ISTANBUL: When President Tayyip Erdogan opened a new court complex this month, Turkey’s senior cleric sealed the ceremony with a Muslim prayer, triggering protests from critics who said his actions contravened the secular constitution.
“Make this wonderful work beneficial and blessed for our nation, my God,” Ali Erbas said in his address, adding that many judges had “worked to bring the justice which (God) ordered.”
Erbas’s appearance at the Sept. 1 ceremony in Ankara, and the wave of opposition criticism over his comments, reflect his rising profile at the head of a state-run religious organization and the growing influence it has attained under Erdogan.
The president, whose ruling AK Party is rooted in political Islam, has overturned decades-old restrictions imposed on religion by modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, placing Islam center-stage in political life.
Last year Erbas delivered the first sermon in Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia after the Byzantine church-turned-museum was reconverted into a mosque. He did so while clutching a sword, saying this was traditional for preachers in mosques taken by conquest. The church was captured by Ottoman forces in 1453.
His state-run Diyanet organization, or Religious Affairs Directorate, has its own television channel which is recruiting 30 new staff. Its budget, which already matches that of an average ministry, will rise by a quarter next year to 16.1 billion lira ($1.86 billion), government data shows.
Erdogan further endorsed Erbas last week by extending his term at the Diyanet. He was with Erdogan again on Monday in New York, reciting a prayer at the opening of a skyscraper that will house Turkish diplomats based there.
Erdogan’s political foes says Erbas’s growing profile is at odds with the Turkish Republic’s secular constitution, and shows the president is using religion to boost his waning ratings ahead of an election scheduled for 2023.
“It is completely unacceptable for the Religious Affairs Directorate to be used politically by the AKP,” said Bahadir Erdem, deputy chairman of the opposition Iyi Party.
“The reason for Ali Erbas repeatedly making statements that polarize the nation is very clearly the government using religious sensitivities of those whose votes it thinks it can win,” he said.
Apart from the Diyanet’s growing prominence, secularists also fret over a sharp increase in religious ‘Imam Hatip’ schools, a 10 percent rise in mosque numbers in the last decade, the lifting of a ban on Muslim headscarves in state institutions and the taming of Turkey’s powerful military, once a bastion of secularism, all during Erdogan’s rule.
Responding to the criticism over the Diyanet, the presidency shared a picture of Ataturk standing in prayer beside a Muslim cleric at a ceremony outside Turkey’s new parliament 100 years ago, suggesting that even the founder of the secular republic gave space to religion alongside politics.
The secularist main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) accuse Erdogan of deliberately using Erbas to distract public attention from Turkey’s mounting economic woes.
“He has put the Religious Affairs Directorate chairman on the field like a pawn,” CHP spokesman Faik Oztrak said.
Turkey’s constitution says the Diyanet must act in line with the principles of secularism, without expressing political views.
Erbas, a former theology professor who took office in 2017, has not addressed the criticism directly but says his role is limited to religious guidance.
“In line with the duty set out in the constitution to ‘enlighten society regarding religion’, our directorate is working to convey to our people in the most correct way the principles of Islam,” he said in a speech last week.
That message does not reassure secularist critics.
Erbas’s frequent presence at Erdogan’s side reveals a “very significant elevation of the role of Sunni Islam in government in Turkey,” said Soner Cagaptay, a director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
“The secularist firewall of the 20th century, established by Ataturk and guarded by his successors, that has separated religion and government, and religion and education, has completely collapsed,” he said.
Erbas has courted controversy in the past. Last year his suggestion that homosexuality causes illness triggered a clash between Erdogan’s AKP and Turkey’s lawyers’ associations over freedom of expression.
But he has won support from Erdogan’s nationalist ally Devlet Bahceli.
“Turkey is a Muslim country,” he said. “The allergy against the Islamic religion of those wicked people who have broken off ties with our national and spiritual values is an incurable clinical case.”
Turkey’s top Islamic cleric moves center stage, irking secularists
Turkey’s top Islamic cleric moves center stage, irking secularists
- Political foes says Ali Erbas’s growing profile is at odds with the Turkish Republic’s secular constitution
Israeli NGO warns of “quiet annexation” of West Bank under cover of war
- ACRI accuses Netanyahu govt. of “excessive, unrestrained and illegal use of force” in occupied territory in a new report
- Says govt. is “implementing profound changes to all aspects of control, most of which are flying under the radar”
LONDON: On Oct. 12 last year, a group of armed settlers and Israeli soldiers drove into the West Bank village of Wadi Al-Seeq, 10 kilometers east of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.
There, they seized and handcuffed three Palestinian men, subjecting them to hours of abuse and violence, later compared by one of the victims to the treatment meted out by rogue US soldiers to prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in 2003.
The abuses in Wadi Al-Seeq were led by members of the IDF’s Sfar Hamidbar (Desert Frontier) unit, notorious for recruiting into its ranks violent “hilltop youth” from the illegal farming settlements that are proliferating in the West Bank with the blessing of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, which includes, and is dependent on the support of, far-right parties.
“For hours,” as an Israeli newspaper reported on Oct. 21, 2023, the Palestinians “were severely beaten, stripped to their underwear, and photographed handcuffed.
“Their captors urinated on two of them and extinguished burning cigarettes on them. There was even an attempt to penetrate one of them with an object.”
Israeli human rights activists who arrived at the scene were also arrested, cuffed, beaten, threatened with death and, like the Palestinians, robbed.
At the time, many in Israel were shocked to read the reports of the joint operation between the IDF and settlers, exposed by the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
But as a new report from an Israeli human rights group makes clear, such events have become commonplace as, under cover of the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, the Israeli government and its agencies have been pursuing the ultimate goal of “realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.”
In the report, “One year of war: the collapse of human and civil rights in Israel and the West Bank,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) accuses the government of “excessive, unrestrained, and illegal use of force.”
Furthermore, it says, Netanyahu’s government is “demolishing the judicial system and the civil service with the aim of accumulating unlimited power; increasing the use of force in the West Bank and granting tacit permission for unrestrained settler violence; using force to limit freedom of expression and protest; and systematically violating the rights of detainees and prisoners.”
The list of charges levelled against the government is long, including institutionalized discrimination against Arab society, “unprecedented” infringement of the rights of suspects and prisoners, the “mass armament and creation of untrained forces” of settlers, the “destruction of democratic foundations,” attacks on freedom of expression and “normalization of citizen surveillance and disregard for privacy.”
Legislative steps are being taken with the aim of excluding certain parties from running for the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Last month a controversial bill was passed to change the rules for banning individuals or parties from membership of the Knesset if they have “supported terror,” a definition which now includes visiting the family of someone accused of an act of terrorism.
Likud, Netanyahu’s party, has even accused Arab members of the Knesset of supporting terror simply on the ground of their support for Palestinian statehood.
“Depriving a population of the right to protest politically and the right to political representation” is “a very slippery slope,” said Noa Sattath, the CEO of ACRI.
“When there’s no political representation of a minority, then there's a radicalization of that minority.”
IN NUMBERS
- 733 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.
- 40 Israelis killed during the same period.
- 3,340 Palestinians in administrative detention as of last June.
- 11,800 Palestinians arrested since current conflict erupted.
What the ACRI report exposes on a grand scale, says Sattath, is “the excessive use of power. Of course, we see it in Gaza, and in Lebanon now, but we also see it in the West Bank.
“We also see it being used against Israeli protesters. We’re also seeing it in the treatment of prisoners. In all walks of life, basically, the Israeli government has moved to using excessive power against the different players, rather than making more complicated decisions.”
The headline scandal of the past year is what ACRI describes as “the quiet coup” in the West Bank.
“With public attention focused elsewhere,” says the report, “the government is implementing profound changes to all aspects of control in the West Bank, most of which are flying under the radar.
“In the last two years, the government has made giant strides in advancing policies aimed at accelerating the annexation process of the West Bank, while establishing Jewish supremacy and marginalizing the Palestinian population, all in pursuit of realizing the vision of full Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory.”
The annexation of the West Bank has long been on the agenda, said Sattath, “but the war has given cover and enabled this to happen.
“Basically, they’re creating a new reality on the ground, behind the scenes, without a lot of public scrutiny, without a lot of international discourse on this new reality that they’re manufacturing.”
The Israeli government has, in certain instances, issued statements that aim to distance itself from the violent actions of settlers in the West Bank. Netanyahu has occasionally called for calm and condemned settler attacks on Palestinians, especially after high-profile incidents.
However, ACRI fears that under the incoming US administration of Donald Trump, whose election has been welcomed so enthusiastically by far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, things are only going to get worse.
“I think that the next years are going to be very difficult,” said Sattath.
“The US government is one of the only checks and balances on the behavior of the Israeli government behavior and, even if we would have liked them to be more forceful in the way that they do it, we're very worried that the disappearance of that will have grave implications for the lives of Palestinians, both in Gaza, where the US is currently so involved in the humanitarian aid efforts there, and in the West Bank.”
Disturbingly, she says, Israel is manoeuvring behind the scenes to end the status of the West Bank as an occupied territory under military occupation, which is how it has been defined by international law since the occupation of the West Bank by Israel in 1967.
“It seems a little strange that an organization like ACRI would be advocating for military occupation,” she said.
“But under international conventions military occupation gives the protected citizens of that area many different rights and gives the occupiers obligations.
“Residents in occupied territories cannot be moved. You cannot build on their territory and the occupying force has all sorts of obligations toward them, in terms of humanitarian aid.
“Now, what the settler movement, through its ministers in the government, is trying to do is erase the military occupation, replacing it with government agencies and officials to facilitate the settlement enterprise.”
The process began in February 2023 when, despite disquiet among some members of Netanyahu’s government, authority over many civilian issues in the West Bank was stripped from Defense Ministry agency COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) and transferred to Bezalel Smotrich, the religious Zionism leader and finance minister.
According to a Times of Israel report, the agreement “appears to give the ultranationalist leader sweeping powers over the territory, and allows him to advance his goal of thwarting Palestinian aspirations for a state in the West Bank by enabling the Israeli population there to substantially expand.”
Anti-settlement organizations denounced the agreement, with one, Breaking the Silence, saying it amounted to “legal, de jure annexation,” of the West Bank.
The importance of ACRI’s report, says Sattath, lies in the sheer breadth of abuses by the Israeli government it exposes.
ACRI, founded in 1972 and the oldest civil and human rights organization in Israel, has been publishing reports on the state of human rights in Israel and the West Bank for decades. But, she says, “we have never published a report showing such a severe and comprehensive deterioration as we have seen over the past year.”
ACRI says it hopes its report “will deepen the public’s understanding of the damage being done to human rights and democratic institutions, and that it will stir the public to action and resistance.”
It added: “Monitoring human rights violation processes is also critical for there to be any hope of correction under a different government and reality.”
Sirens sound in central, northern Israel after ceasefire announcement: army
- Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central and northern Israel following projectiles that crossed from Lebanon
JERUSALEM: Israel’s military said sirens sounded across central and northern Israel Tuesday, with three projectiles fired from Lebanon after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his cabinet would vote for a ceasefire.
“Sirens sounded in a number of areas in central and northern Israel following projectiles that crossed from Lebanon,” the military said in a statement. “Three projectiles that crossed from Lebanon into Israeli territory were successfully intercepted by the IAF (Israeli air force).”
UAE thanks Turkiye for helping to arrest Zvi Kogan murder suspects
- Sincere condolences’ expressed to family of Moldovan-Israeli national
- Three men arrested were named as Olimboy Tohirovich, 28, Makhmudjon Abdurakhim, 28, and Azizbek Kamilovich, 33
DUBAI: The UAE has thanked Turkiye for helping in the arrest of three men suspected of murdering Moldovan-Israeli rabbi Zvi Kogan.
It was reported on Monday that three Uzbek nationals had been detained and were being investigated over the killing.
The UAE “expressed its sincere condolences and solidarity” with the family of Kogan, 28, the Emirates News Agency reported on Tuesday.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs extended its sincere appreciation to the authorities in the Republic of Turkiye for their cooperation in arresting the perpetrators,” the agency said.
The ministry “commended the exceptional diligence and professionalism” of the authorities overseeing the case.
The Ministry of Interior said on Sunday that the three arrests had been made in “record time” after Kogan’s family had reported him missing.
A specialized search and investigation team was assembled leading to the discovery of the victim’s body.
The three men arrested were named as Olimboy Tohirovich, 28, Makhmudjon Abdurakhim, 28, and Azizbek Kamilovich, 33.
The Foreign Ministry’s statement on Tuesday said the UAE is committed to upholding the principles of tolerance and peaceful coexistence among diverse religions and cultures.
Erdogan ally wants pro-Kurdish party, jailed militant to talk
- The pro-Kurdish DEM Party, parliament’s third largest, responded by applying for its co-chairs to meet with Ocalan, founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
ANKARA: A key ally of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan expanded on his proposal to end 40 years of conflict with Kurdish militants by proposing on Tuesday that parliament’s pro-Kurdish party holds direct talks with the militants’ jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Devlet Bahceli, leader of the Nationalist Movement Party, made the call a month after suggesting that Ocalan announce an end to the insurgency in exchange for the possibility of his release.
The pro-Kurdish DEM Party, parliament’s third largest, responded by applying for its co-chairs to meet with Ocalan, founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Erdogan described Bahceli’s initial proposal as a “historic window of opportunity” but has not spoken of any peace process.
Ocalan has been held in a prison on the island of Imrali, south of Istanbul, since his capture 25 years ago.
“We expect face-to-face contact between Imrali and the DEM group to be made without delay, and we resolutely reiterate our call,” Bahceli told his party’s lawmakers in a parliamentary meeting, using the name of the island to refer to Ocalan.
Bahceli regularly condemns pro-Kurdish politicians as tools of the PKK.
DEM’s predecessor party was involved in peace talks between Ankara and Ocalan a decade ago. Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, DEM’s parliamentary group chairperson, said it applied to the Justice Ministry on Tuesday for its leaders to meet Ocalan.
“We are ready to make every contribution for a democratic solution to the Kurdish issue and the democratization of Turkiye,” she said.
Turkiye and its Western allies call the PKK a terrorist group. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the fighting, which in the past was focused in the mainly Kurdish southeast but is now centered on northern Iraq, where the PKK is based.
Growing regional instability and changing political dynamics are seen as factors behind the bid to end the conflict with the PKK. The chances of success are unclear as Ankara has given no clues on what it may entail.
The only concrete move so far has been Ankara’s permission for Ocalan’s nephew to visit him, the first family visit in 4-1/2 years.
Authorities are continuing to crack down on alleged PKK activities. Early on Tuesday, police detained 231 people of suspected PKK ties, the interior ministry said. DEM Party said those detained included its local officials and activists.
Earlier this month, the government replaced five pro-Kurdish mayors in southeastern cities for similar reasons, in a move that drew criticism from DEM and others.
Algeria holds writer Boualem Sansal on national security charges: lawyer
- “Boualem Sansal... was today placed in detention” on the basis of an article of the Algerian penal code, lawyer Francois Zimeray said
- Sansal had been interrogated by “anti-terrorist” prosecutors and said he was being “deprived of his freedom on the grounds of his writing“
PARIS: Algerian authorities have remanded in custody on national security charges prominent French-Algerian novelist Boualem Sansal following his arrest earlier this month that sparked alarm throughout the literary world, his French lawyer said on Tuesday.
“Boualem Sansal... was today placed in detention” on the basis of an article of the Algerian penal code “which punishes all attacks on state security,” lawyer Francois Zimeray said in a statement to AFP.
He added that Sansal had been interrogated by “anti-terrorist” prosecutors and said he was being “deprived of his freedom on the grounds of his writing.”
Sansal, a major figure in francophone modern literature, is known for his strong stances against both authoritarianism and Islamism, as well as being a forthright campaigner on freedom of expression issues.
His detention by Algeria comes against a background of tensions between France and its former colony, which also appear to have spread to the literary world.
The 75-year-old writer, granted French nationality this year, was on November 16 arrested at Algiers airport after returning from France, according to several media reports.
The Gallimard publishing house, which has published his work for a quarter of a century, in a statement expressed “its very deep concern following the arrest of the writer by the Algerian security services,” calling for his “immediate release.”
A relative latecomer to writing, Sansal turned to novels in 1999 and has tackled subjects including the horrific 1990s civil war between authorities and Islamists.
His books are not banned in Algeria but he is a controversial figure, particularly since making a visit to Israel in 2014.
Sansal’s hatred of Islamism has not been confined to Algeria and he has also warned of a creeping Islamization in France, a stance that has made him a favored author of prominent figures on the right and far-right.
In 2015, Sansal won the Grand Prix du Roman of the French Academy, the guardians of the French language, for his book “2084: The End of the World,” a dystopian novel inspired by George Orwell’s “Nineteen-Eighty Four” and set in an Islamist totalitarian world in the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.
The concerns about his reported arrest come as another prominent French-Algerian writer Kamel Daoud is under attack over his novel “Houris,” which won France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt.
A woman has claimed the book was based on her story of surviving 1990s Islamist massacres and used without her consent.
She alleged on Algerian television that Daoud used the story she confidentially recounted to a therapist — who is now his wife — during treatment. His publisher has denied the claims.
The controversies are taking place in a tense diplomatic context between France and Algeria, after President Emmanuel Macron renewed French support for Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory of Western Sahara during a landmark visit to the kingdom last month.
Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, is de facto controlled for the most part by Morocco.
But it is claimed by the Sahrawi separatists of the Polisario Front, who are demanding a self-determination referendum and are supported by Algiers.
Daoud organized a petition signed by fellow literary luminaries published in the Le Point weekly calling for Sansal’s “immediate” release.
“This tragic news reflects an alarming reality in Algeria, where freedom of expression is nothing more than a memory in the face of repression, imprisonment and the surveillance of the entire society,” said the letter also signed by the likes of British novelist Salman Rushdie and Turkish Nobel winner Orhan Pamuk.
