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TALKING TURKEY
FrontPage Magazine
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/07/talking-turkey/
June 6 2010
Turkey has been at the center of the now infamous flotilla incident
involving a Hamas-connected Turkish "NGO" which attempted to run
an Israeli naval blockade off the coast of Gaza. The flotilla
was supported financially by Hamas and peopled primarily by their
Turkish allies. It was purportedly seeking to transport 10,000 tons
of humanitarian supplies to Gaza. But in fact, Israel supplies Gaza
with 15,000 tons of food, medicines, and related humanitarian support
every week. There seems to be more here than meets the eye.
Turkey remains a prime transit route for Southwest Asian heroin into
Western Europe. International trafficking organizations that operate
within the country, from Ankara to Istanbul and beyond, excel at
evading narcotics blockades and interdicts. With all the focus on
Turks sailing towards the Hamas seas, defying Israel's determined
effort to bar delivery of military weapons and material to the
terrorist government that runs Gaza, one wonders how genteel Turkey's
own internal borders have been. Does her treatment of religious and
ethnic minorities model Western humanitarian values? Consider Turkey's
treatment of her Armenian, Catholic, and Kurdish minorities.
Adolf Hitler, a personal friend and ally of Grand Mufti Haj Amin
el-Husseini, the founder of modern-day Palestinian Arab nationalism,
said in 1939: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of
the Armenians?" Certainly not Istanbul. For nearly a century, Turkey
steadfastly has refused to acknowledge their barbaric genocide between
1915-1918 of 1,500,000 Armenian men, women, and children. Turkey will
not apologize or even acknowledge the genocide they perpetrated,
assuring that one of the most heinous war crimes of the twentieth
century festers unresolved. American President Theodore Roosevelt
contemporaneously wrote in 1918: "[T]he Armenian massacre was the
greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to
condone it...[T]he failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror
means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is
mischievous nonsense." British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said:
"In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out
the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia
Minor...There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned
and executed for political reasons." In 1981, Ronald Reagan urged in
a Presidential proclamation that the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust
never be forgotten "like the genocide of the Armenians before it,
and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it."
Throughout the week, Israel has acknowledged and publicly regretted
the loss of human life due to the flotilla incident, even as Israel
has explained why she must continue blockading Gaza - namely, because
recent experience has evidenced again and again that Hamas supporters
will not stop trying to ship rockets, grenades, and anti-tank missiles
to Israel's bordering enemies to launch terror assaults against Jewish
civilian communities. Meanwhile, Turkey still denies the Armenian
Genocide ever happened.
As for the country's Catholics, Bishop Luigi Padovese, a Roman
Catholic bishop, was stabbed to death in Turkey on Thursday shortly
before he was scheduled to depart for nearby Cyprus to meet with Pope
Benedict XVI. Three years ago, three missionaries' throats were cut
out in central Turkey. Their deaths were meant to send a message. The
men were disemboweled, and "their intestines sliced up in front of
their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were
destroyed...Fingers were chopped off...Noses and mouths and anuses were
sliced open." One was stabbed 156 times, another 99 times, and their
"throats were sliced from ear to ear," according to International
Christian Concern, an American organization based in Washington, D.C.
There is no record of sorrow from Rachel Corrie backers or the IHH.
Under the Turkish Constitution enacted by Kemal Ataturk nearly a
century ago, ethnic minorities were barred from expressing cultural
distinctiveness in Turkey. Thus, even as the United States is home
to many foreign-language television and radio stations, the Kurdish
language was absolutely banned in 1991. Expressions of Kurdish
nationalism continue to be repressed; Kurds in Turkey are restricted
from giving their children Kurdish names. Turkey has moved closer to
the governments of Syria and Iran in dealing with Kurdish nationalism.
In 1995, Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish woman ever elected to
Turkish parliament, was sentenced to fifteen years incarceration for
"separatist speech," and her political party was barred. While she was
incarcerated in Turkish prison, the European Parliament awarded her
the Sakharov Prize in Human Rights. (By contrast, an Arab member of
the Israeli Knesset was aboard the Gaza flotilla and returned safely
to Parliament after the it was stopped.) In the 1990s, the Turkish
government was spending some $8 billion annually deploying 300,000
troops in southeastern Turkey to suppress Kurdish nationalism. For
numerical perspective, consider that President Obama announced last
week that he is dispatching 1,200 National Guard troops to provide
administrative support along the porous American border with Mexico.
Turkey killed approximately 25,000 Kurds in the mid-1990s, destroying
some 3,000 Kurdish villages during the effort to repress Kurdish
nationalism and producing more than 2,000,000 Kurdish refugees.
According to Minority Rights Group International, in a report funded
by the European Union, as many as 40% of Kurdish women in Turkey are
illiterate and nearly half the children of Kurdish refugees receive no
education. In addition, the government obstructs Armenian and Greek
minorities' school educational efforts. The Turkish war against the
Kurds is so visceral that it threatened Turkey's willingness to join
with American troops against Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in neighboring
Iraq. In an official EU 2006 "Progress Report" on Turkey's fitness
for acceptance in the European Union, it was concluded inter alia
that "Turkey [still] needs to significantly improve the situation of
fundamental rights in a number of areas and address the problems that
minorities are facing."
Now that the world has been talking Israel for the past week,
slowly coming to understand more fully why Israel needs to protect
her borders from Hamas state-sponsored terrorism in Gaza, it seems
it's time to talk Turkey.
Dov Fischer is a legal affairs consultant and adjunct professor of
the law of civil procedure and advanced torts. He was formerly Chief
Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and writes extensively on political,
cultural, and religious issues. He is author of General Sharon's War
Against Time Magazine and blogs at www.rabbidov.com
From: A. Papazian
FrontPage Magazine
http://frontpagemag.com/2010/06/07/talking-turkey/
June 6 2010
Turkey has been at the center of the now infamous flotilla incident
involving a Hamas-connected Turkish "NGO" which attempted to run
an Israeli naval blockade off the coast of Gaza. The flotilla
was supported financially by Hamas and peopled primarily by their
Turkish allies. It was purportedly seeking to transport 10,000 tons
of humanitarian supplies to Gaza. But in fact, Israel supplies Gaza
with 15,000 tons of food, medicines, and related humanitarian support
every week. There seems to be more here than meets the eye.
Turkey remains a prime transit route for Southwest Asian heroin into
Western Europe. International trafficking organizations that operate
within the country, from Ankara to Istanbul and beyond, excel at
evading narcotics blockades and interdicts. With all the focus on
Turks sailing towards the Hamas seas, defying Israel's determined
effort to bar delivery of military weapons and material to the
terrorist government that runs Gaza, one wonders how genteel Turkey's
own internal borders have been. Does her treatment of religious and
ethnic minorities model Western humanitarian values? Consider Turkey's
treatment of her Armenian, Catholic, and Kurdish minorities.
Adolf Hitler, a personal friend and ally of Grand Mufti Haj Amin
el-Husseini, the founder of modern-day Palestinian Arab nationalism,
said in 1939: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of
the Armenians?" Certainly not Istanbul. For nearly a century, Turkey
steadfastly has refused to acknowledge their barbaric genocide between
1915-1918 of 1,500,000 Armenian men, women, and children. Turkey will
not apologize or even acknowledge the genocide they perpetrated,
assuring that one of the most heinous war crimes of the twentieth
century festers unresolved. American President Theodore Roosevelt
contemporaneously wrote in 1918: "[T]he Armenian massacre was the
greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to
condone it...[T]he failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror
means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is
mischievous nonsense." British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said:
"In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out
the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia
Minor...There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned
and executed for political reasons." In 1981, Ronald Reagan urged in
a Presidential proclamation that the lessons of the Nazi Holocaust
never be forgotten "like the genocide of the Armenians before it,
and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it."
Throughout the week, Israel has acknowledged and publicly regretted
the loss of human life due to the flotilla incident, even as Israel
has explained why she must continue blockading Gaza - namely, because
recent experience has evidenced again and again that Hamas supporters
will not stop trying to ship rockets, grenades, and anti-tank missiles
to Israel's bordering enemies to launch terror assaults against Jewish
civilian communities. Meanwhile, Turkey still denies the Armenian
Genocide ever happened.
As for the country's Catholics, Bishop Luigi Padovese, a Roman
Catholic bishop, was stabbed to death in Turkey on Thursday shortly
before he was scheduled to depart for nearby Cyprus to meet with Pope
Benedict XVI. Three years ago, three missionaries' throats were cut
out in central Turkey. Their deaths were meant to send a message. The
men were disemboweled, and "their intestines sliced up in front of
their eyes. They were emasculated and watched as those body parts were
destroyed...Fingers were chopped off...Noses and mouths and anuses were
sliced open." One was stabbed 156 times, another 99 times, and their
"throats were sliced from ear to ear," according to International
Christian Concern, an American organization based in Washington, D.C.
There is no record of sorrow from Rachel Corrie backers or the IHH.
Under the Turkish Constitution enacted by Kemal Ataturk nearly a
century ago, ethnic minorities were barred from expressing cultural
distinctiveness in Turkey. Thus, even as the United States is home
to many foreign-language television and radio stations, the Kurdish
language was absolutely banned in 1991. Expressions of Kurdish
nationalism continue to be repressed; Kurds in Turkey are restricted
from giving their children Kurdish names. Turkey has moved closer to
the governments of Syria and Iran in dealing with Kurdish nationalism.
In 1995, Leyla Zana, the first Kurdish woman ever elected to
Turkish parliament, was sentenced to fifteen years incarceration for
"separatist speech," and her political party was barred. While she was
incarcerated in Turkish prison, the European Parliament awarded her
the Sakharov Prize in Human Rights. (By contrast, an Arab member of
the Israeli Knesset was aboard the Gaza flotilla and returned safely
to Parliament after the it was stopped.) In the 1990s, the Turkish
government was spending some $8 billion annually deploying 300,000
troops in southeastern Turkey to suppress Kurdish nationalism. For
numerical perspective, consider that President Obama announced last
week that he is dispatching 1,200 National Guard troops to provide
administrative support along the porous American border with Mexico.
Turkey killed approximately 25,000 Kurds in the mid-1990s, destroying
some 3,000 Kurdish villages during the effort to repress Kurdish
nationalism and producing more than 2,000,000 Kurdish refugees.
According to Minority Rights Group International, in a report funded
by the European Union, as many as 40% of Kurdish women in Turkey are
illiterate and nearly half the children of Kurdish refugees receive no
education. In addition, the government obstructs Armenian and Greek
minorities' school educational efforts. The Turkish war against the
Kurds is so visceral that it threatened Turkey's willingness to join
with American troops against Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in neighboring
Iraq. In an official EU 2006 "Progress Report" on Turkey's fitness
for acceptance in the European Union, it was concluded inter alia
that "Turkey [still] needs to significantly improve the situation of
fundamental rights in a number of areas and address the problems that
minorities are facing."
Now that the world has been talking Israel for the past week,
slowly coming to understand more fully why Israel needs to protect
her borders from Hamas state-sponsored terrorism in Gaza, it seems
it's time to talk Turkey.
Dov Fischer is a legal affairs consultant and adjunct professor of
the law of civil procedure and advanced torts. He was formerly Chief
Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review and writes extensively on political,
cultural, and religious issues. He is author of General Sharon's War
Against Time Magazine and blogs at www.rabbidov.com
From: A. Papazian