Party Lists Released . . . Game On.

Turkey's political parties have released their party lists ahead of June 12 parliamentary elections. The AKP's list considerably diminishes the power of National Outlook ("Milli Gorus") politicians and aims to gain votes in coastal centers where the party has not fared strongly.

Meanwhile, the MHP is sticking to its strategy of going for votes in both Turkey's coastal areas and Central Anatolia. The MHP suffered a tremendous loss in last year's Sept. 12 election when many of its supporters broke with the party to vote for the AKP-sponsored referendum. MHP leader Devlet Bahceli made the referendum a chance to challenge the AKP on its Kurdish opening, but at the end of the day, MHP's brand of ultra-nationalism seemingly increased support for the MHP, which is now hovering right at the 10% threshold required for parties to enter parliament.

The AKP will go after the MHP with full force in an effort to have the party fall under the 10% threshold. Should this happen, the AKP would almost certainly be guaranteed the super majority of 367 deputies it needs to conduct business without much compromise. It is a make-or-break year for the MHP. Turkish political parties that fall under the 10% threshold have a difficult time coming back, and the MHP would likely come out of the bruising with an even more ultra-nationalist attitude.

Significant to the party lists is the lack of minority representation. No party nominated an Armenian candidate as initially conjectured. Two Jews and two Syriacs were nominated, though all but one of these candidates have either been placed low on the party lists or are representing small parties and so have little chance of entering. Erol Dora, a Syriac, is running for the BDP from Mardin and stands a decnt chance of being elected. If Dora is elected, he will be the first Syriac member of parliament in the history of the Turkish Republic.

Women also got the short end of the stick. The CHP nominated the most women (at 20 percent), and has made gender equality, which the party considers to be under attack, a major plank in its platform. The AKP nominated 14 percent, and the MHP 12 percent. 12 women are running as independents, mostly from the pro-Kurdish BDP, which has by far the highest representation of women in parliament. Among these women is Leyla Zana, a hardline BDP candidate who is very divisive in Turkish politics.

There was some initial speculation that the AKP might attempt to nominate a female candidate who wears the headscarf, though it seems Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc's February statement that now is not the time seemed to have held true in the end. Only one covered candidate was nominated, a school teacher from Antalya, and her name was placed toward the bottom of AKP's party list. For more on women's political representation (and the headscarf), click here.

Turkish Hizbullah on the Scene Again? . . .

AA Photo from Hurriyet Daily News

Five members of Turkish Hizbullah, two high-level members, were released this week when an amendment to Article 102 of the Turkish Code for Criminal Procedure went into effect. The amendment mandated the release of convicted criminals whose appeals had not been processed in a 10-year period, and is raising concern in some circles that the terrorist group, now re-united with old leaders, might take the opportunity to renew the violent terror campaign it waged in the southeast in the 1990s. From Hurriyet Daily News:

Some claim Hizbullah will "redefine itself" and enter a new era following the releases, but others say the possibility that the group returns to violence is now stronger than ever before, given that it has grown into a "mass movement of militants" through traffic on its websites and charity activities of some foundations that are accused of being front organizations for Hizbullah.

“The Turkish Hizbullah may even push to obtain seats in the forthcoming elections from independent candidates and may run in provinces such as Batman, Diyarbakır, Van and Mardin,” Faraç said.

While pro-Kurdish circles claim Hizbullah was a weapon against the Kurdish political movement, the wider public knew of the organization after mass graves that held dozens of hogtied bodies were discovered in the year 2000.

The public relived those days of horror when five Hizbullah members, two of which were allegedly leaders of the organization, were freed last week, as their cases, waiting to be discussed at the high court, did not come to a conclusion in 10 years' time.

Hizbullah came to prominence in the late 1980s in southeastern Turkey. Some experts say its aim is to destroy the secular order and spread “true Islam” throughout the country, by force if necessary. However, strong claims have surfaced that it was the state itself that established the organization to fight the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, through illegal means, such as summary executions.

Other experts dismiss such claims, but acknowledge that the Turkish state has long failed to appropriately investigate the group.

Indeed, many of those killed in the Southeast during the 1990s, usually with meat cleavers or a bullet in the neck, were known to be active pro-Kurdish politicians or journalists.

Many members of groups that preceded today's Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP, are believed to have been killed by Hizbullah, though hundreds of such murders still remain unsolved.

. . . .

The organization’s collapse began when Turkish security forces killed one of the group’s leaders, Hüseyin Velioğlu, during an operation in Istanbul in January 2000. Subsequent operations led to the discovery of dozens of mass graves containing the bodies of victims who had been kidnapped, tortured and buried alive.

Velioğlu’s death led the group to target Turkish security forces in 2001, a principal motivation behind government crackdowns on the organization in the following years.

The organization is also charged with the murders of 188 people, including Islamist feminist writer Konca Kuriş and Diyarbakır Police Chief Gaffar Okkan, who commanded huge respect in the city.

Turkish Hezbollah has incredibly murky past, and there is significant evidence that the group was used by deep state elements in the 1990s to counter the influence of the PKK. The PKK and Turkish Hezbollah were in a turf war for much of this period, and the result added to the mass human rights violations and internal displacement with which Turkey is still grappling. Another crime of the group that is not mentioned here is its role in driving many Syriac Orthodox Christians into Syria. Syriac Christians were popular targets of the groups' intense religiosity, many of whom sought refuge in Syria during the unrest and have not returned. For more background on Turkish Hezbollah, which is in no way related to Lebanese Hezbollah, see Gareth Jenkins's analysis from January 2008.


UPDATE I (1/10) -- During a press conference on the KCK trial, the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) announced it would welcome Turkish Hezbollah's participation, echoing a similar statement from Ocalan. At the same time, Ocalan warned that Hezbollah members will not be welcome in cities like Diyarbakir if they resort to their old ways. Meanwhile, PKK commander Murat Karayilan accused the Turkish state of attempting to revitalize the group in its fight against the PKK.

United States Issues Religious Freedom Report

The United States Department has issued its annual International Religious Freedom Report. For DRL's report on Turkey, click here.

Though many accusations might be leveled at the United States for not taking a consistent position on democracy and human rights issues, a difficult task for any country, the State Department's reports on human rights and religious freedom are refreshingly objective.

Issued by the State Department's Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, the reports are issued independent of the State Department's other policy making arms. For a bit on how, why, and the history behind these reports, click here.

Mor Gabriel Case Raises Questions About Syriac Minority

A dispute over the land rights of a Syriac Christian monastery, Mor Gabriel, has spurned a series of controversial law suits, yielding differing rulings over the monastery's rights to the land surrounding it. The case of Mor Gabriel's land rights is not simple, and involves a redrawing of the monastery's boundaries as part of a larger 2008 effort to update the national land registry --- part of a cadastre modernization project in compliance with EU instructions. The monastery is located in the Midyat district of Mardin province, a heavily Kurdish area that was once home to a diverse population of Kurds, Syriacs, Armenians, and Turks. Turkish authorities and the three villages in opposition to Mor Gabriel's redrawing -- Çandarli, Yayvantepe and Eglence -- claim that the new boundaries correctly adjust lands that were wrongly apportioned to Mor Gabriel 15 years ago. The case is significant in that it highlights tensions between Syriacs, their largely Kurdish neighbors, and the Turkish state.

Syriac Christians have long been disciminated against by the Turkish state. Not recognized as a minority under the Treaty of Lausanne, which granted minority rights to Greek and Armenian Christians, the Syriacs are afforded little protection as a group. Largely as a function of the dispute, villagers surrounding Mor Gabriel have complained that the monks are proselytizing to their children, referring to them as "missionaries" and stirring up a good bit of bad feeling. Though members of the Kurdish DTP have tried to reach out to the Syriac community in recent years, the Mor Gabriel case reflects extant tensions between the two groups -- the Kurds having their own disputes with the state.

The most recent ruling came from a Midyat court on May 22 and found in favor of the villagers. The monastery won its challenge to the redrawing in January, and plans to appeal the most recent ruling to the Supreme Court of Appeals. If the Supreme Court of Appeals rules affirms the Midyat court's decision, the monastery has said it will take its case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Some background from Today's Zaman:

In the name of Turkey’s strict secular laws, authorities have over decades expropriated millions of dollars worth of property belonging to Christians. Syriacs, Armenians and Greek Orthodox Christians -- remnants of the Muslim-led but multi-faith Ottoman Empire -- are viewed by many as foreigners. Syriacs are one of Turkey’s oldest communities, descendants of a branch of Middle Eastern Christianity. These Christians, united by a language derived from Aramaic, are split into several Orthodox and Catholic denominations.

There were 250,000 Syriacs when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded Turkey after World War I from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. Today they number 20,000. Syriacs migrated throughout the 20th century to Europe, fleeing first persecution by the new secular republic and later to escape violence between Kurdish separatist terrorists and the Turkish military in the Southeast.

A local prosecutor in August 2008 initiated a separate court case against the monastery after mayors of three villages complained the monks were engaged in “anti-Turkish activities” and alleged they were illegally converting children to the Christian faith. Monks say the mayors are instigating anti-Christian feelings by accusing Mor Gabriel of being against Islam. Villagers in neighboring Çandarlı, a settlement of 12 humble houses with no paved roads, said they had nothing against Christians and accused the monastery of taking land they need for cattle.

“There is a continued campaign to destroy the backbone of the Syriac people and close down the monastery,” said Daniel Gabriel, director of the human rights division of the Syriac Universal Alliance, a leading Syriac group based in Sweden. “These proceedings cannot take place without the sanction of the Turkish government. If the government wanted to protect the Syriac Christian community, it would stop this case,” he said.

Many churches and monasteries in southeast Turkey -- known to Syriac Christians as Turabdin or “the mountain of worshippers” -- are now abandoned and in ruins. “You need people to have a church. Without the community, the church is only a building,” said Saliba Özmen, the metropolitan, or bishop, of the nearby city of Mardin.

The Conference of European Churches, a fellowship of 126 Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican and Old Catholic churches from European countries, has said it is “deeply concerned about the threat to the survival of the monastery.” The group has raised the issue with the EU and Turkish officials. Considered the “second Jerusalem” by Syriacs, Mor Gabriel was built in A.D. 397 near the border of today’s Syria and Iraq.

The ocher-colored limestone building has seen invasions by Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders and Muslim armies and the monastery was once raided by the Mongol leader Tamerlane. After falling into disuse, Mor Gabriel was revived in the 1920s and today teaches the Syriac faith and Aramaic language to a group of 35 boys, who live and study at the monastery. By law, Syriacs must attend state schools where teaching is in Turkish, but they can be taught about their own language and religion outside school hours.

The land rights case made its way into the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom's annual report on Turkey, and could well make its way into the EU progress report.

As some Syriacs have returned to their lands following the bloody war between the Turkish military and PKK insurgents in the 1990s, such disputes have become fairly commonplace. Being a monastery, however, the Mor Gabriel case raises specific questions about religious minorities in Turkey. The monastery has paid taxes to the Turkish state since 1938.