DTA wrote:antifon wrote:The Cypriots and the Kurds - Opinion - International Herald Tribune | Kirsty Hughes
LONDON November 14, 2006 — Turkey complains vociferously about the European Union's unfair treatment of the politically and economically isolated Turkish Cypriots. Why then shouldn't Turkey grant a big chunk of its own citizens - the Kurds - the same rights it demands for people who are not even Turkish nationals?
There are many similarities between Northern Cyprus and the Turkish southeast, where many of Turkey's estimated 15 to 20 million Kurds live. They are geographically similar and are located in sensitive areas - the one off Syria's coast, the other bordering Iran, Iraq and Syria.
Both are relatively isolated and poor, though the Kurds are a lot poorer than the Turkish Cypriots. In both cases, poverty is linked to the unresolved political and security issues around their identity and political status.
But it's the differences that are more striking. Turkey is loudly championing the rights of Turkish Cypriots in the EU. But anyone who champions Kurdish rights in Turkey risks being accused of separatism and even terrorism.
While Turkey expects international support for its Cyprus solution, based on a bizonal, bicommunal federation with political equality between the two communities, it argues the precise opposite for its own Kurdish citizens.
C'ntd >>
http://antifon.blogspot.com/2011/04/cyp ... inion.html
Riddle me this booooooyyyy
With the uprising of the arab nations and political autonomy being sought by all kinds of ethnicities throughout the region how come the Kurdish population of eastern turkey (claimed by you to be 20m) has not done the same..... my opinion is because kurds and Turks are in the main brothers.... what is your take on in boy.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php? ... 2010-10-21
The founding chairwoman of a municipal workers’ union has doubts that the referendum to reform Turkey’s Constitution has contributed to the democratization of the country.
Vicdan Baykara, general chairwoman of the All Municipal and Local Administration Workers Union, Tüm Bel Sen, is a labor union leader who has been involved in union organizing among Turkey’s public sector employees since the 1980 military coup. She is an Alevi originally from Elazığ. Considered honest and straightforward, she occasionally represents Turkish labor unions abroad and has even run for public office.
One of the major problems that troubled people about the proposed constitutional changes was that of the judiciary. The change means an increase in the number of judges on the Constitutional Court, the method by which they would be chosen and the role of Parliament.
Evaluating these changes for the Hurriyet Daily News & Economic Review, Baykara said the prime minister had said the changes would increase the power of legislation, offering this as part of the democratizing process. “Looking generally at how these judges are to be chosen, it is a positive development for democracy.
“While these changes that include greater participation have been offered as democratization, they have been applied to the electoral system under the sole control of the prime minister and the his ruling Justice and Development Party [AKP], which has an absolute majority in Parliament. So whether it is the election of members of the Constitutional Court or the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors [HSYK], both are better examples of the AKP’s centralist measures to strengthen its own power than they are representative of a free and participatory democracy.”
Although Turkey has clearly been changing under AKP rule over the past eight years, Baykara said democratization had to be defined before such a question could be put in its proper framework.
“Democracy is the entirety of economic, political, social and cultural arrangements that set the foundation for plural participation in societal life and give importance to understanding and partnering with each other in an equal and free debate. If different parts of society cannot participate freely and free debate is impossible, then it is impossible for a society to be organized for real democracy and unions that represent the collective won’t be able to provide it either,” Baykara said.
“The military coup of Sept. 12, 1980 resulted in the disbanding of all organizations and the collective will was smashed. This created the foundation of today’s false democracy, a democracy distorted by fascist policies.
“One can see this distortion today in the dictatorial measures in Parliament where the political party in power came to that point through an electoral system based on the dominance of the majority. But this system is a part of a social structure that ceased to exist years ago.
“Although the AKP has issued statements in favor of democratization and these have differed from what it has said in the past, these remain merely words. All sorts of initiatives continue to be held prisoner by military guardianship or civil fascism and thus today society remains without unions. Organizing has remained blocked or subject to assault by police and the activities of organizations set up by democratic groups are confined by far-from-democratic laws.
“The AKP has claimed its democratic initiatives will democratically solve problems of our country, the foremost of which is the Kurdish problem. But when it comes to application, they are being used only to extinguish society’s general expectation of democratization.”
Baykara said she believes there are aspects of the constitutional changes that do not increase democratization. “The 1982 Constitution is a product of the military coup that was prepared to ‘protect the state against its citizens.’ For a long time it has had to be changed and it is obvious that there was an expectation in society in general. Constitutions are texts that guarantee rights and freedoms of citizens vis-à-vis the power of the state and lay out the main principles for the state’s organization and basic characteristics. It is essential that under ordinary conditions a constitution be prepared democratically with the effective participation of all possible parts of society.”
Baykara said she is of the opinion that the AKP’s constitutional change package showed its basic goal for this initiative. She said it used a centralist and exclusive approach coupled with aggressive and oppressive pronouncements that did not recognize the legal rights for those who did not agree with them during the referendum process. This process could generally be read as the AKP’s attempt to strengthen its own political power, but society was forced to divide falsely as a result of critical economic and political questions. In addition an attempt was made to extend the duration of the Sept. 12 arrangements that relied on pressure, exploitation and specific compensations, she said.
“The changes were limited by the AKP’s political goals and supposedly reinforced the Sept. 12 order, but the AKP turned the country’s potential for democratization to zero. For example recognizing the right to a collective agreement for public sector workers through changes in labor law is a complete sham. Although the political parties vehemently deny the public sector workers’ right to a collective agreement, it is known that our labor union has officially registered it in the local courts and in the European Court of Human Rights many times. So public sector workers of course have the right to a collective agreement that includes strikes. The problem is that the attitude of the political powers is to not acknowledge this by not passing any laws about it.
“In this sense the collective labor contract in the constitutional change package is not a new right but a re-writing of an existing right. However it is clear that the right to a collective agreement doesn’t have any meaning without the right to strike. What the public sector workers wanted was for the law on the right to strike to be definitely brought back instead of providing an improvement in labor union freedoms through the change I mentioned. This approach is in harmony with the philosophy of the Sept. 12 Constitution and aims to circumscribe the use of rights and freedoms by keeping public sector workers under supervision and delaying them as much as possible.”
Copperline wrote:I've been involved in campaigns for the last twenty plus years for the right of Kurdish self-determination.GreekForumer wrote:Copperline,
