Month: August 2008

Muslim Land Joins Ranks of Tigers

By ANDREW HIGGINS and FARNAZ FASSIHI
August 6, 2008; Page A1

ANTALYA, Turkey — When an Islamist-leaning political party took charge of Turkey six years ago, this vibrant Mediterranean resort town feared a bumpy ride for a local economy driven in part by booze and bikinis.

Today, says Ahmet Barut, a hotel magnate here, the only real question is whether the town can sustain an unprecedented economic boom. He’s not keen on the teetotaling habits of the governing party’s leaders, nor the headscarves worn by their wives, but he applauds a key part of their record: “They are good at economics.”

From tourism and tomato growing to car making, Turkey has prospered far more under an Islam-tinged government than it did under some previous, ardently secular administrations more in tune with the often decidedly un-Islamic ways of many Turkish businesspeople.

By nearly every measure, Turkey’s economy is now much stronger than it was when the Justice and Development Party, or AK Party, won elections in 2002. Annual growth since then has averaged around 6.5%, up from an annual average of roughly 2.5% over the previous six-year period.

Turkey still faces various headwinds. Economic momentum has been slowed by the global credit crunch, and the country is running a sizable current-account deficit. A spasm of political uncertainty this year over headscarves didn’t help matters. The AK Party set off the turbulence with an effort to let female college students wear headscarves on campus — a potent symbol of conservative Islam, and a touchstone issue in Turkey, which is constitutionally secular. Opponents used the headscarf flap to try (unsuccessfully) to outlaw the AK Party, saying it harbors a hidden agenda to turn Turkey into an Islamic state resembling Iran.

Despite hiccups like these, the economy shows scant sign of slipping back into its earlier doldrums. “Numbers don’t lie,” says Antalya’s mayor, Menderes Turel, an AK Party member. He boasts of new investment, new sewage pipes and a new airport terminal, but also hails a phenomenon not generally esteemed in Muslim lands: Alcohol sales — turbocharged by tourists, restaurants and a raucous club scene — are up.

Thousands of Turks visit Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's mausoleum to protest the government plan to lift a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities in February.

Nearly all Turks are Muslim. But Islam and its symbols have been banished from spheres of state here since 1923, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the modern Turkish republic on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. Ataturk regarded religion as an obstacle to his vision for Turkey as a modern, Western power.

The AK Party’s economic record highlights an intriguing evolution in relations between political Islam and capitalism. Islamists in the Arab world tend to look askance at the secular ways of their Turkish brethren, but Turkey’s experiment with modern-minded Islam is closely watched in big parts of the Muslim world.

Islam itself has nothing against business. The Islamic prophet Muhammad started out as a merchant, and his first wife was a successful businesswoman. Asked to fix prices in the bazaar by followers who wanted to buy goods more cheaply, Muhammad is said to have refused: “Only Allah governs the market.”

Over the past century, however, Islam has often served as a vehicle for anticapitalist revolt. Egypt’s Sayyid Qutb, an influential Islamist thinker, crystallized this trend with a 1951 book, “The Battle Between Islam and Capitalism.” Across much of the Muslim world, Islamists denounced the market, not out of deeply held economic convictions, but mostly in response to corrupt crony capitalism in countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Indonesia before the fall of Suharto in 1998.

Turkey’s AK Party, however, has gone in the opposite direction. It insists it has no desire to challenge Turkey’s secular order. Instead, it sees the solution to many of Turkey’s ills in the free-market — both to open up and vivify an economy long dominated by a state-coddled elite and also to modernize a political system forged in the 1930s and still tinged with authoritarianism.

“We favor more competition, productivity and innovation,” says Mehmet Simsek, Turkey’s minister of state for economic affairs. “Those with 1930s mind-sets — statist and inward-looking — cannot understand this.”

An observant Muslim married to an American from Wisconsin, Mr. Simsek embodies the AK Party’s efforts to bridge different but, it believes, compatible worlds. Mr. Simsek used to work as an economist for Merrill Lynch in London and before that at the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. Faith, says the minister, is a personal affair, not a matter of state.

The success of the AK Party’s economic policy, he says, is easily measured: “People are making money.” Private-car sales, he notes, have jumped during his party’s tenure from 90,000 a year to around 400,000. Per-capita gross domestic product has soared from $3,300 in 2002 to more than $10,000.

Turkey’s rebound from financial disaster in 2001 — when the currency went into free fall and the economy contracted by 6% — “has surpassed expectations,” the International Monetary Fund said in its most recent detailed review of Turkey’s economy, prepared last year before the headscarf ruckus. It credited “sound macroeconomic policies, a conducive global environment and political stability.”

European Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia greets Turkey's Economy Minister, Mehmet Simsek, right, at a joint meeting with EU finance ministers and candidate countries in May.

Since the AK Party took over at the end of 2002, exports have more than tripled, foreign investment has jumped from under $1 billion a year to more than $20 billion, and the number of tourists has more than doubled. Inflation, out of control for three decades, remains a problem but has fallen sharply to around 10%. Growth in GDP this year is expected to be around 4.5%, way down from over 9% in 2004, but still robust.

Guided by the IMF, the AK Party has imposed fiscal discipline that eluded its predecessors, accelerated privatization and trimmed bureaucracy. Recently abolished, for example, was a requirement that any company with 50 or more employees must hire an ex-convict and a terrorism victim, among various others.

The AK Party has also reactivated a long-stalled drive to join the European Union, pushing through regulatory and other changes designed to bring Turkey more into line with European norms.

Unconventional Alignments

The AK Party’s mix of free-market zeal and emphasis on conservative, faith-rooted personal values has scrambled conventional alignments. In many countries, politicians who back free-market economics are supported most enthusiastically by the wealthy. Poorer folk tend to be more skeptical.

In Turkey, it has been the other way round. The AK Party’s biggest traditional base of support is among poorer and generally more devout citizens. Many wealthy businesspeople, on the other hand, started out viewing the party with deep suspicion — and still do on issues such as headscarves.

Foreign investors were also dubious. The AK Party’s Islamic background raised some eyebrows, but one key worry was that the victors might turn their back on an agreement with the IMF negotiated by the previous government. Backtracking would likely stoke inflation and derail economic recovery.

Instead of rejecting the IMF package, the new government embraced it and carried out a long list of IMF-endorsed reforms. “In the market, there was a lot of skepticism,” Mr. Simsek said recently in his office in Ankara, the capital. Over his desk hangs a portrait of Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey.

When the IMF program reached its scheduled end earlier this summer, Lorenzo Giorgianni, the IMF’s Turkey mission chief, said it had contributed to “the most rapid period of economic growth in the recent history of the Republic.”

Meantime, an influential organization of Turkish industrialists, known as TUSIAD, has also shed much of its early skepticism, at least about Turkey’s economic direction. Haluk Tukel, its current secretary general, hails AK Party economic policy over the past six years as “perfect.” But, he adds, many TUSIAD members still worry that the AK Party has a hidden Islamic agenda.

Such worries grew sharply this year when the government moved to lift a ban on pious female students covering their hair in class. AK Party has also talked about making adultery a criminal offense.

The opposition, flummoxed by AK Party’s economic and electoral successes, has seized on issues like these to try to win back support. Onur Oymen, vice president of the staunchly secular CHP party, dismisses Mr. Simsek and other Westernized officials as window dressing. AK Party’s ultimate goal, he believes, is an Islamic theocracy.

“You cannot have a short version of the Quran,” he says. “They present themselves as representing modern life. It is just the opposite.”

Nonsense, says Cemil Ipekci, an openly gay Turkish fashion designer who wears gold earrings and assortments of flamboyant necklaces and bracelets. “They are not radical Islamists. They are conservative, yes, but not fanatics. Look at me, they socialize with me.” He says he and his boyfriend attend state dinners and parties organized by AK Party ministers. The government-owned airline, Turkish Airlines, hired him to re-design its décor.

Levent Kizil, a more mainstream business leader, is also a fan. “They turned our economy round,” says the Istanbul-based owner of a big soft-drinks company. He doesn’t want Islam interfering with his lifestyle but sees scant sign yet of this happening. “I enjoy my secular lifestyle. I like to drink alcohol and gamble and none of the women in my family wear headscarves,” he says, chomping on a Cuban cigar at an Italian seafood restaurant.

When AK Party took office, Mr. Kizil’s company exported just $3 million of soft drinks. The figure is now $12 million. Confident that his domestic and foreign markets will keep growing, Mr. Kizil has invested €25 million, or about $40 million, to renovate two plants.

Big Problems

Turkey’s economy still has big problems. One of the biggest is mushrooming current-account deficit, which stood at around $43 billion for the 12 months leading to May. The current account is the broadest measure of a nation’s trade balance — and deficits raise worrisome questions about how the country will finance the gap.

Mr. Simsek blames the deficit largely on energy costs. Others point to Turkey’s imports of machinery and other items needed to modernize the economy, and point out that Turkey’s current account has been positive only in times of economic malaise.

Nevertheless, the deficit has spooked the market. There are concerns that a global credit squeeze could hurt Turkey’s ability to borrow the funds it needs. Standard & Poor’s Corp., the credit-rating agency, in April revised its outlook for Turkey from “stable” to “negative.” It last week changed this back to “stable” after Turkey’s highest court struck down a request from the chief prosecutor that the ruling AK Party be disbanded for “antisecular” activities related largely to the headscarf spat.

Abrupt Swings

Turkey has a long history of abrupt swings in economic fortune. An earlier attempt to open up to the world economy — and mimic the success of Asia’s so-called “tiger economies” — got off to a promising start in the 1980s. But that export-driven effort petered out and was followed by an era of chronic inflation and budgetary indiscipline. A big constraint on economic performance has been political instability, caused in part by a Kurdish minority seeking greater autonomy, as well as the continuing debate over the very nature of the Turkish state.

Many investors are now waiting to see whether Turkey can reach a new agreement with the IMF. It doesn’t need money from the fund, says Mr. Simsek, and has paid back more than half of the $23.5 billion it owed in 2002. But a new accord would help calm market jitters. Mr. Simsek, who is handling negotiations, said technical discussions would be completed in a “month or so.”

On the Mediterranean coast, meanwhile, Antalya is in the middle of its busiest tourist season ever. It expects over nine million visitors this year, up from 7.3 million last year and roughly half that in 2002. It’s biggest worry is not Islam, but forest fires that raged this week through coastal regions.

Mr. Barut, the hotelier, says Turkey might get more conservative but sees no risk of it turning into anything like Iran. That, he says, would kill the tourism industry.

Agriculture, another local mainstay, is also growing. Antalya now exports around 350,000 tons of tomatoes a year, nearly double the amount in 2002. Exports of flowers to Europe and Russia have soared, too.

A beneficiary of this is Ali Riza Akinci, who sells seeds for tomatoes, flowers and hotel lawns. He gets some of these from Israel, a supplier that is shunned in the rest of the Muslim world — but not here. Business, says Mr. Akinci, should trump politics.

Not everyone is upbeat. The head of the Antalya’s chamber of commerce, Kemal Ozgen, thinks the state is now too hands-off. He wants it to do more to protect small shop owners, who are losing business to newly opened shopping malls. Antalya, he says, had just one mall when the AK Party took power. It now has 28. Foreign retailers have fueled much of this expansion. Too much competition, says Mr. Ozgen, is unhealthy.

All the same, Mr. Ozgen is happy with the benefits that have accrued to his own business, a window-making factory. Thanks to a building blitz, he’s more than tripled output since the AK Party came to power.

Antalya’s growing integration in the world economy makes it highly vulnerable to any serious downturn on a global level. For example, a recession in Germany, now Antalya’s biggest tourist source, would hit local businesses hard.

Antalya’s AK Party mayor, Mr. Turel, can’t do much about that. But he does try to nip less serious problems in the bud — such as reports in the Russian media of a crackdown on booze. Mr. Turel swiftly set the record straight: Alcohol, he announced at a tourism conference, would never be restricted in Antalya on his watch. More than two million Russians are expected to visit the resort this year.

Pragmatism, says the mayor, is the AK Party’s guiding creed. “We allow praying, we allow bikinis, we allow discos,” the mayor says. “We allow everything.”

Write to Andrew Higgins at [email protected] and Farnaz Fassihi at [email protected]

Source: The Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2008

August 7, 2008
Victory for Turkish Democracy (Editorial)

By Japan Times, Tokyo

Aug. 5–Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled last week that the country’s governing party will not be banned for violating the country’s constitution. The outcome is a victory for democracy, as the court decision amounted to a rejection of conservative opposition to the ruling Justice and Development Party and the opposition’s attempts to shape Turkish politics by extra-parliamentary means.

While Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country, the country’s constitution prescribes a secular state. That mandate has empowered a conservative order — backed by the military — that has controlled Turkish politics in the name of secularism.

Having won 47 percent of the popular vote in elections last year — the biggest margin in over 40 years — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, head of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), feels confident enough to press for greater expression of Islamic identity in Turkey. For example, his government has rescinded the ban on women wearing head scarves in university. While this may seem like a minor issue, many fear it is only the first item in an agenda designed to push Turkey toward becoming an Islamic state.

Mr. Erdogan insists he and his party respect the constitution, but critics have their doubts. This spring the chief prosecutor charged the prime minister with harboring an Islamic agenda and demanded that the AKP be banned. The Constitutional Court ruled that the party’s activities were indeed unconstitutional. Six of the 11 judges voted to ban the party, but seven were needed for the ban to be enacted. Another four judges felt that cutting in half the funding the AKP receives from the Treasury — $20 million — would suffice as punishment.

The decision was “a serious warning,” said chief judge Hasim Kilic, to the AKP to “take the necessary lessons.” The loss of financing is not likely to hurt badly since party supporters can make up the lost revenue. The lifting of the threat of a party ban means that Mr. Erdogan can reach out to secularists who oppose conservatives and want to see democracy more deeply entrenched in Turkey. The question now is whether hardliners in the party will see the decision as an opportunity to push harder on their Islamic agenda, alienating moderates and animating conservatives.

The AKP may be on probation, but the decision is also a sign that the country’s judiciary, a pillar of the conservative order, is not prepared to once again overturn the democratic will of the Turkish people. Political parties have been banned in the past, but never one as popular as AKP or one that is in power. While the military has dominated Turkish politics since the founding of the modern state in 1923 — there have been four coups in the last half century — its allies are no longer prepared to give it a blank check.

Mr. Erdogan deserves some of the credit for this new reluctance. His economic policies have been a success. GDP expanded 5 percent in 2007, a slight slowdown from the previous year, but still a respectable showing. Inflation is at a 37-year low and foreign investment last year set a record, topping $22 billion.

The most important development is Mr. Erdogan’s ability to commence membership talks with the European Union. That has been and will continue to be a difficult negotiation as Europe is by no means united on Turkey’s membership. (The chief objection is the fact that it’s a Muslim country; Turkey’s size, argue the critics, would transform the nature of the EU.) But any progress depends on a rigorous and stable democracy. A constitutional coup would strengthen the hands of opponents.

This realization constrains whatever inclinations the AKP might have to push the Islamist agenda further. After the court ruling, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn called on Ankara “to resume with full energy its reforms to modernize the country,” forging consensus “through a broad-based dialogue with all sections of Turkish society.” The message could not be clearer.

The constitutional court decision has settled one important question, but tensions and deep divisions remain. Eighty-six people, including several senior military officers, are in jail awaiting trial on charges of involvement with a terrorist group that aimed to overthrow Mr. Erdogan’s government. The group is suspected of having operated with the tacit acceptance of other pillars of the “secular order.”

Although such musings appeal to the conspiracy minded, many believe that the group enjoys good connections with elements of the security forces. Thus the rulings in their cases will be every bit as important as last week’s ruling on the AKP. They will confirm whether laws and democratic processes, rather than an unelected elite, will shape Turkey’s future.

Source: Japan Times, Tokyo, 05.08.2008

August 7, 2008
STRATFORD: China and the Enduring Uighurs

By Rodger Baker

On Aug. 4, four days before the start of the Beijing Olympics, two ethnic Uighurs drove a stolen dump truck into a group of some 70 Chinese border police in the town of Kashi in Xinjiang, killing at least 16 of the officers. The attackers carried knives and home-made explosive devices and had also written manifestos in which they expressed their commitment to jihad in Xinjiang. The incident occurred just days after a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) claimed responsibility for a series of recent attacks and security incidents in China and warned of further attacks targeting the Olympics.

Chinese authorities linked the Aug. 4 attack to transnational jihadists, suggesting the involvement of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which Beijing has warned is the biggest terrorist threat to China and the Olympics. Despite the Chinese warnings and TIP claims and the intensified focus on the Uighurs because of the Aug. 4 attack, there is still much confusion over just who these Uighur or Turkistani militants are.

The Uighurs, a predominately Muslim Turkic ethnic group largely centered in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, have their own culture, language and written script distinct from their Han Chinese counterparts. Uighur ethnic nationalists and Islamist separatists have risen several times to challenge Chinese control over Xinjiang, but the Uighur independence movement remains fractured and frequently at odds with itself. However, recent evolutions within the Islamist militant Uighur movement, including growing links with transnational jihadist groups in Central and Southwest Asia, may represent a renewed threat to security in China.

Origins in Xinjiang
Uighur nationalism traces its origins back to a broader Turkistan, stretching through much of modern day Xinjiang (so-called “East Turkistan”) and into Central Asia. East Turkistan was conquered by the Manchus in the mid-1700s and, after decades of struggle, the territory was annexed by China, which later renamed it Xinjiang, or “New Territories.” A modern nation-state calling itself East Turkistan arose in Xinjiang in the chaotic transition from imperial China to Communist China, lasting for two brief periods from 1933 to 1934 and from 1944 to 1949. Since that time, “East Turkistan” has been, more or less, an integral part of the People’s Republic of China.

The evolution of militant Uighur separatism — and particularly Islamist-based separatism — has been shaped over time by both domestic and foreign developments. In 1940, Hizbul Islam Li-Turkistan (Islamic Party of Turkistan or Turkistan Islamic Movement ) emerged in Xinjiang, spearheading a series of unsuccessful uprisings from the 1940s through 1952, first against local warlords and later against the Communist Chinese.

In 1956, as the “Hundred Flowers” was blooming in China’s eastern cities, and intellectuals were (very briefly) allowed to air their complaints and suggestions for China’s political and social development, a new leadership emerged among the Uighur Islamist nationalists, changing the focus from “Turkistan” to the more specific “East Turkistan,” or Xinjiang. Following another failed uprising, the Islamist Uighur movement faded away for several decades, with only minor sparks flaring during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution.

In 1979, as Deng Xiaoping was launching China’s economic opening and reform, there was a coinciding period of Islamic and ethnic revival in Xinjiang, reflecting the relative openness of China at the time. During this time, one of the original founders of Hizbul Islam Li-Turkistan, Abdul Hakeem, was released from prison and set up underground religious schools. Among his pupils in the 1980s was Hasan Mahsum, who would go on to found ETIM.

The 1980s were a chaotic period in Xinjiang, with ethnic and religious revivalism, a growing student movement, and public opposition to China’s nuclear testing at Lop Nor. Uighur student protests were more a reflection of the growing student activism in China as a whole (culminating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident) than a resurgence of Uighur separatism, but they coincided with a general movement in Xinjiang to promote literacy and to refocus on religious and ethnic heritage. Amid this revival, several Uighur separatist or Islamist militant movements emerged.

A critical moment occurred in April 1990, when an offshoot of the Uighur Islamist militant movement was discovered plotting an uprising in Xinjiang. The April 5 so-called “Baren Incident” (named for the city where militants and their supporters faced off against Chinese security forces) led Beijing to launch dragnet operations in the region, arresting known, suspected or potential troublemakers — a pattern that would be repeated through the “Strike Hard” campaigns of the 1990s. Many of the Uighurs caught up in these security campaigns, including Mahsum, began to share, refine and shape their ideology in prisons, taking on more radical tendencies and creating networks of relations that could be called upon later. From 1995 to 1997, the struggle in Xinjiang reached its peak, with increasingly frequent attacks by militants in Xinjiang and equally intensified security countermeasures by Beijing.

It was also at this time that China formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), enlisting Central Asian assistance in cracking down on Uighur militants, many of whom had fled China. In some ways this plan backfired, as it provided common cause between the Uighurs and Central Asian militants, and forced some Uighur Islamist militants further west, to Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they would link up with the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), among others.

Among those leaving China was Mahsum, who tried to rally support from the Uighur diaspora in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey but was rebuffed. Mahsum and a small group of followers headed to Central Asia and ultimately Afghanistan, where he established ETIM as a direct successor to his former teacher’s Hizbul Islam Li-Turkistan. By 1998, Kabul-based ETIM began recruiting and training Uighur militants while expanding ties with the emerging jihadist movement in the region, dropping the “East” from its name to reflect these deepening ties. Until the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, ETIM focused on recruiting and training Uighur militants at a camp run by Mahsum and Abdul Haq, who is cited by TIP now as its spiritual leader.

With the U.S. attack on Afghanistan in October 2001, ETIM was routed and its remnants fled to Central Asia and Pakistan. In January 2002, Mahsum tried to distance ETIM from al Qaeda in an attempt to avoid having the Uighur movement come under U.S. guns. It did not work. In September 2002, the United States declared ETIM a terrorist organization at the behest of China. A year later, ETIM experienced what seemed to be its last gasps, with a joint U.S.-Pakistani operation in South Waziristan in October 2003 killing Hasan Mahsum.

A Movement Reborn?
Following Mahsum’s death, a leaderless ETIM continued to interact with the Taliban and various Central Asian militants, particularly Uzbeks, and slowly reformed into a more coherent core in the Pakistan/Afghanistan frontier. In 2005, there were stirrings of this new Uighur Islamist militant group, the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP), which established a robust presence on the Internet, posting histories of the Uighur/Turkistan people in western China and Central Asia and inspirational videos featuring Mahsum. In 2006, a new video surfaced calling for jihad in Xinjiang, and later that year there were reports that remnants of ETIM had begun re-forming and moving back into far western Xinjiang.

It was also around this time that Beijing began raising the specter of ETIM targeting the Olympics — a move seen at the time as primarily an excuse for stricter security controls. In early January 2007, Beijing raided a camp of suspected ETIM militants near the Xinjiang border with Tajikistan, and a year later raided another suspected camp in Urumchi, uncovering a plot to carry out attacks during the Olympics. This was followed in March by a reported attempt by Uighur militants to down a Chinese airliner with gasoline smuggled aboard in soda cans.

Publicly, the Uighur militant issue was quickly swept aside by the Tibetan uprising in March, leaving nearly unnoticed an anti-government protest in Hotan and a series of counterterrorism raids by Chinese security forces in late March and early April that reportedly found evidence of more specific plots to attack Beijing and Shanghai during the Olympics.

In the midst of this security campaign, TIP released a video, not disseminated widely until late June, in which spokesman Commander Seyfullah laid out a list of grievances against Beijing and cited Abdul Haq as calling on Uighur Islamist militants to begin strikes against China. The video also complained that the “U.S.-led Western countries listed the Turkistan Islamic Party as one of the international terrorist organizations,” an apparent reference to the United States’ 2002 listing of the ETIM on the terrorist exclusion list.

In addition to linking the TIP to the ETIM, the April video also revealed some elements of the movement’s evolution since the death of Mahsum. Rather than the typical rhetoric of groups closely linked to the Wahabi ideology of al Qaeda, TIP listed its grievances against Beijing in an almost lawyer-like fashion, following more closely the pattern of Hizb al-Tahrir (HT), a movement active in Central Asia advocating nonviolent struggle against corrupt regimes and promoting the return of Islamic rule. Although HT officially renounces violence as a tool of political change, it has provided an abundance of zealous and impatient idealists who are often recruited by more active militant organizations.

The blending of the HT ideologies with the underlying principles of Turkistan independence reflects the melding of the Uighur Islamist militancy with wider Central Asian Islamist movements. Fractures in HT, emerging in 2005 and expanding thereafter, may also have contributed to the evolution of TIP’s ideology; breakaway elements of HT argued that the nonviolent methods espoused by HT were no longer effective.

What appears to be emerging is a Turkistan Islamist movement with links in Central Asia, stretching back to Afghanistan and Pakistan, blending Taliban training, transnational jihadist experiential learning, HT frameworks and recruiting, and Central Asian ties for support and shelter. This is a very different entity than China has faced in the past. If the TIP follows the examples set by the global jihadist movement, it will become an entity with a small core leadership based far from its primary field of operations guiding (ideologically but not necessarily operationally) a number of small grassroots militant cells.

The network will be diffuse, with cells operating relatively independently with minimal knowledge or communication among them and focused on localized goals based on their training, skills and commitment. This would make the TIP less of a strategic threat, since it would be unable to rally large numbers of fighters in a single or sustained operation, but it would also be more difficult to fight, since Beijing would be unable to use information from raiding one cell to find another.

This appears to be exactly what we are seeing now. The central TIP core uses the Internet and videos as psychological tools to trigger a reaction from Beijing and inspire militants without exposing itself to detection or capture. On July 25, TIP released a video claiming responsibility for a series of attacks in China, including bus bombings in Kunming, a bus fire in Shanghai and a tractor bombing in Wenzhou. While these claims were almost certainly exaggerated, the Aug. 4 attack in Xinjiang suddenly refocused attention on the TIP and its earlier threats.

Further complicating things for Beijing are the transnational linkages ETIM forged and TIP has maintained. The Turkistan movement includes not only China’s Uighurs but also crosses into Uzbekistan, parts of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and spreads back through Central Asia all the way to Turkey. These linkages may have been the focus of quiet security warnings beginning around March that Afghan, Middle Eastern and Central Asian migrants and tourists were spotted carrying out surveillance of schools, hotels and government buildings in Beijing and Shanghai — possibly part of an attack cycle.

The alleged activities seem to fit a pattern within the international jihadist movement of paying more attention to China. Islamists have considered China something less imperialistic, and thus less threatening, than the United States and European powers, but this began changing with the launch of the SCO, and the trend has been accelerating with China’s expanded involvement in Africa and Central Asia and its continued support for Pakistan’s government. China’s rising profile among Islamists has coincided with the rebirth of the Uighur Islamist militant movement just as Beijing embarks on one of its most significant security events: the Summer Olympics.

Whatever name it may go by today — be it Hizbul Islam Li-Turkistan, the East Turkistan Islamic Movement or the Turkistan Islamic Party — the Uighur Islamist militant movement remains a security threat to Beijing. And in its current incarnation, drawing on internationalist resources and experiences and sporting a more diffuse structure, the Uighur militancy may well be getting a second wind.

Tell Stratfor What You Think

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August 7, 2008
Ahmadinejad’s upcoming visit to Turkey important: report

Tehran Times Political Desk

TEHRAN, August 05 (ISNA) – Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan has described President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s upcoming visit to Turkey as “vitally important,” according to ISNA news agency.

“The visit is vitally important and side issues can not overshadow it,” Babacan has said in a meeting with his Portuguese counterpart Luis Amado.

According to Turkish media, Ahmadinejad will start visit to Istanbul on August 14 for a 3-day visit.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul will be staying in Istanbul at that time of the visit to meet Ahmadinejad.

The Turkish media has said it is expected that Iran’s nuclear case to feature as the main topic of the talks. Other issues like bilateral relations and energy cooperation will be discussed.

AA END ISN

August 7, 2008
“US Senator Buying Policies” of Armenian Lobby in the USA

Buying Policies

Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief

PoliGazette takes a closer look into the financial records of US Senator Menendez (D NJ). His vote can and has been bought.

One of the main things Americans frequently complain about is the influence of special interest groups over politicians and, thus, over how the United States is ran. Too many laws, these Americans say, are designed not with the best interest of the American people in mind, but with the interest of said groups in mind. This is, Americans rightfully complain, now how the US government was meant to function.

In recent months and years some Democratic politicians have constantly functioned as mouthpieces for one of those special interest groups; Armenian American nationalists. For some, for most Americans, unknown reason, these Democratic Senators and Representatives bring the events of 1915 which they call the Armenian Genocide up whenever they can. This obsession with something that happened almost 100 years ago resulted in an international controversy when one of the first acts of the Democratically controlled US Congress after the elections of 2006 was to adopt a resolution that labels said events officially as ʽgenocide.ʼ

Turkey denies that what happened constitutes genocide and argues, instead, that historians, not politicians, should cast judgment on this affair. In response to the resolution Turkey threatened to withdraw its support for the War in Iraq and, more importantly, would no longer allow the US to use Turkey (to move troops, material, etc.) in order to fight and thus win in that Middle Eastern country.

Americans wondered what happened to their government; why was the war put at risk? Why were American lives put at risk? Why this sudden obsession with something that has no relation whatsoever with America?

PoliGazette has the answers to those questions. As usual it is about one thing only: money.

One of the most fervent supporters of the Armenian cause in the United States is Senator Robert Menendez. He is one of the Senators who blocked George W. Bushʼs nomination for ambassador to Armenia; when Bush wanted to send that person, Menendez blocked the nomination because the nominee refused to call what happened to the Armenian as ʽgenocide.ʼ Later Bush nominated another diplomat, and once again Menendez objected, etc. In the end, though, Marie Yovanovitch was finally confirmed.

And once again Americans wondered what the hell just happened. Why was Menendez so passionate about this subject? Why is history politicized?

As said, it is about one thing, and one thing only; money. PoliGazetteʼs Kemal (who did most of the work) and me, Michael, took a closer look at the financial records of Senator Menendez and found that he has been paid and bought by Armenian activists. All in all, this Senator received some $136,000 from Armenian action committees and individuals; quite a gigantic sum.

Below follows the complete record of Armenian donations to Senator Menendez. Iʼll summarize the findings here, for details, scroll down to the records.

One of the first things one notices about the Armenians who donated to Senator Menendez is that many of the Armenian donaters do not live in New Jersey. This means that he is not representing them, since American Senators represent a specific part of the population who are able to vote him or her in and out of office. In other words, a sizable part of Menendezʼs donaters are not his constituents.

Since he does not represent them nor their regional interests, common sense dictates that he works for them in other areas. This is, obviously, the Armenian Genocide issue. Menendez has become one of the most vocal US Senators on this subject.

Another interesting aspect of Menendezʼs financial records is that he receives a lot of money from Armenian organizations, or PACS. These PACS are special interest groups, who often only deal with one subject. The Armenian PACS that donate to Menendez are the Armenian American PAC and the Armenian Americans Legislative Issues Committee. Together these PACS have donated $25,746 to Menendez.

Menendezʼs own financial records taken from the Federal Election Commissionʼs website show that this one, individual Senator alone has received $136,481 from Armenian organizations and individuals, many of whom not constituents of this Democratic Senator for New Jersey. This amount, a significant amount, has caused Menendez to focus a lot of time and attention to the Armenian ʽGenocideʼ issue and has, directly, resulted in international controversies and worsening relations with Americaʼs allies.

Here follow the details. Names of individuals are published because those records are available and open to the public already at other places.

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Haberin aslini ve uzerine tiklaninca dokumanlari gosteren bagislarin listesini gormek icin tikalyiniz.

August 6, 2008
BASBUG APPOINTED CHIEF OF THE TGS

By Gareth Jenkins

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

On August 4 Turkish President Abdullah Gul formally approved the appointment of Land Forces Commander General Ilker Basbug as the chief of the Turkish General Staff (TGS) to replace the outgoing General Yasar Buyukanit, who will step down on August 30 after reaching the compulsory retirement age of 67.

Basbug’s appointment followed a three-day meeting of the Supreme Military Council (YAS), which meets at the beginning of August each year to decide on the annual round of promotions and postings in the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). Basbug has been replaced as Land Forces Commander by General Isik Kosaner, the head of the Gendarmerie. The commanders of the Turkish Navy, Admiral Muzaffer Metin Atac, and the Turkish Air Force, General Aydogan Babaoglu, remain unchanged.

Although there is nothing in military regulations to prevent a chief of the TGS from being drawn from the Navy or Air Force, the post has always been filled by a member of the Land Forces, usually the Land Forces commander. The Gendarmerie is distinct from the Land Forces in terms of personnel, with only rare transfers of officers between the two. However, it has traditionally been commanded by a four star general on secondment from the Land Forces. Kosaner is a career Land Forces officer and has been replaced as commander of the Gendarmerie by General Atilla Isik, the current chief of staff of the Land Forces.

In terms of postings, the military year runs for 12 months from the end of August. Chiefs of the TGS can serve for a maximum of four years, provided that they do not reach the compulsory retirement age of 67; in which case they are obliged to step down at the end of the following August.

Basbug was born in 1943 and is expected to serve as chief of the TGS until 2010. It currently appears that he will be succeeded by Kosaner, who was born in 1945 and could thus serve as chief of staff until the end of August 2012. The commands of the individual services have a lower retirement age of 65.

Basbug has a reputation for combining a formidable intellect with an unswerving commitment to the ideological legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938), the fierce secularist who founded the modern Turkish Republic in 1923. In the months leading up to the YAS meeting, hard-line elements in the Islamist media launched a defamation campaign against Basbug in the hope of preventing him from being appointed chief of the TGS. In theory at least, it would have been possible for Gul to delay ratifying Basbug’s appointment, thus forcing him to retire at the end of August while still head of the Land Forces; but Gul appears to have had no hesitation in ratifying Basbug’s appointment when it was presented to him for his approval on August 4.

More surprising than what happened at the YAS meeting was what did not happen. Traditionally, the TGS has used the August YAS meetings and, to a lesser extent, a second YAS meeting in December each year, to purge the officer corps of anyone deemed to be ideologically suspect.

Like most of its counterparts around the world, the Turkish military has its own court system to try those alleged to have breached laws and regulations. The military courts follow standard judicial procedures, including hearings, the presentation of evidence, prosecution and defense. In contrast, the meetings of the YAS are closed. The members of the council simply vote on cases brought before them. The accused do not have the right of defense. In many instances, they are only aware of the allegations against them when they are notified after the YAS meeting that they have been expelled from the military. There is no right of appeal.

Although it has also been applied for other offences, the system has been the main instrument used against suspected Islamist activists. The TGS has long suspected, and not without justification, that Islamist groups are trying to infiltrate the ranks of what is regarded as one of the bastions of the Turkish secular establishment. YAS meetings have proved a convenient way of purging the officer corps of those believed to have been recruited by Islamist groups, without the need to present evidence in a court or risk the possibility of an acquittal. It is also likely, however, that some of the officers expelled over the years for alleged Islamist activism have been guilty of nothing more insidious than increased piety.

The number of officers expelled has tended to vary. At the YAS meeting in August 2007, a total of 23 officers were expelled, 10 of them for alleged Islamist activism. This year, however, for the first time in 16 years, there were no expulsions (Milliyet, Vatan, Hurriyet, Milliyet, Radikal, August 5).

In a country already awash with conspiracy theories, the absence of any expulsions has sent the rumor mills into overdrive. The pro-AKP press has triumphantly speculated that Basbug must have agreed not to expel any officers for Islamist activism in return for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promising to ensure that the continuing Ergenekon investigation (see EDM, July 29) would not implicate any members of the military high command (Zaman, Yeni Safak, Sabah, August 4). This is unlikely in the extreme.

In the prevailing political climate in Turkey, no incoming chief of the TGS, much less one as ruthlessly ideologically committed as Basbug, could afford to be seen to be bowing to pressure from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) over what most secularists regard as a politically motivated investigation.

It is difficult to imagine that, since the last YAS meeting, there have been no perceived serious breaches of military discipline similar to those previously dealt with at these meetings. Rather than allowing suspected Islamist activists to remain within its ranks indefinitely, it is more likely that the TGS is either biding its time or will opt to deal with them through more conventional disciplinary procedures.

August 5, 2008