Something Wicked This Way Comes . . .

Internet freedom in Turkey is drifting closer to the Orwellian as the Prime Ministry's Information and Technology Board plans to implement new regulations on the Internet. From Ersu Ablak writing in Hurriyet Daily News:

After Aug. 22 we will have a totally different system. The government is so kind and father-like that it wants us to be fully protected from any kind of harm that the Internet can bring about. This is why they have decided to provide Internet services to us filtered from the source. It is too much hassle to ban websites one by one, therefore they will have bundles and lists. According to the current plans there will be four types of bundles available.

These will be called Standart Profile (Standart Profil), Children’s Profile (Çocuk Profili), Family Profile (Aile Profili) and Domestic Internet Profile (Yurtiçi İnternet Profili). All of these profiles will be censored to various degrees so that we will be protected just as our profile needs to be, because our government knows best.

Each profile will have two lists assigned; A black one and a white one. In the black list there will be websites that will be banned and in the white one there will be websites that are allowed to be surfed.

The government says that they ban websites at the source so that our children will be fully protected. There will be no room for the human error of parents. Banning websites will be fully automatic. However, the people who will be in charge of these practices and the standardization of establishing these lists are very vague. The government will be able to censor any website at will. You won’t even notice it.

The regulation is entitled “Rules and Procedures of the Safety of Internet Use” and was passed just this February. As if Turkey's current (2006) Internet law was not bad enough . . . let's hope the government turns an about course.

Also, on another note, as far as I can tell the ban on Blogspot (and this blog) is still on.

Wildlife Is Not Immune from Ultranationalism

Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica

Turkey's environment ministry is changing the names of three species of animals bearing Turkish and Armenian names. From the BBC:

The environment ministry says the Latin names of the red fox, the wild sheep and the roe deer will be altered.

The red fox for instance, known as Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica, will now be known as Vulpes Vulpes.

Turkey has uneasy relations with neighbouring Armenia and opposes Kurdish separatists in Turkey.

The ministry said the old names were contrary to Turkish unity.

"Unfortunately there are many other species in Turkey which were named this way with ill intentions. This ill intent is so obvious that even species only found in our country were given names against Turkey's unity," a ministry statement quoted by Reuters news agency said.

Some Turkish officials say the names are being used to argue that Armenians or Kurds had lived in the areas where the animals were found.

Really? Yeah, really.

A Sobering International Women's Day

Ayse Pasali, who was allegedly shot to death by her ex-husband, unsuccessfully sought official protection due to her husband's alleged physical abuse and threats to kill her. PHOTO from Radikal

From Bianet:

The Turkish Medical Association Women Doctors and Women's Health Branch indicated that violence against women in Turkey increased on the grounds of social insecurity caused by capitalism, male domination and the destruction of the social state. Other reasons for the increase of violence were a failing of the state to protect women and the impassiveness of the media regarding the whole topic.

The women's branch announced, "Apart from intensifying the struggle and strengthening solidarity, only very few tiny things have changed for women since the witch-hunting era in the middle ages. Migration and poverty becomes more and more an issue for women. Men dominate women and usurp and control their identity and body. This domination provides them with concrete, tangible benefits".

"Statistics suggest that women murders have increased by 1,400 percent in the last seven years. At least five women are killed every day by men by reasons of honour, virtue or morality. On 8 March this year we are demonstrating once more for our labour, our bodies, our identities and our freedoms."

Prof. Şahika Yüksel and Assoc. Prof. Ayşe Devrim Başterzi, who conducted the study, are not without ideas of how to address the problem, which include amending the Penal Code to eliminate "unjust provocation" as a mitigating factor. Under a recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights, Turkey is required to protect a woman's right to life in cases of domestic abuse, a legal duty Turkey has had difficulty upholding. Below are photos and summaries of the murders of eight women killed in the first two months of 2011 (thanks to Hurriyet Daily News).

Ahmet Şık and Nedim Sener Caught Up in Ergenekon Press Raids

Journalist Ahmet Şık has been detained in the Ergenekon investigation. Most ironically, Şık helped to expose the Ergenekon group as well as past coups against the government. Colleagues say it is highly unlikely he had anything to do with Ergenekon. More likely: He was working on a book on links between the Gulen Movement and the Turkish police . . . playing with fire indeed.

From Hurriyet Daily News:

Turkish police Thursday targeted more journalists as part of a controversial probe into alleged coup plots, among them a prominent award-winning reporter, Anatolia news agency reported.

Police were searching the homes of 11 people in Istanbul and Ankara, following a similar raid targeting the media last month that sparked an outcry over press freedom in EU-hopeful Turkey and drew a U.S. rebuke, Agence France-Presse reported.

A prosecutor issued a detention order for the suspects, and journalist Ahmet Şık was detained after his home was searched for six hours, daily Hürriyet reported on its website. Nine others, mostly journalists, were also detained, The Associated Press reported.

Şık already faces prosecution for co-writing a critical book about the crackdown on the so-called Ergenekon network, broadcaster NTV reported.

Police had reportedly discovered a draft book by Şık that allegedly focuses on the religious groupings within the police force on the hard disk of one computer seized in last month's raid on Oda TV, several news websites said.

Also among the suspects was Nedim Şener, an investigative reporter for daily Milliyet and author who last year received the International Press Institute's "World Press Freedom Hero" award for a book that put blame on the security forces in the 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Şık (use Turkish letters when spelling!) and Sener have both been in-and-out of the news in recent years, and neither can be loved much by the government. Radikal journalist Şık's most recent investigation of links between the Turkish police and the Gulen movement, a most controversial subject in Turkey, has certainly not won the journalist any friends, and many have speculated in the Turkish media that this was the reason for his arrest.

The government has taken a lot of domestic and international heat for its treatment of the press, and many have long accused the government of using the Ergenekon investigation to silence its critics, including journalists.

The current situation is “ridiculous and tragic,” said journalist Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, noting that Ahmet Şık, one of the journalists whose homes were searched, had been instrumental in opening the Ergenekon case in the first place. The diaries in Şık’s “Coup Diaries” story for weekly Nokta in 2007, an article that led to the magazine being shut down, were among the key evidence that led to the investigation, Mavioğlu said.

It is a very “immoral accusation to place Ahmet Şık next to the ‘deep state’ and Ergenekon,” said Mavioğlu, a journalist with daily Radikal and co-author with Şık of a two-volume book about the Ergenekon case. Speaking to the Daily News while in front of Şık’s house as the search continued, he said he cannot compare the situation to anything but McCarthyism.

For more reaction against the arrests, including a strong denunciation by CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu and CHP deputy leader in charge of human rights (who I interviewed last summer), click here. For more on Sener and the trumped up charges he faced last year for leaking state secrets (that could be found in public documents), click here.

Shame, shame, the whole way round . . .


UPDATE I (3/4) -- The Turkish Journalists Association (TGD) has issued a statement in regard to the press raids (thanks to Bianet): 60 journalists are currently detained in prison; more than 2,000 journalists are being prosecuted. Investigations have been launched against 4,000 journalists. Death threats against journalists and trials carrying hundreds of years of imprisonment and are continuing.

. . . .

The government seems to remain a passive spectator of the threats against press freedom and journalists by giving the impression that they are not disturbed by the situation that the source of the threats is not being removed. Crimes of thought are on the rise again in this country with journalists being taken into custody, arrested and tried.

Head of the Turkey-EU Joint Parliamentary Commission Helene Flautre has made the following statement on the arrests: "The professional orientation and research carried out by the journalists do not give the impression that they are affiliated with nationalists and supporters of a coup like the Ergenekon organization, I think."

UPDATE II (3/5) -- The New York Times' Sebnem Arsu has the story here.

Erdonomics?

PHOTO from Hurriyet Daily News

A recent report by TurkStat, the Turkish government's statistical arm, reveals a growing division between rich and poor despite the high growth percentages and foreign direct investment numbers the government has been posting. While the rich have indeed been getting richer, the poor have gotten poorer. From Hurriyet Daily News:

The people in Turkey’s highest income group are 8.5 times richer than those in the poorest, up from 8.1 times in the previous survey, according to the “2009 Income Distribution and Living Conditions” report recently released by the Turkish Statistical Institute, or TurkStat.

The overall poverty rate in the country likewise increased from 16.7 percent in 2008 to 17.1 percent in 2009, the report said. This means a total of 12.97 million people living in poverty, up from 11.58 million a year earlier. According to TurkStat, the monthly income set as the official poverty line for a four-person household in Turkey was increased from 767 Turkish Liras in 2008 to 825 liras in 2009.

. . . .

According to TurkStat’s figures, the richest 20 percent of people in Turkey earned 47.6 percent of the country’s total income in 2009, while the poorest 20 percent had a share of only 5.6 percent.

“Of course, as the statistics demonstrate, the gap of more than eightfold is a sign of inequality. But compared to Western Europe, this ratio is better and I don’t see a worse deterioration,” Professor Seyfettin Gürsel, the director of Bahçeşehir University’s Economic and Societal Research Center, or BETAM, told the Daily News. He said increasing income taxes in an equitable way would enable the social transfer of wealth needed to help solve the problem of income inequality.

TurkStat’s survey showed that poverty rates increased in both urban and rural areas, to 15.4 percent and 16.1 percent, respectively. The 7.09 million urban poor in 2008 went up to 7.51 million, while the total in rural areas went up from 3.2 million to 3.49 million.

. . . .

Wages constitute the largest income source for the Turkish population, 42.9 percent, compared to entrepreneurial income, at 20.4 percent, the survey said. The breakdown of statistics by region and province showed that Istanbul residents continued to have the highest levels of disposable income in 2009, with an average of 12,795 liras annually in 2009, followed by the Western Anatolia region with 11,501 liras. Southeast Anatolia had the smallest amount of disposable income, an average of 4,655 liras. The number of poor people in Southeast Anatolia increased from 895,000 in 2008 to 999,000 in 2009, or 13.7 percent of the regional population.

For the report, click here.

The numbers come at the helm of an election year in which the CHP is challenging the government on its failure to grow the economy for everyone. Moving back to a social democratic agenda, CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has promised to work to bridge the wealth divide and provide better social services. The AKP, on the other hand, has put the emphasis on traditional welfare systems and pursued a neoliberal economic policy that has kept Turkey from pursuing another IMF loan while at the same time largely failing to adequately address income inequality, poverty, and the country's significant informal sector.

Part of the problem here is that Turkey lacks a proper tax infrastructure that would progressively address income inequalities and help solve for the growing inequality brought by high interest rates and an elite-oriented growth policy. From my post last February:

According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the revenue Turkey collects from personal income taxes and profits stands at less than six percent of the total GDP, and has been declining steadily since 2000. (See "Public Finances" at the bottom of Turkey's OECD statistical profile.) This is the lowest among all OECD countries. As the Anatolia News Agency pointed out in its report Monday, a decline in personal income tax collections likely shifts the burden to workers and more vulnerable members of society. Though the Agency cites no sources, I would very much like to see more analysis of the problem.

Also worth taking note of are the remarkable revenues taken in on cigarette sales, which no doubt hit the families of smokers quite hard. (And, in Turkey, smoking is not only an "upper-class" addiction.)

According to the United Nation Development Program's Gini index calculations, Turkey stands between Peru and Ecuador in terms of economic inequality. All European Union member countries rank far ahead of Turkey according to Gini's equality measures, in addition to Croatia and Macedonia, the two other countries that have accession partnerships with the EU.

Kudos to the AKP for bringing the Turkish economy out of a sad time, but it is time to balance neoliberalism with economic and social rights and democracy that delivers. Perhaps the CHP can shake things up a bit. A counter-cyclical fiscal policy would also help -- some lessons from Chile? Finally acting like a social democratic party while paying significantly less heed to the nationalist/laicist rhetoric . . . actually focusing on democracy that delivers . . . what a concept!

Blogspot Banned . . . Again

PHOTO from Hurriyet Daily News

From Hurriyet Daily News:

A spat over rights to broadcast Turkish football matches has led a local court to issue a blanket ban on the popular blogging platform Blogger, angering Turkish Internet users with what experts said was a disproportionate response.

The court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır banned the website, a property of Google Inc., in response to a complaint by the satellite television provider Digiturk, which owns the broadcast rights to Turkish Super League games. Matches broadcast on Digiturk’s Lig TV channel had been illegally posted by several Blogger users on their blogs.

“This is a disproportionate response by the court and undoubtedly has a huge impact on all law-abiding citizens,” cyber-rights activist Yaman Akdeniz told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday, adding that millions of bloggers and blog readers would be affected by the Diyarbakır court decision.

“[I understand] there is a legitimate concern [regarding Digiturk’s commercial rights] but banning all these websites will not solve the issue. The decision opens the way to collateral damage,” said Akdeniz, who is also a law professor at Istanbul Bilgi University.

There are more than 600,000 Turkish bloggers actively using Blogger and some 18 million users from Turkey visited pages hosted by the site last month, Akdeniz said. The ban is expected to fully go into effect within a few days unless it is successfully challenged in court.

“If two people plan a criminal activity on the phone, should we ban the use of telephones all over the country?” asked Deniz Ergürel, the secretary-general of the Media Association.

“We believe this is a wrong approach to the issue and deprives millions of bloggers and Internet users from writing and sharing ideas online,” Ergürel, who is also a regular blogger, told the Daily News on Wednesday. He added that while the violation of Digiturk’s commercial rights should not be ignored, other solutions had to be found. “Even cursing, threatening or cheating over the phone is considered a crime, but this does not imply access to phones all over the country would be banned if there is a case against them,” he said.

Of course, this blog is a Blogspot/Blogger blog, and so for the time being, readers in Turkey are having to use proxy servers to gain access. There are many issues with how Turkey regulates the Internet, but at the heart of these broad "bans" is that the Telecommunications Board shuts off an entire website when only particular page or aspect of that page is troublesome. When we are talking about massive sites like YouTube and Blogspot, the orders become more than a little problematic, not to say ridiculous. For more on Turkey's Internet laws, click here. For more on Turkey's various disputes with Google, which operates Blogspot, click here.

 
UPDATE I (3/4) --  Google has petitioned the Turkish government to ends it blanket ban on Blogspot, calling on the Turkish government and firms concerned with copyright violations to use forms available on their website to seek redress for copyright violations rather than petitioning for the wholesale closure of websites. From a press statement the company has issued: “Instead of depriving all content owners from accessing Blogger services, we encourage them to make use of such a process. In this way, Blogger users from Turkey will be able to benefit from the services while we try to deal with the complaint.” Too much common sense? 

Erbakan Funeral Recalls an Earlier Era

AA Photo from Hurriyet Daily News

Former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan was buried today. Though they have significantly changed their views since, many AKP figures were students of the former Islamist leader, who was removed in power in Turkey's 1997 postmodern coup. A bit of background from my first post:

Shortly after Turkey’s last coup in 1997 (the 'post-modern' coup), Turkey’s Constitutional Court closed Erbakan's Refah Party (RP)and banned from politics its prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, along with other Refah politicians (including Erdoğan who was then the mayor of İstanbul). RP was widely feared when it came to power in 1994's municipal elections and then entered parliament with a plurality of the vote in the next parliamentary elections. The party's ideology was an amalgam of political Islam and anti-imperialism and never did it espouse liberal democratic ideals. It was authoritarian to its core, anti-EU, and paid little heed to the concept of personal liberty.

Although the party moderated its radicalism once in parliament, it did so because it had to in order to maintain the coalition it had formed with the center-right. Despite this moderation, Erbakan was subject to a deluge of criticism when he made state visits to Iran and Libya, seeking to influence foreign policy, traditionally the domain of the president. Further, he urged children to attend religious schools, proposed the construction of mosques in secular centers, and most importantly, failed to control RP municipal authorities who began to pass very restrictive laws, shutting down cinemas, lingerie stores, and restaurants that refused to close their door during Ramazan.

Following the dissolution of RP, many of its members re-organized and established the Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi—FP) in 1998. FP was in many ways a continuation of RP and although posting a strong showing following elections in 1999, faced problems soon after resulting from internal divisions among more Islamist sectors in the party and those who began to identify themselves as reformers. Erdoğan and Gül are members of the reform group and it is this group which formed AKP in 2001 just after the Constitutional Court’s closure of FP. Although some of the more radical actors within RP and FP entered AKP, Erdoğan dismissed with many of them upon coming to power.

Following the collapse of a divided parliament in early 2002, AKP swept to power in elections held in November that year. The party won a surprising 34 percent of the vote—enough to capture an absolute majority in Parliament. AKP's victory seems to have had more to do with reform than Islam. This is indicated by the losses of truly Islamist parties in 2002 and the years that followed. In contrast to AKP, the Felicity Party (Saadet Partisi—SP) was formed by the faction of more Islamist FP members and did quite poorly in the 2002 elections.

The SP is still a minor player in Turkish politics, and received a lot of attention last summer when the party sought to capitalize off of the Gaza flotilla incident. Erbakan lost control of the party soon after when the party's leadership chose not to elect his family members to the party congress. Though most of the AKP leadership has long ago drifted from Erbakan's National Outlook ideology, a synthesis of old-school Turkish nationalism and Islam, Erbakan's ideas remain part of AKP's history. His prime ministership will certainly be remembered as an important time for Turkish politics.

Ceasefire Ends as BDP Takes Harder Line Ahead of Elections

The PKK has ended its Aug. 13 ceasefire ahead of parliamentary elections expected in June. It is yet to be seen what effect increased PKK violence will have on the Kurdish vote in the southeast.

The AKP won nearly half of the vote in the region in the 2007 parliamentary elections, but has suffered a serious loss of support since. 2009 local elections saw many municipalities fall to the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which has wisely used the victories to consolidate support by building social welfare programs and instituting governance structures apart from Ankara. Following a large bout of violence last summer, the PKK declared a ceasefire ahead of the Sept. 12 referendum, which the BDP called on Kurds to boycott. Voter turnout was consequently quite low in much of the mostly Kurdish southeast.

The ceasefire was extended in November, ahead of winter when the PKK seeks refuge in the mountains of northern Iraq and fighting generally stays at a minimum.

Selahattin Demirtas, BDP's co-chair, issued a statement after the PKK announcement in which the hardline politician (there are less militant figures in the BDP, such as Ahmet Tuk and Aysel Tugluk) declared that the Turkish government was unwise not to take advantage of the ceasefire and the peace process. Demirtas threatened further unrest, sounding a note similar to that of fellow BDP hardline and former co-chair Emine Ayna before the violence really got going last summer.

Meanwhile, Sezgin Tanrikulu, a long-time Kurdish rights advocate and now deputy leader of the opposition CHP, which is now seemingly attempting to make headway on the Kurdish issue by bridging the divide between the AKP and the BDP, denounced the violence and called on the government to take aggressive steps to solve the issue.

Sezgin Tanrıkulu, deputy leader of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, spoke to the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Monday and said they are in favor of solving all problems with an understanding of “total freedom, peace and negotiation,” not with guns. “All political parties should approach the problem apart from daily concerns, with having a big responsibility and common rapprochement. In this context in order to tackle the threshold in the elections that prevents just representation, we proposed a ‘commission of realities’ to be built, for the rebuilding of the justice,” Tanrıkulu said.

Tanrıkulu said they view it as “unfortunate” that the governing party has resisted their proposals, which they believe would have served democracy. Tanrıkulu claimed the governing party was acting with “short-term fears and calculations” in this context.

“We believe in order to let the people’s will be reflected in the ballot boxes, the election period should not be dragged into an environment of violence and conflict. Because of that, we once again express our call for an end to the violence,” Tanrıkulu said.

Tanrikulu has proposed a truth commission eventually be established to help in conflict resolution efforts. When I interviewed him last May ahead of the violence and before his BDP appointment, Tanrikulu spoke of the need to bridge a common ground between Kurdish civil society and the government and fast given the potential for violence brought about by the failed expectations the Kurdish opening engendered.

Meanwhile the BDP is taking an ever harder line. Demirtas announced that the party may elect candidates currently on trial for membership in the KCK, the so-called urban wing of the PKK. Those currently under arrest or detention include 12 elected mayors from the BDP. From Hurriyet Daily News:

Demirtaş also cautiously hinted that the BDP might consider nominating some figures from the Kandil Mountains in northern Iraq, where the outlawed PKK has camps.

“We are not enforcing any limitations. And we are not saying that they must be from there. If their legal circumstance permits it, we will consider their applications,” he said. Demirtaş added that the party has “not set aside a quota for those from Makhmour, Habur or prison,” referring to the Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq and the controversial group of returnees who entered Turkey through the Habur border gate in October 2009.

The BDP currently holds 20 seats in Parliament, a figure Demirtaş said the party aims to double in the June general elections.

“Our goal is to double the number of our group and reach 40 deputies in Parliament. This is a realistic goal for us,” he said. “We can have four deputies from Istanbul. We will also have deputies from Adana, Mersin and İzmir for certain. We are also assertive in Bursa, Manisa, Aydın and Kocaeli.”

In the interview with Hurriyet Daily News, Demirtas also speaks of the possibility of forming a coalition with the AKP, as well as addresses the CHP's attempts to address the issue, which are a new development for the party. In the 2000s, CHP adopted a hard, nationalist posture on the Kurdish issue.

A Liberal Democracy?

Jenny White calls attention to a recent incident in Ankara wherein a group of people advocating for organ donation got in a confrontation with police. From Kamil Pasha:

The governor of Ankara province wanted the stands handing out brochures to be removed from Yüksel Boulevard, one of Ankara’s main thoroughfares. A mass of police in full riot gear arrived to carry out his order and got into a discussion with a young woman at a stand promoting organ donorship. Young people gathered and surrounded her protectively, chanting “No to Fascism.” Watch the film. In seconds the police had moved in violently, as they have done with other protests and public civic actions in recent years, often by students and other young people. You can see them dragging people off (the news account said some were dragged away by the hair), throwing them about like paper dolls, and in the film if you watch carefully, you will see a policeman punching one of the young women hard in the face twice.

What was it that Erdogan said about the praiseworthy youth in Egypt demonstrating for their rights, that Mubarak should heed his people’s wishes?

Over-the-top police violence against men and women has been the norm in Turkey since I first went there in the 1970s. The problem has been police immunity and a continuing culture of disrespect for youth, for women, and for civil rights; a widespread acceptance and even approval of violence as a sign of masculinity and love of nation; and a lack of understanding of the principles of liberal democracy — making a safe space for alternative views and lifestyles. Democracy too often means I got the most votes, so everyone else should fall in line with my ideas and my values. A 2006 survey by Çarkoğlu and Toprak shows that the majority of the population values democracy and civil liberties, but shows little sensitivity toward others’ rights. Democracy is understood as a system that represents the views of the majority, rather than protecting the rights of minorities.

Radikal has posted a video of the incident.

Respect for difference and moving toward a liberal versus majoritarian understanding of democracy is one of, if not the, primary deficits of Turkish politics and one I have written about extensively. Events like the attack on the art galleries in Tophane last September to the beating of an Alevi man who sold alcohol at his store to the 1993 burning of the Madimak Hotel in Sivas (which left 37 people dead, mainly Alevis), and countless, countless others all stem from this basic need to respect difference and the rights of others.

On the government level, such questions are raised by restrictions on alcohol, "immoral broadcasting," the harassment and closure of LGBT groups, etc. Most of these posts are marked with "creeping conservatism," but they might also be labeled as "concerns for liberal democracy." And, conversely, respect for those who choose to drink alcohol should also be met with respect for those who choose not to drink alcohol just as respect for those who wear the headscarf should be met with respect for those who do not wear it. Too often disrespect is the story . . . over and over and over (like a broken record).

For more on the police, who should be first in line to be inculcated to respect the rights of others, see this December 2008 report from Human Rights Watch. See also many of the entries marked "police."

CHP Holds Kurdish Workshop in Van

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu holds a locally made vase in the eastern city of Van. DHA photo from Hurriyet Daily News

The CHP's position on the Kurdish question has been evolving in the past few months since Kemal Kilicdaroglu became the party's leader and consolidated his power within the party.

CHP deputy leader Sezgin Tanrikulu and others have been leading the "new CHP" on the issue. Tanrikulu has gone so far to call for truth commissions, a long way from where the party was in July when it was still defining the Kurdish problem as economic in origin and shy to address minority rights/cultural issues.

Now the party has seeimgnly jumped ahead of the AKP, which is still talking about "one nation, many identities" -- a problem since most Kurdish nationalists, though eschewing the term "nationalist" (milliyetci), define themselves as a unique people ("halk") apart from the Turkish people. From Hurriyet Daily News:

The [CHP] held a three-day workshop over the weekend in the eastern province of Van, where its representatives listened to local actors – including representatives of nongovernmental organizations and opinion leaders in the region – on the Kurdish question.

Participants in the workshop generated a series of proposals that include potentially controversial moves to issue a general amnesty and an apology to the Kurdish people.

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said Thursday that the solution proposals did not reflect the party’s official opinion or its report on the Kurdish problem, but the views of participants.

Speaking to CNNTürk on Thursday, CHP deputy leader Sezgin Tanrıklu likewise said what has been characterized in the media as a “solution document” was not the party’s final report on the workshop. The proposals made by local actors in the region would help the CHP create its road map on the Kurdish issue, Tanrıkulu said.

The text from the workshop called for the creation of a new constitution without any reference to ethnicity and including a new constitutional definition of citizenship. It also said the CHP should apologize to Kurdish people for the negative events experienced in the southeastern and eastern regions during the party’s time in government.

Other proposed solutions included a general amnesty for people accused of terrorism-related offenses with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the abolishment of obstacles blocking mother-tongue education and the inclusion of elective Kurdish courses in secondary education curricula.

TESEV conducted a similar series of workshops in 2008, after which they published a report summarizing and chronicling Kurdish demands (see the "Key Documents" section of the sidebar). The CHP's position is still in the making, but just where the party goes ahead of June elections is a critical development to follow over the next few months.

Parliament Passes Broadcast Media Bill

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc speaking after the law's passage. AA Photo from Hurriyet Daily News

The Turkish Parliament has passed a comprehensive law on broadcast media that gives the Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTUK) and the Turkish government broader authority to restrict media rights. Although there are positive measures in the law such as the allowance of broadcasts in languages other than Turkish (something already done in practice), the new law raises serious concerns about the government's ability to restrict programming with which it does not agree or finds morally objectionable. From Hurriyet Daily News:

The new measures also give the prime minister the authority to temporarily halt broadcasting. The law further restricts the sale of alcohol and tobacco by banning all marketing of tobacco and alcohol products.

The new regulation is also designed to protect children by banning advertisements for alcohol, tobacco products, drugs, gambling and “anything that encourages minors toward violence and abuse.”

Risqué images are banned on TV, along with content that is against the equality of sexes or objectifies women.

Movies or news bulletins that go over their allotted broadcast time will have the opportunity to cut to commercial once every 30 minutes. The broadcast of religious events, however, may never be cut for commercial.

The law also allows foreign companies to hold up to 50% of the shares in Turkish media firms, a move that has raised concerns with nationalists and those who fear the kind of large foreign investment that companies like Rupert Murdoch's New Corporation have made in past years.

RTUK, which is part of Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc's portfolio, has already been heavily criticized for restricting programming that government officials find morally and/or politically objectionable. For a litany of such cases, click here. For an earlier law the Parliament passed this year restricting the marketing and sale of alcohol, click here.

Oda-TV Journalists Arrested

DHA Photo from Hurriyet Daily News

From Hurriyet Daily News:

The offices of a news portal and the homes of its owner and several staff members were raided Monday by Istanbul police based on suspected links to the alleged Ergenekon gang.

The operations against Oda TV, which is among the fiercest critics of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, were sanctioned by Public Prosecutor Zekeriya Öz, who heads the Ergenekon investigation.

Police raided the house of Soner Yalçın, a daily Hürriyet columnist and the founder of Oda TV, the office of the web portal and the homes of the website’s editors Barış Pehlivan, Barış Terkoğlu and Ayhan Bozkurt.

Oda TV news editor Terkoğlu was taken into custody after a search at his house. A small group in front of his house applauded him as he was taken to the police station, the Doğan news agency, or DHA, reported.

An Istanbul court ruled Monday that Yalçın, Bozkurt and Pehlivan should also be taken into custody. They were expected to be taken to the police station later Monday.

A number of journalists opposed to the government have been arrested in the Ergenekon investigation over the past two years. Whether the journalists are indeed linked or not is difficult to ascertain, but Turkish journalist associations have stood in solidarity with the journalists to demand that they receive fair trials and ensure that the investigation is not being used as a witch hunt against journalists in the opposition.

Some Progress on the Dink Front

Dink assassin Ogun Samast posing with police officers who arrested him just two days after Dink's murder.

The Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office have granted the request of Dink family lawyers that an investigation be launched into the involvement of high-level security officials into the 2007 assassination of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. From Hurriyet Daily News:

This is an extremely good, positive development. I hope there will be a result [from] this,” Dink family lawyer Fethiye Çetin told a crowd of journalists during the court recess. She said they were expecting the investigation as they had applied to the prosecutor’s office Jan. 17, demanding that rulings made on the case by the European Court of Human Rights be implemented in Turkey.

The Dink family recently made a new plea for state, police and gendarmerie officials not questioned during the initial investigation to be brought into the scope of the case, basing their request on the European court decision finding Turkey guilty of failing to protect Dink and his freedom of speech and of not properly investigating civil servants suspected of being negligent in the murder and its investigation.

. . . .

The 28 public officials whose testimonies are expected to be taken by Public Prosecutor with Special Authority Mustafa Çavuşoğlu in the coming days include former Istanbul Gov. Muammer Güler; Ramazan Akyürek, the former top head of police intelligence; former Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah; Ahmet İlhan Güler, the former Istanbul head of police intelligence; former Trabzon Police Chief Reşat Altay; Col. Ali Öz, the former Gendarmerie Trabzon regiment commander; and Metin Yıldız, the former Trabzon head of gendarmerie intelligence.

Last week President Gul announced that the State Audit Board (DDK) open a separate investigation into Dink's murder. Both investigations are indicators that the government is getting serious about resolving the facts behind Dink's murder. For more on Dink, see past posts.

UPDATE I (2/10) -- Interior Minister Besir Atalay is denying reports that the Istanbul Chief Proescutor's Office has opened up an investigation. Meanwhile newly released phone records verify long-time allegations that police exchanged text messages in the months prior to Dink's assassination. Previous evidence existed that police exchanged phone messages with Tuncel just two hours before Dink's assassination.

UPDATE II (2/15) -- In a new development in the ongoing Dink trial in Istanbul, the Trabzon Chief Prosecutor's Office has announced that it would allow the Istanbul court to question Trabzon police officers in communication with Tuncel up to the day of Dink's murder. Previous requests had been denied.

When Turkey Meant Jazz . . .

And a welcome connection between Turkey and the city in which I now find myself . . .

From National Public Radio:

The Embassy of Turkey and Jazz at Lincoln Center announced a series of six jazz concerts today, to be held throughout 2011 at the residence of the Turkish ambassador in Washington, D.C.

Wait, what? Why would the biggest jazz institution the world has ever seen work with the Turkish embassy? What kind of backroom dealings transpired to make this seemingly arbitrary alliance happen?

A hint: They happened in the '30s and '40s.

Perhaps you know of Atlantic Records, one of the most important record labels for jazz and R&B from 1947 onward. John Coltrane and Charles Mingus recorded seminal work for Atlantic; so did Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and Sonny and Cher.

Atlantic was co-founded by Ahmet Ertegun, who was later joined by his older brother Nesuhi Ertegun (the big jazz buff of the company). The Ertegun brothers were the two sons of the second Turkish ambassador to the U.S., Mehmet Munir Ertegun; they were in their teens when their father accepted the position in Washington, D.C. in 1935. The brothers were huge music fans, and threw themselves into the city's jazz scene.

More KCK Detentions, More Unrest

A street theater group puts on a show in protest of the ongoing KCK trial in front of the Diyarbakir Greater Municipality Building and within view of the courthouse. DHA Photo from Hurriyet Daily News

Police detained six alleged members of the KCK, the PKK's so-called urban wing, in Van yesterday as the KCK trial continued with a bit of street theater in front of the courthouse. From Hurriyet Daily News:

Police simultaneously raided various addresses in the Erciş district of eastern Van province and detained six including Ramazan Alver, Erciş branch head of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP.

. . . .

The lawyers of KCK defendants asked for the recusal of the judges hearing the case during Tuesday’s hearing in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır at the 6th Court of Serious Crimes. A group of people protested the hearing through a theatrical play held in front of the municipality building, located nearby the courthouse.

The KCK case has 152 suspects on trial, of which 104 are under arrest and 19 are on the run. The arrested suspects include 12 elected mayors from the BDP.

The case is in a deadlock because the suspects have demanded to give testimony in Kurdish since the first hearing but have been prevented from doing so by the court.

BDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş had stated the suspects would not attend the hearing Tuesday, which raised tension. Meanwhile, the 23 female suspects under arrest resisted being transferred to the courthouse but were later persuaded to do so.

The request for the recusal of the judges will be heard by the 4th Court of Serious Crimes of Diyarbakır.

The recusal request raises the ante a bit while the BDP continues to score political points. Why does someone not just blink already? The BDP has everything to gain from the current stalemate. Meanwhile, the court's recalcitrance and the Turkish government's absolute silence on the subject is only aggravating concerns. Perhaps a draft proposal creating the right to defend oneself in one's native language. Too much to hope for I know, but still . . .