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Ankara: Tapes are ‘as real as Mount Ararat’: Main opposition CHP leader

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ANKARA

Dailynews The head of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has claimed that the leaked voice recording of a conversation between the prime minister and his son is genuine.

These tapes are as real as Mount Ararat“We verified them with three or four different sources. These tapes are as real as Mount Ararat or Mount Erciyes,” Kılıçdaroğlu, told his lawmakers at his parliamentary group meeting Feb. 25.

During the meeting, the CHP leader played the leaked phone conversation, allegedly between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his son Bilal Erdoğan, into the microphone.

“You transferred dollars, euros, and Turkish Liras using cars and trucks. But new things will be disclosed soon. My advice to you: Take a helicopter and flee abroad and resign. Those who rob the state cannot stay in the Prime Ministry. We can no longer have Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as the prime minister. The government has lost its legitimacy,” he said.

“What saddens me most is to see Erdoğan make his own children a part of his theft,” Kılıçdaroğlu added. “Be sure that I do not feel sorry for Erdoğan, but for his children. Isn’t it a pity for them that you have involved them in your theft?”

The prime minister had complained that even his cryptographic telephones had been eavesdropped on, but Kılıçdaroğlu said this was no defense. “These cryptographic telephones have not been given to you to cover up your corruption. They were given to you to conduct state affairs,” he said.

The main opposition leader recalled that a WikiLeaks document revealed in 2010 claimed that Erdoğan had eight bank accounts in Switzerland. Erdoğan strongly denied the allegations.

“A liar cannot be the prime minister. It’s the first time in our history that we see a prime minister robbing his people,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.

Parliament TV interrupted its broadcast of the CHP group meeting when Kılıçdaroğlu started to play the leaked tape between Erdoğan and his son. The CHP leader later criticized Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek for the decision and also slammed the media organizations that followed Parliament TV’s lead.

“The entire family could be in dirt up to their neck and you won’t see it. The entire world will see, but you won’t … You will have the same responsibility the chief thief has,” he said.

February/25/2014

 

Attackers tattooed cross on brutally killed Istanbul Armenian woman?

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January 09, 2013 | 12:25

ISTANBUL. – The December 28, 2012 killing of Istanbul Armenian Marissa Kucuk was covered by the Turkish media as a brutal murder, but it was not a front-page news. The Istanbul Armenian community is deeply concerned over this incident and expects an explanation from the officials, writes Rober Koptas, the chief editor of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian bilingual weekly.

As per Koptas, at first look this murder seems to be one of the dozens of killings that take place every day in Turkey. But this was the second attack against an Armenian at the same district and in the past one month.

Reflecting on the premise that the 85-year-old woman was killed for being Armenian, Agos’ chief editor posed a number of questions:

Is it true that the attackers tattooed a cross on Kucuk’s body? Will the forensic medical examiners, or the Police, provide a clarification on this matter?

Was the attack against the two Armenian woman, and after a short interval, unplanned?

If both cases are linked to robbery, why were they accompanied with cruelties?

If they are noting that the perpetrators took the jewelry which these women were wearing, did they steal anything else from the homes, or did the robbery just cover up the true motive of the crime?

Rober Koptas demands that the officials provide clarifications to these queries.

The ICC (International Criminal Court) and crimes against humanity in Turkey

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By: ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ

As you see below, the situation is very complex. But we are left with a quite simple question: While Serbs continue to deliver Serbian butchers to The Hague, who will try Turkish butchers who committed crimes against humanity in the ’90s against Kurds in Turkey?

Finally Ratko Mladic, the former chief of staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, has been arrested and he is on his way to The Hague. This is, of course, a step forward for justice for the victims of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. I am sure it will be a huge relief for Bosnians to see Mladic accounting for the crimes he has committed before the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

This news, of course, was also met with great happiness in Turkey by Turks, who have a deep affinity with the Bosnian victims for historical and religious reasons. Mladic and his men used to call Bosnian Muslims Turks. Whether they are aware or not of Mladic’s deep-seated hatred for “Turks,” Turkish people welcomed the news of the arrest of this perpetrator of genocide, who is called the Serbian butcher in Turkey.

In Turkey, most people focused on Mladic’s arrest without thinking too much about its implications for the Serbian people and political system. Delivering war criminals and genocide perpetrators one after another to the ICTY, an ad hoc international court, is a manifestation of a strong political will on the part of Serbia, is it not? In this way, the Serbian political establishment has parted ways with the bloody past of Serbian fascists. Some Serbs are really facing up to their past atrocities, in spite of strong ultranationalist segments that are still alive in that society.

Interestingly enough, between 1992 and 1995, while Bosnian Muslims and Croats were being butchered, there was another serious crime committed in southeastern Turkey. During the ’90s more than 3,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed and tens of thousands of extrajudicial killings were committed. While most Turks welcome the delivery of Mladic to the ICTY, most probably they don’t know that those involved in this destruction of villages and extrajudicial killings committed crimes that are defined as “crimes against humanity,” and thus they could also be transferred to The Hague if Turkey became a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Under Article 7 of the Rome Statute, crimes against humanity mean, amongst other things, “murder” and “deportation or forcible transfer of population” when committed as part of widespread or systematic attack against any civilian population. This definition is a perfect definition of the crimes that were committed against Kurds in those years. And we also know that the drafters of the Rome Statute also intended to cover the atrocities committed within the borders of a sovereign country. I have not heard about any person being put on trial because of their role in the destruction of villages in southeastern Turkey. Amongst those tens of thousands murders, only 20 of them are now being addressed in a trial in Cizre, murders allegedly committed by Col. Cemal Temizöz between 1993 and 1994 in this district.

We also know that some founders and commanders of JİTEM, which was responsible for most of these extrajudicial killings, are now being tried in the Ergenekon case for being members of this organization. It is, of course, quite significant to see them behind iron bars, but it is also quite sad that we cannot see them giving an account for crimes against humanity. Imagine if Mladic was being tried in Serbia for being a member of a terrorist organization that aims to overthrow the Serbian government. Would it then be said that justice was being served?

Interestingly enough, as far as I can see, most of Turkey’s hesitation regarding the ICC and reluctance to be a part of it stems from the possibility that the prosecutor in The Hague may press charges against people who have committed crimes against Kurds. Retroactive application of the Rome Statute is not a known practice, but bureaucrats in the Turkish Foreign Ministry may be keeping in mind the possibility that the ICC may adhere to the interpretation that in the case of an “ongoing violation” (reluctance to investigate extrajudicial killings and the inability of Kurds to return to their villages that were destroyed) it would be possible for past crimes, which were committed before a state party ratified the Rome Statute, can be tried by the ICC.

As you see, the situation is very complex. But we are left with a quite simple question: While Serbs continue to deliver Serbian butchers to The Hague, who will try Turkish butchers who committed crimes against humanity in the ’90s against Kurds in Turkey?

Was Atatürk an Armenian?

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Write:
Orhan Kemal Cengiz is a Turkish lawyer, journalist and human rights activist. He graduated in law from the University of Ankara in 1993. From 1997 to 1998 he worked in London.
o.cengiz@todayszaman.com
The Radikal daily has started quite an interesting discussion about the family origins of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic. Radikal reported, according to the forthcoming book “From Mustafa to Kemal: Atatürk’s Big Secret” by Fatih Bayhan, that the family origins of Atatürk do not lie in Thessaloniki, as is commonly believed, but instead in the eastern province of Malatya. Bayhan claims that Atatürk’s family immigrated to Thessaloniki from Malatya.
According to this new version of his life, Atatürk’s true father and mother were people who lived in Malatya and Atatürk’s acknowledged mother, Zübeyde Hanım, was actually his aunt. The writer claims that Atatürk was sent to Thessaloniki when his actual father died and was adopted by Zübeyde Hanım when his mother died. The book is said to be based on official governmental records and documents that are set to be made public for the first time.

I do not want to bother you with all these details any more. This allegation of course needs to be proven. However, I would not be surprised if it turns out to be true. Much of history in Turkey is based on so many lies and legends, all of which were created to deny some fundamental facts in our past. Turkish official history “writers” never hesitated to bend history according to the needs of our official ideology and the state’s so-called “higher interests.”

Malatya was one of the provinces which were heavily populated by Armenians in the past. If this new version of Atatürk’s origins is true, the first question to come to mind is why the history writers fabricated the well-known version of his life. Did they write the official version to disassociate Atatürk from Anatolian Armenians? If the new story is true, there must be a reason.

The facts of Turkish history are still surrounded by many taboos, some of which have caused loss of life. You know how the tragic events leading to the assassination of Hrant Dink began. He simply dared to say that Atatürk’s adopted daughter Sabiha Gökçen was indeed an Armenian orphan. And this revelation was followed a lynching campaign and he was killed after that.

Nowadays the walls around the taboos which surround our history seem to be weakening. Ayhan Aktar keeps writing about some taboos in our history. One of the stories he tells is about the Dardanelles wars. According to Aktar, one of the heroes of this war was Cpt. Sarkis Torosyan, a citizen of Armenian descent in the Ottoman Empire. Torosyan’s story is a heartbreaking one. Torosyan was a much-decorated gunner wounded while defending the Dardanelles. He was later transferred to the area where his family had been deported, modern-day Palestine. There he discovered his sister in rags and heard his fiancée was dying of tuberculosis. He learned that his parents had been killed along the way. While he was defending his country to the death, his family and loved ones had been forcefully evicted from their homes.

This story is of course not written in any schoolbooks, nor is it known by many people in Turkey. Some may think this story is just a tiny detail in Turkish history, but I think it’s a very significant and important one. The real story of an Armenian captain who fought a heroic war in the Dardanelles is a huge burden on the Turkish conscience. This is because this one single event has the capacity to bring up all of our painful memories about our long-lost neighbors and about our past.

As I repeatedly said in this column before, people confront their past by opening their hearts to the stories of others, by feeling the pain and anguish they suffered — a process which has already started in Turkey and in which we have a very long way to go.

Classified Woman: The Sibel Edmonds Story!

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In this startling new memoir, Sibel Edmonds—the most classified woman in U.S. history—takes us on a surreal journey that begins with the secretive FBI and down the dark halls of a feckless Congress to a stonewalling judiciary and finally, to the national security whistleblowers movement she spearheaded. Having lived under Middle East dictatorships, Edmonds knows firsthand what can happen when government is allowed to operate in secret. Hers is a sobering perspective that combines painful experience with a rallying cry for the public’s right to know and to hold the lawbreakers accountable. With U.S. citizens increasingly stripped of their rights in a calibrated media blackout, Edmonds’ story is a wake-up call for all Americans who, willingly or unwillingly, traded liberty for illusive security in the wake of 9/11.

You can visit the Classified Woman website here: http://classifiedwoman.com