Turkey, CHP leader suggests celebrating Dec. 17-25 week as “Thieves’ Week

October 18, 2014 By administrator

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu satirically suggested the week between Dec. 17 and 25 to be celebrated as “Thieves’ Week” every year, referring to a corruption investigation concerning top government officials and that came to public attention on Dec. 17 and 25. report today zaman

Kılıçdaroğlu on Saturday commented on a decision by İstanbul Public Prosecutor’s Office on Friday to drop charges against the suspects implicated in one of Turkey’s major graft probes.

“After all these things happened, the Dec. 17-25 week should be declared as Thieves’ Week and celebrated by the thieves at [Justice and Development] AK Party headquarters.
The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutors’ Office on Friday dropped charges against 53 suspects who stood trial in the corruption investigation. The highly-publicized investigation, which was kicked off on Dec. 17, 2013 and labeled by authorities as a “coup against the government”, implicated sons of several ministers, pro-government businessmen and chief of the state bank. At the heart of the probe was Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab, who involved in money laundering scheme as part of his strategy to bypass US-led sanctions on Iran.
Sons of former ministers Barış Güler and Salih Kaan Çağlayan were also among suspects whose charges were dropped.
CHP Secretary-General Gürsel Tekin also said in an interview with the Hürriyet daily on Saturday that members of all CHP provincial branches will go to courthouses and leave a black wreath in protest of the prosecutors’ decision on Monday.

France, Retailleau (UMP) opposed to Turkey’s accession to the EU

October 18, 2014 By administrator

The president of the UMP group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau, objected Saturday to Turkey’s accession to Europe, showing his disagreement with the Prime Minister Manuel Valls he was asked about it on Thursday.
“I disagree with the Prime Minister who believes that the accession negotiations between Turkey and the European Union should continue. Yes has an association agreement with Turkey, no to Turkish accession to Europe, “the senator (…)

Turkey, Court should request Dink murder documents from military: Turkish intelligence

October 17, 2014 By administrator

ISTANBUL

Turkey’s national intelligence agency (MİT) has referred a court to the country’s top military body to learn whether intelligence documents related to the Hrant Dink murder were classified as a state secret. Hurriyet daily news report

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead by then-17-year-old Ogün Samast in front of his Istanbul office on Jan. 19, 2007. Samast, who was sentenced to over 22 years in jail for the murder, is also on trial for being a member of a terrorist organization, as the alleged network behind the crime is yet to be revealed.

The latest trial session was held at the Istanbul 2nd Heavy Penal Court for Children on Oct. 17. The jailed Samast was not present in the courtroom and was represented by his lawyer.

The court had earlier twice asked the MİT about the “top-secret” and “secret” documents that the spy agency had sent to Parliament’s Coup Research Commission. The MİT did not give a clear answer whether the documents constitute a state secret, only stressing that they included “claims.”

The MİT answered the question more directly in the Oct. 17 session. “It would be appropriate to ask the General Staff whether the requested information was state secrets or not,” it said.

The Dink family’s lawyer, meanwhile, said the documents should be released. “The documents that the MİT sent to Parliament should be given to us too,” lawyer Hakan Bakırcıoğlu said.

October/17/2014

Iranian Deputy FM Emir Abdullahyan recently accused Turkey of pursuing Neo-Ottomanism in the region.

October 17, 2014 By administrator

Ambassador Alireza Bigdeli. Hürriyet photo by Levent Kulu

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has summoned Iranian Ambassador to Turkey Alireza Bigdeli over several statements from Iranian officials criticizing policies of Ankara on Syria.

“Turkey does not need to ask permission from anyone while taking measures in line with international law against threats to its national security,” Anadolu Agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tanju Bilgiç on Oct. 17.

Turkey denounces remarks by Iranian officials who should instead remain silent to what has been happening in Kobane and the humanitarian tragedy in the region with the feeling of “shame,” because Iran has been a supporter of the Syrian regime that has caused the “terror problem” in the region, Bilgiç also said.

Bilgiç said Iran requested permission be granted from the Syrian regime for any help to the Syrian people. Turkey expressed its unease over the statements to the Iranian ambassador, he added.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Emir Abdullahyan had recently accused Turkey of pursuing Neo-Ottomanism in the region.

Iranian Chief of General Staff Hasan Firuzabadi, meanwhile, indirectly criticized Turkey for blocking aid to Kobane, a Kurdish town on Syria’s border with Turkey that has been attacked by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants.

PKK members ‘throw smoke bomb’ at Turkish Culture Ministry office in Rome

October 16, 2014 By administrator

Some of the protesters hurled red paint at the building and wrote ‘murderers’ on its walls during the demonstration in Rome. DHA Photo

Members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have staged an attack with smoke bombs on the Turkish Culture Ministry attaché’s office in Rome, Culture Minister Ömer Çelik stated via his Twitter account on Oct. 16.

“A group of 20 PKK members attacked the Culture Ministry office during a demonstration in front of the building. They threw smoke bombs at our office. We condemn this attack,” Çelik said. Some of the protesters hurled red paint at the building and wrote “murderers” on its walls.

The attack comes amid unprecedented tension in southeastern Turkey, particularly since the start of the Kurdish peace process in 2013. Some 37 protesters have died in clashes following widespread demonstrations across the country against the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane.

The Turkish government has been criticized for its perceived lack of action against ISIL, particularly by the Kurdish-leftist bloc the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

Pro-Kobane demonstrations have also been held across Europe, but no other Turkish foreign mission has been targeted.

Good News from UN Security Council seat Spain beats Turkey

October 16, 2014 By administrator

UNITED NATIONSs

Spain is elected to the UN Security Council on Oct. 16, roundly defeating Turkey for the seat during a vote at the General Assembly

Spain was elected to the U.N. Security Council Oct. 16, roundly defeating Turkey for the seat during a vote at the U.N. General Assembly.

Spain joined Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand and Venezuela as the newest members to the top U.N. body, which has the power to impose sanctions and authorize the use of force.

Earlier in the day, Venezuela, Malaysia, Angola and New Zealand won seats on the Council for two years from Jan. 1, 2015, while a run-off vote between Spain and Turkey took place to decide who gets the fifth available spot.

The 193-member U.N. General Assembly elected Spain with 132 votes in the third round of voting against 60 votes for Turkey.

Turkey got 72 votes in the second round against 121 for Spain. The board membership requires a minimum of 129 votes.

Venezuela with 181 votes in favor, Malaysia with 187 votes, Angola with 190 vote and New Zealand with 145 votes.

October/16/2014

Kurds Hoping To Fight ISIS In Kobani Are Trapped By Turkish Suspicions

October 16, 2014 By administrator

by Peter Kenyon NPR

Syrian defenders of the mainly Kurdish border town of Kobani say an increase in coalition airstrikes — and better coordination with the air support — have helped them hold off the more heavily armed fighters from the so-called Islamic State.

Each day, cars and vans carrying Kobani residents, Turkish Kurds and journalists climb over the rock-strewn paths on the edge of plowed fields, avoiding Turkish military roadblocks to reach the hills overlooking the Syrian border and the town of Kobani.

With only a few units from the Free Syrian Army joining Kobani’s Kurdish defenders on the ground, Syrian Kurds say Turkey should open a corridor and let fighters and weapons in. Instead, they say, Turkish authorities are detaining young Kurdish men on suspicion of terrorism.

Mustafa Ali has a relative among the fighters still in Kobani. The 38-year-old Ali came to Turkey about a week ago, after being stuck for three days at the border while ISIS shells landed not far away. He doesn’t think Turkey will overcome its suspicion of all Kurds and intervene to save Kobani — unless it gets a push from outside.

“If the international community forces Turkey to support Kobani, it will,” Ali says. “But without pressure from the Americans and the Europeans they won’t, because Turkey thinks both sides in this fight are terrorists.”

Turkish Suspicion

Adding to the pain of watching their town be destroyed a little more each day is the clear knowledge that those fleeing Kobani aren’t welcome in Turkey. Ali says that Kurdish men, especially younger ones, routinely are stopped at the border, and that many then are taken by Turkish authorities to detention centers, where they’re not charged with anything but are investigated on suspicion of terrorism.

“I know some of the guys who have been detained. They are political guys from Kobani, members of various Kurdish political parties, and the Turks caught them and held them,” Ali says. “I was told there were as many as 200 of them, but some chose to go back to Syria.”

In one of the newest refugee camps for Kobani residents to spring up, in the border town of Suruc, Turkish hosts are digging trenches between the neat rows of family-sized gray tents to lay electric cables. Kobani families appreciate the shelter they’ve been given, but 34-year-old Mohammed Sheikh al-Muslim says the way the Turks are treating the detained Kurdish men is unjust.

“They gave us three choices — Jazeera, Qameshli or Afrin,” he says, meaning they could pick one of three Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria to which they would be returned.

Yasser says it’s because the Turks think they’re with the People’s Protection Units, the Syrian Kurds linked to Turkey’s own Kurdish militants, known as the PKK. He says he has nothing to do with any of that, but the Turks don’t believe him.

Turkey Wounded ISIS members treated in Urfa

October 14, 2014 By administrator

14.10.2014

It came out that Turkey which is denying wounded people from Kobanê permission to cross the Mürşitpınar border gate to receive treatment continues to allow the crossing of wounded members of the inhumane ISIS gangs into the Urfa province through the Akçakale border gate and to provide treatment at various hospitals in the city. report by firatajans.com

While 64 of the 261 Kobanê citizens who have been held hostage in Suruç for 9 days were taken to the Mürşitpınar border gate and deported, it has been learned that two ambulances carrying wounded ISIS members crossed the Akçakale border gate yesterday.

One of the wounded ISIS members, who were taken from Tal Abyad, is reported to be Abdullah Helef, while the identity of the other hasn’t been learned yet.

The two ISIS members were first taken to Akçakale State Hospital where they received immediate treatment before being referred to Urfa.

Abdullah Halef has reportedly been referred to the Mehmet Akif İnan Training and Research Hospital and the other to Balıklıgöl State Hospital in Urfa.

German deputy speaker: NATO must stop Turkey support for ISIS

October 14, 2014 By administrator

By RUDAW

Claudia Roth: ‘Germany must help the peace process to continue in Turkey.’

BERLIN, Germany – NATO must force Turkey to stop its undeclared support of the Islamic State (ISIS) and shift its policy toward the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the deputy speaker of the German parliament said.

Claudia Roth said in an interview with Rudaw that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government is pursuing a “murky” policy in Syria because it wants the Kurds weakened and their fighters “annihilated.”

“What we have learned is that Mr Erdogan wouldn’t mind if Kurds were weakened and then annihilated,” said Roth, deputy speaker of the Bundestag and a Green Party MP.

Erdogan’s “dealings with the ISIS are unacceptable. I could not believe that Turkey harbors an ISIS militant camp in Istanbul,” Roth said. “Turkey has also allowed weapons to be transported into Syria through its borders. Also that the ISIS has been able to sell its oil via Turkey is extraordinary,” she added.

Turkey categorically denies any dealings with ISIS. But there are many reported accounts of foreign jihadi fighters crossing from Turkey to Syria, wounded militants treated in Turkish hospitals and Ankara turning a blind eye to ISIS selling smuggled oil.

Turkey has invited criticism for its Syria policy. Ankara has remained idle while in Kobane Kurdish fighters of the PKK-affiliated People’s Protection Units (YPG) are making a last stand to keep ISIS from overrunning the Syrian town just across the border.

“I really don’t understand either why would Mr Erdogan and his ministers regard the PKK the same way they view the Islamic State,” Roth said. “Yes, it’s true the PKK does not have a democratic foundation, but it is no ISIS and one should not regard it as such,” she added.

“Germany must put pressure on Turkey to change course and reevaluate its policies. It should also ask NATO members to do the same. Germany must help the peace process to continue in Turkey.”

Regarding German help for Syrian Kurds, she said “Germany could have done so much more than just sending humanitarian help.”

She added that the world should also have helped the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, where the autonomous government has taken in some 1.6 million refugees from Syria and other parts of Iraq.

“Why has the international community not helped Kurdistan and the refugees the way it should have?” Roth questioned. She said she had seen refugees first hand in Kurdistan and the Turkish Syrian border of Suruc.

“It was devastating to see how an entire population is being eradicated before our eyes in Kobane,” she said.

“There is a refugee crisis even there where people have been sheltered in temporary places and on the streets. I want to underline that the international community must act very fast and aid the refugees. I have also asked the German government to increase its humanitarian help,” she added.

She said that the peace process between the PKK and the Turkish government, which has largely lagged since it was initiated in March 2012, would succeed only if Ankara changed its treatment of the outlawed PKK.

If Turkey continues to regard the PKK as a terrorist organization like ISIS it “will destroy this process and boost extremism among Kurds,” she warned. “In actual fact Kurds are victims of the rotten Turkish policies. No country should accept this.”

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the PKK, said recently that the fall of Kobane could kill the Kurdish peace process in Turkey.

Roth blamed regional powers and selfish interests for Kurdish suffering. “Unfortunately some regional powers think only about their interests without thinking about the suffering of the Kurds,” she said. “There is no coordinated action or will against the ISIS in the region, for instance between Iran and Saudi Arabia. I hope the UN will put pressure on them to take a clearer stand.”

She made a call for ISIS to be “annihilated” and targeted economically as well as militarily.

“Lightly arming Kurds won’t solve the problem. There should be extensive and radical efforts,” she said, fearing that Kobane would fall to ISIS but calling on Kurds not to despair.

“They should know that they have many friends who support them in their battle against the Islamic State.”

Turkey block KRG aid to Kobani instate Turkey launches airstrikes on Kurds PKK

October 14, 2014 By administrator

Military aid sent from the Kurdish part of Iraq, to Kurds fighting the “Islamic State” (IS) in Kobani, Syria, has failed to arrive. Turkey has also attacked Kurdish PKK militants for the first time in two years. Reported dw.com

A “symbolic” amount of military aid sent from Iraq’s Kurdish region to Syrian Kurds is stuck in northeastern Syria as Turkey refuses to open an aid corridor, Syrian Kurdish official Alan Othman said on Tuesday.

The aid was sent from the Kurdish region in Iraq with the intention of helping Kurdish fighters in Kobani fight against the “Islamic State” (IS) terrorist group who are advancing into the heart of the city on the Turkish border.

“It is a symbolic shipment that has remained in the Jazeera canton,” Othman said, using the Kurdish name for northeastern Syria.

Hamid Darbandi, Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) official, responsible for Syrian Kurdish affairs in Iraq, said, “We helped them in roughly every arena. We sent them aid, including military.”

Turkish airstrikes

A Turkish media report also said on Tuesday that Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets had been attacked by Turkish war planes in the Hakkari province in southeastern Turkey late on Sunday. This was the first significant air operation against the Kurdish militants since the launch of a peace protest in 2012.

Turkish newspaper website Hurriyet reported that the airstrikes were launched in response to suspected PKK shelling of a military outpost in the area.

A Turkish military statement said on Tuesday the armed forces had responded “in the strongest way” to shelling by the rebels, without saying whether airstrikes were launched.

Lack of help

The alleged airstrikes came amid criticism from Turkey’s Kurdish population that Ankara is failing to help Syrian Kurds in Kobani. On Monday, a Turkish government official also denied reports that Ankara had given permission to Washington to use its airbases to launch airstrikes on IS.

At least 35 people were killed in riots last week from Turkey’s 15-million-strong Kurrdish minority due to Ankara’s refusal to help defend Kobani from the oncoming IS assault.

The jailed leader of PKK has also threatened to call off talks to end a decades-old insurgency in Turkey if no progress is made by Wednesday.

IS advances in Iraq

Meanwhile in Iraq, IS are continuing to advance toward control of Iraq’s Anbar province. On Monday, local media and witnesses reported that jihadist militants from the self-styled “Islamic State” group seized an army base near the Iraqi town of Hit.

The capture of the military base marks a further step in the advance of the militants into the western Sunni-dominated province of Anbar, which extends from the western edge of the capital, Baghdad, to the Syrian border.

Impending massacre

Efforts by the US-led coalition carrying out airstrikes in Iraq have so far failed to drive back IS forces. During an unannounced visit to Baghdad on Monday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted that Iraqi security forces would have to do the “heavy work on the ground.”

The IS terrorist group has committed widespread atrocities during its offensive, including attacking civilians, conducting mass executions, beheadings and enslaving women.

Many now fear that if the IS succeeds in cutting off the border crossing from Syria into Turkey it could result in a massacre of those residents, many of them elderly, who have not yet fled.

ksb/ng (Reuters, AP, AFP, dpa)