Le Kurdistan irakien indépendant en 2016?
Par Gilles Munier (Afrique Asie – février 2011)
Massoud Barzani ne croit pas que les Arabes et les Turcomans accepteront de rattacher Kirkouk au Kurdistan irakien, ou les territoires qu’il revendique dans les régions de Mossoul et de Diyala.
Le 11 décembre 2010, au congrès du Parti Démocratique Kurde qu’il dirige – en présence de Nouri al-Maliki et de Iyad Allaoui - il a déclaré que le Kurdistan avait « droit à l’autodétermination », c'est-à-dire, tout le monde l’a compris, à l’indépendance.
Parag Khanna, ancien conseiller de Barack Obama en matière de gouvernance mondiale - et des forces spéciales en Irak en 2007 – avance même une date : 2016. Ainsi, dit-il, les champs gaziers du Kurdistan irakien - dont la production est estimée à 9 milliards de m3 par an – pourront être raccordés au futur pipeline Nabucco destiné à réduire la dépendance de l’Europe à l’égard de la Russie. Avec ses 45 milliards de barils de brut de réserve, l’Etat kurde serait alors le 6ème producteur de pétrole mondial.
En attendant, fin décembre 2010, le Gouvernement régional kurde (KRG) a envoyé 10 000 peshmergas à Bagdad pour protéger Jalal Talabani et les officiels kurdes, en cas de coup d’Etat.
dimanche 30 janvier 2011
samedi 29 janvier 2011
No hydropower from Iraq's Mosul dam: official
By Anwar Faruqi
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm/sidANA20110127T155731ZOUC11/No%20Hydropower%20From%20Iraq
BAGHDAD, Jan 27, 2011 (AFP) - Record low water levels at Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam have ground turbines there to a halt, amplifying a power shortage that led to riots last summer, a top official said on Thursday.
Adel Mahdi, advisor to the electricity minister, said water levels at the Mosul dam on the Tigris River had fallen to 298 metres (977 feet) above sea level.
"It is the first time since 1984 when the dam was built that water levels have fallen this low," Mahdi told AFP.
"The installed power generation capacity of Mosul's hydroelectric plant is 1,175 megawatts, but the current production is zero, because the turbines need a minimum water level of 307 metres (1,007 feet) to operate," he added.
He said half of the water to the dam was coming from Turkey, and the rest from Iran and the mountains of Iraq.
The Tigris and Euphrates which gave Iraq its ancient name of Mesopotamia, meaning "land of two rivers," reach Iraq through Turkey.
The Tigris flows directly from Turkey, and the Euphrates goes from Turkey through Syria, then flows to Iraq. Water projects in the two countries have had a severe impact on Iraq.
Mahdi said Iraq also was eyeing with extreme worry Turkey's controversial Aliso dam on the Tigris, work on which began in 2006.
"If Aliso is completed, it will finish with the Tigris in Iraq completely," Mahdi said.
Mahdi said hydropower from Iraq's Haditha dam on the Euphrates was also operating at less than 50 percent of capacity because of water shortages due to irrigation and dam projects in Turkey.
He added that Iraqis will have to endure power outages next summer as well, because additional supply would be matched by an expected 10 percent rise in demand, leaving Iraqis with an average of eight hours of power per day.
Mahdi said the situation would not improve before 2013, when projects in the pipeline now would add another 10,000 megawatts to the grid.
He put overall Iraqi electricity demand at 15,000 megawatts, and supply at 8,500 megawatts.
Due to the shortfall, homes and businesses nationwide suffer daily cuts and rely on private generators to fill the gap, as the war-ravaged country struggles to boost capacity.
Angry Iraqis staged violent demonstrations last summer in several southern cities over power rationing as temperatures reached 54 degrees Celsius (130 degrees Fahrenheit).
Iraq's infrastructure was devastated during the 2003 US-led invasion and more than a decade of sanctions that preceded it.
afq/psr/al
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm/sidANA20110127T155731ZOUC11/No%20Hydropower%20From%20Iraq
BAGHDAD, Jan 27, 2011 (AFP) - Record low water levels at Iraq's largest hydroelectric dam have ground turbines there to a halt, amplifying a power shortage that led to riots last summer, a top official said on Thursday.
Adel Mahdi, advisor to the electricity minister, said water levels at the Mosul dam on the Tigris River had fallen to 298 metres (977 feet) above sea level.
"It is the first time since 1984 when the dam was built that water levels have fallen this low," Mahdi told AFP.
"The installed power generation capacity of Mosul's hydroelectric plant is 1,175 megawatts, but the current production is zero, because the turbines need a minimum water level of 307 metres (1,007 feet) to operate," he added.
He said half of the water to the dam was coming from Turkey, and the rest from Iran and the mountains of Iraq.
The Tigris and Euphrates which gave Iraq its ancient name of Mesopotamia, meaning "land of two rivers," reach Iraq through Turkey.
The Tigris flows directly from Turkey, and the Euphrates goes from Turkey through Syria, then flows to Iraq. Water projects in the two countries have had a severe impact on Iraq.
Mahdi said Iraq also was eyeing with extreme worry Turkey's controversial Aliso dam on the Tigris, work on which began in 2006.
"If Aliso is completed, it will finish with the Tigris in Iraq completely," Mahdi said.
Mahdi said hydropower from Iraq's Haditha dam on the Euphrates was also operating at less than 50 percent of capacity because of water shortages due to irrigation and dam projects in Turkey.
He added that Iraqis will have to endure power outages next summer as well, because additional supply would be matched by an expected 10 percent rise in demand, leaving Iraqis with an average of eight hours of power per day.
Mahdi said the situation would not improve before 2013, when projects in the pipeline now would add another 10,000 megawatts to the grid.
He put overall Iraqi electricity demand at 15,000 megawatts, and supply at 8,500 megawatts.
Due to the shortfall, homes and businesses nationwide suffer daily cuts and rely on private generators to fill the gap, as the war-ravaged country struggles to boost capacity.
Angry Iraqis staged violent demonstrations last summer in several southern cities over power rationing as temperatures reached 54 degrees Celsius (130 degrees Fahrenheit).
Iraq's infrastructure was devastated during the 2003 US-led invasion and more than a decade of sanctions that preceded it.
afq/psr/al
Through the desert to a country with no name, by Wayne Madsen
Through the desert to a country with no name
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
(WMR) – WMR’s Middle East sources are pointing to a looming battle that will be waged for control of the life-sustaining waters of the Nile River when southern Sudan, or whatever it’s name will be, achieves independence from Sudan following the ongoing independence referendum.
Independence for southern Sudan has long been a goal of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her god-daughter, current U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice. The splitting of Sudan has long been in the interests of Israel, which has yearned for a client state in southern Sudan that could put the squeeze on the supply of the Nile’s headwaters to Egypt and northern Sudan. For Rice, a vitriolic hatred for Khartoum and its majority Arab population, has helped the cause of the southern Sudanese. Rice’s views on southern Sudan and Khartoum were partly influenced by two members of the Israeli Lobby who had direct control over U.S. policy toward Sudan as counter-terrorism officials in the Bill Clinton National Security Council: Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin.
The late southern Sudanese leader, John Garang, was one of Albright’s celebrated ex-Marxist “beacons of hope” for Africa, along with other U.S. client dictators in the region as Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia. Congo’s Laurent-Desire Kabila and Garang were among Washington’s “red princes” until they got cross-wise with the CIA and U.S. corporate plans for their respective nations and were removed in assassinations plotted by Langley.
Southern Sudan has not even settled on a name for the new nation. However, any of the proposed names raises the specter of ambitions by the Israelis and other external actors vying for influence in central Africa. One name proposed is the Nile Republic but that would immediately send an alarm to Cairo and Khartoum concerning the long-term control of the Nile’s waters by the new pro-U.S. and pro-Israeli government with its capital in Juba in southern Sudan. Another proposal would call the country “Nilotia,” again, problematic, because of the reference to the Nile River.
Another proposed name, Cush, is taken from the Jewish Bible and refers to an ancient kingdom extending from the Horn of Africa to southern Egypt. There is some informed speculation in the region that the Mossad was behind the recent Christmas car bombing outside an Egyptian Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt in order to stir up tensions between Egypt’s ten percent Coptic minority and its majority Muslim population. Some Middle East commentators pointed out that remotely-controlled car bombs are virtually unknown in Egypt but have been carried out by Mossad in Lebanon, where they are then blamed on Hezbollah.
Mossad is reportedly recruiting agents from the hundreds of southern Sudanese in Israel who have migrated to Israel for employment opportunities. Many of these southern Sudanese refugees, mostly found in Tel Aviv, are expected to return to their new nation.
Southern Egypt, the land that supposedly once included Cush [Cush was the mythical grandson of Noah], is a center for Egypt’s Copts and wider irredentist claims in the region by an independent Cush [or “Kush”] in southern Sudan could further inflame tensions along the entire stretch of the Nile River.
Another proposed names for the new nation in southern Sudan, New Sudan, may stir up tensions on the disputed oil-rich territory on the border of old Sudan and “New Sudan,” the Abyei region. Continued use of “South Sudan” or “Southern Sudan” would give the impression of a divided country like South and North Korea or South and North Yemen. Continued use of Sudan in the name may also create friction as seen in the Balkans between Greece and Macedonia. Greece has insisted that Macedonia be referred to by the United Nations as “FYROM: former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” because of what it believes are irredentist claims by Macedonia on northern Greece.
However, it is the ambitions of Israel that may pose the greater problem for the land of the Nile headwaters. Israel’ expansionist government is fond of using the collection of ancient folk lore and myths known as the “Old Testament” to drive claims to land in the West Bank [which are referred to by the arcane biblical names of Judea and Samaria] but also, increasingly to lands in northern Iraq. On January 28, 2008, WMR reported: “Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical ‘Greater Israel.’ Israel reportedly has plans to re-locate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines. According to Kurdish sources, the Israelis are secretly working with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to carry out the integration of Kurdish and other Jews into areas of Iraq under control of the KRG.
Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni Muslim, and Turkmen have noted that Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan after the U.S. invasion in 2003 that is considered historical Jewish ‘property.’ The Israelis are particularly interested in the shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum in al Qush, the prophet Jonah in Mosul, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Kirkuk. Israelis are also trying to claim Jewish ‘properties’ outside of the Kurdish region, including the shrine of Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifl in Babel Province near Najaf and the tomb of Ezra in al-Uzayr in Misan Province, near Basra, both in southern Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated territory. Israeli expansionists consider these shrines and tombs as much a part of “Greater Israel” as Jerusalem and the West Bank, which they call ‘Judea and Samaria.’”
Oil is also a major factor in the independence of southern Sudan. The new country is rich in oil and with Africa’s oil and other resources now highly sought after by competing nations like the United States, China, and Japan, the traditional strictures issued by the Organization of African Unity upon its founding in 1963 against changing Africa’s colonial borders through secession have been overtaken by new realities and a new organization, the African Union, which has now permitted two nations to secede from established nations: Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993 and now southern Sudan or whatever it will call itself, from Sudan in 2011.
Several nations point to Somaliland, the former British Somaliland that declared itself independent from Somalia in 1991, as the next state in line to achieve recognition. Israeli diplomats have reportedly been in Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital, to talk about Israeli recognition of the state. However, it will be the United States and Britain, both of which favor recognition, that will spur Somaliland’s quest for international recognition and UN membership.
After Somaliland, two other parts of Somalia, Puntland and Jubaland, will likely follow suit.
Some Africa policy habitués of the Council on Foreign Relations and other fronts for the global banking elites are already floating the idea that the Sudan solution may be applied to Africa’s other north-south and Islamic-Christian flash points like Nigeria and Ivory Coast. They reason that if majority Christian south Sudan can separate from largely Muslim north Sudan, why not majority Muslim north Ivory Coast from largely Christian south Ivory Coast and Muslim north Nigeria from Christian south Nigeria? And the Democratic Republic of the Congo has long been seen as a prime candidate for “Balkanization” by the Corporate Council on Africa and its affiliates at the Kissingerian Center for Strategic and International Studies.
As for southern Sudan or whatever it will be, after the likes of John Kerry and George Clooney depart from the photo ops in Juba, they will be replaced by non-governmental organization and international aid agency faceless international bureaucrats, the foot soldiers of the global “misery industry” who migrate from killing fields to war zones in search of new tax-free income, walled compounds with servants and Land Rovers, and duty free shopping gigs. Southern Sudan’s “independence” will be in name only, with the aid agencies and NGOs calling the shots as they do in Haiti today.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2011 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6813.shtml, Jan 18, 2011
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
(WMR) – WMR’s Middle East sources are pointing to a looming battle that will be waged for control of the life-sustaining waters of the Nile River when southern Sudan, or whatever it’s name will be, achieves independence from Sudan following the ongoing independence referendum.
Independence for southern Sudan has long been a goal of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her god-daughter, current U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice. The splitting of Sudan has long been in the interests of Israel, which has yearned for a client state in southern Sudan that could put the squeeze on the supply of the Nile’s headwaters to Egypt and northern Sudan. For Rice, a vitriolic hatred for Khartoum and its majority Arab population, has helped the cause of the southern Sudanese. Rice’s views on southern Sudan and Khartoum were partly influenced by two members of the Israeli Lobby who had direct control over U.S. policy toward Sudan as counter-terrorism officials in the Bill Clinton National Security Council: Steven Simon and Daniel Benjamin.
The late southern Sudanese leader, John Garang, was one of Albright’s celebrated ex-Marxist “beacons of hope” for Africa, along with other U.S. client dictators in the region as Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia. Congo’s Laurent-Desire Kabila and Garang were among Washington’s “red princes” until they got cross-wise with the CIA and U.S. corporate plans for their respective nations and were removed in assassinations plotted by Langley.
Southern Sudan has not even settled on a name for the new nation. However, any of the proposed names raises the specter of ambitions by the Israelis and other external actors vying for influence in central Africa. One name proposed is the Nile Republic but that would immediately send an alarm to Cairo and Khartoum concerning the long-term control of the Nile’s waters by the new pro-U.S. and pro-Israeli government with its capital in Juba in southern Sudan. Another proposal would call the country “Nilotia,” again, problematic, because of the reference to the Nile River.
Another proposed name, Cush, is taken from the Jewish Bible and refers to an ancient kingdom extending from the Horn of Africa to southern Egypt. There is some informed speculation in the region that the Mossad was behind the recent Christmas car bombing outside an Egyptian Coptic church in Alexandria, Egypt in order to stir up tensions between Egypt’s ten percent Coptic minority and its majority Muslim population. Some Middle East commentators pointed out that remotely-controlled car bombs are virtually unknown in Egypt but have been carried out by Mossad in Lebanon, where they are then blamed on Hezbollah.
Mossad is reportedly recruiting agents from the hundreds of southern Sudanese in Israel who have migrated to Israel for employment opportunities. Many of these southern Sudanese refugees, mostly found in Tel Aviv, are expected to return to their new nation.
Southern Egypt, the land that supposedly once included Cush [Cush was the mythical grandson of Noah], is a center for Egypt’s Copts and wider irredentist claims in the region by an independent Cush [or “Kush”] in southern Sudan could further inflame tensions along the entire stretch of the Nile River.
Another proposed names for the new nation in southern Sudan, New Sudan, may stir up tensions on the disputed oil-rich territory on the border of old Sudan and “New Sudan,” the Abyei region. Continued use of “South Sudan” or “Southern Sudan” would give the impression of a divided country like South and North Korea or South and North Yemen. Continued use of Sudan in the name may also create friction as seen in the Balkans between Greece and Macedonia. Greece has insisted that Macedonia be referred to by the United Nations as “FYROM: former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” because of what it believes are irredentist claims by Macedonia on northern Greece.
However, it is the ambitions of Israel that may pose the greater problem for the land of the Nile headwaters. Israel’ expansionist government is fond of using the collection of ancient folk lore and myths known as the “Old Testament” to drive claims to land in the West Bank [which are referred to by the arcane biblical names of Judea and Samaria] but also, increasingly to lands in northern Iraq. On January 28, 2008, WMR reported: “Israeli expansionists, their intentions to take full control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and permanently keep the Golan Heights of Syria and expand into southern Lebanon already well known, also have their eyes on parts of Iraq considered part of a biblical ‘Greater Israel.’ Israel reportedly has plans to re-locate thousands of Kurdish Jews from Israel, including expatriates from Kurdish Iran, to the Iraqi cities of Mosul and Nineveh under the guise of religious pilgrimages to ancient Jewish religious shrines. According to Kurdish sources, the Israelis are secretly working with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to carry out the integration of Kurdish and other Jews into areas of Iraq under control of the KRG.
Kurdish, Iraqi Sunni Muslim, and Turkmen have noted that Kurdish Israelis began to buy land in Iraqi Kurdistan after the U.S. invasion in 2003 that is considered historical Jewish ‘property.’ The Israelis are particularly interested in the shrine of the Jewish prophet Nahum in al Qush, the prophet Jonah in Mosul, and the tomb of the prophet Daniel in Kirkuk. Israelis are also trying to claim Jewish ‘properties’ outside of the Kurdish region, including the shrine of Ezekiel in the village of al-Kifl in Babel Province near Najaf and the tomb of Ezra in al-Uzayr in Misan Province, near Basra, both in southern Iraq’s Shi’a-dominated territory. Israeli expansionists consider these shrines and tombs as much a part of “Greater Israel” as Jerusalem and the West Bank, which they call ‘Judea and Samaria.’”
Oil is also a major factor in the independence of southern Sudan. The new country is rich in oil and with Africa’s oil and other resources now highly sought after by competing nations like the United States, China, and Japan, the traditional strictures issued by the Organization of African Unity upon its founding in 1963 against changing Africa’s colonial borders through secession have been overtaken by new realities and a new organization, the African Union, which has now permitted two nations to secede from established nations: Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993 and now southern Sudan or whatever it will call itself, from Sudan in 2011.
Several nations point to Somaliland, the former British Somaliland that declared itself independent from Somalia in 1991, as the next state in line to achieve recognition. Israeli diplomats have reportedly been in Hargeisa, the Somaliland capital, to talk about Israeli recognition of the state. However, it will be the United States and Britain, both of which favor recognition, that will spur Somaliland’s quest for international recognition and UN membership.
After Somaliland, two other parts of Somalia, Puntland and Jubaland, will likely follow suit.
Some Africa policy habitués of the Council on Foreign Relations and other fronts for the global banking elites are already floating the idea that the Sudan solution may be applied to Africa’s other north-south and Islamic-Christian flash points like Nigeria and Ivory Coast. They reason that if majority Christian south Sudan can separate from largely Muslim north Sudan, why not majority Muslim north Ivory Coast from largely Christian south Ivory Coast and Muslim north Nigeria from Christian south Nigeria? And the Democratic Republic of the Congo has long been seen as a prime candidate for “Balkanization” by the Corporate Council on Africa and its affiliates at the Kissingerian Center for Strategic and International Studies.
As for southern Sudan or whatever it will be, after the likes of John Kerry and George Clooney depart from the photo ops in Juba, they will be replaced by non-governmental organization and international aid agency faceless international bureaucrats, the foot soldiers of the global “misery industry” who migrate from killing fields to war zones in search of new tax-free income, walled compounds with servants and Land Rovers, and duty free shopping gigs. Southern Sudan’s “independence” will be in name only, with the aid agencies and NGOs calling the shots as they do in Haiti today.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2011 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6813.shtml, Jan 18, 2011
jeudi 27 janvier 2011
Hasan Turan, a Turkmen councillor calls for semi-autonomy in Kerkuk
http://www.zawya.com/story.cfm/sidZAWYA20110126090738
By Ammar Ali
Kirkuk - A Turkmen Councillor in Kirkuk said on Tuesday that the Turkmen project to apply for semi-autonomy in the oil-rich, multi-ethnic region under Article 119 of the Iraqi Constitution would resolve the territorial debate being waged between Baghdad and the Kurdistan region.
Hasan Turan told AKnews that he believes the project will win the support of all ethnic components and political blocs on both regional and national levels."This province can become a region...and be a model of economic well-being in Iraq and of peaceful coexistence between the ethnic components found within it," he said.
Kirkuk has long been the subject of a territorial debate between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government. The region is believed to be sitting atop four percent of global oil reserves and is attractive to foreign investors, but exploration has been blocked by security concerns.
By Ammar Ali
Kirkuk - A Turkmen Councillor in Kirkuk said on Tuesday that the Turkmen project to apply for semi-autonomy in the oil-rich, multi-ethnic region under Article 119 of the Iraqi Constitution would resolve the territorial debate being waged between Baghdad and the Kurdistan region.
Hasan Turan told AKnews that he believes the project will win the support of all ethnic components and political blocs on both regional and national levels."This province can become a region...and be a model of economic well-being in Iraq and of peaceful coexistence between the ethnic components found within it," he said.
Kirkuk has long been the subject of a territorial debate between Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government. The region is believed to be sitting atop four percent of global oil reserves and is attractive to foreign investors, but exploration has been blocked by security concerns.
mercredi 26 janvier 2011
Human Rights Watch World Report 2011
World Report:
http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011?tr=y&auid=7674654
Download Full Report > [PDF, 4 MB] Introduction
This 21st annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide. It reflects extensive investigative work undertaken in 2010 by Human Rights Watch staff, usually in close partnership with domestic human rights activists.
With increasing frequency, governments that might exert pressure for human rights improvement are accepting the rationalizations and subterfuges of repressive governments, favoring private “dialogue” and “cooperation” over more hard-nosed approaches. In principle there is nothing wrong with dialogue, but it should not be a substitute for public pressure when the government in question lacks the political will to respect rights. Human Rights Watch calls on governmental supporters of human rights to ensure that the quest for cooperation does not become an excuse for inaction.
Browse chapters by country:
http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011?tr=y&auid=7674654#countries
http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011?tr=y&auid=7674654
Download Full Report > [PDF, 4 MB] Introduction
This 21st annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide. It reflects extensive investigative work undertaken in 2010 by Human Rights Watch staff, usually in close partnership with domestic human rights activists.
With increasing frequency, governments that might exert pressure for human rights improvement are accepting the rationalizations and subterfuges of repressive governments, favoring private “dialogue” and “cooperation” over more hard-nosed approaches. In principle there is nothing wrong with dialogue, but it should not be a substitute for public pressure when the government in question lacks the political will to respect rights. Human Rights Watch calls on governmental supporters of human rights to ensure that the quest for cooperation does not become an excuse for inaction.
Browse chapters by country:
http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011?tr=y&auid=7674654#countries
Turkey’s National Library included in EU digital project
Turkey’s National Library included in EU digital project
ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency Tuesday, January 25, 2011The National Library has become the first Turkish institute to be included in Europe’s digital library project, Europeana. Thanks to the project, Europeans can see many priceless manuscripts and other objects online. ’Inclusion in Europeana is also significant for Turkey’s promotion abroad,’ says the National Library General Director Tuncel Acar
Turkey’s National Library has become be the first Turkish institution included in the European Union’s digital library project, Europeana, the director of the National Library has announced. Nearly 27,050 manuscripts and 10,000 magazines from the National Library’s digital collection will now be available through the database.
The Europeana project aims to integrate the databases of cultural institutes and libraries from around Europe. The project, which began in 2008, is based in the National Library of the Netherlands and receives funding from the European Commission.
National Library General Director Tuncel Acar said Europeana officials contacted with Hacettepe University and asked to include Turkey in the project. The university then held a meeting with the National Library to initiate work on the project, Acar said.
Europeana largely focuses on historic artworks that were digitized in libraries, museums, and research and development centers, according to Acar. “Some 27,000 manuscripts were in the digital platform, but we were not included in Europeana’s website,” he said. “This was a deficiency.” The National Library signed a protocol with Europeana a few days ago and its works are now included in the system, the library director said.
The Turkish artworks and documents included in the database are unique and could prove very important to researchers, Acar said. “These objects do not have copyrights. We have digitized them and shouldn’t other people in the world see Turkey’s priceless manuscripts?”
Acar added that inclusion in the project is prestigious for the National Library. “But the fact that we are the first Turkish institute in the system, this is more prestigious for us. I am sure that other institutes will be included in it following us,” he said.
Acar added that inclusion in the project is prestigious for the National Library. “But the fact that we are the first Turkish institute in the system, this is more prestigious for us. I am sure that other institutes will be included in it following us,” he said.
In addition to manuscripts, printed works will also be digitized for Europeana, said Acar, who pointed to the example of a book of letters from Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror to the Vatican in 1475. “This book is as valuable as a manuscript because it was printed 600 years ago,” he said.
While European researchers may not be familiar with the Turkish National Library’s website, they know Europeana, according to Acar. “When people enter this website, they will also see our manuscripts. This is a big advantage for us,” he said. “Turkish language will also be included in the website. This is why we give importance to Europeana.”
While European researchers may not be familiar with the Turkish National Library’s website, they know Europeana, according to Acar. “When people enter this website, they will also see our manuscripts. This is a big advantage for us,” he said. “Turkish language will also be included in the website. This is why we give importance to Europeana.”
Significant for Turkey’s promotion
Acar emphasized that the National Library’s inclusion in Europeana is significant for Turkey’s promotion abroad. “Imagine that the works at the Topkapı Palace are included in Europeana,” he said. “It would be great.”
Acar emphasized that the National Library’s inclusion in Europeana is significant for Turkey’s promotion abroad. “Imagine that the works at the Topkapı Palace are included in Europeana,” he said. “It would be great.”
He suggested that access to information about Turkey would encourage people to visit the country. “Because what you see on the Internet is just a small object, regardless of its magnificence.”
The only problem with digitization is copyrights, Acar said, adding that publishers oppose digitization because it hurts their profits.
“As soon as you put a best-selling object on the Internet, the sales of this object stop. This is why publishers want copyrights, but this system is not well established in Turkey yet,” he said, unlike in Scandinavian countries where the state pays copyright fees for researchers. “In this way, the right of the writer is protected by the state.”
“As soon as you put a best-selling object on the Internet, the sales of this object stop. This is why publishers want copyrights, but this system is not well established in Turkey yet,” he said, unlike in Scandinavian countries where the state pays copyright fees for researchers. “In this way, the right of the writer is protected by the state.”
Acar added that publishers also make contracts for digital copies when they publish books. “Such e-book companies only began appearing in Turkey recently.”
What is Europeana?
Europeana was launched in 2008 with the goal of making Europe's cultural and scientific heritage accessible to the public. The project is funded by the European Commission. The website, with some 2 million works, enables users to benefit from Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage. It offers content including images, paintings, maps, voice records and newspapers.
The National Library gives visitors a password to access the digital archives. In accordance with protocol, visitors pay for printing to contribute to the library’s funding.
Europeana was launched in 2008 with the goal of making Europe's cultural and scientific heritage accessible to the public. The project is funded by the European Commission. The website, with some 2 million works, enables users to benefit from Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage. It offers content including images, paintings, maps, voice records and newspapers.
The National Library gives visitors a password to access the digital archives. In accordance with protocol, visitors pay for printing to contribute to the library’s funding.
Europeana can be accessed at http://www.europeana.eu/.
© 2009 Hurriyet Daily News URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=0124102043618-2011-01-24
© 2009 Hurriyet Daily News URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=0124102043618-2011-01-24
lundi 24 janvier 2011
Critics alarmed as Iraq’s Maliki centralises power
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has won a court ruling placing independent bodies like the central bank and the electoral agency under the Cabinet, a centralisation of power that critics are calling a "coup".
Maliki's government made the request to the supreme court in December before he was reappointed later that month to a second term, and the court ruling in his favour came through last Tuesday, generating little controversy at first.
The independent agencies affected are supposed to be monitored by parliament according to the constitution, hastily drawn up in the chaotic aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion.
Maliki argued that where the language describing parliament's monitoring powers over the agencies was ambiguous, the bodies should be attached to the Cabinet. The court agreed.
The main agencies affected are the Central Bank of Iraq, the Independent Higher Electoral Commission, anti-corruption watchdog the Integrity Commission and the High Commission for Human Rights.
"The court views that the term 'monitoring by' is not clear enough to place these under parliament's authority, therefore they should be attached to the Cabinet," the ruling said.
The decision alarmed critics who view with suspicion glimpses of authoritarian leanings in some of Maliki's actions.
The democracy bestowed on Iraq by US administrators after Sunni leader Saddam Hussein was ousted is fragile and unique in a region accustomed to strongmen and presidents for life. Its future is murky as US forces prepare to withdraw this year.
"We consider the request of Nouri Maliki to the court to be a coup against the constitution that puts Iraq's democracy on the line," said Haider Al Mulla, a member of parliament and spokesman for the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc.
Criticism of move
Iraqiya, led by ex-premier Iyad Allawi, won the most seats in an election last March but was unable to muster the majority needed to form a government. It ended up a junior partner in the new government formed by Maliki, a Shiite.
Legal experts and analysts decried the supreme court decision, which a judicial spokesman said could not be appealed.
"Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki is seeking more powers to control his government. He wants to have a strong government," said a prominent lawyer, Tariq Harb.
Amman-based researcher Yahya Al Kubaisy of the Iraqi Centre For Strategic Studies called it an "unforgiveable mistake".
"It's a clear bid by Maliki to monopolise powers," he said.
The Cabinet groups more than 40 ministerial positions from various political parties, not all allied to Maliki, following torturous horsetrading over nine months to form the government.
Some officials supported the court ruling, saying ambiguity over parliament's powers of supervision had allowed some of the independent agencies to be hijacked by political interests.
Deputy Central Bank Governor Ahmed Al Buraihi said the decision should have been made a long time back and would not affect the bank's daily operations.
"Aren't central bank decisions of importance to the Cabinet? Shouldn't the Cabinet care about an institution that manages $60 billion and which manages its overseas funds?" he said.
Maliki’s media adviser Ali Al Moussawi said the criticism was an attempt to cast the government in a bad light and undermine its efforts to be strong. Maliki has said a strong government is needed to fight a weakened but still deadly insurgency.
"There was a flaw and conflict between the work of these independent commissions and the work of the executive authority ... the government sought to solve this issue through legal
channels," Moussawi said.
http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=33771
24 January 2011
Maliki's government made the request to the supreme court in December before he was reappointed later that month to a second term, and the court ruling in his favour came through last Tuesday, generating little controversy at first.
The independent agencies affected are supposed to be monitored by parliament according to the constitution, hastily drawn up in the chaotic aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion.
Maliki argued that where the language describing parliament's monitoring powers over the agencies was ambiguous, the bodies should be attached to the Cabinet. The court agreed.
The main agencies affected are the Central Bank of Iraq, the Independent Higher Electoral Commission, anti-corruption watchdog the Integrity Commission and the High Commission for Human Rights.
"The court views that the term 'monitoring by' is not clear enough to place these under parliament's authority, therefore they should be attached to the Cabinet," the ruling said.
The decision alarmed critics who view with suspicion glimpses of authoritarian leanings in some of Maliki's actions.
The democracy bestowed on Iraq by US administrators after Sunni leader Saddam Hussein was ousted is fragile and unique in a region accustomed to strongmen and presidents for life. Its future is murky as US forces prepare to withdraw this year.
"We consider the request of Nouri Maliki to the court to be a coup against the constitution that puts Iraq's democracy on the line," said Haider Al Mulla, a member of parliament and spokesman for the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc.
Criticism of move
Iraqiya, led by ex-premier Iyad Allawi, won the most seats in an election last March but was unable to muster the majority needed to form a government. It ended up a junior partner in the new government formed by Maliki, a Shiite.
Legal experts and analysts decried the supreme court decision, which a judicial spokesman said could not be appealed.
"Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki is seeking more powers to control his government. He wants to have a strong government," said a prominent lawyer, Tariq Harb.
Amman-based researcher Yahya Al Kubaisy of the Iraqi Centre For Strategic Studies called it an "unforgiveable mistake".
"It's a clear bid by Maliki to monopolise powers," he said.
The Cabinet groups more than 40 ministerial positions from various political parties, not all allied to Maliki, following torturous horsetrading over nine months to form the government.
Some officials supported the court ruling, saying ambiguity over parliament's powers of supervision had allowed some of the independent agencies to be hijacked by political interests.
Deputy Central Bank Governor Ahmed Al Buraihi said the decision should have been made a long time back and would not affect the bank's daily operations.
"Aren't central bank decisions of importance to the Cabinet? Shouldn't the Cabinet care about an institution that manages $60 billion and which manages its overseas funds?" he said.
Maliki’s media adviser Ali Al Moussawi said the criticism was an attempt to cast the government in a bad light and undermine its efforts to be strong. Maliki has said a strong government is needed to fight a weakened but still deadly insurgency.
"There was a flaw and conflict between the work of these independent commissions and the work of the executive authority ... the government sought to solve this issue through legal
channels," Moussawi said.
http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=33771
24 January 2011
dimanche 23 janvier 2011
Tony Blair and the death of David Kelly: The Chilcot Inquiry equals "don't mention Dr David Kelly"
Shameful episode in British history
by Stephen Frost
Global Research, January 23, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22921
Chilcot Inquiry equals "don't mention Dr David Kelly" ... an inquest into Dr Kelly's death is required by the laws of this land, and indeed those of Europe ... the evidence would have to be heard under oath at an inquest ... so far, there have been no fewer than five inquiries into the Iraq War (Foreign Affairs Committee, Intelligence and Security Committee, Hutton Inquiry, Butler inquiry, Chilcot Inquiry) but not a single word of evidence at any of these inquiries has been heard under oath ... if evidence were heard under oath there WOULD be a breaking of ranks (perjury is a very serious crime) ... the only chance of hearing evidence under oath would be at an inquest into Dr David Kelly's death ... that is why the call for that inquest is so important ... please read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/07_01_11davidkelly1.pdf
and, for background, please read this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12085257
Everyone who cares about this shameful episode in British history, and who wants to arrive at the truth of the matter, should support the increasingly loud calls for this required (in law) inquest into a death which was inextricably linked to the United Kingdom's waging of illegal (according to both the Geneva Conventions ... "the supreme international war crime" ... and the United Nations Charter) aggressive war on the sovereign state of Iraq.
Stephen Frost is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Frost
by Stephen Frost
Global Research, January 23, 2011
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=22921
Chilcot Inquiry equals "don't mention Dr David Kelly" ... an inquest into Dr Kelly's death is required by the laws of this land, and indeed those of Europe ... the evidence would have to be heard under oath at an inquest ... so far, there have been no fewer than five inquiries into the Iraq War (Foreign Affairs Committee, Intelligence and Security Committee, Hutton Inquiry, Butler inquiry, Chilcot Inquiry) but not a single word of evidence at any of these inquiries has been heard under oath ... if evidence were heard under oath there WOULD be a breaking of ranks (perjury is a very serious crime) ... the only chance of hearing evidence under oath would be at an inquest into Dr David Kelly's death ... that is why the call for that inquest is so important ... please read this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/07_01_11davidkelly1.pdf
and, for background, please read this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12085257
Everyone who cares about this shameful episode in British history, and who wants to arrive at the truth of the matter, should support the increasingly loud calls for this required (in law) inquest into a death which was inextricably linked to the United Kingdom's waging of illegal (according to both the Geneva Conventions ... "the supreme international war crime" ... and the United Nations Charter) aggressive war on the sovereign state of Iraq.
Stephen Frost is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Stephen Frost
samedi 22 janvier 2011
Iraqi government to purchase armored limousines worth $75 million for members of parliament
By Shaymaa Adel
Azzaman,
January 21, 2011
The Iraqi government has decided to spend nearly $75 million from the country's oil revenues to purchase armored limousines, one for each of the 325 members of parliament.
The government says the vehicles are needed because the parliamentarians are targets of attack by insurgents and 'terrorists.
The high salaries and perks senior Iraqi officials get are fueling anger in Iraq and there has been a storm of protest from local media.The benefits have turned them into a special class with body guards, armored vehicles and specially imported power generators to light, heat and cool their homes.
The roads leading to their houses are normally blocked and when driving in Baghdad their armored vehicles are part of a large convoy of cars carrying their contingents of bodyguards.
Lack of transparency is leading to wild guesses about the monthly salaries and other benefits senior officials get in the country.
The government which claims to be democratically elected has no transparency system in place where ordinary Iraqis can have access to the perks, salaries and benefits of senior officials.
Azzaman,
January 21, 2011
The Iraqi government has decided to spend nearly $75 million from the country's oil revenues to purchase armored limousines, one for each of the 325 members of parliament.
The government says the vehicles are needed because the parliamentarians are targets of attack by insurgents and 'terrorists.
The high salaries and perks senior Iraqi officials get are fueling anger in Iraq and there has been a storm of protest from local media.The benefits have turned them into a special class with body guards, armored vehicles and specially imported power generators to light, heat and cool their homes.
The roads leading to their houses are normally blocked and when driving in Baghdad their armored vehicles are part of a large convoy of cars carrying their contingents of bodyguards.
Lack of transparency is leading to wild guesses about the monthly salaries and other benefits senior officials get in the country.
The government which claims to be democratically elected has no transparency system in place where ordinary Iraqis can have access to the perks, salaries and benefits of senior officials.
mardi 18 janvier 2011
IRAK: Bras de fer et révoltes pour de l'électricité
France-Irak Actualité
http://www.france-irak-actualite.com/article-bras-de-fer-et-revoltes-pour-de-l-electricite-65241933.html
Le Kurde Abdul-Rahman Mustafa, gouverneur de Kirkouk et un des artisans du nettoyage ethnique de la ville, s’est engagé dans un bras de fer avec le pouvoir central en décidant, le 17 janvier 2011, de couper l’approvisionnement de Bagdad en électricité*. Il estime que les mégawatts de la centrale de Taza (25 km au sud de Kirkouk) doivent d’abord profiter aux habitants de la cité pétrolière revendiquée par le Gouvernement Régional Kurde (GRK), ou tout du moins faire l’objet d’un partage équitable entre sa région et la capitale.
Il faut dire qu’à Kirkouk, la population menace de se révolter contre le pouvoir central qui ne lui alloue que trois heures d’électricité par jour. Pire, pour Abdul-Rahman Mustafa, des Kurdes nouvellement installés retourneraient au Kurdistan en raison des mauvaises conditions de vie… Et, il se souvient des violentes manifestations contre le manque d’électricité qui ont secoué l’Irak en juin 2010. A Bassora, où la température est étouffante l’été, des milliers de manifestants réclamaient le départ du gouverneur de la province. Ils scandaient : « Aujourd'hui c'est une manifestation pacifique, mais demain ce sera la guerre ». La police avait tiré, faisant au moins deux morts.
Effrayé, Nouri al-Maliki avait dû destituer Karim Wahib, son ministre de l’Electricité, et promettre que le problème serait réglé dans deux ans grâce à l’entrée en service de nouvelles centrales. A Bassora, des contrats ont été signés dans l’urgence. Alstom construira une centrale électrique au fuel, et Schneider huit sous-stations électriques.
Pour ce qui concerne Kirkouk, Nouri al-Maliki pourrait prendre un malin plaisir à laisser le gouverneur se débattre avec ses concitoyens, sachant que dans ce domaine le GRK ne peut pas lui venir en aide. Les effets de la coupure du courant provenant de la centrale de Taza ne se feront sentir que progressivement sur la capitale irakienne qui possède d’autres sources d’approvisionnement.
Source :Northern Iraqi governor cuts Baghdad power (Associated Press – 17/1/11)
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=73995&s2=18
http://www.france-irak-actualite.com/article-bras-de-fer-et-revoltes-pour-de-l-electricite-65241933.html
Le Kurde Abdul-Rahman Mustafa, gouverneur de Kirkouk et un des artisans du nettoyage ethnique de la ville, s’est engagé dans un bras de fer avec le pouvoir central en décidant, le 17 janvier 2011, de couper l’approvisionnement de Bagdad en électricité*. Il estime que les mégawatts de la centrale de Taza (25 km au sud de Kirkouk) doivent d’abord profiter aux habitants de la cité pétrolière revendiquée par le Gouvernement Régional Kurde (GRK), ou tout du moins faire l’objet d’un partage équitable entre sa région et la capitale.
Il faut dire qu’à Kirkouk, la population menace de se révolter contre le pouvoir central qui ne lui alloue que trois heures d’électricité par jour. Pire, pour Abdul-Rahman Mustafa, des Kurdes nouvellement installés retourneraient au Kurdistan en raison des mauvaises conditions de vie… Et, il se souvient des violentes manifestations contre le manque d’électricité qui ont secoué l’Irak en juin 2010. A Bassora, où la température est étouffante l’été, des milliers de manifestants réclamaient le départ du gouverneur de la province. Ils scandaient : « Aujourd'hui c'est une manifestation pacifique, mais demain ce sera la guerre ». La police avait tiré, faisant au moins deux morts.
Effrayé, Nouri al-Maliki avait dû destituer Karim Wahib, son ministre de l’Electricité, et promettre que le problème serait réglé dans deux ans grâce à l’entrée en service de nouvelles centrales. A Bassora, des contrats ont été signés dans l’urgence. Alstom construira une centrale électrique au fuel, et Schneider huit sous-stations électriques.
Pour ce qui concerne Kirkouk, Nouri al-Maliki pourrait prendre un malin plaisir à laisser le gouverneur se débattre avec ses concitoyens, sachant que dans ce domaine le GRK ne peut pas lui venir en aide. Les effets de la coupure du courant provenant de la centrale de Taza ne se feront sentir que progressivement sur la capitale irakienne qui possède d’autres sources d’approvisionnement.
Source :Northern Iraqi governor cuts Baghdad power (Associated Press – 17/1/11)
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=73995&s2=18
lundi 17 janvier 2011
Report: United States War Crimes in Iraq during the First Gulf War
WAR CRIMES
A Report on United States War Crimes Against Iraq to the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal
by Ramsey Clark and Others
Index of Crimes
The United States engaged in a pattern of conduct beginning in or before 1989 intended to lead Iraq into provocations justifying U.S. military action against Iraq and permanent U.S. military domination of the Gulf.
President Bush from August 2, 1990, intended and acted to prevent any interference with his plan to destroy Iraq economically and militarily.
President Bush ordered the destruction of facilities essential to civilian life and economic productivity throughout Iraq.
The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed civilian life, commercial and business districts, schools, hospitals, mosques, churches, shelters, residential areas, historical sites, private vehicles and civilian government offices.
The United States intentionally bombed indiscriminately throughout Iraq.
The United States intentionally bombed and destroyed Iraqi military personnel, used excessive force, killed soldiers seeking to surrender and in disorganized individual flight, often unarmed and far from any combat zones and randomly and wantonly killed Iraqi soldiers and destroyed materiel after the cease fire.
The United States used prohibited weapons capable of mass destruction and inflicting indiscriminate death and unnecessary suffering against both military and civilian targets.
The United States intentionally attacked installations in Iraq containing dangerous substances and forces.
President Bush ordered U.S. forces to invade Panama, resulting in the deaths of 1,000 to 4,000 Panamanians and the destruction of thousands of private dwellings, public buildings, and commercial structures.
President Bush obstructed justice and corrupted United Nations functions as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace and war crimes.
President Bush usurped the Constitutional power of Congress as a means of securing power to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and other high crimes.
The United States waged war on the environment.
President Bush encouraged and aided Shiite Muslims and Kurds to rebel against the government of Iraq causing fratricidal violence, emigration, exposure, hunger and sickness and thousands of deaths. After the rebellion failed, the U.S. invaded and occupied parts of Iraq without authority in order to increase division and hostility within Iraq.
President Bush intentionally deprived the Iraqi people of essential medicines, potable water, food, and other necessities.
The United States continued its assault on Iraq after the cease fire, invading and occupying areas at will.
The United States has violated and condoned violations of human rights, civil liberties and the U.S. Bill of Rights in the United States, in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere to achieve its purpose of military domination.
The United States, having destroyed Iraq's economic base, demands reparations which will permanently impoverish Iraq and threaten its people with famine and epidemic.
President Bush systematically manipulated, controlled, directed, misinformed and restricted press and media coverage to obtain constant support in the media for his military and political goals.
The United States has by force secured a permanent military presence in the Gulf, the control of its oil resources and geopolitical domination of the Arabian Peninsula and Gulf region.
Index
WWW URL: http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-crime.htm
Copyright © 1992 by The Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal
dimanche 16 janvier 2011
Turkmens honour their martyred leaders
Iraqi Turkmens in Ankara held a commemoration ceremony in honour of their martyred leaders
Abdullah Abdurrahman, Necdet Koçak, Adil Şerif and Rıza Demirci
who were executed on January 16, 1980 by the Baath regime.
samedi 15 janvier 2011
TÜRKMEN AYDINLARI TOPLANTISI-11
TÜRKMEN AYDINLARI TOPLANTISI-11
ORSAM tarafından periyodik olarak düzenlenen Türkmen Aydınlar Toplantılarının 11.si 25 Aralık 2010 Cumartesi günü ORSAM konferans salonunda gerçekleştirildi. Türkmen halkının hedeflerinin tartışıldığı toplantıya ilgi oldukça büyüktü.
Türkiye’deki Türkmen dernek ve vakıf temsilcilerinin yanı sıra Türkmeneli Partisi Başkanı Riyaz Sarıkahya ve Cumhurbaşkanımız Abdullah Gül’ün Başdanışmanı Erşat Hürmüzlü de toplantıya iştirak etti. Ayrıca toplantıda Türkiye’de bulunan Türkmen sivil toplum örgütlerinin, fikir ve söylem birliği yapmak, ortak çalışmalar düzenlemek ve birlik, beraberliği pekiştirmek amacıyla bir araya gelerek Türkmeneli Federasyonu’nu kurduğu ve hazırlık komitesinin çalışmalarına başladığı açıklandı.
Oturum başkanlığını ORSAM Danışmanı Habib Hürmüzlü’nün yaptığı toplantıda konuşmacı olarak;
- Kerkük Vakfı Genel Sekreteri Prof. Dr. Suphi SAATÇi,
- Türkmeneli İnsan Hakları Derneği Başkanı Dr. Nefi DEMİRCİ,
- Irak Türkleri Kültür ve Yardımlaşma Derneği Genel Başkanı Mehmet TÜTÜNCÜ,
- Irak Türkmen Birliği ve Dayanışma Derneği Başkanı Dr. Kürşat ÇAVUŞOĞLU,
Müzakereci olarak ise;
- Türkmen Danışma Meclisi Başkanı Prof.Dr. Ümit AKKOYUNLU,
- Türkmeneli İşbirliği ve Kültür Vakfı Yönetim Kurulu Üyesi Prof.Dr. Hişam DEMiRKÖPRÜLÜ,
- Türkmen Sanatçı İsmet HÜRMÜZLÜ,
- Türkmen Aydınlar Derneği Başkanı Fuat TİGİN,
- Türkmen Araştırmacı ve Yazar Cengiz EROĞLU,
- Öğrenci Birliği Temsilcisi Ali HÜSEYİN, katıldı.
Toplantıda bir açılış konuşması yapan Habib Hürmüzlü, Türkmenlerin hedef belirlemede kavramsal sıkıntılar çektiğini ifade ederek, milli kimliğin Türk mü, Türkmen mi? olarak tanımlanmasında sıkıntı olduğunu ancak Türkmen kelimesinin benimsendiğini ifade etmiştir. Türkmenlerin hedef belirlemede sıkıntı çektiği bir diğer kavramın “Türkmeneli” olduğunu dile getiren Hürmüzlü, Türkmeneli kavramının halen Irak’ta yerleşmediğini belirtmiştir. Son olarak Türkmenlerin toplum ya da millet olarak ifade edilmesinin önemini vurgulayan Hürmüzlü, Türkmenler denildiği zaman bireyselliğin ön plana çıktığı, ancak Türkmenlerin toplum olarak ifade edilmesinin daha bütüncül bir nitelik arz ettiğini dile getirmiştir. Bu konuya ilişkin bir açıklama yapan Suphi Saatçi, “Türkmenler” ve “Türkmen Toplumu” kavramının anlamlarının birbirine karşılık geldiğini ifade ederek, yine de “Türkmen Toplumu” ifadesinin milli bir bütünlük içerdiği söylemiştir.
Açılışın ardından ilk sözü alan Nefi Demirci, “Türkmen toplumunun hedefleri var mı?” sorusunu tartışmanın çok önemli fakat incitici olduğuna dikkat çekerken, amaçsız toplumlar yüzlerce şehit vermez ifadesinde bulunmuştur. Buradaki temel meselenin Türkmen toplumunun kendi özgür iradesini kullanıp kullanamadığıyla ilgili olduğunu belirten Demirci, bugünkü yapı içerisinde Türkiye’nin çok büyük etkisinin olduğunu öne sürmüştür. Öte yandan Irak’taki dönemsel değişikliklerin de Türkmenler üzerinde etkili olduğu ifade eden Demirci, 1991’e kadar Türkmenlerin çok fazla örgütlenemediğini, ayrıca Türkmenlerin fiili olarak bölünmüş farklı coğrafyalarda yaşamaları nedeniyle iletişime geçemediğini dile getirmiştir. Hedef açısından Türkmenlerin belirlenmiş bütünlük içeren bir toprak üzerinde yaşamasının önemli olduğunu söyleyen Demirci, Kerkük’ün ayrı bir bölge olması Türkmenlerin diğer yaşadığı bölgelerden ayrılması anlamına geleceğini, ayrıca Telafer ve Tuzhurmatu’nun da vilayet olması gerektiğini, böylece Türkmenlerin bir bölge kurabileceğini belirtmiştir. Gençlerin iyi yetiştirilerek bölgeye gönderilmeleri ve orada hizmet vermelerinin önemli olduğun dile getiren Demirci, Türklüğü korumanın asıl amaç olduğunu ifade etmiştir.
Daha sora sözü alan Suphi Saatçi, dışarıdan biri olarak bakıldığında uluslararası platformda kabul görmüş Türkmenlerin hedeflerini gösteren bir belgenin olmadığına dikkati çekmiştir. Hedefleri toplumların ulusal çıkarlarının benimsediğini söyleyen Saatçi, Türkmenlerin kısa ve uzun vadeli hedefleri olması gerektiğini, gerekirse uzun vadeli hedeflerin dile getirilmeyebileceğini ifade etmiştir. Kısa vadeli hedeflerin de reel politikaya uygun olması gerektiğini belirten Saatçi, bu hedeflerin kucaklayıcı ve toplum tarafından kabul görmesi gerektiğini dile getirmiştir. Toplumun kısa vadeli hedeflerinin de siyasal ve siyaset dışı olarak tanımlanabileceğini vurgulayan Saatçi, hastane, okul yapma gibi hizmetleri siyaset dışı hedefler olarak belirtmiştir. Ayrıca Türkmenlerin tanımlamalar yapması gerektiğini ifade eden Saatçi, Türkmenlerin kendilerini, diğer toplulukları ve mezhepsel farklılıkları nasıl tanımladığının hedef belirlemede önemli olduğunu söylemiştir.
Saatçi’den sonra konuşan Mehmet Tütüncü ise, Türkmenlerin bugüne kadar çok fazla Türkiye’nin gölgesinde kaldığını vurgulamıştır. Türkmenlerin hiçbir zaman Türkiye’den vazgeçemeyeceğini belirten Tütüncü, Türkmenlerin kendi politikalarını belirlemeleri gerektiğine dikkat çekmiştir. Türkmenlerin artık karşı tarafı bırakıp kendilerini ön plana çıkarmaları gerektiğini söyleyen Tütüncü, Türkmenlerin kırmızı çizgiler belirleyerek siyaset yapması gerektiğini belirtmiştir. Türkmenlerin politize olmadığını ifade eden Tütüncü, artık politik düşünülmesi ve diyaloğun arttırılması gerektiğini belirterek, Irak’taki Türkmen varlığının dikkate alınarak hedeflerin belirlenmesi gerektiğini dile getirmiştir.
Bir diğer konuşmacı Kürşat Çavuşoğlu ise, milli hedeflerin bir grubun değil, toplumun paylaştığı değerler olması gerektiğine dikkat çekmiştir. Hedeflerin söylemde kalmaması gerektiğine vurgu yapan Çavuşoğlu, hedeflerin projelendirilmesi ve aşama aşama gerçekleştirilmesi gerektiğini ifade etmiştir. Türkmenlerin en büyük hedefinin demokratik, özgür ve güvenli bir Irak’ta Türk kültürünün korunması ve ana dilde eğitim olduğunu söyleyen Çavuşoğlu, gençlerin yetişmesine çok önem verilmesi gerektiğini belirtmiştir. Türkmenlerin siyaset ekseni olarak Bağdat’ı belirlemesi gerektiğini ifade eden Çavuşoğlu, Türkmenlerin kendi haklarını ancak kendileri alacağını ve bunun silah kadar etkili demokratik yollarla da yapılabileceğini dile getirmiştir. Irak’taki farklı şartlara göre Türkmenlerin çeşitli planlar üretmesi gerektiğini söyleyen Çavuşoğlu, uluslararası alanda ve Türk toplumlarına açılarak çalışmalar yapılmasının önemine değinmiştir.
Konuşmacıların ardından ilk sözü alan müzakerecilerden Hüseyin Ali, Türkmenlerin liderden çok toplum olma vasıflarına ihtiyacı olduğunu belirterek, henüz bilinçli bir Türkmen toplumu oluşamadığını ifade etmiştir. Türkmenlerin en temel hedefinin Türkmen varlığının korunması olduğunu söyleyen Ali, Saddam zulmü altında yaşayan Türkmenlerde bireysel çıkarların korunmasına yönelik duygular geliştiğini bunun da toplum olma bilincini geri plana attığını vurgulamıştır. Türkmen toplumunun aşama aşama bazı projeleri gerçekleştirmesi gerektiğine dikkat çeken Ali, Türkmenlerin sektörel gelişim sağlaması gerektiğini dile getirmiştir. Türkmenlerin hedef belirlerken milli hedef ile siyasal mücadeleyi birbirinden ayırması gerektiğini söyleyen Ali, Türkmenlerin hatalı da olsa kendi kararları alması gerektiğine inandığını ifade etmiştir.
Ümit Akkoyunlu ise, Türkmenlerin İngiliz Anayasası gibi yazılı olmasa da hedefleri olduğunu belirterek, hedef ile amacın birbirine karıştırılmaması gerektiğine dikkat çekmiştir. Amacın hedef için bir araç olduğunu dile getiren Akkoyunlu, hedef için gerekirse ölünebileceğini ifade etmiştir. Hedeflerin değişebileceğini belirten Akkoyunlu, bunun konjonktüre göre belirlenebileceğini söylemiştir. Başkanı olduğu Türkmen Danışma Meclisi çalışmalarından da bahseden Akkoyunlu, birçok uluslar arası toplantıda bu meclisin Türkmenlerin hedeflerini ortaya koyduğunu dile getirmiştir.
Diğer bir müzakereci Hişam Demirköprülü de Türkmenlerin gittikçe geliştiğini ifade ederek, bugünün dünden daha iyi olduğunu ve yarının bugünden daha iyi olacağına inandığını belirtmiştir. “Bir bayrak varsa biz de varız” diye konuşan Demirköprülü, hedefin bayrak olduğunu, bayrağın ne anlama geldiğinin de herkesçe bilindiğini vurgulamıştır. Irak’ta Türk varlığının korunmasının en önemli unsur olduğunu söyleyen Demirköprülü, Türkmenlerin Irak’ta üç kurucu unsurdan biri olarak tanınması gerektiğini belirtmiştir. Türkmenlerin hedeflerini ortaya koyarken bağımsız kanaate sahip olmaları gerektiğini ifade eden Demirköprülü, kararların toplumsal nitelik arz etmesi gerektiğini öne sürmüştür. Sadece kararların alınmasının yeterli olmadığını vurgulayan Demirköprülü, inanarak alınacak kararların uygulamasının önemli olduğunu ifade etmiştir.
İsmet Hürmüzlü de Türkmenlerin tabii olarak bir hedefi olduğunu dile getirerek, bu hedeflerin zamanın şartlarına göre değişebileceğini öne sürmüştür. Hedeflerin Irak’ta yaşayamayan için kolay belirlenebileceğini ifade eden Hürmüzlü, asıl zor olanın Irak’ta yaşamak olduğunu dile getirmiştir. Davada herkese ihtiyaç olduğunu söyleyen Hürmüzlü, her meslek sahibinin mesleğine ve davasına inanarak çalışması halinde belirlenen hedeflere ulaşılabileceğini ifade etmiştir.
“Türkmenlerin hedefi var mı?” sorusunun bile yanlış olduğunu dile getiren Fuat Tigin ise, tarihsel süreç içerisinde Türkmenlerin hedefinde değişiklikler olduğunu söylemiştir. Geçmişte ilk hedefin Türk bayrağını Kerkük’e asmak olduğunu ifade eden Tigin, bu sürecin tarihsel olarak bittiğini, şimdiki hedefin Türkmeneli olduğunu vurgulamıştır. Türkmenlerin de kendi yanlışlıkları olduğunu belirten Tigin, Türkmenleri ne Arap ne de Kürtlerin yönetemeyeceğini söylemiştir. Arap ve Kürtlerin Türkmenlerin kapı komşusu olduğunu dile getiren Tigin, Türkmenlerin bu iki gruplar komşuluk ilişkisinden öte bir bağının bulunmadığını söylemiştir. Türkmenlerin bir arada yaşayacağı bir toprağa ihtiyacı olduğunu ifade eden Tigin, bunun Türkiye’nin desteği ve uluslararası güçlerin kontrolüyle gerçekleşmesi gerektiğine dikkat çekmiştir.
Toplantıda müzakereci olarak son sözü alan Cengiz Eroğlu, Türkmen davasının en büyük sıkıntısının hedef ve fikir birliği bulunmaması olduğunu vurgulamış ve Türkmenlerin bir hedefi olmasına rağmen bu hedef doğrultusunda birlik oluşturamadıklarını belirtmiştir. Mutlaka hedeflerin dönemsel şartlara göre güncellenmesi gerektiğini ifade den Eroğlu, Türkmenler üzerinde ağır bir psikolojik baskı olduğunu öne sürmüştür. Türkiye’nin Irak’la olan ilişkilerine örnek veren Eroğlu, Türkiye’nin Irak’a ekonomik çıkar gözüyle baktığını, bu noktada Türkmenlerin payının yüzde 2 yada 3’ü geçmeyeceğini, Türkmenlerin de bu gerçeğe göre hareket etmesi gerektiğini ifade etmiştir.
Toplantı sonunda, katılımcıların soru ve görüşlerinin alınmasının ardından, bu toplantının konusuna ilişkin olarak başka bir toplantının daha yapılması ortak kararı alınmıştır.
ORSAM tarafından periyodik olarak düzenlenen Türkmen Aydınlar Toplantılarının 11.si 25 Aralık 2010 Cumartesi günü ORSAM konferans salonunda gerçekleştirildi. Türkmen halkının hedeflerinin tartışıldığı toplantıya ilgi oldukça büyüktü.
Türkiye’deki Türkmen dernek ve vakıf temsilcilerinin yanı sıra Türkmeneli Partisi Başkanı Riyaz Sarıkahya ve Cumhurbaşkanımız Abdullah Gül’ün Başdanışmanı Erşat Hürmüzlü de toplantıya iştirak etti. Ayrıca toplantıda Türkiye’de bulunan Türkmen sivil toplum örgütlerinin, fikir ve söylem birliği yapmak, ortak çalışmalar düzenlemek ve birlik, beraberliği pekiştirmek amacıyla bir araya gelerek Türkmeneli Federasyonu’nu kurduğu ve hazırlık komitesinin çalışmalarına başladığı açıklandı.
Oturum başkanlığını ORSAM Danışmanı Habib Hürmüzlü’nün yaptığı toplantıda konuşmacı olarak;
- Kerkük Vakfı Genel Sekreteri Prof. Dr. Suphi SAATÇi,
- Türkmeneli İnsan Hakları Derneği Başkanı Dr. Nefi DEMİRCİ,
- Irak Türkleri Kültür ve Yardımlaşma Derneği Genel Başkanı Mehmet TÜTÜNCÜ,
- Irak Türkmen Birliği ve Dayanışma Derneği Başkanı Dr. Kürşat ÇAVUŞOĞLU,
Müzakereci olarak ise;
- Türkmen Danışma Meclisi Başkanı Prof.Dr. Ümit AKKOYUNLU,
- Türkmeneli İşbirliği ve Kültür Vakfı Yönetim Kurulu Üyesi Prof.Dr. Hişam DEMiRKÖPRÜLÜ,
- Türkmen Sanatçı İsmet HÜRMÜZLÜ,
- Türkmen Aydınlar Derneği Başkanı Fuat TİGİN,
- Türkmen Araştırmacı ve Yazar Cengiz EROĞLU,
- Öğrenci Birliği Temsilcisi Ali HÜSEYİN, katıldı.
Toplantıda bir açılış konuşması yapan Habib Hürmüzlü, Türkmenlerin hedef belirlemede kavramsal sıkıntılar çektiğini ifade ederek, milli kimliğin Türk mü, Türkmen mi? olarak tanımlanmasında sıkıntı olduğunu ancak Türkmen kelimesinin benimsendiğini ifade etmiştir. Türkmenlerin hedef belirlemede sıkıntı çektiği bir diğer kavramın “Türkmeneli” olduğunu dile getiren Hürmüzlü, Türkmeneli kavramının halen Irak’ta yerleşmediğini belirtmiştir. Son olarak Türkmenlerin toplum ya da millet olarak ifade edilmesinin önemini vurgulayan Hürmüzlü, Türkmenler denildiği zaman bireyselliğin ön plana çıktığı, ancak Türkmenlerin toplum olarak ifade edilmesinin daha bütüncül bir nitelik arz ettiğini dile getirmiştir. Bu konuya ilişkin bir açıklama yapan Suphi Saatçi, “Türkmenler” ve “Türkmen Toplumu” kavramının anlamlarının birbirine karşılık geldiğini ifade ederek, yine de “Türkmen Toplumu” ifadesinin milli bir bütünlük içerdiği söylemiştir.
Açılışın ardından ilk sözü alan Nefi Demirci, “Türkmen toplumunun hedefleri var mı?” sorusunu tartışmanın çok önemli fakat incitici olduğuna dikkat çekerken, amaçsız toplumlar yüzlerce şehit vermez ifadesinde bulunmuştur. Buradaki temel meselenin Türkmen toplumunun kendi özgür iradesini kullanıp kullanamadığıyla ilgili olduğunu belirten Demirci, bugünkü yapı içerisinde Türkiye’nin çok büyük etkisinin olduğunu öne sürmüştür. Öte yandan Irak’taki dönemsel değişikliklerin de Türkmenler üzerinde etkili olduğu ifade eden Demirci, 1991’e kadar Türkmenlerin çok fazla örgütlenemediğini, ayrıca Türkmenlerin fiili olarak bölünmüş farklı coğrafyalarda yaşamaları nedeniyle iletişime geçemediğini dile getirmiştir. Hedef açısından Türkmenlerin belirlenmiş bütünlük içeren bir toprak üzerinde yaşamasının önemli olduğunu söyleyen Demirci, Kerkük’ün ayrı bir bölge olması Türkmenlerin diğer yaşadığı bölgelerden ayrılması anlamına geleceğini, ayrıca Telafer ve Tuzhurmatu’nun da vilayet olması gerektiğini, böylece Türkmenlerin bir bölge kurabileceğini belirtmiştir. Gençlerin iyi yetiştirilerek bölgeye gönderilmeleri ve orada hizmet vermelerinin önemli olduğun dile getiren Demirci, Türklüğü korumanın asıl amaç olduğunu ifade etmiştir.
Daha sora sözü alan Suphi Saatçi, dışarıdan biri olarak bakıldığında uluslararası platformda kabul görmüş Türkmenlerin hedeflerini gösteren bir belgenin olmadığına dikkati çekmiştir. Hedefleri toplumların ulusal çıkarlarının benimsediğini söyleyen Saatçi, Türkmenlerin kısa ve uzun vadeli hedefleri olması gerektiğini, gerekirse uzun vadeli hedeflerin dile getirilmeyebileceğini ifade etmiştir. Kısa vadeli hedeflerin de reel politikaya uygun olması gerektiğini belirten Saatçi, bu hedeflerin kucaklayıcı ve toplum tarafından kabul görmesi gerektiğini dile getirmiştir. Toplumun kısa vadeli hedeflerinin de siyasal ve siyaset dışı olarak tanımlanabileceğini vurgulayan Saatçi, hastane, okul yapma gibi hizmetleri siyaset dışı hedefler olarak belirtmiştir. Ayrıca Türkmenlerin tanımlamalar yapması gerektiğini ifade eden Saatçi, Türkmenlerin kendilerini, diğer toplulukları ve mezhepsel farklılıkları nasıl tanımladığının hedef belirlemede önemli olduğunu söylemiştir.
Saatçi’den sonra konuşan Mehmet Tütüncü ise, Türkmenlerin bugüne kadar çok fazla Türkiye’nin gölgesinde kaldığını vurgulamıştır. Türkmenlerin hiçbir zaman Türkiye’den vazgeçemeyeceğini belirten Tütüncü, Türkmenlerin kendi politikalarını belirlemeleri gerektiğine dikkat çekmiştir. Türkmenlerin artık karşı tarafı bırakıp kendilerini ön plana çıkarmaları gerektiğini söyleyen Tütüncü, Türkmenlerin kırmızı çizgiler belirleyerek siyaset yapması gerektiğini belirtmiştir. Türkmenlerin politize olmadığını ifade eden Tütüncü, artık politik düşünülmesi ve diyaloğun arttırılması gerektiğini belirterek, Irak’taki Türkmen varlığının dikkate alınarak hedeflerin belirlenmesi gerektiğini dile getirmiştir.
Bir diğer konuşmacı Kürşat Çavuşoğlu ise, milli hedeflerin bir grubun değil, toplumun paylaştığı değerler olması gerektiğine dikkat çekmiştir. Hedeflerin söylemde kalmaması gerektiğine vurgu yapan Çavuşoğlu, hedeflerin projelendirilmesi ve aşama aşama gerçekleştirilmesi gerektiğini ifade etmiştir. Türkmenlerin en büyük hedefinin demokratik, özgür ve güvenli bir Irak’ta Türk kültürünün korunması ve ana dilde eğitim olduğunu söyleyen Çavuşoğlu, gençlerin yetişmesine çok önem verilmesi gerektiğini belirtmiştir. Türkmenlerin siyaset ekseni olarak Bağdat’ı belirlemesi gerektiğini ifade eden Çavuşoğlu, Türkmenlerin kendi haklarını ancak kendileri alacağını ve bunun silah kadar etkili demokratik yollarla da yapılabileceğini dile getirmiştir. Irak’taki farklı şartlara göre Türkmenlerin çeşitli planlar üretmesi gerektiğini söyleyen Çavuşoğlu, uluslararası alanda ve Türk toplumlarına açılarak çalışmalar yapılmasının önemine değinmiştir.
Konuşmacıların ardından ilk sözü alan müzakerecilerden Hüseyin Ali, Türkmenlerin liderden çok toplum olma vasıflarına ihtiyacı olduğunu belirterek, henüz bilinçli bir Türkmen toplumu oluşamadığını ifade etmiştir. Türkmenlerin en temel hedefinin Türkmen varlığının korunması olduğunu söyleyen Ali, Saddam zulmü altında yaşayan Türkmenlerde bireysel çıkarların korunmasına yönelik duygular geliştiğini bunun da toplum olma bilincini geri plana attığını vurgulamıştır. Türkmen toplumunun aşama aşama bazı projeleri gerçekleştirmesi gerektiğine dikkat çeken Ali, Türkmenlerin sektörel gelişim sağlaması gerektiğini dile getirmiştir. Türkmenlerin hedef belirlerken milli hedef ile siyasal mücadeleyi birbirinden ayırması gerektiğini söyleyen Ali, Türkmenlerin hatalı da olsa kendi kararları alması gerektiğine inandığını ifade etmiştir.
Ümit Akkoyunlu ise, Türkmenlerin İngiliz Anayasası gibi yazılı olmasa da hedefleri olduğunu belirterek, hedef ile amacın birbirine karıştırılmaması gerektiğine dikkat çekmiştir. Amacın hedef için bir araç olduğunu dile getiren Akkoyunlu, hedef için gerekirse ölünebileceğini ifade etmiştir. Hedeflerin değişebileceğini belirten Akkoyunlu, bunun konjonktüre göre belirlenebileceğini söylemiştir. Başkanı olduğu Türkmen Danışma Meclisi çalışmalarından da bahseden Akkoyunlu, birçok uluslar arası toplantıda bu meclisin Türkmenlerin hedeflerini ortaya koyduğunu dile getirmiştir.
Diğer bir müzakereci Hişam Demirköprülü de Türkmenlerin gittikçe geliştiğini ifade ederek, bugünün dünden daha iyi olduğunu ve yarının bugünden daha iyi olacağına inandığını belirtmiştir. “Bir bayrak varsa biz de varız” diye konuşan Demirköprülü, hedefin bayrak olduğunu, bayrağın ne anlama geldiğinin de herkesçe bilindiğini vurgulamıştır. Irak’ta Türk varlığının korunmasının en önemli unsur olduğunu söyleyen Demirköprülü, Türkmenlerin Irak’ta üç kurucu unsurdan biri olarak tanınması gerektiğini belirtmiştir. Türkmenlerin hedeflerini ortaya koyarken bağımsız kanaate sahip olmaları gerektiğini ifade eden Demirköprülü, kararların toplumsal nitelik arz etmesi gerektiğini öne sürmüştür. Sadece kararların alınmasının yeterli olmadığını vurgulayan Demirköprülü, inanarak alınacak kararların uygulamasının önemli olduğunu ifade etmiştir.
İsmet Hürmüzlü de Türkmenlerin tabii olarak bir hedefi olduğunu dile getirerek, bu hedeflerin zamanın şartlarına göre değişebileceğini öne sürmüştür. Hedeflerin Irak’ta yaşayamayan için kolay belirlenebileceğini ifade eden Hürmüzlü, asıl zor olanın Irak’ta yaşamak olduğunu dile getirmiştir. Davada herkese ihtiyaç olduğunu söyleyen Hürmüzlü, her meslek sahibinin mesleğine ve davasına inanarak çalışması halinde belirlenen hedeflere ulaşılabileceğini ifade etmiştir.
“Türkmenlerin hedefi var mı?” sorusunun bile yanlış olduğunu dile getiren Fuat Tigin ise, tarihsel süreç içerisinde Türkmenlerin hedefinde değişiklikler olduğunu söylemiştir. Geçmişte ilk hedefin Türk bayrağını Kerkük’e asmak olduğunu ifade eden Tigin, bu sürecin tarihsel olarak bittiğini, şimdiki hedefin Türkmeneli olduğunu vurgulamıştır. Türkmenlerin de kendi yanlışlıkları olduğunu belirten Tigin, Türkmenleri ne Arap ne de Kürtlerin yönetemeyeceğini söylemiştir. Arap ve Kürtlerin Türkmenlerin kapı komşusu olduğunu dile getiren Tigin, Türkmenlerin bu iki gruplar komşuluk ilişkisinden öte bir bağının bulunmadığını söylemiştir. Türkmenlerin bir arada yaşayacağı bir toprağa ihtiyacı olduğunu ifade eden Tigin, bunun Türkiye’nin desteği ve uluslararası güçlerin kontrolüyle gerçekleşmesi gerektiğine dikkat çekmiştir.
Toplantıda müzakereci olarak son sözü alan Cengiz Eroğlu, Türkmen davasının en büyük sıkıntısının hedef ve fikir birliği bulunmaması olduğunu vurgulamış ve Türkmenlerin bir hedefi olmasına rağmen bu hedef doğrultusunda birlik oluşturamadıklarını belirtmiştir. Mutlaka hedeflerin dönemsel şartlara göre güncellenmesi gerektiğini ifade den Eroğlu, Türkmenler üzerinde ağır bir psikolojik baskı olduğunu öne sürmüştür. Türkiye’nin Irak’la olan ilişkilerine örnek veren Eroğlu, Türkiye’nin Irak’a ekonomik çıkar gözüyle baktığını, bu noktada Türkmenlerin payının yüzde 2 yada 3’ü geçmeyeceğini, Türkmenlerin de bu gerçeğe göre hareket etmesi gerektiğini ifade etmiştir.
Toplantı sonunda, katılımcıların soru ve görüşlerinin alınmasının ardından, bu toplantının konusuna ilişkin olarak başka bir toplantının daha yapılması ortak kararı alınmıştır.
mercredi 12 janvier 2011
Britain's War on Islam
by Stephen Lendman
January 11, 2011
Western vilification of Islam is longstanding, cruel, and unjustifiable. In his 1978 book "Orientalism," Edward Said explained a pattern of Western misinterpretation of the East, especially the Middle East. In "Culture and Imperialism" (1993), he broadened Orientalism’s core argument to show the complex relationships between East and West by referring to colonizers and the colonized, "the familiar (Europe, West, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them)."
He explained Western high-minded/moral superiority notions compared to culturally inferior Muslims. They’re now portrayed as dangerous bomb-throwing terrorists, making them easy prey to wrongfully victimize.
Ramsey Clark is a former US Attorney General and International Action Center (IAC) founder. He’s also a committed activist for social, economic, political, and racial justice. In his new year’s message, he expressed worry and hope looking ahead, saying:
"During the past year, there has been a dangerous upsurge, largely manufactured by the media, in anti-Islamic bigotry. Simultaneously, supposedly, in the name of 'peace,’ " American and Western allies have attacked and occupied non-threatening Muslim countries preemptively and lawlessly.
Notably post-911, they’ve viciously targeted Muslims for political advantage. Throughout America, continental Europe and Britain it rages, harming innocent men and women. With no regard for democratic values and justice, they’re bogusly charged and imprisoned for crimes they neither planned or committed. Yet supportive media reports convict by accusation, the public unaware that supposed threats were lies, yet it repeats endlessly.
No wonder former Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi once told a Kuala Lumpur audience that Muslim vilification was "insensitive and irresponsible," adding that false accusations and hate are "widespread within mainstream Western society. The West should treat Islam the way it wants Islam to treat the West and vice versa. They should accept one another as equals."
Islamophobia in Britain’s Media
A January 2007 Islamic Human Rights Commission report titled, "The British Media and Muslim Representation: The Ideology of Demonisation" corroborated various studies showing UK Muslims believe British media inaccurately portray them and their religion falsely and unjustly.
In 2008, a Channel 4 Television "Dispatches" documentary, based on a Peter Oborne and James Jones "Muslims under Siege" document, revealed how UK media and political figures propagate widespread Islamophobic views, similar to America where Muslims are vilified as terrorists.
Since 2000, UK findings showed most media reports portrayed Muslims as dangerous, backward, irrational, extreme, incompatible with British values, and prone to commit terrorism. Both tabloid and major broadsheets stand guilty, including London Guardian writer Polly Tonybee once saying "I am an Islamophobe and proud of it." The Independent’s Bruce Anderson wrote:
There are widespread fears that Muslim immigrants, reinforced by political pressure and, ultimately, by terrorism, will succeed where Islamic armies failed and change irrevocably the character of European civilisation.
Author Martin Amis in the Times wrote "There is a definite urge – don’t you have it? The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order." The "Muslims under Siege" document explained that:
Islamophobia is a tremendous force for unification in British public culture. It does not merely bring liberal progressives like Polly Toynbee together with curmudgeonly Tory commentators like Bruce Anderson. It also enlists militant atheists with Christian believers.
Moreover, it’s punctuated by political opportunists wrongfully charging Muslims with terrorism, taking advantage of public sentiment against a Muslim presence in Britain. More on that below.
In "Muslims under Siege," Oborne and Jones noted how mainstream society for centuries singled out an alien presence for hatred and opprobrium because they were perceived to threaten British identity. Earlier targets included Catholics, Jews, French, Germans and gays. Today it’s Muslims, public enemy number one as in America.
Wrongfully vilified for their faith, they’re considered fair game by hostile journalists and political opportunists, especially those on the far right. They’ve turned away from maligning Jews and Blacks to now focus on Muslims, but they’re not alone. Mainstream politicians also made Islamaphobia Britain’s remaining socially respectable form of bigotry.
They believe, like British National Party (BNP) chairman Nick Griffin, that:
To even hint of making common cause with Islam is political insanity. We should be positioning ourselves to take advantage for our own political ends of the growing wave of public hostility to Islam currently being whipped up by the mass media.
He and others cited Bat Ye’or’s book titled, "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis," saying Europe is becoming Eurabia where Christians and Jews will be second class citizens to a new Muslim majority. Griffin sees all Europe being Islamified, threatening traditional mainstream culture. It’s a short leap to inciting hysteria about terror attacks to justify Britain’s war on Islam, replicating the same tactics in America and throughout Europe.
Hyping Fear, Citing Terror, Naming Names, and Rounding up the Usual Suspects
Reports regularly appear like a London Independent March 28, 2009 article headlined, "Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists," saying:
Two hundred school children in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists by a police scheme that aims to spot youngsters who are 'vulnerable’ to Islamic radicalisation.
Norman Bettison, Britain’s most senior terror prevention official, said the Association of Chief Police Officers asks teachers, parents and other community figures to spot signs of extreme views, suggesting youngsters are being "groomed" by radicalizers.
What will often manifest itself is what might be regarded as racism and the adoption of bad attitudes towards the West," he explained, adding "We are targeting criminals and would-be terrorists who happen to be cloaking themselves in Islamic rhetoric.
A Home Office spokesman said: "We are committed to stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists or violent extremists," even though Britain, like America, faces no terror threat.
Claiming it is entirely bogus to hype fear for political advantage. As a result, Muslims are wrongfully scapegoated. UK media reports like US ones wrongfully convict them by accusation, the public never the wiser.
An earlier article discussed a bogus London terror plot.
It explained that in America and Britain, government cooperators are paid to lawlessly entrap and testify against targeted Muslims. A so-called London Fertilizer Case used Juniad Babar, a dubious character UK media nicknamed "Supergrass."
In 2004, he agreed to cooperate with FBI agents after being indicted in June. He then pled guilty to four counts of conspiring to and providing and attempting to provide material support or resources to terrorists. A fifth count involved providing funds, goods, or services to benefit Al-Qaeda. In return for a reduced sentence, he copped a plea, requiring him to provide "substantial assistance," including entrapping and testifying against targeted Muslims, ones authorities want to frame and convict.
He was also used in London’s Fertilizer Case. It involved a half-ton of ammonium nitrate, allegedly to blow up a London shopping center, nightclub and other targets. Though charges were entirely bogus, alleged "bombers" were convicted and imprisoned, despite no plot and no crime.
On December 28, New York Times writer, Sheryl Stolberg, headlined, "Obama’s Traveling Team Stays Focused on Terror," saying:
While on vacation, he has "reliable secure voice capability" to maintain contact with his advisors on any breaking news. "In recent weeks, concerns about terrorism in Europe have spiked, with intelligence officials reporting increased chatter about threats."
No matter how bogus, hyping fear in America, across Europe and Britain has become the national sport. Alarms and/or arrests recently were made in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and UK.
On December 29, based on suspicions only, several Muslim men (several entering from Sweden) were arrested for allegedly planning to attack the Jyllands-Posten newspaper offices, the same broadsheet that published 2005 satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. One was later released. No incriminating evidence links them to a plot. Yet they’ll likely face "preliminary" terrorism related charges, Denmark’s PET security police head, Jakob Scharf, saying:
"It is our assessment that this is a militant Islamic group; and they have links to international terrorist networks," even though he has no evidence proving it. Once again, guilty by accusation.
Swedish SAPO security police head, Anders Thornberg, said suspects were surveilled before entering Denmark based on suspicions they were planning a terror attack. Again, suspicions, no evidence.
White House spokesman, Nick Shapiro, approved, saying:
We comment the work done by the Danish and Swedish authorities to disrupt this plot, and will continue to coordinate closely with them and our other European partners on all counterterrorism matters of common concern.
Even through the holiday season, likely innocent Muslims are targeted and charged. No evidence needed, just "suspicions."
On December 27, New York Times writer, Alan Cowell, headlined, "British Police Charge 9 Men, Arrested in Raids, With Preparing for Terrorist Acts," saying:
After a week of coordinated raids in three cities, UK police said they "charged nine of the 12 men they arrested in a case that seemed to be a sign that Europe’s concerns over potential terrorist attacks were spreading."
All arrested were Muslims. Three were uncharged and released. The others appeared in London court accused of "engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism." At issue is an alleged plot to bomb unspecified targets. According to John Yates, Britain’s ranking counterterrorism official:
"The operation (was) in its early stages, so we are unable to go into detail at this time about the suspected offenses," because perhaps none are planned. "However, I believe it was necessary at this time to take action in order to ensure public safety," even though saying so may be a lie, especially after admitting there’s no imminent terrorist attack.
European officials, in fact, said, no specific threats were timed to coincide with the holiday season, despite alleged claims of an Al Qaeda plot at the time. Nonetheless, inflammatory news reports, including from BBC, said the men were planning attacks on the US Embassy and London Stock Exchange "to coincide with the Christmas holidays (and prepared by) reconnoitering the targets." Also that they were using parcel bomb designs from an Al Qaeda newsletter, though no bombs or clear evidence was found.
It’s another case of guilt by accusation based only "on suspicion (no evidence) of the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism," but media reports suggest otherwise.
Cowell said:
…special squads us(ed) sniffer dogs to raid four homes and an Internet cafe. They smashed windows and ceilings in the cafe and, according to witnesses, seized a dozen computers. The antiterrorism team also searched two motel rooms near a military base, where four of the detainees had registered, but the police provided no further information.
AP reported that Sue Hemming, head of the Crown Prosecution Service Counterterrorism Division said:
I have today advised the police that nine men should be charged with conspiracy to cause explosions and with engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism with the intention of either committing acts of terrorism or assisting another to commit such acts.
BBC reported that "Police search(ed) many properties, (but) no explosives have yet been found." When no evidence exists, conspiracy is charged. Also, "conduct in preparation" is meaningless without specifics. If they existed, they’d be stated and reported. Authorities instead said an alleged plot was in "relatively early stages," giving no credibility whatever to the charge. Nonetheless, on December 30, Reuters said a Danish court charged the three men in custody with attempting an act of terrorism.
A Final Comment
On July 7, 2005, BBC reported that three blasts struck the London Underground. Another struck a city double-decker bus (called 7/7). All occurred during the morning rush hour for maximum disruption and casualties. Prime Minister Tony Blair called them terrorist attacks. Four men were later charged. Three were Muslims, the other Jamaican-born. At precisely the same time, an anti-terror drill occurred, simulating the real attacks. It was no coincidence, raising legitimate questions about a false flag.
AP reported that the London Israeli embassy warned Scotland Yard about 7/7 in advance, and Israeli Army Radio said "Scotland Yard had intelligence warning of the attacks a short time before they occurred," but didn’t act or issue alerts. Moreover, Israel’s finance minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, was told to skip a London economic conference where he was scheduled to speak. Other officials were also warned, but not the public. It’s no stretch calling 7/7 a false flag operation to heighten fear and keep Britain and America embroiled in war.
The March 2004 Madrid train bombings occurred three days before Spain’s general elections. With no supportive evidence, they were blamed on Al Qaeda. Another false flag was likely to stoke fear in Spain and throughout the West. Nearly always, Muslims are blamed. This time, Basque separatists were also named, again with no corroborating evidence.
The pattern repeats often. On June 30, 2007, a Jeep Cherokee with propane canisters crashed into Glasgow International Airport’s glass doors. BBC reported that it "was in the middle of the doorway burning, (but) the car didn’t actually explode. There were a few pops and bangs which presumably (was) the petrol."
The usual suspects were named, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists. Prime Minister Gordon Brown then said:
We are dealing, in general term, with people who are associated with Al Qaeda."
The UK Telegraph reported:
An "unknown Al Qaeda terrorist cell (was) thought to be preparing to launch a series of Baghdad-style car bombings."
Other UK and US reports also stoked fear, ABC News saying:
All of this comes just three weeks after what was described as an Al Qaeda graduation ceremony for suicide bombers at a training camp in Pakistan.
Neither Brown or media reports cited evidence, just fear mongering charges. Another false flag was likely to maintain public support for the war on terror that’s also a war on Islam in America, continental Europe and Britain. The latest London arrests look just as bogus, especially with no hard evidence to corroborate charges.
www.uruknet.info?p=73824
January 11, 2011
Western vilification of Islam is longstanding, cruel, and unjustifiable. In his 1978 book "Orientalism," Edward Said explained a pattern of Western misinterpretation of the East, especially the Middle East. In "Culture and Imperialism" (1993), he broadened Orientalism’s core argument to show the complex relationships between East and West by referring to colonizers and the colonized, "the familiar (Europe, West, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them)."
He explained Western high-minded/moral superiority notions compared to culturally inferior Muslims. They’re now portrayed as dangerous bomb-throwing terrorists, making them easy prey to wrongfully victimize.
Ramsey Clark is a former US Attorney General and International Action Center (IAC) founder. He’s also a committed activist for social, economic, political, and racial justice. In his new year’s message, he expressed worry and hope looking ahead, saying:
"During the past year, there has been a dangerous upsurge, largely manufactured by the media, in anti-Islamic bigotry. Simultaneously, supposedly, in the name of 'peace,’ " American and Western allies have attacked and occupied non-threatening Muslim countries preemptively and lawlessly.
Notably post-911, they’ve viciously targeted Muslims for political advantage. Throughout America, continental Europe and Britain it rages, harming innocent men and women. With no regard for democratic values and justice, they’re bogusly charged and imprisoned for crimes they neither planned or committed. Yet supportive media reports convict by accusation, the public unaware that supposed threats were lies, yet it repeats endlessly.
No wonder former Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi once told a Kuala Lumpur audience that Muslim vilification was "insensitive and irresponsible," adding that false accusations and hate are "widespread within mainstream Western society. The West should treat Islam the way it wants Islam to treat the West and vice versa. They should accept one another as equals."
Islamophobia in Britain’s Media
A January 2007 Islamic Human Rights Commission report titled, "The British Media and Muslim Representation: The Ideology of Demonisation" corroborated various studies showing UK Muslims believe British media inaccurately portray them and their religion falsely and unjustly.
In 2008, a Channel 4 Television "Dispatches" documentary, based on a Peter Oborne and James Jones "Muslims under Siege" document, revealed how UK media and political figures propagate widespread Islamophobic views, similar to America where Muslims are vilified as terrorists.
Since 2000, UK findings showed most media reports portrayed Muslims as dangerous, backward, irrational, extreme, incompatible with British values, and prone to commit terrorism. Both tabloid and major broadsheets stand guilty, including London Guardian writer Polly Tonybee once saying "I am an Islamophobe and proud of it." The Independent’s Bruce Anderson wrote:
There are widespread fears that Muslim immigrants, reinforced by political pressure and, ultimately, by terrorism, will succeed where Islamic armies failed and change irrevocably the character of European civilisation.
Author Martin Amis in the Times wrote "There is a definite urge – don’t you have it? The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order." The "Muslims under Siege" document explained that:
Islamophobia is a tremendous force for unification in British public culture. It does not merely bring liberal progressives like Polly Toynbee together with curmudgeonly Tory commentators like Bruce Anderson. It also enlists militant atheists with Christian believers.
Moreover, it’s punctuated by political opportunists wrongfully charging Muslims with terrorism, taking advantage of public sentiment against a Muslim presence in Britain. More on that below.
In "Muslims under Siege," Oborne and Jones noted how mainstream society for centuries singled out an alien presence for hatred and opprobrium because they were perceived to threaten British identity. Earlier targets included Catholics, Jews, French, Germans and gays. Today it’s Muslims, public enemy number one as in America.
Wrongfully vilified for their faith, they’re considered fair game by hostile journalists and political opportunists, especially those on the far right. They’ve turned away from maligning Jews and Blacks to now focus on Muslims, but they’re not alone. Mainstream politicians also made Islamaphobia Britain’s remaining socially respectable form of bigotry.
They believe, like British National Party (BNP) chairman Nick Griffin, that:
To even hint of making common cause with Islam is political insanity. We should be positioning ourselves to take advantage for our own political ends of the growing wave of public hostility to Islam currently being whipped up by the mass media.
He and others cited Bat Ye’or’s book titled, "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis," saying Europe is becoming Eurabia where Christians and Jews will be second class citizens to a new Muslim majority. Griffin sees all Europe being Islamified, threatening traditional mainstream culture. It’s a short leap to inciting hysteria about terror attacks to justify Britain’s war on Islam, replicating the same tactics in America and throughout Europe.
Hyping Fear, Citing Terror, Naming Names, and Rounding up the Usual Suspects
Reports regularly appear like a London Independent March 28, 2009 article headlined, "Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists," saying:
Two hundred school children in Britain, some as young as 13, have been identified as potential terrorists by a police scheme that aims to spot youngsters who are 'vulnerable’ to Islamic radicalisation.
Norman Bettison, Britain’s most senior terror prevention official, said the Association of Chief Police Officers asks teachers, parents and other community figures to spot signs of extreme views, suggesting youngsters are being "groomed" by radicalizers.
What will often manifest itself is what might be regarded as racism and the adoption of bad attitudes towards the West," he explained, adding "We are targeting criminals and would-be terrorists who happen to be cloaking themselves in Islamic rhetoric.
A Home Office spokesman said: "We are committed to stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists or violent extremists," even though Britain, like America, faces no terror threat.
Claiming it is entirely bogus to hype fear for political advantage. As a result, Muslims are wrongfully scapegoated. UK media reports like US ones wrongfully convict them by accusation, the public never the wiser.
An earlier article discussed a bogus London terror plot.
It explained that in America and Britain, government cooperators are paid to lawlessly entrap and testify against targeted Muslims. A so-called London Fertilizer Case used Juniad Babar, a dubious character UK media nicknamed "Supergrass."
In 2004, he agreed to cooperate with FBI agents after being indicted in June. He then pled guilty to four counts of conspiring to and providing and attempting to provide material support or resources to terrorists. A fifth count involved providing funds, goods, or services to benefit Al-Qaeda. In return for a reduced sentence, he copped a plea, requiring him to provide "substantial assistance," including entrapping and testifying against targeted Muslims, ones authorities want to frame and convict.
He was also used in London’s Fertilizer Case. It involved a half-ton of ammonium nitrate, allegedly to blow up a London shopping center, nightclub and other targets. Though charges were entirely bogus, alleged "bombers" were convicted and imprisoned, despite no plot and no crime.
On December 28, New York Times writer, Sheryl Stolberg, headlined, "Obama’s Traveling Team Stays Focused on Terror," saying:
While on vacation, he has "reliable secure voice capability" to maintain contact with his advisors on any breaking news. "In recent weeks, concerns about terrorism in Europe have spiked, with intelligence officials reporting increased chatter about threats."
No matter how bogus, hyping fear in America, across Europe and Britain has become the national sport. Alarms and/or arrests recently were made in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and UK.
On December 29, based on suspicions only, several Muslim men (several entering from Sweden) were arrested for allegedly planning to attack the Jyllands-Posten newspaper offices, the same broadsheet that published 2005 satirical cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. One was later released. No incriminating evidence links them to a plot. Yet they’ll likely face "preliminary" terrorism related charges, Denmark’s PET security police head, Jakob Scharf, saying:
"It is our assessment that this is a militant Islamic group; and they have links to international terrorist networks," even though he has no evidence proving it. Once again, guilty by accusation.
Swedish SAPO security police head, Anders Thornberg, said suspects were surveilled before entering Denmark based on suspicions they were planning a terror attack. Again, suspicions, no evidence.
White House spokesman, Nick Shapiro, approved, saying:
We comment the work done by the Danish and Swedish authorities to disrupt this plot, and will continue to coordinate closely with them and our other European partners on all counterterrorism matters of common concern.
Even through the holiday season, likely innocent Muslims are targeted and charged. No evidence needed, just "suspicions."
On December 27, New York Times writer, Alan Cowell, headlined, "British Police Charge 9 Men, Arrested in Raids, With Preparing for Terrorist Acts," saying:
After a week of coordinated raids in three cities, UK police said they "charged nine of the 12 men they arrested in a case that seemed to be a sign that Europe’s concerns over potential terrorist attacks were spreading."
All arrested were Muslims. Three were uncharged and released. The others appeared in London court accused of "engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism." At issue is an alleged plot to bomb unspecified targets. According to John Yates, Britain’s ranking counterterrorism official:
"The operation (was) in its early stages, so we are unable to go into detail at this time about the suspected offenses," because perhaps none are planned. "However, I believe it was necessary at this time to take action in order to ensure public safety," even though saying so may be a lie, especially after admitting there’s no imminent terrorist attack.
European officials, in fact, said, no specific threats were timed to coincide with the holiday season, despite alleged claims of an Al Qaeda plot at the time. Nonetheless, inflammatory news reports, including from BBC, said the men were planning attacks on the US Embassy and London Stock Exchange "to coincide with the Christmas holidays (and prepared by) reconnoitering the targets." Also that they were using parcel bomb designs from an Al Qaeda newsletter, though no bombs or clear evidence was found.
It’s another case of guilt by accusation based only "on suspicion (no evidence) of the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism," but media reports suggest otherwise.
Cowell said:
…special squads us(ed) sniffer dogs to raid four homes and an Internet cafe. They smashed windows and ceilings in the cafe and, according to witnesses, seized a dozen computers. The antiterrorism team also searched two motel rooms near a military base, where four of the detainees had registered, but the police provided no further information.
AP reported that Sue Hemming, head of the Crown Prosecution Service Counterterrorism Division said:
I have today advised the police that nine men should be charged with conspiracy to cause explosions and with engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism with the intention of either committing acts of terrorism or assisting another to commit such acts.
BBC reported that "Police search(ed) many properties, (but) no explosives have yet been found." When no evidence exists, conspiracy is charged. Also, "conduct in preparation" is meaningless without specifics. If they existed, they’d be stated and reported. Authorities instead said an alleged plot was in "relatively early stages," giving no credibility whatever to the charge. Nonetheless, on December 30, Reuters said a Danish court charged the three men in custody with attempting an act of terrorism.
A Final Comment
On July 7, 2005, BBC reported that three blasts struck the London Underground. Another struck a city double-decker bus (called 7/7). All occurred during the morning rush hour for maximum disruption and casualties. Prime Minister Tony Blair called them terrorist attacks. Four men were later charged. Three were Muslims, the other Jamaican-born. At precisely the same time, an anti-terror drill occurred, simulating the real attacks. It was no coincidence, raising legitimate questions about a false flag.
AP reported that the London Israeli embassy warned Scotland Yard about 7/7 in advance, and Israeli Army Radio said "Scotland Yard had intelligence warning of the attacks a short time before they occurred," but didn’t act or issue alerts. Moreover, Israel’s finance minister at the time, Benjamin Netanyahu, was told to skip a London economic conference where he was scheduled to speak. Other officials were also warned, but not the public. It’s no stretch calling 7/7 a false flag operation to heighten fear and keep Britain and America embroiled in war.
The March 2004 Madrid train bombings occurred three days before Spain’s general elections. With no supportive evidence, they were blamed on Al Qaeda. Another false flag was likely to stoke fear in Spain and throughout the West. Nearly always, Muslims are blamed. This time, Basque separatists were also named, again with no corroborating evidence.
The pattern repeats often. On June 30, 2007, a Jeep Cherokee with propane canisters crashed into Glasgow International Airport’s glass doors. BBC reported that it "was in the middle of the doorway burning, (but) the car didn’t actually explode. There were a few pops and bangs which presumably (was) the petrol."
The usual suspects were named, Al Qaeda and Islamic terrorists. Prime Minister Gordon Brown then said:
We are dealing, in general term, with people who are associated with Al Qaeda."
The UK Telegraph reported:
An "unknown Al Qaeda terrorist cell (was) thought to be preparing to launch a series of Baghdad-style car bombings."
Other UK and US reports also stoked fear, ABC News saying:
All of this comes just three weeks after what was described as an Al Qaeda graduation ceremony for suicide bombers at a training camp in Pakistan.
Neither Brown or media reports cited evidence, just fear mongering charges. Another false flag was likely to maintain public support for the war on terror that’s also a war on Islam in America, continental Europe and Britain. The latest London arrests look just as bogus, especially with no hard evidence to corroborate charges.
www.uruknet.info?p=73824
Davutoğlu's delayed visit to Iraq
HASAN KANBOLAT
h.kanbolat@todayszaman.com
Davutoğlu’s delayed visit to Iraq
Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s visit to Iraq, which was scheduled for Jan. 10-11, 2011, has been postponed for now. The minister is expected to visit the country in the next couple of weeks. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to make a visit to Iraq after Davutoğlu.
There are few hotels in Baghdad, and they are currently undergoing maintenance for the Arab League summit that will be held in Baghdad in March, causing Davutoğlu to keep his delegation at home. Aside from this, Baghdad continues to be the scene of political developments.
The last time Davutoğlu visited Iraq was on Nov. 7, 2010. His visit was going to be an expression of support for the new Iraqi government. During his visit, the preliminary work of the High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council was going to be carried out. Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai have already visited Iraq to lend their support to the Iraqi government. Last week Iran’s new foreign affairs minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, made his first visit among Arab countries to Iraq. In this respect, Salehi’s visit shows where Iraq stands with regard to Iran’s foreign policy.
Davutoğlu had plans to visit Baghdad, Najaf and Kirkuk. No senior level Turkish diplomat other than Turkey’s ambassador in Baghdad, Murat Özcelik, has visited Najaf, which is one of the most important Shiite centers in Iraq and the place where Hazrati Ali’s tomb is believed to be located. Davutoğlu was going to be the first Turkish minister to visit Najaf.
Davutoğlu’s planned visit to Kirkuk is also very important. Turkish politicians were not able to visit Kirkuk between the years 1976 and 2006. A delegation of Turkish military officers, politicians and diplomats visited Kirkuk for the first time in 1937 after the Sadabat Pact was signed.
Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel visited the city in 1967.
During his visit, Demirel met with a 10-person delegation from the Turkmen Brotherhood Association. The leaders of the delegation, retired Col. Abdullah Abdurrahman and Dr. Necdet Koçak, as well as Dr. Rıza Demirci and Adil Sharif were executed at the order of Saddam in 1980.
President Cevdet Sunay studied at the Kirkuk Military High School in 1910 visited Kirkuk in 1969.
Demirel visited Kirkuk for a second time when he went to attend the opening ceremony of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline in 1972. President Fahri Korutürk went to Kirkuk in 1976 and visited the Kirkuk Turkish Cultural Center, where he addressed close to 10,000 Turkmen.
After Korutürk’s visit, wide-scale arrests took place among Turkmen in Kirkuk, and Turkmen were constantly subject to assimilation until the Saddam Hussein regime collapsed. The most recent visit to Kirkuk by Turkish officials was in 2006, when a delegation from the Turkish Parliament, which included Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Balıkesir deputy Turhan Çömez and Republican People’s Party (CHP) Tokat deputy Orhan Ziya Diren, visited the city.
Davutoğlu’s Kirkuk visit will be the first visit by a senior-level Turkish official since 1976.
Kirkuk is one of the most important oil fields in Iraq and the center of the Turkmen population in Iraq. It is an important center for Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq. Following 2003, Kurdish groups started intensifying efforts to take control of the city. The central Iraqi government is having trouble countering the desire of Kurds to dominate the city.
Turkey wants to open a third embassy in Kirkuk, after Basra and Arbil. Reopening the Turkish Cultural Center, which is affiliated with the Turkish Ministry of Culture but was closed down during Saddam’s reign, will be an important development in terms of healing the wounds of Kirkuk Turkmen who were oppressed under Saddam’s rule.
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-232097-davutoglus-delayed-visit-to-iraq.html
h.kanbolat@todayszaman.com
Davutoğlu’s delayed visit to Iraq
Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s visit to Iraq, which was scheduled for Jan. 10-11, 2011, has been postponed for now. The minister is expected to visit the country in the next couple of weeks. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected to make a visit to Iraq after Davutoğlu.
There are few hotels in Baghdad, and they are currently undergoing maintenance for the Arab League summit that will be held in Baghdad in March, causing Davutoğlu to keep his delegation at home. Aside from this, Baghdad continues to be the scene of political developments.
The last time Davutoğlu visited Iraq was on Nov. 7, 2010. His visit was going to be an expression of support for the new Iraqi government. During his visit, the preliminary work of the High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council was going to be carried out. Egyptian Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Jordanian Prime Minister Samir Rifai have already visited Iraq to lend their support to the Iraqi government. Last week Iran’s new foreign affairs minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, made his first visit among Arab countries to Iraq. In this respect, Salehi’s visit shows where Iraq stands with regard to Iran’s foreign policy.
Davutoğlu had plans to visit Baghdad, Najaf and Kirkuk. No senior level Turkish diplomat other than Turkey’s ambassador in Baghdad, Murat Özcelik, has visited Najaf, which is one of the most important Shiite centers in Iraq and the place where Hazrati Ali’s tomb is believed to be located. Davutoğlu was going to be the first Turkish minister to visit Najaf.
Davutoğlu’s planned visit to Kirkuk is also very important. Turkish politicians were not able to visit Kirkuk between the years 1976 and 2006. A delegation of Turkish military officers, politicians and diplomats visited Kirkuk for the first time in 1937 after the Sadabat Pact was signed.
Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel visited the city in 1967.
During his visit, Demirel met with a 10-person delegation from the Turkmen Brotherhood Association. The leaders of the delegation, retired Col. Abdullah Abdurrahman and Dr. Necdet Koçak, as well as Dr. Rıza Demirci and Adil Sharif were executed at the order of Saddam in 1980.
President Cevdet Sunay studied at the Kirkuk Military High School in 1910 visited Kirkuk in 1969.
Demirel visited Kirkuk for a second time when he went to attend the opening ceremony of the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline in 1972. President Fahri Korutürk went to Kirkuk in 1976 and visited the Kirkuk Turkish Cultural Center, where he addressed close to 10,000 Turkmen.
After Korutürk’s visit, wide-scale arrests took place among Turkmen in Kirkuk, and Turkmen were constantly subject to assimilation until the Saddam Hussein regime collapsed. The most recent visit to Kirkuk by Turkish officials was in 2006, when a delegation from the Turkish Parliament, which included Justice and Development Party (AK Party) Balıkesir deputy Turhan Çömez and Republican People’s Party (CHP) Tokat deputy Orhan Ziya Diren, visited the city.
Davutoğlu’s Kirkuk visit will be the first visit by a senior-level Turkish official since 1976.
Kirkuk is one of the most important oil fields in Iraq and the center of the Turkmen population in Iraq. It is an important center for Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq. Following 2003, Kurdish groups started intensifying efforts to take control of the city. The central Iraqi government is having trouble countering the desire of Kurds to dominate the city.
Turkey wants to open a third embassy in Kirkuk, after Basra and Arbil. Reopening the Turkish Cultural Center, which is affiliated with the Turkish Ministry of Culture but was closed down during Saddam’s reign, will be an important development in terms of healing the wounds of Kirkuk Turkmen who were oppressed under Saddam’s rule.
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-232097-davutoglus-delayed-visit-to-iraq.html
mardi 11 janvier 2011
Occupation of Iraq destroys women's lives
By Serene Assir
More than seven years after the US- and UK-led invasion of their country, Iraqis continue to endure an occupation that has systematically violated their rights to life, dignity, self-determination and economic development. The occupation has been and continues to be so destructive and so violent that one in four Iraqis are estimated to be dead or displaced. One in five Iraqis has been made a refugee or an internally displaced person (IDP).
In particular, the role and situation of women and girls has declined precipitously compared to prior to the invasion. From torture to rape to assassination, from forced separation for mixed couples to women and their children enduring the death of their husbands and fathers, from a loss of educational rights to expulsion from the workplace and public life, and from sexual slavery to forced flight or enforced disappearance, for the past seven years Iraqi women and girls have endured the most terrifying of fates. They are living at the mercy of an occupation that both seeks to terrorize them into submission, and to use them as objects for the terrorization of the whole of Iraqi society.
No security
Dr. Souad al-Azzawi, who authored a study on Iraqi women entitled "Deterioration of Iraq women's rights and living conditions under occupation," published in January 2008, told The Electronic Intifada: "The most significant loss that Iraqi women have suffered is a complete and total loss of security." She explained that the loss of security entails both the loss of physical security and "the economic, social and civil securities Iraqi women were so accustomed to prior to the occupation."
In fact, it appears that the loss of physical and other aspects of security have a Catch-22 effect on the lives of women. The lack of legal and institutional support for women by an Iraqi puppet government which is at best ineffective has meant that in the vast majority of cases the criminals, mafias, militias, death squads, US occupation forces and Iraqi police and army forces committing crimes against women are not held accountable for their actions. This has in turn encouraged the development of a situation characterized by lawlessness and criminality, in which women are prime targets. As such, many women have been forced to leave their jobs and quit their education, for fear that they may be the next victim of rape or assassination.
According to al-Azzawi, Iraqi women have had to resort to "the relative security of their homes," often taking their children out of school too if they were the only parent able to accompany them there and back.
Echoing al-Azzawi's words, an Iraqi refugee speaking on condition of anonymity said that she was forced to leave Iraq precisely because of death threats issued against her by militias who had found out she was actively working as a journalist seeking to expose the injustices taking place against women. Had she stayed in Iraq, the threats likely would have been fulfilled.
"Not only was I being targeted, but I was also without protection, given that Iraq has no government to speak of," she explained. She added that "I could have been killed at any moment, and no one would have been held accountable for it. It was for one reason alone that I fled: because I had no choice."
Criminal levels of poverty
The figures speak for themselves. According to a dossier on Iraqi women published by the BRussells Tribunal, prior to the invasion 72 percent of working women were government employees. The dismantlement of state institutions immediately after the invasion meant that these women became unemployed. Instability and ineffective institutions in Iraq render it impossible to pinpoint the total rate of unemployment today, but estimates range from 15 percent to 70 percent. The few stable jobs that exist, according to the dossier, are usually given to men, though a growing number of female-headed households means that many women need to take extraordinary risks in order to try and cater for their children ("Iraqi Women Under Occupation" [PDF]).
The same economic insecurity affects Iraqi refugee families. Aseer al-Madaien, the Protection Officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - Syria, says that out of 139,000 registered Iraqis in Syria, 28 percent are households headed by women. In total, estimates for the total number of displaced Iraqis, including both refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), range up to almost five million, according to the international organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, which believes that there are 2.5 million Iraqi IDPs and 2.3 million refugees.
IDPs suffer both extreme vulnerability and insecurity, as they seek refuge in the homes of relatives and friends, said Hana Al Bayaty, member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Many of them are the victims of ethnic cleansing, whereby a country once free of sectarianism is increasingly witnessing the targeting of persons on the basis of their religion or ethnicity. Mixed marriages in these conditions are all too often broken up by force, according to a report published by the UN-affiliated IRIN humanitarian news agency ("Mixed Marriages confront Sectarian Violence," 6 April 2006).
The majority of Iraqi refugees have headed to neighboring countries Syria and Jordan, where they are not allowed to work, as they are legally considered "guests." In 2007, the UNHCR reported that an estimated 40 percent of Iraq's middle class had fled the country. Not only have almost half of those with the qualifications and experience to help rebuild Iraq left the country, but they are also suffering from the most extreme form of disempowerment, according to Al Bayaty.
Al-Azzawi explained that "For the educated middle class, this situation is shattering as everything we have worked so hard to earn and build up over decades of war and sanctions is being brought down by military force before our very eyes."
Unable to work legally, it is often refugee women who take upon themselves the burden and the risk of working as they are less likely to be asked for documentation on the streets of Amman, Damascus and beyond, and they thereby hope to be less likely to be deported.
Unemployment levels in Syria and Jordan, however, mean that even illegal work is hard to come by. It is because of this that the phenomenon of forced prostitution is becoming increasingly rife. The growing problem of sex trafficking is partly caused by poverty.
According to al-Azzawi, the lack of work permits, qualifications and opportunities "leads some women to prostitution in order to feed their children and their families." In other cases, the sheer lack of protection faced by some women push them into prostitution. Problems in such cases include threats of kidnapping issued against women should they not accept to prostitute themselves. These threats are issued especially against women whose husbands are dead or missing. "The women of Iraq live in a very fragile situation as a result of the American occupation's crimes," al-Azzawi said.
Death, torture and enforced disappearance
No statistical reference can adequately convey the sheer suffering experienced by the people of Iraq, as a whole, from the genocidal sanctions period through the invasion and ensuing occupation. Current estimates place the number of dead at anywhere between 1.5 million and 2.5 million.
According to Iraqi human rights analyst and advocate Asma al-Haidari, "Up to one million Iraqis have been forcibly disappeared." Behind the enforced disappearances are the US army, Iraqi government forces including the army and police, and al-Qaeda and other militias that operate freely across the country, according to a presentation given by Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee, at a London conference organized by the International Committee Against Disappearances on 9-12 December 2010. According to calculations by Adriaensens, based on UNHCR statistics, 20 percent of internally displaced Iraqi families have reported cases of missing children ("Enforced Disappearance. The Missing Persons of Iraq" [PDF]).
It is also understood that, given that there is a very real and justified fear of retaliation against families who report the disappearances of their loved ones, many others suffer in silence. Thousands of detainees, some of them in secret, illegal prisons, according to al-Azzawi, are women. Estimates published in 2008 by the Iraqi Parliamentary Women's Committee and the Iraqi Ministry of Women's Affairs indicate that between one and two million Iraqi women are widows.
Inside Iraq's jails, legal or not, cases of torture and sexual abuse have been widely reported. Revelations by WikiLeaks published on 22 October 2010 were described by Iraqi activists such as Sabah al-Mukhtar, president of the Arab Lawyers' Union, as just "the tip of the iceberg," as he said on an Al-Jazeera English interview on 24 October. According to al-Azzawi, women are usually jailed on trumped-up charges of terrorism, where there is no proof and while there is no adequate legal system to ensure their right to a fair trial. "Many are awaiting execution," al-Azzawi added.
Further, when it is the man who disappears, whether he is dead or missing, women and their families have to fend for themselves in a hellish situation. Out of this horror comes forth one of the more obtuse trends, inexistent in Iraq up until 2003, of families giving their daughters away in early marriage for fear of being unable to adequately support them.
One immediate effect of this phenomenon is the fact that girls aged 13, 14 and 15 sold into early marriage lose their right to education. As figures currently stand, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report published on 1 September 2010, for every 100 boys in school, there are only 89 girls ("Girls Education in Iraq 2010" [PDF]).
"Lots of those little girls are very bright and are willing to finish their education if they are allowed to," said al-Azzawi.
Worse still is the flourishing of what are known as "pleasure marriages." These are short-term marriages conducted out of court, whereby separation is also very simple. It is a practice that Iraqi women's rights advocates describe as linked to prostitution, because of the wrongful abuse of the practice by men in power, often blackmailing fathers into giving their daughters away in a "pleasure marriage," and also because once a girl or a woman has married in this way and has received alimony for her short-term commitment, she will find it very difficult to reintegrate back into her family.
"Many girls are forced into prostitution and ultimately sex trafficking this way," al-Azzawi added.
Forced Islamization of society
It is deeply telling that Iraqi society is becoming forcibly Islamized by militias tied to the Iraqi puppet government, which is dependent upon the United States for its survival. Meanwhile, Washington claims to be fighting a war on Islamic terrorism. The reality, as is frequently the case, is the precise opposite. Previously a secular state, Iraqi society is becoming forcibly transformed into a theocracy. In such systems, women and girls inevitably lose.
The results of the proliferation of fundamentalist militias are varied. While reports of Christian women veiling in order to avoid attacks are troubling in the Iraqi context, what is potentially much worse is that the notion of an Iraqi state for all its citizens is fast disappearing. Not only does this mean that Iraqi girls are no longer safe on the streets; it also means that if the occupation fulfills its goals, Iraqi "career women" may be a thing of the past.
Al-Azzawi notes that "Economically the country has lost a huge, skilled working force, which is exactly what the occupation planned to do, and the lives of millions of working women and families were shattered."
Considering that there is not a single right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the US occupation has not violated -- as the International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq team found when working in 2009 to bring a legal case for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against four US presidents and four UK prime ministers -- it is amazing yet encouraging that the US occupation's goals have failed.
Not only is the US administration under President Barack Obama still battling to maintain control over a country whose people resist in the name of their dignity and their love for Iraq, but many of the most outspoken and brilliant advocates for Iraqis' rights in general are in fact women.
"I have much hope for Iraq," said human rights advocate Asma al-Haidari, "Nothing will make me lose hope."
A US soldier stands over an Iraqi woman in her home, May 2008. (Jason Fudge)
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11723.shtml
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11723.shtml
January 10, 2011
More than seven years after the US- and UK-led invasion of their country, Iraqis continue to endure an occupation that has systematically violated their rights to life, dignity, self-determination and economic development. The occupation has been and continues to be so destructive and so violent that one in four Iraqis are estimated to be dead or displaced. One in five Iraqis has been made a refugee or an internally displaced person (IDP).
In particular, the role and situation of women and girls has declined precipitously compared to prior to the invasion. From torture to rape to assassination, from forced separation for mixed couples to women and their children enduring the death of their husbands and fathers, from a loss of educational rights to expulsion from the workplace and public life, and from sexual slavery to forced flight or enforced disappearance, for the past seven years Iraqi women and girls have endured the most terrifying of fates. They are living at the mercy of an occupation that both seeks to terrorize them into submission, and to use them as objects for the terrorization of the whole of Iraqi society.
No security
Dr. Souad al-Azzawi, who authored a study on Iraqi women entitled "Deterioration of Iraq women's rights and living conditions under occupation," published in January 2008, told The Electronic Intifada: "The most significant loss that Iraqi women have suffered is a complete and total loss of security." She explained that the loss of security entails both the loss of physical security and "the economic, social and civil securities Iraqi women were so accustomed to prior to the occupation."
In fact, it appears that the loss of physical and other aspects of security have a Catch-22 effect on the lives of women. The lack of legal and institutional support for women by an Iraqi puppet government which is at best ineffective has meant that in the vast majority of cases the criminals, mafias, militias, death squads, US occupation forces and Iraqi police and army forces committing crimes against women are not held accountable for their actions. This has in turn encouraged the development of a situation characterized by lawlessness and criminality, in which women are prime targets. As such, many women have been forced to leave their jobs and quit their education, for fear that they may be the next victim of rape or assassination.
According to al-Azzawi, Iraqi women have had to resort to "the relative security of their homes," often taking their children out of school too if they were the only parent able to accompany them there and back.
Echoing al-Azzawi's words, an Iraqi refugee speaking on condition of anonymity said that she was forced to leave Iraq precisely because of death threats issued against her by militias who had found out she was actively working as a journalist seeking to expose the injustices taking place against women. Had she stayed in Iraq, the threats likely would have been fulfilled.
"Not only was I being targeted, but I was also without protection, given that Iraq has no government to speak of," she explained. She added that "I could have been killed at any moment, and no one would have been held accountable for it. It was for one reason alone that I fled: because I had no choice."
Criminal levels of poverty
The figures speak for themselves. According to a dossier on Iraqi women published by the BRussells Tribunal, prior to the invasion 72 percent of working women were government employees. The dismantlement of state institutions immediately after the invasion meant that these women became unemployed. Instability and ineffective institutions in Iraq render it impossible to pinpoint the total rate of unemployment today, but estimates range from 15 percent to 70 percent. The few stable jobs that exist, according to the dossier, are usually given to men, though a growing number of female-headed households means that many women need to take extraordinary risks in order to try and cater for their children ("Iraqi Women Under Occupation" [PDF]).
The same economic insecurity affects Iraqi refugee families. Aseer al-Madaien, the Protection Officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) - Syria, says that out of 139,000 registered Iraqis in Syria, 28 percent are households headed by women. In total, estimates for the total number of displaced Iraqis, including both refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), range up to almost five million, according to the international organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, which believes that there are 2.5 million Iraqi IDPs and 2.3 million refugees.
IDPs suffer both extreme vulnerability and insecurity, as they seek refuge in the homes of relatives and friends, said Hana Al Bayaty, member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Many of them are the victims of ethnic cleansing, whereby a country once free of sectarianism is increasingly witnessing the targeting of persons on the basis of their religion or ethnicity. Mixed marriages in these conditions are all too often broken up by force, according to a report published by the UN-affiliated IRIN humanitarian news agency ("Mixed Marriages confront Sectarian Violence," 6 April 2006).
The majority of Iraqi refugees have headed to neighboring countries Syria and Jordan, where they are not allowed to work, as they are legally considered "guests." In 2007, the UNHCR reported that an estimated 40 percent of Iraq's middle class had fled the country. Not only have almost half of those with the qualifications and experience to help rebuild Iraq left the country, but they are also suffering from the most extreme form of disempowerment, according to Al Bayaty.
Al-Azzawi explained that "For the educated middle class, this situation is shattering as everything we have worked so hard to earn and build up over decades of war and sanctions is being brought down by military force before our very eyes."
Unable to work legally, it is often refugee women who take upon themselves the burden and the risk of working as they are less likely to be asked for documentation on the streets of Amman, Damascus and beyond, and they thereby hope to be less likely to be deported.
Unemployment levels in Syria and Jordan, however, mean that even illegal work is hard to come by. It is because of this that the phenomenon of forced prostitution is becoming increasingly rife. The growing problem of sex trafficking is partly caused by poverty.
According to al-Azzawi, the lack of work permits, qualifications and opportunities "leads some women to prostitution in order to feed their children and their families." In other cases, the sheer lack of protection faced by some women push them into prostitution. Problems in such cases include threats of kidnapping issued against women should they not accept to prostitute themselves. These threats are issued especially against women whose husbands are dead or missing. "The women of Iraq live in a very fragile situation as a result of the American occupation's crimes," al-Azzawi said.
Death, torture and enforced disappearance
No statistical reference can adequately convey the sheer suffering experienced by the people of Iraq, as a whole, from the genocidal sanctions period through the invasion and ensuing occupation. Current estimates place the number of dead at anywhere between 1.5 million and 2.5 million.
According to Iraqi human rights analyst and advocate Asma al-Haidari, "Up to one million Iraqis have been forcibly disappeared." Behind the enforced disappearances are the US army, Iraqi government forces including the army and police, and al-Qaeda and other militias that operate freely across the country, according to a presentation given by Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee, at a London conference organized by the International Committee Against Disappearances on 9-12 December 2010. According to calculations by Adriaensens, based on UNHCR statistics, 20 percent of internally displaced Iraqi families have reported cases of missing children ("Enforced Disappearance. The Missing Persons of Iraq" [PDF]).
It is also understood that, given that there is a very real and justified fear of retaliation against families who report the disappearances of their loved ones, many others suffer in silence. Thousands of detainees, some of them in secret, illegal prisons, according to al-Azzawi, are women. Estimates published in 2008 by the Iraqi Parliamentary Women's Committee and the Iraqi Ministry of Women's Affairs indicate that between one and two million Iraqi women are widows.
Inside Iraq's jails, legal or not, cases of torture and sexual abuse have been widely reported. Revelations by WikiLeaks published on 22 October 2010 were described by Iraqi activists such as Sabah al-Mukhtar, president of the Arab Lawyers' Union, as just "the tip of the iceberg," as he said on an Al-Jazeera English interview on 24 October. According to al-Azzawi, women are usually jailed on trumped-up charges of terrorism, where there is no proof and while there is no adequate legal system to ensure their right to a fair trial. "Many are awaiting execution," al-Azzawi added.
Further, when it is the man who disappears, whether he is dead or missing, women and their families have to fend for themselves in a hellish situation. Out of this horror comes forth one of the more obtuse trends, inexistent in Iraq up until 2003, of families giving their daughters away in early marriage for fear of being unable to adequately support them.
One immediate effect of this phenomenon is the fact that girls aged 13, 14 and 15 sold into early marriage lose their right to education. As figures currently stand, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report published on 1 September 2010, for every 100 boys in school, there are only 89 girls ("Girls Education in Iraq 2010" [PDF]).
"Lots of those little girls are very bright and are willing to finish their education if they are allowed to," said al-Azzawi.
Worse still is the flourishing of what are known as "pleasure marriages." These are short-term marriages conducted out of court, whereby separation is also very simple. It is a practice that Iraqi women's rights advocates describe as linked to prostitution, because of the wrongful abuse of the practice by men in power, often blackmailing fathers into giving their daughters away in a "pleasure marriage," and also because once a girl or a woman has married in this way and has received alimony for her short-term commitment, she will find it very difficult to reintegrate back into her family.
"Many girls are forced into prostitution and ultimately sex trafficking this way," al-Azzawi added.
Forced Islamization of society
It is deeply telling that Iraqi society is becoming forcibly Islamized by militias tied to the Iraqi puppet government, which is dependent upon the United States for its survival. Meanwhile, Washington claims to be fighting a war on Islamic terrorism. The reality, as is frequently the case, is the precise opposite. Previously a secular state, Iraqi society is becoming forcibly transformed into a theocracy. In such systems, women and girls inevitably lose.
The results of the proliferation of fundamentalist militias are varied. While reports of Christian women veiling in order to avoid attacks are troubling in the Iraqi context, what is potentially much worse is that the notion of an Iraqi state for all its citizens is fast disappearing. Not only does this mean that Iraqi girls are no longer safe on the streets; it also means that if the occupation fulfills its goals, Iraqi "career women" may be a thing of the past.
Al-Azzawi notes that "Economically the country has lost a huge, skilled working force, which is exactly what the occupation planned to do, and the lives of millions of working women and families were shattered."
Considering that there is not a single right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the US occupation has not violated -- as the International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq team found when working in 2009 to bring a legal case for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against four US presidents and four UK prime ministers -- it is amazing yet encouraging that the US occupation's goals have failed.
Not only is the US administration under President Barack Obama still battling to maintain control over a country whose people resist in the name of their dignity and their love for Iraq, but many of the most outspoken and brilliant advocates for Iraqis' rights in general are in fact women.
"I have much hope for Iraq," said human rights advocate Asma al-Haidari, "Nothing will make me lose hope."
Serene Assir is a Lebanese independent writer and journalist based in Spain.
vendredi 7 janvier 2011
Rise, fall and rise again of the Turkish Empire
A Turkey as resurgent as at any time since its Ottoman glory is projecting influence through a turbulent Iraq, from the boomtowns of the...
By ANTHONY SHADID
The New York Times
ZAKHO, Iraq —
A Turkey as resurgent as at any time since its Ottoman glory is projecting influence through a turbulent Iraq, from the boomtowns of the north to the oil fields near southernmost Basra, in a show of power that illustrates its growing heft across an Arab world long suspicious of it.
Its ascent here, in an arena contested by the United States and Iran, may prove its greatest success so far, as it emerges from the shadow of its alliance with the West to chart an often assertive and independent foreign policy.
Turkey's influence is greater in northern Iraq and broader, although not deeper, than that of Iran, with its ties to the Shiite leadership, in the rest of the country. While the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, losing more than 4,400 troops there, Turkey now exerts what may prove a more lasting legacy — so-called soft power, the assertion of influence through culture, education and business.
"This is the trick — we are very much welcome here," said Ali Riza Ozcoskun, who heads Turkey's consulate in Basra, one of four diplomatic posts it has in Iraq.
Turkey's newfound influence here has played out along an axis that runs roughly from Zakho in the north to Basra, by way of the capital, Baghdad. For a country that once saw the Kurdish region in northern Iraq as a threat, Turkey has embarked on the beginning of what might be called a beautiful friendship.
In the Iraqi capital, it promoted a secular coalition that it helped build, drawing the ire of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, along the way. For Iraq's abundant oil and gas, it has positioned itself as the country's gateway to Europe, while helping to satisfy its own growing energy needs.
Just as the Justice and Development Party of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reoriented politics to appease a growing fundamentalist Islamic influence in Turkey, it is doing so in Iraq, with repercussions for the rest of the region.
While some Turkish officials recoil at the notion of neo-Ottomanism — an orientation of Turkey away from Europe and toward an empire that once included parts of three continents — the country's process of globalization and attention to the markets of the Middle East is upsetting assumptions that only U.S. power is decisive. Turkey has committed itself here to economic integration, seeing its future in at least an echo of its past.
"No one is trying to overtake Iraq or one part of Iraq," said Aydin Selcen, who heads the consulate in Erbil, which opened this year. "But we are going to integrate with this country. Roads, railroads, airports, oil and gas pipelines — there will be a free flow of people and goods between the two sides of the border."
By the border, he meant Zakho and the 26-lane checkpoint of Ibrahim Khalil, where 1,500 trucks pass daily, bringing Turkish building materials, clothes, furniture, food and pretty much everything else that fills shops in northern Iraq.
Trade doubled
The economic boom they have helped propel has reverberated across Iraq. Trade between the two countries amounted to about $6 billion in 2010, almost double what it was in 2008, Turkish officials say. They project that, in two or three years, Iraq may be Turkey's biggest export market.
"This is the very beginning," said Rushdi Said, the flamboyant Iraqi Kurdish chairman of Adel United, a company involved in everything from mining to sprawling housing projects. "All of the world has started fighting over Iraq. They're fighting for the money."
In some ways, he is a reincarnation of an Ottoman merchant, at ease speaking Kurdish, Turkish, Persian and Arabic. He has thought of contacting Angelina Jolie, "maybe Arnold and Sylvester, too," to interest them in some of his 11 projects across Iraq to build 100,000 villas and apartments at the cost of a few billion dollars. So far, though, his best partner is Ibrahim Tatlises, a Turkish-born Kurdish singer, whose portrait adorns Said's advertisement for his project the Plain of Paradise.
"The villas are ready!" Tatlises says in TV ads. "Come! Come! Come!"
Erbil, the Kurdish capital in the north where Said lives, has become the nexus of Turkish politics and business, made possible by the sharp edge of military power.
About 15,000 Turks work in Erbil and other parts of the north, and Turkish companies, more than 700 of them, make up two-thirds of all foreign companies in the region. Travel requirements have been lifted, and the consulate in Erbil issues as many as 300 visas a day.
Turkish officials talk about transforming the region into something akin to the U.S.-Mexican border, an ambiguous frontier. While Turkey sees integration as a way to tap nascent markets in the Middle East, some Kurdish officials have seen it more emotionally, as a way to bind them to
Kurdish regions in neighboring countries.
Kurds represent nearly 20 percent of Turkey's population, and Turkish governments have long viewed calls for their self-determination as a fundamental threat to the state. The same went for Kurds in Iraq, whose autonomy might provide an inspiration to Turkey's own minority.
Over the smoldering reservations of the Turkish military, which has carried out repeated coups against elected governments, Erdogan has undertaken halting steps to reconcile with Turkey's own Kurds. Less publicly, U.S. officials in late 2007 began to support Turkish military action against Kurdish rebels in Turkey who have sought refuge in northern Iraq.
Influence increases
On the road from Erbil to Baghdad, its pop culture is everywhere.
Posters of Turkish TV serials — from "Muhannad and Nour" to "Forbidden Love" — sell by the tens of thousands. The action series "Valley of the Wolves" is a sensation, the lead actor lending his name to cafes. Turkey's political influence in Baghdad is no less widespread. Unlike Iran and the United States, it has cultivated ties with virtually every bloc in the country, although relations with al-Maliki have proved difficult at times. (At one point, his officials tried to revoke the Turkish ambassador's credentials to enter Baghdad's security enclave known as the Green Zone. "A misunderstanding," Turkish diplomats called it.)
Turkish diplomats have managed to reach out to unlikely partners, namely the followers of the Iran-affiliated populist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Most of al-Sadr's bloc of lawmakers traveled to the Turkish capital, Ankara, for training in parliamentary protocol. In October, Turks were the only diplomats to attend a commemoration the Sadrists held at Baghdad University.
Turkey strongly backed the fortunes of a coalition led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite politician who enjoys the support of factions dominated by Sunnis, the rival branch of Islam. More than any other country, Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors included, it is credited with forging the coalition in the first place.
In southernmost Iraq, the old Ottoman quarter in faded Basra is crumbling. Its windows are patched with cinder block, although the stench of sewage still seeps in. Across town is the Basra International Fair Ground, built by Turks and opened in June. Three fairs have already been held there, including one organized in November for Iraq's petroleum industry.
Oil is still king in Iraq, and as much as anything else, underlines Turkey's interests here. The pipeline from Kirkuk, Iraq, to Ceyhan, Turkey, already carries roughly 25 percent of Iraq's oil exports.
The Turks have signed on to the ambitious $11 billion Nabucco gas-pipeline project, which may bypass Russia and bring Iraqi gas to Europe. Turkish companies have two stakes in oil contracts, and two more in gas projects, potentially worth billions of dollars. In a land of oil, no place has more than Basra.
Turkish ships offshore provide 250 megawatts of electricity a day. Turkish companies have refurbished the Sheraton Hotel in Basra and are helping to build a 65,000-seat stadium. The Turkish national air carrier is planning four flights a week from Istanbul to Basra; only one is offered now, by Iraqi Airways. Vortex, Crazy Dance and other amusement rides in Basraland are Turkish. So are the sweets sold there.
"No one is working here except Turkey," said Ozcoskun, the Turkish consul in Basra.
By ANTHONY SHADID
The New York Times
ZAKHO, Iraq —
A Turkey as resurgent as at any time since its Ottoman glory is projecting influence through a turbulent Iraq, from the boomtowns of the north to the oil fields near southernmost Basra, in a show of power that illustrates its growing heft across an Arab world long suspicious of it.
Its ascent here, in an arena contested by the United States and Iran, may prove its greatest success so far, as it emerges from the shadow of its alliance with the West to chart an often assertive and independent foreign policy.
Turkey's influence is greater in northern Iraq and broader, although not deeper, than that of Iran, with its ties to the Shiite leadership, in the rest of the country. While the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, losing more than 4,400 troops there, Turkey now exerts what may prove a more lasting legacy — so-called soft power, the assertion of influence through culture, education and business.
"This is the trick — we are very much welcome here," said Ali Riza Ozcoskun, who heads Turkey's consulate in Basra, one of four diplomatic posts it has in Iraq.
Turkey's newfound influence here has played out along an axis that runs roughly from Zakho in the north to Basra, by way of the capital, Baghdad. For a country that once saw the Kurdish region in northern Iraq as a threat, Turkey has embarked on the beginning of what might be called a beautiful friendship.
In the Iraqi capital, it promoted a secular coalition that it helped build, drawing the ire of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, along the way. For Iraq's abundant oil and gas, it has positioned itself as the country's gateway to Europe, while helping to satisfy its own growing energy needs.
Just as the Justice and Development Party of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has reoriented politics to appease a growing fundamentalist Islamic influence in Turkey, it is doing so in Iraq, with repercussions for the rest of the region.
While some Turkish officials recoil at the notion of neo-Ottomanism — an orientation of Turkey away from Europe and toward an empire that once included parts of three continents — the country's process of globalization and attention to the markets of the Middle East is upsetting assumptions that only U.S. power is decisive. Turkey has committed itself here to economic integration, seeing its future in at least an echo of its past.
"No one is trying to overtake Iraq or one part of Iraq," said Aydin Selcen, who heads the consulate in Erbil, which opened this year. "But we are going to integrate with this country. Roads, railroads, airports, oil and gas pipelines — there will be a free flow of people and goods between the two sides of the border."
By the border, he meant Zakho and the 26-lane checkpoint of Ibrahim Khalil, where 1,500 trucks pass daily, bringing Turkish building materials, clothes, furniture, food and pretty much everything else that fills shops in northern Iraq.
Trade doubled
The economic boom they have helped propel has reverberated across Iraq. Trade between the two countries amounted to about $6 billion in 2010, almost double what it was in 2008, Turkish officials say. They project that, in two or three years, Iraq may be Turkey's biggest export market.
"This is the very beginning," said Rushdi Said, the flamboyant Iraqi Kurdish chairman of Adel United, a company involved in everything from mining to sprawling housing projects. "All of the world has started fighting over Iraq. They're fighting for the money."
In some ways, he is a reincarnation of an Ottoman merchant, at ease speaking Kurdish, Turkish, Persian and Arabic. He has thought of contacting Angelina Jolie, "maybe Arnold and Sylvester, too," to interest them in some of his 11 projects across Iraq to build 100,000 villas and apartments at the cost of a few billion dollars. So far, though, his best partner is Ibrahim Tatlises, a Turkish-born Kurdish singer, whose portrait adorns Said's advertisement for his project the Plain of Paradise.
"The villas are ready!" Tatlises says in TV ads. "Come! Come! Come!"
Erbil, the Kurdish capital in the north where Said lives, has become the nexus of Turkish politics and business, made possible by the sharp edge of military power.
About 15,000 Turks work in Erbil and other parts of the north, and Turkish companies, more than 700 of them, make up two-thirds of all foreign companies in the region. Travel requirements have been lifted, and the consulate in Erbil issues as many as 300 visas a day.
Turkish officials talk about transforming the region into something akin to the U.S.-Mexican border, an ambiguous frontier. While Turkey sees integration as a way to tap nascent markets in the Middle East, some Kurdish officials have seen it more emotionally, as a way to bind them to
Kurdish regions in neighboring countries.
Kurds represent nearly 20 percent of Turkey's population, and Turkish governments have long viewed calls for their self-determination as a fundamental threat to the state. The same went for Kurds in Iraq, whose autonomy might provide an inspiration to Turkey's own minority.
Over the smoldering reservations of the Turkish military, which has carried out repeated coups against elected governments, Erdogan has undertaken halting steps to reconcile with Turkey's own Kurds. Less publicly, U.S. officials in late 2007 began to support Turkish military action against Kurdish rebels in Turkey who have sought refuge in northern Iraq.
Influence increases
On the road from Erbil to Baghdad, its pop culture is everywhere.
Posters of Turkish TV serials — from "Muhannad and Nour" to "Forbidden Love" — sell by the tens of thousands. The action series "Valley of the Wolves" is a sensation, the lead actor lending his name to cafes. Turkey's political influence in Baghdad is no less widespread. Unlike Iran and the United States, it has cultivated ties with virtually every bloc in the country, although relations with al-Maliki have proved difficult at times. (At one point, his officials tried to revoke the Turkish ambassador's credentials to enter Baghdad's security enclave known as the Green Zone. "A misunderstanding," Turkish diplomats called it.)
Turkish diplomats have managed to reach out to unlikely partners, namely the followers of the Iran-affiliated populist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Most of al-Sadr's bloc of lawmakers traveled to the Turkish capital, Ankara, for training in parliamentary protocol. In October, Turks were the only diplomats to attend a commemoration the Sadrists held at Baghdad University.
Turkey strongly backed the fortunes of a coalition led by Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite politician who enjoys the support of factions dominated by Sunnis, the rival branch of Islam. More than any other country, Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbors included, it is credited with forging the coalition in the first place.
In southernmost Iraq, the old Ottoman quarter in faded Basra is crumbling. Its windows are patched with cinder block, although the stench of sewage still seeps in. Across town is the Basra International Fair Ground, built by Turks and opened in June. Three fairs have already been held there, including one organized in November for Iraq's petroleum industry.
Oil is still king in Iraq, and as much as anything else, underlines Turkey's interests here. The pipeline from Kirkuk, Iraq, to Ceyhan, Turkey, already carries roughly 25 percent of Iraq's oil exports.
The Turks have signed on to the ambitious $11 billion Nabucco gas-pipeline project, which may bypass Russia and bring Iraqi gas to Europe. Turkish companies have two stakes in oil contracts, and two more in gas projects, potentially worth billions of dollars. In a land of oil, no place has more than Basra.
Turkish ships offshore provide 250 megawatts of electricity a day. Turkish companies have refurbished the Sheraton Hotel in Basra and are helping to build a 65,000-seat stadium. The Turkish national air carrier is planning four flights a week from Istanbul to Basra; only one is offered now, by Iraqi Airways. Vortex, Crazy Dance and other amusement rides in Basraland are Turkish. So are the sweets sold there.
"No one is working here except Turkey," said Ozcoskun, the Turkish consul in Basra.
mardi 4 janvier 2011
IRAQ: THE TURKMENS WANT PEACE
The Turkmens want peace
04 January 2011
Iraqi Turkmen Front Representative Hicran Kazancı said that they did not want a separate government in Iraq, that a new phase with the Kurdish government had begun.
Iraqi Turkmen Front Turkey Representative Hicran Kazancı said that the idea that the Turkmen desire a separate government in Iraq did not reflect the truth. "We are a part of Iraq" said H.Kazancı and underlined that in comparison with the past, the relations with Kurds was now closer.
Iraqi Turkmen Front Turkey Representative Hicran Kazancı shared his views with Taraf newspaper about the investment of Turkish businessmen in Iraq, relations with Kurds and the democratic initiation process in Turkey.
Hicran Kazancı said that the view that the Turkmen desire a separate government in Iraq did not reflect the truth, he said "We are a part of Iraq".
Hicran Kazancı underlined that a new phase in the relationship with Kurds had begun, he said, "After the Saddam regime, everyone realized that the problems of Iraq cannot be resolved with violence. This is evidenced by the fact that the Turkmen were invited to the KDP congress to resolve problems at the table".
Hicran Kazancı went on to underline that the democratic initiation process in Turkey was closely followed and said: "After the memorandum dated 1st March, the policies executed by Turkey have been received very positively in Iraq. The respect for Turkey and its power are increasing. At first, the initiation was perceived as a weakness. However, when this initiation is realized the PKK in Northern Iraq shall begin to unravel. A fraction of the PKK have understood the importance of peace but there will always be those whose choice is to use firearms. Still the numbers of those wanting peace is growing. "
Great interest towards investments
Hicran Kazancı drew attention to the investment made by Turkish businessmen in Iraq. "The days of unadulterated politics is over, nowadays economy is everything" said H.Kazancı and added that the investments made in Northern Iraq caused happiness and feelings of sympathy among the groups in Northern Iraq.
Taraf
04 January 2011
Iraqi Turkmen Front Representative Hicran Kazancı said that they did not want a separate government in Iraq, that a new phase with the Kurdish government had begun.
Iraqi Turkmen Front Turkey Representative Hicran Kazancı said that the idea that the Turkmen desire a separate government in Iraq did not reflect the truth. "We are a part of Iraq" said H.Kazancı and underlined that in comparison with the past, the relations with Kurds was now closer.
Iraqi Turkmen Front Turkey Representative Hicran Kazancı shared his views with Taraf newspaper about the investment of Turkish businessmen in Iraq, relations with Kurds and the democratic initiation process in Turkey.
Hicran Kazancı said that the view that the Turkmen desire a separate government in Iraq did not reflect the truth, he said "We are a part of Iraq".
Hicran Kazancı underlined that a new phase in the relationship with Kurds had begun, he said, "After the Saddam regime, everyone realized that the problems of Iraq cannot be resolved with violence. This is evidenced by the fact that the Turkmen were invited to the KDP congress to resolve problems at the table".
Hicran Kazancı went on to underline that the democratic initiation process in Turkey was closely followed and said: "After the memorandum dated 1st March, the policies executed by Turkey have been received very positively in Iraq. The respect for Turkey and its power are increasing. At first, the initiation was perceived as a weakness. However, when this initiation is realized the PKK in Northern Iraq shall begin to unravel. A fraction of the PKK have understood the importance of peace but there will always be those whose choice is to use firearms. Still the numbers of those wanting peace is growing. "
Great interest towards investments
Hicran Kazancı drew attention to the investment made by Turkish businessmen in Iraq. "The days of unadulterated politics is over, nowadays economy is everything" said H.Kazancı and added that the investments made in Northern Iraq caused happiness and feelings of sympathy among the groups in Northern Iraq.
Taraf
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