[Event of the week]
Erdoğan’s remarks on deporting illegal Armenians spark debate

The remarks drew ire from Turkish media commentators and rights groups, who said Erdoğan’s remarks meant Armenian workers -- most of whom work for monthly wages of a few hundred lira -- were being used as a bargaining chip in foreign policy. Columnist Cengiz Çandar, one of many in the Turkish media who chided Erdoğan for his remarks, said in his column in the Radikal daily that Erdoğan should apologize to Armenians.

In a speech on Friday, however, Erdoğan dismissed the criticism and reassured Turkey’s Armenian community that they are not being targeted after facing anger for his threats to expel Armenian illegal immigrants.

“We have never had any problems with our Armenian citizens,” Erdoğan told a meeting of his Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in Ankara. He complained that he was misquoted in the media, which he said misrepresented his remarks to suggest that they are targeting Turkey’s Armenian community.

The prime minister, whose government has launched a democratic initiative to expand rights for Kurds and non-Muslim minorities including the Armenians, said his position on minorities was clear. “I want to remind everyone here that I am the first prime minister to courageously voice the injustices inflicted on our minorities,” he said.

Long-time Adana Mayor Aytaç Durak, facing accusations of corruption, denied charges that he made a $2 billion fortune through irregularities in the designation of his private land.

Mayor Durak, speaking at a press conference, said his personal wealth stood at slightly above TL 40 million and insisted that vast tracts land his wife inherited from her family were the main source of his assets.

March 14 Sunday

A corporal died and another soldier was wounded following an ambush by terrorists in Dağlıca, a neighborhood of the Yüksekova district in Hakkari province.

Addressing thousands of Roma who came to İstanbul to attend a meeting organized as part of a government initiative to find solutions to problems faced by the ethnic minority, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he views the Roma’s problems as his own. Erdoğan met with more than 10,000 Roma in a meeting which had a festive atmosphere, a move that came as a part of the government’s democratic initiative, which is intended to expand the rights of previously disadvantaged groups and communities such as the Kurds, the Alevis and the Roma.

The foreign ministers of Turkey and Sweden jointly condemned a vote in the Swedish parliament that defined the early 20th-century killings of Anatolian Armenians as genocide.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoğlu, participated in a two-day informal meeting of European Union foreign ministers held over the weekend in the Finnish ski resort of Saariselkä which was hosted by Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb.

Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan regional administration in northern Iraq, met with Aydın Selcen, Turkey’s first consul general in Arbil, the de facto capital of the semi-autonomous region.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates expressed regret over a US House committee labeling the killings of Anatolian Armenians during World War I as genocide, while voicing awareness of the probable “damaging” impacts of the US House committee’s resolution on Turkish-US relations.

A group of lawyers affiliated with the Universal Jurists’ Platform filed a criminal complaint against Republican People’s Party (CHP) İzmir deputy Ahmet Ersin, who is accused of pressuring a secret witness in a terrorism case to retract his statement.

After two days of intensive deliberations in Ankara, the Abant Platform urged a change in the “oligarchic structure of the judiciary” and stressed the need to confront the distressing events of the past, including the Armenian tragedy. At the end of discussions held under the title “Democratization for a New Social Consensus,” the Abant Platform concluded that in order to ensure freedoms and rights, the judiciary should be democratized and its oligarchic structure changed.

President Abdullah Gül, who branded the Balyoz (Sledgehammer) Security Operation Plan “a serious matter,” has demanded that institutions remove people engaged in wrongdoing from their ranks. Answering journalists’ questions while on a visit to Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gül said Turkey is becoming more transparent and that cases such as Ergenekon and Balyoz, which are accepted as being work in preparation to overthrow the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), are part of the “process of normalization.”

March 15 Monday

Turkey’s business with Africa is continuing, President Gül said, while adding that Turkey is “Africa’s voice” in international platforms, during a joint news conference with Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa. Gül and Kabila held a bilateral meeting and then jointly chaired a committee gathering between the two countries after an official ceremony hosted by Kabila.

The İstanbul Provincial Health Directorate announced that Buket Bulut, who was critically injured in a tram accident in İstanbul’s Güngören district last Thursday evening, had been declared brain dead.

Foreign Minister Davutoğlu reiterated his government’s demand that the European Union lift visa requirements for Turkish nationals traveling to EU member countries, saying agreements signed by the EU and Turkey necessitate that Turks be exempted from visas. Davutoğlu’s comments came at a joint press conference with Stefan Füle, the EU’s new commissioner for enlargement and neighborhood policy.

Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ and Land Forces Commander Gen. Işık Koşaner expressed strong doubts about the justness of an ongoing investigation in Erzincan, in which 3rd Army Commander Gen. Saldıray Berk stands accused of engaging in terrorism, in an interview with the Hürriyet daily. “We asked [Gen. Berk’s] opinion of the incident. The commander told us several times that he has no links to the allegations,” the military chief told Hürriyet, to which Gen. Koşaner added, “And we have no hesitation that this is the case.”

Challenged by high unemployment, Turkey saw a jobless rate of 13.5 percent in December 2009, a 0.5 percentage point drop compared to December 2008, a recent survey showed.

Prime Minister Erdoğan denied claims that there is conflict among state institutions. “There is no conflict among our institutions,” the prime minister said at a press conference at Esenboğa Airport in Ankara before he left for the United Kingdom.

March 16 Tuesday

In the İstanbul districts most threatened by an earthquake, nearly half of the buildings could collapse in the event of a major earthquake, according to the worst-case scenario of a five-year study. The study, carried out by the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), examined nearly 125,000 buildings in six İstanbul districts considered likely to be most affected by an earthquake, namely Zeytinburnu, Fatih, Küçükçekmece, Bahçelievler, Bayrampaşa and Güngören.

Fourteen people were detained as a result of an operation in the province of Siirt against the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK), an organization that allegedly functions as the urban arm of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

A group of members of the military who drafted an alleged plot to overthrow the government titled the Sledgehammer Security Operation Plan reportedly categorized 221 generals in 2003 in terms of their potential to support or object to the implementation of the plot. The generals were categorized in a document that was later included in a civilian investigation into the alleged plot.

Turkey’s consumer confidence index, which has shown signs of recovery since December, continued its upward movement in February, increasing by 3.3 percent over the previous month, though still indicating a slightly pessimistic outlook, recent data revealed.

March 17 Wednesday

The Adana Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into Adana Mayor Durak, who has been accused of widespread corruption and bribery, after Durak filed a criminal complaint against himself and a colleague at the Adana Metropolitan Municipality.

Prime Minister Erdoğan’s remarks about the possible deportation of Armenians working illegally in Turkey angered civil society organizations despite the ruling AK Party’s attempts to explain that Erdoğan did not intend to expel these workers but only wanted to underline Turkey’s “magnanimity.”

The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office turned down a request by the General Staff Military Prosecutor’s Office to allow it to conduct a series of chemical tests on a military plot allegedly devised within the military to check whether the fingerprints on the document actually match those of a colonel on active duty who is believed to have drafted the plot.

March 18 Thursday

Erzincan University President Professor Erdoğan Büyükkasap was found dead on Thursday after an apparent suicide. He was 48.

Marking the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli, Prime Minister Erdoğan said no country’s parliament can challenge Turkish history, in reference to decisions in various parliaments around the world declaring the 1915 killings of Armenians who lived under Ottoman rule “genocide.” Erdoğan was in Çanakkale commemorating the soldiers killed during the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli.

Bulut, who was critically injured in a tram accident in İstanbul’s Güngören district just a week ago, died.

President Gül dismissed further talks with the US administration on easing tensions over a congressional panel vote endorsing Armenian claims of genocide, saying the ball is in the US court now to work on ways to restore ties.

The National Police Department detained 28 individuals in raids across nine provinces yesterday as part of the ongoing investigation into Ergenekon, a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

March 19 Friday

Prime Minister Erdoğan said his party would hold talks with the opposition next week on proposed amendments to the Constitution, but the opposition said they vehemently oppose the changes.

A funeral prayer was held in Erzincan for Erzincan University President Büyükkasap, who was found dead on Thursday after an apparent suicide.

Prime Minister Erdoğan apologized to Turkey’s Roma community, saying they have been denied citizenship rights. “If there is anybody who deserves an apology, it is the Roma people. I apologize to them on behalf of the state,” Erdoğan said in a speech to AK Party officials.

Prime Minister Erdoğan dismissed criticism and reassured Turkey’s Armenian community that they are not being targeted after facing angry reactions over his threats to expel Armenian illegal immigrants. “We have never had any problems with our Armenian citizens,” Erdoğan told a meeting of his AK Party in Ankara. He complained that he was misquoted in the media, which he said misrepresented his remarks to suggest that they are targeting Turkey’s Armenian community.