The Cablegate is Useful for America, Not Harmful

Apart from all the diplomatic gossip and some kind of official confirmation of the public knowledge, the WikiLeaks' Cablegate has failed to shock the world.

It is such a disappointment that I started to think of conspiracies. Why is Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, releasing the American cables piece by piece? If it is really because he doesn't want to flood the media with thousands of important stories at once, isn't he also aware that he is actively building a political narrative with this method, which is -journalistically- even worse than a flooding as such?

Hence, the problem is this narrative itself: The cables seem like they are hand-picked somehow. There is absolutely nothing against the American and the Israeli interests. In contrary, while setting some friendly countries (like Turkey and Azerbaijan) against each other, hindering potentially harmful alliances to America's interests, the latest cables also set the scene for a war against Iran as they portray an Arab front against Tehran: A perfect PR for the Israeli government and the neo-con establishment in the United States. Moreover, the same cables present an opportunity for the American administration not only to design the new diplomatic order, but also to restructure its outdated intelligence system.

I don't suggest that Assange is a Pentagon agent (although I'm more suspicious about Adrian Lamo). And I don't have any proof that the tail is wagging the dog now. But it is obvious that the current method of the WikiLeaks neither clears the air out of conspiracy theories nor it is statistically better in conveying news.

With its following releases, WikiLeaks should convince sceptics like me. I'm sure Assange knows that the American legal oath asks:

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth?"

Yes, Minister!

Another interesting cable among the WikiLeaks' documents is also about a Turkish minister. This time it's not about the personal attributes of an AKP figure, but it's about his dirty back-room dealings which hint about his government's anti-democratic intentions.

According to this confidential US Embassy report, Minister of Trade Mehmet Simsek had told a group of investors in London to sell their Dogan stocks because Dogan “won't be around much longer.”

US Embassy reports that Simsek, who also holds a British passport- told these words "several weeks before" September 2008.

After exactly one year, the AKP government imposed a multi-million dollar tax levy and penalty on Dogan, which was still Turkey's largest media company.

So, now it is clear that the American authorities were also aware that the AKP government intended to choke the free media in Turkey. We know that the government is still trying it and Dogan remains as one of the few free voices in our media.

And how did Mehmet Simsek respond today?

He claimed that the WikiLeaks' document is forged!

Yes, even the US authorities don't question the authenticity of the cables, but we have a minister who could do it, instead of immediately resigning from his position.

Isn't it nice?

We have a British minister, apparently confessing his government's plan to suppress free media in Turkey behind the scenes, while making insider trading for the interests of the British investors. (In a country with a government with racist tendencies, like today's Netherlands, I believe that a similar incident could be a great pretext to ban dual citizens to be a minister.)

And finally, we have many international actors, including the government of the United States, publicly praising and encouraing the AKP government, even though they had known from the beginning that these neo-liberal Islamists were undermining the Turkish democracy.

Just like AKP uses religion as a leverage to gain financial benefits in Turkey, it seems that several foreign governments use AKP as a leverage for similar purposes.

And this how they shut my mouth up.

WikiLeaks' Turkey Files: The Pedo-Fire

WikiLeaks' Embassy Files ain't no news to us.

A leading AKP minister with "reported ties to the heroin trade, well-known predilection for teenage girls, and his son's open mafia links" may have been confirmed by the US Embassy in Ankara now; but Turkish people already know other members of the parliament, too.

I worked for more than 15 hours today, just because of this leak, but I was more interested in a fire; a fire that engulfed a landmark in my city.

The fire broke out in Istanbul's historic Haydarpasa train station today, damaging the beautiful building seriously. Built in 1908 on the Asian side of Istanbul by the German architects, this train station was one of my favorites in this city (eat your heart out, Christian Wulff!).

The fire is suspicious, because the AKP government had always wanted to get rid of it and build some skyscrapers there, ruining the original silhouette of Istanbul. The controversial project is still on, though. Maybe it would be even easier to realize it now.

All in all, the Haydarpasa fire highlights the AKP reality once again: This pseudo-Islamic party is neo-liberal and neo-con in its core, maybe as much as Dick Cheney. Most of AKP's leading figures don't have anything to do with Islam. They just benefited from an Islamic perception as a leverage in Turkey where there are still uneducated, rural masses.

So, don't get surprised if you find a pedophile, mafioso junkie in their political ranks. But be surprised when the old domes of the Haydarpasa train station don't collapse.

Justice vs. Politics

Isaac Newton had theorized centuries ago that there was always an equal and opposite reaction to every action.

So, some Turkish students keep reacting to the anti-democratic actions of the AKP government.

Hasim Kilic, the chief judge of the Constitutional Court, is pelleted by eggs during a conference in Anadolu University.

"My valuable young brothers have used their right of free expression, although they did it a bit vulgarly," Kilic, who was not hit, said after the attack.

Kilic is known as a pro-government figure, but his statement proves why the men of justice are relatively better than men of politics.

I can't even imagine what Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan would say after a similar incident.

(Should I also add that the students were neutralized a bit vulgarly?)

AKP's Hyper-Democracy is Anti-Democracy

AKP, the governing party in Turkey, has based its political discourse on a fictious concept that they call "hyper-democracy."

Branding is good, but it's content is not different than what Putinism offers: Crushing the democratic opposition with a newly-created establishment while emphasizing the importance of political stability, as well as economic development, and putting your own men in charge at all levels of a non-transparent state.

Shortly, it's anything but democracy, whatever AKP's court fools, whether they are bought foreign pens or just ignorant minds, keep saying.

Just by looking at how university students have been treated during eight years of AKP rule, you can see the direction that the neo-liberal Islamism is steering Turkey to.

In the past, I had reported what happened to the students who protested AKP's merciless cut of student grants. Then I had posted something about Yildiz Technical University's dissident students who were banned to enter their campus.

And now, eighteen students who protested Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan have been sentenced to one year and three months prison. This is a punishment for a peaceful protest that you can't see even in an authoritarian state like the Putinist Russia. You can see it probably only in North Korea or Myanmar. I don't believe that neither Kim Jong-il nor the Myanmar junta label their administrations as hyper-democracy, though.

The worst part of the latest punishment is not the suspended prison sentences. The court, which is completely under the influence of the government now like all the judiciary after the latest constitutional amendments, also convicted the students with five years of probation. It means that they will be effectively brought to reason by the government for quite a long time.

I am still hopeful, though. Turkish students should show that they are as politically conscious as their Greek, French or British peers. They already declared that they wouldn't surrender to the prime minister.

And if they surrender, Turkey will become a colony of AKP and its national/international accomplices.

But we know that this nation has never ever been colonized in history.

Gods Want Sacrifice Even on Turkey Day?

When I celebrated the Muslim Festival of Sacrifice last week, I didn't tell anything about the controversial ritual of slaughtering animals.

The ritual is actually not a must, according to Islam. However, I believe that it is compatible with the Islamic creed, as long as you don't eat the meat of the animal, but distribute all of it to the poor. Unfortunately, many Muslims don't get the symbolic and the functional good in this ritual and do the opposite.

On the other hand, it is a common practice for many non-Muslim journalists to wear their orientalist glasses once again, highlighting a few bloody scenes to present Islam as a violent religion. Some of them are just unconscious parts of the establishment and some of them are intentional closet racists.

I believe that you can present any similar religious ceremony, even the secular ones, in a similar way, if you want to construct such a discourse. Take the Thanksgiving Day. Even this American festival which doesn't have anything to do with any religion anymore can be related to cruelty to animals. Pardoning of a turkey by the President of the United States, on the other hand, may be regarded as a more appropriate ritual for such a secularized, religious holiday.

Finally, I think that all festivals, whether religious or secular, are sacrificial. Even Rio Carnival -which is on the eve of Lent, is sacrificial in a sense, if you take it as a performative act of getting rid of your self with music and dance, just like you get rid of your identity in a masquare. With a self-sacrifice, you are supposed to reach a higher level of consciousness with the help of something in yourself, which is more than yourself. Religions call this thing God. Some seculars call it cocaine.

So, sacrifice is something related to individual and I don't care much about the experience of all individuals. I'm more interested in the social. In this sense, I observe all sacrificial practices with an intent of critizing the socially-destructive ones, while promoting their everlasting creations, for sake of humanity.

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for all the turkey!

The Photo of the Old Europe

This picture summarizes the final of the NATO summit in Lisbon, as well as the international scene in general.

A grinning Nicolas Sarkozy, watching things happen on the sidelines, while Turkey is in the spotlight.

I repeat: In twenty years, there will be no Sarkozy and -probably- no European Union around, if there is no Turkey.

Photo Credit: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU (AFP)

Two Editorials from the Washington Post

The mainstream media in the United States don't change.

You'll understand what I mean if you've read a little bit Noam Chomsky.

The media should stand for freedom AND security of the people.

Neither the American media nor the Turkish one has ever done it.

The problem with the American media is even worse, because the United States have always been promoting itself as the center of democracy.

Read two editorials of the Washington Post today.

The first one pretends as if the WP is for freedom, although it doesn't do anything but war-mongering, which profits certain interest groups in the United States -once again.

The second one pretends as if it is for the security of the nation, although it is actually a part of the PR campaign to keep the American public terrorized while disregarding their privacy and health.

Journalists change, journalism change, newsrooms shrink; but the American mass media still behave as if it is the Pravda of the establishment.

As I said:

You'll understand what I mean if you've read a little bit Noam Chomsky.

The Turkish Millenium

Following the debate on my latest post, I decided to write something about the westward instinct in the historical DNA of Turks, who -in two millenia- established almost 20 states that always tried to move westwards, from the Huns to the Ottoman Empire.

On the other hand, the age of military invasion is over. The aim is peaceful coexistence of different cultures now. I sincerely believe that today's Turkey can unite the European Union, which is currently as divided as it was in the Middle Ages, if it can be a member one day. It is its destiny.

A time-lapse map that I've seen in the Huffington Post a few days ago could be a great tool to see Turks' westward instinct graphically. I've found the source of the video, which was a computer program on history. I asked a friend who owns it to make a better video with more emphasize on the Turkish entry in the global scene. (Edit: The company has claimed a copyright infringement and my friend had to delete the Youtube video. There was no violation in my view and such acts can only be expected from companies with an irrational management, because they reject free advertisement that doesn't enforce any kind of revenue compromise. Whatever, it's their choice and I posted a similar Youtube video below.)

Istanbul's Grand Mosque and Mosque-Free Athens

It's another bayram, Festival of Sacrifice, at my favorite Istanbul landmark, Süleymaniye Mosque.

This year, it's a more special day for the city; because the renovation of the mosque has been finally completed after three years. Until today, I have been guiding several of my foreign friends to Süleymaniye, only to show the exterior of the mosque and a small portion of the interior. As the renovation, which is the most comprehensive in 457-year old history of the mosque, is completed now, Süleymaniye is once again a must-see landmark for all tourists.

Süleymaniye is a massive symbol of humbleness and it is not a contradiction.

Sinan the Great Architect built this temple in the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent. The construction was completed a bit later than it was planned. So the great Ottoman sultan was initially angry. One day, he went to the construction site and saw Sinan, smoking a water pipe beneath the huge dome. He lost his temper, asked Sinan why he was enjoying his time while the mosque was still not completed. Sinan was calm. "I'm testing the acoustics, my sultan," he said, signaling another instance of his genius.

The sultan cooled down, but he got angry again when he learned that the Shah of Persia had sent some diamonds as a contribution to the slowed-down construction. It was a clever insult from the Shah. So the Sultan crushed all the diamonds of Shah and put them into the cement of the mosque. They say that this is why one of the minarets of the mosque still shines during sunsets.

Such anecdotes about a unique civilization can make a person feel good, whether he sees these buildings as houses of God or just human-made architectural structures. Today's Europe should comprehend it as well. Losing ancient landmarks, mosques or churches or aqueducts, is a loss for humanity; because they all have such stories, history. Since Andalusia and Ottoman, Islam belonged to Europe, too, as German President Christian Wulff has recently observed.

On the other hand, as I've written before, there are no mosques anymore in Athens, the Greek capital which was an Ottoman city for centuries. Festival of Sacrifice is not a day to make any kind of criticism, so I won't criticize the Greek politicians who demolished the Ottoman heritage in the past. However, it is a good time to say something about the future.

How come can the Greek government still ban the construction of mosques in Athens? Why does the European Union let them to do so? Would Brussels agree the full membership of another Turkey that would demolish all churches and ban their construction?

Egemen Bagis, Turkey's EU negotiator, was in the European Parliament today to accept a prize for his government's performance on expanding religious freedom. As you know, I dislike his Islamist government, but Bagis pointed out the right direction in the right time. He said that he was in Athens the previous day and he added: "I had to come to Brussels earlier, in order to participate in the bayram prayer in a mosque here. Why? Because in Athens, they don't have a mosque and thousands of Muslims pray in the streets."

All in all, if the European Union insists to remain as a Christian club, we will all see that it will not be European, nor union anymore. The first quality requires you to be civilized and the second one requires you to be tolerant.

In Defense of Ankara Against Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk's anti-Turkish complex is recurred with his latest article.

He cannot help but revealing his bias against Turks even in a piece about an irrelevant subject, such as deliberately-created capital cities.

Fisk chooses the put Ankara in the headline as an example of a "fake capital." The fact that only Canberra has got the same honor may be an indication that this article is -in its core- about Turks and Turkey.

Fisk's discourse has a tendency of linking Turks with genocide over and over again, trying to construct a certain perception on all occasions. He keeps using shallow analogies like falsely comparing the Holocaust to the mass-deportation of the Ottoman Armenians, which was -in my opinion- a shame, but not a genocide.

As a journalist, Fisk can keep telling romantic lies, instead of sticking up to realism. I'm really bored of reading his unsourced, baseless, anti-Turkish accusations in a good newspaper like the Independent; so I'm not going to defend my citizens on this issue.

However, I won't let Fisk to revile at Ankara, which was founded as a metropolitan capital in the 1930s, by calling it "Germanised" (apparently in order to link it with the Nazis in reader's subconscious) or "fake."

In contrary to Fisk's statement, "Turkish hearts" don't feel that Ankara should be the capital of Turkey, instead of Istanbul. For almost all Turks, Ankara is the materialization of the dream of independence in a way that Washington, D.C. is for Americans. When the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul had become a puppet of the imperialist/colonialist powers, Ankara was the refuge for the burgeoning independence movement in Anatolia, during the Turkish War of Independence between 1919-1923.

Hence, Ankara was the heartland where independent-minded Turks had to retreat against the British occupation in Istanbul, the Greek occupation in the west, the Armenian occupation in the east, the French occupation in the southeast and the Italian occupation in the south. After the retreat, the newly-founded national army organized and started its counter-attack from Ankara and liberated the whole country in only four years to create the first republic of its kind in the history of the world.

Ankara was a village before it was made the capital. It become a modern, sprawling metropolis in a few years. Even though most Turks don't really enjoy this city because of its bureaucratic, grey atmosphere now; they still can't imagine a Turkey without Ankara as a capital. Moreover, there is something with Ankara that makes you miss it, even though you don't really understand what exactly you miss in there. Shortly, Ankara shouldn't be looked down on, because it is the epicenter of a historic miracle that still produces an emotive attraction.

There are many, many quotations about Istanbul to praise it and I had written some of them in accordance to the theme of this blog. This time, however, I'll finish with one of the few quotes about Ankara. Cemal Süreya, one of my favorite Turkish poets, says:

Do you have a problem?

Do you want to extract something out of your problem?

You must come to Ankara.

Ankara is t

he most kindhearted stepmother.

A Catholic Marriage and a Badly Needed Viagra

Last year, I had used a sexual reference for the relationship between Brussels and Ankara in a post, titled "Enlarge Your EU."

European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based think tank, has recently published a study with a similar punchline.

Their report, which can be read here, suggests that the only possible special relationship between Turkey and the EU is the current open-ended negotiation process; hence, talking about concepts like privileged partnership is waste of breath. While Turkey and the EU have already tied knots with a Catholic marriage, the real question is whether the couple can be a happy one. The think tank also suggests that visa liberalization is the badly-needed Viagra for the accession process.

I agree, but I have a question:

Does Viagra work even the guy is comatose, if not dead?

How to Re-civilize the EU

The EU officials love to emphasize that Turkey has to obey the EU rules, if it wants to be a member in its victimized bid.

And what if the EU countries start to disobey the EU rules?

Then, not only the candidate countries, but the whole international community can and should warn those EU countries.

Nobody talks about the mass deportations of the Roma community in Nicolas Sarkozy's France anymore. And the European Commission is already silenced by their overlords...

Maybe that's why Turkey has now started to warn the EU countries not to shift away from the EU criterion:

Turkey’s ambassador in Vienna has criticized Austrian immigration policy today, putting it into the same basket with the surging xenophobia in Germany.

"When Turks apply for housing in Vienna, they're always sent to the same neighborhood. And yet, at the same time, they're accused of creating ghettos. Turks are happy people, they don’t want anything from you. They only want not to be treated like a virus," Ambassador Tezcan said in an interview for Die Presse. He also gave personal examples about the rising xenophobia in Austria and criticized the passive stance of the social democrat opposition in the face of the far-rightist surge.

I guess even the Austrian government officials who protested the Turkish ambassador know well that his criticism is justified. They just can't believe that it is told by a diplomat -especially a Turkish one, can you believe, Turkish, yuk!

I agree that the interview is anything but diplomatic. However, I also know very well that an ambassador cannot utter such words without the approval of his Foreign Ministry. I believe that Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has recently decided to switch to an offensive stance to protect the minorities in several Central European countries, which are all facing the far-rightist threat.

The European Union should see that it cannot keep preaching Turkey about human rights while deporting minorities or imprisoning them in modern ghettos, depriving them of their natural rights and discriminating against them on every aspect of daily life. After all, you cannot beg for foreign workers to come and work for half the price of your citizen's labor and then demonize and traumatize them after thirty-forty years, in order to kick them back like used napkins.

I may dislike the current government in Turkey, but their new policy about this moral subject sounds right; because it seems as an effort to protect the least of our brothers, whether Turkish or not, against another potential genocide by the powerful.

I'm not sure if Turkey can turn the EU into a superpower in the future like Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has suggested today, but I believe that only Turkey can re-civilize the EU. It's the first and the last hope, I think.

Cultural Racists

"Get off your high trojan horse. Turkey is not a European nation it is a middle eastern nation. Geographically and culturally. So stop blaming us for your problems and stop demanding something which is not your right. Turkey is a buffer country from Iran, Iran and Syria. Why can't you just get it and join EFTA or something," asks an Anonymous commentator on a recent post here.

While I was hitting the keyboard buttons to approve the publishing of this angry (and ignorant) comment today, I was thinking of Bosnia, once again. The dominant European narrative on Bosnia is simplistic:

1- Serbian (and in a smaller scale, Croatian) armies and paramilitary forces massacred thousands of Bosnian Muslims in an organized way. Everybody, including the EU, condemned.

2- Only after a few years, some people started to talk about reconciliation. You know, we can't live in history. We can't keep complaining. We have to move on, blah blah...

3- The EU quickly paved the way for the full membership of Croatia and Serbia, even though there are still fugitive war-criminals and Muslim victims who couldn't even return their homes in Bosnia.

According to this narrative, the Bosnian genocide was an obstacle for Croatia and Serbia, but it has been overcome now. The EU, which was completely unconnected to these atrocities, did what should have been done.

* * *

I don't think so. While reading the comment above, I once more thought that the genocide in Bosnia has never been an obstacle for Serbia's EU membership. It didn't slow Serbia's progress towards the EU; it accelerated it.

In fact, the liquidation of the Muslims was a necessity to be an EU member, just like the liquidation of the Jews in WWII was needed for the conditions that would give birth to the EU right after the war.

Let's remember:

Europe started to talk about a “Judeo-Christian” culture only after the Holocaust, but it seems that neither the bloody Reconquista nor the more recent Muslim genocide in Bosnia are enough to make some Europeans admit that the Old Continent is the home of a Judeo-Christian-Muslim civilization. Especially, the Christian “Democrats” should be thinking that there are still too many Muslims around to make a redefinition.

Maybe the Cultural Europe looks for a permanent solution, once again, who knows?

Does it really matter for Turkey?

Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, has answered today:

“If you want to see if Turkey is a part of Europe or not, go to Sarajevo. You’ll find the summary of Europe there where you’ll see a mosque, a synagogue and a church side by side, just like you can see in Istanbul. Those who don’t accept that the Turkish culture is European are cultural racists. These racists are more or less the same with those who bombed Sarajevo. However, neither Sarajevo nor the Turkish culture can be erased from the map of Europe.”

AKP Rewards the Dictator, Instead of Prosecuting Him

Kenan Evren, 7th President of Turkey, and the current President Abdullah Gul

AKP keeps flirting with the only military dictator in the history of Turkey, while still fooling the world with lies about their democratic intentions.

On the eve of the September 12 referendum, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan propagated that the proposed constitutional amendments will finally abolish the military tutelage by allowing the courts to prosecute the former dictator who is still alive.

Skeptics, on the other hand, insisted that Erdogan's AKP was not interested in democratizing Turkey as they are also a by-product of the 1980 coup in Turkey, which was followed by the adoption of the current Constitution. They claimed that AKP prepared the amendments just to consolidate its power.

In less than a month, skeptics are proven correct. Following an initiative by an AKP member of parliament, the monthly salary of President Abdullah Gul was raised 8 percent. The salary of former president Kenan Evren, the leader of the 1980 coup, is also raised. He will be paid around 6000 Euro every month.

The people, including some EU authorities, who suggested that the latest constitutional amendments will allow Turkey to prosecute its former dictator Evren should be red-faced now. Instead, Evren will be able to live even a better life in his retirement home in the Turkish Riviera.

To summarize, AKP enriches and compliments anyone that suits to their interests.

Simply, it is either a necessity for the maintenance of their governing pseudo-Islamic neo-liberal ideology or it is just a duty of loyalty to former military leaders who paved the way for the Islamist rise.

For a real democracy, Turkey must liquidate both of these authoritarian mindsets in governance: Of the leaders of the former military dictatorship and of today's civil tyranny...

Trained in Northern Iraq, Triggered From Denmark

The terrorist who bombed the busiest place in Istanbul last week is identified. As everybody had predicted, he was a PKK militant, codenamed Dervish Sino.

According to latest news reports, Dervish Sino joined PKK in 2004 and went to northern Iraqi mountains for guerrilla training. For the terror attack, he moved to Istanbul early last month. The first thing he did was to set up a satellite TV in his new, temporary home. He tuned in to Roj TV, PKK's propaganda channel which is based in Denmark.

One day, in a music program on Roj TV, a specific song has been played. It was a hidden message from the leaders of PKK. It was what Dervish Sino was waiting in his sleeper cell. He listened to the music, prepared his explosives and left his home permanently to strike the heart of Istanbul as a suicide bomber.

* * *

If Denmark was a Muslim-majority country and PKK was an Islamist terror organization which was based on an anti-American country unlike northern Iraq, such circumstances could be enough for the United States for an invasion on both of these countries.

In this regard, Danish and Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq are lucky. But for sake of humanity, they must stop sponsoring this terrorist organization anyway.

Who Did Tell the Truth?

Of course there are some news outlets that are still kind enough to remind us that PKK is defined as a terrorist organization by the US, the EU and Turkey. Here is a Newsy video, mashing up multiple sources about the latest PKK attack in Istanbul:

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