Martians 'invade Turkey', Court dismisses case

One of the amendments brought in by last September's referendum on constitutional change was the right for Turkish citizens to apply directly to the Constitutional Court, the highest judicial body in the land. The court tended to busy itself with constitutional disputes, such as whether the ruling AK Party should be closed down, and only accepted applications from politicians and the like.

Now, the Constitutional Court will be an additional level of appeal for ordinary Turkish citizens who feel their cases were not adequately handled by the Court of First Instance and the Court of Appeal. The move has been hailed as an emancipation, a Great Leap Forward for Turkish citizen rights and a way for a court so often seen as aloof to connect with ordinary people.

How fitting, then, that the first ever "ordinary" application to the court has come from someone claiming his mind has been invaded by Martians.

"I suspect my mind has been invaded by Martians," NTVMSNBC reports the applicant as saying. "I have evidence to support this. Please intervene."

Regretfully, the applicant has been sent a response saying Martian coercion is outside the Constitutional Court's remit. It's a shame: we may never know what the evidence was.

Time, gentlemen: Efes Pilsen, Turkey's top basketball team, is forced off court

Turkey's most successful basketball team found out yesterday that it must change its name or close down because it shares its name with an alcoholic beverage. The team falls foul of new laws passed by parliament that broaden the ban on alcohol and tobacco advertising to the naming of sports clubs. Efes Pilsen, the team named after Turkey's most popular beer, is the most prominent victim of the new rules.

Alcohol has a long history of sport sponsorship around the world. One Canadian brewer that backed England's football Premier League for years now has its name splashed all over the Carling Cup competition, whilst rugby union's Heineken Cup would be an entirely different affair without that famous Dutch beer. It's happened in Turkey too: Efes Pilsen and Tuborg are two examples of teams carrying their sponsor companies' names.

Turkey's latest alcohol advertising ban is not unusual. France, where the Heineken Cup is abbreviated to the "H Cup", also restricts alcohol sponsorship in sport. But critics say the Turkish version was passed to placate the pious supporters of the governing party. The AK Party is mildly Islamic, to put it, well, mildly, and few doubt that some sections of its voting base would happily see alcohol banned in the country entirely. Council leaders have often spoken of plans to move all licenced restaurants and bars within their town to an allocated zone, effectively a red light district, and to issue a ban outside it. Nor is the trend restricted to excitable local politicians. The cabinet has not been shy to raise the consumption tax on booze - it increased by as much as 30 percent last October, much to the chagrin of consumers such as the Turkish Wine Forum.

Efes Pilsen now has a year to change its name, and it's not clear what route the team is going to take. Anadolu, Efes's parent company, has signalled it might pull out of basketball entirely. That would be a tragedy, depriving Turkish basketball of its most successful team ever: Efes Pilsen has won the national league 13 times and has a European title under its belt too. Another possibility is to drop Pilsen from the name, so as to become Efes Istanbul or Efes Anadolu. A third option would be to merge forces with an existing club - Beşiktaş Efes, anyone?

UPDATE (09 January, 2pm): An internet campaign, "Kulübüme dokunma - Don't touch my club" has appeared collecting signatures against the new law. See it at kulubumedokunma.com.

Things we already knew: Kılıçdaroğlu better than Baykal

There's been a smattering of coverage in the Turkish press of a public opinion survey that paints the leader of Turkey's main opposition party in better light than his predecessor. "The Kılıçdaroğlu vaccine has worked" trumpets today's Cumhuriyet, a staunchly secular newspaper. 68 percent of the party's voters think its new leader is more successful, while 13 percent prefer former leader Deniz Baykal, it reports. So far, so good for Mr Kılıçdaroğlu?

Possibly. Trouble is, that was the easy part. Many party members - and many others outside the party, like this blog - were so disillusioned about the CHP's direction and agenda under the previous leadership that a change at the top was seen as the only way forward. So not being Mr Baykal had already guaranteed Mr Kılıçdaroğlu points.

New leaders of major political parties tend to experience a public opinion bounce. Mr Kılıçdaroğlu's honeymoon period was particularly short: events in the eastern Mediterranean involving a certain flotilla put paid to that. In the months that followed, the new leader's challenge was to win over his party, a party whose leader had gone, but whose old guard remained. It appears quite clear, following a period of internal skulduggery that culminated in a stormy party congress late last year, that Mr Kılıçdaroğlu now has that steady grip on the CHP leadership.

Some of these poll results will be encouraging to him. 53 percent of respondents think CHP was a "revolutionary" (awkward word, I know) party, as against 33 percent who say it represented the status quo. That result would certainly have been the other way around during the Baykal era. There were also positive responses when asked whether the CHP leadership was "in touch with the people": more than 9 percent name him as the politician they most admire, ahead of Devlet Bahçeli, who has led the third-placed Nationalist Action Party for donkey's years, and well ahead of Mr Baykal's best results.

However, Mr Kılıçdaroğlu was only third in the popularity contest. Prime Minister Erdoğan was first (22 percent) and President Abdullah Gül second (10 percent), which illustrates the scale of his next challenge: winning over the country. A majority of Metropoll's respondents (56 percent) believe Mr Kılıçdaroğlu and his team can not lead the CHP to power, and an overwhelming 72 percent do not believe the party could solve the Kurdish issue.

The next challenge, then, is for Mr Kılıçdaroğlu to win over the country. He has recorded a modest improvement in his party's standing, as the latest Metropoll survey shows, but the governing AK Party remains firmly in the lead. He has six months to prove his worth.

Metropoll interviewed 1504 people in 31 Turkish provinces between 25 and 29 December 2010. The full survey can be found here.

Opinion poll suggests huge gains for CHP; hollow victory for AK Party

Metropoll's latest opinion poll* just over a week ago asked, among other things, for voting intention. Here are the topline percentages, with changes from the 2009 local election:

AK Party: 45.3 (+6.5) [Justice and Development Party, governing, religious conservative]

CHP: 30.7 (+7.3) [Republican People's Party, secularist]

MHP: 13.8 (+0.3) [Nationalist Action Party, nationalist]

BDP: 6.5 (+2.7) [Peace and Democracy Party, pro-Kurdish]

SP: 1.3 (-0.3)** [Felicity Party, strongly Islamist]

DP: 0.6 (-0.5) [Democrat Party, centre-right]

HAS Party: 0.8 (-2.9)** [People's Voice Party, split from SP]

Others: 0.5

These findings suggest a flock in support towards the four mainstream parties. This is interesting considering we are probably just over six months away from a general election, and Turkish political parties tend to proliferate - rather than unite - around this time.

If this were replicated at a general election, this would be a substantial stride forward for the CHP and its best result in 34 years. For other parties, this poll appears to reproduce the 2007 election result: the governing AK Party stages a recovery from its poor local election showing two years ago, whereas the MHP records a small drop in support that is within the margin of error. All other parties, save the BDP whose members will probably run as independents, fall below the 10 percent threshold.

So how would parliament look in such a scenario? Interestingly, despite the similarities in vote proportions to 2007, the seat distribution would look remarkably different:***

AK Party: 265 seats (-70)

CHP: 180 seats (+79)

MHP: 85 seats (+15)

BDP: 20 seats (no change)

The AK Party would shed around a fifth of its seats and lose its governing majority in the process. The CHP, meanwhile, would be far from able to govern alone and would seriously struggle to lead a coalition with these numbers, but would still become the single largest opposition party AK have ever seen. But why?

The answer lies in vote representation. In 2007, 89 percent of Turks voted for parties and independent candidates who ended up being represented in parliament. Under this poll, the figure would be 96.3 percent. If the findings of this opinion poll are correct, it represents an exodus of voters from the smaller parties. It suggests Turks are aware their vote is less likely to be represented if they don't vote big.

* Metropoll interviewed 1504 people in 31 Turkish provinces between 25 and 29 December 2010. The full survey can be found here.
** The HAS Party split off from the SP late last year. Figures for both parties are compared to SP's 2009 local election result.
*** The above is a crude and entirely unscientific swing, assuming the 10 percent electoral threshold is not lowered and the pro-Kurdish BDP's 20 MPs decide to run again as independents, this poll would roughly produce the following seat distribution in parliament (with changes from the present situation).

New Year cheer: how Top Gear offended Turkey

Fans of the BBC's popular motoring show Top Gear will be aware that their latest adventure saw them drive across the Middle East towards Bethlehem. They were following in the footsteps of the Three Wise Men, they explained, but intended to replicate their journey in sports cars - part of which took them through southeastern Turkey. It was a hugely entertaining episode and I enjoyed it immensely, but it was characteristically outspoken and managed to offend some Turks in the process.

That in itself is not a particularly difficult to do, but for those foreigners who don't understand why the Turks were offended - and, indeed, those who haven't seen the programme - here's my guide to Top Gear's transgressions. It comes complete with "blunders thou shall commit" warnings of my own, in case you plan to tread on a few toes yourself. We begin fifteen minutes into the programme, outside Irbil in Northern Iraq.

After spending their first few days travelling wearing bulletproof vests, the presenters come to the conclusion that northern Iraq really is not as dangerous as its more southerly regions. Sitting in the garden of their hotel, Jeremy Clarkson says:

I'm glad we've gone to Iraq. I'm sorry, I know this is Iraq, okay, but it's the Kurdistan region of Iraq, so it's full of Kurds...and they're all lovely. Everybody's very friendly. It's about as dangerous as Cheltenham.

and they all proceed to remove their bulletproof vests. Blunder #1: do not suggest Kurdish people are nice. Especially if you're about to visit Turkey.

That is precisely what they do. At the border, their cars are combed by border guards and sniffer dogs on the Turkish side. The presenters are taken aback by levels of security they haven't seen so far, and in fact will not see again until they reach Israel. At one point, the guard finds a cigarette lighter in the shape of a bullet, and the theatrically jittery way Richard Hammond shuffles over to explain himself makes him look like he's actually smuggling heroin.

Once they are allowed through, the trio are handed an envelope from the programme's producers containing new instructions on how to reach Bethlehem. It reads:

You idiots. You have escaped from a region where there is no war into a region where there is. The Kurds are fighting the Turks for independence so if you really are Wise Men you will get to your hotel in the safe zone by nightfall.

Attached to the instructions is the British Foreign Office's latest travel advice to British citizens for the region, which Jeremy Clarkson proceeds to read out. It currently says:

We advise against all but essential travel in the provinces of Hakkari, Sirnak, Siirt and Tunceli and visitors should remain vigilant when travelling in other provinces in south eastern Turkey. Terrorist attacks are regularly carried out against the security forces in the south east of the country by the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party.

They all proceed to put their bulletproof vests back on.


Blunder #2: Never suggest Turkey is a dangerous place or slander the country's good name by daring to mention there are terrorists about.

The rest of the Top Gear team's time in Turkey will be familiar to any foreigner, and many Turks too. They drive through endless potholes and complain about the quality of the roads; they are relieved when they finally find a decent bit of dual carriageway, and bemused to discover both directions of traffic are still sharing the same piece of road; they encounter police checkpoints; they are eager to reach their destination before dusk to avoid driving at night; and one of their number gets food poisoning.

Blunder #3: Do not complain about Turkey's infrastructure, its traffic management, its driving habits, or the quality of its food. You're wrong.

But all that was before the killer remark, just after the border into Syria was cleared:

We've only been in Syria for half a mile and already it's better than Turkey.

Blunder #4: Ouch!

Turkey's most-watched news channel, NTV, said "exaggerated remarks" were made in the programme that "disparaged Turkey". The report went on: "The presenters wore bulletproof vests and helmets and said that the southeast of Turkey should be considered a war zone." The Doğan News Agency said the programme "showered Turkey with insults", while Sabah said that "as they crossed into Turkey, the three presenters exhibited panicky behaviour [as a vehicle for] their propaganda of fear".

Also interesting was the online response. The user "Gejo" on Ekşisözlük, a popular social networking site, accuses Top Gear of supporting an unlikely alliance of the PKK terrorist organisation and Fethullah Gülen, an influential Islamic cleric who is currently living in self-imposed exile in the United States. The user adds: "some heavy insults have been made towards Turkey, they must definitely have been funded by America". If only so - British licence fee payers would be delighted.

Of course the comments on Top Gear should not be taken seriously - I certainly don't. But the minor furore surrounding this episode has exposed something about Turkish people: they are ashamed of the state of the southeastern region. They are proud of their country and want visitors to see its best bits, not the parts with the dilapidated roads and heavy security. But this is more than just attempting to sweep ugliness under the carpet. There is a feeling of sorrow that Turkey is bundled together with Iraq, Syria and Israel - countries more prominently associated with volatility.

The reality is that parts of southeastern Turkey are extremely dangerous. Security forces do clash with PKK members. Both sides shoot to kill. There probably are more terror attacks in that part of the country than in Iraqi Kurdistan. But it was safe enough for a motoring entertainment show to visit, and while that's not exactly going to herald an influx of tourists, it does indicate a degree of normality for a region that has spent most of the last three decades in a state of emergency. That counts for something.

Happy New Year - my best wishes to everyone for 2011, an election year for Turkey. My thoughts and predictions coming here next.

WikiLeaks revelations: Turkey snubbed over NATO deal

Turkey had spoken loudly and resolutely against Anders Fogh Rasmussen taking the reins at NATO when the secretary-general post became vacant early last year.

The Turkish position was entirely personal: Mr Rasmussen, then Danish prime minister, refused to clamp down on pro-PKK television stations inside Denmark. Turkey also objected because of Denmark's handling of that cartoon crisis. It was only resolved when Barack Obama personally intervened. But all this  was already known.

What we didn't know then, but do know now, is that part of the deal was for "a qualified Turk" would be considered for the position of Mr Rasmussen's deputy. But the Turkish foreign ministry official goes on:

Instead...a German of uncompelling merit was selected. "We suspect a deal between Rasmussen and Merkel." ... "We missed an opportunity with the selection of the Assistant Secretary General." [the official] added: "We let Rasmussen have Secretary General, because we trusted you."

Who is this German of "uncompelling merit"? NATO's website throws up no clues.

Turkey aided al Qaida, apparently

Turkish aid has gone directly to al Qaida in Iraq, while the United States has similarly assisted the PKK in the region. That, at least, is what is rumoured to be in some of the US diplomatic correspondence that is to be imminently released by the online whistleblower Wikileaks.

The Turkish press picked up on the story over the weekend as it emerged Turkey was one of the countries briefed by the US State Department. It appears there has been a warning to expect something "potentially embarrassing". To whom, and in what way, remains to be seen.

Being only rumours, there's little real comment I can make. You don't need me to tell you that, if vindicated, this could be explosive. But it all does seem just a little too far-fetched.

The Twitter scene seems to think there will be a release at 4.30pm New York City time tomorrow (Sunday). We shall wait and see.

Is Bursa a racist town?

This isn't a football blog. In fact, I can't remember the last time I wrote about it. But the bizarre response to a recent game in the northwestern town of Bursa recently has some telling signs for the way some Turks think.

For the uninitiated, some quick background: Bursaspor are the current Turkish champions. They won the national league in May in a thrilling twist on the final day of the season, becoming only the second team outside of Istanbul to do so. But they were destined to become runners-up until a simultaneous game involving Trabzonspor went Bursa's way: Trabzon, who was out of the running for the championship, defeated the only other contender, Fenerbahçe, to ensure a Bursa victory.

The new season is now well underway, and Bursa and Trabzon played each other - in Bursa - for the first time this season last Saturday. Trabzon won the game 2-0, thus taking the league leadership from a hitherto undefeated Bursa side. I must declare an interest at this stage - I am a Trabzonspor fan, and have been since childhood, and was delighted by the result. But what I found remarkable wasn't the game so much as a televised incident that occurred the following morning on Bursaspor's TV station.

While reviewing newspaper coverage of the game, Seda Çapçı, the presenter, launched into an astonishing rant about Bursa's Black Sea community, ostensibly in response to anti-Bursa chants by Trabzon fans at the game.

"We always saw them as one of us, we never discriminated," she said, before adding: "They opened businesses here, earned their bread here, lived here, sent their children to school here, found work here, and we were happy." She went on to identify specific neighbourhood of Bursa where people from Turkey's Black Sea region tend to live, and taunted them for not showing their faces in the town centre after the game.

Two things are striking about Ms Çapçı's comments: firstly, that they appear to invoke a sense of racial difference where many Turks would not have dreamed of thinking one existed, and secondly, that they had such resonance around the country.

The Laz, as people from the Black Sea are known, have their own language and a distinct language and culture based around the mountainous, fertile region where they have lived for centuries. It's fair to say they are more closely integrated with the rest of Turkey too: they tend to be bilingual, and separatist aspirations have seldom been seen. They are also the butt of several jokes, largely because of their unusual accents and mannerisms, not unlike the Irish or Welsh would be in some English circles.

I spoke to a long-time Bursa resident who told me members of the city's Black Sea community had long been conspicuous in the city. Sometimes their actions would be comical: "I knew this one family who must have moved from a village straight into the city, because - hand on heart - they tended a cow in their fourth floor flat." But never, she told me, were there racist tensions. They were Turks moving from one part of Turkey to another.

However, in the week of Eid al-Adha, when news is slow, Ms Çapçı's comments found nationwide coverage. The day after the broadcast, a group of Trabzon fans gathered outside the main Ataturk memorial in Bursa's central square to read a statement condemning the broadcast, but police had to be called when a fight broke out with fans of the home side. Four Bursa fans were arrested.

Bursaspor TV has since disassociated itself for the comments and issued an apology. Ms Çapçı has been fired, and might be facing charges for inciting hatred.

So, the question remains: is Bursa a racist town? No. As with most football-related incidents, this appears to be the opinion of the few. But it does provoke thought on the mindset of some people in Turkey.  This isn't the first time I've highlighted signs of antipathy towards a minority; what is encouraging is that, this time, Ms Çapçı's views did not go unchallenged.

You propose an alliance?

One of the long-standing customs of Eid al-Adha (Kurban Bayramı, the Festival of Sacrifice) is for people to use the holiday as an opportunity to visit their relatives. Turkish politicians do much the same with their political rivals: for the week-long holiday, hands are wrung, tea is served and baklava is awkwardly nibbled, as representatives from Party X chat to Party Y's people about what a wonderful time of year this is. Of course, the cameras are there to capture the moment.

On the whole, these are tedious affairs that last little longer than half an hour in practice and barely thirty seconds on the evening news. This year, however, there has finally been a reason for excitement: the pro-secular Republican People's Party (CHP) met the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) for the first time.

That in itself is quite something. CHP has long snubbed the smallest party in parliament during the holidays, largely because they have tended to regard the BDP as too close to the PKK and too far from the concept of a undivided Turkish state for comfort. But CHP is under new leadership, undergoing a period of significant renewal, and yesterday's visit revealed that the two have more in common than they think. Both are - ostensibly, at least - parties of the centre-left. Indeed, both were represented at this week's Socialist International council meeting in Paris.

During yesterday's Eid visit, in full view and earshot of the assembled journalists, the BDP proposed an electoral alliance. Unity among the Turkish left has not happened for more than a quarter century, but many proponents believe it is a key step towards unseating the governing (centre-right) AK Party at next year's election.

There would be other material advantages too: BDP members would presumably run on the CHP list, thus avoiding entanglements with the 10 percent electoral threshold. For CHP, it would deliver instant and solid gains in East and Southeast Turkey, a region where they haven't won anything for years. Besides, they have a common rival: BDP's only main challenger in the region is AK. The opportunity for a credible opposition is clear.

So they'd be mad not to go for it, yes? Well, the matter is complicated by the BDP's Kurdish connection. There is a significant nationalist contingent within CHP who, disgusted by the prospect of an alliance, could split the party and take its votes elsewhere - to the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), for example. As Ahmet Altan points out in today's Taraf, "the girl who threw stones at the BDP convoy during a party visit to Izmir [a CHP stronghold] last year would not easily vote CHP".

It is definitely too early to say, but this could be the start of something special.

UPDATE: Milliyet has CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu being rather unequivocal about all this. "Our view is clear: we want to govern alone," he told reporters in Ankara. "We have no search for an alliance, nor have we called for one."

That's that, then.

Despicable journalism on Turkish television

Tonight saw one of the worst examples of news reporting I have seen in my career.

It all revolved around the story of a three-year-old boy from an Istanbul village, who went missing on Monday. A massive search operation involving the gendarmarie was launched, but by Wednesday evening there was still no news. As residents helped with the hunt, the media went into overdrive. Turkey's plethora of news channels were all reporting live from the scene; at one stage, when there was nothing fresh to cover, they appeared to be taking it in turns to interview the boy's family.

On Wednesday evening, Kanal D, one of the country's "big four" stations, sent a reporter into the boy's family home to provide live two-ways and speak to the family during the main evening news bulletin. During one interview, the reporter, Özay Erad, announced (to camera, not to the boy's mother) that she had just been informed that a child's body had been found a few kilometres outside of the village. The boy's mother is seen to collapse into a frenzy and, as the camera pans in upon the family trying to calm her, the reporter shouts over the commotion that she had misheard her earpiece, and that it was a child's voice that had been heard outside the village.

The boy has since been found safe and well.

A recording of the incident is available on NTVMSNBC, but be warned: the scenes are distressing.

It is journalism at its very worst - causing distress, spreading incorrect information - but all too common among Turkey's mainstream bulletins. So often the news on all four big channels is car crash television: presented by elderly men to an epic film soundtrack (ATV opts for Gladiator), sensationalism is their main ingredient. A typical bulletin may begin with a graphic footage of an overturned lorry on the motorway, followed by close-ups of the blood on the ground from a midnight neighbourhood brawl, interspersed with pictures of the prime minister walking in and out of buildings as a voice drones about proceedings in parliament, before finishing with shots of female European tourists sunning themselves at a Mediterranean resort.

There was plenty wrong with Kanal D's broadcast tonight, not just that the reporter misheard what she was being told by her director. Ms Erad should not have been in the house in the first place: if she had to be near the scene, she should have stationed herself outside. If she had an inkling of doubt, she should have asked the gallery to repeat the report to her. She should have emphasised that the report she was communicating to the viewers was unconfirmed. The first time the boy's mother heard the rumour that her son might be dead should not have been from this reporter. None of it should have been on live television.

Kanal D should be ashamed. I certainly would be.