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  • New Turkey, Old Challenges: From Fundamental Freedoms to Minority Ri

    Fair Observer
    Oct 4 2014

    New Turkey, Old Challenges: From Fundamental Freedoms to Minority Rights
    360° ANALYSIS

    By Roberto Frifrini

    urkey has a long path ahead before all of its citizens can enjoy the
    full benefits of citizenship.

    On August 10, Turkey directly elected its president for the first time
    since the republic was founded in 1923. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the
    former prime minister, won the election, which called 55 million
    citizens to the ballot boxes. Gaining 51.79% of the vote, he
    prevailed over his opponents: Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, former
    secretary-general of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and
    joint candidate of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the
    Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) among others; and Selahattin
    DemirtaÃ…?, co-chair of the People's Democratic Party (HDP).

    On August 28, Erdogan took over the presidency from his predecessor,
    Abdullah Gul, in an official ceremony held at the Cankaya presidential
    palace in Ankara. Political tensions surrounded the oath ceremony, due
    to the delayed publication of the election results ' although the
    Supreme Board of Elections (YSK) declared the end of the counting
    procedure on August 15. Usually, any regulation or amendment made to
    the law is expected to be published the same day or the day after; in
    case of official elections, the results should be distributed as soon
    as the final counting is formally announced by the YSK. The delay has
    been repeatedly denounced by the opposition as an open violation of
    the Turkish constitution. The main points of criticism were based on
    the acts and meetings held by then President-elect Erdogan during the
    13-day delay, during which he also served as prime minister and
    chairman of his party. During this transition period, Erdogan also
    announced the designation of Ahmet Davutoglu, former foreign minister,
    as the new chairman of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and new
    prime minister.

    President Erdogan has consistently been a key player in Turkish
    politics and the wider Middle East since the general elections of
    2002. The 12th president of the republic is a charismatic figure
    influenced by and promoting political Sunni Islam. In December 2013,
    his leadership and the AKP's reputation were blemished by a corruption
    scandal that involved several people very close to the government, the
    Gezi Park protests in summer 2013 and Erdogan's harsh political
    rhetoric toward his opponents, especially the Hizmet movement and its
    leader, the Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen.

    Admittedly, under Erdogan's premiership, the country has achieved
    several goals, including consolidating its role as a regional power
    and global actor, as well as an economic powerhouse.

    Partially thanks to Turkey's candidacy for European Union (EU)
    membership, civil liberties and human rights have improved and it
    could easily be asserted that the last ten years represent the golden
    age of modern Turkey. But at the same time, it is crucial to emphasize
    Erdogan's negative impact on the country's human rights situation. Of
    particular note are the 2011 general elections, in which the AKP won
    327 seats out of 550 in the Grand National Assembly (TBMM), gaining
    the right to lead a single-party government for another term, and the
    Gezi Park protests.

    Turkey has been ruled by a single-party authoritarian government,
    creating tension among its citizens and threatening basic human
    rights.

    Gezi Park has been and still is seen as the turning point of the
    current administration's behavior and reputation at the domestic and
    international level. After the Occupy Gezi clashes erupted in all
    major Turkish cities and were suppressed by security forces with an
    indiscriminate use of tear gas and water cannons ' a practice
    condemned by all the national nongovernmental organizations (NGO), as
    well the EU, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International ' the
    governance style of Turkey's leading party completely changed.

    Gezi Protests: A Turning Point for Human Rights in Turkey

    Since the protests, Turkey has been ruled by a single-party
    authoritarian government, creating tension among its citizens and
    threatening basic human rights. Moreover, the situation has worsened
    in the wake of the 2013 bribery case. Over a 12-month period, Turkey
    witnessed restrictions on media and Internet freedom, with a temporary
    ban of Twitter and YouTube and an increase of attacks and legal
    complaints against journalists, as extensively documented by Index on
    Censorships and BIANET, a Turkish independent news site.

    Furthermore, an interim report by the Organization for Security and
    Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) openly denounced the lack of nonpartisan
    journalism covering the recent ballots. Censorship has not only
    affected the coverage of the presidential election. After the prime
    minister called on the media to not report any news about the
    abduction of Turkish diplomats and soldiers by the Islamic State in
    Mosul, an Ankara court issued a prohibitive order on airing or
    publishing any news related to the situation of the hostages. On June
    17, the ban was imposed with immediate effect on all media executives
    by Turkey's Supreme Board of Radio and Television (RTUK).

    Freedom of expression is just one of the civil society's concerns
    right now. On August 1, the Istanbul Convention, a legal milestone on
    preventing and combating gender-based and domestic violence, came into
    force. Turkey was the treaty's first signatory in 2011, but the
    situation of women in the country is still under threat.

    Moreover, during the holidays marking the end of Ramadan, Deputy Prime
    Minister Bülent Arınç expressed his concerns about the conduct that
    women should observe in the public sphere, including calling on them
    to not laugh in public. This could be misinterpreted as perpetuating
    an anachronistic patriarchal order. The vision seems to be shared by
    Erdogan as well. In one of his electoral rallies, he used violent
    words indirectly targeting a prominent journalist, defining her as a
    `shameless and militant woman' who must know her place. Amberin Zaman,
    a columnist for Taraf and The Economist, and her colleague, Ceyda
    Karan from the Cumhuriyet Daily, have been the targets of a libelous
    campaign on social media only for their professional observations on
    the status of Turkish politics.

    The 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide is on April 24, 2015.
    The mass deportations and deaths suffered by the non-Muslim population
    under the Ottoman Empire in 1915 will be commemorated worldwide.

    Another very important topic that will affect the post-electoral
    period and the upcoming political agenda are minority rights. Only
    three minorities are recognized in Turkey: Armenians, Greeks and Jews.
    According to Articles 37-44 of the Treaty of Lausanne, these
    minorities enjoy rights from freedom of expression and religion to
    education. Even nowadays, almost a century after the foundation of the
    Turkish republic, there is no legal provision for other communities or
    for non-Sunni Muslim groups. There has been a rise in the use of
    discriminatory language to target opponents, which negatively affects
    the daily life of the many Turks not considered members of official
    minority groups. This racism, perpetuated by university textbooks and
    election rallies, leaves an uncertain future for Turkey's
    non-protected minorities.

    The Armenian Genocide and the Alevi Controversy

    The 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide is on April 24, 2015.
    The mass deportations and deaths suffered by the non-Muslim population
    under the Ottoman Empire in 1915 will be commemorated worldwide. The
    centenary will be the occasion to better understand Turkey's treatment
    of its citizens belonging to different ethnic groups. The remembrance
    presents the threat of confrontation among Turks and citizens of
    different ethnicities.

    Unfortunately, since the assassination of Hrant Dink in 2007 ' a
    famous Turkish-Armenian journalist and editor-in-chief of Agos, a
    bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly ' one can observe an escalation of
    incendiary rhetoric toward the Armenian community. The fight over the
    recognition of events in 1915 as a genocide even extends beyond
    Turkey's borders. For instance, it has evoked nationalism in Turkish
    communities living abroad that are trying to counter the
    commemorations in countries such as the United States, Australia and
    Canada. Other minority communities will honor their dead as well and
    openly confront Turkish denialism; for instance, there will be
    commemorations of the Seyfo Genocide suffered by the Assyrian minority
    under Ottoman rule.

    Furthermore, according to a 2013 Agos report and later on confirmed by
    the interior ministry, the `officially recognized' minorities are
    subjected to a race code classification by the education ministry as a
    legacy of the Ottoman educational system. According to the report, the
    code for Armenians is two, the Greek minority is classified with code
    one and the Jewish minority is number three. This practice could
    amount to illegal ethnicity-based data collection and profiling of
    current and future generations.

    Those who support a confrontation with Turkey's past are being
    subjected to discrimination and hate speech. For instance, movie
    director Fatih Akın ' after an interview published with Agos about his
    new movie The Cut, which alludes to the Armenian genocide ' has been
    officially threatened alongside with Agos by the Turkic Pan-Turanist
    Association's Ã-tüken Journal. The association has openly declared its
    intentions to fight any attempt to recognize the events of 1915 as
    genocide.

    >From a political perspective, despite the words pronounced by
    then-Prime Minister Erdogan on the eve of the 99th anniversary, in
    which he offered his condolences toward Turkish citizens of Armenian
    origin, attitudes to this minority have not changed. Labeling someone
    as Armenian is still considered an insult by many conservative Turks.
    Recently, Erdogan was invited by the Armenian president, Serzh
    Sargsyan, to attend the Genocide commemoration ceremony next April in
    Yerevan. At the time of writing, there was still no official reply
    from the Turkish president or the government.

    Muslim minorities, particularly the Alevis, are experiencing
    significant discrimination as well. The Alevis, an heterogeneous and
    heterodox Muslim community, represent the largest religious minority
    in Turkey. They cannot freely practice their faith and their houses of
    prayer, the Cemevis, are not officially recognized as places of
    worship by the Directorate of Religious Affairs. The community has
    suffered several massacres (Dersim, MaraÅ?, Çorum and SivaÅ?), and is
    still one of the preferred targets of discrimination from a political
    point of view.

    The fight against ultranationalism and discrimination, alongside the
    creation of a pluralistic environment supportive of human rights, is
    the final task of the democratization process under Erdogan. Despite
    several achievements of the AKP's era ' from the ending of the
    headscarf ban to the unofficial recognition of Alevis' worship houses
    ' there is still a long path ahead for equal rights for all peoples in
    Turkey.

    The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not
    necessarily reflect Fair Observer's editorial policy.

    http://www.fairobserver.com/region/middle_east_north_africa/new-turkey-old-challenges-ahead-from-fundamental-freedoms-to-minority-rights-47812/




    From: A. Papazian
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