Yearbook 2010
 Turkey.
According to
COUNTRYAAH,
Turkey has a population of 82 million (2019). The power struggle further raged between the EU-oriented Islamist government and the secularist
opposition based on the judiciary and the military. In a
referendum on September 12, the government proposed
constitutional amendments that diminished the power of the
military courts and the Constitutional Court's power to ban
political parties, and gave Parliament greater influence
over the appointment of high-ranking judges and prosecutors.
The proposal, which had already been approved by Parliament,
was welcomed by the EU but, according to the opposition,
meant the secularization of the secular state.
A trial was initiated in December against almost 200
people, most of whom are high ranking officers, suspected of
having planned a coup d'谷tat in 2002-03 with the code name
Släggan. The plan was said to have included: blast two
mosques into the air and then exploit the subsequent riots
to show that the ruling party AKP harbored militant
Islamism. The dome was the latest in a series of revealed
conspiracies involving members of the so-called deep state.
The government's so-called Kurdish initiatives, which
aimed to strengthen the Kurds' rights, increasingly lost
their credibility. A fifteen-year-old girl was sentenced in
January to seven years and nine months in prison for
throwing stones at the police and shouting slogans in
connection with a demonstration in support of the Kurdish
PKK guerrilla in the country's southeast. Ten former PKK
rebels, who had surrendered to the military in 2009 for the
purpose of testing the government initiative, were brought
to trial in June for supporting the PKK. At the same time,
the violence escalated as the guerrillas interrupted a
unilateral ceasefire.
Several hundred people were arrested during the year for
links to the militant Islamist network al-Qaeda. Weapons,
ammunition, fake passports and explosives were found in
connection with the arrests, as well as documents showing
that the organization planned attacks on US, Israeli and
NATO interests in Turkey.
The OSCE Security and Cooperation Organization (OSCE)
reported in June that Turkish authorities have closed over
5,000 websites, many of them for political reasons.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan canceled a planned
visit to Sweden, and Turkey temporarily called its
ambassador from Sweden since the Swedish Parliament on March
11 had determined that Armenians in the then Ottoman Empire
had been subjected to a genocide 1915-23. A week earlier,
the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee
voted in favor of a resolution that also classified the
events as genocide, prompting Turkey to temporarily call its
ambassador from the United States as well. The rapprochement
with Armenia has stalled since Armenian President Serzh
Sarkisian halted parliamentary ratification of the 2009
agreement between the countries in April.
The ban on wearing a headscarf at the country's
universities and colleges was lifted since the government
had declared in September that it would support students who
were punished for covering their heads.
An homicide of a 16-year-old girl in southeastern Turkey
in February attracted international attention. The girl, who
had been friendly with boys, had been buried alive. The
father was among those arrested for the murder.
The currency of the new Turkish Lira was withdrawn in
January and replaced by the old Turkish Lira of the same
value. When the new lira replaced the old one in 2005, it
was a measure to reduce inflation and a million old lira was
then equal to a new lira.
In June, the EU opened a new chapter on food security in
the membership negotiations with Turkey. Consequently,
negotiations took place in 13 policy areas.
In Syria and Iraq, Turkey's Islamic allies, IS, were
under increasing pressure. On April 26, Turkish fighter
aircraft therefore attacked targets in both Iraq and Syria
in support of IS. In Iraq, the rogue state of Sinjar
attacked the mountain during which 5 Kurdish peshmerga
fighters were killed. The attack sparked condemnation from
the Iraqi government and from the United States. In Syria,
the rogue state attacked a number of YPG positions and a
media center, killing 18 YPG fighters. This attack also
triggered criticism from the United States. ((Turkey
condemned for strikes in Iraq, Syria, Daily Star
26/4 2017)
In May, Erdogan was on a state visit to Washington to put
pressure on the United States to make it cease support for
the Syrian-Kurdish army YPG/YPJ, which is the only
effectively fighting IS in Syria. The attempt failed and the
United States announced instead that it would supply heavier
weapons to the YPG/YPJ to strengthen its ability to
capture Raqqa. In frustration, Erdogan let his security
forces attack protesters in front of Turkey's embassy in
Washington. Nine were injured. Up until the G20 summit in
Germany in July, Turkey was explicitly instructed that
Germany would not accept Turkish thugs' attacks on
protesters in Germany. ('Erdoğan's bodyguards' in violent
clash with protesters in Washington DC, Guardian
17/5 2017)
In June 2017, tens of thousands of Turks launched a 400km
protest march from Ankara to Istanbul demanding Adalet
(justice). The march was organized by the CHP party, which
found that Turkey, with its arbitrary mass arrests and
massive suppression of freedom of expression, was no longer
a democracy. In eastern Turkey, the regime routinely removed
Kurdish mayors and deployed its own people from the AKP.
('We've lost democracy': on the road with Turkey's justice
marchers, Guardian 30/6 2017)
Iraqi Kurdistan conducted a referendum in September 2017
which confirmed by a large majority that the autonomy area
should be independent. Turkey coordinated with Iraq and Iran
on how this plan should be crushed. Turkey announced to the
autonomous government that it would close the border between
it and Turkey and stop its oil exports through Turkey. This
would effectively stifle self-government financially.
However, the collapse happened much faster as the Iraqi army
recaptured northern Iraq, which had been under the control
of the autonomy. The independence plans were then abandoned.
Until then, the United States had supplied weapons to the
Kurds both in Syria and Iraq, both involved in the fight
against IS. This battle was coming to an end, IS was
defeated and the United States then turned its back on the
Kurds, orienting themselves towards Baghdad and Ankara.
In October, the regime placed 11 human rights activists
on the terrorist court. Among the accused were the director
of Amnesty International's Turkish branch, İdil Eser. Acc.
the prosecution had the accused downloaded the app ByLock,
which had been used by the coup makers in July 2016 for
encrypted communication. That the prosecution could not
prove its claim was not an obstacle to sentencing. Both the
European Commission and a large number of individual EU
countries (but not Denmark) protested against the regime,
which however ignored the foreign protest. (Senior Amnesty
figures among 11 on trial in Turkey on terror charges,
Guardian 25/10 2017)
In frustration over the Kurdish-led crackdown on Turkey's
allies in Syria, IS launched a war in January 2018 against
Rojava - Kurdistan in northern Syria. The regime in Ankara
had for several years labeled the Syrian Kurds as terrorists
and had occupied parts of northern Syria since August 2016.
Before Turkey began the war, the Turkish Minister of War
visited Moscow to ensure that the Turks were not attacked by
Russian aircraft. Russia agreed not to intervene. Both
countries used the situation against the United States.
Russia wanted to weaken the US-Turkey alliance, and Turkey
wanted to mark political and military opposition to the US
tactical alliance with the Kurds. From the latter half of
January, Turkey daily attacked targets in western Rojava
(Afrin) with aircraft and artillery. Syria protested to the
Islamist regime in Ankara and sent some units to Afrin, but
otherwise the Kurdish YPG/YPJ militia faced the
overwhelmingly heavy Turkish armed forces alone. The Turkish
attacks cost several thousand Kurdish civilians, and by
mid-March had sent around 200,000 Kurds to flight. They
naturally did not want to flee to Turkey, but instead sought
Aleppo. In mid-February, there were reports of Turkish use
of chemical weapons against the civilian population. The
Turkish war crimes and the humanitarian catastrophe that
unfolded were largely unreported in the Western media, which
instead worried about the Assad regime's attack on Ghouta's
Islamist militias on the outskirts of Damascus. In
mid-March, Afrin succumbed to Turkish force majeure, the
occupying power hoisted the Turkish flag over the city and
the YPG/YPJ then declared it to go to guerrilla attack on
the occupying power. (Turkey seeks Russian OK for air
campaign against Afrin, Daily Star 19/1 2018; Kurdish
doctors report suspected Turkish gas attack in Syria, Daily
Star 17/2 2018; Turkey begins assault on Kurdish hero
enclave in Syria, Guardian 19/1 2018 )
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