Open market in the southeastern Turkish city of Dyarbakir, capital of the Kurds in Turkey. The city has been a focal point for conflicts between the government and Kurdish movements. December 2014. Credit: Fabíola Ortiz /IPS

By Fabíola Ortiz
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Jan 29 2015 (IPS)

A rupture inside the movement for the creation of an independent state of Kurdistan has given new impetus to the voices of those condemning the use of weapons as the way to autonomy.

The 40 million Kurds represent the world’s largest ethnic group without a permanent nation state or rights guaranteed under a constitution.

“We are the only nationality with a great population without land,” Murat Aba, a member and one of the founders of the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), told IPS. “We’ve been split since after the First World War and we’ve never been allowed to rule ourselves. We are not a minority, we’re a huge number of people and we defend the independence of the four Kurdish groups living in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.”“The peace talks between the PKK and the [Turkish] government should take a different direction. They are being done in secrecy without any transparency at all. We are against the use of firearms in our struggle for independence” - Sabehattin Korkmaz Avukat, lawyer for human right causes involving Kurds.

PAK, which was formally launched towards the end of 2014, is the first legally recognised party in Turkey to include the word ‘Kurdistan’ in its name which, until recently, was forbidden for political parties in the country. According to its leader Mustafa Ozcelik, PAK will pursue independence for Kurds ”through political and legal means”.

This distinction is intended to differentiate it clearly from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) – the armed group created in the 1970s to fight for self-determination for the Kurds in Turkey and considered illegal by the Turkish government. So far, the armed struggle for independence has killed over 40,000 people.

Today, around 20,000 PKK soldiers are being trained In the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq, 1,000 kilometres from Diyarbakir, the capital of the Kurds in Turkey. Many of them are now fighting against the Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.

The financial resources to maintain PKK operations come illegally from Kurds living in Europe, Hatip Dicle of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) admitted to IPS. The DTK is a political party which also includes members who are sympathetic to PKK ideology.

The Turkish government “does not allow us to collect donations by legal means,” Dicle continued. “There are over two million Kurds in Europe and all donations are sent secretly.” Dicle said that even it is a pro-democracy movement PKK does not give up the armed solution.

However, in recent years, the PKK has been involved in secret “peace talks” with the Turkish government. Through senior members of his cabinet, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been negotiating with Abdullah Öcalan, the PKK leader in jail since 1999 on Imrali island in the Sea of Marmara.

The DTK gained strength when the peace process between Turkish authorities and  Öcalan began and, now, “we want this conflict to be over and we wish to achieve a common solution,” Dicle told IPS.

Nevertheless, the secrecy surrounding the peace talks with Öcalan and the PKK is being strongly criticised by those who call for an open process.

“The peace talks between PKK and government should take a different direction. They are being done in secrecy without any transparency at all. We are against the use of firearms in our struggle for independence”, said Sabehattin Korkmaz Avukat, a lawyer advocating for human right causes involving Kurds.

According to Avukat, deep-rooted reform of the Civil Constitution in Turkey is needed. “We want to follow the path of democracy and not violence. Our fight is totally addressed to achieving our own autonomy in a peaceful way. We wish to have our rights included in the Civil Constitution”, he argued.

For Mohammed Akar, the general secretary and founder of a new Kurd cultural entity called Komeleya Şêx Seîd, an organisation dedicated to cultural and educational activities for the Kurdish community and based in Diyarbakir, the road to autonomy in Turkey should not include armed violence.

“We don’t want to use violence to achieve our independence. It may even spoil our claim for democracy”, said Akar, the grandson of Şêx Seîd.  Also known as Sheikh Said,  Şêx Seîd was a former Kurdish sheikh of the Sunni order and leader of the Kurdish rebellion in 1925 during Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s nationalist regime (1923-38).

Şêx Seîd’s name and image had been banned since then until recently, and this is the first time that a civil society entity has been authorised to use his name.

Famous Kurdish writer and political scientist Îbrahîm Guçlu also criticises the way in which the PKK is promoting its political view. He denounces drug trafficking, forced recruitment and coercion of young Kurds by the outlawed group.

“The PKK is an illegal formation whose leader is in jail and tries to manage his entire community from inside prison. We are different and we promote open discussion within society”, says Guçlu.

Edited by Phil Harris

Police barricade in Gezi Park – one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district and an “oasis” in Taksim Square, a large stone plaza of mostly open space with a few statues, fountains and entrances to underground stations (May 2013). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Tessa Love
ISTANBUL, Oct 14 2014 (IPS)

A year after the Gezi Park uprising – a protest that began as an act to save trees – exploded into anti-government riots around the country, sparking cohesive community efforts to fight urban sprawl, the face of environmental activism and awareness in Turkey has changed.

“It’s no coincidence that the demonstrations were ignited by an ecological issue, by concerns of urban development,” said Morat Ozbank, an assistant professor of political theory at Bigli University and a board member of the Turkish Green Party. “And this later became an issue of human rights and democratisation.”

At 11 pm on May 27, 2013, bulldozers moved into Gezi Park – one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district and an “oasis” in Taksim Square, a large stone plaza of mostly open space with a few statues, fountains and entrances to underground stations.  They were there to clear the trees for the controversial construction of an Ottoman-era style shopping mall.“The mega-projects are disastrous for Istanbul. All development is hurting something. Urban planning is a rational profession, but the government does not listen to this rationale. They take our public spaces and sell them for construction” – Akif Burak Atlar, secretary to the board at the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners

Within 20 minutes, throngs of people filled the park to block the construction, and they stayed for 20 days before being forced out by police.

The proposed shopping mall was just one of a long list of mega-projects spearheaded by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Other projects include a third bridge across the Bosphorus, a tunnel for private vehicles beneath the same waterway, the world’s largest airport, and a second Bosphorus on the Asian side of the city.

Many of these projects are being carried forward despite opposition from bodies such as the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB), which is responsible for assessing the potential impact of proposed projects and advising against those that could be detrimental to the environment.

According to Akif Burak Atlar, secretary to the board at the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners, all of these projects fit that description.

“The mega-projects are disastrous for Istanbul,” he says. “All development is hurting something. Urban planning is a rational profession, but the government does not listen to this rationale. They take our public spaces and sell them for construction.”

Atlar believes that every neighbourhood in Istanbul should legally have a certain amount of green space to uphold urban planning standards. Nevertheless, public parks are being destroyed and, beyond the city limits, miles of wild forests have been destroyed to make way for the third bridge and the second Bosphorus.

While all of these projects had elicited outcries from various small organisations and legal action from TMMOB before May 2013, nothing came close to the response at Gezi Park.

“Gezi was a unique moment is Turkish history,” says Atlar. “There was no leader, no formal organisation. It was an awakening.”

One year later, this movement is still alive and although policies regarding urban planning have not changed at governmental level, grassroots organisations have joined forces in the hope of making changes where they can.

One of these – Northern Forest Defence – is a movement organised by free volunteers to defend the last forests of northern Istanbul. Known as the “Child of Gezi,” it works to halt the development of mega projects like the third bridge, as well as working within small communities to stop the destruction of public parks for development.

While many of these efforts are small, Cigdem Cidamli, a founding member of the organisation, believes that they are essential to the progress of urban defence. “Small movements can’t change as much as big movements,” she says, “but we can’t have big movements without the small ones. So now we are trying to create more integrated channels of solidarity.”

Cidamli, Atlar and Ozbank all agree that the integration of organisations is the most recognisable accomplishment of Gezi so far. Many neighbourhoods now have an urban defence group to discuss a wide range of issues including urban development.

Many of these groups have come together to form larger organisations such as Taksim Solidarity, Istanbul Urban Defence and Northern Forest Defence.

One small group, Caferaga Dayanismasi, is a collective in the Kadikoy neighbourhood that conducts meetings and organises activist movements from a “squat” – an abandoned building that members have occupied and are renovating.

Bahadir, a member of the squat, says that the best thing they have done as a group is to have occupied and cultivated an empty lot that was going to be turned into a car park. Now it is a community vegetable garden where neighbours, both the young and the old, get their hands dirty.

Cidamli is thankful to Gezi for this development. “After Gezi, people are looking inward to create solidarity in small ways,” she says. “We can’t have Gezi every day. So, instead, we cultivate tomatoes.”

With this growth in community-minded activism, Bahadir says that the city cannot cut down a single tree without sparking a protest.

But so far, the only major development that has successfully been halted is the shopping mall at Gezi.

“The funny thing is, they can’t do anything in Taksim Square right now,” says Ozbank with a smile. “They can’t touch anything … not even to beautify the place.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Iraqi President Fouad Massoum said this past week that the government was looking for an independent Sunni Muslim to fill the post of defense minister in an effort to improve chances of reunifying the country and defeating the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS).

Massoum, in his first extended comments to a U.S. audience since his recent selection as president of Iraq, also said Sept. 26 that Iraqi Kurds – while they might still hold a referendum on independence – would not secede from Iraq at a  time of such major peril.

“Today there is no possibility to announce such a state,” Massoum, a Kurd and former prime minister of the Kurdish region, told a packed room at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

“Forming a Kurdish state is a project, and a project like that has to take into account” the views of regional and other countries and the extraordinary circumstances of the current terrorist menace to Iraq.

Kurdish threats to hold a referendum and declare independence were widely seen as leverage to force the resignation of former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki,also under pressure from President Barack Obama’s administration, Iraqi Sunnis and Iran, stepped down to allow a less  polarizing member of his Shi’ite Dawa party – Haider al-Abadi – to take the top job.

Abadi, however, has been unable so far to get parliament to approve his choices for the sensitive posts of defense and interior ministers. Queried about this, Massoum said, “There seems to be some understanding that the minister of defense should be Sunni and there is a search for an independent Sunni.”

As for interior minister, Massoum said, they were looking for an “independent Shiite” to take the post.

For the time being, Abadi is holding the portfolios, but unlike his predecessor, who retained them, has clearly stated that he does not want to assume those responsibilities for long. Massoum said a decision was likely after the coming Muslim holiday, the Eid al-Adha.

The Iraqi president also said there was progress on a new arrangement for sharing Iraq’s oil revenues, a major source of internal grievances under Maliki. A decision has been made that each of the regions will have representation on a higher oil and gas council, Massoum said. He also expressed confidence in Iraq’s new oil minister, Adel Abdel-Mahdi.

Asked whether Iraq would split into three countries – as Vice President Joe Biden once recommended – Massoum said there might be an eventual move toward a more confederal system but “partitioning Iraq … into three independent states is a bit far-fetched, especially in the current situation.”

Massoum began his remarks with a fascinating explanation of how IS – which he called ISIS, for the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams – came into being. He said the group began “as a marriage” between nationalist military officers and religious extremists that took place when they were in prison together while the U.S. still occupied Iraq.

The notion of combining Iraq with the Levant – made up of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Jordan – is actually an old Arab nationalist concept, Massoum said.

As for the religious aspects of the movement, Massoum traced that to the so-called Hashishin – users of hashish. This Shiite group, formed in the late 11th century, challenged the then-Sunni rulers of the day, used suicide attacks and were said to be under the influence of drugs. The English word “assassin” derives from the term.

“Many times these terrorist practices [were used] in the name of a religion or a sect,” Massoum said.

He praised the United States for coming to the aid of Iraqis and Kurds against IS and also expressed support for the recent bombing of IS and Jabhat al-Nusra positions in Syria. But Massoum sidestepped repeated questions about whether such strikes would inadvertently bolster the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“Hitting ISIS in Syria should not mean this is to support the regime or as a beginning to overthrowing Bashar al-Assad,” Massoum said. “That’s why the attacks are limited.”

Asked about Iraqi relations with Iran and whether the Iraqis and Kurds were serving as go-betweens for the United States and Iran in mutual efforts to degrade IS, Massoum noted Iraq’s historic relations with its neighbour and that Iraq also had common interests with the United States.

“We don’t look at America with Iranian eyes and we don’t look at Iran with American eyes,” Massoum said. He evaded questions about Iran’s military role in Iraq, saying that while he had heard reports that Quds Force Chief Qasem Soleimani had visited the Kurdish region, requests for a meeting were not fulfilled.

As for Iranian military advisers who were said to have helped liberate the town of Amerli and relieve the siege of Mt. Sinjar, Massoum said, there were “many  experts” who had come to help the Kurdish peshmerga forces.

Massoum attributed the collapse of the Iraqi army at Mosul to poor leadership, corruption and decades of setbacks starting with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran in 1980. This was followed a decade later by his invasion of Kuwait and subsequent refusal to cooperate with the international community.

“These blows all had an impact on the psychology of the commanders and soldiers,” Massoum said. Iraqi armed forces have gone “from failure to failure.”

The president confirmed that under the new Iraqi government, each governorate will have its own national guard made up of local people. This concept – which may be partly funded by the Saudis and other rich Gulf Arabs – is an attempt to replicate the success of the so-called sons of Iraq by motivating Sunni tribesmen to confront IS as they previously did al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Asked what would happen to Shi’ite militias – which have committed abuses against Sunnis and helped alienate that population from Baghdad – Massum said the militias would eventually have to be shut down but only after the IS threat had been eliminated. He did not indicate how long that might take.

Massum was also asked about reported IS plots against U.S. and French subway systems. Abadi earlier this week made reference to such plots, but U.S. officials said they had no such intelligence.

Iraqi officials accompanying Massoum, who spoke on condition that they not be identified, said Abadi had been misinterpreted and was referring only to the types of attacks IS might mount in the West. Massoum warned, however, that “sleeper cells” in the West as well as in Iraq might be planning terrorist attacks.

Asked about Turkey – which has been reticent about aiding Iraq against IS – Massoum, who met at the U.N. this week with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said he expected more help now that 49 Turkish hostages in Mosul have been freed.

Massoum also urged Turkey to do a better job vetting young men who arrive there from Europe and America, and prevent them from reaching border areas and slipping into IS-controlled areas in Syria.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Turkey’s new democratisation reform package may mark a step forward for civil rights, but it does not go far enough to ease social tension and feelings of mistrust that are afflicting the country, analysts say.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced the long-awaited reform package on Sep. 30, saying it ushered in “a new, decisive phase” in Turkey’s democratisation process.

But after a summer during which Erdoğan’s reformist reputation was shredded by a violent police crackdown on anti-government protests, many Turks see the package mostly as an attempt to repair the prime minister’s battered image.

“The fact that this is being marketed as a big reform package is precisely because the government is seeing that they are failing on that front,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a political columnist at Milliyet newspaper, an influential publication generally critical of the government. “It’s not enough, it’s hardly enough, but it’s a start.”

The measures, to be enacted through a mix of administrative and legislative changes, include the strengthening of minority language rights, the lifting of a ban on Islamic headscarves for women in public institutions, and alterations to the electoral system to benefit smaller political parties.

The package did not include widely anticipated enhancements of cultural and religious rights for Alevis, a Shi’a-Islam-influenced sect whose adherents comprise the country’s largest religious minority.

The bulk of the measures are aimed at addressing the grievances of Turkey’s 15 million ethnic Kurds, who have endured forced assimilation since the early years of the republic. The government currently is engaged in a peace process with the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), whose 30-year-long separatist insurgency has cost 40,000 lives. A ceasefire has held since March, with government officials holding direct talks with the PKK’s imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan.

However, those talks have come to a standstill, with the rebels recently freezing a withdrawal from Turkey after accusing Ankara of failing to deliver on promised reforms.

On Sep. 30, Erdoğan announced that education in mother-tongue languages other than Turkish will be allowed for the first time, but only in private schools.

A ban on the letters q, w, and x, which are found in the Kurdish, but not the Turkish alphabet, will be lifted, allowing for their use in names and official documentation. Kurdish place names that were “Turkified” in the past will be restored to their original spelling.

Meanwhile, a “student oath,” which begins with the words “I am a Turk,” will be abolished in schools.

Erdoğan also proposed a debate on lowering the existing 10-percent threshold that a political party must clear in an election in order to secure seats in parliament. In many Western democracies, such as Germany, the threshold for representation is five percent of the popular vote. The high electoral barrier in Turkey has generally been seen as a means to stymy Kurdish political representation.

Overall, though, the reform measures fell short of several key Kurdish demands, including a loosening of the country’s draconian anti-terror laws. Many observers were also disappointed that Kurdish-language education will be restricted to private schools.

“Was this really a package worth waiting for?” asked Gültan Kışanak, co-chair of the main pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party in a televised statement.

“Kurds wished for the Kurdish problem to be solved, Alevis wished for freedom of religion, and other discriminated groups in Turkey wished for more participatory governance,” Kışanak continued. “It is not a package that responds to Turkey’s need for democratisation.”

Analysts interpreted the cautiousness of the measures as a sign of the government’s sensitivity over a possible Turkish nationalist backlash against Kurdish initiatives, particularly in the context of municipal and presidential elections next year.

“I think there’s been a growing unrest across the country since the peace talks began and the government began speaking to Öcalan directly,” said Ziya Meral, a London-based Turkey researcher, and former human rights advocate.

“It is not so much because of a lack of political will, but because elections are coming and the Turkish public is not necessarily on board with such a speedy resolution of the Kurdish issue.”

Hugh Pope, country director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, expressed a belief that the government’s fears are largely misplaced.

“This imaginary Turkish nationalist resistance to reform is very real in the mind of Ankara, but I don’t think it’s reflected on the ground,” Pope said. “Erdoğan is pushing through an open door, and the better he explains it, the easier this process will go.”

Meral believes that Erdoğan will likely announce further substantial reforms in the coming months as the elections draw nearer — especially on the Alevi issue.

“If you unveil all your major reforms in one go, the public will quickly forget, “ he drily noted, “but if you spread out the love a bit, your actions might be remembered much closer to the election date.”

The generally negative reception of the package from key opposition groups, including the Kurds, highlighted deeper social problems that the reforms did not address, he added.

Editor’s note: Alexander Christie-Miller is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

A woman collapses in front of a police barricade during one of the Occupy Gezi protests. Credit: Arzu Geybulla/IPS

By Ariam Frezghi
ISTANBUL, Jul 13 2013 (IPS)

Among the many issues bringing protestors together at Gezi Park, the now-iconic site of struggle in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, is the demand for women’s liberation.

Coming from many walks of life and expressing a myriad of ideals and values, the women of the Occupy Gezi Movement have nevertheless voiced a collective desire: to fight the undercurrent of deeply entrenched patriarchal values and reclaim autonomy over their own bodies and lifestyles.

These demands are now coalescing around proposed legislation from the country’s Health Ministry that will call on pharmacies to limit the sale of oral contraception known as the morning-after pill only to those with a doctor’s prescription, a practice that is uncommon for most drugs available to the public here.

Under Turkey’s conservative-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, women are encouraged to have at least three children to help maintain population growth rates.

Feminists and women’s rights groups representing almost 400 people say the new legislation is part of government attempts to impose traditional values onto their lifestyle, and will only reinforce stereotypes about the “ideal” Turkish woman, while stigmatising those who stray from this image.

“I can’t go to the family doctor (for my contraceptive needs) because it is a secretive issue for me,” said Merve Kosar, a 26-year-old Istanbulite who relies on the pharmacy to replenish her supply of the drug.

In Turkey, most non-narcotic drugs are available for purchase over the counter. Insisting on a prescription from a family doctor, who can report to other members of the family, places added pressure on women to conform to conservative mores.

Women like Kosar, who make the conscious decision to have sex before marriage, are worried about having fewer options to guard against unwanted pregnancies.

Nearly 34 percent of once-married and currently married women said they use morning-after pills as their main form of contraception, according to the 2008 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey.

Still, the possibility of parliament passing the bill under a larger package of reforms sometime this year seems likely and concerns women’s rights groups who say the announcement will hinder some from asking pharmacies for pills.

An article in the Hurriyet Daily News cited a notice from the Health Ministry, which stated that “growth hormones, antibiotics, antidepressants, and antihistamines” must be sold with a doctor’s prescription to reduce the misuse of drugs.

According to Zerrin Guker, a pharmacist in the commercial neighbourhood of Karakoy who sells 15 to 20 boxes of the morning-after pill per month, some customers have been misusing the drug by purchasing it a few times per week, which can cause hormonal side effects.

A 27-year-old protestor named Elif, who declined to give her last name for fear of retribution, said she suffered blood clots and nausea after taking the pill once; yet she still believes in a woman’s right to choose and says the government’s proposed restriction is designed to prevent unmarried women from having sexual relationships.

“Most women can’t even buy tampons or feminine products from stores because they are ashamed,” she told IPS, stressing that the culture of shame has become entrenched in society.

A long fight to overturn these attitudes is slowly showing results: ideals about abstinence until marriage, for instance, are shrinking, as women continue to speak out about their grievances with men including harassment and sexist swearing, practices that have infiltrated the Occupy Gezi Movement.

At a recent meeting in Yogurtçu Park in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district, more than 100 women gathered to discuss their experiences at Gezi Park.

One protestor said a drunken man grabbed her buttocks one night, while bystanders justified his actions saying he had been under the influence.

Another woman read out a list of complaints with the governing party, which included attempts to get rid of “dekolte” (low-cut dresses) and state attempts to ban abortions and “keep women at home.”

A year ago, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for tighter restrictions on reproductive health by drafting a bill that would shorten the time period in which women can have an abortion from 10 weeks to eight weeks.

“There is no difference between killing the foetus in a mother’s womb or killing a person after birth,” Erdogan said in a speech before female politicians in the capital, Ankara, last year.

His words drew the ire of around 3,000 to 4,000 protestors, mostly women, who marched against the anti-abortion law in Kadikoy last June, waving banners proclaiming statements such as: “It is my body, so who are you?”

When abortion became legal in 1983, the Turkish Population and Health Survey found that 37 percent of once-married Turkish women had at least one abortion. As of 2008, that figure stood at 14.8 abortions per 1,000 women.

While the latest call to limit oral contraception has yet to spark demonstrations, many believe it will eventually ignite the tensions that have been simmering for years now.

Ayse Dunkan, journalist and activist, believes the outcry will pick up momentum, with more people rebelling against the “conservative concept (that) women (must) stay home and raise children.”

Such ideals, she told IPS, have resulted in Turkey having the world’s second highest population growth rate after China.

Selime Buyukgoze, a volunteer at Mor Cati, an Istanbul-based network for battered women, called the proposal “problematic” since the morning-after pill must be taken within 72 hours of having unprotected sex and few women will be able to reach their doctors that soon.

Like most others, though, her biggest fear is that doctors will break a woman’s confidence by reporting her lifestyle to the family.

Ahmet Kaya, a family doctor who sees almost 150 patients a week, rebukes that claim. “If your patient doesn’t want you to inform her family, you can’t make that call,” he told IPS.

At the moment, pharmacies are continuing to sell the pill without asking for a prescription

It remains to be seen whether or not the government will push ahead with the law, or whether it will respond to the will of more than 1.5 million female protesters.

During the decades when Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood was a barely tolerated opposition party, it campaigned against the reigning secular autocrats under the banner “Islam is the solution.”

With the military’s removal on Jul. 3 of the Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, the region’s oldest exemplar of political Islam has lost its best and perhaps only chance to validate that slogan. Indeed, the rise and abrupt fall of the Morsi presidency are a timely comeuppance for a world view that, starting with Iran’s 1979 revolution, seemed to be gaining adherents throughout the Muslim world.

Political Islam has had a long arc, reviving in the modern era with the founding of the Brotherhood by Hassan al Banna in 1928 in opposition to a monarchy largely controlled by Western interests. Over the decades, monarchs and military-run governments of assorted Arab nationalist, socialist and capitalist hues have suppressed the Brotherhood and its various offshoots. Then came spring 2011.

While Islamic movements did not lead the rebellions against aging autocrats, they were well placed to benefit because of superior organisation, a history of providing social services to the poor and a record of repression by the state.

Once in power, however, these movements frequently overreached. Nowhere was this more evident than in Egypt, where the Brotherhood reneged on initial promises not to seek a parliamentary majority or the presidency – promises made to avoid provoking a backlash from secular forces.

Then, Morsi – a substitute for a more powerful Brotherhood official, Khairat el-Shater, who was disqualified from running – misinterpreted his narrow victory in a runoff a year ago as a mandate to  consolidate  power and essentially gut the Arab world’s most important democratic transition.

Given the magnitude of the problems Egypt faced after the removal of Hosni Mubarak, only a government that truly reached out beyond its political base stood a chance of succeeding.  Without that broad popular support, the Brotherhood was loathe to implement crucial economic reforms and incapable of concluding a bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund.

The constitution rammed through by the Brotherhood last spring disappointed those looking for major improvements from the Mubarak era.  Morsi was also tone-deaf  in many of his appointments, going so far as to name a member of the once-violent Gamaa al-Islamiya that had massacred foreigners in Luxor to govern one of Egypt’s most important tourism hubs.

The Brotherhood mistook the piety and religiosity of ordinary Egyptians for allegiance to a largely one-party religious government. This is a common mistake among Islamists. Many people in the Middle East might like to have a pious Muslim as a president but even more, they want competent leaders who will listen to others and forge constructive relations with the outside world.

Morsi’s removal is a warning that Islamic parties cannot count on religious identity alone to govern successfully and need to work constructively with others. This lesson seems to have been internalised by the Al-Nour party, a nominally more hard-line group that supported Morsi’s ouster and pushed for a consensus choice for prime minister instead of Mohamed ElBaradei, a Nobel laureate and champion of secular forces.

The fate of the Brotherhood experiment in Egypt has important ramifications throughout the region – for Tunisia, still struggling to write a constitution, and for Syria, whose opposition includes numerous Islamic groups and whose regime is banking on the support of religious minorities terrified by the notion of Islamic rule.

Morsi’s fall is also a sobering lesson for Iran, the world’s only theocracy, and Turkey, whose ruling AK Party has strong Islamist roots. Both initially welcomed the Brotherhood victory but instead of validating an Islamic world view, the events in Egypt have underlined its limitations.

In Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan is still reeling from protests in Istanbul and other major cities against his government’s authoritarianism and creeping efforts to legislate Islamic morality. Erdogan’s behaviour in recent years has contrasted with the AKP’s tolerance of opposing views when it first came to power a decade ago. Increasingly, Erdogan has come to resemble previous Turkish autocrats with an Islamic veneer.

In Iran, meanwhile, the 1979 Islamic Revolution died years ago. Iran is now one of the least religious countries in the Middle East, a place where Muslim holidays such as Ramadan are barely observed compared to ancient Persian celebrations such as Nowruz.

In urging Iranians to vote in last month’s presidential elections, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had to resort to appealing to the electorate’s patriotism as Iranians, not their religious identity as Shiite Muslims – a telling sign that he recognises how unpopular the system has become. Iranians promptly chose the least hard-line candidate allowed to run, Hassan Rouhani. One of the reasons his victory was surprising is because he is a cleric and clerics are notoriously unpopular among the citizens of the Islamic Republic.

In a speech shortly after his election, Rouhani indicated that he understands that religious ideology is no substitute for competence and accountability. He promised to listen to the “majority of Iranians” who voted for him and added:

“In our region, there were some countries who miscalculated their positions, and you have witnessed what happened to them…The world is in a transitional mood, and a new order has yet to be established. If we miscalculate our national situation, it will be detrimental for us.”

Turkish police have been using excessive force against unarmed protestors. Credit: Arzu Geybulla/IPS

By Roger Hamilton-Martin
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 20 2013 (IPS)

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay have advised “maximum restraint” following media reports of a violent police crackdown on peaceful protestors in Istanbul’s Gezi Park.

In a statement on Jun. 18 Pillay said, “The atmosphere is still…highly combustible, it is important that authorities recognise that the initial extremely heavy-handed response to the protests, which resulted in many injuries, is still a major part of the problem.”

The Turkish Medical Association last week reported nearly 7,500 protest-related injuries since the occupation of the park began at the end of May, and at the time of writing six have died.

Pillay urged the Turkish government to take “all necessary measures to ensure that police forces do not resort to excessive use of force… The aim should be to minimise damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life.”

The protests began as a peaceful complaint over land use in Gezi Park – an island of green in the middle of the concrete Taksim Square – but expanded swiftly into an anti-government uprising in many cities around Turkey.

One of the 50 original Gezi Park protesters, who asked to be identified only by her first name, Bengi, told IPS: “I have been a part of the protest from its very beginning. I’m not surprised at the police violence, as Turkey has a tradition of violence, suppression and police brutality.”

She acknowledged that attempts over the last decade to move closer to EU succession have led to a decrease in open state hostility, “so in a sense this reaction could be seen as strange.”

Expected or unexpected, the violence has been extreme and has grabbed media attention and the eyes of the world’s leading rights bodies, with watchdogs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch strongly condemning the actions of heavily armed security forces against peaceful demonstrators.

Bengi sees this violent response as a direct result of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s “wayward” decision making. “The Prime Minister has shown a lack of effective management, and simply wants to prove to the people that what he says will be done.”

Many have questioned Erdoğan’s administration of the police force since the protests began, including the widespread use of gas canisters against the population.

Two protestors are reported to have died due to gas canisters; Abdullah Comert, 22, a youth member of the opposition Republican People’s Party, was killed after being struck in the head by a canister in Hatay, close to the Syrian border in southern Turkey, while cleaning worker Irfan Tuna died after having been subjected to powerful tear gas in Kızılay Square in Ankara.

The U.N. high commissioner drew specific attention to the use of these canisters by police forces in her statement on Jun. 18.

“Reports that tear gas canisters and pepper spray were fired at people from close range, or into closed spaces, and the alleged misuse of rubber bullets, need to be promptly, effectively, credibly and transparently investigated,” she stressed.

The Turkish Medical Association says many of the injured have reported respiration disorders caused by tear gas, and musculoskeletal system injuries (soft tissue injuries, cuts, burns and fractures), which are related with close-quarter shots of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. They also reported tear gas being released into a clinic in Ankara.

Kimber Heinz, organising coordinator of the ‘Facing Tear Gas’ (FTG) campaign spearheaded by U.S.-based War Resisters League, told IPS that gas, pepper spray and other chemicals weapons have become a popular tool among oppressive governments to quell democratic uprisings.

“We started hearing a lot of calls around 2011 from places like Egypt, how there were canisters being used by police to injure people and suppress popular resistance movements.” Many of these canisters, she said, carried “Made in USA” labels.

“There are now reports coming out of Istanbul that canisters produced by NonLethal Technologies, based in Homer City, Pennsylvania and Defense Technologies based in Casper, Wyoming, have been found on the ground in Gezi Park,” Heinz added.

Facing Tear Gas has helped promote a petition, authored by American-Turkish lawyer Kerem Gulay, that calls on three U.S. congressmen to propose legislation that could stem the flow of tear gas to countries that are violently stifling peaceful protests.

The petition cites the fact that some 150,000 canisters were used across Turkey between May 28 and Jun. 16, and that in the same period 12,000 people received medical care for exposure to multiple forms of tear gas. The primary target of the petition, Senator P. Leahy from Vermont, was unavailable for comment.

While the U.S. represents a spigot that can be tightened to choke the supply of these products to Turkey, Bengi is unsure that such a call has resonated with the Turkish population yet.

“Right now people are still trying to shake off the shock of sustained use of tear gas. Their anger is entirely focused on the Turkish government,” she said.

Thousands of public sector workers in Turkey are on a two-day strike in support of anti-government demonstrations.

The strike was called by The Public Workers Unions Confederation in response to “state terror implemented against mass protests across the country”. It said the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had “shown once again … enmity to democracy”.

The confederation, which has an estimated 240,000 members in 11 unions, said the strike would last for two days.

Al Jazeera’s Rawya Rageh, reporting from the capital Ankara, said that the strike call was significant: “They are trying to send a message, that this is not just youth on the streets, this is not just about a park or individual demands – this is about something bigger.”

However, she said that the success of the strike remained to be seen: “It has to be said that unions are not that strong in Turkey. This is going to be a test to show that they are able to deliver on what they say.”

The workers’ strike comes in the wake of four days of mass protests against the Islamic-rooted government of Erdogan. At least two people, both men, have died in the demonstrations.

The first was killed in an accident with a taxi in Istanbul. The second man died during a protest in Antakya, close to the Syrian border. The NTV television channel said Abdullah Comert, 22, was shot in the head, but authorities disputed the claim, saying he suffered a blow to the head rather than a bullet wound.

‘Police abuse’

Social media was awash with reports and videos of police abuse. Turkey’s Human Rights Foundation claimed more than 1,000 protesters were subjected “to ill-treatment and torture” by police.

Bulent Arinc, the deputy prime minister, on Tuesday apologised to protesters hurt in the clashes and said that he would meet some of the original organisers of a protest to save Gezi Park in Istanbul. That protest widened to anti-government demonstrations following a harsh police response.

Despite facing the biggest challenge to his rule since he came to office in 2002, Erdogan left Turkey earlier on Monday on an official visit to Morocco, where he insisted the situation in his country was “calming down”.

He earlier rejected talk of a “Turkish Spring” uprising by Turks who accuse him of trying to impose religious reforms on the secular state, and dismissed the protesters as “vandals”, stressing that he was democratically elected.

Erdogan has blamed the protests on “extremists”, “dissidents” and the main opposition Republican People’s Party.

“The situation is now calming down … On my return from this visit, the problems will be solved,” he said in Rabat.

“The Republican People’s Party and other dissidents have a hand in these events.”

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Fadi Hakura, a Turkey analyst at the Chatham House think-tank in London, said: “I think that the prime minister has really adopted a really defiant and confrontational approach towards the protests taking place in Istanbul and across Turkey.

“He has already accused them of being extremists; he has suggested there’s a link between the protesters and foreign plotters.”

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Zeki Gorbuz, a Turkish asylum seeker in Greece, who was arrested on Feb. 12, remains detained today due to an international warrant that was transmitted by Turkish authorities to Greece just one day before his asylum interview. Turkish media were quick to report the arrest, describing Gorbuz as a radical leftist and regional leader of the Marxist Leninist Communist Party (MLCP), which has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the Turkish government.

On the same day that Gorbuz was detained, Bulent Aytunc Comert, who arrived in Greece as an asylum seeker in 2002, was also arrested. His request for asylum was approved in 2003 but was never cleared by the ministry of police.

Branded by Turkish authorities as a member of the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C), Comert is a fugitive. He was imprisoned in the notorious solitary confinement units known as the “White Cells” on what he says was a fabricated murder charge.

“Members of several civil society organisations and student groups [in Turkey] have been put into prison, often on flimsy evidence and based on the anti-terrorism law that can be used to charge pretty much any form of dissent as terrorism."
Having come here to escape persecution, Gorbuz and Comert, like many other Turkish political dissidents and Turkish Kurds, are now stuck in no-man’s land, suspended between the highly bureaucratic Greek immigration and asylum system, and an extremely hostile government in Turkey.

Indications of a secret deal to return asylum seekers in Greece to Turkey are surfacing, while human rights activists warn of the grave impacts of Greece’s plan to extradite persons in need of international protection against criminal charges that might be fabricated by Turkish authorities.

According to Turkish media reports, a Feb. 4 meeting between Turkish Chief of Police Mehmet Kiliclar and Greek Police Chief Nikolaos Papagiannopoulos ended with the Greek official’s promise to dismantle Kurdish as well as radical leftist “Turkish terrorist cells” here.

A month later, on Mar. 4, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras visited Turkey for a high profile meeting with his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul, where the two heads of state signed 25 cooperation deals covering areas such as health, tourism and fighting illegal migration.

That same day, the Ankara Strategic Institution pointed out that private Turkish investment in Greece has been used as a pressure tool in order to promote the deal on extradition. More reports followed referring to preparations for extraditions but the Greek government is yet to responded to any of them.

Besides Gorbuz and Comert, three more asylum seekers have been arrested since February, including Meric Serkan on Feb. 14, Fadik Adauman on Feb. 26 and Huseyin Cakil on Apr. 6. All are wanted by Turkish authorities for “terrorist activity” and, according to the Greek Council for Refugees, all five have been victims of torture during their detention in Turkey.

The activist group Movement for Freedom and Democratic Rights (KEDDE), which has been a whistleblower on the deal between Turkish and Greek authorities, says there is no guarantee of Turkish dissidents’ safety if they are forced to return.

“People arrested under the Turkish anti-terror law are subject to a long detention with an indefinite time limit and with no access to their case file until the beginning of the trial (which could be situated two years later),” according to a statement on the group’s website.

“It might also mean they become subject to the jurisdiction and judgment of special courts, for the operation of which Turkey has been several times condemned by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, since these courts make use…as means of ‘proof’ confessions extorted through torture.”

Cakil’s case was tried in the Greek city of Thessaloniki and, given that his asylum claim has been informally accepted and is pending ministry clearance, the move to extradite him was denied.

Gorbuz and Comert who were apprehended in Patras, about 215 kilometres west of Athens, were also spared extradition but they will now have to face a court of second instance.

Given that most cases here take months or even years just to reach court, let alone a decision, this “rapid response by Greek authorities…is indicative of political interests (both Greek and Turkish) behind the cases,” lawyer Dimitris Sarafianos, member of the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy and World Human Rights (ELDH), told IPS.

He believes it “strange” that the prosecutor of the court of second instance appealed the decision in “absolute contradiction with the fact that the prosecutor of the hearing had pointed out that the charges were heavily unfounded, requesting for the continuation of the detention of one refugee (Gorbuz).”

“Given the persistent rumours referring to a secret agreement between the two Prime Ministers, Samaras and Erdogan, concerning matters of extradition of asylum seekers to Turkey, it is clear that the Greek government is prompt to violate the Geneva Convention,” the lawyer said.

According to Sarafianos, who participated in an ELDH fact-finding mission to Turkey, over 10,000 citizens of Kurdish origin are currently faced with charges, as are scores of Turkish unionist in the private and public sectors, professors, students and lawyers defending human rights.

The extradition deal currently being worked out the with Greek authorities appears to be part and parcel of this ongoing wave of detentions and arrests of political dissidents as well as suspected members of the DHKP-C – branded a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union — and members of Turkey’s Contemporary Lawyers Association (CHD).

Earlier this year, Erdogan rushed to connect the DHKP-C with the Feb. 1 bombing of the U.S embassy in Ankara.

Dr. Kerem Oktem, expert on contemporary Turkish politics and research fellow at the European Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, told IPS that although the detentions “caused a great outcry…many of the arrested people are intimately related to the DHKP-C, which took responsibility for the bombing of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) headquarters and the Justice Ministry in Ankara on Mar. 11.”

Although Oktem acknowledges that “members of several civil society organisations and student groups have been put into prison, often on flimsy evidence and based on the anti-terrorism law that can be used to charge pretty much any form of dissent as terrorism”, he believes it would be incorrect to characterise the crackdown as being directed solely against dissenting civil voices.

Often it is aimed at apprehending “groups and individuals that maintain relations with real terrorist groups”, he said.

(END)

Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed Kurdish rebel leader, has issued a long-awaited ceasefire declaration that would be a major step towards ending a 30-year conflict that has cost around 40,000 lives in Turkey.

The ceasefire announced on Thursday, which coincides with the Kurdish New Year, or Newroz, also calls for the withdrawal of his PKK organisation, likely to bases in northern Iraq.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the ceasefire call was a “positive development”.

“There are groups that are fed by terror in our country. This process will ruin their game,” he said, speaking during a visit to the Netherlands.

In Ocalan’s letter, read out by members of parliament Pervin Buldan, in Kurdish, and Sirri Sureyya Onder, in Turkish, the PKK leader said: “Let guns be silenced and politics dominate.

“The stage has been reached where our armed forces should withdraw beyond the borders … It’s not the end. It’s the start of a new era.”

The statement was read out to a sea of red-yellow-green Kurdish flags, in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, where hundreds of thousands gathered for celebrations.

Erdogan expressed his disappointment because there were no Turkish flags at the Newroz celebrations in Diyarbakir.

“This is a provocative approach by the circles who wants to influence the process in a negative way,” he said.

Ocalan’s ceasefire is likely to be in return for wider constitutional recognition and language rights for Turkey’s up to 15 million Kurds.

The peace plan is the result of written consultations between Ocalan, pro-Kurdish legislators and PKK bodies in Europe and northern Iraq, under the close monitoring of Turkish agents.

Kurdish legislators say Ocalan might ask for commissions to be established to properly monitor the ceasefire, and call for safe passage for fighters wishing to leave Turkey.

‘Political career’

Erdogan and Ocalan both appear to have staked their political futures on the renewed push to end the conflict.

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from Diyarbakir, said Erdogan had made no secret that he was eyeing the presidency.

“He will need to amend the constitution and would like to increase the powers of the president. He cannot do that without the support of the Kurdish party, the BDP.”

Erdogan said he was putting his faith in the peace process “even if it costs me my political career,” in the face of accusations that Ankara was making concessions to Ocalan.

Ocalan, known as “Apo,” has said he wants peace for the greater good of his people.

“Consider Apo dead if this process fails. I am simply out,” the burly 64-year-old was quoted as saying in a rare prison meeting with Kurdish legislators last month.

Hard road ahead

If a ceasefire holds, the path to disarmament, and the reintegration of PKK fighters, will still be long and vulnerable to sabotage.

The fate of Ocalan also remains uncertain, but any move to release him would be strongly opposed by critics who see any settlement as threatening Turkish unity.

The prospect of talks with the PKK has outraged many Turks who revile Ocalan and hold him personally responsible for the bloodshed.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.