Army strikes kill 29 PKK militants

‘Infidel’ slur raises hackles

ISTANBUL, Dec 15, (Agencies): A Turkish warplane bombardment killed 29 militants in an operation targeting Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Iraq on Dec 11, Turkey’s military said on Thursday.

Fighter jets struck and destroyed a main headquarters, gun positions and shelters used by PKK militants in the operation in the Zap region of Iraq, the army said.

Turkey may hold a referendum as early as March on constitutional changes to expand the president’s powers, a senior ruling party lawmaker said, a move that would help Tayyip Erdogan acquire the executive presidency he has long sought. The ruling AK Party over the weekend submitted to parliament a 21-article package of constitutional reform proposals, aiming to hold a referendum on the package by spring.

The constitutional commission is due to discuss the package next week and debate in parliament is likely to follow in January, according to Mustafa Sentop, the head of parliament’s constitutional commission. “A referendum appears possible by the end of March or early April,” Sentop told Reuters in an interview late on Wednesday.

Erdogan has turned a largely ceremonial presidency into a powerful platform by drawing on his unrivalled popularity. His opponents say the constitutional proposals could lead toward authoritarian rule in Turkey.

Erdogan

Opposition

The AKP, founded by Erdogan over a decade ago, wants the backing of the nationalist MHP opposition to see the plan through parliament, as any constitutional change needs the support of at least 330 deputies in the 550-seat assembly to go to a referendum.

The AKP has 316 lawmakers eligible to vote, and the MHP 39.

If passed, the reforms would ensure that presidential, parliamentary and local elections are all held in 2019. The current president and government would continue to work in the present system until then, although the proposal does include the option for early elections.

“There is no such thing as the elections being brought forward. However, this is politics, and Turkey’s and the world’s conditions may change. This is why we put the relevant article in,” Sentop said, referring to a clause that allows for early elections before 2019.

The use by a senior Turkish official of a pejorative word meaning “infidel,” widely used in Ottoman times to describe non-Muslims, has sparked accusations of hate speech and fears of discrimination against minorities.

In a speech earlier this month, Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus used the word “gavur” (“infidel”), prompting an outcry from Turkey’s Armenian minority.

The Ottoman Empire dominated swathes of the Middle East and North Africa for more than six centuries until it collapsed at the end of World War I.

Encompassing settings as diverse as the Arabian peninsula, the Balkans, the Horn of Africa and part of the Caucasus, the empire was a multi-ethnic and multi-faith entity, with millions of Christians.

However within the borders of modern Turkey, there are just tens of thousands — mainly Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians — as well as a significant Jewish community.

Kurtulmus on Dec 3 boasted of “new Turkey” being shaped under the wings of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) which he said stood against imperialism or exploitation.

“We need to take the issue of independence seriously. To us, independence is to stand tall and call an infidel ‘an infidel’,” he told a meeting in the northern Turkish city of Kastamonu.

Turkey’s Human Rights Association (IHD) lodged a complaint at an Istanbul prosecutor’s office, accusing Kurtulmus of breaching the universal human rights declaration to which Ankara is a party, as well as the Turkish penal code.

Ahmet Hakan, a columnist in the Hurriyet newspaper, wrote that Kurtulmus’s comments constituted “hate crime.”

Discrimination

“Even the Ottoman (empire) that you like so much banned the use of expressions like ‘infidel’ in order to put an end to discrimination against non-Muslim citizens,” he said, referring to the government.

In the mid-19th century, the Ottoman Empire banned the use by officials or private persons of inflammatory epithets based on religion, language or race, as part of a series of reforms heavily influenced by European ideas.

Garo Paylan, Istanbul MP of Armenian origin from the opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said Kurtulmus’ comments were hate speech that required an apology.

Human Rights Watch on Thursday accused Turkey of “silencing” independent media in its bid to prevent scrutiny or criticism of its huge crackdown following the failed July coup.

In a report, the US-based rights watchdog said Turkey’s “assault” on critical journalism had accelerated since the attempted overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — but said it began several years earlier and had steadily “sharpened” since 2014.

HRW said journalists it spoke to described “the stifling atmosphere in which they work and about the rapidly shrinking space for reporting on issues the government does not want covered.”

The Turkish government insists it does not attack the press or journalists, often saying there is no problem with press freedom. The Turkish authorities had no immediate reaction to the report.

Since mid-July, 140 media outlets and 29 publishing houses had been shut down under regulations imposed under a post-coup state of emergency, leaving over 2,500 journalists and media workers unemployed, HRW said.

The state of emergency was renewed for another three months in October. Just one of the emergency decrees involved the closure of 131 media outlets over alleged links to Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara has accused of ordering the putsch.