Showing posts with label turkey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label turkey. Show all posts

Wednesday 27 July 2016

In the aftermath of the failed coup

Erdogan is continuing to clean up his country, making sure all those who could ever say something against him shall be taken out of the way.

It did not end by 8,800 policemen, 6,000 soldiers, 2,700 judges and prosecutors, dozens of governors, and more than 100 generals – or just under one-third of the general corps. More than 30,000 teacher shall not be there to give classes and educate the citizens about the human rights and to show them what went wrong in the last centuries so that they could avoid such historical missteps again.

Already before the coup several newspapers and blogs were silenced, but now also some 20 news websites critical of the government have also been blocked.

The Turkish government says it is carrying out a legitimate security operation to safeguard the country in the aftermath of a failed coup that came close to toppling the elected president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the early hours of Saturday morning.

For the Turkish government all those who have links to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based Islamic cleric are also responsible for the more than 300 dead at the weekend.

Large swaths of the population back the actions by the president, whom they idolise for boosting Turkey’s economy and representing the country’s lower classes. In Europe we can see daily thousands of enthusiast carrying the Turkish flag and shouting "Erdoğan". But not only in Turkey we see pro-Erdoğan rallies since the weekend. In Belgium several Erdoğan fans made life sour to other minded Turks or to those they think responsible, though they live here in Belgium.

Many Turks consider this present president the father of the re-risen nation, Turkey never having seen this kind of president or prime minister. For many Turks, even those living abroad Erdoğan’s perceived achievements since reaching power in 2003 lifted the country and made a better life for the Turks.
“No other president or prime minister achieved what he has done – in economic terms, in charitable terms, and in patriotic terms. There’s such a difference, a world of difference, in our lifestyle. Healthcare has especially improved. We have opportunities, and we have options.”
 is what we hear a lot.

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Additional reading

  1. Bosphorus bloodshed
  2. Belgian aftershock from the Turkish coup d’état
  3. Editor of Flemish Gülen inspired newspaper threatened
  4. State of emergency and respect for human rights

State of emergency and respect for human rights

In France the situation got so bad the president and his entourage thought it advisable to extend the state of emergency.

In the wake of the failed coup of Friday July 15 the Turkish president who took unseen unprecedented measures has also declared a state of emergency.

Turkey’s parliament has approved a three-month state of emergency, on Thursday by 346 votes to 115, which will allow the government to rule by decree, passing bills that have the force of law unless they are overturned by parliament, where the majority of MPs belong to the ruling Justice and Development party.a bill declaring a state of emergency in the wake of last weekend’s coup attempt and informed the Council of Europe of a partial withdrawal from the European convention on human rights.

At the same time we in Europe could be surprised that Erdogan could so quickly know who was behind the coup and had already on the day after so many people arrested we can question if this not was prepared in advance.


A member of the military is arrested in Turkey. EPA

The secretary general of the Council of Europe required Turkey to provide regular updates on the measures taken under the state of emergency, according to the terms of the treaty.
Turkey initially said it had informed the Council of Europe that it would suspend the convention entirely, a more wide-ranging measure likely to have drawn criticism from allies.

“Turkey will derogate the European convention on human rights insofar as it does not conflict with its international obligations,”
the deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmuş, was quoted as saying by the state-run Anadolu news agency, in a corrected statement.

Kurtulmuş said Turkey would take the step “just like France has done” under article 15 of the convention, which allows signatory states to derogate certain rights, including freedom of movement, expression and association, during times of war or a major public emergency.

But we do have do question  if Turkey is really willing to respect the human rights, because what we could see already on television shows that they have no respect at all for those international laws of defence and human dignity.

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) may be vague about the conditions that constitute an emergency, so in some ways, it’s not clear whether what is happening in Turkey constitutes one.

It is not because Erdogan may be elected in a democratic way that he is keeping to democratic laws and is respecting human laws of freedom. even a democratic elected person can not be above the law. An independent and functioning judiciary is fundamental to this. Erdoğan’s purging of the judiciary in Turkey is deeply worrying, to say the least.


Read also:
France, Turkey and human rights: is a state of emergency the new normal?


Thursday 9 July 2015

Bringing into safety from Irak and Iran

English: Map of Iran-Irak war, Furthest ground...
English: Map of Iran-Irak war, Furthest ground gains. Red = Irak / Yellow = Iran Deutsch: Irak-Iran-Krieg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Belgian Christadelphians did not have much luck with keeping in contact with those from Irak and Iran, they brought  into safety and gave financial assistance. Even those which got baptised, once in the West in safety did not keep to the faith and enjoyed their renewed life in the capitalist world in the same way as most people do who are surrounded by all the materialistic tempting goods.

Brother Mehdi escaped persecution in Iran and recently left Turkey, being granted asylum in the United States. His wife and daughter remain in Turkey awaiting permission to resettle. After originally being sent to Kentucky by the resettlement agency, the Bloomington ecclesia supported his relocation to their city, so that he might be in the company of brethren and be able to benefit from ecclesial life. 
Although the federal government provides some funding to refugees, many expenses are not covered.
There are also numerous practical issues that need to be addressed such as enrolling in ESL classes, finding suitable housing, obtaining employment and securing transportation. At the request of the Bloomington ecclesia, WCF has provided financial assistance to cover rent and utility expenses until our brother becomes self-sufficient. 
The Foundation also continues to financially support many of the brethren remaining in Turkey as they await the slow process of resettlement to a new home in the West.

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Thursday 19 February 2015

African misery and women inequality

The widespread sectarian violence and ongoing military conflicts in several political hotspots, including Syria, Iraq and Lebanon, have not only claimed thousands of human lives and devastated fragile economies but also undermined the U.N.’s longstanding plans to eradicate hunger and extreme poverty worldwide.
The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP), the world body’s lead agency monitoring human development, points out that the political turmoil, including in countries such as Libya, Tunisia and Egypt, is threatening to derail the U.N.’s highly-touted Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), specifically in the Arab world.

Addressing violence against women, in all of its forms, is a global imperative and should be one of the international community’s top priorities, including in forthcoming intergovernmental processes, such as the post-2015 development agenda.
The translation and full implementation of these global norms into national laws, policies, and measures remain uneven and slow. This is clear from the prevalence of all forms of violence against women seen throughout the world.
The focus of prevention and response to violence against women should therefore be on strengthening the implementation of existing global policy frameworks and in ensuring accountability mechanisms are in place.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action identified Violence against Women as one of its 12 critical areas of concern, and the review and appraisal of the Platform for Action is a key opportunity for the international community to not only acknowledge the progress made in the past 20 years but to also assess the remaining gaps and challenges in its implementation, including violence against women, to feed the lessons learned into the post-2015 development agenda processes.

UN Women has developed several good practices in engaging other stakeholders to hold member states accountable on their commitments to gender equality and the empowerment of women, in addition to our norm setting and knowledge building, and programmatic work in 81 countries.
UN Women has established global, regional, and national level Civil Society Advisory Groups, has worked through the U.N. Secretary-General’s “UNiTE campaign,” and the newly established “Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity: Picture it!,” and the “HeForShe” Beijing + 20 campaigns to engage the global citizenry on ending violence against women.


Since 1994, the year of the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo when 179 governments committed to a 20-year Programme of Action to deliver human rights-based development, UNFPA has identified significant achievements with regard to women’s rights and effective family planning, but also a dramatic increase in inequality. When we look at what is going on in Africa at the moment we should be more worried.

Not only is there ISIS which presents the women as a dish cloth to use for all the dirty work, which can be used to release sexual urges without any commitments and to try out the validity of the female slaves.

In much of the Arab world, women’s participation in the labour force, out of home, is the lowest in the world, according to the United Nations, while women in politics are a rare breed both in the Middle East and North Africa.
Perhaps one of the few exceptions is Algeria, says Lakshmi Puri, deputy executive director of U.N. Women.

Women protest in Tunis to demand protection of their rights. Credit: Giuliana Sgrena/IPS

Sanam Anderlini, co-founder of the International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) and a senior fellow at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), told IPS:
 “We should steer clear of assuming that the low levels of participation in public spaces – political and economic – are ‘entrenched ‘cultural or religious values.’
“There is no doubt that culture and religion play some role, but the fact remains that over the past 30 years, and particularly in the last decade, we have seen the rising tide of very conservative forces in the region – largely supported by regional governments themselves – that are promoting a regressive agenda towards women.”

Let’s not forget that Egypt had a feminist movement in the 19th century, she added.
Puri listed several factors that negatively affect outcomes for women and girls.

These, she pointed out, include family codes and parallel traditional legal and justice systems that deny women property and inheritance rights, access to productive resources, sanction polygamy and early and child marriages, and put women at a disadvantage in marriage and divorce.
At the same time, it is essential to tackle negative misinterpretations of religion or culture that not only condone but perpetuate myths about inherent inequality between men and women and justify gender-based discrimination.
“As we at UN Women have pointed out, along with many faith-based and other organisations, equality between women and men was propounded centuries ago in the Arab region,”
Puri said.

Gender-based violence is one of the world’s most prevalent human rights abuses, and has one of the greatest degrees of impunity surrounding it,but in Africa this seems to be tried tout into the top.

At the same time, governments along with all stakeholders, including civil society, need to put in place an enabling environment in order to increase women’s participation in all spheres of life, said Puri.

Maternal mortality has dropped by almost 50 percent and more women than ever before have access to both contraception and family planning mechanisms, supporting a decrease in child mortality. Furthermore, women are increasingly accessing education, participating in the work force and engaged in the political process.
Nevertheless, a gross disparity remains between the developed and developing worlds. In a press conference, Dr.  Osotimehin indicated that while the global average likelihood of a woman dying in childbirth is one in 1,300, this increases to one in 39 when evaluating developing nations specifically.

In January 2012, a Tuareg rebellion triggered a series of events that lead to the fall of almost two-thirds of Mali’s territory. The Tuareg rebels were soon ousted by Islamic movements, several of which are linked to Al Qaeda. But military intervention from French, and later African, troops, liberated the north in January 2013 and led to elections here in July of that year.
But hundreds of thousands of displaced persons and refugees have still not returned to their homes.

A year after Mali’s civil war came to an end, there proofed enough reason to be increasingly concerned that the country risked an eventual return to violence, particularly as Malian authorities continued to marginalise the restive north while neglecting to pursue meaningful political and economic reforms. 
Indeed, a lack of equitable opportunity across Mali has caused northern Tuareg separatists to cite political and economic marginalisation as their reason for rebelling in the first place. The Tuaregs have contested Mali’s north since the 1990s, launching four separate rebellions, finally succeeding due to arms obtained from the Libyan Civil War against Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

The Syrian war continued and lots of Europeans found their way to go and fight with the Jihadis. Some of them got their training in Belgium and one of them even was two years in the Belgian army where he learned the trade of weaponry.

In the Turkish camps we can see how people got used to the hopelessness and started to create their own  little world with their own renewed economy.

In one of the last camps to be built by the Turkish government in 2012 Harran is considered the most modern, with a capacity for lodging 14,000 people in 2,000 containers and having its school for 4,700 Syrian children of all ages run by Helit who had been the headmaster of a school in Syria before the outbreak of the armed conflict in Syria in March 2011.

In the meantime Boko Haram has been massing and launching lightning strike attacks on several isolated regions frighthening more than 200 trained teachers so that they refused to take up their posts in Cameroon in 2014.

A group of Nigerian refugees rests in the Cameroon town of Mora, in the Far North Region, after fleeing armed attacks by Boko Haram insurgents on Sep. 13, 2014. Credit: UNHCR / D. Mbaoirem
A group of Nigerian refugees rests in the Cameroon town of Mora, in the Far North Region, after fleeing armed attacks by Boko Haram insurgents on Sep. 13, 2014. Credit: UNHCR / D. Mbaoirem


In 2014 Sima Bahous, chairman of the U.N. Development Group (UNDG) in the Arab States Region already warned:
“The crisis in Syria is a crisis for development across the Arab region,” 
While suffering a major setback in human development, including in education, literacy, health care and life expectancy, Syria has also been singled out as one of the countries responsible for triggering the spreading economic chaos in the region.

As the Egyptian revolution against Hosni Mubarak celebrated its fourth anniversary, having seen the military junta under General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi resurrecting dictatorship under the veneer of “constitutional” legitimacy and on the pretense of fighting “terrorism”, Egypt still seems a problem country where even women are not at all safe when in public places. Often they are gangraped and treated as scum but those who call themselves Muslim, but do such things which are against the will of Allah.
Syria is still ablaze. Yemen has yet to sever the tentacles of the Saleh regime, and Libya remains in the chaotic throes of tribal fissures and militia violence.

Tunisia could have been the only “Arab Spring” country that was transitioning to democracy wisely and pragmatically, though more and more fundamentalist Muslims also bring terror in the country.
In 2013-14 the Salafists, at first wildly successful in channeling the frustration of Tunisia’s poor after the fall of former dictator Ben Ali, became publicly rejected by Ennahdha. After Ennahdha cancelled the national conference of ultra-conservative group Ansar Al Charia in May, and in August 2013 officially labeled it a ‘terrorist group’, average Tunisian Salafists were facing the heat, like those arrested in Metlaoui.

Residents of Tunisia's two main border crossings with Libya have begun a general strike to protest what they say is excessive force by police during clashes at the weekend that left one person dead.
The unrest in Ben Guerdane, near the northern Mediterranean crossing, and Tatouine, near the southern desert crossing, is influenced in part by the ongoing civil war in Libya. It is the first major challenge of Tunisia's new government and underlines the economic and political obstacles to stability and prosperity.
Locals demonstrated after the imposition of new border taxes disrupted the cross border trade the region depends on.
Residents closed schools, businesses and hospitals at the beginning of this month to protest police action at the second weekend.




>
Islamic Party Parts With Islamists
Restive North Languishes in Post-War Mali
Syrian Crisis Threatens Development in Arab World
Mali’s Displaced Still Have Nothing To Return To 
Growing Inequality Mars 20 Years of Women’s Progress
Women Still Walk Two Steps Behind in Arab World
Nigeria’s Nightmare Gives New Momentum to IVAWA
Ending Violence Against Women – A Global Responsibility
Syrian Refugees Between Containers and Tents in Turkey
Boko Haram Insurgents Threaten Cameroon’s Educational Goals


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Tuesday 4 June 2013

Unprecedented violence against protesters and social protest

A festival atmosphere prevailed Monday in Taksim Square on the fourth day of protests set off by a brutal police crackdown of a protest against removing park trees that has spiraled into massive anti-government demonstrations.

The protests have spread to 67 of Turkey's 81 provinces, according to the semi-official Anadolou News Agency. On Monday, a confederation of unions claiming some 240,000 members added its voice to the anti-Erdogan chorus, saying it would go on strike against what it called the "fascism" of Erdogan's ruling party.
Português: Vista da Praça Taksim à noite
Taksim square in peaceful days (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


Erdogan dismissed the street protests as organized by Turkey's opposition and extremist groups and angrily rejected comparisons with the Arab Spring uprisings.
"We already have a spring in Turkey," he said, alluding to the nation's free elections. "But there are those who want to turn this spring into winter.
"Be calm, these will all pass," he said.

Tensions were high near police barricades. People wearing homemade gas masks and carrying sticks made their way down toward the Besiktas neighborhood, which acts as the front line between protester-controlled territory and police. Many had scrawled their blood types on their forearms with magic markers in case they are injured.

The fighting was fiercest in Besiktas near an Ottoman-era Dolmabahce Palace where the prime minister has his Istanbul office. Freelance photographer Dogan Emre was at the scene until about 2 a.m. Monday.
"Police fired hundreds of tear gas (canisters) and they didn't stop," he said. "There were many injured men and women and there weren't any ambulances. Civilians were helping the injured in a mosque. They used the mosque like a hospital."
By midday Monday the subway system had reopened and municipal workers were cleaning the streets. The smell of paint thinner was in the air as anti-government graffiti was scrubbed off storefronts.

The Turkish Medical Association claimed that at least 3,195 people had been injured in clashes Sunday and Monday. Only 26 of them were in serious or critical condition, it said. One protester, Mehmet Ayvalitas, died of his injuries, the association said.

The association reported that the bulk of the injuries occurred in Istanbul, where the protests began before spreading to Ankara, Izmir, Adana and other locations.
International groups including Amnesty International have criticized the police response as excessive. In Ankara Sunday night, a CNN crew witnessed authorities roughing up at least one protester. One police officer kicked a CNN videographer, CNN's Nick Paton Walsh reported, and a CNN crew in Istanbul Sunday also witnessed bloodied protesters.




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Monday 3 June 2013

Growing separation and problems in Turkey


AP567678613414.jpg
A man wears a makeshift gas mask during protests in Turkey on May 31, 2013 (AP)


In the early afternoon Friday, Turkish police surrounded a peaceful group of protesters, and, shortly after the end of Friday prayers, began to volley a slew of tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd. The protesters had been camped in Gezi Park -- a small leafy park wedged near the bustling Taksim square -- for days to prevent the ripping out of trees to make way for the building of a shopping mall. 
The number of protesters “suggest the birth of a new Turkey—a majority middle class that cherishes individual rights and the environment.

Protesters gathered in their thousands in Taksim Square in Istanbul again on Sunday.
The gathering was relatively peaceful after two days of Turkey's fiercest anti-government demonstrations for years.

Youths had lit fires and scuffled with police in parts of Istanbul and Ankara in the early morning but there was little violence by the afternoon.
Thousands of protesters had celebrated on Saturday night after police withdrew from Taksim Square, the focal point of nationwide protests against the government.
What had begun as an outcry against tree-felling in nearby Gezi park on Friday had snowballed into a broader protest against the government's increasingly intolerant, conservative agenda.

Since the first clashes on Friday the unrest has spread to dozens of other cities.
Interior Minister Muammer Guler claimed that 53 citizens and 26 police officers had been injured across the country.
He also said that police had arrested 939 protesters in more than 90 demonstrations in 48 cities.
Officials said a dozen people were being treated in hospital.
But Amnesty International reported two deaths and more than a thousand injured.


Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, who retains vast public support, especially among the conservative rural population that has slowly migrated to the city, all but ensuring victor, has chastised the protests, claiming that the hundreds of people were unfamiliar with Ottoman history, and that the projects would continue unabated. In turn, the police have been using tear gas to forcibly evict the protesters camped in the park. As the use of force has escalated, the protests have morphed from an occupy style movement into a larger-scale rebuke of the AKP's heavy-handed rule. The protests have now spread to Kocaeli, Edirne, Afyon, Eskisehir, Bodrum, Antalya, Aydin, Trabzon, Mugla, Mersin, Ankara, Adana, and Konya.


My Christadelphian brothers where this weekend under attack from two over drunk Turkish men and they broke their apartment door and they just could hold the door until Police came . Police came and blamed them to being in their country. They told them “if you have complaint from them come to Police office” but they suggested them to give up about this.

My brethren thought they could help them but when they went to the Police office they accused them to have stimulated them and released them before their eyes.

The bad news is that guys living in their apartment and they are not safe any more in Turkey. “This is the justice that we have here and our rights when we our refugees in Turkey .” they say. “I don’t blame any one and this world has so many suffering inside but i had so many of them in my life. This is just a beginning for us with this problem . Need your prayer and nothing more …” Mahan From Kayseri-Turkey

It is such a shame that the beautiful work Atta Turk had done is nearly all gone. The separation of state and religion would have been the best guaranty for building up a society where different people and different religions could live peacefully together.

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Find some photographs form the protests in Turkey: Protest


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Thursday 30 May 2013

Relieve the current humanitarian crisis in Syria

At the end of March the Samaritan Fund made a significant donation to an Emergency Appeal by the UK Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) to help relieve the current humanitarian crisis in Syria. This is in addition to the donation made in January to the UNICEF emergency appeal for children in Syria. The DEC appeal provides a grim summary of life in that troubled country: 
Map of the autonomous areas under the French M...
Map of the autonomous areas under the French Mandate of Syria before 1937. Only the entities within the territory of the modern state of Syria are shown, so that Hatay (Alexandretta) -- which was ceded by France to Turkey -- and Lebanon (often considered part of Syria before 1936) are excluded. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Two years of war have had a devastating impact on many Syrian families and have left more than four million people in need of aid. In many parts of the country the health system has effectively collapsed, water supplies have been cut and food is in short supply. In addition, over one million people have now fled to the neighbouring countries of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. Refugees are arriving at camps which are already stretched to capacity, and many families are living in crude shelters they have built themselves, with host families in overcrowded conditions, or in partially finished buildings. The Samaritan Fund is also able to forward donations from ecclesias and brethren and sisters wishing to support this appeal. Donations should be sent to our Treasurer, Brother Ken Smith, Westhaven House, Arleston Way, Shirley, Solihull, West Mids., B90 4LH, with a note earmarking it for the DEC Crisis Appeal for Syria.
 
 Neville Moss (Secretary Samaritan Fund)
 
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