Turkey's first Kurdish dept opens amid political tension

From Hürriyet Daily News:

The beginning of Turkey's first undergraduate Kurdish program has been welcomed but the development comes amid charter-related tension

After years of efforts, a number of rejections and strong debates, Turkey’s first undergraduate-level Kurdish language and literature department is welcoming students for its first class today in the southeastern province Mardin’s Artuklu University.

The beginning of the first undergraduate-level Kurdish program, which many consider a positive development, comes at a time of recent tension over discussions on Turkey’s new constitution, which are about to commence between the ruling and oppositional parties, including the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which is primarily focused on the Kurdish issue.

While tension among the delegates is expected to rise especially on the first three articles, which discuss “the characteristics of the Republic,” an academic move to officially integrate Kurdish culture into Turkey’s education system is already regarded as a sign of development.

“When we established the School of Eastern Languages, I had planned to set up a Kurdish Language and Literature Department and kept re-applying to YÖK [Higher Education Board]. This city is the center of upper Mesopotamia, and Kurdish [culture] is a major part of this,” Artuklu University Rector Serdar Bedii Omay said.

Full story here.

Turkey going nuclear: follow-up

It might seem a bit out of touch with reality, with all that's happening in Libya, to get back to the nuclear issue right now. But on one hand, the problem is certainly not solved, and it's only yesterday that <a href="http://ca.news.yahoo.com/hundreds-protest-turkeys-decision-move-ahead-plans-build-20110319-075921-435.html">activists in Turkey and <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1300561879_1">Cyprus</span> protested against Turkish government plans to build the country's first nuclear reactor</a>. On the other hand, I have a duty to update you on what I anticipated in my <a href="http://turkishdiary.blogspot.com/2011/03/turkey-going-nuclear-is-it-wise-after.html">previous post</a>. Fact is, the <a href="http://www.itamc.org/">International Tourism and Media Conference</a> in Bursa was canceled at the last minute.
The official reason given to us is as follows:

<blockquote>Many participants have very recently informed us that they could not come due to the ongoing problems in the Arab world and the tragic situation in Japan which keeps them buys at home.

Meanwhile we also thought that it would not be proper to hold a "tourism and media conference" while millions are mourning in Japan for the loss of possibly over 10 thousand people and decided to postpone our conference. </blockquote>
The real reasons, I was told by independent sources, appear to be linked with the current situation of journalists in Turkey, with arrests and the growing censorship situation condemned exactly by that <a href="http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P7-TA-2011-0090+0+DOC+XML+V0//EN">European Parliament report</a> I quoted in the previous post.

My interview to Nedim Gürsel

I wish to announce the interview to Nedim Gürsel, the Turkish writer, which will be on air on euronews starting from tonight at 21.45 (CET). I met him in Paris to talk to him about his trial in Turkey and the implications in Turkey's accession to the EU.
It should be on air all over the weekend, although I don't know the exact timetable. Should you miss it, don't worry: it will soon be on air on euronews' website.

Turkish regulator to extend broadcasting time of private stations in Kurdish

From EJC Media News:

The Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK) of Turkey is planning to extend the period of time private television and radio stations are allowed to broadcast in Kurdish. Private TV stations currently have the right to broadcast programmes in Kurdish for a maximum of four hours a week, and radio stations for a maximum of five hours a week. Private TV and radio stations which broadcast in Kurdish include Gün TV, Söz TV and Medya FM. The RTÜK's decision to extend the broadcasting time allowed to private TV and radio stations for Kurdish programming came only days after the launch of the country's first 24-hour television channel broadcasting in Kurdish. The public use of Kurdish was prohibited following the 1980 military coup until 1991. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan praised the new Kurdish channel, terming it 'a very important initiative to strengthen ties between the public and the state.' (Today's Zaman via Media Network Weblog)

Turkey's Kurdish TV channel opens to mixed reviews

(From Reuters.com)

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Turkey has launched its first 24-hour Kurdish-language TV station in what the government called a democratic new era for minority Kurds.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan extended best wishes in once-banned Kurdish, but some Kurdish politicians criticised the New Year launch of state-run TRT 6 as a ploy to woo voters ahead of March local elections.

Some viewers were concerned that programming would become state propaganda, underscoring scepticism in a region scarred by decades of violence and poverty.

Turkey, which aspires to join the European Union, has been under pressure to expand cultural and political rights of its estimated 12 million Kurds, a sixth of the population.

Read the full story

Turks in Turkey cannot read Turkish Diary...

Or: another blog service closed. This time it's Blogger's turn.
From The Earth Times:

World's largets blog hosting service banned in Turkey

Ankara - A court in south-east Turkey on Friday banned Turkish internet users from accessing Blogger, the world's largest free blog hosting service. Internet users in Turkey discovered Friday afternoon that the site, which hosts millions of blogs, or web logs, had been blocked. When users tried to view a blogger's page they were redirected to a message which said: "Access to this website has been suspended in accordance with decision no. 2008/2761 of the TR Diyarbakir First Criminal Court of Peace."

No reason for the ban was given.

Turkish internet users are used to court-ordered bans of a large range of websites, including the video-sharing site Youtube, which was barred for hosting a video insulting the founder of the Turkish republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Adnan Oktar, an Islamic creationist has also been successful in getting a variety of sites banned by court decisions, including blog hosting website Wordpress and the personal website of renowned biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins.

Turkey at the Frankfurt Book Fair

I'm writing from the Frankfurt Book Fair, where this year Turkey is the guest of honour.

Yesterday, at the opening ceremony, there was a clash. Oh, if you had just passed by and had a look at it, you might not have noticed it, everyone looked very happy and friendly. Orhan Pamuk was sitting next to Adullah Gül's wife, and they all smiled from time to time when the Director of the German Publishers & Booksllers Association Gottfried Honnefelder or the German Foreign Affairs Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier named one or both of them.

But you had to listen to their speeches. Pamuk spoke of freedom of expression in quite hard terms toward Turkey: "The State's habit of penalising writers and their books is still very much alive - he said -; Article 301 of the Turkish penal code continues to be used to silence and suppress many other writers, as it was use against me; there are at this moment hundreds of writers and journalists being prosecuted and found guilty under this article. While I was working on the novel that I published earlier this year, I needed to research old Turkish films and songs. I did it easily on YouTube, but now I would not be able to do the same. Because YouTube, like many other domestic and intrnational websites, has been blocked for residents of Turkey for political reasons".

As soon as he finished his speech, Pamuk left the hall in a hurry. Did he just have another appointment, or was it perhaps to avoid getting angry at what his president would say soon after him? Because Abdullah Gül critisized the lack of respet of freedom of speech in other countries, speaking of Turkey as a paradise in that respect, where the "biggest achievement" is multiculuralism. He said that in Turkey there are "Books and magazines published in different languages, as well as TV and radio programmes in different languages", even though in Turkey broadcasting in languages such as Kurdish or Arabic is still strongly limited.

This morning I went to a panel about Islam in Europe or European Islam. The guests were Islamic European scholar Tariq Ramadan and Albert Schmid of the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. Actually the two agreed on almost everything, so there wasn't much of a debate, which was undoubtedly dominated by Ramadan. I was quite stunned by his charisma. He's a star, of course, and especially in France, but I had never bothered to learn more about him or to look for anything (a book, some TV appearance...), also because of him being a star, and my natural suspicious attitude towards such "vedettes". But I must admit he has arguments, and looks as if he believed in what he says, namely that Sharia does not mean denial of separation between the Church and the State, or that the people who are Muslim by religion but European by culture abide by what he calls "the 4 l'", that is the law of the country where they live, its language, loyalty to it, and liberty. It would deserve that I speak more about it, especially about his position on the stoning of adulterers, but unfortunately I don't have the time now.

The rest of the Fair is waiting for me (and lunch as well!).

Turkey's poisoned pens

Here is a very interesting and very comprehensive article about the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Turkey is this year's guest country at the Frankfurt Book Fair. For months now, the country's writers and critics have been embroiled in a bitter feud over the politics of participation. By Constanze Letsch

The 60th Frankfurt Book Fair opens in just a few days time, a moment that has been eagerly awaited in Turkey, this year's guest country, for almost two years. The Turkish government set aside a budget of seven million euros, and rented 4.260 m² of exhibition space. The country will be represented by 100 publishers, 350 authors, translators and academics, 320 artists, 10 literary and licensing agency representatives, 110 curators, presenters and coordinators and 120 media representatives: almost 1000 people in total.

1000 minus 20. Since July, a bitter feud has been bubbling away in the Turkish media over a controversial boycott of the Book Fair, in which to date, 20 of the invited authors and literary critics are participating.

Full story on Nomadics

Turkey’s state TV to broadcast in Kurdish, Persian, Arabic in March

From Media News:

Ibrahim Sahin, Director General of the state-owned Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), said a new TV station in Kurdish, Persian and Arabic will start broadcasting in March of next year. Sahin said the Kurdish station will use the Hot Bird satellite, which is used by Roj TV, a popular regional station that authorities regard as a mouthpiece for the PKK. TRT's Kurdish station will be available not only in the mainly Kurdish Southeast but also in Iraq, Iran and the European states where Kurds reside. Observers say the latest move is an attempt to attract viewers away from Denmark-based Roj TV. Kurdish critics say the TRT's allocation of a station for Kurdish-language broadcasting will prove beneficial for social unity. However, they also noted it should be well designed so as not to allow any room for bureaucratic manoeuvring. Parliament passed a bill at the end of May allowing the TRT to broadcast programmes in languages other than Turkish. State broadcaster TRT began airing weekly 30-minute programmes in Kurdish and several other minority languages in 2004 as part of Turkey's bid to join the European Union. But the Turkish political and military establishment has long feared that encouraging minority languages might harm the unity among Turkey's 72 million people. Sahin said there is a high demand in Arab countries for Arabic and Persian broadcasts from Turkey. With its Persian station, Turkey will reach at least 20 million Azerbaijanis living in Iran, Sahin added. (Today's Zaman via Media Network Weblog)

Turkey crisis: Hopes of democracy are hanging in the balance

From the Observer

It is too soon to know how the battle between the AKP and the secular establishment will play itself out, but, while we wait, spare a thought for Turkey's beleaguered democrats.

They include the scholars who have questioned the very foundations of official history, the lawyers who have challenged its infamous penal code, the writers, journalists, translators and publishers who have refused to be intimidated by that code, the nationwide alliances of feminist and human rights activists, and the musicians and memoirists who defy official ideology by celebrating their multicultural roots.

I could go on. These are loose-knit networks: though many go back several decades, it was when EU accession began to look like a real possibility, in the mid to late 1990s, that they came into their own. What they saw in the EU bid was a chance for a bloodless revolution - a measured reform of its repressive state bureaucracies, a democratic resolution of the Kurdish problem, and an end to what polite political scientists call tutelary democracy.

In the Turkish context, they mean a democracy in which the army has the last word, involving itself in the day-to-day running of government and stepping in to shut it down whenever it deems it to have strayed from the righteous path.

Read the full story

Turkish parliamentary commission approves bill amending Article 301

From Hürriyet:

Turkish parliament's justice committee on Friday accepted the bill to amend the controversial Article 301, which has been seen as a restriction on free speech. The committee agreed to give the mandate of opening prosecutions under the article to the justice minister, signaling a split within the ruling AKP. The initial proposal had given the mandate to the president. Turkish Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin rejected claims from the opposition that the new amendment would bring an end to the protection of "Turkish values, state and nation." (UPDATED)

The controversial bill amending the Article 301 of Turkish Penal Code busied the country's agenda recently, was accepted following to discussion held in Parliamentary Justice Committee on Friday.

Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code criminalizes insulting "Turkishness." Under the amendments proposed by the government, the term "Turkishness" will be replaced by the "Turkish nation," and the term "Republic" will be replaced with "State of the Republic of Turkey."

The committee agreed to make the justice minister responsible to approve any prosecution under the law. The initial proposal by the government sought the president's greenlight for prosecutors before they could press any charges related with the article.

The committee also removed from the amendment bill presidential approval for prosecution under Article 301, which criminalizes insults against "national interests."

The bill lowers the maximum punishment from three to two years, opening the way for the postponement of prison terms for those convicted under the law.

The European Union has been calling on Turkey to amend Article 301, which has been the basis for charges against Turkish writers and journalists including Hrant Dink, Elif Safak and Orhan Pamuk.

Turkey jails Kurdish Nobel nominee

A Turkish court has sentenced Leyla Zana, a Kurdish politician and former Nobel peace prize nominee, to two years in prison for spreading "terrorist" propaganda, court officials said.

Zana was convicted in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir for a speech she made at Kurdish festival last year. In the speech, she said that the Kurdish people had three leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, Kurdish politicians in northern Iraq, and Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader. Zana came to prominence in 1994 when she was convicted for links to the PKK, which is outlawed in Turkey.

She was released in 2004 after Turkey's appeals court overturned her conviction and that of three other Kurdish former politicians.

Full story here.

Journalist to appear in court for 301 case

Recent revelations by two gendarmes that their superiors received prior warning of a plan to murder ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in İstanbul early last year have strengthened the case of a Turkish journalist facing trial on charges of insulting the military.

Today's Zaman columnist Lale Sarıibrahim-oğlu is facing prosecution under the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) due to remarks she made concerning images of the gunman who allegedly shot Dink to death posing with a gendarmerie officer and a police officer in two separate pictures published by Turkish dailies.

Gendarmes Sgt. Okan S. and Spc. Sgt. Veysel Ş., appearing in a Trabzon court on March 20, confirmed the earlier testimony of witness Coskun İğci -- the ex-husband of a relative of one of the prime suspects in the Dink murder -- that they had been warned about the plan to murder Dink.

The two soldiers said they informed their superior, Col. Ali Öz, then the Trabzon gendarmerie provincial commander, of the plot. They also testified that they had previously given false statements during the course of the investigation after being pressured to do so by the colonel.

Following the testimonies by the two soldiers, Öz was removed from his post as gendarmerie provincial commander of Bilecik and posted to the Bursa Regional Command, which amounted to a demotion.

The two gendarmes’ testimony has been added to Sarıibrahimoğlu’s case file as evidence justifying her criticism of security forces’ behavior after Dink’s murder.
Sarıibrahimoğlu’s second hearing will take place today at the Bakırköy 2nd Court of First Instance in İstanbul.

Read the full story on Today's Zaman

Europe: Turkey: Fine For Upsetting Prime Minister

From the New York Times:

An Ankara court fined an elderly man 10,000 lira ($6,700) for criticizing Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan in a visitors' book at the onetime home of Ataturk, who founded the Turkish Republic in 1923.

Full story

Turkey at a Crossroads, as Always

From Znet:

“Turkey is always at a crossroads,” I said. “That’s what we have been reading in the newspapers in Turkey and in the West for years now. It seems it is convenient to stay at a crossroads.”

There is no choice but to take the road to EU integration, he insisted. It is the only way to bring freedom of expression, minority rights and democracy to Turkey. For Turkish-Armenians, too, it is crucial. “There are people in this country who—if given the chance—would slaughter us again,” he told me.

This was in June 2005 in Istanbul.

On Jan. 19, 2007, I woke up from a phone call from Turkey. “It is all over Turkish TV,” I was told. “They killed him.”
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was slaughtered in front of the editorial offices of his newspaper Agos. He had met one of the people who was “given the chance” and acted upon it.

Three months have passed since Dink’s murder, and—you guessed it—the country is still at a crossroads. I talked about today’s Turkey with Amberin Zaman, Turkey correspondent for The Economist.

“Even I, as a journalist, have to measure my words very very carefully, because I don’t know when some extremist will consider what I said to be ‘insulting Turkishness’ and take me to court on that,” Zaman says in this interview. “ It’s a very nefarious, poisonous atmosphere that we live in today,
and all the more so because we really can’t pinpoint where the danger is coming from. And what’s really obscene about it is that these people use Turkish law to attack intellectuals,” she adds.

Full story