Targeted journalists file criminal complaint against ‘Sledgehammer’

MEDIA REVIEW

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-199993-100-targeted-journalists-file-criminal-complaint-against-sledgehammer.html

YONCA POYRAZ DOĞAN

Many of the journalists whose names are on a “to be arrested” list allegedly prepared in 2003 by military coup planners filed a criminal complaint in İstanbul yesterday against all people involved in the creation of the Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan.

Speaking on behalf of 28 out of the 35 journalists who were on the list, Sabah columnist Nazlı Ilıcak said that they denounce the Sledgehammer plan. “In the so-called ‘war game,’ journalists were categorized as ‘to be arrested’ and ‘to be used.’ We condemn the idea that 137 of our colleagues were labeled ‘collaborators’ without their knowledge or approval. We invite the political parties represented in Parliament to take action,” Ilıcak said at a press conference prior to filing a criminal complaint at the Beşiktaş High Criminal Court. She added that the coup planners violated Articles 309, 311 and 312 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).

Meanwhile, Genç Siviller (Young Civilians) demonstrated in support of the journalists with banners reading, “İpekçi, Mumcu, Dink bir daha asla” (İpekçi, Mumcu, Dink never again), “Andıç bir daha asla” (Andıç [background information memorandums] never again) and “Balyoz bir daha asla” (Sledgehammer never again), in reference to past political assassinations and categorizations of journalists and other people on previous lists.

The journalists who filed the criminal complaint also announced their suggestions for parliamentary initiatives. The first action on their list is to abolish the Protocol on Cooperation for Security and Public Order (EMASYA), which allows military operations to be carried out for internal security under certain conditions without authorization from civilian authorities. Their second suggestion is to amend Article 145 of the Constitution to limit the duties of the military courts to the military sphere, and in that regard they also suggested abolishment of the military high administrative courts and military courts of appeals.

Another suggestion of the journalists is to eliminate Article 35 of the Internal Service Act in order to prevent misinterpretation of the charge to “protect and look out for the republic.” Their last suggestion is the establishment of a parliamentary commission to investigate the coup plans.

 “This would allow the political parties to take mutual initiatives, reduce polarization and prevent unproductive discussions in these critical times when there is a need for the intellectuals to take action together,” their statement read.

This was the theme expressed by many journalists at the press conference, as they complained of a lack of willpower in the country to act together against coup plans and called on their colleagues not to fall into the trap of those who would cause divisions among journalists.

Ekrem Dumanlı, editor-in chief of the Zaman daily, said that it is Turkish democracy which is under threat.

“Let’s not see the issue in divisive terms like people in different camps. It is a shame to think that people would be divided into camps over the issue of coup plans,” he said.

Sibel Erarslan, a columnist at the Taraf daily, said that she would like to see solidarity from those who are not in the “to be arrested” list.

Radikal daily columnist Cengiz Çandar, whose name is also on the list, said that the 137 journalists on the other list, the potential collaborators, have a right to file a criminal complaint as well.

 “We did not make that division ourselves. The planners of the coup did it. Not all 137 journalists might have been victims in that regard, but for the ones who are, we call on them to file a criminal complaint,” he said at the press conference.

Star daily columnist Mehmet Altan said that the Cage plan was as notorious as the Sledgehammer plan, but some media outlets did not speak up against it. He recalled that the Cage plan is now under investigation as part of the Ergenekon case, referring to the İstanbul 12th High Criminal Court’s ruling on Wednesday to accept the indictment of military officers detained as part of an investigation into a weapons cache buried in İstanbul’s Poyrazköy district in April of last year during the probe into an illegal organization known as Ergenekon.

Vakit daily columnist Yavuz Bahadıroğlu reminded those who said the documents were just “fabrications” that the General Staff did not deny the plans.

 “I am glad that these plans are revealed now. When fitna is revealed, it loses its effect. In the past, such things were discussed behind closed doors. Today, we are heading in the right direction,” he said.

According to the Sledgehammer plan, which appeared in the Taraf daily starting on Jan. 20 and was allegedly prepared by Gen. Çetin Doğan, the junta group planned to have 35 journalists arrested and thought they could “make use of” 137 others in spurring public support for the coup. According to Taraf, there is no indication that the potentially useful journalists were in on the coup plans or had any other connections to the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK).

The Sledgehammer plan is not, however, the first of its kind. The liberal Taraf daily has revealed several other plots in the past, including the Action Plan to Fight Reactionaryism and the Cage Operation Action Plan. All of those plans were drafted by active duty members of the military and sought to topple the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government.

The 28 writers/journalists who filed the criminal complaint against the planners of Sledgehammer operation are: Ilıcak, Altan, Abdurrahman Dilipak, Ahmet Taşgetiren, Ali İhsan Karahasanoğlu, Çandar, Dumanlı, Hasan Celal Güzel, Hidayet Karaca, Hüseyin Gülerce, Mustafa Karaalioğlu, Perihan Mağden, Akif Emre, Hasan Karakaya, Kazım Güleçyüz, Mehmet Ocaktan, Nuh Gönültaş, Eraslan, Sadık Albayrak, Bahadıroğlu, Emre Aköz, Serdar Arseven, Mustafa Erdoğan, Etyen Mahçupyan, Gülay Göktürk, Ali Bayramoğlu, Abdullah Aymaz, Murat Belge and Abdullah Aymaz. Ilıcak said that they were not able to reach a few people on the list, including Abdullah Yıldız, Haluk Örgün and Mustafa Kaplan, and Fehmi Koru and Umur Talu were not interested in being part of the group seeking mutual action. Also on the list of “to be arrested” journalists was Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, who was assassinated on Jan. 19, 2007.

29.01.2010 News

Sack Military Secy, says Indain Army court of inquiry into land scam

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/557988/
 
New Delhi: An Army inquiry into the Darjeeling land scam, first reported by The Indian Express, has recommended “termination of services” of Lt Gen Avadhesh Prakash, Military Secretary at Army HQ and one of the seniormost Generals, and court martial proceedings against Lt Gen P K Rath whose appointment as Deputy Chief of Army Staff was later scrapped by the Ministry of Defence.
The inquiry also favoured disciplinary action and court martial against Major General P Sen and administrative action against
Lt Gen Ramesh Halgali, currently commanding the 11 Corps. A separate inquiry has also been recommended against a Colonel of the legal department for giving dubious advice regarding the land deal.
The inquiry found that Prakash was in constant touch with a Siliguri real estate developer, Dilip Agarwal, who brokered a controversial land deal in Darjeeling.
Through phone records, the inquiry established, that Agarwal, who inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to obtain no-objection certificates (NOCs) from the Army to purchase nearly 70 acres near the 33 Corps HQ in Sukna, was in constant touch with Prakash while the deal was being sealed. The NOCs were given after an institution claimed it was an affiliate of the Mayo College in Ajmer and would establish a branch in Sukna. Mayo College denied it had any affiliate.
Apart from establishing the connection between Prakash and Agarwal, the inquiry was also told by Rath, who as the then 33 Corps Commander authorised granting of NOCs, that Prakash used his influence to get the deal through.
Sources said the recommendation for termination of services of Prakash were given by Eastern Army Commander, Lt Gen V K Singh, on the basis of the court of inquiry findings and opinion by the Army’s legal department.
While the recommendations have been forwarded by the Eastern Army command, the onus for action against Prakash, who is one of the seven Principal Staff Officers (PSO) at Army HQ, now lies with Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor.
The Army Chief, sources said, now has the choice to accept the recommendations and terminate Prakash’s services or overrule the matter on sound legal grounds. If the recommendation is accepted, Prakash can either accept dismissal or face court martial proceedings where he can contest the charges against him.

Mosques, minarets, religious diversity: Europe and the rest

Şener Aktürk

http://todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-199530-109-centermosques-minarets-religious-diversity-europe-and-the-restbr-i-by-i-brsener-akturkcenter.html

 

Is the Swiss vote banning the construction of minarets a rupture in a European tradition that is otherwise tolerant of religious diversity?

On the contrary, the Swiss ban on minarets is in conformity with a Continental European hostility towards mosques and minarets. Most European states, even those that were once ruled by Muslims, removed traces of Islamic architecture, some of them not even leaving a single mosque standing.

Swiss voters embarrassed their government, shocked the world and surprised their pollsters by approving a ban on the construction of minarets, the most symbolic element of Islamic architecture, in Switzerland. The purported goal of this ban, which has the status of a constitutional ban, is to prevent the “Islamization” of Switzerland. There are four mosques with minarets in all of Switzerland, and none of them perform the daily calls to the prayer from their minarets.

Making matters worse, a large segment of Swiss Muslims are Bosnians, people who escaped ethnic cleansing and concentration camps committed by ultranationalists who targeted historic Ottoman-era mosques of Bosnia as part of their campaign to eradicate Bosnia’s Muslim heritage, human and architectural. Now minarets are banned in the peaceful, multicultural and wealthy haven in the Alps where they sought refuge.

Comparison is the basis of the social sciences, and it is the foundation of a fair and dispassionate discussion, especially if the topic of discussion is as heated as religion and politics. And a fair comparison is the basis of a fair discussion, whether on current policy or historical practice.

An evenhanded tourist traveling through Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Senegal, India, Indonesia, China and Russia would observe this much about religious diversity: While in those Catholic and Protestant countries, once upon a time designated as the (Western) “Christendom,” stretching from Portugal and France to Lithuania and Hungary, overlapping more or less with the borders of present-day EU, our hypothetical tourist is not going to find a historic “Muslim quarter” or even a historic mosque, even in those lands that have been ruled by Muslims for centuries. Our tourist will find some Muslim ghettos built to accommodate, mostly, the descendants of Muslim workers called upon to rebuild Europe after World War II.

In contrast, in predominately Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and some Eastern Orthodox Christian countries, our hypothetical tourist will find churches, mosques, temples of other religions as well as sizable adherents of many religions coexisting for centuries, if not millennia. This is the big picture. Again, to be fair in our comparison, there are some exceptions to this generalization on the Muslim side, such as Turkey and Algeria, which resemble average European countries in their religious homogeneity.

And through the wars and violence in places like Iraq and Pakistan, religious diversity in those Muslim countries is being eroded. But despite exceptions, until the 1960s the religious market in Madrid and Palermo, Budapest and Athens has been “monopolized” by one religion only, Christianity, and our tourist will look in vain if s/he is seeking historical communities of Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists or other non-Christian denominations. This picture is in stark contrast to the dazzling religious diversity of Egypt, Syria, India, Indonesia, China, Azerbaijan or even Russia.

Given the historical background of a Western Christian monopoly in the religious market, it is somewhat understandable that when Muslims, the first significant group of non-Christians, appeared in post-Holocaust Europe, they have increasingly faced nativist and Islamophobic reactions from the older residents.

Historical intolerance

Western European and Balkan countries have been historically intolerant of mosques, minarets and other symbolic forms of Islamic culture. While living in Central Europe, I was shocked not to find a single historic mosque in Budapest, Hungary, which was ruled by the Ottomans for more than 150 years.

Athens, which lived under Muslim rule for 375 years, until the 19th century, did not have a mosque until 2006, although it is home to an estimated 200,000 Muslims. The same is still true of more than one capital city among EU member states.

Although Switzerland will be the first country to have a constitutional amendment against the building of minarets, many other European countries “combat” the “minaret threat” by denying permission for the building of mosques, let alone minarets. Unlike Switzerland, which at least has mosques and four of them with minarets, Slovenia still does not have a single mosque, despite the demands by its Muslim minority (2.4 percent of the population) since 1969.

Germany is the EU member state with the largest population, boasting a Muslim minority estimated at 3 to 4 million people and 2,400 prayer spaces described as “mosques,” but its capital city, Berlin, only has a single mosque with a clearly visible minaret, located on the outskirts of the city next to an airport. Even this signature mosque with a minaret was built with the support of the Turkish government next to the historic Muslim cemetery, where Ottoman soldiers who fought on the side of Germany in World War I are buried.

While the shining golden cupola of the New Synagogue in central Berlin adorns the Berlin skyline with its sole dome, an Islamic dome and minaret are conspicuous for their absence, despite the presence of a much larger Muslim minority. Right-wing mobilization against the building of a mosque with a minaret in Cologne fortunately failed to prevent the approval of a construction permit for the mosque there.

The German Constitution bans popular plebiscites and referenda, a legacy of de-Nazification, since Hitler abused plebiscites and referenda in pursuit of his anti-Semitic, totalitarian and expansionist agenda. Subjecting minority rights and religious freedoms to a popular referendum, though it has the veneer of democracy, is deeply illiberal and against the spirit of representative democracy.

In contrast, Europe’s eastern and southern neighbors, Russia and the Muslim countries of the Near East, provide many examples of churches and mosques standing side by side. Most certainly not more democratic or liberal than Western Europe, Russia and the Muslim countries of the Middle East are more accustomed to and accepting of religious diversity and its architectural representations. A bewildering variety of Christian denominations and their churches adorn the Syrian landscape, and I was pleasantly surprised to find churches along with synagogues and mosques in Moscow and elsewhere in present-day Russia, despite the pervasive anti-Semitism and Islamophobia found in that country.

Even in Turkey, where, as a result of nationalism, discriminatory policies and multiple wars in the first half of the 20th century, only a very small Christian minority remains today, one can nonetheless find hundreds of churches relatively intact. A comparison with the vanished mosques and minarets of Hungary, Greece, Spain, Sicily, Romania, Serbia and elsewhere in Europe is inescapable.

Even I had known little about the centuries-long Islamic civilization in Sicily until becoming interested on this island after reading Tariq Ali’s beautiful novel, “A Sultan in Palermo.” So thoroughly “erased” from public memory is the Islamic history of Europe, reminiscent of Omar Bartov’s description of the vanishing traces of Jewish heritage in Galicia, in his book “Erased.”

Swiss ban not exceptional

The Swiss minaret ban has to be considered in the context of a historic resistance to non-Christian religions and their symbols in Europe. The Swiss are not exceptional; many European countries use legal and bureaucratic methods less sensational than referenda and constitutional bans to prevent the building of mosques and minarets.

On a positive note, the constitutional ban against the minarets by the Swiss provokes us to interrogate Europe’s historical record vis-à-vis non-Christian religions and in comparison to the rest of the world for a truly democratic Europe has to genuinely accommodate the religious diversity in its midst. It has to be multicultural, not only in its demographic stock but also in its official and public expression.

Religious pluralism broadly defined, including facing with and embracing Europe’s suppressed Islamic history and Muslim heritage, along with accommodation of present-day non-Christian minorities, be they Muslims, Jews or others, is a sine qua non of such a democratic multiculturalism, one which we must strive for in Europe and elsewhere around the world.

Şener Aktürk (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is a post-doctoral fellow at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and a visiting lecturer in government at Harvard University.

Minaret ban reflects Europeans’ confusion about their secular identity

Joe Wood

In fact, this story comes from the other side of the Atlantic. Amish residents of Morristown, New York, claim that the local building code violates their beliefs by requiring them to install smoke detectors in their homes, submit engineering plans, and obtain building permits. Eleven Amish men have been charged with violating the code since 2006, and the Amish say they will have to leave if they lose their fight. Their lawyer decried Morristown’s “crusade against the Amish.” Arbitration failed to resolve the question earlier this month, and litigation will ensue.

The Amish case highlights the tension between religious and civil authorities that still produces heated debate and frequent lawsuits in the United States. The founding myth of America is rooted in religious freedom, but the reality has been far more complex: the original pilgrims tolerated no religious dissent, Catholic Mass was illegal in Maryland (originally a Catholic colony) for most of the 18th century, Jews and Catholics were prohibited from holding public office in some places as late as the latter part of the 19th century. The history of the efforts of American courts to regulate religious-civil tension has reflected (and often produced) extraordinary confusion.

But the confusion in the United States is usually limited to litigation, letter-writing campaigns, and sharp rhetoric. While the questions involved are real and very dear to those on both sides, the disputes generally are not thought to go to the core of American identity. In Europe, a different kind of confusion seems to prevail.

In early December, Switzerland’s citizens voted, with a comfortable 57% majority, to ban the building of new minarets (Switzerland, with a total population of 7.7 million, is home to 400.000 Muslims — mostly from the Balkans and Turkey — and four minarets). The Swiss minaret referendum has been interpreted as both a statement in response to (and fear of) increased Muslim presence in Europe, and a response to the possible growth of a political Islam whose values are incompatible with the West. Both interpretations have merit as explanations of the Swiss vote.

Architecture is central to any culture, from Muslims to Amish to Europeans. As such, architectural symbols both shape and convey a sense of identity and place. French President Nicolas Sarkozy wrote in The Guardian,

"The Swiss vote has nothing to do with religious freedom or freedom of conscience. No one, in Switzerland or anywhere else, questions these fundamental freedoms. Europeans are welcoming and tolerant: it is in their nature and culture. But they do not want their way of life to be undermined, and the feeling that one’s identity is being lost can cause deep unhappiness. The more open the world – the greater the traffic of ideas, people, capital and goods – the more we need anchors and benchmarks, and the more we need to feel that we are not alone. National identity is the antidote to tribalism and sectarianism."

Concern in Switzerland about identity suggests not just a reaction to a foreign presence, but a lack of confidence in the continuing strength of Switzerland’s own identity. The cross on the Swiss flag, originally worn by Christian soldiers, is no longer thought of as an actively Christian symbol. The Swiss are not alone; polling indicates that the populations of other West European countries would also reject minarets given the opportunity. As Christopher Caldwell concludes in his recent study of Islam in Europe, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, when a minority with strong cultural and religious beliefs confronts a majority with weaker beliefs and sense of identity, the minority is likely to have a greater influence than simple numbers would predict. Europeans seem to feel this, but they are also unsure how to react. Many who denounced the minaret ban had also supported the European Court of Human Rights decision earlier in November to ban crucifixes in Italian schools, a decision condemned across the Italian political spectrum for its alleged assault on national identity.

Concern for the preservation of a vague but important sense of identity is linked to concerns about the influence of “political Islam.” The radicalization of young Muslims in Europe, terrorist plots both successful and foiled, calls for the application of sharia law, and foreign funding of mosque construction all produce a fear that some Muslims have a political agenda that would change European society dramatically. The minaret, rightly or wrongly, is seen as a forceful symbol of this political Islam.

The United States has two important advantages over Europe in dealing with religious symbols: the absence of a history of national wars associated with religious divisions, and a strong ability to integrate immigrants. Until European nations find a confident sense of identity that grows beyond much of their history and learn to better integrate the immigrants they need for their economies, European confusion on religious symbols will only increase.

Joe Wood is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow with the German Marshall Fund in Washington, DC.

I posted this article for enhancing understanding on this sensitive and important issue.