Turkey Archives

Luxury car purchased for Turkey’s top Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet)

December 13, 2014 By administrator

Nurettin Kurt – ISTANBUL

A luxury vehicle has been purchased to serve as the official car of Turkey’s top cleric, Hürriyet has learned.

Mehmet Görmez, the head of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet), will soon start using the Mercedes S500 sedan, which is worth 1 million Turkish Liras ($435,000). Moreover, 14 Toyota cars were bought for the Diyanet’s general directors, as well as 16 minibuses to serve the organization.

The institution announced Dec. 13 that the purchases were made from the coffers of the state, not by using citizens’ private donations for the Diyanet Foundation.

“All the vehicles mentioned in the news report were purchased through tenders conducted by the State Supply Office under the permissions granted by the Law of The Central Government’s 2014 Budget and within the knowledge of the Finance Ministry,” the Diyanet said in a written statement.

Turkey’s top religious office also said that the cost of the luxury car allotted for Görmez is “much lower,” without releasing the actual figure in the official documents.

Görmez was featured in international media when he met Pope Francis, who paid a historic visit to Turkey late last month. It was reported that Turkish authorities had refused the pope’s request for “a humble car” in Ankara on the grounds of security. In Istanbul, however, the pontiff had surprised many journalists by arriving in a “humble car” with a civilian traffic license plate.

December/13/2014

Daesh (ISIS) smuggling oil via Turkey, Iraq says

December 13, 2014 By administrator

Baghdad: Iraqi finance minister Hoshyar Zebari has said that the Daesh (ISIS) is smuggling Iraqi and Syrian oil via Turkey, and called it the richest terrorist group in the world.

“Daesh controls a number of oilfields in Syria and Iraq and they smuggle this oil overland through trucks, through middlemen to Turkey or towards other countries,” Zebari told Al Jazeera news channel Friday.

After an accounting of banks under Daesh control, Zebari said that Daesh is now believed to have looted about $500 million from Mosul, Tikrit and other cities, saying it was “the richest armed group in the world”.

He said Iraq was trying to crack down on Daesh financing, including oil smuggling.

“The air campaign targets these facilities in Syria and in northern Iraq in order to deprive them of this revenue but they have enormous financial resources; they are paying recruits good salaries, better than what we can afford to pay ours,” he added.

“And this is one element of the strength of this organisation. It’s not purely an underground terrorist organisation. It has an agenda it wants to control. It wants to rule.”

He also rejected comments by US officials that the fight against the Daesh could take years.

“Contrary to what many people think, I don’t think this will be a long drawn out battle,” the minister said.

The comments came after the Iraqi army managed to liberate two key districts in the city of Samarra on Friday.

He added that coordination between Iraqi forces and the US-led coalition is the key to the success of the offensive against the radical group.

Turkey Convenient murderer “Dink’s murder and the 3 Paris killings”

December 11, 2014 By administrator

EMRE USLU

e.uslu@todayszaman.com

The murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink is the most scandalous, mysterious murder; it was committed during the term of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and the assailants were apprehended. However, these assailants were being used at the time they committed the murder and are still being used.

Those who used them in the past to kill Dink, whom they saw as their enemy, are now using them to attack new enemies. One of the assailants hurled accusations at police officers as soon as he was released from prison. Those who gave him the gun to slay Dink have apparently given him a petition of complaint against several police officers and have sent him to the prosecutor.

There are odd details in the statement that the murderer gave to the prosecutor. For instance, he gave the prosecutor the badge numbers of five police officers, claiming that these police officers had looked up the telephone number of Yasin Hayal, who was allegedly involved in the murder of Dink, in the police department’s computer system five minutes after the murder. How he got these numbers is questionable, because he was in prison for the last few years.

Apparently his masters who sent him to attack Christian missionaries and Armenians — whom they stigmatized as enemies — are preparing to send him to attack their new enemy, the Hizmet movement. Or do you believe that a murderer who has been silent out of fear for many years in prison learned the badge numbers of five police officers in his dreams and decided to be an informant?

Let me tell you why this “convenient” murderer has been ordered to talk: The government seeks to curry favor with the leftists and liberals in the fight it has been waging against the Hizmet movement. If it can manage to put the blame for Dink’s murder on those police officers whom it portrays as being affiliated with the movement, the government will be able to criminalize the movement and alienate the liberals who support the movement…

I have reiterated this countless times. The ruling AKP, prosecutors and Nedim Şener, who wrote a book about Dink’s murder, were all unwilling to investigate the murder in depth and with the intention of finding out the mastermind behind the murder. Everything was being done to cover up the connection of the murder to the state.

If you really want to find the real perpetrators of Dink’s murder, you must focus on the powers that are behind the murderers and not on the murderers themselves. But you won’t do this because those powers don’t want you to do so. There is a single document the court must investigate if it is really willing to investigate Dink’s murder and the killing of several Christian missionaries in Malatya: the decisions taken during the National Security Council (MGK) meetings held in 2004 about the activities of Christian missionaries and the Armenian issue.

Why did the Religious Affairs Directorate decide to take action against the missionary activities and sponsor a book about them? Why did certain media outlets start to churn out news stories and TV programs as though Turkey was snowed under with Christian minorities?

I know you won’t search for the answer because you have always been the state’s prosecutor or judge. But let me write it down: 2005 was the 90th anniversary of the Armenian tragedy. The state took certain measures at home and abroad in connection with it.

The sponsorship of a book about Christian missionaries by the Religious Affairs Directorate was one of these measures. Under the same project, media outlets kicked off campaigns to engineer public opinion and several experts on the Armenian issue mushroomed out of nowhere to make appearances on several TV channels.

Şener’s book about Dink’s murder is also part of those measures, as it serves to cover up the mastermind behind the murder. One day, the truth will come out…

Dink was sacrificed as a result of those measures. An independent court would not waste time on the claims made by a convenient murderer, but instead investigate who gave the order to that murderer.

Some may say “Dink was murdered in 2006,” but I would like to draw attention to the killing of three Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) members in Paris in 2013. The state made a decision in 2012 to act against the PKK leaders. In the wake of the Uludere tragedy — in which 34 civilians were mistaken for terrorists and killed by military airstrikes in Şırnak’s Uludere district in 2011 due to false intelligence — the state adopted a new concept, but old “measures” were kept in force. The state initiated peace talks with the PKK, but at the same time, it also killed off the PKK leaders. This is what we get from the media reports that appeared in the wake of the Paris killings.

As a result of such measures, Murat Karayılan, the PKK military wing’s number one, was captured in Iran. A very high-ranking intelligence officer had said: “We cannot go and capture Karayılan using the intelligence from the US while the state was negotiating with the PKK. Therefore, we gave the information to the Iranians, who caught him.”

This is the way the state operates. It worked in the same manner in Dink’s murder and with the Paris killings. My intention is not to protect the police or military officers who should be held responsible for the murder. My suggestion is that all police and military officers who were in office at that time, politicians and those who took those decisions at the MGK should be tried by a real and independent court and not with fake investigations, fake indictments and fake courts. This could be the Constitutional Court or an international court, but it must be a real court to punish the real perpetrators. But Turkey cannot do this because everyone knows the real perpetrators. This murder cannot be resolved but is instead covered up by fake courts, fake indictments, expedient murderers and fake books.

Dink’s murder was one of the results of the measures the state took in 2005, i.e., on the 90th anniversary of the Armenian issue. 2015 is the 100th anniversary of this issue and Turkey is taking new measures. Perhaps, the first of these measures is to make that convenient murderer talk…

Hrant Dink murder case deepens with new testimonies

December 9, 2014 By administrator

Ayşegül Usta ISTANBUL

The list of suspects in the murder case of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist killed in 2007 in Istanbul, has been broadened, with the court listening to more high-ranking officials amid a move to merge the case of the convicted shooter with that of the alleged instigators.

Ergun Güngör, the Istanbul deputy governor at the time, testified on Dec. 9 at an Istanbul court as a suspect accused of negligence.

A day earlier, Ahmet İlhan Güler, the then-chief of police intelligence, testified. The then-Trabzon police chief Reşat Altay has also been called to testify, while former Istanbul police chief Celalettin Cerrah, along with seven others, are expected to appear in court soon.

A Bakırköy district court in Istanbul canceled the dismissal of charges against officials on June 6, handing the case to the Istanbul chief public prosecutor’s office.

Another court decision ruled to combine convicted assailant Ogün Samast’s case at the juvenile court with a case at the fifth high criminal court, in which Yusuf Hayal and Erhan Tuncel are accused of convincing Samast in the Black Sea province of Trabzon to shoot Dink in Istanbul.

“I will speak up,” Samast, who was 17 years old when he shot Dink in front of the latter’s office on Jan. 19, 2007, was quoted as saying in daily Taraf late last month. His words came in a letter sent to the prosecutor in charge of the investigation.

Civil servants and institutions allegedly implicated in the murder of Dink should be investigated, the Constitutional Court stated in a detailed ruling on the case on Nov. 12.

December/09/2014

Turkey Former Trabzon police chief summoned to testify in Dink murder trial

December 9, 2014 By administrator

Former Trabzon Police Chief Reşat Altay has been summoned by Prosecutor Yusuf Hakkı Doğan to testify in the trial into the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink was assassinated in broad daylight outside the office of his Agos newspaper on Jan. 17, 2007.

Media reports say the prosecutor will also request that Yasin Hayal, a convict in the ongoing trial, and Erhan Tuncel, who was earlier found not guilty of the Dink murder, testify as part of the ongoing investigation.

When he testified in January 2012, Tuncel had accused former Trabzon Police Chief Altay of destroying all the evidence concerning the Dink murder.

According to a media report, Prosecutor Doğan also listened to the testimony of a police officer, Bahadır Tekin, on Monday. Tekin was asked about claims saying that he doctored a report to show he had checked out an address that was mentioned in an intelligence report sent from the Trabzon Police Department on Feb. 17, 2006. The doctored report also said one of Tekin’s colleagues, Özcan Özkan, went with him to scope out the address, which was located in İstanbul’s Ümraniye district, even though neither had gone there.

The intelligence report sent by Trabzon police had warned that Hayal — now a convict in the Dink murder trial — was planning to assassinate Dink. There are claims that Tekin had doctored his own report after the murder took place in order to make it seem as if he had gone to scope out the address before the murder. Tekin denied all claims directed at him in his testimony, according to media reports.

As part of the same investigation, two former heads of the intelligence unit of the National Police Department — Sabri Uzun and Ramazan Akyürek — and a former police chief, Ali Fuat Yılmazer, testified as suspects. Other high-profile figures have been called to testify as suspects, including former İstanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah, former İstanbul Vice Governor Ergun Güngör and former İstanbul Police Department Intelligence Unit Chief Ahmet İlhan Güler.

Furthermore, Ogün Samast, who was sentenced to 21 years and six months in prison in 2011 for assassinating Dink, also testified as a witness in the ongoing investigation into the murder on Dec. 5. Samast had sent a letter to Prosecutor Doğan saying he wanted to speak about the murder. The prosecutor decided to listen to Samast as a witness in the investigation.

Dink was shot and killed by an ultra-nationalist teenager seven years ago. Samast and 18 others were brought to trial. During this time, the lawyers for the Dink family and the co-plaintiffs in the case presented evidence indicating that Samast did not act alone. Hayal was given life in prison for inciting Samast to murder. However, Tuncel, who worked as an informant for the Trabzon Police Department and was the man accused of initiating the effort to have Dink murdered, was found not guilty of the murder.

Shadowboxing history of the long-buried Armenian genocide

December 9, 2014 By administrator

In her memoir “There Was and There Was Not,” Armenian American journalist Meline Toumani attempts to pierce the veil of unknowingness that the official record of Turkey throws over the Armenian genocide.

by Meline Toumani

Metropolitan Books, 276 pp., $28

Touching stories about reconciliation are not hard to find. Germans and Jews helping each other, Israelis and Palestinians playing music together. These types of stories are possible, in part, because both sides start from acknowledgment of atrocity and understand that violence slowly kills the perpetrator, too.

It’s harder when the crime is not just buried, but purged. How can you seek reconciliation when your enemy believes, and insists that you do, too, that there’s nothing to reconcile? It’s tough, as journalist Meline Toumani discovered. As an Armenian American, she had nowhere to turn when she wanted to explore the divide between Armenians and Turks, still gaping a century after the murder of more than 1 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. The Turkish government has never officially acknowledged a genocide. Throwing the word around freely violates the country’s penal code, under the charge of “insulting Turkishness.” National census records do not match those of the Armenian clergy. The planned elimination of an entire group does not exist in textbooks. Rather than continue to hate, “I wanted to understand what drove Turks to cling to their view,” she states in the book’s opening chapter.

Toumani, whose family came to the U.S. from Iran, was steeped in genocide lore. Her family did not patronize Turkish businesses or eat Turkish food. “Turk” was a term of derision. In fact, it “was a very long time” before she realized that none of her grandparents was among those captured and shot, or among those who perished in the horrific death marches of 1915. Yet, “The villain, for me, had always been the Turk. It was time to try to understand him,” she decided.

“There Was and There Was Not” is her chronicle of what was intended as an eight-week trip to Turkey but became a two-year stay in which she careened from one surreal encounter to another. She spent time with other outcasts, such as Armenian journalists (one of whom was murdered) and Kurds. Modern, younger Turks were puzzling to her. A Turkish acquaintance said he didn’t need to know anything about the Armenian genocide; in his eyes, if the government denied the slaughter, that meant the opposite — that it actually happened. And he didn’t need to delve any further. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara presented an even bigger puzzle. Toumani gaped at a timeline of 3,000 years of human settlement … with no mention of Armenians whatsoever. The trip could no longer be about why something happened, but whether.

This could have easily become a mawkish more-feelings-than-facts story. Toumani’s reportorial approach, laced with healthy skepticism, elevates it. She shares a deeply personal point of view, but an accessible thread of geopolitics and history is woven throughout. Before setting out on her first trip to Turkey, she makes a naive wish list: “I would learn to speak Turkish, and I would meet with Turks from all walks of life, and I believed — truly believed — that if I spoke to them in a certain way … I would be able to make some sort of breakthrough.”

There is no happy ending here. Toumani is unsparing in her reactions to Turks and Armenians alike. At the end of her trip, she truthfully recounts she was weary of what it took to “pass” in Istanbul; rather than widening her horizons, her background had constricted them. She couldn’t meet people simply as human beings. If they did not deny the past outright, they were too carefully insisting that she was the same as they were; there were no differences to overcome.

A disappointment, sure, but one that led her to this humbling insight: Without the recognition of genocide, what was left to the Armenians? “Nothing holds us together; we are no longer together at all. Now all possibilities are available to us, and that is terrifying.”

Source:

By Melissa Davis

Seattle Times assistant features editor

Turkey out of East Anatolia

December 8, 2014 By administrator

By Dr Jan Best de Vries:

Since Mr. Erdogan and his ministers, living in a state that is currently a NATO member, repeatedly accuse NATO members Germany and The Netherlands of being aggressive and racist against people of Turkish descent in these countries (1), one should realize for a moment that, from an historical point of view, the Turks arguably do not belong in Anatolia at all, in that, as barbarian nomads, they intruded there from the Siberian steppes some centuries ago. Since the beginning of the 20th century at least, Turkey has itself showed itself to be aggressive and racist against minorities within Anatolia, and the Armenians and Kurds, both sharing a common Indo-European language, have even experienced genocide from the Turks.

One should also realize that the present Turkish government is responsible for the creation of barbaric ISIS in Istanbul, Ankara, Raqqa and Mosul these days. Many peoples from before the Turks arrived in Anatolia are extinct now, but not all. One people surviving the onslaught of the Turks in Anatolia, whose ancestral territory is East Anatolia, are the Kurds, whose ancestors were the Medes who lived in Kurdistan, like the Persians in Iran, from 1700 BCE. These peoples have, like the present peoples in Germany and The Netherlands, not only a common Indo-European background, but they also speak Indo-European languages (Sorani and Farsi respectively, cognate to most languages spoken in Europe these days).

At the moment American, Canadian, German and Dutch private soldiers fight together with the citizens of Rojava against ISIS, the closest ally of the Islamist state Turkey that you can imagine. Why do they do so? Because, as in their own countries, in Rojava reigns secularism, democracy, gender equality and humanism. ISIS fighters in The Netherlands, Germany, Syria and Iraq do represent just the long arm of Turkey, the latter state demonstrating itself once more as an enemy of human civilization. Mr. Erdogan’s Turkey does not belong in NATO in the first place and Turkey should at least withdraw from East Anatolia, the ancient homeland of Armenians and Kurds. The patience of the populations in Germany and The Netherlands with the Islamist fanatic Mr. Erdogan is almost over and when so, at last, the Turkish embassies in these countries would better be closed….

(1) For example, on the Dutch TV-program Nieuwsuur (News hour) on NPO 2, Sunday 7 December, 22.00- 22.35 h.

Dr. Jan Best de Vries is an archaeologist and historian, decipherer of the so-called Byblos Script from Aleppo and Alalakh (‘How to Decipher the Byblos Script’, Aspekt Publishers 2014, ISBN978-946-153-420-0)

Source: kurdistantribune.com

Armenian Genocide centennial to be commemorated in Istanbul

December 8, 2014 By administrator

Turkish and Armenian-American organizations are working together to commemorate the centennial of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 2015 and to encourage Armenians from around the world to attend, DurDe and Project 2015 said.

While Turkish groups have organized memorial events in Istanbul for the past several years, DurDe and Project 2015, a U.S.-based organization, are working to ensure that a large contingent of Armenians come to Turkey for the historic centennial commemoration, a press release says.

“We encourage and welcome Armenians from around the globe to assemble with citizens of Turkey in Istanbul to participate in these memorial events,” said Levent Sensever of DurDe. “As Turks, we want to express our solidarity with Armenians as we pay our respects to the victims and survivors of this terrible crime, and press our government to recognize the genocide.” The events in Istanbul will include a public assembly in Taksim on the evening of April 24. It will also include a memorial service at Şișli Armenian Apostolic Cemetery, where Sevag Şahin Balikçi is buried. (Balikçi was an Armenian soldier serving in the Turkish military and murdered by a Turkish soldier on April 24, 2011.)

“As Armenians, we are going to Istanbul to memorialize the brutal massacre of our family members, and to remind the world that 100 years later, we are still seeking justice and accountability from the Turkish government,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, board member of Project 2015. “For many of us, this is a first return to the lands of our ancestors, who lived here for thousands of years before their murders and expulsions 100 years ago.” “We want to demonstrate to the world that while the Turkish government may not be ready to come to terms with this country’s past, we as citizens of Turkey are ready,” Sensever added.

DurDe is one of Turkey’s leading civil and human rights organizations, working to combat racism, nationalism and hate crimes. It is an activist network that in recent years has played an important role in organizing commemorations for the Armenian Genocide in Istanbul. Project 2015 is a US-based non-profit organization comprised of Armenians, Turks and Americans to encourage wide participation in the commemoration events in Istanbul.

“Commemorating the Armenian Genocide in the place where the crimes took place will be a deeply meaningful experience,” said Nancy Kricorian, Project 2015 board member. “Our presence in Istanbul will be a form of resistance to erasure and denial.”

Egypt bans travel to Turkey without permit (Ankara is ISIS recruitment epicenter)

December 7, 2014 By administrator

Egyptian authorities have started to impose a ban on their citizens’ travel to Turkey without a special permit in order to prevent recruitment to the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Egyptian airport officials said the new ban applies to all Egyptians between the ages of 18 and 40 who want to travel to Turkey.

Egyptians in the affected age range need to apply for security clearance in Cairo before their departure to Turkey. According to the Egyptian authorities, over 200 people have been barred in only one day, the AP reported on Saturday.

Egyptian Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel-Latif said the new measure was an effort to prevent Egyptian citizens from traveling through Turkey to join militant groups in Syria. According to the estimates of Egyptian security officials, hundreds of Egyptians are fighting alongside militants in Syria and Iraq.

ISIL militants took control of large parts of Iraq and Syria this past year, making swift advances in the region. The US, meanwhile, has worked on forming a strong coalition of countries against ISIL. There are around 60 countries so far that have joined the US-led coalition against the extremist group.

Turkey is one of the coalition partners but is often criticized for its lack of enthusiasm to contribute more. Turkish officials complain that there is no comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIL and insist on removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power as part of eliminating the threat stemming from ISIL.

Turkey has been accused of turning a blind eye to the foreign fighters coming from various countries and using Turkish territory to cross into Iraq and Syria to join the ISIL militants. A high-level European Union delegation will be arriving in Turkey this week to push the country to do more to prevent the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria.

Turkey and Egypt have been at odds since the summer of 2013, following the ousting of the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi — a member of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkey’s relationship with Egypt has been derailed due to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s open support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is considered a terrorist organization by Egypt.

President Erdoğan has been taking every chance to criticize the former military leader and current president of the country, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The dispute started with Erdoğan’s furious remarks targeting Western and Arab nations over the military coup that ousted Morsi in July 2013.

After having reciprocally expelled ambassadors with Egypt in November of last year due to then-Prime Minister Erdoğan’s harsh criticism towards the military regime in the North African country, Turkish Foreign Ministry officials tried to mend ties with Egypt recently through a meeting in New York on the sidelines of a United Nations summit in October.

But the planned meeting between the Turkish foreign minister and his Egyptian counterpart was canceled by the Egyptian side after Erdoğan’s highly critical remarks about Egyptian President el-Sisi at the UN General Assembly.

Turkey Orhan Pamuk’s Nobel denounced the atmosphere of “fear” in Turkey under Erdogan

December 7, 2014 By administrator

Istanbul, December 7, 2014 (AFP) – Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, denounced the atmosphere of “fear” in Turkey and the pressure from the Islamic-conservative regime on freedom of the press in a rare interview Sunday a Turkish newspaper.

“The worst is that there is a fear. I see that everyone is afraid, it is not normal (…) Freedom of expression has fallen to a very low level, “said Mr. Pamuk told the Hürriyet newspaper on the occasion of the release of his new novel, not yet translated, six years after the last, “The Age of Innocence museum”.

The writer lamented successful pressure on the media in general in Turkey by power and including legal action and dismissal for opposition journalists. “Many friends come to tell me that this or that journalist lost his job. Now even the closest journalists were driven from power. I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere, “said the novelist 62 years old.

Author of numerous books on Istanbul, his hometown, he also deplored the recent statements of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who said that men and women were not equal “because it is against human nature”, causing a controversy of international concern.

“My (last) novel is really about the oppression of women in Turkey (…) If we were to criticize Turkey with a look worn out, it would be for the place of women in society .dropoff window Our policies are thoughtless statements on this point as if he wanted to provoke a fight, “he said in a thinly veiled reference to the controversy generated by the strong Turkish man.

Erdogan led undivided Turkey at the head of the executive from 2003 to 2014 before being elected to the highest office last August. He is accused by his opponents of autocracy and Islamist drift. Mr Pamuk is the Turkish author whose works are the most sold in the world, translated into over 60 languages. It was also the first Turk to receive a Nobel Prize.