Turkish police arrested 170 protesters around Istanbul’s Taksim Square on May 31, as crowds gathered to mark the 9th anniversary of the nationwide anti-government demonstrations that began in nearby Gezi Park, reports Medya News.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Complacency has been the hallmark of NATO expansion. Over time, it has even become a form of derision, notably directed against Russia. As with many historical matters, records ignored can be records revisited, the second time around sometimes nastier than the first.
With the Ukraine conflict raging, a few of Russia’s neighbours have reconsidered their position of military non-alignment and neutrality. Last month, both Sweden and Finland submitted membership applications to formally join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
This reconsideration must be taken with the heaviest of qualifications. Sweden and Finland, while they have claimed neutrality and non-alignment status, have hardly been neutral on the subject of cooperation with NATO. Since the 1990s, Sweden has become an increasingly important partner of the alliance, using its military in concert with NATO exercises. Finland, with its 280,000 troops and 900,000 reservists, also boasts an interoperability function with the alliance.
Admission to the security club does, however, come with the requirement of unanimity from current members. As things would have it, one country has shown little enthusiasm to acquiesce to the plan. Turkey, at times the large fly in the pact’s ointment, sees an opportunity to extract concessions and muddy the pool of consensus. With the Russian invasion, the Erdoğan regime has broadened its military and political efforts against its long-term enemies, the Kurds. Militarily, Turkish forces have intensified efforts in Kurdish-run parts in northeast Syria. Politically, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hopes to have Sweden and Finland surrender a number of Kurdish dissidents, or terrorists, as he prefers to call them.
The point for Turkey regarding the Kurdish issue is far from new. In 2009, Erdoğan kicked up a fuss by blocking the appointment of former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen as NATO chief, citing Denmark’s sympathies for “Kurdish terrorists”. He also accused Rasmussen of failing to heed Turkish requests to ban ROJ TV, a Danish-based station linked to the Kurdistan’s Workers’ Party, the PKK. The appointment did eventually come through after much haggling and a solemn promise from President Barack Obama that a Turk would be given a prominent leadership role.
Be it NATO relations with Israel, efforts to bolster Eastern European states against Moscow, or the acquisition of Russia’s S-400 missile defence system, Erdoğan has proved a determined spoiler. In 2020, he sorely tested NATO relations by teasing Greece with a gas-exploration ship backed by fighter jet support. The Oruç Reis was sent to waters in the East Mediterranean claimed by Turkey, with the purpose of exploring hydrocarbon reserves. France deployed its own ships in support of Greece. NATO had gotten into a squabble with itself.
The PKK continues its unrelenting guerrilla campaign on behalf of the large Kurdish minority within Turkey, one it has waged since 1984. While the party is listed as a terrorist group by the EU and the United States, Sweden and Finland have generally opposed extradition of its members and sympathisers. For its part, Sweden has welcomed somewhere in the order of 100,000 Kurds since the 1970s. Erdoğan, in typically blunt fashion, has accused Sweden of being a “hatchery” for “terrorist” organisations.
Ankara is also unlikely to have forgotten the condemnation by Finland and Sweden of its military incursion into Syria in 2019, a move that was accompanied by restrictions on weapons sales.
Last month, Turkey’s Justice Ministry noted the rejection by Helsinki and Stockholm of the request “for the extradition of people with links to the PKK and Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ)”. In terms of numbers, six members of the PKK and six from FETÖ have been sought for the last five years, while a further 21 “suspects” have bulked the list.
The affair has become something of a spectacle. Sweden has extended an arm to Ankara, hoping to pacify Erdoğan even as he tells members of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) about the devious way Stockholm and Helsinki have tried to rebrand the PKK in other theatres, such as Syria.
The propitiating move has caused tremors of worry within Sweden. “If you want to sell everything for NATO membership,” stormed Swedish lawmaker Amineh Kakabaveh, “then go ahead but I think it’s awful.”
A note of determined stroppiness has also been struck. “Let’s not fall into Erdoğan’s trap,” urged 17 cultural and literary figures in an opinion piece published by Dagens Nyheter. Other Swedish papers, including Aftonbladet, Expressen and Svenka Dagbladet also ran the piece titled “Do not hand over the publishers to Erdogan!” The key concern: the demand from Ankara that various journalists, writers and publishers be surrendered to Turkish authorities.
This point is particularly biting, given that many of these figures have become Swedish citizens. But it is also of concern given Turkey’s notoriously poor record in treating members of the fourth estate. The stern op-ed recalls “the attacks and assassination attempts against prominent journalists, Can Dündar, in Istanbul, Erk Acarer in Berlin, and Ahmet Dönmez in Stockholm.”
There is a certain irony in the Swedish and Finnish decision, not least in claimed efforts to bolster their security against an authoritarian Russia. NATO, despite supposedly promoting liberal democratic values, has members (Turkey and Hungary spring to mind) who are much at odds with them.
An authoritarian Turkey, argue the 17 signatories, is fiendishly attempting to insinuate its own values into the Swedish political and legal system. The Turkish leader’s “political manoeuvre to extradite the people who took refuge in Sweden to be free as an attempt to export his own understanding of freedom of expression to our country, Sweden.”
Despite the tangle, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is convinced “that we will be able to address the concerns that Turkey has expressed in a way that doesn’t delay the membership”. In the final heave-ho, all eyes will be on what concessions will go Erdoğan’s way.
The post Turkey Spoils the Big NATO Party first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
CORRECTION: During the production of this episode we were working with the most up to date information at the time when we had said nobody had died at the May Day protests in Chile. Unfortunately we have since learned that Francisca Sandoval, a journalist age 29 died several days later in the hospital. Our condolences go out to her family and loved ones.
Welcome to another episode of System Fail. In the news this week we do a quick rundown of May Day celebrations around the world. Although there were other May Day festivities we focused on Montreal Santiago de Chile, Istanbul, Berlin and Paris.
For our next segment we cover the drastic curtailing of reproductive rights in the United States as foreshadowed by the leak of Supreme Court documents. We also take a look at the acts of resistance and the obnoxious recuperationist conspiracy theorists who try to discredit them.
Later, we see how comrades in Greece are resisting Law 4777 which would station police on university campuses, where they have historically not been allowed to go.
Finally, we cover a violent insurrection in Sri Lanka where protesters have ousted the corrupt Prime Minister and torched two of the President’s houses and his presidential Lamborghini.
The post System Fail 11: Lamborghinis and Tear Gas first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
On May 16 2022, Finland and Sweden decided to become members of NATO.
Not only is this totally against the 1991 US / NATO promise to then Russian President Gorbachev, that “NATO will not move an inch eastward from Berlin”. Then total NATO members were 14, two in the Americas – US and Canada – and 12 in Europe. By late 1990’s, expansion started rapidly and today NATO counts 30 members, 28 in Europe and the same two in the Americas. Most of the new ones are East of Berlin.
Finland shares a 1,340 km border with Russia. Thus, as a NATO country, it would become another real threat for Moscow. Also, during WWII, Finland allied with Nazi-Germany fighting the Soviet Union, when the USSR lost some 27 million people, soldiers and civilians. Finland does not have a clean record vis-à-vis Russia.
On the other hand, Sweden shares no border with Russia and has not been at war with Russia in 300 years. Sweden, like Finland, has not been threatened at all by Russia. So, Sweden teaming up with Finland against Russia – there is something quite weird going on. A country does not overnight seek or make an enemy when there was absolutely not a minimum threat from the “assumed” enemy. What’s going on?
Given the circumstances of these two “neutral” countries suddenly changing from “neutral” to “aggressive” against Russia, there must have other reasons than Russia attacking Ukraine. Both of these countries know exactly the background for the Russian war on Ukraine.
While war should, under all circumstances, be avoided and replaced by negotiations, one cannot ignore Russia’s worries -– preoccupations enhanced by the fact that many proposals for negotiations advanced by Russia before the war were rejected by Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy. Likewise, after the beginning of the armed conflict, proposal for Peace Talks, notably by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were, though first accepted, then rejected, which made Mr. Lavrov assume that Mr. Zelenskyy is not his sovereign own man, but follows instructions. See his interview with Al Arabia media.
Could it be, or is it highly probable, that both Finland and Sweden were coerced by Washington, and likely by Europe / NATO to decide and ask for immediate NATO membership? Sweden, because of the North Sea, where Russia has a dominant presence?
The NATO Czar, Stoltenberg, has repeatedly said that NATO would apply special measures (or create special rules?) to accelerate NATO membership for these two countries. He reiterated on several occasions that by June 2022 Finland and Sweden could already be active members. Normally, it takes at least a year for a new NATO member to enter the Alliance. So, what’s the hurry, if there is no threat?
Before the Ukraine-Russia war, and before the billion-dollars-worth of western anti-Russia campaign, only about a third, max. 40% of the people of both countries, were somewhat favorable towards NATO – a clear minority.
After the beginning of the war, and the utterly distorted anti-Russia lie-propaganda campaign, the popular support for NATO-entry allegedly jumped to about 70%. Yet, this figure advanced by the two NATO-candidate countries, would have to be scientifically verified as both nations have a highly educated population. They know the risks they are taking by becoming de facto enemies of Russia by NATO membership.
Ukraine was a candidate for NATO long before the 2014 Maidan Coup. In fact, the Maidan Coup was an instrument to accelerate Ukraine’s NATO membership. Russia – President Putin – from the very beginning said Nyet to Ukraine NATO membership. Not only was he referring to the 1991 promise, but also to the Minsk Agreement of 2014.
After the US planned and directed the Maidan Coup in Kiev, the Minsk Protocol was negotiated by France and Germany. Under the Minsk Accord, Ukraine was to remain neutral, de-militarized, no NATO ever. The Protocol also demanded a De-Nazification of Ukraine, as well as a special status for the two Donbass Republics — Donetsk and Lugansk.
De-Nazification refers primarily to the Nazi Azov Battalion(s) that were, for the last 8 years, lambasting and attacking mostly civilians in the two “independent” Donbass Republics, causing some 14,000 deaths, about one third of which are children.
Russia – President Putin and most of the Kremlin – are particularly sensitive to the Ukraine Nazis, as they collaborated with Hitler’s Nazi-Germany in WWII in the war against Russia, when some 27 million Russians were killed. NATO knows about it. Therefore NATO, under the guidance of Washington and followed by Brussels, kept — and keeps — provoking Russia with first sending military “advisors” and clandestinely weapons to Ukraine. For NATO countries a key objective is to conquer Russia – primarily for her riches in natural resources, as well as the enormous landmass, the globe’s largest country – and for the power the dominance of large and rich Russia would bestow in this sick western personal and corporate oligarchy.
In the preparation of the war, weapons were relatively clandestinely delivered from the west to Ukraine. Now, weapon deliveries from the US and from European NATO countries in the tens, if not hundreds of billions of dollars-worth equivalent, are fully open. No secret. Not even hidden anymore. NATO countries feel they have the right to indirectly use Ukraine to fight Russia.
But what is RIGHT?
The last two decades at least, were exacerbated by the fake WEF (World Economic Forum)-imposed covid scare — lockdown, killing of the world economy, killing of common people’s livelihood, killing of children’s future – reflected in the skyrocketing teenager suicide rate and more untold misery, all of which eradicated the human notion of RIGHTS and WRONGS.
The last two decades at least, were exacerbated by the fake WEF (World Economic Forum)-imposed covid scare, lockdown, killing of the world economy, killing of common people’s livelihood, killing of children’s future – reflected in the skyrocketing teenager suicide rate and more untold misery; all of which eradicated the human notion of RIGHTS and WRONGS.
During this period, International Rule of Law has completely disappeared. Nobody respects it anymore. The judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC) of The Hague, so far have not accepted any claim that goes against the interests of the Cabal, mostly Anglo Saxon-led westerners – plus the insanely wealthy financial corporations — BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelity. See also Ukraine-Russia and the World Economic Forum (WEF): A Planned Milestone Towards “The Great Reset”?
But now comes the hick. Just a little detail. According to Article 10 of the NATO Constitution, all 30 members of the Alliance have to agree to a new member.
Turkey, a key NATO member, in a particularly strategic geographic and geopolitical position – opposes entry of Finland and Turkey into NATO. And this under the pretext, according to Turkish President Erdogan, that “the two Nordic countries are “guesthouses for terrorist organizations.” He [Erdogan] was referring to the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front (DHKP/C), which have been outlawed by Ankara”.
“These countries do not have a clear unequivocal stance against terrorist organizations. Sweden is the incubation center of terrorist organizations. They bring terrorists to talk in their parliaments… We wouldn’t say ‘yes’ to them joining NATO, a security organization… They were going to come on Monday to convince us. Sorry, they don’t have to bother,” Erdogan said.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry said on Monday [16 May 2022] that senior official from Helsinki and Stockholm would travel to Turkey to discuss the matter. Erdogan, however, indicated at the press briefing that such talks would be senseless. See this from Le Monde International.
Turkey may be a NATO country, one of the most important ones for the Alliance, due to its geographically strategic location and position. However, Turkey is also an ally of Russia. And in recent months, years, Erdogan has been tilting more to Russia, to the east in general, than to the west, towards her western NATO allies. Has Erdogan noticed how unreliable and deceptive, and trickery the West / NATO is and behaves around the world? It’s very likely.
Anticipating such a move, Jens Stoltenberg had already said days ago, that if Turkey, or any other NATO member, would oppose entry of Finland and Sweden into the Alliance, NATO would apply special measures to overrule NATO’s Article 10. He did not elaborate what measures he would apply.
But in a world without rules, everything is possible.
When in 2017, Turkish President Recep Erdogan brokered a deal reportedly worth $2.5 billion with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the purchase of the highly sophisticated Russian S-400 air defense system, there was talk of Turkey possibly exiting the Alliance. Indeed, Turkey has been “sanctioned” for doing so, and many, if not all, of the nuclear war-heads stationed in Turkey were removed and placed in Europe, most of them in Italy.
Might this be again a moment for Turkey to say and, indeed, decide to exit NATO and seek closer alliance with Russia and China – and the east in general? The Eurasian Economic Commission might welcome a strategic Turkey in its fold. For Turkey quite a positive alternative option to the constant threats and sanctions by the west.
Would NATO fall apart, if Turkey decided to leave? Good riddance! It would be a blessing for the world.
The post Nordic NATO Expansion or NATO Implosion? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Abdullah Bozkurt in the Nordic Monitor of 18 May 2022 points out that Turkey is nominating an unsuitable candidate for membership on the UN Human Rights Committee.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has nominated a person with a poor human rights record for membership on the UN Human Rights Committee. According to UN documents Hacı Ali Açıkgül, head of the human rights department at Turkey’s Justice Ministry since 2015, was officially nominated to become one of nine new members of the Human Rights Committee.
Açıkgül, a loyalist and partisan official in the Erdoğan regime, hushed up cases of torture and abuse in Turkey’s detention and prison facilities where many people, including journalists, human rights defenders and activists, were subjected to harsh treatment.
The widespread and systematic practice of torture and abuse is approved by the Erdoğan government as part of an intimidation campaign to silence critical and independent voices in Turkey. Complaints of rights abuse fell on deaf ears, while officials who were involved in ill-treatment and torture were granted impunity.
He issued opinions to challenge complaints filed by victims with the Constitutional Court on violation of fundamental human rights and secretly and illegally coordinated with judges and prosecutors to ensure the continuous imprisonment of government critics. He defended the Erdoğan government in cases brought to the European Court of Human Rights.
Açıkgül used his position in the department not only to bury torture and abuse allegations and complaints, but also helped whitewash them when queried by organizations such as the Council of Europe.
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
On 3 May 2022 the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) announced the three recipients of the 2022 Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent.
The 2022 laureates are: professional basketball player and human rights advocate Enes Kanter Freedom, Iranian artist project PaykanArtCar, and Ukrainian-born Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova. This year’s laureates will receive their awards on Wednesday, May 25, during the 2022 Oslo Freedom Forum.
Enes Kanter Freedom is a professional basketball player and vocal advocate for human rights. Since the start of the 2021 NBA season, he has used his global platform to consistently raise awareness of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s human rights abuses. Using his basketball shoes as the canvas for his messages, he wore multiple artistic designs highlighting issues such as the Uyghur genocide, the occupation of Tibet, slave labor at the Nike shoe factories, and the intolerance of China’s dictator. As a result of his creative dissent, he is now banned from China and was dropped by both the Boston Celtics and the Houston Rockets, despite being only 29 years old and in the prime of his career. Freedom’s perseverance has captured the attention of international media and informed millions of sports fans about the global struggle for individual rights in places like Tibet and the Uyghur region. At a time when professional athletes display incessant hypocrisy, unlimited greed, and double standards, Freedom emerges as the moral conscience of professional basketball. Freedom first came to international attention as an outspoken critic of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, making him a target of Turkey’s government — he was deemed a “terrorist” by the regime, stripped of his passport, and was publicly disowned by his family. In late 2021, he changed his name and added “Freedom” as his official last name. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/525e5018-7f56-4009-85b8-3f3cce9a8810
The PaykanArtCar unites the talents of contemporary Iranian artists in the diaspora with a beloved symbol of Iranian national pride — the Paykan automobile — to advocate for human rights in Iran. The car used was once gifted by Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran to the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceaușescu, and was purchased at an auction to serve as the canvas for artwork by Iranian artists in exile. Each year, PaykanArtCar commissions an exceptional Iranian artist-in-exile to use the car to capture the Iranian struggle for human dignity and basic freedoms. The inaugural PaykanArtCar was designed by Alireza Shojaian and features a historic Persian design with a provocative message about the brutality and ruthlessness faced by the marginalized and oppressed LGBTQ+ community inside Iran. The PaykanArtCar represents brave, creative dissent against the human rights abuses of Iran’s theocratic dictatorial regime. The PaykanArtCar will travel to Norway to be present at the Oslo Freedom Forum as part of Human Rights Foundation’s Art in Protest exhibit and will be parked at the event venue. The second edition of PaykanArtCar will be painted by a female Iranian artist and will advocate for women’s rights in Iran.
Marina Ovsyannikova is a Ukrainian-born Russian journalist and activist, who staged a live protest against the war in Ukraine during a news broadcast of Russian state TV. Ovsyannikova was a longtime editor at Russia’s Channel One, where her job was to assist those engaged in disinformation to be distributed to the Russian people. After thinking through ways in which she could protest, she chose to interrupt a live broadcast, holding a sign calling for “no war.” Following her demonstration on live TV and a subsequent anti-war video, Ovsyannikova was held overnight in a police station, denied access to a lawyer, and ultimately fined 30,000 roubles — she disappeared without contact for more than 12 hours. The Kremlin denounced her protest as “hooliganism,” and Ovsyannikova faces up to 15 years in prison under Russia’s disinformation laws. In a recent article, she expressed profound regret for her years as a participant in “the Russian propaganda machine” where her job was to create “aggressive Kremlin propaganda – propaganda that constantly sought to deflect attention from the truth, and to blur all moral standards,” she says: “I cannot undo what I have done. I can only do everything I possibly can to help destroy this machine and end this war.”
For more on the Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent and its laureates, see: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/438F3F5D-2CC8-914C-E104-CE20A25F0726
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
A teacher in Turkey’s southern province of Mersin, was issued a fine for communicating in Kurdish and Arabic with his students, reports Medya News.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Turkey’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the refusal by a public office to register a baby with the name “Ciwan” — which contains the Kurdish letter “W” — was constitutional, reports Medya News.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Photo credit: cdn.zeebiz.com
On April 21st, President Biden announced new shipments of weapons to Ukraine, at a cost of $800 million to U.S. taxpayers. On April 25th, Secretaries Blinken and Austin announced over $300 million more military aid. The United States has now spent $3.7 billion on weapons for Ukraine since the Russian invasion, bringing total U.S. military aid to Ukraine since 2014 to about $6.4 billion.
The top priority of Russian airstrikes in Ukraine has been to destroy as many of these weapons as possible before they reach the front lines of the war, so it is not clear how militarily effective these massive arms shipments really are. The other leg of U.S. “support” for Ukraine is its economic and financial sanctions against Russia, whose effectiveness is also highly uncertain.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is visiting Moscow and Kyiv to try to kick start negotiations for a ceasefire and a peace agreement. Since hopes for earlier peace negotiations in Belarus and Turkey have been washed away in a tide of military escalation, hostile rhetoric and politicized war crimes accusations, Secretary General Guterres’ mission may now be the best hope for peace in Ukraine.
This pattern of early hopes for a diplomatic resolution that are quickly dashed by a war psychosis is not unusual. Data on how wars end from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) make it clear that the first month of a war offers the best chance for a negotiated peace agreement. That window has now passed for Ukraine.
An analysis of the UCDP data by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) found that 44% of wars that end within a month end in a ceasefire and peace agreement rather than the decisive defeat of either side, while that decreases to 24% in wars that last between a month and a year. Once wars rage on into a second year, they become even more intractable and usually last more than ten years.
CSIS fellow Benjamin Jensen, who analyzed the UCDP data, concluded:
The time for diplomacy is now. The longer a war lasts absent concessions by both parties, the more likely it is to escalate into a protracted conflict… In addition to punishment, Russian officials need a viable diplomatic off-ramp that addresses the concerns of all parties.
To be successful, diplomacy leading to a peace agreement must meet five basic conditions:
First, all sides must gain benefits from the peace agreement that outweigh what they think they can gain by war.
U.S. and allied officials are waging an information war to promote the idea that Russia is losing the war and that Ukraine can militarily defeat Russia, even as some officials admit that that could take several years.
In reality, neither side will benefit from a protracted war that lasts for many months or years. The lives of millions of Ukrainians will be lost and ruined, while Russia will be mired in the kind of military quagmire that both the U.S.S.R. and the United States already experienced in Afghanistan, and that most recent U.S. wars have turned into.
In Ukraine, the basic outlines of a peace agreement already exist. They are: withdrawal of Russian forces; Ukrainian neutrality between NATO and Russia; self-determination for all Ukrainians (including in Crimea and Donbas); and a regional security agreement that protects everyone and prevents new wars.
Both sides are essentially fighting to strengthen their hand in an eventual agreement along those lines. So how many people must die before the details can be worked out across a negotiating table instead of over the rubble of Ukrainian towns and cities?
Second, mediators must be impartial and trusted by both sides.
The United States has monopolized the role of mediator in the Israeli-Palestinian crisis for decades, even as it openly backs and arms one side and abuses its UN veto to prevent international action. This has been a transparent model for endless war.
Turkey has so far acted as the principal mediator between Russia and Ukraine, but it is a NATO member that has supplied drones, weapons and military training to Ukraine. Both sides have accepted Turkey’s mediation, but can Turkey really be an honest broker?
The UN could play a legitimate role, as it is doing in Yemen, where the two sides are finally observing a two-month ceasefire. But even with the UN’s best efforts, it has taken years to negotiate this fragile pause in the war.
Third, the agreement must address the main concerns of all parties to the war.
In 2014, the U.S.-backed coup and the massacre of anti-coup protesters in Odessa led to declarations of independence by the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. The first Minsk Protocol agreement in September 2014 failed to end the ensuing civil war in Eastern Ukraine. A critical difference in the Minsk II agreement in February 2015 was that DPR and LPR representatives were included in the negotiations, and it succeeded in ending the worst fighting and preventing a major new outbreak of war for 7 years.
There is another party that was largely absent from the negotiations in Belarus and Turkey, people who make up half the population of Russia and Ukraine: the women of both countries. While some of them are fighting, many more can speak as victims, civilian casualties and refugees from a war unleashed mainly by men. The voices of women at the table would be a constant reminder of the human costs of war and the lives of women and children that are at stake.
Even when one side militarily wins a war, the grievances of the losers and unresolved political and strategic issues often sow the seeds of new outbreaks of war in the future. As Benjamin Jensen of CSIS suggested, the desires of U.S. and Western politicians to punish and gain strategic advantage over Russia must not be allowed to prevent a comprehensive resolution that addresses the concerns of all sides and ensures a lasting peace.
Fourth, there must be a step-by-step roadmap to a stable and lasting peace that all sides are committed to.
The Minsk II agreement led to a fragile ceasefire and established a roadmap to a political solution. But the Ukrainian government and parliament, under Presidents Poroshenko and then Zelensky, failed to take the next steps that Poroshenko agreed to in Minsk in 2015: to pass laws and constitutional changes to permit independent, internationally-supervised elections in the DPR and LPR, and to grant them autonomy within a federalized Ukrainian state.
Now that these failures have led to Russian recognition of the DPR and LPR’s independence, a new peace agreement must revisit and resolve their status, and that of Crimea, in ways that all sides will be committed to, whether that is through the autonomy promised in Minsk II or formal, recognized independence from Ukraine.
A sticking point in the peace negotiations in Turkey was Ukraine’s need for solid security guarantees to ensure that Russia won’t invade it again. The UN Charter formally protects all countries from international aggression, but it has repeatedly failed to do so when the aggressor, usually the United States, wields a Security Council veto. So how can a neutral Ukraine be reassured that it will be safe from attack in the future? And how can all parties be sure that the others will stick to the agreement this time?
Fifth, outside powers must not undermine the negotiation or implementation of a peace agreement.
Although the United States and its NATO allies are not active warring parties in Ukraine, their role in provoking this crisis through NATO expansion and the 2014 coup, then supporting Kyiv’s abandonment of the Minsk II agreement and flooding Ukraine with weapons, make them an “elephant in the room” that will cast a long shadow over the negotiating table, wherever that is.
In April 2012, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan drew up a six-point plan for a UN-monitored ceasefire and political transition in Syria. But at the very moment that the Annan plan took effect and UN ceasefire monitors were in place, the United States, NATO and their Arab monarchist allies held three “Friends of Syria” conferences, where they pledged virtually unlimited financial and military aid to the Al Qaeda-linked rebels they were backing to overthrow the Syrian government. This encouraged the rebels to ignore the ceasefire, and led to another decade of war for the people of Syria.
The fragile nature of peace negotiations over Ukraine make success highly vulnerable to such powerful external influences. The United States backed Ukraine in a confrontational approach to the civil war in Donbas instead of supporting the terms of the Minsk II agreement, and this has led to war with Russia. Now Turkey’s Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavosoglu, has told CNN Turk that unnamed NATO members “want the war to continue,” in order to keep weakening Russia.
Conclusion
How the United States and its NATO allies act now and in the coming months will be crucial in determining whether Ukraine is destroyed by years of war, like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, or whether this war ends quickly through a diplomatic process that brings peace, security and stability to the people of Russia, Ukraine and their neighbors.
If the United States wants to help restore peace in Ukraine, it must diplomatically support peace negotiations, and make it clear to its ally, Ukraine, that it will support any concessions that Ukrainian negotiators believe are necessary to clinch a peace agreement with Russia.
Whatever mediator Russia and Ukraine agree to work with to try to resolve this crisis, the United States must give the diplomatic process its full, unreserved support, both in public and behind closed doors. It must also ensure that its own actions do not undermine the peace process in Ukraine as they did the Annan plan in Syria in 2012.
One of the most critical steps that U.S. and NATO leaders can take to provide an incentive for Russia to agree to a negotiated peace is to commit to lifting their sanctions if and when Russia complies with a withdrawal agreement. Without such a commitment, the sanctions will quickly lose any moral or practical value as leverage over Russia, and will be only an arbitrary form of collective punishment against its people, and against poor people everywhere who can no longer afford food to feed their families. As the de facto leader of the NATO military alliance, the U.S. position on this question will be crucial.
So policy decisions by the United States will have a critical impact on whether there will soon be peace in Ukraine, or only a much longer and bloodier war. The test for U.S. policymakers, and for Americans who care about the people of Ukraine, must be to ask which of these outcomes U.S. policy choices are likely to lead to.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Roketsan’s Cruise Missile ÇAKIR, which can be launched from land, naval and, air platforms, is set to become a new force multiplier for armed forces with its state-of-the-art features and effective warhead. Roketsan continues to create new concepts on the battlefield with its new technologies. ÇAKIR – Roketsan’s new Cruise Missile – can be launched […]
The post Roketsan’s New Cruise Missile Brings Operational Flexibility on the Land, on the Sea and in the Air appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
A Turkish court has acquitted Öztürk Türkdoğan, co-chair of Turkey’s oldest human rights group, the Human Rights Association (İHD), of charges of membership in a terrorist organization. The ruling was issued by the Ankara 19th High Criminal Court on Tuesday 19 April 2022.
Türkdoğan was briefly detained in March 2021 after a police raid on his home in Ankara. He was questioned by the police without a lawyer present and released under judicial supervision. Türkdoğan was prohibited from travelling abroad and had to check in at a police station twice a month. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/02/23/prosecution-of-human-rights-defender-ozturk-turkdogan-in-turkey-should-be-dropped/
Türkdoğan said he was targeted for urging authorities to carry out an investigation into the killing of 13 civilians on February 15, 2021 during a military operation in northern Iraq’s Gare province.
“The Turkish state loves to accuse all citizens, human rights defenders, politicians, activists, union members and students of membership in a terrorist organization. There’s probably no other country in the world that accuses so many of its own citizens,” he added.
Announcing the court verdict in a statement, the İHD said, “We will not give up on defending human rights.“
In his defense in the first hearing of the case at the Ankara 19th Heavy Penal Court, Türkdoğan had said the lawsuits were intended to intimidate rights advocates: “I know the lawsuit against me was filed by the ministry of Interior. I am a rights advocate. My legal activities were cited in the indictment“.
The other two lawsuits were filed for “insulting the Turkish nation” and “insulting Minister of Interior Süleyman Soylu.”
https://bianet.org/english/law/260706-human-rights-association-co-chair-ozturk-turkdogan-acquitted
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
When Russian and Ukrainian delegations meeting in Turkey on March 29 reached an initial understanding regarding a list of countries that could serve as security guarantors for Kyiv should an agreement be struck, Israel appeared on the list. The other countries included the US, the UK, China, Russia, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy and Poland.
One may explain Israel’s political significance to the Russian-Ukrainian talks based on Tel Aviv’s strong ties with Kyiv, as opposed to Russia’s trust in Israel. This is insufficient to rationalize how Israel has managed to acquire relevance in an international conflict, arguably the most serious since World War II.
Immediately following the start of the war, Israeli officials began to circumnavigate the globe, shuttling between many countries that are directly or even nominally involved in the conflict. Israeli President Isaac Herzog flew to Istanbul to meet with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The outcome of this meeting could usher in “a turning point in relations between Turkey and Israel,” Erdogan said.
Though “Israel is proceeding cautiously with Turkey,” Lavan Karkov wrote in the Jerusalem Post, Herzog hopes that “his meeting with .. Erdogan is starting a positive process toward improved relations.” The ‘improved relations’ are not concerned with the fate of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation and siege, but with a gas pipeline connecting Israel’s Leviathan offshore gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, to southern Europe via Turkey.
This project will improve Israel’s geopolitical status in the Middle East and Europe. The political leverage of being a primary gas supplier to Europe would allow Israel even stronger influence over the continent and will certainly tone down any future criticism of Tel Aviv by Ankara.
That was only one of many such Israeli overtures. Tel Aviv’s diplomatic flurry included a top-level meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, and a succession of visits by top European, American, Arab and other officials to Israel.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken landed in Israel on March 26 and was expected to put some pressure on Israel to join the US-led western sanctions on Russia. Little of that has transpired. The greatest rebuke came from Under-Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, when, on March 11, she called on Israel not to become “the last haven for dirty money that’s fueling Putin’s wars”.
For years, Israel had hoped to free itself from its disproportionate reliance on Washington. This dependency took on many forms: financial and military assistance, political backing, diplomatic cover and more. According to Chuck Freilich, writing in Newsweek, “by the end of the ten-year military-aid package agreed (between Washington and Tel Aviv) for 2019-28, the total figure (of US aid to Israel) will be nearly $170bn.”
Many Palestinians and others believe that, if the US ceases to support Israel, the latter would simply collapse. However, this might not be the case, at least not in theory. Writing in March 2021 in the New York Times, Max Fisher estimated that US aid to Israel in 1981 “was equivalent to almost 10 percent of Israel’s economy,” while in 2020, the nearly $4 billion of US aid was “closer to 1 percent.”
Still, this 1 percent is vital for Israel, as much of the funds are funneled to the Israeli military which, in turn, converts them to weapons that are routinely used against Palestinians and other Arab countries. Israeli military technology of today is far more developed than it was 40 years ago. Figures by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) place Israel as the world’s eighth-largest military exporter between 2016-2020, with an estimated export value of $8.3 billion in 2020 alone. These numbers continue to grow as Israeli military hardware is increasingly incorporated into many security apparatuses across the world, including the US, the EU and also in the Global South.
Much of this discussion is rooted in a document from 1996, entitled: “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”. The document was authored by Richard Perle, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense, jointly with top leaders in the neoconservative movement in Washington. The target audience of that research was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then the newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister.
Aside from the document’s detailed instructions on how Israel can use some of its Arab neighbors, in addition to Turkey, to weaken and ‘roll back’ hostile governments, it also made significant references to future relations Tel Aviv should aspire to develop with Washington.
Perle urged Israel to “make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality – not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes.” This new, ‘self-reliant Israel’ “does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it.” Ultimately, such self-reliance “will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.”
An example is Israel’s relations with China. In 2013, Washington was outraged when Israel sold secret missile and electro-optic US technology to China. Quickly, Tel Aviv was forced to retreat. The controversy subsided when the head of defense experts at the Israeli Defense Ministry was removed. Eight years on, despite US protests and demands that Israel must not allow China to operate the Israeli Haifa port due to Washington’s security concerns, the port was officially initiated in September 2021.
Israel’s regional and international strategy seems to be advancing in multiple directions, some of them directly opposing those of Washington. Yet, thanks to continued Israeli influence in the US Congress, Washington does little to hold Israel accountable. Meanwhile, now that Israel is fully aware that the US has changed its political attitude in the Middle East and is moving in the direction of the Pacific region and Eastern Europe, Tel Aviv’s ‘clean break’ strategy is moving faster than ever before. However, this comes with risks. Though Israel is stronger now, its neighbors are also getting stronger.
Hence, it is critical that Palestinians understand that Israel’s survival is no longer linked to the US, at least not as intrinsically as in the past. Therefore, the fight against Israeli occupation and apartheid can no longer be disproportionately focused on breaking up the ‘special relationship’ that united Tel Aviv and Washington for over 50 years. Israel’s ‘independence’ from the US entails risks and opportunities that must be considered in the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement has launched a new initiative to build strategy and connections in the global struggle against capitalism.
The new web-based platform is dubbed the Academy of Democratic Modernity (ADM). It aims to be a space for revolutionary thought and strategy. The site looks at revolution through the lens of the Kurdistan Freedom Movement’s new paradigm, based on three foundational pillars of social ecology, radical democracy, and women’s freedom.
The new paradigm is inspired by the defence writings of Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) co-founder .
The movement sees the global peoples’ struggles going on today – for example in Kurdistan, Ukraine or Palestine – as the continuation of the ever-present struggles of people against power, which have existed throughout history. Today’s struggles are being waged by ‘democratic forces’ against ‘capitalist modernity’.
Capitalist modernity is the dominant global system today, characterised by a drive for unending profits over people, by the nation state and by imperialist oppression.
The Kurdistan Freedom Movement opposes capitalist modernity, and rejects the concept of nation states. Instead, the movement seeks to bring ‘democratic modernity’ to the forefront through the practice of radical democracy.
These ideas have been taking shape in Northeast Syria since the 2012 Rojava revolution. The revolutionaries of Rojava have created a system of governing society from the bottom up, through communes cooperating together at the street and neighbourhood level. These then send delegates to cooperate at regional and wider levels. This system is known as democratic confederalism.
The ADM issued a statement marking the launch of its new website. This called for dialogue and the creation of new forums to discuss ‘democratic modernity’. To do this, it said, it is necessary to connect our struggles against capitalism
we consider the creation of networks and connections between democratic forces as a fundamental prerequisite for building Democratic Modernity. Through the creation of forums and platforms, we want to contribute to the strengthening of the international exchange of experiences and connect existing struggles.
The statement continued by calling for a greater degree of organisation in our struggles against global capitalism. In this way, the ADM hopes to rival the highly organised forces of ‘capitalist modernity’:
Based on the realization of our analysis of the world political situation and the crisis of the democratic forces, we think that it is time to deepen the discussions about ways out of the crisis and the construction of Democratic Modernity. Because while the Capitalist Modernity is a highly organized and global system, the alternative remains until today unorganized, fragmented and without a strategic and unifying proposal of common organization.
The ADM aims to contribute to the creation of democratic confederalism on a global scale:
The areas of work of the Academy are, among others, the organization of social educational work, the connection of democratic forces, and the expansion of democratic politics as a contribution to the construction of Democratic World Confederalism.
The website is available in English and German, and will soon be available in Spanish.
Laying out its vision of how world democratic confederalism can be constructed, the ADM stated:
If we succeed in expanding democratic politics in everyday life – through alliances, councils, communes, cooperatives, academies – the huge political power of society will unfold and be used to solve social problems. Through the expansion of democratic politics and the building of Democratic World Confederalism, the much-needed offensive of the paradigm of Democratic Modernity will succeed.
The site’s authors point out that it is not only possible, but necessary and urgent, to begin building democratic confederalism on a global scale. They write:
Let us work together to bring our visions and utopias to life. Another world is not only possible – given the world situation, it is sorely needed. Let us start building our future world together in the present, because to wait any longer would be madness.
Featured image via The Academy of Democratic Modernity
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Turkish Aerospace (TAI) has big plans for Malaysia, whether or not it wins the Royal Malaysian Air Force’s (RMAF’s) competition for a light combat aircraft/fighter lead-in trainer (LCA/FLIT). Speaking at DSA, the company’s president and CEO Prof Temel Kotil described a firm strategy to expand its recently-opened technology centre in Cyberjaya near Kuala Lumpur to […]
The post Turkish Aerospace Reveal Big Intentions for Business Development in Malaysia appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
The contemporary right has inherited two seemingly contradictory impulses from the neoliberal era: anti-democratic politics and a libertarian personal ethic.
This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.
Turkish Aerospace will participate in the DIMDEX 2022 fair, that will be held on March 21-23, 2022 in Qatar, an important place among the Gulf countries. The company will display of GÖKBEY and HÜRKUŞ mock-ups as well as mock-ups of other platforms which are indigenously designed and developed by Turkish Aerospace engineers. The GÖKTÜRK-2 model […]
The post Turkish Aerospace Will Display the Aerial and Space Platforms at Qatar DIMDEX 2022 appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from International Women’s Day in Istanbul to ‘kill the bill’ protests in Cambridge
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) has delivered two of six T129B ATAK helicopters ordered by the Philippine Air Force (PAF), the service announced via its social media channel on 9 March. The PAF said the two new helicopters arrived at Clark Air Base along with associated logistical and support equipment aboard two Turkish Air Force Airbus […]
The post First two T129B ATAK helicopters arrive in the Philippines appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
International Women’s Day is one of the focal points of the struggle for the Kurdistan Freedom Movement. Today supporters of the movement will be out on the streets across Kurdistan.
Women took to the streets in Bakur – the part of Kurdistan within the borders of Turkey – despite massive state repression. Kurdish woman Cahîda Dêrsim tweeted:
Against all odds and despite being encircled by #Turkish police and military a group of Kurdish women are celebrating the International Women’s Day #8March in front of the #HDP office in Şirnex’s #Cizîr district (@MAturkce) #TwitterKurds pic.twitter.com/GaqOsDeqyM
— Cahîda Dêrsim (@dersi4m) March 6, 2022
Across the border in Northeast Syria, women fighters also commemorated 8 March:
On the occasion of the International Women’s Day the #Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (#YPJ) published a footage with messages of their fighters on the 8th March. The Kurdish freedom movement draws its strength, motivation & will from the reality of the free woman #IWD2022 pic.twitter.com/VEKTjPfD0j
— Cahîda Dêrsim (@dersi4m) March 7, 2022
In Turkey, in the lead up to 8 March, the Turkish state has been laying the ground to further criminalise the movement.
On 4 March, Meghan Bodette – a researcher following Kurdish politics in Turkey and Syria – tweeted:
March 4: The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office launched an investigation against democratically elected HDP MP Semra Güzel.
Police also raided her home in Diyarbakir. She thankfully wasn't there. pic.twitter.com/0yyrfkKiN5
— Meghan Bodette (@_____mjb) March 4, 2022
The left-wing, radically democratic People’s Democratic Party (HDP) is the third largest party in the Turkish parliament. The party practices the co-chair system, meaning that positions within the party and the movement are filled by two people, who must not be two men. The HDP has spearheaded the introduction of co-mayors in municipalities where the party has stood candidates in local elections (although in most cases HDP mayors have been replaced by state appointees loyal to president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan).
The arrests of Semra Güzel and Halide Türkoğlu are part of the ongoing repression of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) by the Turkish state. They follow moves by the state to strip Güzel – together with many of her fellow HDP MPs – of their parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
Bodette tweeted about the events that led up to Güzel‘s arrest:
March 2: Investigations against 9 democratically elected HDP MPs—Berdan Öztürk, Meral Danış Beştaş, Ayşe Acar Başaran, Ömer Öcalan, Feleknas Uca, Murat Sarısaç, Dersim Dağ, Sait Dede, and Pero Dundar—were sent to the Parliament, with the request that their immunities be removed. pic.twitter.com/ihap01eqD3
— Meghan Bodette (@_____mjb) March 4, 2022
Last week The Canary wrote:
Despite its role as an electoral party, the HDP is part of the struggle for radical democracy in Turkey. The HDP is not only anti-capitalist but part of a movement which critiques the concept of the state itself. This movement intends to move beyond nation states by encouraging the reliance on people’s directly democratic organising at the street or neighbourhood level, confederated across regions.
The three key concepts of the movement are women’s freedom, radical democracy and ecology.
The women of the HDP have already paid a heavy price for their commitment to radical politics. Leyla Güven – an ex-HDP MP and co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) – was imprisoned for 22 years in 2020. The DTK is the umbrella body trying to bring about democratic confederalism in Bakur. The DTK itself has been criminalised by the Turkish state. HDP co-chair Figen Yuksekdag – who is one of the defendants currently on trial in Ankara – was originally arrested in 2016 and has been in prison ever since.
The TJA (Free Women’s Movement) – whose spokesperson Ayşe Gökkan was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment last year – highlighted the situation for women in Bakur:
The system is male dominant and that affects the cases. We have male friends and we are in the same struggle, but because the system is male dominant we’re accused of both being women and Kurdish while they are just accused of being Kurdish. That’s why it’s more difficult for women. The women’s punishment is always more than the men. The decisions are not equal with the law. They give [judgements] depending on the political situation. women are faced with lots of abuse, some faced with sexual abuse, torture, some other political intimidation. We have a friend who has been sentenced and faced with sexual abuse in prison.
The Union of Women’s Communards/Women’s Freedom Force released a statement to mark International Women’s Day. It seems fitting to end with their words:
Women, whose labour and bodies are exploited by men in homes, factories and schools, continue to stoke up the purple fire they have lit against male-state violence. In the meantime, the severe political-economic crisis of AKP-MHP [the ruling coalition in Turkey] fascism is continuing with various crackdowns against women. They pay the heaviest price of impoverishment as a result of the economic crisis
The statement concludes:
We have declared a war on patriarchal capitalism on all fronts! We have removed all the borders. We will continue the socialist feminist struggle with every method and tool in every field until we destroy the male-dominated world!
Featured image via Twitter screen grab
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Seven political parties, meeting on February 26 in Turkey’s capital Ankara, to discuss the creation of a democratic front, released a joint statement on the war in Ukraine, reports Medya News.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
A show trial of 108 of Turkey’s radicals is ongoing in Ankara. The trial has been ongoing since April 2021. 21 of the defendants are currently remanded in prison. All 108 face aggravated life sentences.
Many of the defendants are from the left-wing, radically democratic People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in the Turkish parliament. Others are connected to civil society organisations and to the Kurdistan freedom movement. The chief prosecutor in the case has demanded that Selahattin Demirtaş – the former HDP co-chair – face the extraordinarily long sentence of 15,000 years in prison if he’s convicted.
Despite its role as an electoral party, the HDP is part of the struggle for radical democracy in Turkey. The HDP is not only anti-capitalist but part of a movement which critiques the concept of the state itself. This movement intends to move beyond nation states by encouraging the reliance on people’s directly democratic organising at the street or neighbourhood level, confederated across regions.
The allegations against the defendants relate to demonstrations that broke out across Turkey in 2014, following Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan’s support for the siege of the city of Kobanî in Rojava – Northeast Syria – by Daesh (ISIS/ISIL). Erdoğan’s AKP government was preventing vital supplies from reaching the besieged city.
Kobanî was eventually liberated by the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG). Many radicals from inside Turkey’s borders crossed into Rojava at that time to join the YPG’s fight. The charges against the defendants on trial in Ankara are serious, and include terrorism and murder. One of the lawyers for the defendants in the Kobanî trial, Ibrahim Bilmez, spoke to The Canary about the case.
The ‘Kobanî case’ is part of an onslaught by the Turkish state, aimed at silencing political radicalism within Turkey. That onslaught includes plans to criminalise and ban the HDP.
Last year I travelled to Istanbul and interviewed Ibrahim Bilmez, who is one of the lawyers for the defendants in the Kobanî trial. Bilmez is personally representing Ayla Akat Ata from the HDP and Sebahat Tuncel, the former co-leader of the Democratic Regions Party (DBP). Overall, his firm is representing all of the 108 defendants on trial, and is working with many other lawyers as well.
I asked Bilmez whether he thought the trial in Ankara was connected to the moves to ban the HDP. He replied:
There definitely is a connection. They’re trying to push the Kobanî case through and speed it forward. So that they can say ‘look at all these HDP ‘terrorists”. And then it would be very easy for them to shut down the HDP by pointing to them already being convicted in this Kobanî case
Bilmez said that the Ministry of justice had tried to speed up the Kobanî case by replacing a judge – who wasn’t moving things along fast enough – and replacing him with a judge “who’s more racist and closer to their ideas”. The assistant judges in the case have also been changed. According to Bilmez:
Whenever they want they can just change the judge. You can’t talk about justice in this kind of situation.
Bilmez argued that the Ministry of Justice is “answering directly to Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan”. He said:
basically the political system and political power politics is interfering with and directing the Kobanî case, and moving the case forward.
The Turkish state meddling with the judicial system is nothing new. Since Turkey’s failed coup attempt in 2016, nearly 4,000 judges and prosecutors have been sacked.
The Kobanî case relates to a tweet by the HDP executive council from October 2014, calling on people to take to the streets in solidarity with Kobanî. The message read:
Urgent call to our peoples […]! The situation in Kobanê is extremely critical. We call on our peoples to take to the streets and support those who are already on the streets to protest against the attacks of ISIS and against the embargo of the AKP government.
People took to the streets to protest in support of the people of Kobanî, and against Daesh’s siege of the city. Supporters of Daesh and Kurdish Hezbollah – an Islamic group which received arms from the Turkish state – attacked the demonstrators, and terrible bloodshed ensued. Up to 53 people died over the course of three days of the uprising. Bilmez told me that the majority of those who died were supporters of the HDP.
Firat News Agency reported that:
According to a report by the Human Rights Association (IHD), 682 people were injured during the protests. At least 323 people were arrested. In the course of the uprising, there were also arson attacks on shops and public facilities. The government holds the HDP responsible for the incidents.
According to Bilmez:
So now they’re turning it around on the HDP years later, and saying ‘you called those people to the streets. You encouraged this violence to happen… and you’re responsible for the deaths that happened’
He continued:
The strange thing is that basically they’re accusing HDP of being responsible for sending HDP people to their deaths.
Bilmez also pointed out that, in the years since 2014, people have already stood trial for charges relating to the uprising, and that it’s a basic principle of law that people should not be convicted twice for the same allegation.
The Turkish state has good reasons for taking an interest in the Kobanî case. Several people who are close to the HDP believe that the state wants to carefully stage-manage the banning of the HDP in order to benefit the ruling AKP party in the next election. Erdoğan‘s AKP is likely to face decreasing public support because of the crashing Turkish economy and spiralling government debt.
It would benefit the AKP greatly if the HDP is banned just before the next election.
Bilmez told me that a trial like the Kobanî case would normally take 5-7 years to hear all of the evidence. He said that the case was being rushed in order to obtain convictions, which would provide the evidence for the banning of the HDP.
As of December 2021, Bilmez told us the trial was taking place at two week intervals with the court sitting for two weeks and then breaking for one. Hundreds of files of evidence have been served by the prosecutor, and “every day there is a new dossier”.
Bilmez told me it was impossible for his clients to adequately prepare a defence in these circumstances, as there was no time being allowed to consider the huge volumes of prosecution material. This was why the lawyers in the case staged a protest last year, walking out of the proceedings. Bilmez said that the current conditions were “a form of abuse” against the defendants.
Bilmez said that countering the ‘blatant attack’ posed by the Kobanî case was bringing radical lawyers together:
for Kurdish lawyers and for Left-wing lawyers in the country, we see that it’s a blatant attack. So there’s a lot of solidarity to come together and be active.
He concluded:
Turkey is moving away from having any kind of just government. You can’t say that there is justice in Turkey.
Featured image of HDP flags taken by Emily Apple, picture of Erdoğan via YouTube
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on The Canary.
All charges against Öztürk Türkdoğan, the co-chair of Turkey’s most prominent human rights organisation and a respected lawyer, should be immediately dropped, Amnesty International said ahead of the start of his trial. Öztürk Türkdoğan, the co-chair of the Human Rights Association (IHD), faces baseless charges of “membership of a terrorist organization”, “insulting a public official” and “insulting the Turkish nation and the Turkish state” for public statements he made in relation to his association’s human rights work.
See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/03/22/turkey-arrests-and-backsliding-on-femicide/.
“The prosecution of Öztürk Türkdoğan is an undisguised attack on this one human rights defender and also on all those who speak out for human rights in Turkey,” said Julia Hall, Amnesty International’s Deputy Director for Research for Europe. “With these spurious charges against the co-chair of Turkey’s longest-standing human rights organisation, the prosecuting authorities send a chilling message that increases the climate of intense fear among Turkey’s already beleaguered human rights community.”
According to IHD’s records, over 200 separate criminal investigations and prosecutions of IHD members and elected representatives of the organization are ongoing across Turkey.
“The criminalization of human rights defenders and of the Human Rights Association are the true insults here. The authorities’ unrelenting attack on Öztürk Türkdoğan and Turkey’s civil society movement has to end,” said Julia Hall. “Turkey must immediately drop all charges against Öztürk Türkdoğan and create an enabling, protective environment for civil society in line with its obligations under international human rights law.”
In December 2021, the Turkish authorities initiated three separate prosecutions against Öztürk Türkdoğan. He was tried under Article 125 of the Turkish Penal Code allegedly for “insulting” a public official in a statement published on the IHD website on 29 June 2018. The first hearing of this prosecution, in which the Minister of Interior is the alleged victim, was held on 18 February 2022. The next hearing will be held on 11 May.
He was also charged with “membership of a terrorist organization” under Article 314/2 of the penal code after the authorities detained him and searched his home on 19 March 2021. During the search, his phone and laptop were confiscated. The first hearing for this case will take place on 22 February 2022.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2029361/middle-east
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
Every year since the abduction and imprisonment of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan 23 years ago, an international peace delegation has collected evidence on the treatment of political prisoners in Turkey, reports Peter Boyle.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Turkish Aerospace will attend Asia’s biggest aviation event, the Singapore Airshow on February 15-18, 2022. Turkish Aerospace will display the exact model of its 5th generation fighter jet Turkish Fighter in Asia region for the first time and will be displaying its indigenous platforms. For the participation and importancy of the Singapore Airshow, Turkish Aerospace […]
The post Turkish Fighter Full Scale Mock-up Will Be Displayed in Singapore for the First Time appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
February 15 2022 will mark the 23rd anniversary of the capture of , the co-founder of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
The PKK has fought for Kurdish freedom and autonomy since the 1970s.
was abducted by the Turkish state from Nairobi in 1999. He’d been forced to leave Syria – previously a PKK safe haven – the year before. The events leading up to ‘s capture have been dubbed an ‘international conspiracy’ by the Kurdish Freedom Movement.
has still been able to put across his ideas for a new society, as part of his legal defence writings. His ‘new paradigm’ – of a stateless direct democracy based on women’s freedom and an ecologically sustainable society – has inspired both the Rojava revolution in Northeast Syria, and the movement for democratic autonomy in Bakur (the part of Kurdistan that lies within Turkey’s borders).
A demonstration is planned in London on Saturday 13 February, calling for ‘s freedom. The Kurdish People’s Assembly of the UK tweeted:
This February marks 23 years that Abdullah Öcalan has been illegally detained, in conditions amounting to torture, on the prison island Imrali.
Join us at 1pm at Portland Place in London on 13 February to demand freedom for the 'Mandela of the Middle East'. pic.twitter.com/2GNTbtnW6h
— Kurdish People’s Assembly (@KurdishAssembly) January 20, 2022
Supporters of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are taking part in a “long march” across Europe to Strasbourg, calling for “Freedom for
Last December, I travelled to Istanbul and interviewed Ibrahim Bilmez for The Canary.
I was on the way to join a delegation to Bakur made up of radical journalists, including three of us from The Canary, as well as representatives from the Kurdistan Solidarity Network and defendant and prisoner solidarity organisations.
Bilmez has been ‘s lawyer for over 18 years. He told me:
the most important thing on the agenda for us at the moment is that we cannot get any news from Mr . That’s been going on now for eight months.
Bilmez told me that he was concerned about his client’s deteriorating health. According to Bilmez:
So eight months ago, news came on social media from verifiable sources saying that ‘s health was very bad, and that he could be close to losing his life… That was last March [2021]. And at that point they gave permission for his family to speak with him on the phone.
Bilmez said that has not had a visit from friends, family, or his supporters since 3 March 2020, and that even these visits had only been achieved by popular pressure. In the period immediately preceding the 2020 visit, there was a forest fire which had spread to the prison. Kurdish people in Turkey took to the streets and demanded proof that and his fellow prisoners were still alive, and this eventually led to the state authorising the visit.
‘s lawyers have not been able to visit him since August 2019. Again, those legal visits only came about because of the determination of the Kurdish movement. In 2018, thousands of Kurdish prisoners launched a wave of hunger strikes, demanding the end of ‘s isolation. According to Bilmez:
The reason that it was possible for the lawyers to actually visit in 2019 was because of the hunger strikes that happened in the prisons, by Leyla Güven from the [People’s Democratic Party] HDP and other prisoners. And that was what put the pressure on, so that lawyers would come and visit.
Leyla Güven‘s successful hunger strike lasted 200 days and almost led to her death. Last year, the state took revenge on her, sentencing her to a further 22 years in prison.
Bilmez said that between 2011 and 2019, there had been no lawyer visits permitted at all. has not been allowed any legal visits since 2019 either
Bilmez told me that there had been another hunger strike in Summer 2021, aimed at breaking the isolation of , but that a decision had been made early on to quit the strike. This was because – back in 2019 – said that he couldn’t endorse hunger strikes as a strategy, and called on the movement to find different ways to change things.
I asked Bilmez what the conditions were like for in prison. He said:
he was taken there in 1999, and until 2009 he was the only prisoner in that prison. After 2009, five other prisoners from the Kurdish movement were taken there as well, but they are in separate cells.
Now there are only four people left there [including ].
Bilmez said that the Turkish state is acting with complete impunity in ‘s case:
The government has done whatever it wants with him since 1999. No law applies, there’s no transparency there.
My comments might not come across as objective but – as a lawyer – I can say that it’s the case, and this is backed up by the report of the [Council of Europe’s] Committee for the Prevention of Torture. They visited eight or nine times, and that’s the basis of their report.
I asked Bilmez if he had faced criminalisation himself for representing
In November 2011, there was the biggest ever operation against lawyers in Turkey. Over 40 lawyers [who were connected to representing ] were arrested and had their houses raided in the middle of the night. They arrested lawyers from [the cities of] Diyarbakir, Ankara, Izmir and Wan, and took them to Istanbul.
35 of us were put into prison, including myself.
I was in prison from 2011-14. Now I have been released – with conditions – but the case against me is still ongoing.
The alleged crime was simply that we were lawyers for They allege that we’re a tool, a vehicle for his ideas and his organisation.
Bilmez said that – on the way to – he had been physically attacked by Turkish fascist groups, and that on one occasion:
a group of 50 or 60 fascists came to attack us with stones and sticks. The police were forced to protect us in some way, but they didn’t really put much effort into it.
that these attacks were done in coordination with the Turkish state.
I asked Bilmez if there was anything that people from the UK could do to pressure the Turkish government over ‘s situation. He told us that it was important to focus on the cases being taken outside Turkey:
We have cases with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
These international cases are very important. We’re constantly trying to open cases, or keep cases going – but still ‘s conditions stay the same. So it is very important to keep up the international pressure and awareness, and to raise your voice.
Bilmez gave examples of how international solidarity makes a difference. He pointed out:
One of the big unions in the UK, which has 1000s of members, specifically mentioned Abdullah at one of their big protests, to see this from here was very meaningful and very important.
Another example was that there was a boat full of activists who went from Athens to Napoli raising awareness about ‘s right not to be isolated. And that was done on the same day as when he had been taken captive in 1999.
These kinds of events are really important. In Turkey the law basically doesn’t mean anything in these political cases, and there’s no independent media here either. So that’s why international political pressure is so important.
According to Bilmez, the isolation of
The kind of violations that have happened in and with the wider Kurdish question – these have become the template for Turkey. This injustice that was acceptable in those spaces is now the norm in Turkey.
This first happened in obody raised their voice. So it has become the standard in Turkey. That the law is there to be bent.
The Kurdish Freedom Movement is calling for an end to the isolation of Abdullah as an urgent step. But, more than that, they want an end to his imprisonment. This is seen as a stepping stone to ending the oppression of Kurdish people, and to a radical democratisation of society.
According to Ayşe Acar Başaran, spokesperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Women’s Assembly:
The years-long isolation of Mr Öcalan is a manifestation of the government’s approach to the Kurdish issue. The government has dropped the democratic solution to the Kurdish problem following its alliance with the ultra-nationalist MHP since 2015.
The HDP are part of the movement for radical democracy in Turkey, inspired by the ideas of Abdullah Öcalan
According to the Women Defend Rojava campaign:
we see that the imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan is not limited to him as a single person – but with him an entire people, an entire movement is being tried to punish and destroy. The imprisonment of his person is vicariously linked to the attempt to suppress an alternative to patriarchy, fascism and capitalist modernity.
10,000 people are currently imprisoned in Turkey for connection with the Kurdish Freedom Movement. In 2016, Turkey was listed as the world’s biggest jailer of journalists, and they are still being jailed in large numbers.. During our time in Turkey and Bakur, we spoke to many people facing prison for their political organising, as well as many families of prisoners. Emily Apple wrote in The Canary about just how wide ranging the repression is:
Everyone is charged with “membership of a terrorist organisation”. But these are not terrorists. These are lawyers, journalists, MPs, co-op members, and human rights activists. Their crime is being Kurdish and supporting radical democracy in the face of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s fascistic regime.
A lot of the people we spoke to told us how important ‘s freedom was to them, that freedom for would also mean freedom for them and their loved ones. is widely seen as the key to restarting peace negotiations with the Turkish state.
Even after 23 years of extreme isolation – and all of the efforts of the Turkish state to silence him – still inspires revolutionaries not just across Turkey and Kurdistan but worldwide. It’s clear that the movement will continue fighting for his freedom, and for the stateless, radically democratic society that he envisioned.
Featured image is a screenshot from a video of a protest at the Durham Miners Gala
By Tom Anderson
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Lawyer says refugees, who were protesting against Turkey leaving Istanbul convention on violence against women, are at risk in Iran
Three Iranian refugees are facing deportation from Turkey after taking part in a demonstration against Ankara’s withdrawal from the Istanbul convention on violence against women.
Lily Faraji, Zeinab Sahafi and Ismail Fattahi were arrested after attending a protest in the southern Turkish city of Denizli last March. A fourth Iranian national, Mohammad Pourakbari, was detained with the others, despite not attending the protests, according to Buse Bergamalı, their lawyer.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Steve Sweeney writes that Kurdish officials have accused Western powers of complicity in Turkish airstrikes that killed two people and injured many more at the United Nations-administered Makhmour Refugee Camp in northern Iraq.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
Whilst Turkish President Erdogan was in Kiev on Thursday, ostensibly brokering a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine to defuse escalating tensions following the Russian troop build-up along Ukraine’s borders and the deployment of 3,000 US forces in Poland and Romania, Biden announced that the Islamic State leader had been killed in a special-ops raid in northwest Syria along the Turkish border.
“Last night, operating on my orders, US military forces successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world: the global leader of ISIS. Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” a visibly jubilant Biden tweeted.
The details of the raid were sketchy but there were civilian casualties and one of the choppers involved in the operation encountered mechanical failure and had to be destroyed, as in the Bin Laden raid at Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011 when one of the Black Hawks involved in the “secret operation” also encountered malfunction and was blown up by the Navy Seals Team Six that awakened the whole sleepy town.
According to the US government documents released in September 2020, Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, whose real name was Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla, snitched for the US military and identified dozens of fellow militants as well as the structure of al-Qaeda in Iraq, after he was arrested in 2008 and detained at Camp Bucca.
Three Tactical Interrogation Reports released by the Combating Terrorism Centre (CTC) alleged that al-Baghdadi’s successor al-Mawla, who at the time was an al-Qaeda judge, gave the US occupation forces in Iraq the names of 68 al-Qaeda fighters that led to the deaths of several al-Qaeda members after the US military conducted raids to hunt them down.
According to the documents, al-Mawla was arrested in 2008 by the US forces and interrogated at Camp Bucca, a facility in Umm Qasr, southern Iraq, where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was also incarcerated. Several officials have since referred to it as a “Jihadi university” because of the training provided there.
The CTC said that al-Mawla was released in 2009 and only came to prominence when he became the leader of the Islamic State following the death of al-Baghdadi in October 2019.
As in the special-ops raid eliminating al-Baghdadi’s successor al-Mawla in the densely populated town of Atmeh along Turkish border in northwest Syria, it’s important to note in the news coverage of the killing of al-Baghdadi that although the mass media was trumpeting for several years before the raid that the Islamic State’s fugitive chief was hiding somewhere on the Iraq-Syria border in the east, he was found hiding in northwest Idlib province, under the control of Turkey’s militant proxies and al-Nusra Front. He was killed while trying to flee to Turkey in Barisha village, just five kilometers from the border.
The reason why the mass media scrupulously avoided mentioning northwestern Idlib province of Syria as the most likely hideout of al-Baghdadi and his successor was to cover up the collusion between the militant proxies of Turkey and the jihadists of al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State.
In fact, the corporate media takes the issue of Islamic jihadists “commingling” with Turkey-backed “moderate rebels” in Idlib so seriously – which could give Damascus the pretext to mount an offensive in northwest Syria – that the New York Times cooked up an exclusive report in October 2019, days after the Special Ops night raid eliminating al-Baghdadi, that the Islamic State paid money to al-Nusra Front for hosting al-Baghdadi in Idlib.
The morning after the night raid, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported in October 2019 that a squadron of eight helicopters accompanied by warplanes belonging to the international coalition had attacked positions of Hurras al-Din, an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, in Idlib province where the Islamic State chief was believed to be hiding.
Despite detailing the operational minutiae of the Special Ops raid, the mass media news coverage of the raid deliberately elided the crucial piece of information that the compound in Barisha village, just five kilometers from Turkish border where al-Baghdadi was killed, belonged to Hurras al-Din, an elusive terrorist outfit which had previously been targeted several times in the US airstrikes.
Although Hurras al-Din is generally assumed to be an al-Qaeda affiliate, it is in fact the regrouping of the Islamic State jihadists under a different name in northwestern Idlib governorate after the latter terrorist organization was routed from Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and Raqqa and Deir al-Zor in Syria in 2017 and was hard pressed by the US-led coalition’s airstrikes in eastern Syria.
It’s worth noting that although the Idlib governorate in Syria’s northwest has firmly been under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led by al-Nusra Front since 2015, its territory was equally divided between Turkey-backed rebels and al-Nusra Front.
In a brazen offensive in January 2019, however, al-Nusra Front’s jihadists completely routed Turkey-backed militants, even though the latter were supported by a professionally trained and highly organized military of a NATO member Turkey. Al-Nusra Front now reportedly controls more than 70% territory in the Idlib governorate.
The reason why al-Nusra Front was easily able to defeat Turkey-backed militants appeared to be that the ranks of al-Nusra Front were swelled by highly motivated and battle-hardened jihadist deserters from the Islamic State after the fall of the latter’s “caliphate” in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria in July and October 2017, respectively.
In all likelihood, some of the Islamic State’s jihadists who joined the battle in Idlib were part of the contingent of thousands of Islamic State militants that fled Raqqa in October 2017 under a deal brokered by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The merger of al-Nusra Front and Islamic State in Idlib didn’t come as a surprise, though, since the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front used to be a single organization before a split occurred between the two militant groups in April 2013 over a leadership dispute. In fact, al-Nusra Front’s chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani was reportedly appointed the emir of al-Nusra Front by Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the deceased “caliph” of the Islamic State, in January 2012.
Al-Jolani returned the favor by hosting both the hunted leaders of the Islamic State for months, if not years, in safe houses in al-Nusra’s territory in Idlib, before they were betrayed by informants within the ranks of the terrorist organization who leaked the information of the whereabouts of al-Baghdadi and his successor, leading to the killing of the Islamic State leaders in special-ops raids in October 2019 and on February 3.
In the book Rage, American journalist Bob Woodward has corroborated what was long known to be an open secret: the existence of a Faustian pact between Donald Trump and President Erdogan of Turkey in which the latter agreed to cover up the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 and also let Washington hunt down Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi hiding in Syria’s Idlib, bordering Turkey, in October 2019. This was in return for Turkey mounting Operation Peace Spring in northeast Syria with the permission of the Trump administration.
In an informal conversation with Woodward, Donald Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. “I saved his ass,” Trump said in 2018, according to the book. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”
When Woodward pressed Trump if he believed the Saudi crown prince ordered the assassination himself, Trump responded: “He says very strongly that he didn’t do it. Bob, they spent $400 billion over a fairly short period of time,” Trump said.
“And you know, they’re in the Middle East. You know, they’re big. Because of their religious monuments, you know, they have the real power. They have the oil, but they also have the great monuments for religion. You know that, right? For that religion,” Trump noted. “They wouldn’t last a week if we’re not there, and they know it,” he added.
Regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018, the Erdogan administration released American pastor Andrew Brunson on October 12, 2018, which had been a longstanding demand of the Trump administration, and also decided not to make public the audio recordings of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi implicating Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman in the assassination.
In return, the Trump administration promised to comply with Turkish President Erdogan’s vehement demand to evacuate American forces from the Kurdish-held areas in northeast Syria, and the withdrawal was eventually effected an year later in October 2019.
In the Operation Peace Spring in October 2019, the Turkish armed forces and their Syrian proxies invaded and occupied 120 kilometers wide and 32 kilometers deep stretch of Syrian territory between the northeastern towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn. It’s worth pointing out that although Turkish forces invaded northeast Syria in October 2019, the negotiations went on for almost an year since December 2018.
Trump immediately announced the withdrawal of American troops from Syria after losing the midterm elections in November 2018. But the Pentagon kept delaying the evacuation of American forces from northern Syria to appease Washington’s Kurdish allies.
However, once Turkish armed forces and allied militant proxies invaded northeast Syria in October 2019, the Pentagon was left with no other choice than to redeploy American forces to Kurdish-held areas al-Hasakah and Qamishli in northeast Syria.
Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from Syria was reportedly made during a telephonic conversation with Turkish President Erdogan on December 14, 2018, before President Trump made the momentous announcement in a Tweet on December 19. The decision was so sudden that it prompted the resignation of Jim Mattis, then the Secretary of Defense, according to a December 22, 2018, Associated Press report.
Considering the events surrounding the killing of al-Baghdadi in October 2019, it’s obvious that his successor, too, was betrayed by the Turkish patrons to extract geo-strategic concessions from the Biden administration. Due to Erdogan’s personal friendship with Biden’s political rival Trump, Turkish leader has repeatedly been snubbed by Biden throughout the maiden year of his administration.
But after letting the Biden administration eliminate the Islamic State leader and offering to mediate in the dispute between Russia and Ukraine to defuse mounting tensions in the Eastern Europe, Erdogan is trying desperately hard to prove to the Biden administration that Turkey is still a reliable NATO ally that could play a vital role in the global power rivalry.
The post How Erdogan Scapegoated ISIS Caliph to Appease Biden? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.