UK to aid Iraq DU removal | ||||
The US has said it has no plans to remove DU debris, despite international recommendations for its retrieval. There is widespread controversy over the use of DU, which some veterans believe has made them ill. One UK adviser on DU welcomed the British announcement as evidence of a fresh approach. A spokeswoman for the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) told BBC News Online: "Legally, we have no obligation to clean up the remains of the DU we used. It's the responsibility of the new regime in Baghdad. "But morally we do recognise an obligation, as we have in the past. We helped in the removal of DU from Kosovo. "We'll be helping in any way we can, specifically by providing money for the clean-up, and by making available records of where the ammunition was fired. Silver bullet "There may not always be any records, for instance where there was a skirmish - but insofar as we have them, we'll make them available."
When a weapon with a DU tip or core strikes a solid object, like the side of a tank, it goes straight through before erupting in a burning cloud of vapour. This settles as chemically poisonous and radioactive dust. Both the US and the UK acknowledge the dust can be dangerous if inhaled, though they say the danger is short-lived, localised, and much more likely to lead to chemical poisoning than to irradiation. Almost all the UK ammunition containing DU was fired from Challenger 2 tanks, the MoD says. It is also used in "bunker-busting" bombs, in some naval armaments, and in the ammunition of A-10 anti-tank aircraft. The MoD could give no figure for the amount of DU used in Iraq: one unconfirmed estimate suggests the total could be about 1,500 tonnes, five times more than was used in the 1991 Gulf war. Long-lived hazard A Pentagon spokesman said on 14 April he believed the US had no plans for a DU clean-up in Iraq. The British initiative is an unusual departure from a common Anglo-American approach.
It recommends collecting DU fragments, covering contaminated points with asphalt or clean soil, and keeping records of contaminated sites. Malcolm Hooper, emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Sunderland, is chief scientific adviser to the UK Gulf Veterans' Association. He told BBC News Online: "I welcome what the MoD has said, because it suggests someone may now be starting to say: 'Hang on, perhaps this stuff isn't as benign as we thought'. "And I think the evidence is piling up that DU is not benign at all. The inhalation of these fine dust particles represents a health hazard that was known to the military as long ago as 1974. "The ministry is right to say it has a moral duty to act. I think it has a legal duty as well, in the light of the child cancers and birth defects we've been seeing in Iraq since DU was used in the 1991 war." Many UK and US veterans of that war believe exposure to DU has damaged their health, and in some cases killed their comrades. They also blame it for some of the health problems seen in southern Iraq, though many scientists say there is no known mechanism by which DU could have caused the damage. | ||||
mardi 31 mai 2011
Britain and the US have the obligation to clean up the remains of DU they used in Iraq!
The evidence is piling up that DU is not benign at all 
lundi 30 mai 2011
Irak’ta Türkmenlere Yönelik Şiddet Neden Tırmanıyor
Irak’ta Türkmenlere Yönelik Şiddet Neden Tırmanıyor
Hasan Kanbolat, ORSAM Başkanı, hasankanbolat@orsam.org.tr
Mayıs ayının ilk haftasında Irak Türkmen Meclisi’nde alınan karara göre, Irak Türkmen Cephesi’nin (ITC) yeniden organize edilmesi kararlaştırılmıştı. ITC’nin yeni başkanı milletvekili ve ITC Kerkük İl Başkanı Erşat Salihi olmuştu. ITC’deki yeni siyasi yapılanma sürecinden bir hafta sonra 12 Mayıs’ta sabaha karşı Erşat Salihi’nin Kerkük’teki evine saldırı gerçekleştirilmişti. Ev korunmasına rağmen evin tavanında açılan delikten içeriye patlayıcılar atıldı, evin etrafına mayın döşendi. Böylece, Irak’ta ilk defa bir Türkmen lidere bu büyüklükte bir eylem yapıldı. Neyseki, Salihi ve ailesi evde iken yapılan saldırıda kimse zarar görmedi. Ancak, olay yerini incelemeden dönerken Kerkük Emniyet Müdürü Cemal Tahir’in konvoyuna da bir saldırının gerçekleşmiş olması saldırının oldukça organize ve ısrarlı olduğunu gösteriyor.
Irak’ta düşük yoğunluklu şiddet günlük hayatın parçası olmuş durumda. Irak’ın genelinde günde yaklaşık 10-100 kişinin hayatını kaybettiği şiddet günlük hayatı etkilemiyor. Irak halkı kitselleşmeyen şiddeti normal karşılamaya başlamış. Ancak, Salihi’ye yönelik saldırının Irak’taki herhangi bir saldırıyla karıştırılmaması gerekiyor. Nitekim, saldırının öneminden dolayı Türk Dışişleri Bakanlığı da bir açıklama yaparak saldırıyı kınamıştır (12 Mayıs 2011/ No: 126).
Erşat Salihi, muhtemel bir saldırıyı beklediklerini, ancak saldırı nedeniyle herhangi bir tarafı suçlayamayacağını söylemiştir. Olay, siyasi bir mesaj ise bu mesajın sahibi kim? Mesajın içeriği nedir? Irak’ın üç kurucu unsurundan biri olmalarına rağmen 7 Mart 2010 genel seçimlerine kadar Irak siyasetinde varlık gösteremeyen Türkmenler, ilk kez 3 bakanla temsil edilmeye başlanmış ve Kerkük Vilayet Başkanlığını seçimle elde etmişti. Türkmenlerin Irak siyasetinde yer almasından rahatsız mı olundu? Türkmenlerin siyaseti öğrenmesi mi rahatsızlık yarattı? Türkmenler üzerinde Türkiye’ye mesaj mı verilmek isteniyor? Yoksa, Türkiye’nin ve Irak Türkmenlerinin değişen Kürt politikası mı saldırılar da etkili oldu? Bu soruların cevaplarını aramak için yakın geçmişe bakmalıyız.
ITC, 1995’de Erbil’de kurulmuştu. O zamanlar Türkmenlerin sloganı “Erbil Türktür, Türk kalacak”dı. Ancak, PKK’nın Irak’ın kuzeyinde barınarak Türkiye’ye sızması, PKK’nın faaliyetlerine Irak Kürtlerinin müsaade etmesi Türkiye ve Irak Türkmenleri ile Irak Kürtlerinin arasının açılmasına yol açmıştı. 2003’de ABD işgali sonrası ITC merkezini Kerkük’e taşıdı. Kürdistan Bölgesel Yönetimi’nin oluşturulması ve ITC’nin ‘Kürdistan’ adını kabul etmemesi, KYB ve KDP’nin haritalarında bölgesel yönetimin sınırları içinde Kerkük’e yer vermesi taşınmada etkili olmuştu. Kürkük’e taşınan ITC ile birlikte Türkmenlerin yeni sloganı “Kerkük Türktür, Türk kalacak” olmuştu.
Son yıllarda Türkiye’nin Kürt politikasında yumuşamanın Irak Kürtleri ile ilişkileri de etkilemesiyle birlikte Irak Türkmenleri ile Irak Kürtleri arasında da bahar havası esmeye başlamıştır. Bu bahar havası Türkmenlerin Kerkük Vilayet Başkanlığını seçimle elde etmesine de yardımcı olmuştur. Türkiye’nin Erbil Başkonsolosluğu’nu açması, Dışişleri Bakanı Davutoğlu, Sanayi Bakanı Çağlayan, İçişleri Bakanı Atalay’ın ziyaretleri sonrası Başbakan Erdoğan’ın da 29 Mart’da Erbil’i ziyaret etmesi, KDP’nin kongresine ITC’yi davet etmesi, ITC’deki değişime Kürtlerin olumlu yaklaşımı ve Salihi’yi tebrik eden ilk siyasi partilerden birinin KYB olması, 2003’den beri Erbil bürosu kapalı olan ITC’nin Erbil’de yeniden büro açmaya hazırlanması Türkiye ve Irak Türkmenleri ile Irak Kürtleri arasındaki güven bunalımının büyük ölçüde aşılmasına yol açmıştır. Ancak, bu yeni denge yeni kutuplaşmaların da önünü açmıştır. Tartışmalı bölgelerde Kürtlerin nüfus ve siyasi yönden yayılmasından giderek daha fazla rahatsız olan egemen güçler Türkiye’nin ve Irak Türkmenlerinin uzlaşmacı politikalarından rahatsız olmuştur. Nitekim, 15 Şubat’ta Kerkük’te üç Türk işçisi kaçırılarak Kerkük-Reşad’a bağlı bir Arap köyü olan Dogmat’da 70 gün tutulmuş, son 7 gün de sadece plastik bir boruyla nefes alabilecek şekilde bir çukura gömülmüşlerdi.
Bölge Araplarını yok sayacak hiçbir çözüm önerisinin Kerkük’e ve tartışmalı bölgelere huzur getirmeyeceği açık bir gerçektir. Aynı şekilde, Türkmenler ve Kürtler de yok sayılamaz. Bu nedenle, bölgede taraflar arasındaki diyalog arayışlarının dengeler gözetilerek yapılması tansiyonun düşmesine yardımcı olacaktır.
29 MAYIS 2011
http://www.orsam.org.tr/tr/yazigoster.aspx?ID=1989
Hasan Kanbolat, ORSAM Başkanı, hasankanbolat@orsam.org.tr
Mayıs ayının ilk haftasında Irak Türkmen Meclisi’nde alınan karara göre, Irak Türkmen Cephesi’nin (ITC) yeniden organize edilmesi kararlaştırılmıştı. ITC’nin yeni başkanı milletvekili ve ITC Kerkük İl Başkanı Erşat Salihi olmuştu. ITC’deki yeni siyasi yapılanma sürecinden bir hafta sonra 12 Mayıs’ta sabaha karşı Erşat Salihi’nin Kerkük’teki evine saldırı gerçekleştirilmişti. Ev korunmasına rağmen evin tavanında açılan delikten içeriye patlayıcılar atıldı, evin etrafına mayın döşendi. Böylece, Irak’ta ilk defa bir Türkmen lidere bu büyüklükte bir eylem yapıldı. Neyseki, Salihi ve ailesi evde iken yapılan saldırıda kimse zarar görmedi. Ancak, olay yerini incelemeden dönerken Kerkük Emniyet Müdürü Cemal Tahir’in konvoyuna da bir saldırının gerçekleşmiş olması saldırının oldukça organize ve ısrarlı olduğunu gösteriyor.
Irak’ta düşük yoğunluklu şiddet günlük hayatın parçası olmuş durumda. Irak’ın genelinde günde yaklaşık 10-100 kişinin hayatını kaybettiği şiddet günlük hayatı etkilemiyor. Irak halkı kitselleşmeyen şiddeti normal karşılamaya başlamış. Ancak, Salihi’ye yönelik saldırının Irak’taki herhangi bir saldırıyla karıştırılmaması gerekiyor. Nitekim, saldırının öneminden dolayı Türk Dışişleri Bakanlığı da bir açıklama yaparak saldırıyı kınamıştır (12 Mayıs 2011/ No: 126).
Erşat Salihi, muhtemel bir saldırıyı beklediklerini, ancak saldırı nedeniyle herhangi bir tarafı suçlayamayacağını söylemiştir. Olay, siyasi bir mesaj ise bu mesajın sahibi kim? Mesajın içeriği nedir? Irak’ın üç kurucu unsurundan biri olmalarına rağmen 7 Mart 2010 genel seçimlerine kadar Irak siyasetinde varlık gösteremeyen Türkmenler, ilk kez 3 bakanla temsil edilmeye başlanmış ve Kerkük Vilayet Başkanlığını seçimle elde etmişti. Türkmenlerin Irak siyasetinde yer almasından rahatsız mı olundu? Türkmenlerin siyaseti öğrenmesi mi rahatsızlık yarattı? Türkmenler üzerinde Türkiye’ye mesaj mı verilmek isteniyor? Yoksa, Türkiye’nin ve Irak Türkmenlerinin değişen Kürt politikası mı saldırılar da etkili oldu? Bu soruların cevaplarını aramak için yakın geçmişe bakmalıyız.
ITC, 1995’de Erbil’de kurulmuştu. O zamanlar Türkmenlerin sloganı “Erbil Türktür, Türk kalacak”dı. Ancak, PKK’nın Irak’ın kuzeyinde barınarak Türkiye’ye sızması, PKK’nın faaliyetlerine Irak Kürtlerinin müsaade etmesi Türkiye ve Irak Türkmenleri ile Irak Kürtlerinin arasının açılmasına yol açmıştı. 2003’de ABD işgali sonrası ITC merkezini Kerkük’e taşıdı. Kürdistan Bölgesel Yönetimi’nin oluşturulması ve ITC’nin ‘Kürdistan’ adını kabul etmemesi, KYB ve KDP’nin haritalarında bölgesel yönetimin sınırları içinde Kerkük’e yer vermesi taşınmada etkili olmuştu. Kürkük’e taşınan ITC ile birlikte Türkmenlerin yeni sloganı “Kerkük Türktür, Türk kalacak” olmuştu.
Son yıllarda Türkiye’nin Kürt politikasında yumuşamanın Irak Kürtleri ile ilişkileri de etkilemesiyle birlikte Irak Türkmenleri ile Irak Kürtleri arasında da bahar havası esmeye başlamıştır. Bu bahar havası Türkmenlerin Kerkük Vilayet Başkanlığını seçimle elde etmesine de yardımcı olmuştur. Türkiye’nin Erbil Başkonsolosluğu’nu açması, Dışişleri Bakanı Davutoğlu, Sanayi Bakanı Çağlayan, İçişleri Bakanı Atalay’ın ziyaretleri sonrası Başbakan Erdoğan’ın da 29 Mart’da Erbil’i ziyaret etmesi, KDP’nin kongresine ITC’yi davet etmesi, ITC’deki değişime Kürtlerin olumlu yaklaşımı ve Salihi’yi tebrik eden ilk siyasi partilerden birinin KYB olması, 2003’den beri Erbil bürosu kapalı olan ITC’nin Erbil’de yeniden büro açmaya hazırlanması Türkiye ve Irak Türkmenleri ile Irak Kürtleri arasındaki güven bunalımının büyük ölçüde aşılmasına yol açmıştır. Ancak, bu yeni denge yeni kutuplaşmaların da önünü açmıştır. Tartışmalı bölgelerde Kürtlerin nüfus ve siyasi yönden yayılmasından giderek daha fazla rahatsız olan egemen güçler Türkiye’nin ve Irak Türkmenlerinin uzlaşmacı politikalarından rahatsız olmuştur. Nitekim, 15 Şubat’ta Kerkük’te üç Türk işçisi kaçırılarak Kerkük-Reşad’a bağlı bir Arap köyü olan Dogmat’da 70 gün tutulmuş, son 7 gün de sadece plastik bir boruyla nefes alabilecek şekilde bir çukura gömülmüşlerdi.
Bölge Araplarını yok sayacak hiçbir çözüm önerisinin Kerkük’e ve tartışmalı bölgelere huzur getirmeyeceği açık bir gerçektir. Aynı şekilde, Türkmenler ve Kürtler de yok sayılamaz. Bu nedenle, bölgede taraflar arasındaki diyalog arayışlarının dengeler gözetilerek yapılması tansiyonun düşmesine yardımcı olacaktır.
29 MAYIS 2011
http://www.orsam.org.tr/tr/yazigoster.aspx?ID=1989
dimanche 29 mai 2011
Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?
By ANTHONY SHADID
Published: May 28, 2011
GAZIANTEP, Turkey
LESS than a mile from the Syrian frontier, in the land of Kemal Ataturk, Ahmed Sheikh Said defies the identities that borders inspire.
Mr. Said was born in the Syrian town of Azaz and raised across a line on the map in Kilis, Turkey. A grocer, he speaks Turkish like a native to his customers, while holding an ear open to the Arabic telecasts of Al Jazeera playing in his store. His wife and his mother are Turkish, but Arab blood runs through his veins, he says, “till the end of time.”
“The bread of Azaz comes from Kilis, and the bread of Kilis comes from Azaz,” said Mr. Said, whose shop sits just off a road that once carried the business of the far-flung Ottoman Empire and now marks Turkey’s limits. “We’re the same. We’re brothers. What really divides us?”
As the Arab world beyond the border struggles with the inspirations and traumas of its revolution — a new notion of citizenship colliding with the smaller claims of piety, sect and clan — something else is percolating along the old routes of that empire, which spanned three continents and lasted six centuries before Ataturk brought it to an end in 1923 with self-conscious revolutionary zeal.
It is probably too early to define identities emerging in those locales. But something bigger than its parts is at work along imperial connections that were bent but never broken by decades of colonialism and the cold war. The links are the stuff of land, culture, history, architecture, memory and imagination that remains the realm of scholarship and daily lives but often eludes the notice of a journalism marching to the cadence of conflict.
Even amid the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in directions that call into question more parochial notions. The undertow intersects with the Arab revolution’s search for a new sense of self; it also builds on economic forces now reconnecting an older imperium, as well as on Turkey’s new dynamism and on efforts to bring reality to what has long been nostalgia.
Its echoes are heard in the borderlands like Gaziantep, near Mr. Said’s shop, where businessman can haggle in a patois of English, Turkish, Arabic and even Kurdish. It is seen in the blurring of arbitrary lines where the Semitic script of Arabic and Kurdish tangles with the Latin script of Turkish across the borders with Syria and Iraq. It is noticed along the frontiers where Arab and Turkish nationalism, pan-Islamism and a host of secular ideologies never seemed to quite capture the ambitions or demarcate the environments of the diverse peoples who live there.
“The normalization of history,” proclaims the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has tried to reintegrate the region by lifting visa requirements and promoting a Middle Eastern trade zone, as it deploys its businessmen along the old routes and exports Turkey’s pop culture to an eager audience.
“None of the borders of Turkey are natural,” he went on. “Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities. That’s the way it’s been for centuries.”
There is admittedly a hint of romanticism in it all. The Arab world may in fact be bracing for years of sectarian and internecine strife in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. And in seeking to be a more prominent, and steadying, influence, Turkey’s ambitions may well be greater than its means. Still, economic realities are already restoring old trajectories that joined the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, tied Batumi in Georgia to Trabzon in Turkey, and knit Aleppo into an axis of cities — Mosul, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep and Iskenderun — in which Damascus, the leading but distant Arab metropole, was an afterthought.
THE DRAWING OF 20TH-CENTURY BORDERS rendered traumas large and small. Sectarian and ethnic cleansing after World War I rid Turkey and Greece of much of their diversity. The horrors of nationalism and the Holocaust made Salonica, a celebrated melting pot, unrecognizable in its modern incarnation. Even history’s footnotes were rewritten.
One example is Marjayoun, my family’s ancestral hometown in Lebanon, nestled near the Israeli and Syrian borders in the heart of the old Ottoman realm, and little more than an afterthought on maps these days.
No one in Marjayoun would necessarily pine for the days of the Ottoman rulers. Massacres occurred, and Jews and Christians faced discrimination in taxes and commerce. There was no such thing as equality. To this day, the darkest moments of Marjayoun’s history remain those last breaths of the empire — the seferberlik. It was the Ottoman name for the draft, but it came to represent the famine, starvation and death that World War I brought to the town, when the famished searched the manure of animals to find an undigested morsel of grain.
Yet more than a few in Marjayoun today might express a nostalgia for the time and place the Ottoman Empire represented, when Marjayoun’s traders ventured to Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula and down the Nile to Sudan, by way of Palestine. The town was a way station on the route from the breadbasket of the Houran in southern Syria to Acre, the Levant’s greatest port on the coast of Palestine. Beirut was an afterthought. Marjayoun’s traders plied the steppe of the Houran, its gentry owned land in the Hula Valley, and its educated ventured to Haifa and Jerusalem to make their reputations.
World War I and the borders that followed augured the demise of this style of life, and not just in Marjayoun. The ideologies that gained prevalence in the town then were about contesting those frontiers — Arab nationalism, pan-Syrian nationalism and Communism, which itself was imagining a broader community. These movements failed as more borders were drawn in wars with Israel in 1948 and 1967. And with those lines on the map came a smaller sense of self. By the time Lebanon’s 15-year civil war began in 1975, ideologies had given way to identities, and most people in Marjayoun identified themselves simply as Christian, or perhaps Greek Orthodox, too unique to survive as a community.
A town of thousands is today a town of hundreds, strewn with the abandoned villas of another age. Hajar bala bashar, a friend once told me. “Stones without people.”
“A RECREATION OF THE HISTORIC AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT” is how Mr. Davutoglu describes his vision for the region. And indeed, that vision, which is effectively government policy, has touched in a nerve in Turkey, a country with its own unresolved questions of identity.
Just as Arab nationalism still runs run deep, with the fate of Palestine its axis, so does Turkish nationalism, which includes a sense that the country deserves a role in the region, and beyond that at least echoes of its Ottoman age. The more sophisticated Turks dismiss charges of a new rationale for Turkish imperialism and call the goal instead a peaceful partnership that might look like the free-trade zone that presaged the European Union after World War II.
“It’s been almost 100 years that we’ve been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultural and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we’re lifting national boundaries,” said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s staff. “Turkey is challenging the traditional understanding of policy in the Middle East in place since the 20th century.”
More than the talk of a salon, the vision comes at an obvious turning point in the Middle East. Though dealt setbacks by the Arab revolution — investments have been lost in Libya and the prospect of chaos stalks Syria — Turkey has stuck to its vision of an integrated region. A railway line linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq reopened last year; a fast train is to operate between Gaziantep and Aleppo. The resources of northern Iraq are strategic for Turkey’s plans to diversify its energy sources and to feed a pipeline from Turkey to central Europe. A common free-trade area has already been agreed upon by Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
Turkish television series are dubbed into Syrian Arabic, and its stars’ posters sell by the tens of thousands in Iraq. In Baghdad, portraits of one famous actor are digitally altered to show him in traditional Kurdish or Arab dress.
Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism. It echoes even in Turkey, where religious and national divides are increasingly blurred. Selcuk Sirin, a professor at New York University who has done extensive polling in Turkey, especially among youth, calls this the emergence of “hybrid identities.”
“Young people don’t buy into this idea of a clash, and they don’t buy into this idea of fixed identity,” he said. “They know how to negotiate these so-called polar opposites, and they’re looking for something new.”
THERE WAS A MOVIE more than a decade ago in Turkey called “Propaganda,” a dark comedy about the border drawn between Syria and Turkey, dividing family from family. It was inspired by the reality of relatives heading to the fence there on Muslim holidays — Bayram in Turkish, Id in Arabic — and throwing gifts to the other side.
These days, with the border effectively open, Syrians fill the hotels on weekends in Gaziantep, which is famous for its pistachios. Some merchants here talk about their trade growing tenfold since visa requirements were lifted. Debates rage over whether the kebab of Gaziantep is better than the kibbe in Aleppo.
Turks may still call a mess “Arab hair.” But they also judge a gift by the standards of “apricots in Damascus.” And the old notions of Ottoman tyranny (from the Arab point of view) and Arab betrayal in World War I (as Turks see it) have given way somewhat to the promise of profit in a market still booming even amid the uprising across the border.
Hakan Cinkilic, foreign trade manager of a plastics company called Sun Pet, is reaping the benefits. Nearly 80 percent of its products go to Iraq, and the company set up a factory in Jordan last year. Its exports have more than doubled since 2008. This year he has already traveled to Libya, the United States, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
As he spoke, his cellphone rang. It was a customer in Kirkuk, Iraq, who spoke to him in Turkish. A few minutes later, a businessman called from the West Bank. The conversation unfolded in English, punctuated by Arabic expressions inflected by the vowels of his native tongue. You wouldn’t call him neo-Ottoman, given the term’s suggestion of a resurgent imperialism. He’s not really Levantine, an identity whose borders hug the Mediterranean coast. He seemed post-Ottoman, reinterpreting the past.
“It’s natural,” he said simply.
via Can Turkey Unify the Arabs? – NYTimes.com.
Published: May 28, 2011
GAZIANTEP, Turkey
LESS than a mile from the Syrian frontier, in the land of Kemal Ataturk, Ahmed Sheikh Said defies the identities that borders inspire.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis
Mr. Said was born in the Syrian town of Azaz and raised across a line on the map in Kilis, Turkey. A grocer, he speaks Turkish like a native to his customers, while holding an ear open to the Arabic telecasts of Al Jazeera playing in his store. His wife and his mother are Turkish, but Arab blood runs through his veins, he says, “till the end of time.”
“The bread of Azaz comes from Kilis, and the bread of Kilis comes from Azaz,” said Mr. Said, whose shop sits just off a road that once carried the business of the far-flung Ottoman Empire and now marks Turkey’s limits. “We’re the same. We’re brothers. What really divides us?”
As the Arab world beyond the border struggles with the inspirations and traumas of its revolution — a new notion of citizenship colliding with the smaller claims of piety, sect and clan — something else is percolating along the old routes of that empire, which spanned three continents and lasted six centuries before Ataturk brought it to an end in 1923 with self-conscious revolutionary zeal.
It is probably too early to define identities emerging in those locales. But something bigger than its parts is at work along imperial connections that were bent but never broken by decades of colonialism and the cold war. The links are the stuff of land, culture, history, architecture, memory and imagination that remains the realm of scholarship and daily lives but often eludes the notice of a journalism marching to the cadence of conflict.
Even amid the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in directions that call into question more parochial notions. The undertow intersects with the Arab revolution’s search for a new sense of self; it also builds on economic forces now reconnecting an older imperium, as well as on Turkey’s new dynamism and on efforts to bring reality to what has long been nostalgia.
Its echoes are heard in the borderlands like Gaziantep, near Mr. Said’s shop, where businessman can haggle in a patois of English, Turkish, Arabic and even Kurdish. It is seen in the blurring of arbitrary lines where the Semitic script of Arabic and Kurdish tangles with the Latin script of Turkish across the borders with Syria and Iraq. It is noticed along the frontiers where Arab and Turkish nationalism, pan-Islamism and a host of secular ideologies never seemed to quite capture the ambitions or demarcate the environments of the diverse peoples who live there.
“The normalization of history,” proclaims the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has tried to reintegrate the region by lifting visa requirements and promoting a Middle Eastern trade zone, as it deploys its businessmen along the old routes and exports Turkey’s pop culture to an eager audience.
“None of the borders of Turkey are natural,” he went on. “Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities. That’s the way it’s been for centuries.”
There is admittedly a hint of romanticism in it all. The Arab world may in fact be bracing for years of sectarian and internecine strife in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. And in seeking to be a more prominent, and steadying, influence, Turkey’s ambitions may well be greater than its means. Still, economic realities are already restoring old trajectories that joined the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, tied Batumi in Georgia to Trabzon in Turkey, and knit Aleppo into an axis of cities — Mosul, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep and Iskenderun — in which Damascus, the leading but distant Arab metropole, was an afterthought.
THE DRAWING OF 20TH-CENTURY BORDERS rendered traumas large and small. Sectarian and ethnic cleansing after World War I rid Turkey and Greece of much of their diversity. The horrors of nationalism and the Holocaust made Salonica, a celebrated melting pot, unrecognizable in its modern incarnation. Even history’s footnotes were rewritten.
One example is Marjayoun, my family’s ancestral hometown in Lebanon, nestled near the Israeli and Syrian borders in the heart of the old Ottoman realm, and little more than an afterthought on maps these days.
No one in Marjayoun would necessarily pine for the days of the Ottoman rulers. Massacres occurred, and Jews and Christians faced discrimination in taxes and commerce. There was no such thing as equality. To this day, the darkest moments of Marjayoun’s history remain those last breaths of the empire — the seferberlik. It was the Ottoman name for the draft, but it came to represent the famine, starvation and death that World War I brought to the town, when the famished searched the manure of animals to find an undigested morsel of grain.
Yet more than a few in Marjayoun today might express a nostalgia for the time and place the Ottoman Empire represented, when Marjayoun’s traders ventured to Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula and down the Nile to Sudan, by way of Palestine. The town was a way station on the route from the breadbasket of the Houran in southern Syria to Acre, the Levant’s greatest port on the coast of Palestine. Beirut was an afterthought. Marjayoun’s traders plied the steppe of the Houran, its gentry owned land in the Hula Valley, and its educated ventured to Haifa and Jerusalem to make their reputations.
World War I and the borders that followed augured the demise of this style of life, and not just in Marjayoun. The ideologies that gained prevalence in the town then were about contesting those frontiers — Arab nationalism, pan-Syrian nationalism and Communism, which itself was imagining a broader community. These movements failed as more borders were drawn in wars with Israel in 1948 and 1967. And with those lines on the map came a smaller sense of self. By the time Lebanon’s 15-year civil war began in 1975, ideologies had given way to identities, and most people in Marjayoun identified themselves simply as Christian, or perhaps Greek Orthodox, too unique to survive as a community.
A town of thousands is today a town of hundreds, strewn with the abandoned villas of another age. Hajar bala bashar, a friend once told me. “Stones without people.”
“A RECREATION OF THE HISTORIC AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT” is how Mr. Davutoglu describes his vision for the region. And indeed, that vision, which is effectively government policy, has touched in a nerve in Turkey, a country with its own unresolved questions of identity.
Just as Arab nationalism still runs run deep, with the fate of Palestine its axis, so does Turkish nationalism, which includes a sense that the country deserves a role in the region, and beyond that at least echoes of its Ottoman age. The more sophisticated Turks dismiss charges of a new rationale for Turkish imperialism and call the goal instead a peaceful partnership that might look like the free-trade zone that presaged the European Union after World War II.
“It’s been almost 100 years that we’ve been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultural and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we’re lifting national boundaries,” said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s staff. “Turkey is challenging the traditional understanding of policy in the Middle East in place since the 20th century.”
More than the talk of a salon, the vision comes at an obvious turning point in the Middle East. Though dealt setbacks by the Arab revolution — investments have been lost in Libya and the prospect of chaos stalks Syria — Turkey has stuck to its vision of an integrated region. A railway line linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq reopened last year; a fast train is to operate between Gaziantep and Aleppo. The resources of northern Iraq are strategic for Turkey’s plans to diversify its energy sources and to feed a pipeline from Turkey to central Europe. A common free-trade area has already been agreed upon by Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
Turkish television series are dubbed into Syrian Arabic, and its stars’ posters sell by the tens of thousands in Iraq. In Baghdad, portraits of one famous actor are digitally altered to show him in traditional Kurdish or Arab dress.
Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism. It echoes even in Turkey, where religious and national divides are increasingly blurred. Selcuk Sirin, a professor at New York University who has done extensive polling in Turkey, especially among youth, calls this the emergence of “hybrid identities.”
“Young people don’t buy into this idea of a clash, and they don’t buy into this idea of fixed identity,” he said. “They know how to negotiate these so-called polar opposites, and they’re looking for something new.”
THERE WAS A MOVIE more than a decade ago in Turkey called “Propaganda,” a dark comedy about the border drawn between Syria and Turkey, dividing family from family. It was inspired by the reality of relatives heading to the fence there on Muslim holidays — Bayram in Turkish, Id in Arabic — and throwing gifts to the other side.
These days, with the border effectively open, Syrians fill the hotels on weekends in Gaziantep, which is famous for its pistachios. Some merchants here talk about their trade growing tenfold since visa requirements were lifted. Debates rage over whether the kebab of Gaziantep is better than the kibbe in Aleppo.
Turks may still call a mess “Arab hair.” But they also judge a gift by the standards of “apricots in Damascus.” And the old notions of Ottoman tyranny (from the Arab point of view) and Arab betrayal in World War I (as Turks see it) have given way somewhat to the promise of profit in a market still booming even amid the uprising across the border.
Hakan Cinkilic, foreign trade manager of a plastics company called Sun Pet, is reaping the benefits. Nearly 80 percent of its products go to Iraq, and the company set up a factory in Jordan last year. Its exports have more than doubled since 2008. This year he has already traveled to Libya, the United States, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
As he spoke, his cellphone rang. It was a customer in Kirkuk, Iraq, who spoke to him in Turkish. A few minutes later, a businessman called from the West Bank. The conversation unfolded in English, punctuated by Arabic expressions inflected by the vowels of his native tongue. You wouldn’t call him neo-Ottoman, given the term’s suggestion of a resurgent imperialism. He’s not really Levantine, an identity whose borders hug the Mediterranean coast. He seemed post-Ottoman, reinterpreting the past.
“It’s natural,” he said simply.
via Can Turkey Unify the Arabs? – NYTimes.com.
jeudi 26 mai 2011
IRAQ: Thousands rally against U.S. troops
Thursday, May. 26, 2011
Iraq: Thousands Rally Against U.S. Troops
By AP / QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
(BAGHDAD) — Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters led a massive rally of followers of a hard-liner anti-American cleric on Thursday, marching in Baghdad in a show of defiance as Iraqi leaders weigh whether to keep U.S. troops in the country beyond the end of the year.
An estimated 70,000 supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr waved Iraqi flags and shouted "No, no, America!" as the tight columns of the unarmed but ominous Mahdi Army marched though one of Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods.
U.S., Israeli and British flags were painted on the pavement to be stomped on by the marching protesters, and Iraqi military helicopters buzzed overhead while soldiers stood guard to keep peace if needed.
The rally was a message to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about the staunch opposition by Iraq's most devout Shi'ites — and the ones who grudgingly helped him clinch a second term in office last year — to a continued U.S. military presence in 2012.
Under a security agreement between Washington and Baghdad, the 46,000 combat troops still in Iraq are required to leave by Dec. 31. But Iraq's widespread instability has led U.S. and Iraqi leaders to reconsider the deadline for the sake of the country's security.
"I am ready to fight the Americans whenever Sayyida (Muqtada) orders me to," Mohammed Moyad, 18, who said he skipped five days of school to train with his colleagues for Thursday's march.
Al-Sadr had not yet appeared nearly two hours after the start of the march, and his top aide, Salah al-Obeidi, said the cleric likely would not. Adoring crowds surged at a convoy of more than 10 white sport utility vehicles that was believed to be carrying al-Sadr, but it drove away without stopping.
Though the rally was billed as a peaceful demonstration, al-Obeidi said threats against the U.S. still stand if the troops stay. "We will be obliged to fight and do our best to liberate our country," he said.
Already, American forces in Baghdad and southern Iraq have seen an increase in rocket and mortar attacks as well as roadside bombs in recent months. U.S. officials have blamed the uptick on Shi'ite militias backed by Iran who are trying to take credit for driving American forces from Iraq.
Al-Obeidi said the point of the rally was to show that Iraqis are disciplined and can protect the country. A statement by parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni, called the march "clear proof to Iraq's unity."
However, al-Nujaifi spokesman Mohammed al-Khalidi sought to distance the speaker from the specter of violence. He said al-Nujaifi is not necessarily against the U.S. presence but declined to elaborate.
U.S. officials counted more than 300 busloads — each carrying up to 70 passengers — who traveled from Iraq's south for the rally, and were joined by some of the roughly 2 million who live in Baghdad's northeast Sadr City neighborhood where it was held.
An estimated 18,000 militiamen wore matching T-shirts bearing the Iraqi flag as spectators burned American and Israeli banners. Small groups of youths along the parade route also struck Americans flags with twirling kickboxing moves to the delight of onlookers.
Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana and Lara Jakes contributed to this report.
Iraq: Thousands Rally Against U.S. Troops
By AP / QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA
(BAGHDAD) — Iraqi Shi'ite militia fighters led a massive rally of followers of a hard-liner anti-American cleric on Thursday, marching in Baghdad in a show of defiance as Iraqi leaders weigh whether to keep U.S. troops in the country beyond the end of the year.
An estimated 70,000 supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr waved Iraqi flags and shouted "No, no, America!" as the tight columns of the unarmed but ominous Mahdi Army marched though one of Baghdad's poorest neighborhoods.
U.S., Israeli and British flags were painted on the pavement to be stomped on by the marching protesters, and Iraqi military helicopters buzzed overhead while soldiers stood guard to keep peace if needed.
The rally was a message to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki about the staunch opposition by Iraq's most devout Shi'ites — and the ones who grudgingly helped him clinch a second term in office last year — to a continued U.S. military presence in 2012.
Under a security agreement between Washington and Baghdad, the 46,000 combat troops still in Iraq are required to leave by Dec. 31. But Iraq's widespread instability has led U.S. and Iraqi leaders to reconsider the deadline for the sake of the country's security.
"I am ready to fight the Americans whenever Sayyida (Muqtada) orders me to," Mohammed Moyad, 18, who said he skipped five days of school to train with his colleagues for Thursday's march.
Al-Sadr had not yet appeared nearly two hours after the start of the march, and his top aide, Salah al-Obeidi, said the cleric likely would not. Adoring crowds surged at a convoy of more than 10 white sport utility vehicles that was believed to be carrying al-Sadr, but it drove away without stopping.
Though the rally was billed as a peaceful demonstration, al-Obeidi said threats against the U.S. still stand if the troops stay. "We will be obliged to fight and do our best to liberate our country," he said.
Already, American forces in Baghdad and southern Iraq have seen an increase in rocket and mortar attacks as well as roadside bombs in recent months. U.S. officials have blamed the uptick on Shi'ite militias backed by Iran who are trying to take credit for driving American forces from Iraq.
Al-Obeidi said the point of the rally was to show that Iraqis are disciplined and can protect the country. A statement by parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni, called the march "clear proof to Iraq's unity."
However, al-Nujaifi spokesman Mohammed al-Khalidi sought to distance the speaker from the specter of violence. He said al-Nujaifi is not necessarily against the U.S. presence but declined to elaborate.
U.S. officials counted more than 300 busloads — each carrying up to 70 passengers — who traveled from Iraq's south for the rally, and were joined by some of the roughly 2 million who live in Baghdad's northeast Sadr City neighborhood where it was held.
An estimated 18,000 militiamen wore matching T-shirts bearing the Iraqi flag as spectators burned American and Israeli banners. Small groups of youths along the parade route also struck Americans flags with twirling kickboxing moves to the delight of onlookers.
Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana and Lara Jakes contributed to this report.
Korku, Engelleri Aştık biz...Sadun Köprülü
Yazan: Sadun KÖPRÜLÜ
Irak Türkleri için korkunç ve ürpertici yaşantılar hazırlayanlara Saddam rejimi ve ömrü billah düşman güçlerin oyuncağı olmaktan öteye gitmemiş, hep dış güçlerle el ele yürümüş –sözüm ona feodal aşiret reisi, işbirlikçiler Türk halkına karşı fırsatçı ve acımasız oldular.
Türkmen milletine Saddam rejimi gibi türlü baskılar uyguladılar: İşkenceler, tertip ve tuzaklar bir yandan, bir yandan hukuksuz özgürlüklerini ellerinden aldılar, yok ettiler veya yerlerinden yurtlarından ettiler ve etmeye çalışmaktadırlar. Mallarını mülklerini yağmaladılar.
Acı çileyle, sürgünle yok etmeye, haklarını gasp etmeye devam etmeleri yetmedi, özellikle Türkmen şehri Kerkük’e, yine bir ölçüde yerlerinden yurtlarından ettikleri başka unsurları getirip yerleştirdiler.
Olay petrol ve feodal güçlerin güç gösterisi sorunudur.
Bunları gerçekleştirmek için dünyanın gözüne baka, baka sistemli, planlı faaliyetlerini sürdürüyorlar.
Sanki dünya “üç buçuk eşkıya”ya teslim
Edilmişte Türk’ün yok edilişine hepten karar verilmiştir.
Görünüşe göre sanki mazlumların gücü sahibi kalmamıştır…
Ama Irak Türkleri hale bu maceraya karşı dayanıp durdular, korkmadılar, susmak bilmediler, her yerde haklarını aramaya gösterişlere katıldılar, şehitler verdiler, irada gücü ile zorluğa karşılık verebildiler.
Acıya, işkenceye, baskıya, çileye dayandılar durdular varlıklarını tüm dünyaya bildirdiler.
Çünkü Türk milleti olarak gururumuz, İlkemiz her şeyden üstündür, Eski dönemde Kerkük’te, Altunköprü, Tuzhurmatu ve başka Türkmen topraklarında, diktatör rejimi güvenlik, istihbaratı, her tarafı sarmıştı, hatta öyle bir duruma gelmiştir ki, millet kendi evinde ailesi içerisinde siyaset, Türkçülükten, Milletten, Kerkük ve öteki Türkmen yerlerinden ve ortalarında anne dilleriyle konuşmak, Türkçe türkü söylemekten, kitap, gazete, dergi okumadan dertleşmekten bahsetmeye çekiniyorlardır.
Kardeş, kardeşten, baba, oğuldan herkes birbirinden korkuyordur.
Yüzlerce genç, yaşlılarımızı boşu boşuna idam ederek kurşuna dizerek, birçoğunu da yıllar boyunca Türkçülük, milliyetçilik ile suçlayarak mahpushaneye atmışlardır.
Ama ne yazık demokrasi geldi diye sevindik buda çok sürmedi yine işbirlikçiler, Saddamcılar ve kopyaları iş başında hep eskiden yaralandıkları gibi bugünde onlara daha fazla önem verilmektedir, Mücadeleci dava adamları, şehit aileleri ve hapis, ,işkence görenler arka planda kalarak onları her bir türlü baskı ile yok etmeye çalışıyorlar
Ama bir türlü onlara karşı yüz be yüz duramıyorlar, güçleri yetemiyor millet arkalarında olduğundan dolayı.
Çünkü onlar yiğittiler, kahramandılar, korkuya, ölüme bile aldırmadan milli mücadele davalarını kanlarıyla, canlarıyla sürdürmektedirler.
Bizler geçmişte olduğu gibi bugünde
Değer arzularımızı beslemekle, varlığımıza göz koyan gururumuzu, özgürlüğümüzü hiç etmeye çalışanların karşısında, Ercesine korkmadan durarak, hiç kimsenin bizde hakkı yoktur, yalnız kendi başımızla, kanımızla, canımızla özgürlüğümüz için, mücadelemiz için, döktüğümüz arı temiz kanları meydanları kınamıyoruz.
Türklükle iftihar ederek yüce, Ulu şehitlerimizi anarak, acılarımızın tekrar geriye dönmesini isteyenlere ve tahta oturmayı hayal edenlere, sevenlere hiç
Hoş geldin demiyoruz, tahta oturanlar kutsal görevlerin düşünmelidirler, parayı masayı, sandalyeyi unutmalı, yalnız şehitlerin kanına, Türkmeneli Kerkük’e
and ederek, düz doğru milli yolda gönülden, çalışarak Türkçülük milliyetçilik görevini sağlam olarak yerine getirmeli,
Saddam cellât gibi, kendi milleti için diktatör olmamalı, çünkü her lideri millet lider eder, beğenmezse de millet onu yok eder düşürür, tahtan atar, indirir Dünyada
Ortadoğuda olduğu gibi.
En büyük sorunumuz korku idi, ama bugün bir kıyıcı diktatöre karşı, bunu aşarak, cellat Saddam düştükten sonra, yerini İşbirlikçi partiler, ajanlar, alınan insanlar alarak, onun yapmadığını Türkmen milletine karşı onlar uygulamaktadırlar.
Biz büyük bir milletiz, kendimize güveniriz, gururumuz, benliğimiz, varlığımız için her adımda ilerlemekteyiz.
Saddam yönetiminde kapkaranlık, dünyamızı çalışma, yorulmayla aydınlatarak, bu günde milli yolumuza, Saddam rejiminin düşmesi, halkın ayaklanması, ve karşı durması, irade ve sabırla, mücadeleye başlayarak, onları korku ve endişe içerisine sokmalı....
En büyük zulüm ve vahşete karşı duran, Irak Türkleri toprak, yurtlarımızı, köy, yerlerimizi, pisliklerden, kıyıcı kötülüklerden, zalimlerden, Türk düşmanlarından, işbirlikçilerden kurtarmak için, neler yaptığımızı dünya biliyor, Bunu, hiç kimse inkâr edemez, bizler yüce Türk milletinin oğullarıyız, baş eğmeden kimseye, ırkımızdan, Türklüğümüzden ölürüz hiçbir zaman tavız vermeyiz.
Tüm dünya basını ve yayınları buna şahittir, Duymayan duysun, bilmeyen bilsinler, bizler Irak’ta, büyük milletiz, bu toprakları biz kurduk, gelişleştirdik, uygarlık yaptık, tarih yazdık bizlerden önce bu topraklarda, hiçbir millet devlet yokmuş 6 devlet imparatorlar korduk, Irak Türkleri olarak tarih boyu bu topraklarda Devletler, bizim elimizle hüküm sürmüştür, korkmadan her türlü facia ve kaygı zulüm, işkence karşısında durup yenilmeden varlığımızı gösterdik, Bizi yok eden ve hayatımızla oynayan insanlara, hiç fırsat vermeyeceğiz.
Tarihimizin, hayatımızın kararmasını bilmiş ve anlamışız buna göre yolumuza başlamışız, bu nedenle tüm haklarımızı koruyarak başarmalıyız.
Ey kıralar, tiranlar, despotlar, kıyıcı diktatörler, dünyaya hâkim olmak isteyenler, bu mazlum insanların kaderinde oynayanlar, biraz kendinize gelin, önünüzü düşünmezseniz sonunuzu düşünün, bu dünya çok padişahlara, başkanlara hiç kimselere kalmamış ve kalmayacaktır.
Acaba sonunuzun, hesabından korkmuyormuşsunuz, utanmıyormuşsunuz.
Sizlerde, Saddam ve Saddamcılar, bu kutsal Türkmen toprak yerlerini kendilerine mal edenler, Türk yurdu Kerkük'ü kendi topraklar, malları sayanlar, artık sonunuz geldi, biz büyük Türk dünyasını, birleştireceğiz birliğimizi koracağız isterseniz, istemezseniz de bu topraklar, bu yerler bizlerindir ve bizlerinde kalacaktır.
Büyük tarihli, kültürlü, onurlu, töreli, güçlü atılgan yiğit Türk milleti ile bizler varız var olacağız.
Türkmenler, Azerbaycan Türkleri, Batı Trakya, Roman, Yunan, Makedonya, Ahıska, Batı Avrupa, Avustralya, ABD Türkleri, Dağıstan, Kuzey Osetya, Gagavuz,
Kara kaplak, Kırım, Tatar Doğu Türkistan,
Uygur Türkleri, Afganistan, Bulgaristan, Irak, Erdebil, Urumya, Türkmen Sahra, Tebriz, Tahran, Horasan, Kaşğar, Halaç, Zen can, Hehadan, Kazvin Türkleri, Irak Kerkük, Kale Hıristiyanları , Musul, Erbil, Diyala, Telafer, Bağdat Türkleri, Sincan, Telafer, Aziziye Türkleri…
Moğolistan ,Nugaya, Suriye, Heleb, Dımışk, Lazikiya, Hasaka, Teslima Türkleri, Kosova, Sancak, Baş Kurt isten, Çavuş isten, Yakut isten, Hakas, Altay , Tava, Kara çay, Kabart ay, Balkar, İnguşe Sibirya, Kızıl deriler, Filistin Ehzan, Cenin, Adana köy,Türkleri, Kahire, Cezayir, Tunus, Libya, Kıbrıs,Urdun, Hicaz, Şam Türkleri Türkmenistan, Azerbaycan, Türkistan, Kırgız, Özbekistan , Kazakistan, Tacikistan, Kara bağ, Çeçenistan, Bosna Hersek, Arnavutluk… Ve tüm dünya Türkleri birdir, bir gönül, bir eldiler, bir dildiler; hiç bir mezhep, din, renk ayrımı bizde yoktur ve olmayacaktır, çünkü bir yürek bir gönülüz.
Bundan dolayı bizler her Türk’e kanımızla, canımızla, malımızla her bir şeyimizle, yardım edersek öz milletimize yardım etmek oluyoruz ve hiçbir kimseye de ajans uşak olmayacağız. Türk milleti her nerde olursa olsun, kendi milletimizdir, kendi kanımızdır, canımızdır.
Türklük davamızdan bizi hiç bir güç kuvvet ayıramaz Atasözümüzde olduğu gibi, Et tırnaktan ayrılmaz.
Düşmanlar bizleri bir mezhep, iki din, üç, dört ülke, bu Türk’tür, bu Türkmen’dir, bu Azarıdır, bu Afşar, bu Gagavuz’dur diye ayırtmak istiyorlar, ama bunlar bu boş kafayı kötü davranışları iç, dış düşmanlıkları kin beslemekleri, hainliklerini yeter bıraksınlar,
Bizim varlığımızı unutmayacağız,hakkımız öcümüz her nasıl olursa alınacaktır, bizleri sevmeyenler kıyıcılar doğdukları günlerine pişman olacaklardır..
Düşmanlarda bunu iyi bilsin bir karış anayurt, baba ocağı topraklarımız Kerkük, Musul, Erbil’den ve Türk dünyamızdan ayrılamayız, vazgeçmeyiz, ölene, can verene kadar.
Başkaları ne derse desinler, bizler Türk’üz, Türk kalacağız, Anavatanımız Türkiye’dir ve nerde bir Türk varsa oradan sınır, topraklarımız başlayacak,
Oralarda Türkçülük, milli bayrağımız dalgalanacaktır.
Rahmetli büyük Atamız Mustafa Kemal Paşa Atatürk, ne kadar güzel belirtmiştir:
“NE MUTLU TÜRK’ÜM DİYENE!”
Tarihimiz Uludur yücedir milli yorumumuz da bu, ne yazık ki. Hem yazık, hem tarihimiz mücadelemiz anlamamız geregir toplumuzu biran önce uykudan kaldırmalıyız, ona göre hesap kitap etmemiz gereken çıplak gerçekte bu değil midir?
Rahmetli Türk Başbuğu Türkeş’in, tarihe gönderme yaparak belirttiği,”Türk’ün Türk’ten başka dostu yoktur” gerçeği, ne yazık ki uzak kalan bir bölüm kardeşlerimiz Türk’e, Türk dünyasına yakınlık, ilgi göstermemiş gerekmektedir yanlarında olmalıyız, sahip çıkmalıyız kendisini doğru Türk bilenler artık korkuyu unutsunlar Türkler yiğittir, yiğit, kahraman kalmalıdırlar.
samedi 21 mai 2011
Iraklı Bakan ve Valiler Yerel Yönetimlerin Sorunlarını ve Türkiye İle İşbirliği Olanaklarını Değerlendirdi
Bugüne kadar özellikle Ortadoğu ülkelerinden pek çok konuğu ağırlayan ORSAM, 18 Mayıs 2011'de Irak Vilayetlerden Sorumlu Devlet Bakanı Dr. Turhan Müftü, Bağdat Valisi Salah Abdülrezzak ve Divaniye Valisi Salim Hüseyin Alvan'ı konuk etti. Iraklı konuklar Ankara'da Rixos Otel'de “Irak’ta Yerel Yönetimlerin Sorunları ve Türkiye ile İşbirliği Olanakları” konulu bir konferans verdi.
http://www.orsam.org.tr/tr/trUploads/Yazilar/Dosyalar/2011520_orsam.turan.mufti.tutanaklar.pdf
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