Ankara | Apr 28

Huriryet Daily - Turkey warned Syria today not to repeat border violations, implying that it could use force to protect its border and call on NATO to respond to a potential Syrian attack.

“We have strong armed forces. We will carefully continue to take steps to this end. But Syria must be aware of the fact that in the event of a repetition of these border violations, Turkey’s stance will not be the same,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in an interview with Al-Jazeera, Anatolia news agency reported.

Jacob Resneck, Jabeen Bhatti and Ruby Russell | Reyhanli, Turkey | Apr 9

USA TODAY - Violence in Syria and at its borders continued to rage Monday on the eve of a cease-fire that analysts said they doubted would be agreed to by President Bashar Assad.

"The Syrian government is in a race against time to basically crush the armed wing of the uprising and have the upper hand in any political negotiations," said Fawaz Gerges, director of the Middle East Center, London School of Economics.

"The Assad regime and the rebels have locked themselves into a protracted and bloody conflict. Both camps are planning for the long term," he said.

Syrian forces fired across the border into a refugee camp in Turkey, wounding five people, authorities said. The soldiers were firing at rebels who tried to escape after ambushing a military checkpoint, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. On the border with Lebanon, a cameraman for Lebanon's Al Jadeed TV station was killed by shots fired from Syria, the station said.

Turkey shelters thousands of refugees fleeing Assad's military, which has killed 9,000 people since March 2011 in an attempt to put down an uprising, according to the United Nations.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry demanded Syria stop shooting across the border, saying that the refugees "are under the full protection of Turkey."

Sebnem Arsu & Alan Cowell | Ankara | April 9

NYT - Turkish officials said on Monday that Syrian government forces had opened fire across the border late Sunday, killing two people and wounding three others close to one of the largest Syrian refugee camps in Turkey.

Reports from the area seemed confused, with some accounts from activists inside Syria saying that a large number of reinforcements for the government troops, backed by tanks and helicopters, had arrived close to Turkish territory. A Turkish government official said the three people who were wounded — two Syrians and a Turkish translator — were hit when they tried and failed to rescue two unidentified civilians who were shot and killed near the border.

Roy Gutman | Turkish/Syrian Border | March 11

McClatchy - The Syrian military in the past month planted a band of anti-personnel mines along stretches of the border with Turkey, where last year more than 10,000 Syrian refugees fled the Assad regime's crackdown on the pro-democracy "Arab Spring" uprising, Syrian witnesses said.

After a family of five were reported severely injured in a new minefield last month, Syrian civilians, operating with primitive means — an axe, a rope and the guidance of a volunteer who'd had mine- clearance training in military service — unearthed hundreds of those mines and reopened the way to safety, volunteers said.

Oliver Trenkamp | on the Turkish-Syrian Border | Feb 24

Speigel Online - At first they served the regime, but now they are fighting against it. Operating out of southern Turkey, units of the Free Syrian Army, driven by hatred toward Assad, are infiltrating their home country and fighting soldiers loyal to the dictator. SPIEGEL ONLINE visits the troops.

Feb 21

AFP - China's central bank announced Tuesday that it had signed a 10 billion yuan (US$1.59 billion) currency swap deal with Turkey, in its latest effort to promote international use of the Chinese currency.

The swap deal was signed with Turkey's central bank and will last for three years, the People's Bank of China said in a statement, adding the agreement could be extended beyond the initial period by mutual consent.

The PBOC has signed a series of similar swap agreements with various countries as part of an effort to promote international use of the Chinese currency.

China has in recent years signed agreements with New Zealand, South Korea, Malaysia, Belarus, Indonesia, Argentina, Iceland, Singapore and the southern Chinese territory of Hong Kong, which has its own currency.

Analysts say China is stepping up efforts to increase overseas use of the yuan partly to reduce the country's exposure to the US dollar and allow its currency to take on a greater global role.

China's key trading partners such as the United States say the yuan is undervalued, making Chinese exports cheaper on world markets and thereby gaining an unfair trade advantage.

. . . is a fucking moron.

Staff | Istanbul | Jan 11

Today's Zaman - German state organs have provided varying degrees of support to a recently uncovered neo-Nazi ring in that country, according to an overwhelming majority of Turkish immigrants living in Germany, a recent survey has found.

The survey comes some two months after the discovery of a neo-Nazi ring that was responsible for at least 10 murders. Nine of them were immigrants; eight being of Turkish origin, the other one Greek. The 10th victim was a police officer. As the investigation into the terrorist ring unfolded it became evident that Germany's federal intelligence agency, the Organization for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), had been watching every move of the gang and had agents among the gang members. An investigation is under way into the murders, but the findings hint that the BfV possibly knew about some of the murders.

Daren Butler & Can Sezer | Istanbul | January 6

Reuters - The former head of Turkey's armed forces, General Ilker Basbug, was in custody on Friday on charges of trying to overthrow the government, a stunning move by the judiciary against a military that was once the ultimate power in the land.

Basbug, who retired in 2010 as chief of NATO's second-largest army, is the most senior officer to be caught up in the Ergenekon case, a long-running crackdown on the military and the secularist establishment.

He was charged overnight and jailed, crowning the fall from grace of the once invincible military. The General Staff chief was Turkey's most powerful man until Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's government gradually eroded army influence in the last decade.

Erdogan managed the transformation thanks to overwhelming public support for his government, now in its third term.

Istanbul | Dec 29

CNN - A Turkish airstrike on the border with Iraq killed 35 people who are now thought to have been smuggling cigarettes, a senior Turkish lawmaker said Thursday.

Turkish air force jets launched the strike late Wednesday after unmanned aerial vehicles showed a group moving from Iraq toward the border with Turkey in an area "mostly used by terrorists," a statement from the military general staff said.

But a senior member of Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) said early indications are that those identified by the drones and subsequently killed were civilians.

"These people were thought to be terrorists; however, the first initial investigative information we have from the local authorities, especially from Sirnak Governor's office, indicate that these people are involved in cigarette smuggling," said the AKP's deputy chairman and spokesman Huseyin Celik.

He said the strike had killed many members of the same family.

"Even if there was a situation 100% that these people were smugglers, these people should not have been subjected to this, they should not have been bombed. It is out of question," he said.

Expressing his condolences to the affected families, he vowed that a full investigation would be carried out and no cover-up would be allowed.

yada yada yada where have we heard that before

Matthew Kalman | Dec 26

The Independent - In a step that will further inflame already fraught relations between Israel and Turkey, parliamentarians in Jerusalem have publicly debated for the first time whether to recognise Turkish responsibility for the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915.

The Knesset session yesterday followed a French vote last week outlawing denial of the massacres, a step that angered the Turkish government.

"Denying a holocaust is something that history cannot agree with," Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin said during a discussion in the Knesset's Education, Culture and Sports Committee, breaking a decades-long taboo on public debate by the Knesset on the issue – and a longtime avoidance of the use of the word "holocaust", which most Israelis prefer to apply only to the Nazi massacre of six million Jews. "We believe that as humans, as Jews and as citizens of the State of Israel – along with members of Knesset that are not Jewish – we must put the subject on the national agenda," Mr Rivlin said.

In the past, successive Israeli governments had suppressed discussion of the issue for fear of offending Turkey, a rare Muslim ally of the Jewish state. Academic symposiums have been held at Israeli universities and the former Education Minister Yossi Sarid attended two Armenian government conferences marking the 85th and 90th anniversaries of the massacre.

Following the breakdown of relations over the killing of nine passengers aboard a Turkish ship trying to enter Gaza in 2010, pressure grew for Israel's parliament to acknowledge the historical suffering of Armenians.

Dan Bilefsky | Instanbul | December 23

NYT - In a deepening diplomatic rupture, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey accused France on Friday of genocide against Algerians in the period of French colonial rule, one day after France made it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks.

“Approximately 15 percent of the population in Algeria have been subjected to a massacre by the French starting from 1945,” Mr. Erdogan said of the French dominion, which ended in 1962. “This is genocide.”

Mr. Erdogan’s sharp remarks seemed to severely dent Turkey’s already fraught talks on joining the European Union. But more immediately, they underscored concerns both at home and abroad that Turkey’s expansive new sense of self-confidence — buttressed by its emerging role as a leader in the Middle East — might be tipping into arrogance, threatening to alienate allies and foes at a critical time.

Ipek Yezdani | Istanbul | Nov 25

McClatchy - Turkey sees no possibility of resuming full diplomatic relations with Israel unless Israel apologizes and pays damages for the deaths its commandos caused last year aboard a Turkish ship that was trying to run Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip, Turkey's foreign minister said Friday.

"Israel buried our friendship in the deep waters of the Mediterranean," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in response to a question on whether Turkish-Israeli relations would recover in the near future.

Turkey, which became the first Muslim country to recognize Israel in 1949, was considered Israel's closest ally in the Middle East until September, when Turkey expelled the Israeli ambassador, canceled all military cooperation agreements and downgraded its relations with the Jewish state after Israel refused to apologize for the deaths of nine Turkish citizens who were aboard the Mavi Marmara in May 2010 when it was boarded by Israeli commandos rappelling from helicopters.

A U.N. report on the incident that was released in September said Israel had used excessive force to stop the ship, though it endorsed Israel's right to blockade Gaza.

Davutoglu said Friday that Turkey's position on the incident hadn't changed: that Israel should apologize and compensate the families of the Mavi Marmara dead.

Until then, he said, relations between Turkey and Israel couldn't be normalized.

Davutoglu also criticized Israel for continuing to expand settlements in areas of the West Bank that Palestinians consider part of a future Palestinian state.

"They are unfortunately part of the problem now," Davutoglu said of Israel.

Davutoglu made the comments after meeting with Italian Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi, a former ambassador to the United States who was named foreign minister last week under the country's new government, led by Prime Minister Mario Monti.

Peter Harling & Hugh Pope | November 25

International Crisis Group Blog - Turkey arguably ranks highest on the outside players’ score sheet after a first year of Arab revolts. Ankara responded fastest to the region’s paradigm shift, taking the lead in calling Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak to step down; defined clear principles, pushed for sweeping reforms and denounced repression; avoided rushing into a questionable war to oust Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, but emerged on the winning side; satisfied the Arab public’s mood by challenging Israel and downgrading relations with the Jewish state, even though this occurred for mostly unrelated reasons; and could flaunt the “Turkish model” as a conveniently ill-defined way forward. The prize: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could tour the Arab world to a hero’s welcome.

Nov 12

Bloomberg - Turkish commandos stormed a hijacked ferry in the waters outside Istanbul and shot the hijacker dead after failing to persuade him to turn himself in, Interior Minister Idris Sahin said in televised remarks.

The operation took place at 5:35 a.m. local time and was run in coordination with the Interior Ministry, navy, coast guard, Istanbul police and Istanbul governorship, the state-run Anatolia news agency said. None of the 18 passengers or six crew members on board were harmed, Istanbul Governor Huseyin Avni Mutlu said.

Kadir Altunoglu, a passenger on the vessel, told NTV television he was on the lower deck of the ferry when he heard five or six gunshots on an upper floor.
The hijacker was a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, Mutlu said. The group is classified as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the European Union. More than 40,000 people have died in PKK attacks and in its clashes with security forces since the group took up arms against the state in 1984 to fight for Kurdish autonomy.

Interior Minister Idris said in an interview on NTV that the hijacker was found with three 450-gram blocks of A-4 explosives. Ercan Topaca, the governor of Kocaeli province, said earlier that no explosives were found and the device the hijacker was wearing wasn’t a bomb; it was made from cables and bottles and designed to resemble a bomb. There was no explanation for the discrepancy.

Ankara | October 23

MSNBC - A powerful 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck eastern Turkey on Sunday, collapsing dozens of buildings into piles of twisted steel and chunks of concrete. Desperate survivors dug into the rubble with their bare hands, trying to rescue the trapped and injured.

State-run television reported that 45 people were killed and 150 others injured in the eastern town of Ercis, but scientists estimated that up to 1,000 people could already be dead, due to low housing standards in the area and the size of the quake.

Ercis, a town of 75,000 in the mountainous province of Van close to the Iranian border, was the hardest hit. It lies on the Ercis Fault in one of Turkey's most earthquake-prone zones. The bustling regional center of Van, 55 miles (90 kilometers) to the south, also suffered substantial damage.

Emre Peker | Oct 20

Bloomberg - Thousands of Turkish troops crossed into Iraq to hunt fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which is staging its deadliest strikes since the 1990s.

Twenty-two battalions in five areas on both sides of the border are engaged in the fight against the Kurdish group, backed by aerial bombing and artillery attacks, the army said on its website today. Turkey is in the first stages of the operation and is seeking assistance from Iraq, in whose northern mountains the PKK has its main base, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters in Ankara today.

The conflict, the latest in a region rocked by uprisings all year, escalated after the PKK killed 30 Turkish soldiers in a series of attacks in Turkey’s largely Kurdish southeast. They coincided with the start of talks in the Ankara parliament over a new constitution that may help address the grievances of Turkey’s Kurds, about 20 percent of the population.

Oct 19

VOA - Turkey has launched a military operation against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, hours after the militants killed at least 24 soldiers and wounded 18 in attacks in southeastern Turkey near the Iraqi border.

News reports quote Turkish officials as saying at least 20 rebels were also killed in the fighting, as Turkish air force bombers hit targets in Iraq and helicopters ferried army troops into the region. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who canceled a trip to Kazakhstan, described the action as "hot pursuit" within the limits of international law, following the deadliest such Kurdish attack in years.

Turkish authorities say rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, opened fire on military outposts in Cukurca and Yuksekova in Turkey's Hakkari province earlier Wednesday. Kurdish rebels claimed responsibility, prompting President Abdullah Gul to tell reporters that "vengeance for these attacks will be great."

Last week, Turkey called on Iraq to stop the Kurdish rebels from attacking Turkey from Iraqi soil, saying its "patience is running out." Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Ankara is determined to eradicate the rebel threat in northern Iraq.

This is a pretty well written exploration of religious freedom in Turkey. I don't really have any comment other than to say if you are interested in learning more about how secularism and religious freedom in Turkey work this is a good start.

Jack Shenker | Cairo | Sept 13

The Guardian - Analysts believe Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Egypt visit is designed to strengthen Turkey's influence in the region and isolate Israel

Turkey's prime minister has called for the Palestinian flag to finally be raised at the United Nations, insisting that international recognition of the state was now an obligation, not an option.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a much-anticipated speech to the Arab League in Cairo to rally opposition to Israel, and promised that Turkey would stand in solidarity with those struggling for political change in the Arab world.

"Freedom and democracy and human rights must be a united slogan for the future of our people," Erdogan told an audience of Arab foreign ministers and millions more watching on television across the region. "The legitimate demands of the people cannot be repressed with force and in blood."

The 57-year-old was speaking at the start of a four-day tour of revolutionary north Africa, which analysts believe is designed to strengthen Turkey's influence within the Middle East and isolate their one-time ally Israel. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who is also in Egypt, has announced that he will be pressing ahead with Palestine's bid for full recognition from the UN security council, despite the fact that it will almost certainly be met by a US veto. The EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, said that the bloc has yet to reach a common position on the question of Palestinian statehood.

. . . they are strategic geniuses of the first order by seeking meetings with Kurdish terrorists. Fucking brilliant! Maybe Israel can siphon off some of the billions in US tax dollars they get to support a terrorist group who are fighting a NATO ally!

On a more serious note: what possible good can come of this for either Israel or the United States now that a single, small client state has it in its power to unravel our entire European alliance structure? This is just breathtaking in its arrogance.

Update: An email correspondent brings up a very key point in all this: "One thing is clear, the military in Turkey will now have to back Erdogan to the hilt with respect to policies toward Israel." Just think about that for a moment, let it sink in: Israeli policies are engendering the kind of (soft-shoe) Islamists it really doesn't need in its neighborhood.

Update 2: Chuck Spinney writes in to add:

Netanyahu may be tough enough to cow President Obama, but to date, he has been afraid to reign in his fanatical Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. His plan to" weaken" Turkey described below in the Israeli outlet YnetNews suggests that time is running out.

One thing is clear from Lieberman's outrageous proposals to sow dissension in Turkey by supporting anti-Turkish claims of Armenians and Kurds: it will blow back to unify and harden Turkish attitudes. Israel's opportunistic cynicism and lack of a moral center revealed by these proposals boggles the mind -- this is particularly true of its flip flop on the recognizing the Armenian holocaust after decades of opposing such recognition on the grounds that it diminished the moral stature of Jewish holocaust.

But these proposals are more than outrageous; they set a new standard for self-referencing stupidity: The Turkish army, which has been one of Israel's best friends in Turkey, has been in a power struggle with PM Erdogan. The army is fundamentally, however, a proud nationalist institution. The army will have no choice but to side with Erdogan in this conflict with Israel. This will increase Erdogan's and the ruling AKP party's political power and give him much more domestic support to tough it out with Israel. And Erdogan is a little like Lieberman, in that he is a self-made tough guy who grew up in the back streets of Istanbul, but he is much smarter and is a true reformer to boot.

Moreover, setting aside personalities of individuals, Turkey, unlike Israel, is not a country burdened down with emotional baggage or a sense that the world owes it. Anyone with a modicum of understanding of Turkish culture knows that it is a proud, self confident culture, with its own sense of history. It is not dependent on handouts from others and is dynamically expanding to the status of being regional power. Finally, a strategy based on the idea that one should publicly back a Turkey into a corner and humiliate her national honor is without a doubt the stupidest way to deal with this proud country.

One can only conclude that a failure to dump Lieberman is a signal that Israel is losing its collective mind and a kind of self-righteous paranoia is displacing common sense in a nuclear armed country. One has to wonder what extent Obama's pusillanimity in dealing with Netanyahu has contributed to this dangerous evolution.

Criag Whitlock | Washington | September 10

WaPo - The Obama administration is considering a request from Turkey to base a fleet of Predator drones on Turkish soil for counterterrorism operations in northern Iraq, a decision that could strengthen a diplomatic alliance but drag the United States deeper into a regional conflict.

The U.S. military has flown the unarmed Predators from Iraqi bases since 2007 and shared the planes’ surveillance video with Turkey as part of a secretive joint crackdown against fighters from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. Unless a new home for the Predators is found, however, the counterterrorism partnership could cease by Dec. 31, when all U.S. forces are scheduled to withdraw from Iraq.

Staff | Istanbul | September 9

Today's Zaman -

A warning by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Israel reiterating his country's firmness on ensuring freedom of navigation in the eastern Mediterranean sent shockwaves throughout the region after it was interpreted as a prelude to a naval confrontation with its former ally.

But officials in Ankara made clear on Friday that Erdoğan's remarks during an interview with Al Jazeera were quoted out of context. Some of his quotes were compiled later both by Al Jazeera and Reuters in a way that implied these quotes had followed each other, the same officials said. “Turkish warships, in the first place, are authorized to protect our ships that carry humanitarian aid to Gaza,” Erdoğan was quoted as saying by Reuters in the interview, broadcast by Al Jazeera with an Arabic translation.

Israel responds:

“We’ll exact a price from Erdoğan that will prove to him that messing with Israel doesn’t pay off. Turkey better treat us with respect and common decency,” Lieberman was quoted as saying. Whether Lieberman’s threats could ever be implemented remains questionable.

Sept 8

BBC - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said his country will in future escort aid ships travelling to the Gaza Strip.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Mr Erdogan also said Turkey had taken steps to prevent Israel unilaterally exploiting natural resources in the eastern Mediterranean.

He spoke amid a growing row over Israel's refusal to apologise for a deadly raid on an aid ship last year.

Turkey has already cut military ties and expelled Israel's ambassador.

It has also said it will challenge Israel's blockade of Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

Relations between Turkey and Israel have worsened since Israeli forces boarded the Mavi Marmara aid ship in May last year as it was heading for Gaza. Nine Turkish activists were killed during the raid.

Israel has refused to apologise and said its troops acted in self-defence.

In his comments to Al-Jazeera, Mr Erdogan said Turkish warships were "authorised to protect our ships that carry humanitarian aid to Gaza".

"From now on, we will not let these ships to be attacked by Israel, as what happened with the Freedom Flotilla," he said, referring to the Mavi Marmara incident.

As I wrote in this post back in 2010:

Actions speak louder than words. It's a timeless adage, but no less true for its banality. And in watching the Turkish-Israeli spat, it's the actions, concrete developments, not the hyperbolic grandstanding of Israeli and Turkish politicians which is most important. . . If the spat between Turkey and Israel is to grow into a real breach, a couple of things need to happen, including the Turks sending a new ship to Gaza, which is happening now. If the Israelis botch this one Erdogan might feel empowered to cancel the contracts and then escalate the whole situation much more. I seriously doubt the Turks will send a naval escort until the contracts have been canceled. Until I see that, I'm in the camp that sees this whole episode as so much propaganda posturing.

The rift is now totally complete:

Mr Erdogan said Turkey was "totally suspending" defence industry ties with Israel, after downgrading diplomatic relations with the country.

"Trade ties, military ties, regarding defence industry ties, we are completely suspending them," he told reporters in Ankara. "This process will be followed by different measures."

Those are concrete actions. I don't know if or when another ship might sail to Gaza from Turkey--and the idea I had back then about seems fanciful now. But the reality is this: Israel has lost its best and only friend in the Muslim world.