TURKEY: Israeli Trade & more – 21st May 2024

Merhaba from BA! This is the Rorshok Turkey Update from the 21st of May twenty twenty-four. A quick summary of what's going down in Turkey.

In tragic news as the Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died after his helicopter crashed due to foggy weather near the Azerbaijan border on Sunday the 19th. The next day, on Monday the 20th, the rescue teams found the helicopter, carrying Raisi, the Israeli Foreign Minister, and six other individuals, after an overnight search in blizzard conditions. Unfortunately, they all died. The Anadolu News Agency, Turkey’s state-run news agency, announced that a Turkish drone located the wreckage, but Iranian authorities denied receiving help with the search operations. The Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said that Iran requested a night-vision search-and-rescue helicopter from Turkey.

On Thursday the 16th, the Israeli Finance Minister announced plans to abolish Israel's free trade agreement with Turkey and impose a 100% tariff on Turkish imports. This move responds to President Erdoğan's decision to halt exports to Israel, citing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The minister called Erdoğan's decision an economic boycott and a violation of international trade agreements. He criticized the measures against Israel saying that they will only stand with Erdoğan's presidency, suggesting the trade agreement could resume under a new leader.

Speaking of Erdoğan… On Friday the 17th, he pardoned seven generals convicted for their roles in the postmodern coup of nineteen ninety-seven, a military intervention that pressured the then Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan into resigning. The coup led to the closure of Erbakan's Islamist Welfare Party for violating secularism.

The court initially sentenced the generals back in twenty eighteen, over two decades after the coup. President Erdoğan had told the convicts he would release them if they apologized, but they refused, believing their actions to protect secularism were justified.

However, Erdoğan cited their old age and health issues as reasons for the recent pardons. Özgür Özel, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, approved the decision but criticized the delay. Reportedly, Özel mentioned the health state of the convicts to President Erdoğan during their meeting earlier this month, which may have led to their release.

The generals aren’t the only people the president pardoned. On the same day, Erdoğan pardoned Hacı Sülük, convicted for the twenty nineteen murders of two election officials from the Felicity Party, the Islamist opposition. He is also the father of the Pütürge district Mayor, who is a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party or AKP. Just like with the two generals, Erdoğan cited Sülük's old age and health conditions to justify the pardon. However, this was called into question as the ex-con has ties to the government and this might have influenced his release.

Still on judicial news, on Thursday the 16th, an Ankara High Criminal Court held the final trial of the Kobanê case, related to the twenty fourteen protests against the government's inaction during the ISIS siege of the Kurdish town of Kobanê just across the border in Syria. The defendants were accused of disrupting the unity and integrity of the state, inciting crime, and murdering almost forty demonstrators, among other charges. The court sentenced twenty-eight of the defendants to time in prison with over thirty years for Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, the former co-chairs of the People’s Democratic Party, nowadays known as the Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party. The decision might be labeled as politically motivated and opposition figures deemed the verdict a massacre of law. Following the ruling, the governors of twelve provinces that have big Kurdish populations imposed protest bans to avoid escalating tension

Up next, on Tuesday the 14th, the Court of Cassation, the top appeals court, finally elected its new president after weeks of repeating the elections. There were three candidates left in the election, however, no one secured a definitive majority, so the elections kept going. Last week, reportedly upon President Erdoğan’s request, Muhsin Şetürk, one of the candidates, withdrew from the race, leading to Ömer Kerkez winning the election.

More on the Court of Cassation as President Erdoğan appointed Şentürk as the court’s chief public prosecutor on Thursday the 16th. Insider sources told DW Turkish, an online news outlet, that in exchange for his withdrawal, Erdoğan promised Şentürk the position of chief public prosecutor. Previously, Şentürk led the 3rd Criminal Chamber, which infamously ignored the Constitutional Court's order to release former MP Can Atalay, despite his parliamentary immunity. Özgür Özel criticized the appointment and called it a token name of constitutional violation.

In some unfortunate news… On Tuesday the 14th, a private coal mine in Zonguldak collapsed, killing one miner and injuring another. The workers were rescued after half an hour, but one of them died in the hospital. This incident occurred three months after a similar disaster at the İliç Gold Mine in Erzincan, where nine workers were trapped under a chemical-contaminated soil heap, exposing cyanide to the environment. Frequent mine collapses continue to raise concerns about regulatory oversight and worker protection.

Moving on… Thousands of Turkish citizens have launched a social media campaign to correct what they see as a significant error in Google's description of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. When users search for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on Google, his photo appears with the description Former President of Turkey. Many Turks believe this is misleading and disrespectful, arguing that Atatürk should be recognized as the Founder of the Republic of Turkey. Citizens have taken to social media to demand Google fix the mistake.

On Wednesday the 15th, the Turkish Statistical Institute shared the country’s birth statistics for last year. Reportedly, Turkey had less than one million live births. The average number of children per woman fell to 1.50, below the level needed to maintain the population size. In addition, the report showed that women are now having children later, with the highest birth rates shifting from the twenty to twenty-four age group to the twenty-five to twenty-nine span.

In pleasant news, teen births dropped from forty-nine per thousand women to eleven in two thousand one, meeting global goals to reduce teen pregnancies.

In more good news, on Tuesday the 14th, Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul’s Mayor, announced that starting from Thursday the 16th, the municipality will provide a free Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccination program for people aged nine to twenty-six. He highlighted the rising trend of HPV-induced cancer cases in the country. Studies show the HPV vaccine is nearly 100% effective in preventing cervical cancer, which claims over a thousand lives annually in Turkey. However, the shot is not mandatory. The initiative was welcomed but still called into question as the government didn’t fulfill its promise to include the vaccine in the national vaccination program.

And to wrap up this edition, last Monday the 13th, a group of British tourists scattered the ashes of a deceased relative into the sea in Marmaris. Reportedly, the deceased had loved Marmaris, prompting the family to hold the ceremony there. Some local residents expressed their concern over the practice, arguing that scattering ashes into the sea could pose health risks. Cremation isn’t a popular practice in Turkey, and almost everyone is buried after they are dead. So scattering of ashes is not a common practice as well. However, experts explained that anything burned at temperatures reaching thousands of degrees would not contain bacteria.

Aaand that’s it for this week! Thank you for joining us!

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