A leading ruling party figure has said that two articles of a much-criticized security bill that must be passed for the previously accepted 67 articles of the bill to become law will be brought before Parliament on Thursday.
mustafa elitaş, parliamentary group deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), said on Wednesday that they would bring the remaining articles of the domestic security bill before Parliament for discussion.
Elitaş’s statement came shortly after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan criticized some steps the government was preparing to take as part of a settlement process launched to resolve the country’s long-standing Kurdish issue and terrorism problem.
Erdoğan said no further steps should be taken in the process before the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) started to lay down their arms, as was previously agreed.
The Turkish military exchanged fire with PKK militants in southeastern Turkey on Wednesday in what is now a rare event since the settlement process was launched at the end of 2012, raising doubts about the future of the process.
Several hours before Elitaş’s statement, Deputy Prime Minister Yalçın Akdoğan also criticized the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) as well as the PKK, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US and the EU, over remarks targeting Erdoğan with regard to the settlement process, saying that Erdoğan is the architect of the process and his stance on it is of vital importance regarding how the process will proceed.
If the two articles, which deal with enforcement and the date the bill will come into effect, are passed as expected since the AK Party enjoys a clear majority in Parliament, the bill will be referred to the President’s office for approval, after which it will enter into force once published in the Official Gazette.
The bill has been much-criticized by the opposition for dealing a blow to democracy and fundamental freedoms such as the right to life, protest and privacy.
The bill, which Parliament began to discuss at the beginning of last month, gives police officers the authority to detain anyone on the street who is considered to be a public disturbance or a threat to security or private property.
The police in Turkey cannot, under current legislation, detain a person without a prosecutor’s permission. But if the bill passes, the police will be able to keep a person in custody for 24 hours when caught in the act of committing a crime. But in cases of mass demonstrations, the detention period extends to 48 hours for the police.
The bill has also been severely criticized by the opposition for giving the police more extensive authority to use their weapons. The bill allows police officers to shoot at protesters in order to prevent them from harming property, while according to current legislation, police officers are only authorized to gradually increase the use of force in order to prevent a crime.
If the police are granted such powers, they will be able to shoot and kill a person using a Molotov cocktail, for example, instead of being limited to using less force or less harmful measures, such as tear gas. (TODAY’S ZAMAN, March 25, 2015)
Police in Istanbul have detained 14 people in a large-scale counterterrorism operation, supported by a helicopter, launched in the Gazi neighborhood Tuesday morning.
Various locations in the neighborhood were simultaneously raided early in the day. Special operations teams and riot police contributed to the operation. Along with 14 detentions, two handguns, two shotguns and many documents allegedly linked to illegal organizations were seized by the police. Those detained were taken to the İstanbul Police Department for interrogation.
Groups of people protesting the operation threw firecrackers and stones at the police. Water cannon and armored police vehicles were deployed in the neighborhood as a precaution.
The Gazi neighborhood, located in İstanbul’s Sultangazi district, is known for drug-related gang fights and violent demonstrations by radical leftist organizations that see harsh crackdowns by police. (TODAY’S ZAMAN, March 24, 2015)
March 12 is one of the black anniversaries of the European family. 44 years ago, in Turkey, member of the Council of Europe and NATO as well as associate member of the European Union, the Army generals overthrew the government and opened a new period of repression without precedent.
In fact, since more than a century, the process of democratization in Turkey has often been interrupted by repressive practices and military coups: the Coup of the Young Turks in 1908, the genocide of the Armenians and the Assyrians in 1915, the oppression of the Kurdish people and the left-wing forces followed by the proclamation of the one-party regime in 1925, the pogrom of the Non-Moslim minorities in 1955, the 1960 Coup …
Last 44 years have been marked by two bloody putsches of the Turkish Generals in 1971 and 1980: massive arrests, tortures, hangings, violation of the freedom of expression, reinforcement of the social injustice, negation of the fundamental rights of the Kurdish people and the Armenian, Assyrian, Greek minorities etc.
During the two years following the Coup of March 12, 1971:
The Coup of March 12, 1971 also marks the restart of political emigration towards European countries. The first massive exodus of Turkey towards foreign countries was that of the Armenians and Assyro-Chaldeans following the genocide and the deportation of 1915. The political emigration of the opponents of the regime and people belonging to the ethnic and religious minorities began again after the 1971 Coup and accelerated after the second military coup of September 12, 1980.
It is after these coups that the interference of the Ankara regime in the political and social life of the countries hosting Turkish immigrants was well structured; a system of pressure and intimidation was founded in order to silence any voice rising apart from the control of the Turkish lobby.
FILE ON TURKEY, 336 pages, full text pdf
Turkey’s prominent jurists and political scientists have expressed their objections to a possible “Turkish-style” presidential system that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan aims to establish in Turkey, saying that seeking to create one-man rule in the country is undemocratic and unconstitutional.
In their joint statement titled “Respect for the Constitution and Democratic Processes,” the academics – who are members of faculties of law at various universities across Turkey — emphasized the significance of democracy and separation of powers in Turkey by stating that increasing the efficiency of the current parliamentary system in the context of the separation of powers and ensuring judicial impartiality are preconditions for guaranteeing the fundamental rights and freedoms of citizens.
The academics said that establishing one-man rule by disregarding international democratic standards will alienate Turkey from the rest of the world, creating negative social and economic consequences. “We, as those who put a signature on this statement, want to recall Turkey’s democratization process, which extends from the Ottoman times to the republican period and its constitutional experience in terms of institutionalization of the rule of law, and also emphasize the issues to be mentioned below in light of ongoing debates over the establishment of a presidential system in Turkey,” starts the statement, adding that the recent efforts by Erdoğan to bring a presidential system that will be based on one-man rule are against democratic standards and are also unconstitutional.
The statement argues that the current Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government, which continues to be influenced by Erdoğan, though he was elected president only in August of last year, aims to change Turkey’s 100-year-old parliamentary system, and that the government has been imposing a regime change on the country. Expressing their harsh objections to the ruling party’s intentions, the academics said that they will continue to support Turkey’s democratization process with complete determination.
Among these prominent law professors who put their signatures on the joint statement are Professor İbrahim Ö. Kaboğlu of Marmara University, Professor Ersin Kalaycıoğlu of Sabancı University, Professor Baskın Oran of Ankara University, Professor Nuray Mert of İstanbul University, Professor Büşra Ersanlı of Marmara University and Professor İlter Turan of İstanbul Bilgi University.
Erdoğan, who is pushing for a “Turkish-style” presidential system, has been repeatedly voicing his support for Turkey’s switch to a presidential system after the upcoming June 7 general elections at every meeting he attends.
During a meeting with provincial governors at the Ak Saray presidential palace late in February, Erdoğan said that the result of the elections slated for June 7 is of critical importance for the future of Turkey, and added that a possible switch to presidential system will come to the agenda if the ruling party gets a parliamentary majority sufficient to amend the Constitution.
In an earlier speech, Erdoğan also said that the presidential system is “in our genes.”
“[The] presidential system is in our history, our genes,” Erdoğan said during an event held on Feb. 21 in the eastern province of Malatya, reiterating his claim that Turkey is wasting its energy with an ineffective system of governance.(TODAY’S ZAMAN, March 9, 2015) 
Amid growing debate regarding a fabricated incident of harassment against a woman with a headscarf in İstanbul’s Kabataş neighborhood that apparently never took place, 14 columnists from five pro-government newspapers ran the same headline for their Thursday columns to back the government’s narrative without including any evidence but instead recounting the history of discrimination against the headscarf.
During the Gezi Park protests that erupted during the summer of 2013, pro-government journalists reported that a headscarved woman named Zehra Develioğlu was attacked by Gezi protesters on a street in Kabataş on June 1.
Although a large part of society was galvanized to turn against the Gezi protesters due to the incident — especially after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time, said dozens of half-naked men had attacked the young woman and even urinated on her — footage from nearby security cameras discovered months later showed no evidence that such an attack had even taken place.
In the face of growing criticism from members of the public and the media, the 14 pro-government columnists ran columns supporting the story of the Kabataş incident using the headline “Your language is rude and your hearts made of stone.” The pieces defend the government and columnist Elif Çakır, who first interviewed the alleged victim and insists that the incident took place, from mounting criticism.
Among the columnists who ran the headline or similar versions of it were Ahmet Kekeç, Ardan Zentürk, Halime Kökçe, Murat Çiçek and Saadet Oruç from the Star daily; Ersoy Dede and Kenan Alpay from the Yeni Akit daily; Fuat Uğur from the Türkiye daily; Mahmut Övür from the Sabah daily; and Kemal Öztürk, Merve Şebnem Oruç, Abdülkadir Selvi, Yasin Aktay and Cemile Bayraktar from the Yeni Şafak daily.
They said running the same headline was their attempt at showing solidarity with Çakır after her lawyer, Fidel Okan, recently made a public statement saying the Kabataş incident was a fabrication.
During the Gezi park protest, messages on Twitter as well as reports by columnists stating with confidence that a young woman with a stroller had been attacked in Kabataş became a widely used tool by Erdoğan in his political campaign. After journalists such as Çakır and Balçicek İlter interviewed Develioğlu, the daughter-in-law of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) mayor of İstanbul’s Bahçelievler district, Erdoğan recounted the incident over and over again on live TV to unite his conservative constituency against the Gezi protesters.
Remarks from well-known figures saying they had actually seen the footage of the attack on the woman and her baby further convinced society.
Hürriyet columnist İsmet Berkan had said on his Twitter account that he had seen the video, which he called “grave,” while AK Party deputy Mehmet Metiner had said on TV that society would be pitted against each other if the government released the footage that he had seen.
Taking on a snowball effect, the Kabataş story changed with each narration. Initially, it was an attack on a headscarved woman but later 70-100 half-naked men in leather pants were added to the story. According to the legal complaint that she submitted to a prosecutor, Develioğlu said a man attacked her daughter’s stroller while another slapped her because of her headscarf.
Although the opposition and defenders of the Gezi protests asked for camera footage of the alleged incident, which took place in a key area of İstanbul that is equipped with security cameras, up until Kanal D released the security camera footage no proof of the evidence had been presented by the government or columnists, who argued that the victim’s statements should be sufficient. (TODAY’S ZAMAN, March 3, 2015)
Cemil Bayık, the head of the Kurdistan Communities’ Union (KCK), has reportedly said that Hakan Fidan, head of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), admitted that a group within the intelligence body was responsible for the execution of three Kurdish women linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Paris in 2013.
In an interview published on Sunday in the Cumhuriyet daily, Bayık, who is also the “number two” man in the outlawed PKK, claimed that the Paris murders were committed by a faction consisting of ultranationalists and members of the “parallel state,” in reference to the Gülen movement, also known as Hizmet movement, within MİT, adding, “But he [Fidan] is the head of MİT, and it is impossible to think he is not aware of the assassinations.”
Three Kurdish women, Sakine Cansız, Fidan Doğan and Leyla Söylemez, were found dead with gunshot wounds at a Kurdish information center in Paris in January 2013. The killing of the PKK-linked women is yet to be solved.
When asked whether MİT executed key members of the PKK while it was involved in the talks with the group, Bayık, who clearly expressed his lack of confidence in Fidan’s argument that he was not aware of the killings, stated that besides MİT, other international actors took part in the murders to interrupt the Kurdish settlement process. The talks were initiated in 2011 in order to seek a solution to the country’s decades-long Kurdish problem, which cost nearly 40,000 lives.
Continuing his argument that MİT is aware of the killing, Bayık went on to say, “Any information on this issue was tampered with, but those perpetrators are clear from our point of view.”
Öcalan to issue letter for Nevruz
While a heated debate continues as to whether jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan will send a video message to the people for the approaching Nevruz celebrations, which would be expected to contribute to the establishment of peace in the country, pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) İstanbul deputy Sırrı Süreyya Önder has said that Öcalan will issue a letter instead of a video message.
As such a potential Nevruz message would be expected to have a positive impact on the ongoing peace talks, Önder, who visited Öcalan with a delegation of HDP deputies on Saturday, stressed that the letter that Öcalan is currently composing will include extensive reviews regarding the settlement process.
“In his letter, Öcalan is preparing to share his ideas with the Turkish people and world public regarding concrete steps for solution of the Kurdish problem. The letter will include the main principles of the path to the peace,” Önder noted.
Yet another matter that Önder touched upon was the assignment of a secretariat of five prisoners for Öcalan, which the government and Öcalan previously agreed on. Öcalan and the HDP had previously named the members of the PKK leader’s planned secretariat, and the list was given to the government. The secretariat is likely to start work in the coming days and will work three or four days a week. The new team will be part of the negotiation process between the PKK and the Turkish government.
“The members of the secretariat will be sent to the prison on İmralı Island [where Öcalan is being kept] within a couple of days,” Önder said. Regarding the discussions over a video message by Öcalan, Önder said that Öcalan does not attach importance to the method of conveying his message, in a letter or via video message.
Önder also emphasized that Öcalan will also send letters to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, former Iraqi president and a Kurdish leader, addressing the issue of the elimination of the threats against Kurds in the Iraqi provinces of Mosul and Kirkuk and Syria’s Kurdish town Kobani. (TODAY’S ZAMAN, March 16, 2015)
The Surp Astuanzazh Armenian Church in İstanbul’s Bakırköy neighborhood was daubed with hate speech on Tuesday as “1915, blessed year” was written on the side of the building in reference to the massacre of more than 1 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
Tensions have been growing since Turkey announced in January that it would host international events to commemorate the centennial of the Gallipoli Campaign on April 24, a date that overlaps with the annual commemoration of the massacres, which many countries consider to be genocide.
In addition to “1915, blessed year,” further graffiti on the church stated, “What does it matter if you are all Armenian when there is already one Ogün Samast.”
The message echoes a demonstration slogan that commemorated the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink who was assassinated in 2007 by then-17-year-old ultranationalist Samast. In the aftermath of the murder, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to show empathy for the slain journalist with signs reading “We are all Hrant, we are all Armenian.”
Today’s Zaman visited the site on Wednesday morning and found that the graffiti had been painted over. But an administrator at the church said, “This type of thing happens all the time.” The Armenian Patriarchate of İstanbul refused to comment on the matter. No criminal complaint has been filed.
The incident comes hot on the heels of another racist slur against Armenians in Turkey. It was reported on Tuesday that Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek had filed a criminal complaint against Turkish-Armenian journalist Hayko Bağdat on defamation charges after Bağdat posted lighthearted tweets on his Twitter account referring to the mayor as an Armenian after the March 2014 local elections.
Gökçek appears to believe it an insult to be called an Armenian as his lawyer petitioned the Ankara Prosecutor’s Office, saying, “The statements [by Bağdat] are false and include insult and libel.” (TODAY’S ZAMAN, March 25, 2015)
Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has cast doubt on the efficacy of the recently announced roadmap for the settlement of Turkey’s kurdish issue, saying it is unlikely to bring peace, as the two parties to the agreement have already revealed their mutual distrust.
“I don’t believe such an attitude can bring peace. A process built on distrust [between two sides] could not bring peace to Turkey,” Kılıçdaroğlu said during his party’s parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday.
Underlining that his party is not against the ongoing settlement process launched to resolve the Kurdish issue, Kılıçdaroğlu emphasized that his party just doesn’t believe peace can be established through the current channels.
A delegation representing the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party (HADEP) made a joint statement on Saturday after meeting at Dolmabahçe Palace to discuss details of the roadmap they hope will solve the country’s decades-long Kurdish problem. The statement unveiled 10 articles, which were originally written by Abdullah Öcalan, jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), to guide the progression of settlement talks.
Saying that both parties accuse each other of creating obstacles to the process, Kılıçdaroğlu said that soon after the announcement of the roadmap on Saturday, HADEP stated that the main obstacle to the success of the settlement process is the AK Party. Meanwhile, the ruling party made a similar statement in which it said the main obstacle is HADEP.
“I am saying clearly that there is electoral cooperation [for the upcoming general election on June 7] underway between the AK Party and HADEP,” Kılıçdaroğlu claimed.
Kılıçdaroğlu said his party would be pleased if the PKK keeps to its promise as part of the roadmap to lay down their arms, but added that the public wants to know whether the two parties have struck a secret agreement.
The settlement process, launched in 2011, was welcomed by large parts of society in the hope of putting an end to acts of terror and improving Kurdish people’s rights, which were crushed after the establishment of the Turkish Republic. After the revelation of a massive government graft scandal on Dec. 17, 2013, many believe the government resorted to certain tactics to distract attention from the scandal, such as accelerating the talks with Öcalan and various Kurdish groups. (TODAY’S ZAMAN, March 3, 2015)
The unemployment rate in Turkey was 10.9 percent in December 2014, a four-year high and an increase from November’s rate of 10.7 percent, according to figures released by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) on Monday.
The rate was slightly lower than forecasts of 11.1 percent, although the figures marked the second month in a row that Turkey’s unemployment rate hit a four-year high. Around 3.15 million people were without jobs in December.
Non-agricultural unemployment stood at 12.9 percent, while youth unemployment reached 20.2 percent, up from 19.9 percent in November, meaning one in five young people between the ages of 15 and 24 was jobless in December of last year.
A total of 33.2 percent of Turkey’s workforce was unregistered, meaning that one in three people held informal employment for which they were unable to receive insurance or social security benefits.
Known for its high number of informal laborers, 81.9 percent of Turkey’s agricultural sector consisted of unregistered workers in December. The unemployment rate was 12.6 percent for women and 10.2 percent for men.
The service sector still constituted more than half of the country’s total labor force, as 52.8 percent were employed in service jobs as of the last month of 2014. A total of 19.5 percent of Turkey’s workforce came from the agricultural sector, 20.5 percent were employed in the industrial sector and 7.1 percent were employed in construction.
Turkey’s unemployment rate hovered above the double-digit mark for most of 2014, while the youth unemployment rate was double that, a fact that has created more concern than the overall rate.
The proportion of young people in Turkey who are not employed or engaged in education or training is the highest among all the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, a recent study has shown.
According to the preliminary findings of an ongoing study conducted by the OECD — titled “NEET youth in the Aftermath of the Crisis: Challenges and Policies” — 5.9 million out of 17 million young people in Turkey aged between 16 and 29 were classified as “not in employment, education, or training” (NEET) in 2012, topping the list at 35 percent and ranking higher than all other OECD members. (TODAY’S ZAMAN, March 16, 2015)
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