Closer to the EU? Civilian control of the military in Turkey

On 8 July, Turkish President Abdullah Gul approved a law giving civilian courts the power to prosecute military personnel who might threaten national security. He insisted on the relevance of this legislation as an essential part in the EU membership talks. Indeed, together with other priorities, such as democracy, the rule of law and freedom of religion, the civilian oversight of the armed forces is one of the main and long-standing political criteria for Turkish EU membership: “Strengthen efforts to align civilian control of the military in line with the practice in EU Member States. Ensure that the military does not intervene in political issues and that civilian authorities fully exercise supervisory functions on security matters, including as regards the formulation of the national security strategy and its implementation [...] limit the jurisdiction of military courts to military duties of military personnel.”(1)

In the 2008 Progress Report on Turkey, it was pointed out that no progress had been made on enhancing civilian control over the military. Moreover, the significant political influence by the armed forces was highly criticized: “[s]enior members of the armed forces have expressed their opinion on domestic and foreign policy issues going beyond their remit, including on Cyprus, the South East, secularism, political parties and other non-military developments.” (2)

However, the situation today is a bit different from last year and this new law might be considered as a step forward to EU membership. This legislation has been passed when fifty-six people, including two retired generals, journalists and academics, have gone on trial accused of being part of Ergenekon, the network who allegedly plotted attacks to provoke a military coup. (3) The law was proposed by the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party, which has its roots in political Islam and was highly criticized by the secularist opposition Republican People’s Party who claimed that the law was against the Constitution itself.

The Turkish military is a long-established institution which has historically been considered as the guarantor of the secularism in a country mainly populated by Muslims. Since negotiations started on 3 October 2005, the civilian control of the military represents one of the short-term priorities for EU membership and its role has been increasingly debated and questioned. Since 2002, when the AK Party won the general elections and became the ruling party, this debate gained another dimension in the context of secularism. According to an article in The Economist, this tension between the military and the government may promote reforms and democracy. This new law is considered as one of the biggest challenge to the army’s immunity and to Turkey’s secular elite, the latest more worried about losing its power than Islamic influence by the government. (4)

It should be underlined that since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the armed forces have overthrown several governments in the name of secularism. Therefore, this new law might be considered as a step forward to EU democratic standards to limit the power of the armed forces and reduce the “risk of coup d’états”. On the other hand, the fact that the military in Turkey has still popular support, and it is regarded as “one of the most reliable institutions of the Republic”, shows that this new law represents a symbolic and challenging step for Turkey.

European socialists ready to vote for Barroso in September according to Jean Quatremer

On his blog Coulisses de Bruxelles, UE, in a post dated 14th, Jean Quatremer points to the Socialist Group who fought against Barroso’s re-election on the next 16th of July 2009 in the newly elected European Parliament. Socialists would be now agreeing with a vote to take place a fortnight before the second Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty on the 2nd of October 2009. Such an agreement is simply allowing a majority of the European Parliament to vote for Barroso, whereas a vote after an entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, then requiring an absolute majority of the European Parliament, would make the issue of the election less certain. To accept a vote in September is thus favouring the nomination of Barroso for a second mandate.

The journalist analyses the position of the Socialist Group as a strategy of its president, the German Martin Schulz, to secure his own future election as president of the European Parliament in two-and-a-half years. A coalition agreement between the European People’s Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe makes provision for the future presidency of the European Parliament to go to a socialist MEP without stating whom. Schulz believing that Barroso’s re-election is unavoidable, he would be currently trying to please a powerful ally afraid as he is of a revenge of the European People’s Party MEPs when they will be voting by secret ballot to elect the EP president. He is thus preventing further delay of the vote.

A reader’s comment qualifies the post and argues that the determining factor about Barroso’s election as president of the Commission will be eventually lying in whether the Conference of Presidents will put the provision about Barroso’s election on the agenda of the European Parliament’s September session. Hence, a decision made in a Conference of Presidents can be undone by another Conference of Presidents up to the last minute with regards to the agenda at stake. The position of the commentator is that the die is not cast as no one can predict what can happen until September. It is suggested that an analysis of the reasons for or against the vote before the October Irish referendum would be interesting as well as an assessment of the Lisbon Treaty entry-into-force schedule.

Today, in a new post (available here), Jean Quatremer finally assumes that tomorrow’s Conference of Presidents in the European Parliament will leave any possibility open regarding Barroso’s election in September.

See Jean Quatremer’s initial post here.

More information about the current session of the European Parliament is available in the French press review at this link: http://www.euroalter.com/frenchpress

Re-opening of the Halki Seminary: a step forward for minority rights?

Several days ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seemed to hint that the Orthodox Theological Seminary of Halki (Heybeliada in Turkish) may be re-opened in the near future. This issue has received international attention in recent months and might be a positive step forward in EU membership talks. Indeed, the European Union has raised this issue as part of the negotiations, since according to the Copenhagen criteria, “a candidate country to have [...] stable institutions that guarantee democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities”. The importance of this issue for EU accession process is also addressed in the 2008 Progress Report on Turkey: “Non-Muslim communities [...] still face problems due to lack of legal personality. Restrictions on the training of clergy remain. Turkish legislation does not provide for private higher religious education for these communities and there are no such opportunities in the public education system. The Halki (Heybeliada) Greek Orthodox seminary remains closed.”(1) Therefore, it is important to have a closer look on the issue.

The Halki Seminary was established in 1844 in Heybeliada, the second largest of the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of Marmara, near Istanbul. This was the main school of theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church’s Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople until it was closed as a result of a 1971 Constitutional Court decision that provided that private universities and higher education institutions in Turkey must be formed directly by the government. The Halki Seminary refused to be under state control and the authorities proceeded to its closure.

The European Union, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, and the United States have long pressed Turkey to re-open the seminary as a proof of their respect for religious freedom of the Christian minority. It is not coincidental that in April 2009, in his speech before the Turkish Parliament, United States President Barack Obama urged the need of the re-opening of Halki Seminary:

“Freedom of religion and expression lead to a strong and vibrant civil society that only strengthens the state, which is why steps like reopening the Halki Seminary will send such an important signal inside Turkey and beyond.”

In a meeting with President Obama, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew expressed his gratitude for his support of religious freedom, and human rights and “raising before the Turkish Parliament itself the issue of opening up Halki Seminary as a tangible sign of Turkey’s commitment to enter the European Union”. (2)

It is also argued that the closure of the Halki Seminary in 1971 violated specific laws, including provisions of the Lausanne Treaty, of the European Convention of Human Rights and of the Turkish Constitution itself. According to Article 40 of the Lausanne Treaty, “Turkish nationals belonging to non-Moslem minorities shall enjoy the same treatment and security in law and in fact as other Turkish nationals. In particular, they shall have an equal right to establish, manage and control at their own expense, any charitable, religious and social institutions, any schools and other establishments for instruction and education, with the right to use their own language and to exercise their own religion freely therein”. (3)

Respective provisions are included in the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey (Article 24) , as well as in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Article 9).

Today, Turkish authorities seem to be willing to re-open the Halki Seminary although constitutional amendments would be needed. However, the school remains closed, and there is strong opposition to reopening it from Turkey’s nationalist parties (including the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party), who argue that having a seminary in Istanbul would violate the country’s secular order and the constitution. The main argument against the re-opening would be that there should be “reciprocity on minority rights” and the Turkish minority in Greece should be also protected. In 2006, then the Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, who has been President since 2007, made a very determined statement: “Turkey Will Not Open Heybeliada Seminary”, arguing that Turkey had no problems with religious liberty and that the re-opening of the seminary would violate the Constitution and the principle of secularism. (4)

In a more moderate tone, Egemen Bağış, Turkey’s chief negotiator with the EU, has insisted in many speeches and interviews that the reopening of the Seminary should be considered as a domestic political issue concerning human rights and the rights of the Christian minority in Turkey, because Turkey’s Greek Orthodox community is of Turkish citizenry. Although he emphasizes that the re-opening should not be based on the principle of reciprocity, he focused on the principle of simultaneous good will for Greece to make an effort to meet the needs of the Turkish minority in the West Thrace. (5)

As a Turkish political scientist, Levent Köker, points out in his article “Stances on the reopening of Heybeliada Seminary”, the re-opening of the Halki Seminary is also of great importance because it provides an example of some of the very basic preconceptions and ideas that exist in Turkey. According to the author, the Seminary on Heybeliada, secured by Article 40 of the Treaty of Lausanne, “was ultimately sacrificed to an atmosphere defined by the 1974 Cypriot tensions and is even today being analyzed through the same narrow-minded nationalist mentality”. This would represent a significant step towards building the Turkish democracy into harmony with modern multicultural standards. (6)

It can be argued that the possible re-opening of the Halki Seminary represents a positive step towards the strengthening of minority rights in Turkey. If the Seminary finally re-opens, this will not only be a stimulus to the EU membership talks but also it will be considered as a sign to prove the commitment and willingness of Turkish government to solve the existing problems with other minorities such as Kurds and Armenians.

Worries about the future of the EU

With a simple and rather modest understanding of how things are supposed to work when acknowledging the inseparable link that exist between political decision-making and the economy and vice versa, recent orientations of decisions having been made in different member states of the EU are worrying, and rightly so.

This thought might well be the result of a compulsive tendency to sift through the French press in the last weeks. In particular, one article dated the 6th of July, of which the title is “And what if the crisis was only starting now?“, reports on the meeting of the think tank organization of the ‘Cercle des Économistes’ at the Aix-en-Provence Economic Forum.

According to economic sources, OECD figures state that unemployement has raised up to 40% in the wealthiest countries between April 2008 and April 2009. Forecasts for the period from 2007 to 2010 assert that there will be a leap in the number of unemployed people to 26 million more jobseekers and a rate jumping up to 80% more unemployed persons in the shortest time ever observed. Some believe that the worst is yet to come and that the job loss is irreversible. Some even conclude that in four to five years, OECD countries debt will be higher than their GDPs and that this will result in a reduction of social welfare, number of civil servants and a rise in taxes.

The president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, is warning governments off: “We created a world-wide financial economy, there is a need for a world-wide governance. G20 is not enough and every country has to internalize the effects of its policies for the superior common good of the globalized economy”. This can be analysed and translated into the fact that, in countries having either excessive budget surplus, like China today and Germany tomorrow, or just as excessive deficits, like the US today and France tomorrow, governments undermine a globalization, for which they do not feel responsible, but of which everyone is taking advantage.

Europe is frightened

Europe is frightened

In an article of the Spanish edition of the magazine Foreign Policy, the journalist Ana Carbajosa, analyses an increasingly widespread feeling throughout Europe: fear. Globalisation, terrorism, immigration, social insecurity, climate change and the current economic crisis are making Europeans more and more fearful: “Europeans are frightened” and distrustful of a little promising future. The economic crisis has revived old fears and thousands of Europeans have demonstrated against governments and politicians claiming new economic, and security measures. This goes hand in hand with the increasingly wide support to far-right, anti-EU and populist parties in the European elections (see article below) and the upsurge in racism all over Europe (very recently more than a hundred Romanian immigrants in Northern Ireland were forced out of their homes after xenophobic attacks).

Ana Carbajosa makes reference to the book, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, where the author, Philippe Legrain, explains that the angst during an economic crisis has been historically expressed through the refusal of the “outsiders”. The current economic crisis seems to have the same effect, and has propelled another fear that should be mentioned: the fear to lose one’s identity and the need to belong to a particular social group with well-defined frontiers. This, according to the author, has reinforced old fears of a European super-state, without defined borders and that have helped nationalism to spread. It is in this context, she argues, politicians should give hope to a disorientated society. However, the European construction is at its lowest point and there is no Barack Obama in Europe to increase the trust in political institutions.

The author concludes that the gravity of the economic crisis, together with scarce and late political reactions and the coverage of the media, will culminate in a state of collective fear that will make citizens turn to nationalist and conservative politics. This might put at risk the open and tolerant Europe that has nourished the dream of a peaceful and prosperous Europe. However, the author adds an optimistic note by arguing that this might also be the chance for the left to reinforce its position and that this might also lead to the strengthening of the civil society against a rather disappointing political class.

Full article: http://www.fp-es.org/europa-tiene-miedo

The worrying European elections

In this article of The Economist (13/06/2009), there is a review of the results of the European elections with a very pessimistic note: “the dream of a European demos nourishing a pan-European democracy based on Europe-wide parties is more distant than ever”. The European dream seems now far away and, after the elections, three main common ideas in the 27 European member states –not reassuring for the EU- are listed as follows:

.- Indifference by Europeans: reflected by the lowest EU-wide turnout since 1979, far below levels in national elections (even when European elections campaigns have been dominated by local and national concerns).
.- The defeat of the Left, not only where it is in the government, but also where it is in opposition or in coalition with the mainstream Right. The authors argue that the left-appeal is waning, maybe due to their incoherence and divisions in their views over globalisation and their inability to offer an alternative to the crisis of capitalism.
.- The worrying antis: the increasingly wide support to far-right, anti-EU and populist parties whose ideas are intrinsically “antiethical to all that the EU stands for”. These extremist parties, with their views on protectionism and nationalism, and with their anti-Islamic, racist and homophobic rhetoric, and so on and so forth, are a danger for both the EU (and all its achievement, i.e. the single market and enlargement) and basic civil liberties. The diversity of cultures in an open and tolerant Europe seems to be under threat from populists and nationalists.

The article concludes by arguing that with the rise of these populist and anti-EU parties, those Europeans who did not vote (because they did not care) may come to regret it. If we are to preserve the once valued Europe’s openness where civil liberties and human rights are respected, national and European politics should be reshaped and populist and nationalist parties´ ideas refuted.

Full article: http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13829453

Copywrong?

Last week the British government published its “Digital Britain” report on the future of communications in the UK. One of the many outcomes of the report is to improve enforcement procedures against internet piracy. This recommendation comes in the context of action by other European governments against internet copyright violators, most notably the French Hadopi law. The Hadopi law was suspended by the Conseil Constitutionnel earlier this month, which judged that the penalty of suspending an individual’s internet connection if they repeatedly downloaded unlicensed copyrighted material contravened constitutional rights.

The issue of copyright and the internet came to the fore in the European elections earlier this month, when the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in the European Parliament. This happened in the wake of The Pirate Bay court case, when a Swedish court sentenced the owners of this peer-to-peer filesharing website to a year in jail as well as to paying £2.5m of damages. The Pirate Party campaigns for a free internet, encompassing reform to intellectual property law, and claims more than 45,000 members now in Sweden, mostly among young people. The Pirate Party in Germany won about 1% of the vote there in the European elections, and affiliated Pirate Parties have been set up in various other countries.

Digital Britain announces that the British government considers the piracy of intellectual property as theft, and outlines the government strategy in dealing with this issue. It advocates an education campaign to inform the public about the lawfulness of their actions and the use of the civil law by rights-holders and internet service providers (“ISPs”) against internet users who “wilfully continue unlawful activity”. The report also proposes a new duty for Ofcom, the communications regulator, to notify holders of internet accounts that their account appears to have been used to infringe copyright, and to maintain and make available (according to a court order being obtained) data to allow the identification of “serious repeat infringers”. There are also more punitive measures outlined for ISPs to take if these measures fail to solve the problem.

The recently-formed Pirate Party of the United Kingdom (“PPUK”)  issued its response to the Digital Britain report, criticising the government’s understanding of digital media issues.  On the issue of copyright, the PPUK implied that the proposals were being driven by the interests and lobbying-budgets of “rights-holder industries”, and showed a “basic misunderstanding of the fundamentals of copyright”, adding “the concerns and voices of ordinary citizens are ignored”.

In their response, the PPUK were correct to mention the origins and purpose of copyright law: the purpose of copyright law ought to centre on compensating creative individuals for their endeavours, especially when this would not otherwise occur, and not propping up industries with business models struggling in the new technological climate. Furthermore, the distinction the PPUK’s response draws out between “authors” and “rights-holders” is key: many copyrights are not owned by the creators of the work, but by other persons, and creators often do not control the rights to their work. Instead, the rights-holder, often a corporation, is enriched through the enforcement of the copyright, seemingly not furthering the interests of creators. The PPUK points out a lack of evidence of the losses caused by file-sharing: the only statistics quoted by the Digital Britain report come from the BPI (which claimed that file-sharing costs the British film industry £180m per year) and IPSOS (which claimed a loss in the UK for TV and films or £152m). These are two industry groups, with an evident interest in seeing the tighter enforcement of copyrights, and there is no independent analysis or verification of these statistics. Moreover, it seems that there has been little input into this report from citizens and consumer rights advocates: another proposal is for an industry body known as the “rights authority” to draft a code of practice for Ofcom to approve, with the government encouraging the participation of rights-holders and ISPs to play a role in this, with no mention of any citizen/consumer groups.

The whole area and purpose of copyright law must be re-examined in the contemporary context. New technology has allowed creators more direct access to their audiences than before, as well as allowing a vast amount more information to be available freely, easily and in the public domain. To ensure that we continue to benefit from the fruits of creativity in our capitalist economy, it is essential that creators are compensated for their work. However, stricter enforcement of the current copyright regime will not further this goal. We should be aware of whom the true beneficiaries of measures such as those outlined in Digital Britain are, and of the implications: in this case, shoring up big business in the creative “industries”. The popular politicisation of this issue, as seen in the European elections, is a welcome development.

European citizenship can help deepen democracy

On the 10th of  June, Andrea Bonnani wrote in his blog Europe, hosted by la Repubblica, that “è nato il popolo europeo” (the European people or demos is born). He stressed the fact that European citizens of varied European member states voted as a whole to the extent that the polls in those different countries are all going along the same trend in terms of participation, orientation and results. This is, for him, the sign of the birth of a cohesive and coherent European demos here defined as a political coherent entity.

One often expresses concerns that European citizens are not having real democratic powers at the European level. This short thought aims at introducing underlying issues about democracy, the idea of a demos and the propensity to think of it as the coherent structure which entitles to citizenship and makes it work, whereas citizenship can be the starting notion that reforms democracy and makes it work.

The question of citizenship and political engagement raises problematic questions about Europe and the idea of transnational politics within the European Union as a first experimental platform for establishing responsible relations between political engagement and power. Popular political debates about European citizenship usually focus on the difficulty of creating a European demos. But the focus on a ‘Demos’ could be not only misleading but prevent exploring more interesting alternatives.

A cynical agenda for more of the same: Barroso’s letter to the Council

In an unprecedented move Jose Barroso has written a letter to the members of the European Council of member states laying out his agenda if he is to be re-elected as Commission President. The letter, addressed to the current Czech president of the European Council Jan Fischer, is available to be downloaded as a pdf from the commission website here.

Last week Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel said they would only support Barroso if he set out his intentions for the next term, and it seems like he has followed their instructions. The letter is being sent just before the meeting of the European Council tomorrow and Friday. Barroso is pushing to be nominated by the Council as the President as quickly as possible, whereas there are many other voices arguing that the the council should take time and consider the proposals of parties in the European parliament. The European Parliament has to approve the proposals of the Commission, and although the Conservative PPE party is the biggest party it does not have a sufficient majority on its own. The Socialists have said they will vote against any proposal of the Council if it comes too quickly and doesn’t allow time for the parties to propose their own candidates. The Greens ran an explicitly anti-Barroso campaign and Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the leader of the Greens, campaigned in the parliament yesterday for a proper parliamentary debate on the nominations for Presdient. Neither of these parties managed to propose their own candidates before the elections, however, which would have given the peoples of Europe a say.

 

In the letter Barroso underlines his priorities. They can be summarised as:

- Rebuilding the EU’s financial system. Barroso is careful not to insist on too much reform, although he does mention Commission proposals for increased supervision, which are controversial in the UK (but then all initiatives of the Commission are controversial in the UK)

- Employment.

- Climate Change and the agreement at Copenhagen

- tackling illegal migration and the putting in place of the securitarian Stockholm Program adopted by the Commission last week.

- agreeing on Institutional issues as quickly as possible, such as when the Irish Referendum is going to be, and deciding on the new Commission as soon as possible (of course!)

All in all it is a program designed to please the conservative members of the European Council, from a conservative Commission president who thoughout his term has sought primarily to secure his own reelection by this small group. I have written about this in Europa journal previously (a puppet and his inevitable empire). It is cynical that he writes this letter only a couple of days before the meeting of the Council, and not before the elections themselves, which is to be blamed at least in part on the European political parties in opposition not putting up any candidate of their own. We can only hope that the opposition can conclude their secretive back-room deals quickly enough to field at least one alternative option who will make public his or her own program for the Commission. In that way the peoples in Europe might just about be able to get their word in about what they think before the nomination, if we all work together to shout loud enough.

Poll analysis from Simon Hix at the LSE and a separate analysis show that support for Barroso is low amongst European citizens: see The Parliment website

Open letter of Iranian Artists in Exile

 

A group called Iranian Artists in Exile have released videos in several language versions of an open letter to the world calling for solidarity with the Iranian people. Here below are the French and English versions for the interest of the readers of this blog.

 French

 

The English language version is below

The blog Iranelections09 has some more details and images of the events over the past couple of days.

The currency of Latvian pain

According to Reuters the Latvian government have agreed to a series of austerity measures including cutting pension contributions of those still working by a massive 70%, cutting the pensions of old age people by 10%, cutting state sector salaries by 20%, the tax free minimum on income will be abolished, and allowances for parents cut by 10%. Against expectations, the government has decided against introducing progressive taxation instead of its flat tax of 23%. These proposals are reportedly likely to win the support of parliament on June 17th.

Edward Hugh, on the fistforofeuros blog, specifies that the cut for parental allowances is a reduction in child-care allowance and maternity care allowance, and points to how much of a problem this will be in a country that already has a significant fertility-rate problem.

The motivation for inflicting such pain on people in Latvia is to win a further 1.2 billion in funds from the IMF and EU rescue package, which insists on Latvia cutting spending by around 500 million lats, and to avoid devaluation of the currency which would mean giving up the highly prized pegging of the currency to the Euro. Giving up the currency pegging would pull Latvia out of the european exchange rate mechanism for countries wanting to join the Euro. It would also bring about huge defaults on debts, since approximately 85% of loans in Latvia are in foreign currency.  And devaluation in Latvia would most likely lead to contagion and defaults in Estonia and Lithuania, although it may be argued that defaults are likely anyway and the question is one of when is the best time. (A good analysis of the arguments for and against devalution is at the RGE monitor blog.)

At least one of the strong causes of the crisis in Latvia and the Baltic states is the massive investments of captial from Western European banks since the entry of these countries into the European Union. Between 2001 and 2007 the net entry of Western European capital into the Central and Eastern European states is estimated to have increased 10 fold. The growing resitrictions on credit from these Western Banks and the repatriation of funds have thrown these economies into crisis, and at the same time the pressure on exchange rates has increased. The quite understandable insistance of Baltic countries on keeping the currency pegging to the Euro has turned a financial crisis into a profound recession – understandable because these countries have been welcomed into the European Union.

One solution proposed by the European Commission was the immediate entry of Latvia and other Baltic states into the Euro, which would halt the exterieur contraint of the pegging of the currency. This was rejected by the European Central Bank for several reasons, but one might suppose that the fact that its governing council includes the governors of the central banks of the 16 member states using the Euro might have something to do with it: they were concerned about the strength of the eurozone, and a competitive advantage that comes with it. So Latvia is stuck in a hard place: between not wanting to devalue, not being allowed into the Euro club, and being told to cut its social spending.

Whether or not the ECB will  allow the Baltic countries in, we the European citizens in the more priviledged parts of Europe, we who are protecting our own banks at the expense of our neighbours’, we have at least the obligation to the people of Latvia to give them the means to continue to live: at the moment it looks too much like the IMF is only giving means to survive to the financial institutions, and the EU is too busy looking out for its luckier members.