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Tag: Turkey

  • Erdoğan finds a scapegoat in Turkey’s election: LGBTQ+ people

    Erdoğan finds a scapegoat in Turkey’s election: LGBTQ+ people

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    ISTANBUL — To President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s LGBTQ+ community represents “deviant structures” and a “virus of heresy.”

    In the run-up to Sunday’s too-close-to-call election, he has ramped up his poisonous invective against homosexuality, as he seeks to shore up his conservative Islamist base. Almost every other speech from the campaign trail accuses the opposition of undermining family values and of being in the thrall of improbably powerful LGBTQ+ networks — sometimes with hints they are run by paymasters abroad.  

    “The AK Party has never been an LGBT supporter,” Erdoğan roared at a recent Istanbul rally, referring to his governing party. “We believe in the sanctity of the family. Family is sacred.”

    Adding a menacing note, he followed up with: “So are we ready to bury these LGBT supporters in the ballot box?”

    To some extent, the homophobic focus of the campaign is easily explicable. Increasingly deserted by his early supporters, Erdoğan is having to form coalition partnerships with more extreme Islamists in this year’s elections.

    But even so, his language smacks of a fixation, and an attempt to divert attention from the country’s most pressing ailments — including a snowballing cost of living crisis and scorching inflation.   

    Diversionary tactics

    Fulden Ergen, editor of Velvele.Net, an online debate platform for LGBTQ+ rights, said she was taken aback by the ubiquity of Erdoğan’s propaganda against the LGBTQ+ community in this year’s campaign.

    She reckoned the attacks were an attempt to mask how few answers to Turkey’s profound problems the AK Party now has.

    “I was not expecting them to be this devoid of policies and just talking about LGBTI,” she said. “The alliance does not have much to give people anymore,” she added, referring to the conservative coalition backing the president. “They don’t know how to deal with the economic crisis. They have no policies left, I see this campaign as a defeat.” 

    Though he may be running out of ideas, Erdoğan could still win. And that is now a serious concern to LGBTQ+ people.

    Life is already tough, and could get significantly worse. LGBTQ+ flags are banned, gatherings are arbitrarily blocked by the government and participants in pride parades are regularly attacked or detained by police. The fear is that their organizations could now be made illegal, and — in the worst case scenario — that laws to protect families could be extended to outlaw homosexuality itself.

    Activists say that if Erdoğan stays in power, violence could follow his hate speech.  

    An anti-LGBTQ+ rally in Istanbul in 2022 | Chris McGrath/Getty Images

    One of the dangers is that his government could use security laws to crack down on homosexual relations — casting them as part of a foreign conspiracy. The government is playing on perceptions that “people don’t believe LGBTI can be from Turkey,” Ergen said.  

    One of the biggest setbacks for women and LGBTQ+ people has been Turkey’s 2021 withdrawal from the — ironically named — Istanbul Convention, which is intended to prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and promote gender equality. 

    Domestic violence is a severe problem that kills at least one woman every day in Turkey. According to data from the Monument Counter, a website that commemorates women who lost their lives to domestic violence, 824 women have been killed in just the past two years.

    Gender parity is another failing across the country’s political spectrum. According to the country’s Women’s Platform for Equality, a rights group that has been tracing the candidates on the various parties’ electoral lists, a mere 117 female deputies are set to be elected to Turkey’s 600-seat parliament. 

    ‘I have seen many Erdoğans in my life’

    Zeynep Esmeray Özadikti, who has been an activist for trans rights for 30 years, looks set to be an exception to that trend. She is a candidate for the Workers’ Party of Turkey and the first openly trans woman with a good chance of making it to parliament. 

    In a café in Kurtuluş, a neighborhood in Istanbul where there are significant numbers of trans voters, Esmeray told POLITICO that, if elected, she would fight for the rights of LGBTQ+ people against discrimination, hate crimes and violence. “I am getting very positive feedback from the streets,” she said. “If we can judge it by looking at the streets then I’ll definitely be getting into the parliament.”

    If Erdoğan stays in power, Esmeray believes he will take the country in a more religiously conservative direction, even aiming for Sharia law.

    Ergen, the Velvele.net editor, echoed Esmeray’s line of thought. She feared that Article 10 in Turkey’s constitution — a part of the national charter that gives some vague protection to gender equality — might be doctored, paving the way to the possible criminalization of homosexuality. 

    “This is my biggest fear,” she says. “If they win, they are going to do it.”

    Still, the fear of Erdoğan does not mean the LGBTQ+ community feels completely protected by the opposition, whose candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is leading in the polls ahead of Sunday’s first round vote.

    Ergen thinks the right-wing parties within the wide-ranging opposition alliance could also lobby to make life harder for LGBTQ+ groups. 

    Kılıçdaroğlu himself is fairly guarded in his LGBTQ+ remarks, knowing that the government could easily turn the subject against him.

    To Erdoğan, Turkey’s LGBTQ+ community represents “deviant structures” | Burak Kara/Getty Images

    He is, however, committed to a trajectory toward EU norms. When asked for his stance by POLITICO, he said: “We defend all human rights. It is our common duty to defend human rights. Democracy demands it. You cannot alienate people based on their beliefs, identities and lifestyles, you have to respect everyone.”

    Both Esmeray and Ergen believed the priority should be for Turkey to return the Istanbul Convention to reinforce some basic freedoms.

    And both reckoned Turkey’s population was ahead of its politicians.

    “I am more optimistic about people, not political parties,” said Ergen, who based her hopes on the breadth of civil society activities in Turkey.  

    Esmeray added: “I have seen many Erdoğans in my life. If he wins, we will continue fighting. If it comes to that, I will face him and tell him to kill me.”

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    POLITICO Staff

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  • Mayors of Istanbul and Ankara cry foul over reporting of Turkey’s election results

    Mayors of Istanbul and Ankara cry foul over reporting of Turkey’s election results

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    ISTANBUL — Two of Turkey’s most senior opposition politicians, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş, cried foul over the way the state-run Anadolu news agency was reporting results of Turkey’s election on Sunday night, saying it was giving a distortedly high early count to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

    In its results based on 30 percent of ballots counted at 7.30 p.m., Anadolu reported that Erdoğan was racing ahead with 54 percent of the vote, while his challenger for the presidency Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu had only 40 percent. By 11 p.m. the margin had narrowed to 49.9 percent versus 44.3 percent, with 89 percent of the vote counted. Both camps predicted they would win, though a second-round on May 28 started to look possible as neither candidate was on track to secure the more than 50 percent required to claim the presidency outright.

    Anadolu’s early numbers are highly contentious because they are widely used as the feed for live election coverage on TV. The opposition argues the state agency is deliberately releasing data from electoral districts in favor of Erdoğan and his AK party first — and holding back numbers on opposition ballots — so that election observers might lose heart and not wait for every last vote to be counted.

    For this reason, the opposition is insisting that its election observers must stay in place until all the ballots are counted to prevent any manipulation. The two mayors said Anadolu had used the same strategy in the mayoral elections of 2019, initially saying the votes were on course for big AK party wins, while the opposition eventually took Istanbul and Ankara in late counting.

    Adding to the confusion, the Supreme Election Council said at about 10.30 p.m. only 47 percent of votes had been official processed, while Anadolu was giving data based on almost 90 percent of votes. At around the same time, dozens of trucks with blaring horns and AK party flags roared through central Istanbul, seemingly celebrating although Erdoğan was dropping beneath the 50 percent required to win the presidency outright, making a second round on May 28 the most likely option.

    İmamoğlu said AK party observers were also contesting the counts at polling stations where the opposition is traditionally strong, and opposition activists urged their members to head to the schools where the votes were held to stop intimidation of their observers. Yunus Başaran, a candidate for the Workers’ Party of Turkey from the southern coastal city of Antalya, said that some ballot boxes had been counted seven times. “This time they’ve found this path,” he said. Journalist Nevșin Mengü tweeted she had information that in the Ankara neighborhood of Çankaya — a traditional opposition bastion — one ballot box had been counted 11 times.

    Slamming the public announcement of the results as a “fiction,” opposition leader Kılıçdaroğlu called on his teams to stay vigilant. “We will not sleep tonight,” he said. Erdoğan made the same call: “I ask all of my litigants and colleagues to stay at the ballot boxes, no matter what, until the results are officially finalized.”

    The main opposition party, the CHP, said data from its election observers suggested it was winning as results from its strong holds . “We are ahead,” Kılıçdaroğlu tweeted amid the controversy over the vote count.

    “I urge citizens not to rely on the [Anadolu agency’s] results. When we look at the ratios, we believe that Kılıçdaroğlu will be comfortably declared as the president of the country, but it’s too early to say when we look at the data,” İmamoğlu told reporters in Istanbul.

    Yavaş said: “Let’s keep our morale high.”

    Ömer Çelik, spokesperson for the AK party, defended the Anadolu agency and told the mayors that their remarks were “not very becoming.”

    “There’s no need to be suspicious,” he said. “They can look at other channels, but our president is winning by a large margin.”

    Other political analysts noted early results can favor Erdoğan because small conservative constituencies can report their results relatively quickly.

    Sinan Ülgen, a senior fellow at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, said the situation mirrored the local election night in 2019 and estimated Kılıçdaroğlu would get more votes toward the end of the vote. 

    “I think Kılıçdaroğlu is going to finish the race ahead of Erdoğan, but maybe not get 50 percent,” he told POLITICO.

    This article has been updated.

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    Christian Oliver and Elçin Poyrazlar

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  • Onions and prayer rugs: Turkey approaches its decisive battle for democracy

    Onions and prayer rugs: Turkey approaches its decisive battle for democracy

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    It’s now easy to forget that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once hailed as the paragon of a “Muslim democrat,” who could serve as a model to the entire Islamic world. 

    In the early 2000s, hopes ran high about the charismatic, lanky, former football striker, who received only one red card in his playing career, unsurprisingly for giving an earful to a referee. The man from the working-class Istanbul neighborhood of Kasımpaşa promised something new: Finally, there was a master-juggler, who could balance Islamism, parliamentary democracy, progressive welfare, NATO membership and EU-oriented reforms. 

    That optimism feels a world away now, as Turkey heads into crunch elections on May 14 marked by debate over the centralization of powers under an increasingly authoritarian and divisive leader — dubbed the reis, or captain. Prominent opponents are in jail, the media and judiciary are largely under Erdoğan’s thrall and the kid from Kasımpaşa now rules 85 million people from a monumental 1,150-room presidential complex he built, commonly referred to as the Saray, meaning palace.

    Little wonder, then, that the opposition is focusing its campaign on undoing the “one-man regime.” The six-party opposition bloc is vowing to take a pick-ax to the all-powerful presidential system Erdoğan introduced in 2017 and to shift to a new type of pluralist parliamentary democracy. (POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the contest on a knife edge, meaning there will probably be a second round in the presidential vote on May 28.)

    Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition leader challenging Erdoğan for the top job, describes the restoration of Turkish democracy as the “first pillar” of the election race. “In a manner that contradicts its own history … our veteran parliament’s legislative power has been consigned to the grip of the one-man regime,” Kılıçdaroğlu, an avuncular, soft-spoken former bureaucrat, said in a speech on April 23 commemorating the founding of parliament.

    Know your onions

    But is this talk of democratic restoration seizing the imagination in an election that is, quite literally, about the price of onions and cucumbers?

    Turkey’s brutal cost of living crisis is the No. 1 electoral battleground. Kılıçdaroğlu hit a nerve when, onion in hand, he delivered a warning from his modest kitchen — no Saray for Mr. Kemal — that the cost of a kilo of onions would spike to 100 lira (€4.67) from 30 lira now, if the president stays in power.

    Stung, Erdoğan insisted his government had solved Turkey’s food affordability problems, saying: “In this country, there is no onion problem, no potato problem, no cucumber problem.” But most Turks know Kılıçdaroğlu’s arithmetic is not outlandish; he is an accountant by training, after all. Annual inflation hit a record high of 85.5 percent last October, and ran at just over 50 percent in March. The Turkish lira has plunged to 19.4 to the dollar from about 6 to the dollar in early 2020.

    In contrast to those bread-and-butter campaign issues, the main thrust of the opposition’s manifesto for switching power away from the presidency sounds legalistic. There are provisions to end the president’s effective veto power, ensure a non-partisan presidency and impose a one-term limit. Parliament will be strengthened by measures ranging from a lower threshold for a party to enter the assembly to greater use of independent experts in committees.

    Important reforms, certainly, but will they strike a chord with voters? They could well do. İlke Toygür, professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, observed that while constitutional reforms might not be the “daily conversation,” the big themes of one-man rule and Turkey’s historical attachment to parliament did resonate.

    One-man rule, for example, is widely linked to mismanagement of the economy and skyrocketing prices, she noted. Erdoğan has been lambasted for pouring fuel onto the inflationary fire by advocating for slashing interest rates — a stance euphemistically described as “unorthodox.”

    “If you link everything to each other and link the one-man rule to the cost of living crisis, to the democracy crisis, and to all the problems in foreign policy, then you are defining this system and you are providing an alternative,” she said.

    Toygür also stressed parliament played a crucial role in creating Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s independent Turkish republic a century ago, and that still counted. “Parliament has a very strong symbolic value in Turkey,” she said, adding that voters appreciated teams in decision-making, something that Kılıçdaroğlu is playing up. “One of the biggest complaints now is that people lost their links to decision-making candidates.”

    In stark contrast to the image of Erdoğan as the lone almighty reis, Kılıçdaroğlu portrays himself as building consensus, ready to draw on a broad pool of talent. In videos, he shows himself discussing earthquake-resistant construction, education and nutrition with high-profile mayors, Mansur Yavaș from Ankara and Ekrem İmamoğlu from Istanbul, his vice-presidents in the wings.

    What’s more, Kılıçdaroğlu has pushed this vision of himself as an inclusive leader to a dramatic new level by publicly declaring himself to be an Alevi, a member of Turkey’s main religious minority that long suffered discrimination. His Twitter declaration on his identity, in which he called on young Turks to uproot the country’s “divisive system,” went viral. It’s a risky gambit against a populist president from the Sunni mainstream, but the message is clear: Kılıçdaroğlu is styling himself as the pluralist antidote to Erdoğan’s polarizing politics. The humble 74-year-old may be a bit dull after the caustic current leader, but the opposition’s gamble is that’s what Turkey needs.

    Power to the president

    Most observers looking back to identify a turning point where Erdoğan decided to centralize power around himself select the Gezi Park protests of 2013, when an unusually socially diverse band of demonstrators sought to stop a green space in Istanbul from being bulldozed for a shopping mall.

    The protests — eventually smashed with tear gas and water cannon — swelled into a nationwide roar against Erdoğan’s cronyism and strongman style. Demir Murat Seyrek, adjunct professor at the Brussels School of Governance, said it was the first time Erdoğan felt “the threat was against him” rather than the ruling AK party.

    Turkish President and People’s Alliance’s presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Adem Atlan/AFP via Getty Images

    The final straw was an attempted coup in 2016 — the facts of which remain opaque — that pushed Erdoğan to hold a referendum in April 2017 on shifting to a presidential system. He won by the narrowest of margins (51.4 percent) and the opposition still disputes the result, not least because the vote was held during a post-coup state of emergency.

    Seyrek noted the irony that the presidential system also had downsides for Erdoğan, particularly as he requires 50 percent of votes (+1) to stay in office. Now deserted by bigwigs from his AK party’s early days — former President Abdullah Gül and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu have turned against him — he has to find increasingly extreme partners for his coalition to make up the numbers. “Each time, he wins by losing political power to other parties. He is winning by sharing power with more and more people,” he remarked.  

    A hardened political brawler, Erdoğan is punching back hard against the accusations that he’s the man undermining Turkish democracy.

    As he has done for years, Erdoğan is turning the tables and casts himself as the voice of the majority, underlining Islamic propriety and family values, while saying his adversaries are in hock to terrorists, the imperialist West, murky international high-finance and LGBTQ+ organizations. Mainstream rival parties are dismissed as fascists and perverts, and he predicts his voters will “burst” the ballot boxes with their tide of support on May 14.

    In an episode typical of Erdoğan’s combative instincts, he scented blood when Kılıçdaroğlu was photographed stepping on a prayer rug in his shoes at the end of March. Although his rival apologized for this unwitting accident, the president whipped up a crowd to boo him, accusing Kılıçdaroğlu of taking his instructions from Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based preacher and former AK party ally, whom Erdoğan now accuses of inciting the failed coup in 2016.

    Clutching a prayer rug himself, Erdoğan intoned through his microphone: “This prayer rug is not for standing on with shoes. God willing, we’ll be able to perform the prayer of thanks on this prayer rug on May 15.”

    Opposition politicians know full well they can easily be typecast by Erdoğan as reactionary voices of an old elite. That’s why they are being careful not to describe their proposed constitutional overhaul of the presidency as turning back the clock to some fictional glory days, but rather as creating something new: What the opposition manifesto calls “a truly pluralistic democracy” that “has never been possible” before.

    Free but not fair?

    Given the fears about Erdoğan’s lurch toward authoritarianism, speculation is intense over how fair the elections will be, and whether Erdoğan can rig them. Indeed, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu only fanned the concerns that the government could crack down on the democratic process by describing May 14 as an attempted “political coup” by the West — hardly words to be taken lightly given Turkey’s history of putsches.

    With the full resources of the state and pliant media at his disposal, the president can certainly command disproportionate influence. In only the past few days, for example, Erdoğan has been able to offer free Black Sea gas as a pre-election perk.

    But Seyrek at the Brussels School of Governance stressed that voting itself in Turkey should never be compared with Russia or Belarus. He argued the vote in each polling station would be closely monitored by all the political parties and other civilian observers. “I still feel in Turkey, what you can do against the result of elections is quite limited,” he said.

    The consensus is that Erdoğan will be unable to fix the result in the case of a significant defeat. The greater danger, as noted by several analysts, is that he could attempt some high-risk stratagem in case of a tight result, demanding a recount or calling a state of emergency in case of some diversionary “incident.” That would, however, only inflame the country’s febrile politics just as Ankara needs stability to attract foreign investors and resuscitate the economy.

    The more surreal idea — but not an implausible one now — is that Erdoğan could tactically see the time is ripe to lead the opposition and attack Kılıçdaroğlu’s new government. The new president would be highly vulnerable to Erdoğan’s vitriolic rhetoric as he tries to hold together a fissiparous coalition in the teeth of an economic crisis. Paradoxically, though, Seyrek noted that the AK party members in opposition could even support reforms to shake up the presidency and ensure media freedoms, as that would be in their interest. That could prove important as constitutional change would need a hefty parliamentary majority.

    Or would Erdoğan simply take umbrage in defeat and quit the country?

    Seyrek found that inconceivable.

    “In his mind, he is a second Atatürk, he would rather die than escape.”

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    Christian Oliver

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  • How to watch the Turkish elections like a pro

    How to watch the Turkish elections like a pro

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    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) are hoping to remain at the head of the table in what, according to recent polls, is expected to be the closest race in the country’s recent electoral history.

    After two decades in power, a win for Erdoğan would consolidate his vision of the future of the country, as well as the presidential system he ushered in.

    On the international stage, Erdoğan has been playing a high-wire act on topics such as the war in Ukraine and who should join NATO. But he also faces domestic concerns, such as an escalating economic crisis, soaring inflation, and criticism of the government’s handling of February’s deadly earthquakes, which devastated large swathes of the country.

    Meanwhile, the main opposition coalition is made up of an eclectic mix of six political parties. First and foremost, a win for them would mean a return to a parliamentary system of governance.

    Looming concerns include how exactly voting will take place in the earthquake zone, how voting will be monitored, and whether Erdoğan would concede and step down if he loses.

    Here’s what you need to know.

    How does it all work?

    Around 61 million voters from across Turkey’s 87 electoral districts will head to the polls on Sunday, May 14.

    Meanwhile, some 3.4 million eligible overseas voters — 1.5 million of them in Germany alone — will likely have already cast their ballots.

    Polling stations — which are set up in public schools — open at 8 a.m. on election day and close at 5 p.m. At 9 p.m. media can start reporting, and unofficial results are expected to start trickling in around midnight.

    As a clearer picture emerges early Monday morning, there could be a victory announcement if one candidate has clearly won — although official results from the country’s Supreme Election Council (YSK) could take a few days.

    If no presidential candidate receives over 50 percent of the votes, however, a second round will be held between the two top candidates on Sunday, May 28. If that happens, overseas voting will be held from May 20 to 24.

    What’s on the ballot?

    The country’s parliamentary and presidential elections take place at the same time, with voters receiving two separate ballots.

    There are four candidates on the presidential ballot, who have either been nominated by a party that passed the 5 percent threshold in the previous parliamentary election or secured 100,000 signatures from voters. However, only three of them will actually be running, as one of them — Muharrem İnce — withdrew after ballots were printed, just three days before the election.

    The selection for the country’s 600-seat Grand National Assembly is a more complicated affair. The YSK has allowed 26 political parties and 151 local independent candidates to run — though not all parties are running in every province. For parties to enter parliament, they have to pass a 7 percent electoral threshold — or be part of an alliance that does. There is no such limit for independent candidates.

    What exactly does such a crowded ballot look like? An unwieldy meter-long sheet of paper!

    Who’s running for parliament?

    Of the 26 parties and five alliances on the ballot, here are the major players:

    The People’s Alliance: Representing the current parliamentary majority, the alliance consists of the ruling conservative AKP, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the Islamist and ultranationalist Great Unity Party, and the Islamist New Welfare Party — with all four parties appearing on the ballot.

    However, many of the AKP’s other former partners have deserted it of late, leading the alliance to turn to smaller parties for help — including the Free Cause Party, which is associated with the Kurdish Hizbullah.

    The Nation Alliance: Also known as the “Table of Six,” the main opposition alliance brings together a disparate array of ideologies, all focused on bringing back the country’s parliamentary system, as well as pledges to swiftly reduce inflation, increase per capita income, return Syrian and Afghan refugees back to their countries, and resume talks on EU membership.

    The alliance features the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), the hard-right nationalist splinter Good Party (İYİ), the center-right Democracy and Progress Party, and the Future Party — both led by AKP defectors — as well as the Democrat Party and the Felicity Party. While the Good Party will be appearing on the ballot, all other coalition members will be running under the CHP banner.

    The Labor and Freedom Alliance: This left-leaning alliance technically consists of the Green Left Party (YSP) and the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP). However, the YSP itself boasts candidates from four different parties, including the pro-Kurdish Democratic People’s Party (HDP) — the third-largest opposition party in the country. The HDP isn’t running candidates for parliament under its own name due to a pending court case that could see it shut down.

    Who’s running for president?

    Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: The joint candidate of the People’s Alliance, Erdoğan’s campaign has emphasized his vision for the “Century of Turkey,” showcasing projects realized throughout his years in power, as well as plans to rebuild areas affected by the earthquakes. If he wins, this would be Erdoğan’s third term, which technically goes against Turkey’s constitution. However, a YSK ruling stated that his first term could be counted as starting in 2018 (when the new presidential system came in) rather than when he actually took office in 2014. That means he can run again.

    Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu: The joint candidate of the Nation Alliance, the head of the CHP is Erdoğan’s main rival. Kılıçdaroğlu has received open backing from the HDP — as well as the rest of the Labor and Freedom Alliance — and is running on a platform of justice and accountability, promising to reverse many of Erdoğan’s policies, his consolidation of power under the presidency, and bring “spring” to the country. Though often characterized as mild-mannered, the former bureaucrat has also been known to dial up the rhetoric when criticizing Erdoğan’s “one-man rule.”

    Sinan Oğan: A former MHP member, the final candidate is a nationalist nominee from the right-wing Ancestral Alliance. Though he is unlikely to win, Oğan can divert some of the nationalist vote, particularly from those who find the Good Party to have shifted too close to the center and the MHP too far to the right. Oğan is also in support of returning the country to a parliamentary system.

    How are the votes counted?

    According to the YSK, once polls close, the counting of votes in every single ballot box is supervised by a four-to-seven-person committee. Registered volunteers and citizens are also allowed to observe.

    Each individual ballot is then opened, shown to the committee and then read aloud. As you can imagine, this takes a long time. Once everyone is happy, it’s off to the local district’s electoral council accompanied by security forces.

    The votes are then entered into the YSK’s online system in front of party representatives. And the official count is later verified by political parties and volunteer organizations.

    Will voters show up?

    Turkey usually boasts high voter turnout, and this year is projected to be one of its highest yet, with a recent poll suggesting it could be around 84 percent. There will also be close to 5 million first-time voters, and overseas voting has seen higher participation than in recent years.

    Of course, one of the biggest concerns is how the elections will be held in the earthquake zone — formerly home to 14 percent of the country’s registered voters and once an AKP stronghold. Of the millions that have left the region since the disaster, only a fraction were able to move their voter registrations in time, according to the YSK.

    Those who missed the tight deadline will now have to return to the region to vote, and special polling centers will be set up where public buildings are no longer standing. In order to help aid those in need and boost turnout, campaigns will be running buses to the region, and civil society organizations have started Askıda Bilet — ticket on the hook — a campaign collecting donations to buy bus tickets to the region. However, most votes in the region likely won’t be cast.

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    Leyla Aksu

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  • Hundreds gather in Turkey to remember WWI dead on Anzac Day

    Hundreds gather in Turkey to remember WWI dead on Anzac Day

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    CANAKKALE, Turkey (AP) — Hundreds of people gathered by a beach near the former World War I battlefields on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula on Tuesday to pay homage to soldiers from Australia and New Zealand who lost their lives in a disastrous campaign 108 years ago.

    The Anzac Day services began as the first light broke on the peninsula in northwest Turkey, with a mournful Aboriginal didgeridoo performance and the singing of hymns and solemn songs.

    The annual ceremonies mark the first landings of troops from the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, known as Anzacs, at Gallipoli at dawn on April 25, 1915.

    The landings were part of a failed British-led campaign to take the Ottoman Empire out of the war. More than 44,000 Allied soldiers and 86,000 Ottoman soldiers died during the campaign that lasted for eight months.

    Around 1,700 people — dignitaries and others who made the annual pilgrimage — held a minute of silence to remember the fallen soldiers. The service also included wreath-laying ceremonies and the singing of the Turkish, Australian and New Zealand national anthems.

    “As the dawn breaks on Anzac Day, we come to places like these solemnly, silently and respectfully. We do not come to glorify war. We come to acknowledge high respects and to honor all who sacrificed life and limb, mind and spirit in battle,” Australian Veterans’ Affairs Minister Matt Keogh said.

    Keogh also expressed condolences for the victims of Turkey’s devastating earthquake in February, which left more than 50,000 dead.

    The Gallipoli campaign aimed to secure a naval route from the Mediterranean Sea to Istanbul through the Dardanelles, and knock the Ottomans out of the war.

    The battlefields and cemeteries at Gallipoli have become a place of pilgrimage for many Australians and New Zealanders who sleep on the beaches until the start of the dawn service.

    The battle helped forge Australia and New Zealand’s national identities as well as friendship with their former foe, Turkey.

    A Turkish army major read a message that modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — a former Gallipoli commander — dedicated to the mothers of the soldiers who died:

    “You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser contributed from Ankara, Turkey.

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  • Supreme Court says Halkbank not immune from U.S. prosecution for Iran sanctions violations under FSIA

    Supreme Court says Halkbank not immune from U.S. prosecution for Iran sanctions violations under FSIA

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    Halkbank in Istanbul, Turkey.

    Kemel Uzel | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Halkbank, which is owned by the government of Turkey, is not immune from criminal indictment in New York federal court under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 for allegedly violating U.S. economic sanctions on Iran.

    But the Supreme Court kicked back to a federal appeals court the question of whether Halkbank still can claim sovereign immunity from prosecution in the United States under common law.

    That raises the prospect that the Supreme Court will again be asked in the future to rule on the legality of the prosecution.

    The indictment in Manhattan federal court alleges that high-ranking Turkish and Iranian government officials participated in the sanctions evasion scheme with Halkbank and its officers.

    “On Halkbank’s view, a purely commercial business that is directly and majority-owned by a foreign state could engage in criminal conduct affecting U. S. citizens and threatening U. S. national security while facing no criminal accountability at all in U. S. courts,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion, in which he was joined by six other justices.

    “Nothing in the FSIA supports that result,” Kavanaugh wrote.

    However, the Supreme Court told the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider a request by Halkbank to toss out the prosecution based on an argument of common law immunity.

    The Supreme Court previously recognized that a civil lawsuit not governed by the FSIA law may still be barred under by foreign sovereign immunity under so-called common law.

    The U.S. government has argued that the bar would not apply to criminal prosecution of a commercial entity such as Halkbank.

    Halkbank did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling.

    Justice Neil Gorsuch filed a separate opinion that concurred in part with the majority but also dissented in part. Justice Samuel Alito joined Gorsuch in his opinion, which says it disagreed with the majority’s ruling that “FSIA’s rules apply only in civil cases.”

    “The same statute we routinely use to analyze sovereign immunity in civil cases applies equally
    in criminal ones,” Gorsuch wrote.

    He added that the majority decision “overcomplicates the law for no good reason,” saying that he would have come to the same conclusion that the 2nd Circuit previously reached, “This case against Halkbank may proceed.”

    Halkbank was indicted in October 2019 by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court for allegedly conspiring for years to evade U.S. economic sanctions imposed on Iran by laundering billions of dollars of Iranian oil and gas money.

    At the time of the indictment, then-Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said, “This is one of the most serious Iran sanctions violations we have seen, and no business should profit from evading our laws or risking our national security.”

    In October 2017, a Turkish-Iranian gold trader named Reza Zarrab pleaded guilty to seven criminal counts related to the scheme.

    In January 2018, former Halkbank Deputy General Manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla was convicted at trial of five of the six criminal counts he was charged with.

    Correction: Former Halkbank Deputy General Manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla was convicted In January 2018 at trial of five of the six criminal counts he was charged with. An earlier version misspelled his name.

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  • Here’s what the leaked US war files tell us about Europe

    Here’s what the leaked US war files tell us about Europe

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    Europe has special forces on the ground in Ukraine. Poland and Slovenia are providing nearly half of the tanks heading to Kyiv. And Hungary may be letting arms through its airspace.

    Those are just a few of the eye-catching details about Europe’s participation in the war buried in a 53-page dossier POLITICO reviewed from a leak of unverified U.S. military intelligence documents. 

    The disclosure has generated a tempest of head-spinning revelations that has the U.S. playing clean-up with allies. The documents detail American doubts about Ukraine’s spring offensive, suggest it was spying on South Korea and display intelligence accusing Egypt of plotting to prop up Russia’s quixotic war.

    Yet Europe, for the most part, has been spared these relationship-damaging divulgences.

    That doesn’t mean there isn’t knowledge to be gleaned about Europe’s war effort from the documents, however. The leaked files contain insights on everything from a U.K.-dominated special forces group in Ukraine to how — and when — France and Spain are getting a key missile system to the battlefield. The documents also contain allegations that Turkey is a potential source of arms for Russian mercenaries.

    POLITICO has not independently verified the documents, and there have been indications that some of the leaked pages were doctored. But the U.S. has acknowledged the intelligence breach and arrested a suspect late on Thursday.

    Here are a few of POLITICO’s findings after poring over the file.

    Europe has boots on the ground

    There is a Europe-heavy special forces group operating in Ukraine — at least as of March 23 — according to the documents. 

    The United Kingdom dominates the 97-person strong “US/NATO” contingent with 50 special forces members. The group also includes 17 people from Latvia, 15 from France and one from the Netherlands. Fourteen U.S. personnel round out the team.

    The leaked information does not specify which activities the forces are carrying out or their location in Ukraine. The documents also show the U.S. has about 100 personnel in total in the country.

    Predictably, governments have remained mostly mum on the subject. The Brits have refused to comment, while the White House has conceded there is a “small U.S. military presence” at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, stressing that the troops “are not fighting on the battlefield.” France previously denied that its forces were “engaged in operations in Ukraine.”

    The rest of the countries did not reply to a request for comment. 

    Europe is providing the bulk of the tanks

    A Ukrainian tank drives down a street in the heavily damaged town of Siversk | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

    Tanks are one area where Europe — collectively — is outpacing America.

    Within the file, one page gives an overview of the 200 tanks that U.S. allies have committed to sending Ukraine — 53 short of what the document says Ukraine needs for its spring offensive. 

    Poland and Slovenia appear to be the largest contributors, committing nearly half of the total, according to an assessment dated February 23. France and the U.K. are also key players, pitching in 14 tanks each. 

    Then there’s the Leopard 2 crew, which is donating versions of the modern German battle tanks that Ukraine spent months convincing allies it needed. That lineup includes Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Finland. 

    The document indicates Germany had committed just four Leopard 2s — the most high-end model — but Berlin said in late March that it had delivered 18 Leopards to Ukraine. It also shows Sweden pledging 10 tanks of an “unknown type,” which media reports suggest may be Leopards. 

    Separately, the U.S. has said it will send Ukraine 31 of its modern tanks, though those aren’t expected to arrive until at least the fall. 

    Europe’s deliveries are lagging, too

    The idea behind Europe taking the lead on tanks was partly that it could get the tanks to Ukraine and ready for battle swiftly — ideally in time for the spring offensive.

    But the document shows that as of February 23, only 31 percent of the 200 tanks pledged had gotten to the battlefield. It did note, however, that the remaining 120 tanks were on track to be transferred.

    Separately, another leaked page recounts that France told Italy on February 22 that a joint missile system would not be ready for Ukraine until June. That’s the very end of a timeline the Italian defense ministry laid out in February, when officials said the anti-aircraft defense system would be delivered to Ukraine “in the spring of 2023.”

    Hungary sees America as the enemy — but might be letting allies use its airspace

    Hungary pops up a couple of times in the pile of creased pages, offering more insights into a country that regularly perplexes its own allies.

    The most eye-popping nugget is buried in a “top secret” CIA update from March 2, which says Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán branded the U.S. “one of his party’s top three adversaries during a political strategy session” on February 22.

    The remarks, it notes, constitute “an escalation of the level of anti-American rhetoric” from Orbán.

    Indeed, Orbán’s government has charted its own course during the war, promoting Russia-friendly narratives, essentially calling on Ukraine to quit and caustically dismissing allied efforts to isolate Russia’s economy. 

    However, the leaked U.S. documents also indicate Hungary — which shares a small border with Ukraine — may be secretly letting allies use its airspace to move arms toward the battlefield, despite pledges to bar such transfers.

    Intelligence leaks suspect Jack Teixeira reflected in an image of the Pentagon in Washington, DC | Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images

    One of the leaked documents details a plan for Ukrainian pilots to fly donated helicopters from Croatia to Ukraine “through Hungarian air space.” If true, the information would not only show Hungary is letting arms pass through its skies, but also contradict press reports indicating the helicopters would be transferred on the ground or through flights into Poland. 

    Hungarian and Croatian officials didn’t reply to requests for comment.

    Did the Brits downplay a confrontation with Russia?

    Publicly, the U.K. has told a consistent story: A Russian fighter jet “released” a missile “in the vicinity” of a U.K. surveillance plane over the Black Sea last September. A close call, to be sure, but not a major incident.

    The leaked U.S. dossier, however, hints at something more serious. It describes the incident as a “near shoot-down” of the British aircraft. The language appears to go beyond what U.K. Defense Secretary Ben Wallace told lawmakers last October. This week, The New York Times reported that the Russian pilot had locked on the British aircraft before the missile failed to fire properly.

    The document also details several other close encounters in recent months between Russian fighter jets and U.S., U.K. and French surveillance aircraft — a subject that jumped into the news last month when a Russian fighter jet collided with a U.S. drone, sending it crashing into the Black Sea. 

    Wallace has not commented on the leaked description, and a ministry spokesperson on Thursday pointed to a prior statement saying there was a “serious level of inaccuracy” in the divulged dossier. 

    Turkey is the war’s middleman in Europe

    Turkey has portrayed itself as a conciliator between Ukraine and Russia, helping negotiate a deal to keep grain shipments flowing through the Black Sea and maintaining diplomatic ties with Russia while also providing Ukraine with drones. 

    The leaked pile of clandestine U.S. intelligence reports, however, shows a darker side to Turkey’s position as a middleman that distinctly favors Russia. 

    One page describes how Turkey helped both Russia and its ally Belarus evade strict Western sanctions — a concern U.S. officials have expressed publicly.

    For Belarus, the document says, “Turkish companies purchased sanctioned goods” and then “sold them in European markets.” In the opposite direction, it adds, these companies “resold goods from Europe to Russia.” 

    More alarming is another leaked document that describes a meeting in February between “Turkish contacts” and the Wagner Group, the private militia firm fighting for the Kremlin. It says Wagner was seeking “to purchase weapons and equipment from Turkey” for the group’s “efforts in Mali and Ukraine.”

    The information, which the document says came from “signals intelligence” — a euphemism for digital surveillance — does not explain whether the purchases have occurred.

    The Turkish Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

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  • 2023’s most important election: Turkey

    2023’s most important election: Turkey

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    For Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, next month’s election is of massive historical significance.

    It falls 100 years after the foundation of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular republic and, if Erdoğan wins, he will be empowered to put even more of his stamp on the trajectory of a geostrategic heavyweight of 85 million people. The fear in the West is that he will see this as his moment to push toward an increasingly religiously conservative model, characterized by regional confrontationalism, with greater political powers centered around himself.

    The election will weigh heavily on security in Europe and the Middle East. Who is elected stands to define: Turkey’s role in the NATO alliance; its relationship with the U.S., the EU and Russia; migration policy; Ankara’s role in the war in Ukraine; and how it handles tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.

    The May 14 vote is expected to be the most hotly contested race in Erdoğan’s 20-year rule — as the country grapples with years of economic mismanagement and the fallout from a devastating earthquake.

    He will face an opposition aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi,” who is promising big changes. Polls suggest Kılıçdaroğlu has eked out a lead, but Erdoğan is a hardened election campaigner, with the full might of the state and its institutions at his back.

    “There will be a change from an authoritarian single-man rule, towards a kind of a teamwork, which is a much more democratic process,” Ünal Çeviköz, chief foreign policy adviser to Kılıçdaroğlu told POLITICO. “Kılıçdaroğlu will be the maestro of that team.”

    Here are the key foreign policy topics in play in the vote:

    EU and Turkish accession talks

    Turkey’s opposition is confident it can unfreeze European Union accession talks — at a standstill since 2018 over the country’s democratic backsliding — by introducing liberalizing reforms in terms of rule of law, media freedoms and depoliticization of the judiciary.

    The opposition camp also promises to implement European Court of Human Rights decisions calling for the release of two of Erdoğan’s best-known jailed opponents: the co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party Selahattin Demirtaş and human rights defender Osman Kavala.

    “This will simply give the message to all our allies, and all the European countries, that Turkey is back on track to democracy,” Çeviköz said.

    Even under a new administration, however, the task of reopening the talks on Turkey’s EU accession is tricky.

    Turkey’s opposition is aligned behind Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, nicknamed the “Turkish Gandhi” | Burak Kara/Getty Images

    Anti-Western feeling in Turkey is very strong across the political spectrum, argued Wolfango Piccoli, co-founder of risk analysis company Teneo.

    “Foreign policy will depend on the coherence of the coalition,” he said. “This is a coalition of parties who have nothing in common apart from the desire to get rid of Erdoğan. They’ve got a very different agenda, and this will have an impact in foreign policy.”

    “The relationship is largely comatose, and has been for some time, so, they will keep it on life support,” he said, adding that any new government would have so many internal problems to deal with that its primary focus would be domestic.

    Europe also seems unprepared to handle a new Turkey, with a group of countries — most prominently France and Austria — being particularly opposed to the idea of rekindling ties.

    “They are used to the idea of a non-aligned Turkey, that has departed from EU norms and values and is doing its own course,” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş a visiting fellow at Brookings. “If the opposition forms a government, it will seek a European identity and we don’t know Europe’s answer to that; whether it could be accession or a new security framework that includes Turkey.”

    “Obviously the erosion of trust has been mutual,” said former Turkish diplomat Sinan Ülgen, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank, arguing that despite reticence about Turkish accession, there are other areas where a complementary and mutually beneficiary framework could be built, like the customs union, visa liberalization, cooperation on climate, security and defense, and the migration agreement.

    The opposition will indeed seek to revisit the 2016 agreement with the EU on migration, Çeviköz said.

    “Our migration policy has to be coordinated with the EU,” he said. “Many countries in Europe see Turkey as a kind of a pool, where migrants coming from the east can be contained and this is something that Turkey, of course cannot accept,” he said but added. “This doesn’t mean that Turkey should open its borders and make the migrants flow into Europe. But we need to coordinate and develop a common migration policy.”

    NATO and the US

    After initially imposing a veto, Turkey finally gave the green light to Finland’s NATO membership on March 30.

    But the opposition is also pledging to go further and end the Turkish veto on Sweden, saying that this would be possible by the alliance’s annual gathering on July 11. “If you carry your bilateral problems into a multilateral organization, such as NATO, then you are creating a kind of a polarization with all the other members of NATO with your country,” Çeviköz said.

    A protester pushes a cart with a RRecep Tayyip Erdoğan doll during an anti-NATO and anti-Turkey demonstration in Sweden | Jonas Gratzer/Getty Images

    A reelected Erdoğan could also feel sufficiently empowered to let Sweden in, many insiders argue. NATO allies did, after all, play a significant role in earthquake aid. Turkish presidential spokesperson İbrahim Kalın says that the door is not closed to Sweden, but insists the onus is on Stockholm to determine how things proceed.

    Turkey’s military relationship with the U.S. soured sharply in 2019 when Ankara purchased the Russian-made S-400 missile system, a move the U.S. said would put NATO aircraft flying over Turkey at risk. In response, the U.S. kicked Ankara out of the F-35 jet fighter program and slapped sanctions on the Turkish defense industry.

    A meeting in late March between Kılıçdaroğlu and the U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Jeff Flake infuriated Erdoğan, who saw it as an intervention in the elections and pledged to “close the door” to the U.S. envoy. “We need to teach the United States a lesson in this elections,” the irate president told voters.

    In its policy platform, the opposition makes a clear reference to its desire to return to the F-35 program.

    Russia and the war in Ukraine

    After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey presented itself as a middleman. It continues to supply weapons — most significantly Bayraktar drones — to Ukraine, while refusing to sanction Russia. It has also brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea.

    Highlighting his strategic high-wire act on Russia, after green-lighting Finland’s NATO accession and hinting Sweden could also follow, Erdoğan is now suggesting that Turkey could be the first NATO member to host Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “Maybe there is a possibility” that Putin may travel to Turkey on April 27 for the inauguration of the country’s first nuclear power reactor built by Russian state nuclear energy company Rosatom, he said.

    Çeviköz said that under Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, Turkey would be willing to continue to act as a mediator and extend the grain deal, but would place more stress on Ankara’s status as a NATO member.

    “We will simply emphasize the fact that Turkey is a member of NATO, and in our discussions with Russia, we will certainly look for a relationship among equals, but we will also remind Russia that Turkey is a member of NATO,” he said.

    Turkey’s relationship with Russia has become very much driven by the relationship between Putin and Erdoğan and this needs to change, Ülgen argued.

    Turkey brokered a U.N. deal that allows Ukrainian grain exports to pass through the blockaded Black Sea | Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images

     “No other Turkish leader would have the same type of relationship with Putin, it would be more distant,” he said. “It does not mean that Turkey would align itself with the sanctions; it would not. But nonetheless, the relationship would be more transparent.”

    Syria and migration

    The role of Turkey in Syria is highly dependent on how it can address the issue of Syrians living in Turkey, the opposition says.

    Turkey hosts some 4 million Syrians and many Turks, battling a major cost-of-living crisis, are becoming increasingly hostile. Kılıçdaroğlu has pledged to create opportunities and the conditions for the voluntary return of Syrians.

    “Our approach would be to rehabilitate the Syrian economy and to create the conditions for voluntary returns,” Çeviköz said, adding that this would require an international burden-sharing, but also establishing dialogue with Damascus.

    Erdoğan is also trying to establish a rapprochement with Syria but Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he will only meet the Turkish president when Ankara is ready to completely withdraw its military from northern Syria.

    “A new Turkish government will be more eager to essentially shake hands with Assad,” said Ülgen. “But this will remain a thorny issue because there will be conditions attached on the side of Syria to this normalization.”

    However, Piccoli from Teneo said voluntary returns of Syrians was “wishful thinking.”

    “These are Syrians who have been living in Turkey for more than 10 years, their children have been going to school in Turkey from day one. So, the pledges of sending them back voluntarily, it is very questionable to what extent they can be implemented.”

    Greece and the East Med

    Turkey has stepped up its aggressive rhetoric against Greece in recent months, with the Erdoğan even warning that a missile could strike Athens.

    But the prompt reaction by the Greek government and the Greek community to the recent devastating earthquakes in Turkey and a visit by the Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias created a new backdrop for bilateral relations.

    A Turkish drill ship before it leaves for gas exploration | Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images

    Dendias, along with his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, announced that Turkey would vote for Greece in its campaign for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council for 2025-26 and that Greece would support the Turkish candidacy for the General Secretariat of the International Maritime Organization.

    In another sign of a thaw, Greek Defense Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos and Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi visited Turkey this month, with Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar saying he hoped that the Mediterranean and Aegean would be a “sea of friendship” between the two countries. Akar said he expected a moratorium with Greece in military and airforce exercises in the Aegean Sea between June 15 and September 15.

    “Both countries are going to have elections, and probably they will have the elections on the same day. So, this will open a new horizon in front of both countries,” Çeviköz said.

    “The rapprochement between Turkey and Greece in their bilateral problems [in the Aegean], will facilitate the coordination in addressing the other problems in the eastern Mediterranean, which is a more multilateral format,” he said. Disputes over maritime borders and energy exploration, for example, are common.

    As far as Cyprus is concerned, Çeviköz said that it is important for Athens and Ankara not to intervene into the domestic politics of Cyprus and the “two peoples on the island should be given an opportunity to look at their problems bilaterally.”

    However, analysts argue that Greece, Cyprus and the EastMed are fundamental for Turkey’s foreign policy and not much will change with another government. The difference will be more one of style.

    “The approach to manage those differences will change very much. So, we will not hear aggressive rhetoric like: ‘We will come over one night,’” said Ülgen. “We’ll go back to a more mature, more diplomatic style of managing differences and disputes.”

    “The NATO framework will be important, and the U.S. would have to do more in terms of re-establishing the sense of balance in the Aegean,” said Aydıntaşbaş. But, she argued, “you just cannot normalize your relations with Europe or the U.S., unless you’re willing to take that step with Greece.”

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  • Baby pulled from Turkey earthquake rubble reunited with mother

    Baby pulled from Turkey earthquake rubble reunited with mother

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    Baby pulled from Turkey earthquake rubble reunited with mother – CBS News


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    A three-and-a-half-month-old baby girl who was pulled from the rubble following a devastating earthquake in Turkey has been reunited with her mother.

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  • Erdogan’s political fate may be determined by Turkey’s Kurds | CNN

    Erdogan’s political fate may be determined by Turkey’s Kurds | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    Turkey’s persecuted pro-Kurdish party has emerged as a kingmaker in the country’s upcoming election, playing a decisive role that may just tip the balance enough to unseat two-decade ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    In a key setback to the Turkish president and leader of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party), the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) last month announced that it would not put forward its own presidential candidate, a move analysts say allows its supporters to vote for Erdogan’s main rival.

    “We are facing a turning point that will shape the future of Turkey and (its) society,” said the HDP in a statement on March 23. “To fulfill our historical responsibility against the one-man rule, we will not field a presidential candidate in (the) May 14 elections.”

    It is a twist of irony for the Turkish strongman, who spent the better half of the past decade cracking down on the party after it began chipping away at his voter base. Its former leader Selahattin Demirtas has been in prison for nearly seven years and the party faces possible closure by a court for suspected collusion with the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and affiliated groups. But its influence may nonetheless determine the course of Turkey’s politics.

    The HDP’s decision not to field a candidate came just three days after head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan’s main rival, visited the party’s co-chairs. He told reporters that the solution to Turkey’s problems, “including the Kurdish problem” lies in parliament,” according to Turkish media.

    Kilicdaroglu, who represents the six-party Nation Alliance opposition bloc, is the strongest contender to run against Erdogan in years. And while the HDP hasn’t yet announced whether it will put its weight behind him, analysts say it is the kingmaker in the elections.

    “It was a carefully crafted political discourse,” Hisyar Ozsoy, deputy co-chair of the HDP and a member of parliament from the predominantly Kurdish province of Diyarbakir, told CNN. “We are not going to have our own candidate, and we will leave it to the international community to interpret it the way they wish.”

    Experts say the crackdown on the HDP is rooted in the threat it poses to Erdogan politically, as well as its position as one of the main parties representing Turkey’s Kurds, an ethnic minority from which a separatist militant movement has emerged.

    The party and the Kurdish people have had a complicated relationship with Erdogan. The leader courted the Kurds in earlier years by granting them more rights and reversing restrictions on the use of their language. Relations with the HDP were also cordial once, as Erdogan worked with the party on a brief peace process with the PKK.

    But ties between Erdogan and the HDP later turned sour, and the HDP fell under a sweeping crackdown aimed at the PKK and their affiliates.

    Kurds are the biggest minority in Turkey, making up between 15% and 20% of the population, according to Minority Rights Group International.

    It is unclear if the HDP will endorse Kilicdaroglu, but analysts say that the deliberate distance may be beneficial for the opposition candidate.

    The accusations against the HDP place it in a precarious position during the elections. It currently faces a case in Turkey’s Constitutional Court over suspected ties to the PKK, which is designated as a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Knowing it may be banned at any moment, its candidates are running under the Green Left Party in parliament.

    If the opposition is seen as allying with the HDP, Erdogan’s AK Party may use its influence in the media to discredit it as being pro-PKK, said Murat Somer, a political science professor at Koc University in Istanbul and author of Return to Point Zero, a book on the Turkish-Kurdish question in Turkey.

    The HDP’s threat to Erdogan’s hold on power became apparent after the June 2015 election, the first general election it participated in. It won 13% of the seats, denying the ruling AK Party its majority for the first time since 2002. Erdogan, however, called a snap election five months later, which led to a drop in the HDP’s support to 10.7%, as well as the restoration of the AK Party’s overall majority.

    “They are a kingmaker in these elections because the HDP gets about half of the votes of the Kurdish population in Turkey,” said Somer, adding that the other, more conservative Kurdish voters have traditionally voted for Erdogan’s AK Party. And last month, the Free Cause Party (HUDA-PAR), a tiny Kurdish-Islamist party announced support for Erdogan in the elections. The party has never won seats in parliament.

    The HDP knows that its position is key to the outcome of next month’s vote, but that it’s also in a delicate situation.

    “We want to play the game wisely, and we need to be very careful,” said Ozsoy, adding that the party wants to avoid a “contaminated political climate” where the elections are polarized “between a very ugly ultra-nationalist discourse against Kilicdaroglu and others.”

    The party was founded in 2012 with a number of aims, said Ozsoy, one of which was “peaceful and democratic resolution of the Kurdish conflict.”

    Somer said that the party was seen to be “an initiative” of the PKK, which later led to a heavy government crackdown on it in the name of counterterrorism.

    Its former leader Demirtas remains an influential figure.

    The Turkish government has been trying to link the HDP to the PKK but has so far failed to prove “a real connection,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.

    A post-Erdogan Turkey may give some breathing space to the Kurds and Kurdish-dominated parties in Turkey, Aydintasbas told CNN, noting that many Kurdish voters have recently left Erdogan’s camp. “For HDP, this is more than just an ideological choice,” she said. “It’s a matter of survival.”

    Ozsoy says his party understands what’s at stake, not only for Turkey’s Kurds but for all its minorities.

    “We are aware of our responsibility here. We are aware of our role. We know we are in a kingmaker position,” the HDP lawmaker said.

    Two women arrested for not wearing hijab following ‘yogurt attack’

    Two women were arrested in Iran for failing to wear the hijab in public, after a man threw a tub of yogurt at them at a store in the city of Shandiz on Thursday, according to Mizan News Agency, the state-run outlet for Iran’s judiciary.

    • Background: A video and report published by the Mizan News Agency showed footage of the man approaching one of the unveiled women and speaking to her before he grabs a tub of yogurt and throws it, hitting both women on the head. The video appears to show a male staff member removing the man from the store. The two women were arrested, as well as the man who threw the yogurt, according to local media.
    • Why it matters: Iranians have taken to the streets in protest for several months against Iran’s mandatory hijab law, as well as other political and social issues across the country. The Iranian government has continued to crack down on the protests, and on Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Interior said that the “hijab is an unquestionable religious necessity.”

    Oil prices surge after OPEC+ producers announce surprise cuts

    Oil prices spiked Monday after OPEC+ producers unexpectedly announced that they would cut output. Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped 5.31% to $84.13 a barrel, while WTI, the US benchmark, rose 5.48% to $79.83. Both were the sharpest price rises in almost a year. The collective output cut by the nine members of OPEC+ totals 1.66 million barrels per day.

    • Background: The reductions are on top of the 2 million barrels per day (bpd) cuts announced by OPEC+ in October and bring the total volume of cuts by OPEC+ to 3.66 million bpd, equal to 3.7% of global demand. In a note Sunday, Goldman Sachs analysts said the move was unexpected but “consistent with the new OPEC+ doctrine to act pre-emptively because they can, without significant losses in market share.”
    • Why it matters: The White House pushed back on the cuts by OPEC+. “We don’t think cuts are advisable at this moment given market uncertainty – and we’ve made that clear,” a spokesperson for the National Security Council said. “We’re focused on prices for American consumers, not barrels.” In October, OPEC+’s decision to cut production had already rankled the White House. US President Joe Biden pledged at the time that Saudi Arabia would suffer “consequences.” But so far, his administration appears to have backed off on its vows to punish the kingdom.

    Iran blames Israel for the killing of second IRGC officer, vows to respond

    A second Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer died following an attack in Syria on Friday, according to Iranian state media on Sunday. Iranian state media said the Iranian military adviser died after an Israeli attack near the Syrian capital Damascus left him wounded. The attack also killed another IRGC officer. In a tweet on Sunday, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi said the alleged Israeli attack wouldn’t go unanswered. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said on Sunday that Iran has the right to respond to “state terrorism.”

    • Background: The Friday airstrike hit a “site in the Damascus countryside,” Syrian state news agency SANA said. Israel declined CNN’s request for comment on reports of airstrikes near Damascus on Friday, saying its military doesn’t comment on reports in the foreign media. Iranian influence has grown in Syria since a civil war broke out in the country more than a decade ago, with the IRGC building a substantial presence as “advisers” to the Syrian armed forces.
    • Why it matters: The Israeli military declined to comment, but it has previously claimed responsibility for attacks it has described as Iranian-linked targets in Syria. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting Sunday: “We are exacting a high price from the regimes that support terrorism, beyond Israel’s borders. I suggest that our enemies not err. Israel’s internal debate will not detract one iota from our determination, strength and ability to act against our enemies on all fronts, wherever and whenever necessary.”

    Iranian-American comedian Maz Jobrani, who has been touring the Middle East, spoke to CNN’s Becky Anderson about his support for the protests in his homeland, saying that he used his standup comedy platform to highlight the “brutality against the Iranian people.”

    “It was an opportunity for me to say, ‘let’s keep fighting,’” he said.

    Watch the interview here.

    An Iranian state news outlet is gloating at what it sees as the demise of the US dollar.

    IRNA recreated a popular meme to mark China and Brazil’s decision to reportedly ditch the US dollar as an intermediary in trade, citing the Chinese state news outlet, China Daily. It shows two men representing China and Brazil posing in front of a grave labelled “USD.”

    The meme was pinned to the top of IRNA’s Twitter page, and was met with laughter and ridicule. “Dream on,” said another user, pointing to the dollar’s use as the main reserve currency around the world.

    China Daily said that the agreement was part of “the rising global use of the Chinese renminbi.” It would reportedly enable China and Brazil to conduct trade and financial transactions using local currencies instead of the dollar.

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  • Finland to join NATO on Tuesday 

    Finland to join NATO on Tuesday 

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    Finland will formally become a full-fledged NATO ally on Tuesday, the alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday. 

    “This is an historic week,” the NATO chief told reporters. “Tomorrow, we will welcome Finland as the 31st member of NATO, making Finland safer and our alliance stronger.” 

    A ceremony marking Finland’s accession is set to take place Tuesday afternoon. 

    “We will raise the Finnish flag for the first time here at the NATO headquarters,” Stoltenberg said, adding: “It will be a good day for Finland’s security, for Nordic security, and for NATO as a whole.”

    The move comes after Hungary and Turkey ratified Finland’s membership bid last week, removing the last hurdles to Helsinki’s accession. 

    Sweden’s membership aspiration, however, remains in limbo as Budapest and Ankara continue to withhold support. 

    Speaking ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, Stoltenberg reiterated that he believes Stockholm is still on its way to ultimately joining the alliance as well. 

    “All allies,” he said, “agree that Sweden’s accession should be completed quickly.”

    At their meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, ministers will discuss the alliance’s defense spending goals and future relationship with Kyiv. 

    They will also attend a session of the NATO-Ukraine Commission together with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and meet with partners from ​Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.

    In his press conference, the NATO chief also addressed multiple challenges facing the transatlantic alliance, including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement that Russia will deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. 

    Putin’s announcement is “part of a pattern of dangerous, reckless nuclear rhetoric” and an effort to use nuclear weapons as “intimidation, coercion to stop NATO allies and partners from supporting Ukraine.”

    “We will not be intimidated,” the NATO boss said.

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin of Finland | Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images

    The alliance “remains vigilant, we monitor very closely what Russia does,” he said. “But so far,” he added, “we haven’t seen any changes in their nuclear posture” that require any change in NATO’s nuclear stance.

    In a statement Monday, the Finnish president’s office said that, “Finland will deposit its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the U.S. State Department in Brussels on Tuesday” before the start of NATO foreign ministers’ session. 

    Sanna Marin, the prime minister when Finland applied to join NATO, suffered defeat in a national election on Sunday. Her Social Democrats finished third, with the center-right National Coalition Party coming out on top.

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  • Finland cleared to join NATO following Turkish vote

    Finland cleared to join NATO following Turkish vote

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    The Turkish parliament on Thursday unanimously ratified Finland’s accession to NATO, effectively allowing Helsinki to join the military alliance but leaving Sweden out in the cold.

    Finland could now become a formal member of NATO within days. 

    “All 30 NATO members have now ratified Finland’s membership,” Finnish President Sauli Niinistö tweeted. “I want to thank every one of them for their trust and support. Finland will be a strong and capable Ally, committed to the security of the Alliance,” he said. 

    His country, the president added, “is now ready to join NATO.” 

    The Turkish vote, occurring minutes before midnight in Ankara, comes after months of delays. 

    Finland and Sweden initially applied for membership last May, prompted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And while the two countries were formally invited to join the alliance last summer, both Turkey and Hungary have been stalling on ratifying their memberships.  

    Ankara has raised concerns about the countries’ support of Kurdish groups and limitations on arms exports. But despite striking a deal with both Helsinki and Stockholm that spurred policy changes, Ankara ultimately decided to greenlight Finland while holding Sweden back.

    Hungary’s parliament on Monday also ratified Finland’s membership but like Turkey has yet to schedule a vote on Sweden. 

    Western officials had hoped that both countries would become full members before a summit of NATO leaders scheduled to take place in Vilnius in July, but it remains uncertain whether Sweden could still become a member before the gathering. 

    Turkey is set to hold elections in May, fuelling speculation that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is withholding support for Sweden for domestic political reasons and could change his mind at a later stage. 

    Niinistö, the Finnish president, said in his tweet late Thursday that “we look forward to welcoming Sweden to join us as soon as possible.” 

    Now that Finland has Turkey’s formal support, only procedural steps are left before Helsinki officially joins NATO. 

    Finland will soon get a formal invitation from NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and then give the U.S. its so-called instrument of accession. The U.S. will then issue a statement that Finland is now part of the North Atlantic Treaty.

    The NATO chief welcomed Turkey’s vote.

    “This,” Stoltenberg tweeted, “will make the whole NATO family stronger & safer.” 

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    Lili Bayer and Leyla Aksu

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  • More Borgen, less Sherlock: Europe cracks down on British TV

    More Borgen, less Sherlock: Europe cracks down on British TV

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    It’s a question worthy of a great TV detective: can streamers like Netflix still guarantee a certain proportion of European content if the goalposts are suddenly moved to exclude hits like Sherlock and Doctor Who?

    They may soon have to, as the European Commission is considering removing the U.K. from the list of countries recognized as providing “European” content, according to a policy paper seen by POLITICO. That would put broadcasters and streaming platforms in a tight spot, as the U.K. is among the biggest contributors to their European catalogs.

    “The need to re-define the concept of European works has been raised in the context of Brexit. It is arguable that, since the U.K. is no longer a member of the EU, works originating in the U.K. should no longer be considered as European,” said the paper. It also raised the idea of cutting Switzerland from the scope of European works.

    Under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, television and streaming must include a share of “European works” in their transmission schedules or on-demand catalogues. These are defined as programs originating in, and produced mainly by nationals of, EU countries or those that have ratified the Council of Europe’s European Convention on Transfrontier Television (ECTT), which includes neighbors such as the U.K., Turkey and Ukraine.

    The Commission is now considering how to tighten these criteria.

    In the approach laid out in the paper, dated December 2022, countries that have signed up to the ECTT should also have close ties with the EU and its internal market, singling out members of the European Economic Area, EU candidate countries, or potential candidates and sovereignties which signed agreements to use the euro like the Holy See and San Marino.

    Move over, Fleabag

    That would be bad news for broadcasters and streamers. The U.K. gobbled up about 28 percent of platforms’ European investments in 2021, compared to about 21 percent for German productions and 15 percent for French, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory.

    “It is a wrong discussion, at a wrong time,” Sabine Verheyen, chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education, told POLITICO in response to the Commission document. She warned against excluding such an “important partner, even if they are not a member of the Union anymore.”

    As early as June 2021, the Association of Commercial Television in Europe (ACT) warned against any move to exclude U.K. productions. “Despite Brexit, the audiovisual community continues to work hand in hand across the channel,” it said. “We should focus on building bridges, not burning them.”

    In a reaction to the Commission paper, a spokesperson for the U.K. Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport said: “the U.K. remains committed to European works. We continue to support its contribution to cultural enrichment across Europe and to provide audiences access to content they know and love.”

    The Commission hasn’t yet indicated how it might roll out the changes, and it hasn’t made a definitive proposition to exclude U.K. content; any such move would no doubt trigger opposition from industry. The EU is due to evaluate the audiovisual directive by the end of 2026.

    A Commission spokesperson said in a statement that the EU executive “is currently undertaking a fact-finding exercise” to make sure European works benefit from a “diverse, fair and balanced market.”

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  • Killer drones and multi-billion dollar deals: Turkey’s rapidly-growing defense industry is boosting its global clout

    Killer drones and multi-billion dollar deals: Turkey’s rapidly-growing defense industry is boosting its global clout

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    A Turkish is on view during a presentation at the Lithuanian Air Force Base in Siauliai, Lithuania, on July 6, 2022. Lithuania on July 6, 2022 exhibited a crowdfunded Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 combat military drone that it plans to send to Ukraine to help the war-torn country fight Russia’s invasion.

    Petras Malukas | AFP | Getty Images

    In the early weeks of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a music video surfaced online. 

    It featured clips of missile launchers and Russian tanks in a drone’s crosshairs, as deep-voiced men sang the words in Ukrainian: “The occupiers came to us in Ukraine, with brand new uniforms and military vehicles, but their inventory melted into steel … Bayraktar!”

    The last word drops as an explosion is seen obliterating a Russian target. 

    The video quickly went viral, the song written as an homage to the powerful Turkish-made Bayraktar TB-2 drone that helped Ukrainian forces devastate Russia’s initial offensive. The now-famous drone is produced by Istanbul-headquartered defense company Baykar Makina – whose chief technology officer happens to be Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law.

    Drones aren’t the only thing elevating Turkey’s status as a growing player in the global defense industry. The sheer number of international deals the country’s defense firms have made in the last few years reveals rapidly rising demand, major R&D investment and a growing source of leverage for Turkey’s foreign relations. 

    Record defense exports

    In 2022, Turkey hit a record $4.4 billion in arms exports – a figure larger than some European countries’ annual defense budgets. After exceeding its export target for the year, Turkey’s government aims to bring that figure to $6 billion in 2023. Turnover for the country’s defense industry as a whole last year was $10 billion, according to Turkey’s Presidency of Defense Industries. 

    Revenue from overseas defense exports rose by 42% between 2020 and 2021, with foreign contracts making up as much as 90% of revenue for some Turkish companies — like Baykar, the Atlantic Council reported in December. Turkey is home to some 2,000 companies in the sector. 

    A vessel claimed to be a Russian Raptor boat is destroyed with use of Ukrainian, Turkish-supplied Bayraktar drone, near Snake Island, Ukraine in this screen grab obtained from a social media video on May 2, 2022.

    Courtesy: Ukraine Naval Forces

    The transformation has its roots in the early 2000s, when Ankara outlined a strategy to build a modern and self-sustained defense sector and encourage domestic investment. Erdogan’s two-decade long project, which continues to see strong state investment in local firms, is paying off as arms sales bolster Turkish influence abroad.

    And while Turkey’s military manufacturing footprint is still small compared to major players like the U.S., Russia, and China, it’s won outsized attention for the performance of its weapons like the Bayraktar drone, which has been used in Libya, Syria, and the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict in addition to Ukraine.

    Keeping up foreign relations

    Sales of weapons and technologies, especially drones, “have helped [Turkey] improve ties” internationally, the Atlantic Council wrote, in particular with “states such as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Azerbaijan, and even establish new ties with various other countries such as Poland, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia.” 

    The sales bolster Turkey’s clout in the Gulf states and Europe, too. At IDEX, the Middle East’s largest arms fair held in February in Abu Dhabi, Turkey’s presence was impossible to miss. Enormous Turkish-branded pavilions showcased everything from armored trucks and drones to assault rifles, tactical gear and laser-guided missiles.  

    The Ukraine-Russian war has created a huge demand, even the countries that are not participating in the war are stockpiling. We are already doubling our manufacturing capacity just to meet demand.

    Emin Öner

    Chairman of the board, Assan Group

    “There is significant international demand from the Middle East, from Asia, from Europe. Also with the war in Ukraine, Turkiye is trying to do our best in supporting with equipment, including with UAVs and land platforms,” Alper Öziblen, chairman of Turkish defense company Pavo Group, told CNBC at IDEX. 

    “This shows us that Turkish products have been mature enough to use in the battlefields,” he said. “Our clients, our partners are very happy.”

    Tulpar, Turkish heavy infantry fighting vehicle designed by the Sakarya-based automotive manufacturer Otokar, on display at the 16th edition of International Defence Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, February 21 2023.

    Photo by Mohammed Zarandah | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

    Öziblen and other Turkish executives CNBC spoke to all confirmed they had ongoing or planned partnerships and deals with the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and other oil-rich Gulf states. Many of those countries are investing heavily in growing their own defense sectors — and some, like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have provided substantial financial support to Turkey or pledged billions of dollars in trade and investment. 

    Öziblen highlighted the expertise of his and other Turkish companies in areas like cryptography, essential for secure communications on the battlefield, as well as electronic subsystems for drones and land platforms.

    “Information technology is a major part of the defense domain, and we are positioning ourselves in that domain,” he said. And the investment shows in the numbers: research and development in Turkey’s defense sector “recently increased by 30 percent,” the Atlantic Council’s report wrote.

    Supplying NATO, Ukraine and beyond

    As NATO allies race to supply Ukraine with arms to combat Russia, many of those allies – particularly in Europe – are running severely low on their own weapons stocks. Turkish defense manufacturers say they are booked for the next several years with orders to help replenish NATO stockpiles. 

    Those firms also have high demand from Turkey’s military alone — it is, after all, the second-largest military in NATO after the United States.

    A view from the stand of Turkish ASSAV Defense Company at the 16th edition of International Defense Exhibition and Conference (IDEX) held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, February 21 2023.

    Mohammed Zarandah | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

    “The Ukraine-Russian war has created a huge demand, even the countries that are not participating in the war are stockpiling. We are already doubling our manufacturing capacity just to meet demand [from NATO countries],” Emin Öner, chairman of the board of Turkish defense firm Assan Group, told CNBC. 

    “All the manufacturers are booked for at least five more years,” Öner said. He said that his company was fully booked with orders for the next few years, with shifts running round the clock — despite that fact that Assan does not currently make products for Ukraine. It would do so if the Turkish government requested it, he said.

    Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L), Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (C) and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres (R) pose during a joint news conference after their meeting in Lviv, Ukraine on August 18, 2022.

    Metin Atkas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

    Not all of Turkey’s defense firms supply arms to Ukraine. Among those that do, some, like Baykar, do not comment publicly about it. Turkey’s government is playing a careful balancing act between Ukraine and Russia to act as a mediator between the two, and has maintained relations with Moscow, offering a new home for many Russians fleeing sanctions. 

    For Pavo Group’s Öziblen, however, his company’s provision of defense equipment to Ukraine is a point of pride.

    “If [Ukraine] needs some know-how, knowledge, for specific systems, we are transferring it to them free of charge,” he said.  

    “It’s a kind of responsibility,” Öziblen added. “It’s more than business for us, actually. Ukraine matters more than business.” 

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  • Turkey’s Erdoğan urges end of Ukraine war in call with Putin

    Turkey’s Erdoğan urges end of Ukraine war in call with Putin

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    Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday called for the “immediate cessation” of the war in Ukraine during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Erdoğan also “thanked President Putin for his positive stance regarding the extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative” and added that the two countries “could take further steps” when it comes to economic cooperation, the Turkish presidency’s communications directorate said in a statement on Saturday.

    The Black Sea grain deal, which allowed the export of foodstuffs from Ukraine to resume after Moscow’s unlawful invasion of the country blocked several ports, was extended last weekend. The grain agreement was originally signed last summer by Kyiv and Moscow under the auspices of the United Nations.

    The Kremlin said in a statement following the Putin-Erdoğan phone call that the two leaders also discussed the situation in Syria.

    They emphasized “the need to continue the process of normalizing relations between Turkey and Syria” and “Russia’s constructive role as a mediator,” according to the statement.

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  • Finland on course for NATO membership after Hungarian vote

    Finland on course for NATO membership after Hungarian vote

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    The Hungarian parliament ratified Finland’s NATO membership on Monday, putting Helsinki one step closer to joining the alliance but leaving Sweden waiting in the wings. 

    Members of Hungary’s parliament voted by a margin of 182 to 6 in favor of Finnish accession.

    Helsinki now only needs the Turkish parliament’s approval — expected soon — to become a NATO member. 

    Hungary’s move comes after repeated delays and political U-turns. 

    Hungarian officials spent months telling counterparts they had no objections and their parliament was simply busy with other business. 

    Budapest then changed its narrative last month, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — who has an iron grip over his ruling Fidesz party — arguing the point that some of his legislators had qualms regarding criticism of the state of Hungarian democracy. 

    Finland and Sweden have been at the forefront of safeguarding democratic standards in Hungary, speaking out on the matter long before many of their counterparts.

    But earlier this month — just as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that he will support Finland’s NATO membership — the Fidesz position flipped again, with its parliamentary group chair then announcing support for Helsinki’s bid.

    Turkey’s parliament is expected to ratify Finnish membership soon. But it is keeping Sweden in limbo, as Turkish officials say they want to see the country implement new anti-terror policies before giving Ankara’s green light. 

    Following in Turkey’s footsteps, Hungary is now also delaying a decision on Sweden indefinitely — prompting criticism from Orbán’s critics. 

    Attila Ara-Kovács, a member of the European Parliament from Hungary’s opposition Democratic Coalition, said that Orbán’s moves are part of a strategy to fuel anti-Western attitudes at home. 

    The government’s aim is “further inciting anti-Western and anti-NATO sentiment within Hungary, especially among Orbán’s fanatical supporters — and besides, of course, to serve Russian interests,” he said. 

    “This has its consequences,” Ara-Kovács said, adding that “support for the EU and NATO in the country is significantly and constantly decreasing.”

    A recent Eurobarometer poll found that 39 percent of Hungarians view the EU positively. A NATO report, published last week, shows that 77 percent of Hungarians would vote to stay in the alliance — compared to 89 percent in Poland and 84 percent in Romania.

    But Hungarian officials are adding the spin that they do support Sweden’s NATO membership. 

    The Swedish government “constantly questioning the state of Hungarian democracy” is “insulting our voters, MPs and the country as a whole,” said Balázs Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister’s political director (no relation to the prime minister).

    It is “up to the Swedes to make sure that Hungarian MPs’ concerns are addressed,” he tweeted on Sunday. “Our goal,” he added, “is to support Sweden’s NATO accession with a parliamentary majority as broad as possible.” 

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  • Russian oil finds ‘wide open’ back door to Europe, critics say

    Russian oil finds ‘wide open’ back door to Europe, critics say

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    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has declared Europe’s dependence on Russian oil and gas “history.”

    But others, from senior Ukrainian officials to MEPs and industry insiders, say that chapter of history is still being written.

    Significant quantities of Russian hydrocarbons, particularly oil, are still flowing around sanctions and into the European market, they say, earning payments that fund Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

    “I had a friend in New York in the 1990s who complained cockroaches would get into his apartment through any available hole — that’s what Russia is doing with its energy,” Oleg Ustenko, economic adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told POLITICO. “We have to fix these holes to stop Russia receiving this blood money they are using to finance the military machine that is destroying our country and killing our people.”

    Crude oil is notoriously difficult to track on global markets. It can easily be mixed or blended with other shipments in transit countries, effectively creating a larger batch of oil whose origins can’t be determined. The refining process, necessary for any practical application, also removes all traces of the feedstock’s origin.

    A complex network of shipping companies, carrying the flags of inscrutable offshore jurisdictions, adds a further layer of mystery; some have been accused of helping Russia to hide the origin of its crude exports using a variety of different means.

    “Unlike pipeline gas, the oil market is global. Swap and netting systems, and mixing varieties are common practice,” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a prominent exiled critic of Putin and the former CEO of oil and gas giant Yukos.

    “The result of the embargo is a significant increase in Russian transportation costs, a significant redistribution of income in favor of intermediaries, and some additional discount due to the narrowing of the buyers’ market.”

    Crude workarounds?

    The EU has largely banned Russian fossil fuels since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with exceptions for limited quantities of pipeline crude oil, pipeline gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), and oil products.

    But large volumes of Russian crude oil — a bigger source of revenue than gas — are still being shipped onto global markets, leading some experts to suspect they are finding their way to Europe’s market through the back door.

    “Since the introduction of sanctions, the volumes of crude oil Russia is exporting have remained more or less steady,” said Saad Rahim, chief economist at global commodities trading firm Trafigura. “It’s possible that Russian oil is still being sold on to the EU and Western nations via middlemen.”

    Crude oil is notoriously difficult to track on global markets | Image via iStock

    One potential route into Europe is through Azerbaijan, which borders Russia and is the starting point of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, operated by BP. The port of Ceyhan, in Turkey, is a major supply hub from which crude oil is shipped to Europe; it also receives large quantities from Iraq through the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline.

    François Bellamy, a French MEP and member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy, aired suspicions about this route in a recent question to the Commission. Data show that Azerbaijan exported 242,000 barrels a day more than it produced between April and July last year, he said — a large margin over domestic production, which stood at 648,000 barrels a day last month and is in long-term decline, according to ministry figures.

    “How can a country diminish its production and increase its exports at the same time? There is something completely inconsistent in the figures and this inconsistency creates suspicions that sanctions are being circumvented,” Bellamy said.

    A spokesperson for the Commission said it is working to crack down on loopholes in sanctions regimes and has appointed the EU’s former ambassador to the U.S., David O’Sullivan, as a special envoy tasked with tackling circumvention. The official also pointed out that data cited by Bellamy on Azerbaijani oil transactions, the most recent publicly available, “happened before the sanctions entered into force so there is no question of evasion of sanctions there.”

    “Azerbaijan does not export Russian oil to the EU via the BTC pipeline,” said Aykhan Hajizada, spokesperson for the country’s foreign ministry, adding that while “Azerbaijan continues to use all non-sanctioned oil regardless of source,” it “remains committed to conducting its supply and trading operations with the utmost care and diligence, in line with relevant laws and regulations.”

    BP has previously been forced to deny that the BTC pipeline carries Russian oil, and data seen by POLITICO for crude shipments from Ceyhan shows a recent dip in the volume of exports to the EU, from around 3 million tons per month (about 700,000 barrels per day) in early 2022 to around 2 million tons a month this year.

    Slick operations

    At the same time, though, Turkey doubled its direct imports of Russian oil last year and has refused to impose sanctions on Russian crude despite simultaneously offering military and humanitarian support to Ukraine.

    Finland’s Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) warned late last year that “a new route for Russian oil to the EU is emerging through Turkey, a growing destination for Russian crude oil,” where it is refined into oil products that are not subject to sanctions and sold on.

    “We have enough evidence that some international companies are buying refinery products made from Russian oil and selling them on to Europe,” said Ustenko, the Zelenskyy adviser. “It’s completely legal, but completely immoral. Just because it’s allowed doesn’t mean we don’t need to do anything about it.”

    On Monday, British NGO Global Witness released a report that found Russian oil has consistently been sold at prices far exceeding the $60 cap imposed by G7 countries in December last year.

    “The fact Russian oil continues to flow round the world is a feature, not a bug, of Western sanctions,” said Mai Rosner, a campaigner who worked on the report. “Governments offered the fossil fuel industry a wide-open back door, and commodity traders and big oil companies are exploiting these loopholes to continue business as usual.”

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  • After earthquake, Northwell donates supplies to Turkey, Syria | Long Island Business News

    After earthquake, Northwell donates supplies to Turkey, Syria | Long Island Business News

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    Northwell Health is sending 22 palettes of medical and disaster relief supplies to regions in Syria and Turkey that were devastated by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake last month. The earthquake left more than 48,000 dead and millions displaced in a disaster that compounded by high-magnitude aftershocks in the areas, including a 5.6 magnitude last week.

    “We’re all part of one global family,” Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health, said in a statement. “And when there’s one part of the family in severe distress, we as a healthcare organization have to be concerned about people in other parts of the world.”

    Northwell has sent palettes of relief supplies previously, including a year ago to Ukraine, after Russia had invaded its neighbor. Now, in the Turkey-Syria relief effort,  Northwell gathered team members gathered with the Republic of Turkey Consul General Reyhan Ozgur at the health system’s distribution center in Bethpage on Friday to discuss the supplies going to that region.

    The health system is partnering with Medshare to transport supplies from New York into the affected regions. Northwell’s Center for Global Health is networking with local leaders on the ground to fund relief efforts where they’ll make the greatest impact.

    In this effort, Northwell is working with international partners that include Médecins Sans Frontières – known in the United States as Doctors Without Borders – to provide direct medical care to survivors and people in need of basic care.

    “We are gathering specialized supplies that are difficult to procure locally, things like dialysis kits, trauma supplies that are now already strained in Europe because of the war in Ukraine,” Dr. Eric Cioe Peña, director of the Center for Global Health, said in a statement.

    A Northwell Health Turkey-Syria relief fund was created to bring direct equitable financial support to the disaster areas.

    Abit Soylu is a Northwell paramedic, whose family lives in Turkey, lost his cousin and her son when their home collapsed in the initial earthquake.

    “It’s hard for me because I’m not there and I’m heartbroken here not being able to help them,” he said in a statement. “It took five days for them to find them in the rubble.”

    Other employees at the Bethpage warehouse included Amen Alhadi, a flight paramedic with Helicopter Emergency Medical Services, who has family in Syria,  and Dr. Anas Sawas, an emergency medicine physician at Mather Hospital in Port Jefferson, who spoke about the limited humanitarian access into Syria from the civil war, now strained by the earthquake.

    Also at the event were Dr.  Onat Akin, a Northwell pathologist with family in Turkey, and Dr. Banu Aygun, a pediatric oncologist at Cohen Children’s Medical Center. They said children in the region are now at medical risk because of a lack of access to care and clean water. Scabies and cholera can spread quickly and other illness from lack of vaccinations.

    “Aside from losing their homes, their schools, their friends, some of them are unfortunately orphans,” Aygun said in a statement. “The physical scars are very big, but the psychological scars are much deeper.”

    Northwell aims to replicate the relief efforts it brought to Ukraine to the areas devastated by the earthquake.

    “We’re a culturally dynamic health system,” Peña said. “Like in Ukraine, working with MSF and our teammates that hail from these regions will help us build sustainable relationships to get materials and funds to the right place and care for more people.”

    Northwell Health deployed its integrated telehealth service to provide 24/7 assistance to healthcare providers in Ukraine to consult and offer guidance on civilian and military patient care. The program provided more than 350 consults to clinicians caring for patients of blast injury and gunfire, to women with perinatal care needs and patients awaiting organ transplant.

    “When we launched this program, we quickly realized that using this as a peer-to-peer platform offered the most benefit and impact to the medical community in Ukraine,” Peña said.

    It’s the kind of support that would go a long way in Turkey and Syria.

    “We have an obligation and responsibility,” Dowling said. “It’s part of the culture of Northwell. Any time anyone is in trouble – whether it’s domestic or overseas – we do our best to help.

    “If we have the ability and the resources to help – and we obviously have the will – then we should help,” Dowling said. “That’s why we’re in the health care business. We can’t always be looking internal –  we have to look external. It’s something we’ve always done, it’s something we always do.”

    To donate and support the Northwell Health CGH Turkey/Relief fund visit: https://support.northwell.edu/center-for-global-health

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    Adina Genn

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  • Turkey’s earthquake caused $34 billion in damage. It could cost Erdogan the election | CNN

    Turkey’s earthquake caused $34 billion in damage. It could cost Erdogan the election | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    The devastating earthquake that hit Turkey on February 6 killed at least 45,000 people, rendered millions homeless across almost a dozen cities and caused immediate damage estimated at $34 billion – or roughly 4% of the country’s annual economic output, according to the World Bank.

    But the indirect cost of the quake could be much higher, and recovery will be neither easy nor quick.

    The Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation estimates the total cost of the quake at $84.1 billion, the lion’s share of which would be for housing, at $70.8 billion, with lost national income pegged at $10.4 billion and lost working days at $2.91 billion.

    “I do not recall… any economic disaster at this level in the history of the Republic of Turkey,” said Arda Tunca, an Istanbul-based economist at PolitikYol.

    Turkey’s economy had been slowing even before the earthquake. Unorthodox monetary policies by the government caused soaring inflation, leading to further income inequality and a currency crisis that saw the lira lose 30% of its value against the dollar last year. Turkey’s economy grew 5.6% last year, Reuters reported, citing official data.

    Economists say those structural weaknesses in the economy will only get worse because of the quake and could determine the course of presidential and parliamentary elections expected in mid-May.

    Still, Tunca says that while the physical damage from the quake is colossal, the cost to the country’s GDP won’t be as pronounced when compared to the 1999 earthquake in Izmit, which hit the country’s industrial heartland and killed more than 17,000. According to the OECD, the areas impacted in that quake accounted for a third of the country’s GDP.

    The provinces most affected by the February 6 quake represent some 15% of Turkey’s population. According to the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation, they contribute 9% of the nation’s GDP, 11% of income tax and 14% of income from agriculture and fisheries.

    “Economic growth would slow down at first but I don’t expect a recessionary threat due to the earthquake,” said Selva Demiralp, a professor of economics at Koc University in Istanbul. “I don’t expect the impact on (economic) growth to be more than 1 to 2 (percentage) points.”

    There has been growing criticism of the country’s preparedness for the quake, whether through policies to mitigate the economic impact or prevent the scale of the damage seen in the disaster.

    How Turkey will rehabilitate its economy and provide for its newly homeless people is not yet known. But it could prove pivotal in determining President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political fate, analysts and economists say, as he seeks another term in office.

    The government’s 2023 budget, released before the earthquake, had planned for increased spending in an election year, foreseeing a deficit of 660 billion liras ($34.9 billion).

    The government has already announced some measures that analysts said were designed to shore up Erdogan’s popularity, including a near 55% increase in the minimum wage, early retirement and cheaper housing loans.

    Economists say that Turkey’s fiscal position is strong. Its budget deficit, when compared to its economic output, is smaller than that of other emerging markets like India, China and Brazil. That gives the government room to spend.

    “Turkey starts from a position of relative fiscal strength,” said Selva Bahar Baziki of Bloomberg Economics. “The necessary quake spending will likely result in the government breaching their budget targets. Given the high humanitarian toll, this would be the year to do it.”

    Quake-related public spending is estimated at 2.6% of GDP in the short run, she told CNN, but could eventually reach as high as 5.5%.

    Governments usually plug budget shortfalls by taking on more debt or raising taxes. Economists say both are likely options. But post-quake taxation is already a touchy topic in the country, and could prove risky in an election year.

    After the 1999 quake, Turkey introduced an “earthquake tax” that was initially introduced as a temporary measure to help cushion economic damage, but subsequently became a permanent tax.

    There has been concern in the country that the state may have squandered those tax revenues, with opposition leaders calling on the government to be more transparent about what happened to the money raised. When asked in 2020, Erdogan said the money “was not spent out of its purpose.” Since then, the government has said little more about how the money was spent.

    “The funds created for earthquake preparedness have been used for projects such as road constructions, infrastructure build-ups, etc. other than earthquake preparedness,” said Tunca. “In other words, no buffers or cushions have been set in place to limit the economic impacts of such disasters.”

    The Turkish presidency didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Analysts say it’s too early to tell precisely what impact the economic fallout will have on Erdogan’s prospects for re-election.

    The president’s approval rating was low even before the quake. In a December poll by Turkish research firm MetroPOLL, 52.1% of respondents didn’t approve of his handling of his job as president. A survey a month earlier found that a slim majority of voters would not vote for Erdogan if an election were held on that day.

    Two polls last week, however, showed the Turkish opposition had not picked up fresh support, Reuters reported, citing partly its failure to name a candidate and partly its lack of a tangible plan to rebuild areas devastated by the quake.

    The majority of the provinces worst affected by the quake voted for Erdogan and his ruling AK Party in the 2018 elections, but in some of those provinces, Erdogan and the AK Party won with a plurality of votes or a slim majority.

    Those provinces are some of the poorest in the country, the World Bank says.

    Research conducted by Demiralp as well as academics Evren Balta from Ozyegin University and Seda Demiralp from Isik University, found that while the ruling AK Party’s voters’ high partisanship is a strong hindrance to voter defection, economic and democratic failures could tip the balance.

    “Our data shows that respondents who report being able to make ends meet are more likely to vote for the incumbent AKP again,” the research concludes. “However, once worsening economic fundamentals push more people below the poverty line, the possibility of defection increases.”

    This could allow opposition parties to take votes from the incumbent rulers “despite identity-based cleavages if they target economically and democratically dissatisfied voters via clear messages.”

    For Tunca, the economic fallout from the quake poses a real risk for Erdogan’s prospects.

    “The magnitude of Turkey’s social earthquake is much greater than that of the tectonic one,” he said. “There is a tug of war between the government and the opposition, and it seems that the winner is going to be unknown until the very end of the elections.”

    Nadeen Ebrahim and Isil Sariyuce contributed to this report.

    This article has been corrected to say that the research, not the survey, was conducted by the academics.

    Sub-Saharan African countries repatriate citizens from Tunisia after ‘shocking’ statements from country’s president

    Sub-Saharan African countries including Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea and Gabon, are helping their citizens return from Tunisia following a controversial statement from Tunisian President Kais Saied, who has led a crackdown on illegal immigration into the North African country since last month.

    • Background: In a meeting with Tunisia’s National Security Council on February 21, Saied described illegal border crossing from sub-Saharan Africa into Tunisia as a “criminal enterprise hatched at the beginning of this century to change the demographic composition of Tunisia.” He said the immigration aims to turn Tunisia into “only an African country with no belonging to the Arab and Muslim worlds.” In a later speech on February 23, Saied maintained there is no racial discrimination in Tunisia and said that Africans residing in Tunisia legally are welcome. Authorities arrested 58 African migrants on Friday after they reportedly crossed the border illegally, state news agency TAP reported on Saturday.
    • Why it matters: Saied, whose seizure of power in 2021 was described as a coup by his foes, is facing challenges to his rule at home. Reuters on Sunday reported that opposition figures and rights groups have said that the president’s crackdown on migrants was meant to distract from Tunisia’s economic crisis.

    Iranian Supreme Leader says schoolgirls’ poisoning is an ‘unforgivable crime’

    Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday said that the poisoning of schoolgirls in recent months across Iran is an “unforgivable crime,” state-run news agency IRNA reported. Khamenei urged authorities to pursue the issue, saying that “if it is proven that the students were poisoned, the perpetrators of this crime should be severely punished.”

    • Background: Concern is growing in Iran after reports emerged that hundreds of schoolgirls had been poisoned across the country over the last few months. On Wednesday, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News reported that Shahriar Heydari, a member of parliament, said that “nearly 900 students” from across the country had been poisoned so far, citing an unnamed, “reliable source.”
    • Why it matters: The reports have led to a local and international outcry. While it is unclear whether the incidents were linked and if the students were targeted, some believe them to be deliberate attempts at shutting down girls’ schools, and even potentially linked to recent protests that spread under the slogan, “Women, Life, Freedom.”

    Iran to allow further IAEA access following discussions – IAEA chief

    Iran will allow more access and monitoring capabilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), agency Director General Rafael Grossi said at a press conference in Vienna on Saturday, following a trip to the Islamic Republic. The additional monitoring is set to start “very, very soon,” said Grossi, with an IAEA team arriving within a few days to begin reinstalling the equipment at several sites.

    • Background: Prior to the news conference, the IAEA released a joint statement with Iran’s atomic energy agency in which the two bodies agreed that interactions between them will be “carried out in the spirit of collaboration.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said he hopes the IAEA will remain neutral and fair to Iran’s nuclear energy program and refrain from being affected “by certain powers which are pursuing their own specific goals,” reported Iranian state television Press TV on Saturday.
    • Why it matters: Last week, a restricted IAEA report seen by CNN said that uranium particles enriched to near bomb-grade levels have been found at an Iranian nuclear facility, as the US warned that Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb was accelerating. The president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, rejected the recent IAEA report, which detected particles of uranium enriched to 83.7% at the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran, saying there has been ‘“no deviation” in Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities.

    A new sphinx statue has been discovered in Egypt – but this one is thought to be Roman.

    The smiling sculpture and the remains of a shrine were found during an excavation mission in Qena, a southern Egyptian city on the eastern banks of the River Nile.

    The shrine had been carved in limestone and consisted of a two-level platform, Mamdouh Eldamaty, a former minister of antiquities and professor of Egyptology at Ain Shams University said in a statement Monday from Egypt’s ministry of tourism and antiquities. A ladder and mudbrick basin for water storage were found inside.

    The basin, believed to date back to the Byzantine era, housed the smiling sphinx statue, carved from limestone.

    Eldamaty described the statue as bearing “royal facial features.” It had a “soft smile” with two dimples. It also wore a nemes on its head, the striped cloth headdress traditionally worn by pharaohs of ancient Egypt, with a cobra-shaped end or “uraeus.”

    A Roman stela with hieroglyphic and demotic writings from the Roman era was found below the sphinx.

    The professor said that the statue may represent the Roman Emperor Claudius, the fourth Roman emperor who ruled from the year 41 to 54, but noted that more studies are needed to verify the structure’s owner and history.

    The discovery was made in the eastern side of Dendera Temple in Qena, where excavations are still ongoing.

    Sphinxes are recurring creatures in the mythologies of ancient Egyptian, Persian and Greek cultures. Their likenesses are often found near tombs or religious buildings.

    It is not uncommon for new sphinx statues to be found in Egypt. But the country’s most famous sphinx, the Great Sphinx of Giza, dates back to around 2,500 BC and represents the ancient Egyptian Pharoah Khafre.

    By Nadeen Ebrahim

    Ziya Sutdelisi, 53, a former local administrator, receives a free haircut from a volunteer from Gaziantep, in the village of Buyuknacar, near Pazarcik, Kahramanmaras province on Sunday, one month after a massive earthquake struck southeast Turkey.

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  • Turkish Airlines Flies Hero Dogs Home In Style | Entrepreneur

    Turkish Airlines Flies Hero Dogs Home In Style | Entrepreneur

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    Dogs who participated in rescue efforts after the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria got a special treat from Turkish Airlines — a ride in business class, rather than the cargo section, according to Insider.

    “It was the least we could to do show our appreciation for these heroic dogs’ sincere and heroic efforts,” the company told the outlet.

    An earthquake of 7.8 magnitudes hit parts of Turkey and Syria on February 6 and some 49,000 people have died as of February 24, per The New York Times. Two weeks later, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit the region adding to the death totals.

    Dogs from the U.S., Poland, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Croatia, and Libya, have all taken part in recovery efforts, Insider noted.

    A dog’s sense of smell can pick out human remains from other types of remains (like animals) and find live survivors trapped in the rubble, especially after live rescuers have done their work. These types of dogs typically have a handler.

    Some countries, like Mexico for example, have a national dog rescue team, which found fame in 2017 after helping find survivors after an earthquake hit Puebla, a state southeast of Mexico City.

    Turkish Airlines shared photos of the dogs in transit with Entrepreneur, calling them “our heroic friends.” The company flew the dogs back to their home countries, it added.

    A dog from China flying home. Courtesy company

    A dog from Kyrgyzstan. Courtesy company

    A rescue dog from Thailand. Courtesy company

    Another dog from Thailand. Courtesy company.

    Aid has come to the country from various countries, aid organizations, and the United Nations, but efforts to get help into Syria have been difficult amid the country’s ongoing civil war, which has been raging since 2011, Insider noted.

    The dogs flown home by Turkish Airlines were done so for free, along with their handlers, and some were even treated to business class seats, Insider added.

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    Gabrielle Bienasz

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