The Agonist - Levant

Turkey probes coup plot, ruling party in court

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 07:19:27 -0700

Ankara | July 3

Reuters - Documents seized by Turkish police indicate that a shadowy, ultra-nationalist illegal organisation planned to trigger a coup to unseat the government, newspapers reported on Thursday.

The reports come as the governing AK Party defended itself in court against charges of trying to establish an Islamic state. The party could be closed down, a move that might lead to an early parliamentary election.

Turkish media said a secret plan, including launching illegal protests on July 7 across 40 provinces and clashes with security forces, had been seized during a police swoop on suspected members of the so-called Ergenekon organisation.

Twenty-one people, including two retired senior generals, journalists and politicians, were detained on Tuesday for links to the group suspected of trying to engineer a military takeover. All were critics of the government.

Secularism: New arrests as Turkish court hears attempt to ban ruling party

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:56:28 -0700

Robert Tait | Kayseri | July 2

The Guardian - Turkey's tottering political system edged further towards breakdown yesterday as police arrested 24 people suspected of plotting to overthrow the government hours before a prosecutor went before the country's highest court demanding the dissolution of the ruling party.

Two retired generals and a newspaper columnist were among those detained as investigators widened an investigation into an alleged coup attempt against the Justice and Development party (AKP) government by a secular-nationalist cabal.

The timing of the arrests drew attention away from the official opening of a case brought by the chief prosecutor, Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya, to close the AKP and ban its senior figures from politics for allegedly trying to turn Turkey into an Islamic state.

The bewildering chain of events prompted a crisis of confidence in the financial markets, with shares on the Istanbul stock market plunging 6% and the local currency, the lira, falling by 2%.

Olmert says his cabinet to vote on Hezbollah swap

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:11:34 -0700

Jerusalem | June 25

Reuters - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Wednesday his government would vote on Sunday on a prisoner swap with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla group.

After meeting Olmert on Tuesday, Karnit Goldwasser, whose husband Ehud and fellow army reservist Eldad Regev were abducted by Hezbollah in a July 2006 border raid that triggered a 34-day war in Lebanon, said he had promised her a Sunday vote.

Through U.N.-appointed German mediator, Israel has offered to release five jailed Lebanese guerrillas in exchange for the soldiers, security sources said.

Heavy clashes erupt in Lebanon

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:42:54 -0700

Tripoli | June 22

PressTV (MSH/GM) - At least two people have been killed and 33 others wounded in clashes between rival factions in Lebanon, forcing the withdrawal of the army from the area.

The heavy clashes erupted between rival factions in the Lebanese city of Tripoli.

The clashes in the Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen areas located on the northern edge of the city began around 4:15 am (0115 GMT) pitting supporters of the country's Western-backed government and the anti-government forces against each other, an army official said.

Similar violence had shaken the area in May, prompting the army to deploy.

The fighting on Sunday was taking place amid stalled efforts by Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to form a new government of national unity following a breakthrough deal in May to end a long-running crisis that had brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Syria to cooperate with nuclear team on its own terms

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:43:36 -0700

Damascus | June 21

AFP - UN atomic inspectors begin a three-day visit to Syria on Sunday to probe allegations that a mysterious site bombed by Israel last year was a nuclear facility.

Syria has said it is ready to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency team led by IAEA deputy Olli Heinonen, but would only allow them to visit the remote desert site of Al-Kibar on the Euphrates River.

"Syria invited the IAEA and will cooperate with it," President Bashar al-Assad said this month, dismissing allegations made by the United States and Israel that the bombed site was a nuclear facility.

"It is a military facility... it is not nuclear," he said again last week before a landmark visit to nuclear power India.

Robert Fisk: Today's despot is tomorrow's statesman

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 06:32:43 -0700

June 21

How are the mighty fallen, we used to say. Now we turn it round. How did the fallen become mighty again? Remember the "mad dog of the Middle East" – Reagan's stupid cliché – the "terrorist" sponsor who even sent a shipload of guns to the IRA? A certain Moammar Ghazzafi – there are 17 different ways of spelling his name in Latin script – was the crazed leader of Libya who wrote a mind-numbingly boring volume of pseudo philosophy called The Green Book and who wanted to mock the White House by calling his own palace the Green House until someone tipped him off that this would mean he would look even more of a cabbage than he already was.

Then suddenly, he gave up some imaginary weapons of mass destruction and Anthony Blair, now the commercial director of World Faith, went out to fawn over him in Tripoli and he was called "statesmanlike" by the absurd Jack Straw and then he was invited to Paris by the even more absurd Nicolas Sarkozy where he right royally made the French president look like a twat by behaving in an extremely unstatesmanlike way.

And now – bingo – Sarkozy has done it again. This time it's Bashar al-Assad, another presumed "sponsor of world terror" – this twaddle comes from Washington, of course – who will (if he accepts the invitation française) be in Paris on Bastille Day to take his place in the reviewing stand at the end of the Champs Elysées. The man whom millions of Lebanese believe plotted the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri in Beirut on 14 February 2005 will thus be receiving one of France's highest honours: to stand beside the French president as he reviews his military forces. MORE

Transsexual singer faces jail after questioning Turkey's military

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 03:16:28 -0700

Nicholas Birch | Istanbul | June 19

The Independent - With her bee-stung lips and long permed black hair, Bulent Ersoy, a transsexual and one of Turkey's most popular singers, is no stranger to controversy. Now she finds herself on trial for trying to turn the public against the country's military.

The charges stem from remarks Ms Ersoy made earlier this year on the hugely popular television show Popstar Alaturka that called into question Turkey's deeply ingrained militarism. She suggested that it was not worth sacrificing soldiers' lives in Turkey's conflict with the Kurdish separatist PKK group. "I am not a mother, nor ever will be, but I would not bury my child for someone else's war," Ms Ersoy said.

Her comments coincided with a major incursion by the conscript army on Kurdish separatist bases in northern Iraq, and visibly shocked her fellow panellists. "May God give me a son so that I can send him off to our glorious army," one of them quickly countered, adding a nationalistic phrase repeated at every military funeral. "Martyrs never die, the fatherland cannot be divided." But Ms Ersoy was not put off. "Always the same clichéd phrases," she retorted. "Children go, bitter tears, funerals... and afterwards, these clichéd phrases."

In his indictment, the prosecutor acknowledged that starting a debate was not a crime in a democracy, but stressed that the singer's words amounted to deliberate propaganda against the military. Military service is obligatory for men over the age of 20 and it is a criminal offence to speak against it.

Israel Open to Deal With Lebanon on Disputed Land

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:14:26 -0700

ETHAN BRONNER and ROBERT F. WORTH | Jerusalem | June 19

NYT - The disputed piece of land that will be under negotiation is known as the Shabaa Farms.

Israel offered on Wednesday to start direct peace talks with Lebanon, saying all issues would be negotiable including a tiny piece of Israeli-held land on the countries’ border that Israel has long argued does not belong to Lebanon but that the Lebanese say is theirs.

The announcement comes after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Israel over the weekend and made a surprise stop in Lebanon on Monday. On her trips, she spoke to both the Israeli and Lebanese governments about Washington’s desire to find a solution to the land dispute as a catalyst for solving bigger issues in the region, including strengthening the Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, a senior Israeli official said, and Mr. Olmert agreed to this.

The offer of talks with Lebanon comes amid intense regional diplomatic activity, including the planned start on Thursday of a six-month truce in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, which the Israeli government confirmed on Wednesday, and the end of a second round of indirect negotiations between Israel and Syria for a comprehensive peace treaty.

Robert Fisk: The West's weapon of self-delusion

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 20:03:49 -0700

There are gun battles in Beirut – and America thinks things are going fine

Independent - So they are it again, the great and the good of American democracy, grovelling and fawning to the Israeli lobbyists of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), repeatedly allying themselves to the cause of another country and one that is continuing to steal Arab land.

Secular Turks attack religious council's code for women

Thu, 29 May 2008 07:08:44 -0700

Robert Tait | Islamabad | May 29

The Guardian - A powerful state body regulating the role of Islam in Turkey has come under fire over an article on sexual behaviour that equated flirting with adultery and condemned women for wearing perfume.

Secularists and women's groups hit out after the directorate of religious affairs (Diyanet) published the article on its website setting out recommendations for proper sexual conduct.

Invoking the prophet Muhammad, it put the onus squarely on women by urging them to cover up and behave modestly to avoid provoking male sexual desires.

"Women have to be more careful, since they have stimulants," the article stated. "The women communicating with strange men should speak in a manner that will not arouse suspicion in one's heart and in such seriousness and dignity that they will not let the opposite party misunderstand them, that they should not show their ornaments and figure and that they should cover in a fine manner."

Three Iranian Guardsmen die after rebel clash-report

Mon, 26 May 2008 07:54:04 -0700

Tehran | May 26

Reuters - Three Iranian Revolutionary Guardsmen have died from wounds sustained during a clash with rebels near the Turkish border, an Iranian news agency said on Monday, in an apparent reference to Kurdish guerrillas.

The semi-official Fars News Agency quoted a Guards spokesman as saying the fighting took place on Saturday. Iranian media had earlier said nine Kurdish rebels were killed on that day, but Fars did not make clear if it was during the same clash.

"These three Guardsmen were wounded two days ago in clashes with rebels ... and attained martyrdom after they were transported to hospital," spokesman Reza Rezvani told Fars.

Lebanon's General Suleiman set to become president

Sat, 24 May 2008 15:34:14 -0700

Laila Bassam | Beirut | May 24

Reuters - Lebanon's parliament is set to vote in army chief General Michel Suleiman as the country's 11th president on Sunday, filling a post left vacant for six months by a crisis that threatened a new civil war.

A Qatari-brokered deal between rival Lebanese leaders last week defused 18 months of political stalemate that erupted into street fighting this month and led to Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters seizing Beirut and routing government loyalists.

Members of parliament from the U.S.-supported ruling majority and the Hezbollah-led opposition will attend a parliamentary session at 1400 GMT to elect Suleiman as president, as stipulated by the Doha agreement. The vote had been postponed 19 times because of the crisis.

The deal also calls for the formation of a national unity government where the opposition has veto power and a new law for the 2009 general election.

Halfbaked Thoughts?

Wed, 21 May 2008 18:38:16 -0700

upyernoz has thoughts on the Hezbollah power-sharing agreement and the news that Israel and Syria are in talks. It's a short post, but worth a glimpse, because it made me just sit and think about the region for a moment. Thought being, in my opinion, a good thing.

Also, see the always excellent Col. Lang.

Rival Lebanese leaders sign deal to end conflict

Wed, 21 May 2008 08:36:15 -0700

Nadim Ladki | Doha | May 21

Reuters - Rival Lebanese leaders signed a deal on Wednesday to end 18 months of political conflict, pulling their country away from the brink of civil war and paving the way for the election of a new president.

Parliament will convene on Sunday to elect army chief General Michel Suleiman as head of state, aides to Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri told Reuters in Qatar, where the feuding sides signed the accord after six days of Arab-mediated talks.

The agreement between the U.S.-backed ruling coalition and the Hezbollah-led opposition resolved a dispute over a law for holding 2009 parliamentary elections and met the opposition's long-standing demand for veto power in cabinet.

It followed a Hezbollah military campaign this month against ruling coalition leaders which bolstered the opposition's political strength. Hezbollah, backed by Iran and Syria, routed its rivals in the conflict that killed 81 and prompted the Qatari-led mediation.

Israel-Syria confirm peace talks

Wed, 21 May 2008 04:02:09 -0700

May 21

BBC - Israel and Syria have said they are holding indirect talks to reach a comprehensive peace agreement.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said both sides were talking "in good faith and openly".

The Syrian foreign ministry also confirmed the Turkish-mediated talks, the first since 2000.

The last round of talks broke down because of disagreement over the extent of Israel's possible withdrawal from the Golan Heights.

Condi texts Tzipi Livni: "You %$#@ed us! Again!"