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She is facing a potential sentence of 83 years in prison. The crime, some would say, is belonging to the political opposition that is under siege by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Figen Yuksekdag, co-chair of the countrys leading pro-Kurdish political party, is among the most prominent targets of a massive legal assault on Turkeys Kurdish opposition in the run-up to a vote on a constitutional amendment that could grant Erdogan sweeping powers.

The government has already stripped her of her seat in parliament for allegedly supporting the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). She stands accused in scores of other terrorism-related cases as does her co-leader of the Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, who has been sentenced to five months in prison for insulting the Turkish nation.

Among Yuksekdags alleged crimes: delivering a speech in 2015 that lent support to Kurdish militias battling Islamic State in Syria, and attending the funeral of a suspected leftist militant in 2012.

Using emergency powers in place since last July, Turkey has jailed 13 HDP lawmakers and more than 5,000 of the partys workers over alleged terror links. In the Kurdish southeast, where the HDP enjoys an electoral majority, more than 80 locally elected district governments have been replaced by federally appointed caretakers, their former heads imprisoned.

In addition, dozens of news outlets have been shuttered, scores of journalists arrested, and art exhibits and cultural festivals have been banned for allegedly supporting the PKK.

The crackdown has gutted what was once touted as a political bloc that could help end the PKKs four-decades-long insurgency, which has claimed 40,000 lives.

The government is totally turning everything upside down, said Ahmet Yildiz, an author of several books on Turkeys Kurdish political movement and a researcher at the Istanbul-based Al Sharq Forum. Some [of those accused] have affiliations with the PKK, but not all of them . It all depends on how you define terror, and the government is using a political definition of terror.

Up to 20% of Turkey is ethnically Kurdish, but the minority has long been subject to restrictions on cultural expression, stoking tensions that gave birth to a leftist separatist insurgency by the PKK in 1984, led by the now imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Erdogan's government enacted significant reforms, and the PKK agreed to a cease-fire in 2013. But the truce unraveled in 2015 after Turkey refused to militarily intervene in Syria on behalf of Kurdish militias who saw Ocalan as a figurehead and sought to carve out a separate state.

Erdogan views the Kurdish militias in Syria to be extensions of the PKK, which both Turkey and the United States consider a terrorist organization. In her 2015 speech, Yuksekdag said that while the government believed her party was leaning on a terrorist organization, she saw no harm in supporting the militias, which have been the most effective foes of Islamic State in Syria.

She has defended her attendance at the 2012 funeral as an attempt to acknowledge the grief of mothers in her constituency. Her supporters have pointed to a 2009 speech in which Erdogan ignited hope of a political solution to the PKK insurgency by speaking of the pain of mothers who lose their children. Mothers have no ideology. Mothers have no politics, they are not rightists or leftists, he said.

At the time he made those remarks, Erdogan had enlisted Kurdish opposition figures as mediators with the PKK's head, Ocalan.

One such mediator was Ahmet Turk, a veteran Kurdish politician currently with the Democratic Regions Party who has lived through nearly three decades of what amounts to a revolving door between parliament and prison. He now doubts Erdogan ever sincerely wanted peace.

Not Erdogan, not any of the governments internalized the Kurds identity problems, or their requests for education in their mother tongue, said Turk, currently deposed from his job as mayor of Mardin and facing terror charges for alleged involvement in a regional Kurdish confederation inspired by Ocalan.

The accusations, Turk said, are aimed at trying to make the Kurdish political movement fail. They are political decisions . The government is nitpicking, they have no solid evidence.

The case against Turk is centered on wiretapped phone recordings and a secret witness, the same kind of evidence used against Kurdish leaders under previous military-dominated governments that have banned five pro-Kurdish parties in the nations history over alleged ties to terrorism.

Even Kurds who have usually been allies of Erdogans Islamist movement find themselves in the snare.

One of Erdogans most regularly touted political achievements is the lifting of a ban on women wearing headscarves. Huda Kaya, an HDP lawmaker who once faced the death penalty for protesting the ban, now finds herself being accused of terrorism for a speech that sought to bring attention to alleged abuses by the military in the southeastern district of Diyarbakir.

When reports emerged of civilians dying as a result of a months-long curfew imposed as the military battled PKK militants, Kaya traveled to the area and gave a speech saying, We are witnesses to the massacres here. We know very well who killed whom.

Prosecutors are seeking to jail Kaya for up to 25 years for the statement, which they say glamorized the PKKs narrative.

There were dead bodies in the streets, left alone to rot because of a curfew, Kaya said. Neither in humanity nor in Islam is there any place for that kind of barbarity. I only went there to call for peace, and now I face accusations of being a terrorist.

Farooq is a special correspondent.

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As Erdogan consolidates power in Turkey, the Kurdish opposition ... - Los Angeles Times

Russia will be a center for diplomacy on March 9, hosting the leaders of Israel and Turkey as well as Germany's foreign minister.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said he intends to use his visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin to "express Israel's strong opposition to the presence of Iranian forces, and those of its proxies" on Israel's northern border with Lebanon and Syria.

"This is a very important meeting for the security of Israel," it said. Victory over the terrorism of Daesh cannot lead to an upsurge in terrorism by Iran and its proxies," it said, using another name for the extremist group Islamic State (IS). "We will not exchange terrorism for terrorism."

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is expected to meet with his German counterpart, Sigmar Gabriel, to discuss issues including the conflict in Ukraine. Gabriel and Putin might also meet later in the day.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also expected to arrive in Moscow on March 9 but will not meet with Putin until March 10, the Kremlin said.

They are expected to discuss the conflict in Syria, as well as the construction of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline and the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, it said.

Originally posted here:
Netanyahu, Erdogan, And German Foreign Minister Gabriel In Moscow For Talks - RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to take back a Nazi comparison and expressed concern about the direction of Turkish politics.

Schaeuble, a prominent German voice on international finance and foreign policy, entered the fray in a dispute that erupted after two German cities revoked permits for rallies by Turkish politicians. A day after Merkel condemned Erdogans comment, Schaeuble said he wants to avoid escalating the conflict as Erdogan prepares to hold a referendum on his presidential powers in April.

It would be wise if President Erdogan quickly found a way to make this go away, Schaeuble told foreign reporters in Berlin on Tuesday. We cant accept that Germany is being talked about in such a way.

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As the referendum campaign heats up, government ministers have sought to address the estimated 1.4 million Turkish voters living in Germany, an effort complicated by elevated tension between Turkey and the European Union over Erdogans crackdown on dissent after a failed coup in July. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has demanded that Turkey release a jailed German-Turkish reporter whom Erdogan has described as a spy.

After local authorities in Cologne and the southern town of Gaggenau cited safety concerns in canceling the campaign rallies, Erdogan responded in Istanbul on Sunday. The rulings have nothing to do with democracy and are not different from Nazi practices, he said.

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Germany's Schaeuble Urges Erdogan to Take Back Nazi Analogy - Bloomberg

A convoy of US armored vehicles near the village of Yalanli, in Manbij, on March 5.

The U.S. and Russia have found themselves teaming up for the first time in the war in Syria -- against a country both call an ally: Turkey.

In Manbij, a town in northern Syria about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Turkish border, U.S. and Russia moved this week to effectively block a drive by Turkey to seize it.A U.S. deployment and a Russian-brokered deal with Syrian forces created buffer zones that headed off any Turkish drive against the Kurdish forces -- seen by Washington as key allies against Islamic State, though Turkey views them as terrorists -- who now hold the town.

As the outside powers fighting in Syria step up the fight to crush Islamic State, the battle is laying bare their often-conflicting loyalties. With all sides pushing into terrorist-held territory, the potential for clashes between the players is rising.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is at the center of this thanks to his military campaign, but he must keep allies like Syria and Iran on side even as tries to cooperate with the U.S. and Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan comes to Moscow on Thursday with his defense minister for talks with Putin.

This is a unique circumstance when the U.S. and Russia have found themselves thrown together against Turkey because of the Kurds, who are directly sponsored by Washington and get Russian support too, said Alexander Shumilin, head of the Middle East Conflict Center at the Institute for U.S. and Canada Studies, a government-run research group in Moscow.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said his country was seeking a trilateral mechanism to clear the area of terrorist groups. In Manbij, the U.S. is raising a flag, Russia is raising a flag nearby, things have turned into a flag competition, Yildirim said in an interview with ATV television.

Later on Tuesday, Yildirim said countries operating in Syria must coordinate their actions to eliminate all terrorist groups.

Turkey told its counterparts that no terror group can be destroyed by using another terror group, he said in Ankara. If coordination cant be established, then there could be a risk of confrontation, which we do not wish for.

The standoff has emerged as Russia has taken the diplomatic lead in seeking to resolve the war in Syria after its air campaign that started in 2015 succeeded in bolstering President Bashar al-Assad.

Under pressure in Washington over allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. election, U.S. President Donald Trump has backed off his campaign pledge to cooperate on fighting terrorism in Syria with Putin. Still, last month U.S. warplanes helped indirectly in the Russian-backed Syrian offensive to recapture the historic city of Palmyra, carrying out 23 strikes over nine days, as much as during the rest of February. Now, faced with Turkey, the two powers appear to have taken a tactical joint stance.

In a bid to lower the tensions, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford, Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and Turkeys Chief of the General Staff Hulusi Akar met in the southern Turkish city of Antalya on Tuesday.

It is a measure of the success that forces are having in countering the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria that the conversation is necessary, the U.S. Defense Department said in a statement. It noted that areas like Manbij have become a crowded battlespace and the proximity of the various forces had created a dangerous situation.

Turkey sent troops across the border into Syria in August, backing Free Syrian Army rebels in battles against Islamic State. The army has also clashed with Kurdish groups that the government in Ankara regards as terrorist organizations with links to separatists in Turkey, and which took control of Manbij after expelling Islamic State from the town just before the Turkish incursion.

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Turkey has sought the support of the U.S., its NATO ally, to lead a ground offensive against Islamic States main Syrian stronghold of Raqqa that would advance through areas controlled by Kurdish fighters, a Turkish official said last week. But the U.S. views the Kurds as an essential element of the battle against the radical Sunni group thats waged a global campaign of terrorist attacks from its self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

Full-scale hostilities between the Turks and Kurds would pose a major setback for efforts to capture Raqqa, according to Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Its important to get a buffer between the Turks and Kurds so ISIS can be beaten, he said.

The U.S. has moved 500 soldiers to the outskirts of Manbij, according to Ilnur Cevik, chief adviser to Erdogan. The U.S.-led coalition has taken this deliberate action to reassure coalition members and partner forces, deter aggression and keep the focus on defeating ISIS, spokesman Col. John Dorrian said on Twitter.

The U.S. and Russian moves leave Turkey with no more room to maneuver, said Faysal Itani, an analyst with the Atlantic Council in Washington. That will enable a Kurdish-led operation to capture Raqqa and the Syrian government to deploy its forces too in the area, he said.

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US, Russia Counter Erdogan in Syria as Kurds Get Shield - Bloomberg

BERLIN The leader of Germany's Turkish community on Monday accused President Tayyip Erdogan of damaging ties between the two NATO allies by likening bans on political rallies by Turks in Germany to "fascist actions" reminiscent of Nazi times.

Erdogan's comments on Sunday have further soured relations as public outrage in Germany mounts over Turkey's arrest a week ago of Turkish-German journalist Deniz Yucel.

"Erdogan went a step too far. Germany should not sink to his level," Gokay Sofuoglu, chairman of the Turkish Community in Germany, which groups 270 member organizations, told Reuters.

He said the comments could harm bilateral ties and were exacerbating long-simmering tensions within the community of about 3 million people of Turkish background in Germany.

Sofuoglu said he had talked to police after receiving messages accusing him of being a "terrorist" because of his criticism of Erdogan and of a coming referendum to expand the powers of the Turkish presidency.

But he urged authorities not to ban Erdogan or other Turkish politicians from Germany, saying it was important to set a positive example and preserve rights to freedom of expression.

Two German towns last week canceled political rallies at which Turkish ministers had hoped to drum up support for a "Yes" vote in the April 16 referendum.

An estimated 1.5 million Turkish citizens living in Germany are eligible to vote in the poll, making them one of the largest constituencies outside Turkish cities like Istanbul.

German chancellor Angela Merkel insists the rallies were canceled by the local authorities for security reasons and that federal officials were not involved.

German politicians continued to react with shock and anger to Erdogan's comments on Monday, with many demanding an immediate apology.

"Such accusations are absolutely unacceptable," Merkel's chief of staff Peter Altmaier told German broadcaster ARD, in the chancellery's first comments since Erdogan's latest salvo.

Altmaier said Germany valued freedom of expression and would not prevent appearances by Turkish politicians, but that such speeches should respect "legal boundaries and existing law".

He said Merkel and Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel would address the meaning of the latest events with Ankara, as well as Germany's demand that Turkey free Yucel, whom Erdogan says is a "German agent" and a member of an armed Kurdish militant group.

A source in Germany's foreign ministry told Reuters on Friday those accusations were "absurd".

Gabriel, who is due to meet Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu in Berlin on Wednesday, told reporters in Brussels: "The relationship is clearly strained and it is our responsibility to normalize it."

(Reporting by Gernot Heller, Andrea Shalal, Georg Merziger in Berlin and Tom Koerkemeier in Brussels; Editing by Catherine Evans)

KABUL Gunmen dressed as doctors attacked a military hospital close to the U.S. embassy in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Wednesday and were engaging security forces inside the building, officials and witnesses said.

BEIRUT A U.S. Navy ship changed course in the Hormuz Strait on Saturday toward Iranian Revolutionary Guard vessels, a guards commander was quoted as saying on Tuesday while issuing a warning.

SEOUL A man claiming to be the son of the slain, estranged half brother of North Korea's leader said he was lying low with his mother and sister, in a video posted online by a group that said it helped rescue them following the murder a month ago.

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Germany's Turkish community say Erdogan went too far with Nazi comments - Reuters