government decrees since July 2016, and 2,500 media workers have been fired from their jobs. Along with financial and legal difficulties, journalists and publishers also face physical and verbal abuse.

Foreign journalists suffer as much as Turkish colleagues, facing deportation, arrest and other difficulties at an increasing rate.

Erdogan’s censorship has permeated all levels of society. Even top private colleges’ academic conferences are now designed around the government’s sensitivities. The latest case was from Koc University in Istanbul, when an academic paper that was accepted months ago and scheduled for presentation during the Turkey-Latin America Workshop was taken off the list due to “academic cowardice,” according to Yasemin Yilmaz, the paper’s author from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. It was Turkish academics who decided “politically sensitive topics” should best be avoided in humanities and social sciences. The most pressing question for academia then becomes: How and what can be studied in Turkish academia while avoiding jail during emergency law?

So why would Erdogan champion press freedom for a Qatari network given the increasingly worrisome picture in his own country? In other words, why does Erdogan act so blatantly hypocritical? The simple answer is it works for his end goals. Erdogan in his own careful wording in standing up against the closure of Al Jazeera did not directly target Saudi Arabia or the coalition. Hence, most of his base perceives this as an attack on an Arabic news channel from the West. With increasing xenophobia, it is easy to convince Turkish audiences that the West is shutting down media outlets and not respecting the freedom of expression.

In addition, it is Erdogan’s usual vexing pragmatism that has worked to his advantage for so long. For example, Germany’s refusal to grant space for Erdogan’s rallies is reported as an act of open aggression in pro-AKP Islamist media outlets. It is impressive how Erdogan can demand freedom of expression, association and assembly rights from Western countries but ever so persistently refuse them to his own citizens.

Erdogan might know that these tactics would not work against Saudi Arabia or other Gulf states, which do not subscribe to Western values of freedom of expression. But this kind of vague approach still helps Erdogan avoid targeting Saudi Arabia directly while defending Qatar. Under the cover of these tactics is Erdogan’s dilemma of how to keep friendly relations with the Saudis while not sacrificing the benefits of supporting Qatar.

Tremblay is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse and a visiting scholar of political science at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. She is a columnist for Turkish news outlet T24. Her articles have appeared in Time, New

Turkey’s Erdogan slams opposition as ‘justice march’ nears Istanbul

July 1, 2017 By administrator

Ankara (AFP) – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday accused Turkey’s main opposition party of siding with terrorism, as a three-week “march for justice” led by its chief neared its ending point of Istanbul.

Some analysts have seen the 450-kilometre (280 miles) trek from Ankara to Istanbul led by Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu as a significant challenge to Erdogan but the Turkish strongman has regarded it with disdain.

Kilicdaroglu began the march on June 15 after former journalist turned CHP lawmaker Enis Berberoglu was sentenced to 25 years in jail for leaking classified information to a newspaper.

Marching without party insignia and simply a sign with the word “justice” in Turkish, he has been followed by thousands every day and plans to end the march on July 9 with a mass rally outside Berberoglu’s prison in the Istanbul district of Maltepe.

“If you start protests to protect terrorists and those who support terrorism — when it did not occur to you to take part in anti-terror demonstrations — then you cannot convince anyone that your objective is justice,” Erdogan said.

The president told a meeting of his ruling party that the line represented by the CHP “had gone beyond being a political opposition and taken on a different proportion.”

Accusing the CHP of sympathising with Kurdish militants and the alleged mastermind of the July 15 failed coup, he said the road taken by Kilicdaroglu was “the way to Qandil and Pennsylvania”.

The leadership of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) is based in the Qandil mountain of northern Iraq while the alleged coup mastermind, the preacher Fethullah Gulen, is based in Pennsylvania. He denies the allegations.

The march by Kilicdaroglu has rallied supporters concerned by the extent of the crackdown after the coup which has seen tens of thousands arrested and even more lose their jobs.

The opposition leader was Saturday walking through the Akyazi district of Sakarya province on day 17 of the march, heading towards the town of Sakarya from where he will have a walk of around 150 kilometres (90 miles) to Istanbul.

Germany denies permission for Erdogan rally during G-20 visit

June 29, 2017 By administrator

Germany will deny permission for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to address Turks at a rally when he visits for the upcoming Group of 20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany’s foreign minister said Thursday, June 29, according to The Associated Press.

Turkey officially requested permission Wednesday for Erdogan to make the appearance while in Germany for the July 7-8 summit, Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said during a trip to Russia. Gabriel said he had told his Turkish counterpart weeks ago that “we don’t think this is a good idea.”

“We are telling Turkey that we are convinced such an appearance in Germany is not possible,” Gabriel said, according to news agency dpa.

Earlier Thursday, Gabriel said that “Mr. Erdogan is an important guest at the G-20 and will be received with all honors by us there. But we believe everything that goes beyond that is inappropriate at this point in time.”

He pointed to stretched police resources around the G-20 summit as well as Germany’s current tensions with Turkey.

Erdogan last addressed supporters in Germany in May 2015. Germany has a large ethnic Turkish minority.

Earlier this year, Erdogan accused Germany, and Chancellor Angela Merkel, of “committing Nazi practices” after some local authorities blocked appearances by Turkish ministers hoping to campaign in Germany ahead of Turkey’s referendum on expanding presidential powers.

Relations between the two countries have been frayed by a widening range of other issues, including Turkey’s jailing of two German journalists.