Israel and Turkey: The Week in Review

A snapshot from Israeli television of the berated Ambassador Celikkol. Celikkol is seated much lower than his Israeli counterparts, and with no Turkish flag on the table, as would be typical in most diplomatic proceedings of this kind. PHOTO from the BBC

Though I have not been posting on the most recent diplomatic spat between Turkey and Israel, there is no doubt that it is the story of the week. I would direct you to Yigal Schleifer's excellent reporting on a series of events that started with an indignant prime minister Erdogan criticizing Israel during a joint meeting with Lebanese foreign minister Saad al-Hariri and ended with Israel issuing two apologies to the Turkish government after its deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, humiliated Turkish Ambassador to Israel Oguz Celikkol during a demarche. Ayalon summoned Celikkol to rebuke him over a scene of the popular Turkish television show, Kurtlar Vadisi ("Valley of the Wolves"), that negatively depicted Israeli soldiers. Unlike "Ayrilik," the television miniseries that prompted Israeli diplomatic protests two months ago, "Kurtlar Vadisi" is made by a private television company and aired on a private channel. ("Ayrilik" was run on government television.) Though Prime Minister Erdogan has accepted Ayalon's apology, the incident reveals a great deal about extreme nationalist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's policy toward Turkey. Ayalon's apology came at the behest of Israeli President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been largely supportive of Lieberman's more aggressive approach.

For his part, Erdogan has been quite critical of Israel since its invasion of Gaza, which Turkey was not informed about despite its impact on negotiations it was mediating at the time between Israel and Syria. Erdogan has shown no sign of letting up on Israel until things move forward in the Occupied Territories, seeming particularly keen not to apply Turkey's "zero problems with neighbors" policy to Israel. Israel seems to have been late in realizing the extent of Turkey's anger over Gaza. While Turkey's response to Israeli human rights violations, Gaza, and its illegal settlement of the Occupied Territories might be justified and in order, it is no doubt seemingly all the more difficult for the Turkish government to defend this diplomatic posture in Washington and elsewhere when it has done little to protest Iranian human rights violations and nuclear ambitions, not to mention adopting a rather friendly position toward Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir.


UPDATE I (1/21) -- The Jerusalem Post reports that the head of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin reported to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee that Turkey was moving away from the West and Israel and toward "radical Islam." The paper quotes Yadlin as saying, "In the past, Turkey had ambitions of becoming closer to the West, beyond its acceptance into NATO," Yadlin said. "They wanted to be part of the European market, and they thought that relations with Israel would help them advance in the American market. But then they received a cold shoulder from the Europeans and did not achieve what they wanted. In light of that, they changed their policies and are currently drawing away from secularism and going in a more radical direction. There are still joint strategic interests shared by Turkey and Israel, but it is not the same strategic proximity that they once shared." In the course of his comments, Yadlin used Turkey's rapprochement with Syria as evidence for its strategic departure, citing the former emnity between the two countries as key to Turkey's willingness to maintain good relations with Israel.

Yadlin's address comes days after Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited Ankara, a trip that had been scheduled prior to the Ayalon affair.

Turkey Maintains 3,3 Freedom House Rating

Turkey has maintained its 3, 3 Freedom House rating. Freedom House is a United States-based non-governmental organization that monitors democracy and human rights across the world. Freedom in the World, Freedom House's annual survey of the state of civil and political rights around the world, measures respect for political rights and civil liberties on a 1-7 scale. Turkey scored a 3 on both counts. The report uses incident data to calculate these ratings, and did note a decline of freedom in Turkey for the past calendar year. For Freedom House's 2010 report, Freedom in the World 2010: Global Erosion of Freedom, click here. For its 2009 country report on Turkey, click here. (The full 2010 survey, including country reports, will not be available until the late spring.)

Children and the Weapons of War

Another child was killed after finding an undetonated explosive device. Bianet reports that "eleven people, nine of them children, were killed by military explosives in 2008, 16 people were injured, 13 of them children. In 2009, two children and one adult were killed, seven children and 3 adults were injured." Another child was killed by an explosive found near the same gendarmerie station in Bingol province.

Allegations of Discrimination in Distribution of EU Aid

Radio Sweden reports on allegations that European aid is not reaching the regions and groups for which it is intended. Anne Ludvigsson, head of the Swedish support committee for human rights in Turkey and Swedish MP from the Social Democratic Party, argues the EU should place more pressure on Turkey to support human rights and ensure that Turkish bureacrats are fairly distributing funds. Ludvigsson has attempted to highlight the problem, which many argue is a result of discrimnation. The Radio Sweden story also quotes Levent Korkut, head of the Civil Society Development Center (STGM), which the EU setup to assist NGOs receive funds. According to Korkut, discrimnation is a critical factor in all Turkish affairs, adding that discrimination is based not just on ethnicity and religion, but also disability, sexual orientation, and gender. Muhsin Altun, director of the Central Finance and Contrats Unit, tells Swedish Radio that there is indeed disproportionality in the direction of EU funds between the east and west of Turkey, but points out that NGOs and cooperatives are less plentiful and often lack the technical know-how to apply for the funding. Ludvigsson's part of the interview appears at the end of the story, and features her dismissal of EU bureacrats' claims that the money is being adequately monitored and distributed. Ludvigsson apparently brought a mayor from Turkey's southeast to Sweden to comment on how his region is no longer receiving monies, though the story does not go into when funds stopped, why, and where exactly the mayor was from. Ludvigsson advocates bringing more Turkish politicians to the Swedish parliament to discuss EU funding.

The European Union distributes funding to Turkey under a variety of instruments, most important of which is the Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance. EU funding of minority-based groups is the topic of my Fulbright research, and I am most glad to finally see a story at least broaching it.

In related news, the European Information Center in Istanbul opens today.

Multiplicity and Elif Shafak

A little less than a month ago I attended a talk Elif Shafak gave in which she alluded to the potential for holding multiple identities. For those who are not familiar with Shafak's work, Andrew Finkel has presented a fairly solid glimpse of someone whose refusal to be easily categorized makes any endeavor to profile Herculean. Though Shafak spoke in Turkish, which I am still very much at the incipient stages of coming to grasp, I was able, most surprisingly, to at least catch the broad outlines of her talk. Shafak's English, in which she also publishes, is like embarking on a long journey in which her use of language leads the way. It is not so much that her plots are secondary, but that they are at one with her language, making the latter not just a vehicle for telling her story, but in many ways the very story itself. Describing English as more mathematical than Turkish, I can only imagine what Shafak must be like in her mother tongue. That said, a critical pillar of her speech, and her work in general, is her conviction that identity should be characterized by a certain multiplicity and adaptive capacity. As Finkel quotes Shafak,

"You have to move beyond categories of good and bad. People are multi-layered and you can’t judge them by blocks and association.”

Yet, as Shafak laments, categorization is strongly rooted in Turkish society, a phenomenon in which she seems to hope to complicate in both her literature and her politics.

Additionally, Shafak's talk gave me reason to look back at a study exploring political idenity among Turkish youth, some of the results of which were released this past September. The study, carried out by NYU professor of applied psychology Selcuk Sirin, found political identity for Turkish youth is not so singular, settled, or intractable -- all phenomena which Shafak would be likely to celebrate. Qantara's Jan Felix Engelhardt interviewed Sirin in September. For more on the study, including some of Sirin's results, as well as a bit of analysis, see Jenny White's Sept. 15 post.

For a penetrating article by Shafak on Ask, her most recent book, and writing in multiple languages, see this March article from Zaman (in Turkish). One of Shafak's most prominent crusades is to heighten the vocabulary employed by Turkish youth -- no doubt perhaps useful in describing poitical attitudes that, at least according to Sirin's study, are becoming increasingly complex.

Criminal Appeals Court Rules Armenian Apology Cannot Constitute 301 Crime

A court of criminal appeals has ruled that organizers of the petition apologizing for the Armenian genocide (drafted in Dec. 2008) cannot be tried under Article 301. In Jan. 2009, six Ankara residents launched a criminal complaint alleging the violation constituted an insult to the "Turkish nation," still considered illegal under the auspices of the infamous article in Turkey's criminal code and despite cosmetic revisions made in April 2008. Click here for the article from Bianet. Click here for background on the 301 case and here for background on the petition in the context of intellectuals and activists tried since the 301 reform. For more information Article 301 generally, see past posts.

Under the reformed 301 Law, the Ministry of Justice, specifically the Directorate General of Criminal Affairs, must approve a criminal complaint before it becomes a case. My knowledge of Turkish criminal procedure lacking, I am assuming this happened with the petition organizers since the complaint ended up before the Sincan 1st High Criminal Court. It was at this stage, I believe, that the Ankara prosecutor's office decided to file the order of nolle prosequi, effectively dropping the case. However, the court in Sincan refused to drop the case, leading the Ankara procesutor's office to appeal to the case to the Court of Appeals 9th Criminal Office, which issued the ruling released this week. If I am wrong, I would most appreciate it if someone correct me.

The Patriarchate and Ankara

PHOTO by Yigal Schleifer/Istanbul Calling

Just before Christmas, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew created an international furor when he gave an interview to American broadcasting network CBS's "60 Minutes" news program. In the interview, Bartholomew says he prefers to stay in Istanbul despite being sometimes crucified. When asked if he felt crucified, Bartholomew responded he sometimes did. (See Yigal Schleifer's Dec. 22 post). The AKP government quickly rushed to criticize the Patriarch for his remarks. Yet, plenty of Turks defended the Patriarch, citing continued government inaction to push for critical religious and minority rights reforms. (For example, see Mehmet Ali Birand's column in Hürriyet. For a defense of the AKP's criticism of Bartholemew and the slow rate of progress in terms of advancing rights for the Greek minority, see Orhan Kemal Cengiz's column in Today's Zaman.)

Minority rights reforms involving the Greek minority are critical to Turkey's EU accession process, especially if support from Greece and Cyprus is to be won. However, instead of pushing for reform, the government has instead made promises without providing timelines or showing serious intent of delivering, oftentimes simultaneously insisting that Greeks are equal citizens and/or pointing its fingers to Greece's abuse of its Turkish Muslim minority, as if two wrongs make a right. For an example of the former, see the remarks of the head of Turkey's Religious Affairs Directorate, or Diyanet, Ali Bardakoglu; for the latter, see Prime Minister Erdogan's comments this week. Unlike Turkey, Greece did not have to satisfy the Copenhagen political criteria (developed in 1993) before its accession into the European Union in 1981. That said, minority rights reforms for the Greek community, a legally recognized minority vested with rights under the Treaty of Lausanne, are highly controversial. In March 2008, when the AKP passed modest reforms to Turkey's Law on Foundations, which governed many religious organizations, the reforms faced fierce nationalist opposition from both the CHP and the MHP. Little concrete work has been done since, and with the EU reform process stalled, the AKP government going as perhaps as far as it wants to go at the moment, it is unlikely much will change in the future. Continued problems with its Greek minority continue to get attention in the United states as well -- for example, see Senator Cardin's recent resolution on reopening Halki.

For more information on the Greek religious minority, including its legal standing under Lausanne, see the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom's 2009 annual report. From the report:

When Turkey was founded in 1923, there were approximately 200,000 Greek Orthodox Christians in the country. In 1955, by which time the number had fallen to 100,000, pogroms targeted the Greek Orthodox community, resulting in destruction of private and commercial properties, desecration of religious sites, and killings. As a result of these pogroms and other difficulties, the Greek Orthodox Christian community has fallen to its current low level, which the State Department reports to be no more than 3,000. Although the Ecumenical Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey has been under Ottoman Turkish jurisdiction since 1453, the Turkish government today still does not recognize the Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate as a legal entity. Moreover, the Turkish government also refuses to acknowledge the Patriarch's Ecumenical status, recognizing only his role as head of the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey. Although Prime Minister Erdogan reportedly stated in parliament in January 2008 that the issue of Patriarch Bartholomew's title as "Ecumenical" is an "internal" one for the Patriarchate and that the state should not interfere, the Turkish government still does not officially recognize the Patriarch's Ecumenical status. The Turkish government also maintains that only Turkish citizens can be candidates for the position of Ecumenical Patriarch and for hierarchs in the Church's Holy Synod.

In 1971, the government's nationalization of institutions of higher education included the Orthodox Theological School of Halki on the island of Heybeli, thereby depriving the Greek Orthodox community of its only educational institution for its leadership in Turkey. Furthermore, in November 1998, the school's Board of Trustees was dismissed by the General Authority for Public Institutions. Due to the factors mentioned above and because of the continuing expropriation of income-generating properties from Greek Orthodox private citizens, the very survival of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Greek Orthodox community in Turkey is at risk.

In the summer of 2008, the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously in a case brought by the Greek Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate that Turkey was in violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 (protection of property) of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case concerned an orphanage on the Turkish island of Buyukada owned by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The Turkish government has yet to implement the court's ruling.

See also the EU progress reports and human rights reports linked under the "Key Documents" section of this site.

A Turkish New Year

Left: Father Christmas comes to Istanbul in time to be featured in a New Year's advertisement with one of his rather true-to-life looking reindeer. PHOTO by the lovely and talented Monica Marks. Right: New Year's trees adorn Istanbul streets. PHOTO by the equally lovely and talented Sarah Fischer.

Returning to Istanbul from Texas just before the Epiphany, I found plenty of Christmas lights and Santa Claus images to greet me -- and this well after most Americans have taken their trees down. Instead of putting up trees for Christmas, Turks have made many European/Western Christmas holiday traditions their own by incorporating them into New Year's celebrations. For further explanation of just how this happened, see this story from the Global Post's Nichole Sobecki.

In recent years, some Turks have even gone back to history to find Turkish connections to these "appropriated" Christmas traditions. Click here for one archaeologist's claims that the Christmas tree has its roots in pre-Islamic Turkish cultural traditions. Also possible to raise a bit of controversy are Culture Minister Ertegrul Gunay's plans to request that Italy repatriate the bones of St. Nicholas to Turkey. Of course, Nicholas died in fourth century Asia Minor (in the Greek colony of Myra in what was then Lycia), long before the Turks arrived in Anatolia. Nicholas' bones were removed in the eleventh century by Italian sailors preceding an invasion of Myra by Arab forces.

UPDATE I (1/12) -- Mustafa Akyol searches for more fun-filled Muslim traditions.

The Politics of Water

Graphic from Alyson Hunt/NPR (Source: United Nations Environmental Program)

Drought conditions in Syria, Iraq, and southeastern Turkey continue to create water refugees out of the hundreds of thousands of people in the region who depend on the flow of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers to maintain their agricultural existence. As National Public Radio reporter Deborah Amos explores in a two-part series, the water crisis results not only from climate/weather conditions, but also Turkey's control of the headwaters of the two rivers and all three countries' mis-management/waste of the supply. In September, Turkey promised to release more than 400 cubic meters of water per second following complaints from Iraqi officials that the supply was fluctuating to at times less than 200 cubic meters per second. Yigal Schleifer covered the water dispute on his blog, Istanbul Calling, last September.

Strange Fruit

PHOTO from Radikal

Two recent mob attacks, one on leftist students in Edirne thought to be PKK supporters and the other on Roma in the Selendi district of Manisa, have again put the question of lynchings front and center. In both cases there are plenty of questions about the police response, accusations arising that the police did little to nothing to curb the violence. According to Bianet, the Dec. 27 Edirne attacks sparked a second wave of protests on the same street on Jan. 3, as well as in Erzincan and Kars. For a video of the Edirne attacks, click here.

Jenny White has an excellent post documenting recent lynch attacks, tieing the Edirne and Manisa mobs to a greater lynching phenomenon. Both lynchings were sparked by the same rising racial-based nationalism that I have written about here before (see, for example, June 26,2008 post), but the increased frequency, and possibly, organization, of these attacks should be cause for concern. In November, convoys of DTP politicians in the cities of Izmir and Canakkale were also attacked by mobs.


UPDATE I (1/15) -- The MHP mayor of the Selendi district in Manisa visited neighboring Gördes district, where up to 76 displaced Roma were re-located, and asked them to return. Some have accused the mayor of refusing to adequately respond to the attack and/or helping to foment it. Any other details as to just how the mayor did the latter are appreciated.

TEKEL Protests Continue

Workers of TEKEL, the former government alcohol/tobacco monopoly, have continued to organize protests in Ankara and Istanbul with the cooperation of the Turkish Worker Syndicates Confederation (Turk-Is). The workers are protesting changes to their employment status as a result of TEKEL's privitization, as well as layoffs. For an account of the labor dispute, click here. On Friday, police detained 42 TEKEL workers following protests in front of the AKP's Ankara headquarters.


UPDATE I (1/23) -- TEKEL workers are now going on hunger strike to protest their being assigned temporary worker status, effectively denying them employment rights they had held previously before the government shutdown the factories in which they previously worked with full rights before the government moved to privatize TEKEL. Bianet reports that 40 workers have joined the hunger strike, and that five of them have been hospitalized. On Thursday, Turk-Is declared it would organize a general strike if the government does not respond to TEKEL's demands by Jan. 26.

Hayirsevener Murder Draws Calls from OSCE, IPI

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the International Press Institute called on Turkey to do more to protect journalists following the murder of Cihan Hayirsevener, who was shot in Bandirma while investigating a local corruption scandal. Police have arrested three people. It is suspected that the killing was committed by organized crime.


UPDATE I (1/15) -- Bianet has more details about the murder of Hayirsevener.

Erdogan and the Press

Perihan Magden
PHOTO from the ESI's Rumeli Observer

From Bianet, in a tone most sarcastic:

The court of Appeals approved a decision of a local court concerning the case on compensation fines to be paid to the Erdoğan family. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had filed a complaint about Radikal newspaper journalist Perihan Mağden, his wife Emine Erdoğan had complained about Tempo magazine journalist Cemal Subaşı.

The Court of Appeals 4th Law Office rejected the appeal and approved the decision as "licit and corresponding to the procedure".

The Erdoğan family will receive a total of 10,000 TL (€ 4,500) from both cases. In a speech at the US American John Hopkins University on 7 December Erdoğan said the following about press freedom in Turkey: "The press freedom in our country is so advanced that there are all sorts of freedoms up to very heavy criticism of the president, the prime minister and our families. The press in Turkey is much freer than the press in the USA".

The prime minister has brought multiple lawsuits in recent years against individuals he sees as unduly critical or insulting. Past cases have involved taking a cartoonist to court for portraying him as a caveman, as well as a group of high school students shouting slogans at a protest rally. The prime minister has also been accused of using the government to force the break up of media that takes critical positions against his government, most notably the government's recent imposition of tax fines on the Dogan Media Group. Radikal is a Dogan paper. (See this article by Karen Krüger from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, translated thanks to Qantara), as well as Sedat Ergin's Dec. 8 op/ed in Hürriyet.

For more on Magden, one of Turkey's more controversial journalists, see the European Stability Initiative's Gerald Knaus interview with her in August 2008. The interview appeared in the ESI's Rumeli Observer.


UPDATE I (1/16) -- Bianet's Erol Onderoglu reflects on Erdogan's recent lauding of the Turkish press' reportage of this week's diplomatic crisis. In short, Onderoglu asks, why is Erdogan lauding and condemning the press at all? Is this kind of criticism appropriate from the government? And, just how harmful is it?

Americans should actually be asking themselves similar questions in response to the Obama Administration's recent criticisms of Fox News.

And, on the topic of Erdogan filing suit against critics, I would suggest reading Bulent's comment on the perceived need to legally protect people from being insulted. As long as this need is perceived by Turkish citizens, government -- at least to the extent that the courts hears insult cases, and Turkish legislators create law enabling such cases -- there is little chance of te government not intervening. Is there a need to protect private citizens from public insults? And, what about government officials? Again, these are questions for Turkish citizens, the problem here being much more complicated than merely repealing repressive government laws.

The Politics of Engagement

Dr. Berna Turam discusses "Muslim Politics, Secular Predicaments, and State Transformation" at the 15th Annual Campagna-Kerven Lecture on Modern Turkey at Boston University on Nov. 4. Turam is the author of Between Islam and the State: The Politics of Engagement. The talk is a nice summation of the book with a good number of additional insights given recent events. Thanks to Jenny White at Kamil Pasha.

Alleged Intimidation of Iranian Refugees a Potential Problem for Turkey

Some Iranian political dissidents seeking asylum after Iran's contested presidential elections in July continue to assert that they are not receiving adequate police protection inside Turkey. While much has been made of Turkey's ever closer relationship with the largly de-legitimized Iranian regime, it is claims like these, especially when combined with continued political repression and dissent in Iran, that risk a public relations nightmare for Turkey along the lines of that the country faced this past November when it refused to disallow Sudanese president and genocidaire Omar al-Bashir from attending the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting. The Guardian's Robert Tait writes

Some Iranians have expressed doubts about the protection given to them by police in Turkey. Two men in a small town in central Turkey said police threatened to hand them over to the Iranian authorities. Others say Turkish police have warned them to keep quiet about the threats they have received from Iranian agents.

The intimidation campaign comes after a senior revolutionary guard commander, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, told the hardline Keyhan newspaper that foreign-based supporters of the opposition green movement would be targeted as "extensions of a soft coup".

"So far, a large number of the infantry of the enemy has been identified," he said. "The Islamic Republic will not allow the extensions of a soft coup to act on further sedition and if necessary, the government will make them face serious challenges."

Iranians do not need visa requirement to enter Turkey, meaning it would be easy in theory for Iran's state agents to operate clandestinely within Turkey's borders. Western diplomats have privately voiced concerns about the security of Iranian refugees from the election upheaval.

However, Metin Corabatir, external affairs officer with the UN's high commission for refugees, insisted they were safe in Turkey. "The Iranians are under the protection of the Turkish state and Turkey is a secure country," he said. "If there are some high profile people, extra measures are taken to ensure they are protected. But we know of no incident and there is no threat to these people."

While the UNHCR has maintained the asylum seekers are safe in Turkey, the United States has intervened in at least one case involving the alleged assault of a woman who has been particularly vocal in her complaints about continued intimidation by Iranian authorities, pressing the UNHCR to speed up the woman's application for asylum so she can seek refuge in another country.

Turkey was among the first, if not the first, country to congratulate Iranian President Ahmadinejad on his disputed election victory this past July. While it could well be argued that Turkey did not want to make an enemy of the Iranian regime by criticizing the election, the Turkish government broke its diplomatic silence after the phone call when Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu described the election as "dynamic and well-attended," calling on dissidents to succumb to the result while refraining to comment on the human rights violations that caused other governments to raise concern. In October, Prime Minister Erdogan again decided not to comment on continued human rights violations in Iran, critcizing NATO policy toward Iran's nuclear pursuits as failing to take into account Iran's need to develop critical infastructure while calling the country a "friend" with which it has had no difficulties.

While these strategic choices might be well-grounded, continued dissent in Iran, such as that which occurred during Ashura festivities on Dec. 27, does not bode well for Turkey, nor does any harrassment of Iranian political exiles seeking refuge within its borders.