European and Turkish journalists gathered at İstanbul’s Bahçeşehir University for a three-day international media program.

The program titled “European Media Encounter Media, Intercultural Dialogue and Fight against Discrimination — Cross-reports from Turkey,” is being held as a joint effort by the Council of Europe’s “Speak out against discrimination” campaign and the Intercultural Cities program under the Turkish chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The program will run through Dec. 2.

Among the 80 participants include journalists from the Zaman Media Group, the AGOS weekly, the Habertürk daily and TV channel and the Vatan, Taraf, Radikal and Hürriyet newspapers, representatives from the BBC, Euronews, El Mundo, La Republica and Liberation, as well as 20 journalism students.

The Council of Europe has put forth three main objectives for the program: to train media professionals on how to treat news relating to discrimination and intercultural dialogue; to help people from minority backgrounds make their voices heard by facilitating their access to media professions and productions; and to inform public opinion about policies that combat discrimination.

“Because discrimination remains a common practice whose victims are ill-informed about their rights and the remedies available, the campaign seeks to develop close partnerships with the media in order to inform public opinion about national and European anti-discrimination machinery,” read a booklet distributed to all participants.

Reynald Blion, media and diversity manager and representative of the “Speak out against discrimination” campaign, in his opening speech told participants they would be expected to contribute to the visibility of the program, build permanent dialogue between all media networks in Europe and seek innovative ways to produce reports on diversity and anti-discrimination issues.

Journalist Nicole Pope, who is also a columnist for Today’s Zaman, focused on acts of anti-discrimination worldwide, saying that no country is free of discrimination and Turkey has its own issues on discrimination. “When we say discrimination in Turkey, what immediately comes to mind is the situation of Turkish workers in Europe. … The Turkish Republic was established at a time when diversity was seen a threat rather than a source for richness. But Turkey is now going through an enormous economic and social change,” she said, and expressed her wish that the program would give participants a chance to look at their own societies from a new perspective.

Another speaker, Ahmet Böken — editor-in-chief of TRT Haber — approached the topic of discrimination from a different perspective and focused on employment in the media sector. He said European media outlets and their editors have been questioning if press organs currently employ an adequate number of members from all ethnic groups in their societies, representing a broader diversity.

“I do not think this is possible at all, at least for Turkey. It is said that there are 52 ethnic groups in Turkey. This figure may change for different sources. What is best, for us, is to encourage press organs to open their doors to all ethnic groups in society, which means stronger communication between members of the press and members of ethnic groups, “ Böken said.

Participants were later asked to partner in groups of two to three to produce a report offering different perspectives on intercultural dialogue and the fight against discrimination, focusing particularly on how a media intercultural production can contribute to reduce prejudices and to fight against discrimination.

Fight against discrimination in employment

According to the “Speak out against discrimination” campaign, media organizations should take certain steps to actively combat discrimination in employment. Suggested steps include posting all job vacancies online and making appointments on a fair and non-discriminatory basis and making the results publicly available; exploring how to widen the recruitment base; publishing their employment and recruitment policies openly; and establishing and communicating clear and quantifiable goals such as minimum targets in diversity recruitment, minimum annual training hours for the workforce and concrete targets for representation. Further important steps include enabling journalists from minority communities to report on all aspects of the news and not simply community issues; modernizing the casting and portrayal of minorities and minority issues in mainstream broadcasting programming; establishing industry standards for the collection of monitoring data; and sharing non-commercially sensitive research on cultural diversity.

“We begin to develop more intensive interaction with Turkey in justice area thanks to the active and tactful position of Turkish presidency in the Council of Europe,” the minister said. Juridical protection and assistance to citizens and Russian-Turkish interaction in the area has assumed more importance in the recent years in view of a large number of incidents with tourists.

Konovalov also pointed to Russia’s particular interest in reforming the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). “We are interested particularly in the experience of Turkey that had serious problems with the ECHR some time back. Making a number of pragmatic systemic decisions at the national jurisdiction level it managed to resolve or, at least, to minimize these problems,” he said. Konovalov said Turkey continues to refer a large number of cases to the ECHR, and is interested in perfecting judicial procedure. “I hope we will cooperate successfully in this respect not only with Turkey but also with other countries that press more actively than other for reform of the ECHR,” the minister said.

via ITAR-TASS.

Modernization of the judiciary is an obligation rather than a bonus, Turkey’s justice minister says during the 30th Council of Europe Conference of Ministers of Justice in Istanbul, which tackled topics like modern, transparent and efficient justice; prison policy in contemporary Europe; and the protection of personal information in the third millennium

Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin. AA photo

Modernization of the judiciary is a necessity rather than a luxury, the Turkish justice minister said Thursday in Istanbul during a speech at the 30th Council of Europe, or CE, Conference of justice ministers.

“A judiciary that does not benefit from modern-age tools will become inefficient and inoperative, unsuccessful in the fight against crime and organized crime and will not be able to satisfy the expectations of society,” said Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin.

Modern, transparent and efficient justice, prison policy in contemporary Europe and the protection of personal information in the third millennium were the focal points of the conference, which was held this year in Istanbul on Nov. 25 and 26.

Modernization of the judiciary would not only end extremely lengthy judicial proceedings but also make the system more transparent to the public while providing a better footing for the debate of potential laws at the legislative level, according to Thomas Hammarberg, the CE commissioner for human rights.

Corruption is a serious threat to many CE member countries’ judicial systems, Hammarberg said.

“When money and politics are combined, the situation becomes even worse,” he said, adding that pressure on judges by organized crime networks also poses a serious threat to judicial independence.

“Judicial systems must be efficient enough to provide quality, independent decisions at a proper time,” said CE Deputy Secretary-General Maud de Boer-Buquicchio.

Furthermore, modern judiciaries must ensure a just and humane execution of court decisions, she said, adding that overcrowded prisons and disparities in prison conditions through all CE member countries were two issues that must be addressed urgently.

“Bad prison conditions and the limited provision of healthcare services in prisons are still persisting concerns [in CE countries],” Hammarberg said, adding that HIV has become a very serious problem in prisons throughout Europe.

The European Union has already established an e-justice system in the framework of the Stockholm program, which aims to help justice be administered more efficiently throughout the union, according to Belgian Minister of Justice Stefan de Clerck, who addressed the ministers on behalf of the Belgian EU Council presidency.

“There were about 10 million EU citizens involved in cross-border civil proceedings in the EU, according to a Commission’s 2008 report,” he said, adding that the Stockholm program provided tools designed to help citizens in such cases.

The EU must not duplicate prison policies

The EU should collaborate with the CE and become involved within already existing prison policies, rather than try to establish parallel policies at a community level, said Erol Aslan Cebeci, deputy chairman of the CE Parliamentary Assembly.

“We must stay vigilant,” he said, adding that the EU envisaged its own series of policies regarding prison and detention issues at community levels.

The duplication of this kind of activity must be avoided as it might lead to confusion, he said. “The EU must be part of the Council of Europe’s mechanisms [regarding prison and detention].”

News service for the Justice Ministry of Azerbaijan reportsthat Azerbaijan’s Minister of Justice Fikrat Mammadov will attend the event.

On November 24 the ministers will attend an informal meeting to be held at the Dolmabahce palace. Deputy General Secretary of the Council of Europe Maud de Boer-Buquicchio will speak at the conference.

Her speech will be devoted to the state of negotiations on EU’s participation in the convention of human rights and the Council of Europe’s recently adopted guiding principles of justice, considering children’s interests.

On November 25-26 the ministers will discuss modernization of the judicial systems in the third millennium: transparency and effectiveness of justice and penitentiary facilities. The final news conference will be held on November 26.

1news.az

via News.Az – Fikrat Mammadov to attend conference of CE justice ministers.

The map above shows the forty-seven nations that make up the membership of the Council of Europe.
The Council of Europe was founded in 1949 with ten original members, and added most of the rest of Western Europe over the next decade or so. The largest jump in membership occurred in the years immediately after the Soviet Empire fell. With the exception of Belarus — which has yet to reach the minimum standards for joining the CoE — any country that is even vaguely European is a member.

And, as you can see, some of them — Azerbaijan, perhaps? Georgia? — are not all that European. Culturally speaking, they are no more European than Iran is.

Here’s a list of all forty-seven member states of the Council of Europe — and quite a cornucopia it is:

The borders of the entity known as “Europe” make neither geographical nor cultural sense. The idea of Europe as a “continent” is ludicrous: it is bounded by the Norwegian Sea and Atlantic Ocean on the west (except for Iceland), the Barents Sea and the White Sea on the north, the Ural Mountains on the east, and the Mediterranean Sea, the Bosphorus, the Black Sea, and the Caucasus Mountains on the south. Oh, and Turkey gets a special exception: it lies south of the Black Sea and east of the Bosphorus, but since a tiny piece of it (including Constantinople) lies west of the Bosphorus, Turkey gets to be part of “Europe”.

Isn’t that special?

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
The Council of Europe was set up as a bulwark against communism, and was part of the larger idea of a “United States of Europe”, which also led in its own good time to the EEC, and later the EU.

The concept of human rights was integral to the CoE from its very inception. Turkey, however, like any other Islamic country, has different ideas than most Europeans about what the term “human rights” means. And, since Turkey has just assumed the rotating chairmanship of the Council of Europe, its version of human rights will gain greater visibility over the next few months.

Turkey has been throwing its diplomatic weight around a lot lately. It has used the Turkish minority in Germany to muscle in on the Merkel government’s integration policy. Its ambassador to Austria has insulted the entire nation of Austria — once again, because of its internal policies concerning the ethnic Turkish minority in Austria.

Outside of Europe, Turkey has been cozying up to China, rattling sabers at Israel, making friends with Hezbollah, and discussing military cooperation with Iran. Considering that Turkey is a full-fledged member of NATO, this should be worrisome to national security officials in certain Western capitals, but so far they seem to be taking these developments with equanimity. Britain and Sweden continue to be champions of Turkish accession to the EU.

Turkey — especially under its current fundamentalist Islamic government — would dearly love to reopen the gateway to Europe that was closed to the Ottomans at Vienna in 1683. The EU, with its corrupt welfare system and absence of internal borders, is the preferred vessel to carry tens of millions more Muslims into Europe. But there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and the Council of Europe affords yet another opportunity to poke a sharp stick into the underbelly of that amorphous region formerly known as Europe.

So how is Turkey going to utilize the chairmanship of the CoE to its advantage? Let’s take a look at a recent article from Hürriyet, which describes the latest opportunities handed to Ankara.

Many thanks to our Flemish correspondent VH for the tip about this article, and for the extra research. All the italics were added by me:

Turkey sets five priorities for Council of Europe

As Turkey takes the reins of one of Europe’s top institutions, the Council of Europe, for a six-month term, representatives outline five main focus areas for their work: reform, reducing workloads, fighting discrimination, empowering institutions and facilitating the EU’s decision to join the European Convention on Human Rights

On taking the chairmanship of the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe for six months, Turkey said it has set five priorities to make the 61-year-old European body more visible and more active.

“Turkey’s chairmanship will make every effort to put the Council of Europe back on the international scene as an innovative, more flexible and feasible organization so that it can adapt itself to the changing political landscape,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said during Wednesday’s handover ceremony.

How does the Council of Europe become “more visible and more active”? How might it “adapt itself to the changing political landscape”? And what is there about the landscape that is changing?

Is Mr. Davutoğlu perhaps referring to the secularization and modernization of the Turkish Republic?

Not likely, since the current government in Turkey is moving boldly to roll back ninety years of secularization.

No, the Turks are thinking of something quite different. We get a hint of what Mr. Davutoğlu means in the next few paragraphs:

At the ceremony the outgoing Macedonian chair transferred the six-month tenure to Davutoğlu at the Palais de Conceil de l’Europe. Turkey last chaired the council in 1992. The passing of the torch to Turkey occurs as another Turk, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, serves as head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, placing two prominent Turkish politicians at the top of one of the oldest international organizations working for European integration.

“The expectations from Turkey are quite high. Turkey is seen as an important actor and that’s why its chairmanship of the council is noteworthy,” Daryal Batibay, Turkey’s permanent representative to the Council of Europe, told a group of visiting Turkish journalists Wednesday. “We are ready to do our best.”

According to diplomats, Turkey’s six-month tenure will be important because it could guide ongoing efforts to diminish anti-discriminatory policies across the continent.

That last sentence is phrased peculiarly. Why would Turkey want to “guide ongoing efforts to diminish anti-discriminatory policies”? Presumably the author means that Turkey wants to steer the present course of the CoE away from the diminution of anti-discriminatory policies.

When the Turkish government complains about “discrimination”, it is referring to the refusal of some European governments to allow the hiring of Turkish teachers to teach ethnic Turks in their own language. It is also decrying the failure to give them Islamic religious instruction. It is objecting to bans on the hijab, and restrictions on halal slaughter, and the insistence that immigrants integrate fully into the culture of the host country.

In other words, the Turks want to ensure above all else that the Islamic identity of their ethnic fellows is not threatened, but actually enhanced, in their new European home.

Among Turkey’s priorities are: continuing reforms at the council; actively contributing to reforming the European Court of Human Rights to reduce its burden [which has condemned Ankara more than 2,000 times — source HLN — VH]; assisting in a report to the Committee of Ministers next May in Istanbul that will recommend ways to fight growing discrimination, racism and Islamophobia; empowering independent inspection institutions and facilitating an adequate environment for the completion of ongoing negotiations between the EU and the council for the former’s decision to join the European Convention on Human Rights, one of the most fundamental documents of the Strasbourg-based council.

“Discrimination, racism and Islamophobia”. There you have it. Those readers who are familiar with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) will recognize these three keywords: they are a reference to the OIC’s ten-year-program to eliminate “Islamophobia”. To that end the organization is on the verge of pushing a successful resolution at the UN requiring member states to criminalize the “defamation of religions, including Islam”.

The Council of Europe is just another front in the same international diplomatic war. The Turks obviously intend to use their window of opportunity at the helm of the CoE to their best advantage.

“We are aware this is an ambitious program for the chairmanship,” Davutoğlu said. “At a time when the Council of Europe is at a crossroads, we did not have another option.”

“It’s the first time the EU will be answerable to another institution. Our initial plan is to finish talks before our chairmanship expires,” Batibay said. After the EU signs the convention it will be possible for the citizens of 47 countries to file complaints against Brussels on several issues including the Schengen visa regime. “There are so many sovereignty issues that the EU members have transferred to Brussels. One of the most important is the visa regime. In the future, in the case of unfair treatment the citizens of council countries will be able to go to the court,” Batibay said.

The Schengen visa regime. This is the key. If Turkey can use the Council of Europe to bully, wheedle, or cajole the Europeans to revising the Schengen visa requirements, it could open the door for a mass Turkish migration into Europe,even without membership in the EU.

Other members of the CoE — Russia comes to mind — might enjoy making a little mischief for the EU by throwing their weight behind the Turks.

I have some advice for foreign affairs junkies: tear your eyes away from Barack Obama, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hu Jintao every now and again, and take a look at Turkey. Also: over the next few months, keep an eye on the Council of Europe to see what else pops up. Turkey has found a new playground.

For those who are interested, there’s more at the Hürriyet article.

http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2010/11/turkeys-new-playground.html

Turkey was getting closer to European model and acquis thanks to these reforms, he added.

When asked his views about Turkey in a speech at European Policy Center, Rompuy said that Turkey began membership negotiations with the EU in 2005, and the negotiations were still continuing despite many obstacles. He added that there were some problems with member countries, and it was necessary to solve these problems.

Noting that they knew from the beginning that talks with Turkey would take a long time, Rompuy said that currently, the most important thing was that they were pursuing negotiations with good-will.

AA

14 November 2010 – Issue : 911

Turkey has vowed to continue the reform agenda of the Council of Europe (CoE) as it takes over the six-month chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers.

Turkey took over the chairmanship of the Committee, the decision-making body of the 47-member organisation based in Strasbourg, on 10 November. Speaking on the occasion of his country’s taking over the position, which will last until 11 May,  Ambassador Daryal Batıbay, the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the CoE, said that Turkey would continue the reform agenda outlined by CoE Secretary General Thorbjørn Jagland.

“His reform agenda seeks to make the organisation politically more visible and relevant”, sais Batibay. “The Turkish chairmanship fully shares this objectives. The first priority of the Turkish chairmanship will be to support the reform agenda of the organisation”.

Batibay said that he felt the Council of Europe has “been overshadowed” by the other EU institutions. Outlining the key Turkish priorities for the next six months, he said that “greater political commitment” was needed on behalf of its members to make the Council more relevant.

Other areas that Turkey will focus on will be reforming the European Court on Human Rights, including improving the “quality and coherence” of judgements and the efficiency of their implementation.

The EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights will also be a priority. “With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, the accession of the the European Union to the Convention on Human Rights has moved to the forefront of the European political agenda”, said Batibay. “EU accession will achieve a coherent system of fundamental rights protection across Europe”.

“Accession to the Convention will give a strong political signal of coherence between the EU and wider Europe. It will further result in all European legal systems being subject to the same protection of human rights”.

Other priorities include strengthening the Council’s monitoring mechanisms, including the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, as well as supporting the work of the Turkish-initiated Group of Eminent Persons, the body set up to study the causes of intolerance and discrimination in Europe led by Joschka Fischer.

“To make headway in this agenda requires the co-operation and support of all the member states”, concluded  Ambassador  Batıbay. “It is the hope of the Turkish chairmanship that the member states will make the political commitment which will maintain the Council of Europe as a relevant actor in the European political scene”.

via Turkey to push for reform of the Council of Europe – New Europe.

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
John Milton
Paradise Lost

When Emile Zola published his historic letter, J’Accuse, addressed to the President of France, in L’Aurore newspaper on 13 January 1898, he was rich and famous. But that did not stop his mighty anger. Outraged by the travesty of justice that resulted in the false arrest, conviction, and imprisonment of Alfred Dreyfus, a loyal Jewish army officer, he appealed to the president and the nation for reason and justice to prevail.

Dreyfus was convicted by falsified evidence and forged documents, and was a scapegoat for the thoroughly corrupt French Army general staff. He had been imprisoned at a hell hole called Devil’s Island for three years when Zola wrote his letter. (1)

Zola did so for two reasons. First, to draw the public’s attention to the shameful miscarriage of justice. Second, to provoke his own arrest for libel so that new evidence could be introduced that would prove Dreyfus innocent. He succeeded on both counts. Dreyfus was cleared in 1899 and fully exonerated and reinstated in the French Army in 1906. Zola died under suspicious circumstances on 29 September 1902, “a moment in the history of human conscience,” as eulogized by Anatole France. (2)

On 29 September 2010, 108 years to the day after Zola’s death, the ongoing disaster called Turkey received yet another Pinochet-style shock in its struggle to retain its secularity. Hanefi Avcı, the head of the police department in the city of Eskişehir, was arrested for writing a best seller. His book laid bare the widely suspected fact that Turkey’s highest government institution’s—police, army, and judicial system—had been infiltrated and indeed subverted by a religious cemaat, the Fethullah Gülen movement. (3) Since Avcı himself was once an eager activist for Gülen’s cemaat, the book has a certain whiff of authenticity.

And yesterday, Avcı was arrested. The reason? The usual nonsense of the Ergenekon prosecutor. It seems that suddenly the previously highly esteemed police chief has connections with a terrorist organization. Was the terror organization the Gülen movement?  Ha, ha, ha, no not quite. The Gülenista government of Turkey, also known as the AKP, paid no attention to the compelling information in Avcı’s book about their sugar daddy, Gülen. It decided on some other “terror group,” some socialist or maybe, horror of horrors, some communist operation. Another Alice-in-Wonderland group, cobbled together with false documents and bogus telephone conversations, using the latest listening and stealth technology provided by…guess who?

Avcı refused to file a petition suggested by his lawyer to demand release from prison pending presentation of formal charges. Like Zola, he wants to experience the whole disgusting mess called Turkish justice. He also refuses to speak to any judicial or prosecutorial officials that he suspects of being members of the Gülen cemaat. But Avcı says that he will talk, at his trial. Like Emile Zola, may he sing long and loud.

Hanefi Avcı, KORKMA!

Cem Ryan
Istanbul
http://cemryan.wordpress.com/

NOTES:
1. An excellent summary of the Zola/Dreyfus affair by University of Georgia law professor Donald Wilkes can be found at:  http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/his9_jaccuse.html
For those interested in a dramatic representation of this incident see the stunning classic film (1937) The Life of Emile Zola: http://www.amazon.com/Life-Emile-Zola-Special/dp/B0006HBV3W/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1285843535&sr=1-1

2.  “Il fut un moment de la conscience humaine.” Anatole France, 5 October 1902.
http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/histoire/dreyfus/dreyfus-zola-anatole-france.asp

3. Gülen lives in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. It is well and widely known that his activities are aided, abetted, and otherwise supported by the United States government, in particular by the CIA. The latter’s officials were signatories to Gülen’s permanent residency application (“green card”), which he was granted in 2008. For more detailed information see ISLAM, SECULARISM, AND THE BATTLE FOR TURKEY’S FUTURE at: http://www.brighteningglance.org/on-turkey.html

Hassan Bleibel, Al Mustaqbal (Beirut)

Turkey isn’t even a member yet, but deputy prime minister Ali Babacan is already demanding a leading role in Europe for his country. All you have to do is look at Turkey’s economic and demographic growth to see it’s likely to get what it wants, says Die Presse

“When Turkey becomes a member of the EU, it is not going to be in a secondary position, that’s one of the reasons why countries like Germany and France are quite nervous about our membership,” Turkish vice-premier Ali Babacan declared at a World Leadership Forum in New York during the recent UN plenary session.

And Turkey’s claim to a leading role in the EU is based on hard facts. With economic growth set to hit 7% this year, near-inexhaustible human resources, and mounting clout as a hub of international oil and gas pipelines, Turkey has recently moved into the European fast lane.

At present, Turkey is the 17th biggest economy in the world. Experts predict that in 20 years it will make the top ten, outstripping countries like Spain and Italy. According to forecasts by the IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and the Vienna Institute of Demography, the Turkish population will be around 85.5 million by then – surpassing Germany, now the most populous nation in the EU.

If Turkey were to be admitted into the EU despite resistance from countries like Austria, Germany and France, it would dominate policy in the EU institutions. Even as things are today, Turkey would be the second biggest political force in the European Parliament and on an equal footing with the heavyweights on the EU Council.

Although the EU power structure will have to be gradually adjusted under the rules of the Lisbon Treaty, not much would change for Turkey. By dint of its rapid demographic growth, Ankara’s influence would actually increase, since the number of seats in Parliament and the new representation ratios in the Council will essentially be based on population size.

Given its size, Turkey could not only push EU decisions through with ease, it would also be able to block those that are not to its liking. The Lisbon Treaty provides that as of 2014, countries whose combined populations exceed 35% of the EU population may constitute a blocking minority. That means Ankara could join forces with, say, London, Madrid and Warsaw to thwart any step backed by Paris and Berlin – which would jam the prevailing German-French axis.

What would change politically in the event of Turkish accession? With Turkey on board, European diplomats say, EU foreign and security policy would be even more heavily US-geared. In matters of commerce, Ankara would probably favour free trade more than the EU members do now. Ankara would, in all likelihood, get behind efforts to cooperate more closely on internal security – even while downplaying certain civil rights such as the protection of private data.

Babacan argued in New York that letting Turkey in would boost the EU’s standing on the world scene. “The weight of the European economy in the world has shrunk and will continue to shrink. And only with enlargement will the EU be able to protect its power and influence.”

An opinion seconded by Gerhard Schröder in Die Welt’s online edition. “Without Turkey the EU will sink into mediocrity,” writes the Social Democrat ex-chancellor, pointing to the rapid pace of growth there: this year alone the Turkish economy will grow four times as much as the French and twice as much as the German economy. Schröder expects Turkey to be the fourth or fifth biggest European economy in 20 years. Then there will be no ignoring it.

Translated from the German by Eric Rosencrantz

The charges are vague. The proof is a hodge-podge of illegal wiretaps, secret witnesses (think Spanish Inquisition), prosecutorial leaks to pro-government newspapers, planted and otherwise tainted evidence illegally obtained. Concern about the provenance of such evidence is ignored by the court. The dossiers against the accused—journalists, labor leaders, lawyers, writers, retired military officers, all defenders of the republic established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk—number in the hundreds, the pages therein in the hundreds of thousands. Think Charles Dickens’ Bleak House. The defendants on trial still do not know the specific charges against them. Some have been incarcerated for more than two years. There is no notion of habeas corpus. The case reads as if assembled by an infinite number of monkeys banging away on computers while juggling scissors and paste pots. The chief prosecutor, allegedly a lawyer, has the appropriate last name of Öz.

When I attended the session on 13 August the chief prosecutor was somewhere on the yellow brick road and thus absent, as were all his assistants. So the three judges interrogated the accused. This in itself is incredible. These are the same judges that are supposed to render a verdict of guilt or innocence. How can they be impartial if they are also helping the prosecutor make the case? How can they remain open-minded and just if they are emotionally involved in the prosecution? This is wildly prejudicial and trashes any notion regarding the presumption of innocence. More importantly, by directly interrogating the defendants, the judges have already accepted the validity of the evidence. Defense counsels were challenging the legality of the evidence but to no avail. The judges had already de facto accepted it. To whom should evidentiary appeals be made? Zeus? Telephone numbers and snippets of alleged conversation were read into the record. Do you know this man? No? Do you remember this telephone number? No. Amazingly, a listing of the prescription medications taken by an army general not even charged appeared in the dossier. What a fiasco! No corroborating evidence or witnesses were called. The session was just one long boring rendition of irrelevancies, immaterialities, and hearsay. On droned the three judges, See-No-Legal, Hear-No-Legal, Speak-No-Legal. An embarrassing travesty. Think Emile Zola’s J’Accuse.

In Chile, Pinochet executed all opposed to his regime in the football stadium in Santiago. In Turkey, a slower political genocide is unfolding, this one in a prison exercise hall. The victims? The heirs of the Turkish secular republic founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Turkish army, the supposed defender of Atatürk’s masterpiece has been neutered. It quietly licks its wounds and feathers its nest in incompetent solitude.

Yes, a political genocide of epic dimension is raging throughout the land. It reeks of injustice. But who cares? It is aided and abetted by the west. But who cares? We know where the traitors are. But where are the patriots? It’s the most disgusting of monkey business. Anyone care for a banana?

Cem Ryan
Istanbul

http://cemryan.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/monkeys-in-wonderland/