Turkey is at war with Syria, Erdoğan says in post-election speech

April 1, 2014 By administrator

31 March 2014, Monday /TODAY’S ZAMAN, ANKARA

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has surprised many after his party’s victory in the local elections by declaring that Turkey is at war with Syria. Experts, however, say the declaration is problematic in a legal sense.

Onur Öymen, the former deputy chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), told Today’s Zaman that Erdoğan’s remarks about declaring war on Syria do not comply with either national law or the principles of international law. “Turkey cannot declare war on a country unless an attack happens first. This [declaring war] is not possible without a reason,” said Öymen.

During his “balcony speech,” Erdoğan, surrounded by a former Cabinet minister and family members who have been implicated in alleged corruption, stressed that Syria is in a state of war with Turkey. He also criticized the leaking of a recorded conversation concerning whether Turkey should conduct a military operation in Syria ahead of Sunday’s elections, allegedly between Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and certain government officials.

“How can you threaten our national security? Syria is in a state of war with us. They are harassing our planes. They have martyred 74 of our brothers, and the Tomb of Süleyman Şah is our land. An attack on there is an attack on 780,000 square kilometers. Can we remain silent about such a thing? But these traitors wiretapped this meeting and leaked it to the world,” the prime minister said in his speech.

The audio recording, which was uploaded to YouTube on March 26, reveals a top-secret conversation allegedly between Davutoğlu, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu, National Intelligence Organization (MİT) head Hakan Fidan and Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Güler. Today’s Zaman could not independently verify the authenticity of the audio nor could it determine when or how it was recorded.

In his remarks, Öymen recalled that in October of last year Parliament approved a government motion to renew a mandate to send troops to Syria in case of a possible attack. “Unfortunately, Erdoğan is using the war argument for his domestic political agenda,” Öymen added.

During the vote on the motion, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) voted in favor of the motion, while the main opposition CHP and pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) voted against.

The one-year motion was first endorsed by Parliament last year by a vote of 320-129 after mortar shells from Syria killed five civilians in the border town of Akçakale. The government then said it had no intention of going to war with Syria, although it did blame Syria for the incident.

The proposal read: “To enable our country’s security against all possible threats, to protect Turkey’s surplus profits efficiently, in order not to be faced with a situation from which it will be difficult to recover in the future, to help the Turkish Armed Forces [TSK] employ a fast and dynamic policy, I submit Motion No. 2025, dated Oct. 4, 2012, for the approval of Parliament for the right to allow the TSK to be sent to foreign countries and the necessary regulations that will enable this, the limit, scope, extent and time of which will be decided by the government, to be prolonged for one more year as of Oct. 4, 2013, according to Article 92 of the Constitution.”

Associate Professor Cenap Çakmak, a lecturer in International Law and Politics at Eskişehir Osmangazi University, pointed out two important aspects of declaring war. Speaking to Today’s Zaman, Çakmak said that firstly, according to the norms of international law, the declaration of war is a banned act, referring to United Nations Charter Article 2, which states, “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.”

In the second place, Çakmak maintained that according to Turkish constitutional law, the sole authority that can declare war on another state is Parliament, adding that most of the motions approved by Parliament are to send Turkish troops abroad on missions that are in line with the norms of international law. “In this regard, Erdoğan’s remarks do not have any legal validity,” Çakmak added.

Prior to the local elections, Erdoğan confirmed the occurrence of the security meeting at a public rally in the city of Diyarbakır, saying that the wiretapping of his foreign minister’s office was “immoral,” “cowardice,” “dishonest” and “mean.”

The conversation in the audio recording focuses on whether the Turkish military should enter Syria to protect the tomb of Süleyman Şah, the grandfather of Sultan Osman I, founder of the Ottoman dynasty.

The tomb used to be located at Jaber Castle, a historic castle within Syria’s borders, which is a highly sensitive location protected by a contingent of the Turkish army. It was later moved to another location after the castle was flooded due to dam construction.

According to the Treaty of Ankara, which was signed on Oct. 20, 1921 between the colonial power France and the Turkish Parliament, the compound housing the tomb of Süleyman Şah is considered Turkish territory.

The Foreign Ministry issued a statement regarding the audio recording, saying that the recording of this highly sensitive meeting attended by people responsible for the security of Turkey had been tampered with.

It said the senior officials had met to make a contingency plan in the case of an attack on the tomb of Süleyman Şah, and it reaffirmed Turkey’s determination to defend the tomb.

The statement also said that eavesdropping on conversations in the foreign minister’s office is an attack on Turkey’s national security, an act of espionage and a serious crime.

Erdogan: political enemies will ‘pay the price’

March 31, 2014 By administrator

By Author Fehim Taştekin

Though beleaguered by corruption accusations, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) remained true to style in the March 30 local elections, displaying its political mastery and power of manipulation.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan employed two tactics. First, he set the mood for municipal polls as that of a general election, transforming the ballot into a confidence vote for his government. He managed to channel the vote he had mustered in the 2011 general elections into the municipal polls. The AKP had garnered 38.8% in the 2009 municipal election and 49.8% in the 2011 general election. In the March 30 vote, support for the AKP exceeded 39% — the psychological threshold that Erdogan had set as a victory benchmark — reaching more than 43%.

The opposition compares the result with the last general election outcome and sees it as a setback for the AKP and thus as the beginning of the end for the party. The AKP, on the other hand, takes the previous municipal election result as a positive basis and argues it has received a strong vote of confidence.

The second tactic the AKP employed was to use the ballot box as a mechanism to clear itself from corruption accusations and get the opposition condemned. Erdogan had disabled the judiciary and the police ahead of the elections to thwart the corruption probes. He will now continue on his path, saying that “the people have acquitted him at the ballot box.”

The AKP-CHP (Republican People’s Party) race was suspenseful in Istanbul and in the capital, Ankara, both of which are of critical importance. Erdogan’s calculations more or less materialized. The result may have failed to deal the AKP a blow as strong as the opposition desired, but one reality remains unchanged: More than half of the electorate refuses to buy Erdogan’s argument that the ballot box legitimizes his government. The outcome does not change the fact that the more Erdogan has grown authoritarian, the more he has lost his ability to govern. Hence, he now has two options: either engage in self-criticism, as parliament speaker Cemil Cicek suggests, and opt to normalize the country, or stick to his oppressive style.

Little hope for normalization

Since the 2011 elections, a period he calls his “mastership period,” Erdogan has shifted from pluralism, the AKP’s original starting point, to majoritarianism. Fears are rife that he will maintain his tendency to resolve problems in an authoritarian manner. Even before the elections, he had signaled he would launch a fierce war on the Gulen community, which he has demonized as a “parallel state,” along with other opposition quarters. For instance, he has already asked for a judicial ban on leaving the country for Istanbul’s former deputy police chief Ali Fuat Yilmazer as well as journalists Emre Uslu, Onder Aytac, Bulent Kenes and Mehmet Kamis.

In his victory speech from the party headquarters’ balcony, Erdogan was accompanied by ministers and his son Bilal, also implicated in the corruption scandal, as if he was saying, “They are now acquitted.” Erdogan openly declared a war on the Gulen movement when he said, “We will enter their dens from now on. Yes. They will be held accountable. They will pay the price.” He also stated that Syria “is at war with us,” signaling that he would be even more hawkish in foreign policy.

In remarks to Al-Monitor, Nuray Mert, a prominent academic and a columnist for the Hurriyet Daily News, said the AKP has created a populist ideology mixing conservatism, nationalism and neo-Ottomanism, complete with a cult for a leader who represents this mixture. She stressed, however, that regardless of the election outcome, an iron fist cannot rule the country for too long. “The elections will make no contribution to overcoming the existing political crisis and normalizing the country. Erdogan had lost his ability to run the country long before the corruption scandals broke when he turned in the direction of a civilian authoritarian regime,” Mert said. “A mentality that translates elections results into a one-man rule cannot rule Turkey, a country with a highly polarized and complex fabric, in such a narrow-minded and majoritarian manner, even if they get more than 50% of the vote.”

Intraparty solution prospect

Many expect that a solution could emerge against Erdogan and his clique from within the AKP, perhaps from the ballot box. The election outcome being in favor of Erdogan has somewhat weakened the hand of those who are looking for an alternative way out from within the AKP, including President Abdullah Gul himself. However, the arm wrestling will no doubt continue both within and outside the party until the presidential election in August. AKP members irked by Erdogan’s one-man style were already saying that “the efforts to normalize the country will continue regardless of the election result.”

To begin with, the corruption dossiers will inevitably be on the parliament’s agenda. Under the parliament’s internal rules, an inquiry commission must be set up by April 30 for the four former ministers accused of corruption.

Furthermore, fresh wiretaps are likely to be leaked to turn up the pressure on the government. The more Erdogan fights, the more the salvos against him are expected to increase, with the United States and the European Union also stepping in, until the AKP’s integrity becomes impossible to preserve.

Having strengthened its hand in the local polls, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), too, is expected to mount real opposition against the government, although it has so far played its opposition role quite reluctantly in the name of the Kurdish peace process. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) has sent signals that it may look for interlocutors other than the AKP, suggesting that the Kurds can no longer sustain the AKP’s ambivalent stance that has played into government hands.

Ultimately, if Turkey is not normalized, the rumble of the educated urban middle class, which made a grand appearance on the political scene during the Gezi protests, will continue to pester Erdogan and could perhaps force the government to move the June 2015 general elections forward.

Fehim Taştekin is a columnist and chief editor of foreign news at the Turkish newspaper Radikal, based in Istanbul. He is the host of a fortnightly program called “Dogu Divanı” on IMC TV. He is an analyst specializing in Turkish foreign policy and Caucasus, Middle East and EU affairs. He was founding editor of Agency Caucasus.

Source: al-monitor.com

Syrian rocket hits Turkish mosque

March 31, 2014 By administrator

YAYLADAĞI

A rocket hit a mosque near Turkey’s border with Syria on March 31, injuring a Syrian woman, Doğan News Agency has reported.
The incident took place at around 2 p.m. in the Yayladağı district of Hatay, a Turkish province on the border with Syria, when clashes between Syrian regime forces and the Free Syrian Army had intensified.
According to the Hatay Governorate, three artillery shells fell in the countryside near the Güzelyurt village, while a rocket hit the Hacı Bilal mosque in central Yayladağı, which lies across from a Syrian refugee camp.
A wall of the mosque partly collapsed, injuring Muna Hacısüleyman, a Syrian woman who is believed to be around 60 years old. Hacısüleyman was transferred to Antakya State Hospital in an ambulance.
“In accordance with our new military engagement rules, our artillery units on the border fired into Syria in response,” the Hatay Governorate said in its statement.

March/31/2014

Source: hurriyetdailynews

Google says Turkey intercepting its Web domain

March 31, 2014 By administrator

Google says Turkey has been intercepting its Internet domain, redirecting users to other sites in the latest battle between Ankara and Web giants.        In a weekend post on Google’s security blog, software engineer Steven Carstensen said the company has received “several credible reports and confirmed with our own research that Google’s Domain Name System (DNS) service has been intercepted by most Turkish ISPs (Internet Service Providers).”        Carstensen said the DNS server “tells your computer the address of a server it’s looking for, in the same way that you might look up a phone number in a phone book.”
“Imagine if someone had changed out your phone book with another one, which looks pretty much the same as before, except that the listings for a few people showed the wrong phone number,” he added.        “That’s essentially what’s happened: Turkish ISPs have set up servers that masquerade as Google’s DNS service.”
The news came just days after Turkey banned YouTube after the Google-owned video-sharing website was used to spread damaging leaked audio files from a state security meeting debating possible military action in Syria.        Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily lashed out at his political opponents for leaking the recording.        Earlier this month, Turkey’s telecommunications authority blocked access to the US social network Twitter under orders from Erdogan after opposition members used it to post telephone recordings implicating him in a major corruption scandal.
March/31/2014

Kessab Mayor: Video showing alleged killing of Armenians by terrorists is fake

March 31, 2014 By administrator

March 31, 2014 | 18:43

A video of alleged killing of Kessab Armenians by terrorists that is spread by media is untrue, Kessab Mayor Vazgen Chaparyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

He said around 30 old people stayed in Kessab for several days because they were unable to move y themselves, but they have already been transported to Latakia.

At the moment, the Syrian army is fighting for Kessab, but they are moving slowly so that not to harm the city, Chaparyan emphasized.

As regards Armenians, they left their houses in a hurry without taking neither clothes, nor documents.

“The Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the government have providing assistance to Kessab Armenians so far,” he added.

In the early morning on March 21, armed militants from the Jabhat al-Nusra Islamic terrorist group infiltrated into northern Syria’s Latakia Governorate, which is predominantly inhabited by Armenians and Alawites, from four directions. Two large groups of terrorists had launched the attack from Turkey.

Clashes during Turkey local elections kill eight

March 30, 2014 By administrator

At least eight people have been killed in clashes between groups supporting rival candidates in Turkey’s local elections.

Security sources said on Sunday that at least six people lost their lives in a gunfight between two families in the village of Yuvacik in the eastern province of Sanliurfa.

Two other people were also killed in a gun battle between the relatives of two candidates in Golbasi village of the Hatay province.

Thirteen people are also said to be wounded in the clashes.

The elections, which have turned into a referendum on the rule of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan after several months of street protests, corruption scandals and Internet blocks, began on Sunday.

Turkish court overturns order for Twitter to remove account accusing former official of corruption

March 30, 2014 By administrator

Court overturned an order for Twitter to remove an account that accuses a former minister of corruption, reports said Saturday.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Turkey last week suspended access to Twitter, which has been a conduit for links to recordings suggesting corruption by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, which faces local elections on Sunday.

Recordings posted to Twitter suggested corruption by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The government then blocked access to YouTube following the leak of an audio recording of a top security meeting where officials allegedly discussed a military intervention in Syria. Turkey’s government blocked access to YouTube following the leak of an audio recording of a top security meeting where officials allegedly discussed a military intervention in Syria.

Femen shows up in Turkish PM Erdoğan’s constituency on election day

March 30, 2014 By administrator

By Selçuk ŞAMİLOĞLU ISTANBUL / Hürriyet

Femen, an exhibitionist feminist activism group founded in Ukraine in 2008, has staged a protest in the Üsküdar district on Istanbul’s Asian side, which is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s constituency.
Hours after announcing plans to stage a protest in one of the conservative neighborhoods of Istanbul, two Femen members showed up in Üsküdar’s Burhaniye Elementary School. The naked activists, who wrote “Ban Erdogan” on their chests and backs, were quickly detained by police after grabbing and throwing away several ballots.
Erdoğan has voted at Burhaniye Elementary School in previous elections, but opted to go to the ballot box in Üsküdar’s Saffet Çebi Elementary School for the March 30 local polls.

March/30/2014

Film: “The Armenian Genocide”, at Concordia University, Irvine, CA.

March 30, 2014 By administrator

Wednesday, April 2, 2014 7.00PM

Speakers: Barbara English, Jeff Mallinson, Levon Marashlian

Concordia University

1530 Concordia West, Irvine, CA (map)

April 2014 Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month

They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions.
– Elie WieselRemembering the Past toward Healing our Future

A free six-event commemorative film series featuring stories of survivors and their children

The Armenian Genocide – PBS (2006)

GENOCIDE: Armenian
Wednesday, April 2, 2014 – 9p
Concordia University Center
1530 Concordia West, Irvine, CA 92612
campus map
(See below for free PARKING details.)
Speakers: Barbara English, Jeff Mallinson, Levon Marashlian
RSVP
Space is limited.

Camp Darfur a traveling, awareness-raising six-tent refugee camp exhibit, (one for each genocide being commemorated in April), will be on campus all day outside venue location beginning at noon.
Community booths from our partnering organizations will also be featured in the same area beginning at 5:30p.
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Film Synopsis:

The Armenian Genocide is the complete story of the first Genocide of the 20th century – when over a million Armenians died at the hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War I. This unprecedented and powerful one-hour documentary, was written, directed and produced by Emmy Award-winning producer Andrew Goldberg. Featuring interviews with the leading experts in the field such as Pulitzer Prize-winning author Samantha Power and New York Times best-selling author, Peter Balakian, this film features never-before-seen historical footage of the events and key players of one of the greatest untold stories of the 20th century. The Armenian Genocide is narrated by Julianna Margulies and includes historical narrations by Ed Harris, Natalie Portman, Laura Linney and Orlando Bloom, among others.

Speakers:

Barbara English, LMFT is a Licensed Marriage Family Therapist and Certified Bioenergetic Therapist with over 20 years of experience in psychotherapy. Ms. English’s training included a strong focus on Early Development and Infant Mental Health. Working from a mind-body perspective, she utilizes relational somatic methods as part of the healing process for those seeking recovery after abuse or trauma. Recognizing that current Western models of recovery are grossly inadequate for addressing the pervasiveness of traumatized societies, locally and globally, in 2005, she founded Living Ubuntu and serves as its volunteer Executive Director. Living Ubuntu seeks to increase compassion and support for the common good. Its efforts include raising awareness of trauma, while offering methods of recovery better-suited to large numbers of people from a variety of cultures. Recovery begins in safety; highlighting related human right issues (e.g. genocide and mass atrocities) is a companion piece of the organization’s approach. Ms. English is a 2009 Carl Wilkens Fellow.

Jeff Mallinson, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Concordia University, Irvine, where he serves as the Faculty in Residence for Global Village, a living-learning community for student residents interested in global issues. He earned his doctorate at Oxford University, and researches and writes in the area of intellectual history during the Reformation and early modernity. He serves part time as director of the League of Faithful Masks (faithful masks.org) and is co-host of the Virtue in the Wasteland podcast (virtueinthewasteland.com).

Levon Marashlian, Ph.D. is Professor of History at Glendale Community College. He holds a B.A. from the University of Illinois in Chicago and an M.A. and Ph.D. from UCLA. He has lectured extensively in Armenia at the Academy of Sciences, Yerevan State University, and the American University of Armenia, as well as in Beirut, Lebanon and Montreal, Canada. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Armenia in 1994, teaching courses on democracy in America. In 1996, Dr. Marashlian testified before the US House of Representatives International Relations Committee, during a hearing on the Armenian Genocide; his testimony was published in the Congressional Record, 5 May 1998. In 1987, he served on the California Department of Education Curriculum Advisory Committee for the development of instructional material on genocide and human rights and testified before government committees in favor of legislation mandating the teaching of the Armenian Genocide in secondary schools. He was invited to Ankara in 1990 to participate in the government-sponsored 11th Congress of Turkish History. His paper, “Economic and Moral Influences on US Policies Toward Turkey and the Armenians, 1919-1923,” covered the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath and was published in Ankara by the Turkish Historical Society Press in 1994. He has been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Daily News, Education Week, Washington Jewish Week, Jewish Daily, Houston Chronicle, Glendale News Press, Washington Times, Daily Star (Beirut) and Courier (Paris), as well as in several scholarly journals.

Parking:
Let the guard gate attendant know you are coming to the event and they will distribute visitor parking passes and direct you to appropriate place to park. There is no charge for parking. See campus map.

Living Ubuntu, in collaboration with Amnesty International – Irvine, community partners and six local academic institutions, presents a six-event commemorative film series featuring the stories of survivors and their children. April is Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month, and each film commemorates a genocide that started during April. Living Ubuntu provides education about global traumas as part of its mission to heal trauma in order to promote peace. All events are free and open to the public. The second one is about the Armenian genocide. All details are above.

For info on all six events, a complete list of community partners, and to RSVP, click here.