Valentina Pasquali

Originally published on National Public Radio’s NPR.org

by Valentina Pasquali

On a recent afternoon, nearly 100 people gather at Istanbul’s Galatasaray Square for the weekly demonstration of a group known as the Saturday Mothers.

Kneeling on the pavement, they protest the disappearance of their relatives, mostly ethnic Kurds, caught up in a decades-long fight between the Kurdish separatist movement and the Turkish government.

The protesters hold red carnations and photos of their loved ones, most of whom disappeared in the early to mid-1990s. They hold the Turkish government responsible for the disappearances of about 1,200 Kurds.

The protests started about 15 years ago, but they were halted in 1999 and resumed only recently.

This year, a court case brought by state prosecutors against high-level military and government officials inspired the Saturday Mothers to come back. The prominent Turks are accused of plotting a military coup against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Sebla Arcan, an economist and a leading member of Turkey’s Human Rights Association, believes that some of the military people on trial in the plot to overthrow Erdogan’s government are also responsible for the disappearances in the 1990s.

“We want the people now under custody to also be tried for the disappearances,” Arcan says.

Turkish judges are yet to be convinced of the link between the disappearances and the court case. But the uproar generated across Turkey by the trial has given the families of the disappeared renewed courage to speak out.

“We thought of this case as an opportunity. And that’s why we started the protests again — to show we haven’t forgotten the people who were made to disappear and the people who were responsible for these disappearances,” Arcan adds.

The Kurdish movement has spent decades fighting for the rights of Turkey’s largest minority: Kurds account for about 18 percent of Turkey’s population of 77 million. In the 1980s, a splinter group — the Kurdistan People’s Party, or the PKK — took to the mountains in the Southeast and started an armed struggle against Turkey’s central government, with the intent of carving out a separate state for Kurds. The PKK is regarded as a terrorist organization in the United States and Europe.

Turkey’s security apparatus responded forcefully to the PKK, raiding villages throughout the Kurdish region.

Many Kurds, such as Kasim Alpsoy, were caught in the middle of that fight. Kasim went missing in 1994 from Adana, a city in southern Turkey, where he was a worker in a leather factory. His son, Mehmet, recalls the day.

“There was a police raid at 6 a.m. on our house, and my father was taken into custody,” Mehmet says. “He was questioned and tortured. But then he was released. Only they kept his identification card and told him to come get it the next day.”

According to Mehmet, when Kasim Alpsoy went back for his ID, he disappeared inside the secret services building. His brother-in-law, who had accompanied him, waited outside for hours, to no avail.

“My uncle came back home but not my father. We never saw him again,” Mehmet adds.

Mehmet says his father was sympathetic to, but was not a member of, the Kurdish movement. He also says he believes the government took his father because of his ethnicity.

When the protests to prod the government to investigate the disappearances first started in the mid-1990s, they quickly attracted national attention. As the state took notice, however, things soon got ugly.

“We were dragged on the streets, were attacked with pepper gas,” says Arcan, whose organization co-sponsors the Saturday Mothers’ sit-ins. “It came to the point where it started to threaten the health of the relatives of the disappeared people. That’s why we had to stop [in 1999],” she adds.

Since the demonstrations have restarted, one missing person’s case is presented each week during the rally.

This day it is the turn of Seyhan Dogan, a Kurdish boy rounded up during a police raid in his home in the city of Mardin-Dargecit in southeastern Turkey.

“Seyhan was 13 years old on Oct. 29, 1995,” says an activist reading the boy’s story into a loudspeaker. “He was arrested at 3 o’clock in the morning along with his brother Hazni, who was 9 years old at the time.”

Dogan, the activist says, was never seen again.

For Mehmet Alpsoy, who lost his father in 1994, the matter is simple.

“I am here because even after 15 years, the people who are responsible for the disappearances are still free,” Mehmet says. “I want them to be found and tried.”

Special to The Washington Post
Sunday, August 9, 2009

Original link with photos

Kathy Hamilton, a gregarious, 6-foot-tall, red-haired Texan, stands near the entrance to Osman’s textile shop atop Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, listening to the owner complain about the sudden disappearance of customers. The air-conditioned shop is filled with richly decorated bedspreads, suzani (traditional Turkish wall hangings) and Ottoman caftans in silk, cotton and velvet. Osman is sitting on the carpet-covered floor and spouting a steady stream of Turkish.

Hamilton listens, nods sympathetically and fingers a length of finely decorated antique textile in shades of gold that she guesses was once used as trim on a coat. In fluent Turkish, she reassures the shopkeeper, telling him that it looks as though the U.S. economy is picking up, which will improve things for Turkish merchants as well.

Meanwhile, John Atwell is poking around the shop. He checks out dozens of handmade caftans hanging on a metal bar at the back of the store as his wife, Cerian, changes the diaper on the couple’s 4-week-old baby, Geordan.

John and Cerian are Hamilton’s clients on this recent trip to the Grand Bazaar, a maze of alleys and winding streets crowded with more than 4,000 shops and food stands that is one of Istanbul’s most popular tourist destinations. Hamilton, a Texas transplant who lives in Istanbul, runs an occasional personal-shopping business for foreigners who want to visit the bazaar and buy traditional Turkish rugs, silver jewelry, ceramic ware and more, but are intimidated by the place’s intricate geography and swarming passageways.

“It’s too big for me,” Cerian Atwell says as the trip gets underway in mid-morning. Cerian works for a British company that imports Turkish garments to the United Kingdom, while John manages a Web site on expatriate life in Istanbul. In their two years in the city, the couple have peeked into the bazaar only once, and hated it. “I didn’t know where to go, and all the stores seemed to have the same stuff,” Cerian says, summarizing the feeling of utter helplessness that overwhelms most tourists when they take their first steps into the market.

Cerian is hoping that this trip with Hamilton will help her navigate the bazaar more easily in the future. Mostly hidden from view, the bazaar neighborhood stretches from Eminonu, the city’s commercial dock on the Golden Horn, and climbs up the northern side of the old town to Divan Yolu, the historic boulevard connecting the Blue Mosque to Istanbul University. At the very bottom is the Egyptian Bazaar, the colorful spice market with its Indian curry powders and its Turkish nuts. Just above that is a collection of warehouses and workshops known as hans. At the top of the hill is the Grand Bazaar, with its handicrafts and luxury jewelry.

Sultan Mehmed II built the Grand Bazaar after he conquered what was then Constantinople in 1453. It’s also known as the covered bazaar, and its alleys unroll under a labyrinth of porches decorated with ceramic tiles. The Grand Bazaar’s oldest core, however, displays elegant vaulted ceilings of exposed bricks.

Hamilton’s shopping trip begins at the Nuruosmaniye Camii gate, one of the Grand Bazaar’s less crowded entrances.

Before venturing in, she points to a long, two-story building on the right, home to several brass and copper warehouses where, she says, you can buy pieces at wholesale prices. This is precisely the secret to shopping here: knowing where, what and at what prices to buy.

“I first visited Turkey in the aftermath of the 1980 military coup,” Hamilton says as the group walks through the bazaar. In spite of the tanks in the streets, something about Turkey drew her back again and again. In 1988, at age 40, she relocated to Istanbul and married a Turkish carpet merchant in what she calls “a very productive midlife crisis.” By now, Hamilton has visited the bazaar more times than she can count and knows it like the back of her hand. “I kept wandering around, visiting shops, talking to different shopkeepers. I’m nosy; I approach people and ask what they’re up to,” she explains.

Hamilton shows the Atwells the shop of an artist who hand-paints golden motifs on dieffenbachia leaves imported from Florida. Another of her favorite merchants sells miniatures drawn on antique, progressively thinning paper. Down another alley, she takes the Atwells to a high-end thrift store packed with goods of every kind. John and Cerian are fascinated by some tiny brass scales once used by merchants to weigh coins to make sure that they were real. The Atwells recall that when Geordan was born, they received what they think is a gold coin from a colleague, in accordance with local traditions. Hamilton recommends a place where they can have the coin appraised.

The group also visits some of the more curious corners of the bazaar, such as the money market, a dark passage where illegal but tolerated currency trading takes place. Today, it looks sleepy, a sign that the Turkish lira is enjoying a stable day against foreign currencies. But Hamilton tells the Atwells that when the lira gets on a roller coaster, plenty of people come here to exchange it for dollars and euros.

“This place,” Hamilton says of the Grand Bazaar, “is almost like its own separate city. It has its own police department, post office, mosques.”

The final stop of the day is Osman’s store, which is on a rooftop and somewhat off the bazaar’s beaten path. Hamilton likes to take her clients there because of the quality of the merchandise — and because the air conditioning offers some respite from Istanbul’s summer heat. Some of the shopkeeper’s pieces are affordable, but many of his goods are ancient textiles and quite expensive.

Getting the price right can be particularly frustrating for foreigners, since Turkish merchants expect you to bargain. “There are never any prices in these stores, and I don’t know how much things are supposed to cost,” Cerian complains. Thankfully, Hamilton bargains on behalf of her clients. “As soon as merchants realize I speak Turkish, prices drop,” she promises.

The Atwells, though, are distracted by their baby and ultimately don’t take advantage of Hamilton’s bargaining abilities. Nancy Voye, on the other hand, makes full use of them. Only three days after the Atwells tour the Grand Bazaar, Voye, who’s from Greenwich, Conn., purchases handbags, pottery, jewelry and a carpet, spending close to $1,600. (Hamilton says that the most any client has ever spent in one go is $20,000.)

Voye recently retired from her job on Wall Street and is in Istanbul with her daughter Emily, freshly graduated from college. “Friends recommended Kathy to us,” she says. “As a tourist, I want to be able to see sights and not waste my whole time shopping. Her being able to navigate that immense place so easily made it all very efficient for us.”

Since she doesn’t generally take commissions from merchants, Hamilton is under no pressure to get her clients to spend money; she can easily accommodate both Voye’s buying spree and the Atwells’ window-shopping.

But even though she didn’t buy a thing, Cerian Atwell thinks her trip with Hamilton was a success. “I definitely feel more comfortable now,” she says. “I’d want to come back to the shops that Kathy pointed to . . . if I was ever able to find them again.”

A shopping trip to the Grand Bazaar with Kathy Hamilton costs $225 for groups of up to four, plus transportation and food. Contact Hamilton via her Web site: http://www.istanbulpersonalshopper.com.

A pipeline deal with Turkey was taken as a step toward EU energy security, but Russia looms large.

ISTANBUL — Turkey this week celebrated the signing of a major deal on the Nabucco pipeline project as a step toward European Union membership and becoming a Eurasian energy hub.

Nabucco is expected to pump 31 billion cubic meters of natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe by 2014, bypassing Russia and thereby decreasing the dependence of the EU on Russian gas. Turkey is a Nabucco transit country, along with Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Austria.

Despite the agreement, Russia’s continued attempts to control the region’s energy resources, the lack of unified political action in the EU, and Turkey’s indecisiveness, threaten Nabucco, energy experts say.

Russia, which sits atop about 25 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves, dominates regional energy markets. To strengthen its near monopoly, Moscow buys almost all the gas produced by Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. As a result, countries including Austria, Bulgaria and Hungary have no choice but to import most of their gas from Russia.

Turkey depends on Russia for 65 percent of its domestic gas use and is also desperate to diversify its sources: “There are gas cuts every winter,” said Necdet Pamir, a former high-level official with Turkey’s state-owned oil company and a board member of the World Energy Council.

While Moscow blames the interruptions on Ukraine, “the result is that, for whatever reason, technical or geopolitical, every winter we suffer,” Pamir added.

Russia’s remarkable reach complicates diversification efforts via Nabucco. Azerbaijan — the only supplier committed to feed gas into the pipeline — recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Gazprom to export its gas to Russia for at least a year.

“But Azerbaijan cannot provide both Gazprom and Nabucco with natural gas. It’s either one of them,” said Vugar Baymarov, chairman of the Center for Economic and Social Development, an Azeri think tank.

The Azerbaijan-Russia MOU comes at a difficult time for Baku’s ties to Ankara: “Our recent move to normalize relations with Armenia has complicated Azerbaijani attitudes toward Turkey and thereby Nabucco,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Turkish Parliament.

Since no other supplier has yet been signed up, the Nabucco pipeline faces a major supply hurdle.

Further, in phase two of the project Turkmenistan is scheduled to supply extra gas into Nabucco via a trans-Caspian pipeline. Considering that Turkmenistan’s economy is primarily dependent on Russia, it is unlikely that Ashgabat will sell its gas to any country but Russia, at least not without Moscow’s permission.

Meantime, the two remaining options — Iraq and Iran — are effectively off the table.

Northern Iraq is thought to have large gas reserves, but it will take years to develop them, and, said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Istanbul-based Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, “Political instability during the past decade made it impossible to estimate how much capacity there is and how it can be channeled to Nabucco.”

While it has the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas after Russia, Iran is, according to Stanislav Tkachenko of St. Petersburg State University, a “politically impossible alternative,” because it would require “radically improved relationship between Iran and the United States.”

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U.S. sanctions have crippled Iran’s energy sector and Washington continues to oppose any use of Iranian gas for Nabucco, as U.S. energy envoy Richard Morningstar reiterated Sunday.

Turkey says it will press ahead despite U.S. objections. “Turkey is an independent country and can buy its gas wherever it wants so long as conditions are right. If there is gas in Iraq, Turkey will buy it. The same with Iran,” said Kiniklioglu, the Turkish Foreign Affairs Committee spokesman, pointing to the fact that Turkey already imports Iranian gas for its domestic market.

But Turkey might not have to go behind the U.S.: “There are signals that the U.S. is changing its Iran policy toward a more accommodating approach,” said Tkachenko, noting President Barack Obama’s reaction to the aftermath of Iran’s contested elections.

In any case, Turkey’s own energy issues might complicate things further. While insisting that Ankara can maneuver independently of Moscow, Kiniklioglu admitted that Turkey has to “get along well with a country that provides you with over 60 percent of natural gas.”

Moscow is taking advantage of its position to offer Ankara alternatives to Nabucco. The two parties are discussing the construction of Blue Stream 2, an extension of the Blue Stream 1 pipeline that brings gas from Russia to Turkey. Talks are also underway for the South Stream pipeline, a direct competitor to Nabucco that would transport Russian gas via the Black Sea to Bulgaria, Austria and Italy. By joining South Stream, Turkey could become an energy hub without endangering relations with Russia.

The fact that a central dispute between Turkey and the EU over Nabucco was pushed aside with Monday’s agreement but not solved casts doubts on Turkey’s commitment to the implementation of the deal. Ankara has been asking to divert 15 percent of gas flowing through Nabucco toward its domestic grid, but the EU opposed the request.

Since Ankara’s number one priority is Turkey’s energy security and independence, it will probably try to use Nabucco as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia, and its relations with Gazprom as a lever in talks with the EU.

“Turkey will remain on the agenda with Nabucco, South Stream or some other projects,” Turkey’s Energy Minister Taner Yıldız told the press Tuesday. The Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported that Ankara and Moscow will negotiate energy projects during the visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Turkey on Aug. 6.

According to Yurdakul Yigitguden, Turkey’s former undersecretary of energy, Russia shouldn’t be blamed for pursuing its own interests. “The problem is that there is a lack of leadership in support of gas companies. They can’t go at it alone,” Yigitguden added, calling for stronger political support for Nabucco across the EU and Turkey.

The agreement signed Monday might be a sign of political commitment towards Nabucco. At the same time, in the last several months the Nabucco Consortium began mentioning Russia as a potential supplier of gas for the pipeline, defying the sole reason for Nabucco’s existence.

Originally published in the Miami Herald’s blog dedicated to LGBT issues

Istanbul – Mirroring Turkey’s difficult yet unyielding progress towards equality for all its citizens, Istanbul’s sixth annual gay pride parade took place successfully Sunday after policemen in combat gear initially threatened to prevent the participants from marching down Istiklal Caddesi, the city’s central pedestrian street. After much quarreling and an hour’s delay, the marchers – numbering about 3000 – were finally allowed onto Istiklal. Colorful but definitely not as bold as fellow demonstrators in New York or San Francisco, they chanted political slogans and sang cheerful songs, while holding signs and the traditional rainbow flag. Tourists and curious spectators watched the parade making its way to Galatasaray Square. Heavy humidity leftover from the afternoon’s quick Mediterranean storm had everybody gasping for air, while the old-time tram that still whistles along Istiklal struggled to find a breach in the crowd.

Key to the resolution of the initial dispute with the police force was, perhaps, the intervention of two foreign g

uests attending the parade. The presence of Mechtild Rawert, Social Democrat (SPD) MP from Germany’s National Parliament, and Stuart Milk, nephew of Harvey Milk – the slain gay-rights leader from the ‘70s –and himself an internationally renowned gay rights activist, lent an international touch to the event and made sure that the police relented eventually.

Between Turkey’s bid to gain full European Union membership and its overall effort to present itself as the beacon of modernity in the greater Middle East, authorities here certainly did not want international headlines on the country’s controversial human rights record. “The fight for human rights in Turkey is a key issue towards EU membership. I have personally witnessed the progress achieved in the last few years, but there is more to be done,” said Rawert, the MP from Germany.

For Milk — who attended other events part of a weeklong series of panel discussions, award ceremonies, and film screenings culminating in Sunday’s parade — Turkey represents a great opportunity for the LGBT movement worldwide. “I think Turkey has a tremendous potential to act as a modern, civil and human rights bridge between west and east,” Mr. Milk said. “I came because I believe that success of the LGBT community here will resonate throughout the world,” he added.

While homosexuality is not illegal in Turkey — the country’s Ottoman rulers legalized it in 1858 — it remains a taboo in this conservative Muslim-majority society. Gay men and women who choose to come out of the closet risk being shunned by their families and friends, and fear discrimination. As a result, most Turkish homosexuals still choose not to disclose their true sexual preferences.

In 2005, a survey of the LGBT community in Istanbul conducted by LAMBDA – one of the two oldest gay rights organizations in Turkey — found that 83% of those interviewed preferred to hide their sexual orientation from all or some of their family members. 40% of interviewees also confessed to reluctantly forcing themselves into heterosexual relationships.

“There is discrimination everywhere, it’s hard to describe. It’s in the insults and the general unwelcoming atmosphere,” explained pride participant Zefer Çeler. A thirty-five years old professor of politics at Istanbul’s Yildiz University, Çeler has even seen friends lose their jobs due to their sexual preferences.

“When I walk down the street holding my girlfriend’s hand, or if I ever kiss her in public, people will always comment, sometime they can even try to hurt you,” said Burcu Ersoy, a twenty-nine years old activist who came from Ankara to attend the parade.

Turkey’s LGBT movement has achieved some success in the last couple of decades and they are now better able to organize. “I’d call the 1990s the decade of the movement’s foundation-building, when we created a platform for LGBT people to come together and discuss their experiences with one another,” explained Oner Ceylan. Ceylan, thirty-seven years old, is an interpreter by day and gay rights activist by night. The 2000s became, always according to him, “the years of visibility,” with gay rights organizations sprouting up in many Turkish cities and the community finally taking to the street with the g

ay pride parade, which began in 2004.

But there is little doubt that the movement is only at its inception. The LGBT community has achieved relatively little in terms of human and civil rights. There is no law on the books that protects homosexuals from discrimination in employment, education, housing, health care, public accommodations or credit. Turkey’s family law does not recognize same-sex marriages, civil unions or domestic partnership. The Turkish Council of State has ruled that homosexuals should not have custody of children. And the military bars LGBT people from serving in its ranks.

Members of the LGBT community here also continue to suffer from various forms of persecution. For example, when the country’s vague ‘public order, obscenity and morality’ laws are used by the police force to harass transsexuals on the streets. And hate crimes, particularly stabbings of gays are still not officially recognized by Turkey’s legal system as a form of especi

ally heinous crime. Rather, offenders often get reduced sentences for having harmed or killed a member of the LGBT community, with the courts open to accepting the defense’s claim of “provocation” under article 29 of the Turkish Criminal Code.

While coming out into the open was the key to Harvey Milk’s success — he relentlessly pushed all of California’s closeted gays to declare themselves to their relatives, friends and colleagues — his nephew Stuart thinks that this message might be premature here in Turkey, because of the particularly frightening consequences members of the LGBT community could face.

But there are other ideas that the Turkish gay movement can take from its American counterpart, for example active political engagement. “After the 1980 military coup, most progressive opposition groups in Turkey opted out of the system, giving up on elections and politics,” said Cihan Hüroglu, twenty-eight years old gay pride parade organizer. To this day, Hüroglu believes, the political left in Turkey does not encourage its youth to get involved. “The American tradition is different, more open to civil and political participation at the grassroots level,” Hüroglu continued, explaining that they invited Stuart Milk “to give us inspiration.”

The fact that three MPs from the National Parliament in Ankara attended a panel discussion held as a part of Gay Pride Week on Friday is testimony to the fact that Turkey’s LGBT movement is moving in the right direction. Two came from the left-leaning Kurdish-friendly Democratic Society Party (DTP) and one from the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s main opposition party. However, nobody was there to represent the AKP (Justice and Development Party), the moderate Islamist ruling party.