Turkey

Political wind, Turkey

Islamism in Turkey stalled

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After hundreds of thousands took to Istanbul’s streets in protest and the military threatened a coup, a high court in Turkey delayed the Islamists’ plan to install their party’s founder as President. Islamists already hold a wide majority in Turkey’s Parliament yet risk continued exclusion from the European Union. United Press International editor Claude Salhani provides and update and explains what is at stake in commentary this morning in the Washington Times:

Turkey’s latest crisis began when Mr. Erdogan’s Islamic AKP — Justice and Development Party — set its eyes on the presidency. The position is largely ceremonial but still carries a certain amount of clout. The Turkish president, who serves a seven-year term, can block laws and official appointments. The president nominates the judges of the Constitutional Court and military advocates.

Winning the presidency would have consolidated the AKP’s power, but also set a precedent in the modern Turkish republic by mixing politics and religion.
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Mr. Gul, who is also co-founder of the ruling moderate AKP, however, failed to win the necessary two-thirds majority of the Parliament, or 367 votes in the first round of voting. But a victory by Mr. Gul in a third round was a certain shoo-in, given that he would only need a simple majority to win.

Then there were massive demonstrations in the Turkish capital of Ankara and in its commercial center, Istanbul, with more than 1 million people taking to the streets in protest. And perhaps of greater importance was the not-so-thinly veiled threat from the country’s military — traditional guardians of the Kemalist secularist notion — of having the armed forces intervene.
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Turkish politicians know better than to tempt their military. Turkey’s generals have intervened four times in the last 40 years to protect the secularist Kemalist tenet. Three coups d’etat — in 1960, 1971 and 1980 — brought the military out of their barracks and the politicians into line. The military’s latest incursion into the country’s politics was no later than in 1997, when they forced the resignation of Necmettin Erbakan, the head of government and leader of an Islamic party.

As could be expected, the EU has reacted with alarm to threats by Turkey’s military forces. A military coup at Europe’s doorstep is indeed a frightening prospect. But then again, so is an Islamist state for the vast majority of Europeans.

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Political wind, Turkey, War on Terror

News from the Global War on Terror

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Al Qaeda in Iraq nabbed in large numbers:

April 30, 2007 — U.S. forces grabbed 72 suspected insurgents and seized nitric acid and other bomb-making materials yesterday in raids targeting the al Qaeda in Iraq terrorist group. The raids occurred in Anbar province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, and in Salahuddin province, to the northwest, the U.S. military said.

The detainees included 36 people with alleged ties to al Qaeda in Iraq who were seized in Samarra, a Salahuddin city 60 miles north of Baghdad. In Karmah, an Anbar city 50 miles west of the capital, U.S. forces found 20 five-gallon drums of nitric acid and other bomb-making materials.

Huge rally against Islamist as single choice for Turkey’s presidential election:

Protests Sunday against an Islamist government in Turkey

Hundreds of thousands of secularist Turks took to the streets for the second time in two weeks yesterday after a dramatic intervention by the military in an attempt to stop Abdullah Gul becoming the first Turkish President with an Islamist past. Demonstrators in Istanbul carried blood-red national flags and posters of Kemal Atatürk, the founder of a secular Turkey. Banners read: “Sharia (Islamic law) shall not rise to the Presidential Palace.”

The protests came after the military gave warning that it would act to defend secularism – although the two events were not apparently coordinated. The developments, however, herald a week of high tension in which the Constitutional Court is due to rule on a challenge to Friday’s inconclusive first round of the presidential election.

The second round, in which Mr Gul is the only candidate, is scheduled for Wednesday – unless the court annuls the process beforehand.

7/7 ‘mastermind’ seized while entering Iraq from Iran now at Gitmo:

The al-Qaeda leader who is thought to have devised the plan for the July 7 suicide bombings in London and an array of terrorist plots against Britain has been captured by the Americans. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, a former major in Saddam Hussein’s army, was apprehended as he tried to enter Iraq from Iran and was transferred this week to the “high-value detainee programme” at Guantanamo Bay.
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He had a close link with another arrested al-Qaeda figure and, the sources said, would have “a wealth of information”. He is thought to have been in contact with Osama bin Laden before his capture and might be able to provide information about his leader’s whereabouts.
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“Abd al-Hadi was trying to return to his native country, Iraq, to manage al-Qaeda’s affairs and possibly focus on operations outside Iraq against Western targets,” [Pentagon spokesman Brian] Whitman said. He added that he was a key al-Qaeda paramilitary leader in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, and between 2002 and 2004 led efforts to attack US forces in Afghanistan with terrorist units based in Pakistan.

Saudi Arabia arrests 172 al Qaeda in plot with 9/11 similarity:

Saudi Arabia arrests 172 al Qaeda

CNN’s Nic Robertson reported many of those arrested were Saudis who had recently return from fighting Americans in Iraq.

Annie Jacobsen asks a good question: Where were the suicide pilots trained? Editor’s note: All four of the 9/11 hijacker pilots received aviation training in the United States.

US aircrews show Taliban no mercy

Caught in the middle of the Helmand river, the fleeing Taliban were paddling their boat back to shore for dear life.

Smoke from the ambush they had just sprung on American special forces still hung in the air, but their attention was fixed on the two helicopter gunships that had appeared above them as their leader, the tallest man in the group, struggled to pull what appeared to be a burqa over his head.

As the boat reached the shore, Captain Larry Staley tilted the nose of the lead Apache gunship downwards into a dive. One of the men turned to face the helicopter and sank to his knees. Capt Staley’s gunner pressed the trigger and the man disappeared in a cloud of smoke and dust.

By the time the gunships had finished, 21 minutes later, military officials say 14 Taliban were confirmed dead, including one of their key commanders in Helmand.

The mission is typical of a new, aggressive, approach adopted by American forces in southern Afghanistan and particularly in Helmand, where British troops last year bore the brunt of some of the heaviest fighting since the fall of the Taliban in 2001… FULL REPORT AND VIDEO AT THE LONDON TELEGRAPH