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ANKARA Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday returned to Turkey from his four-day New York visit after cementing Turkeys regional fence-mending with Greece and Israel.

Erdogans one-on-one schedule on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly largely focused on regional diplomacy, including meetings with Israeli, Greek, Iraqi and Algerian leaders. Erdogan also met with NATO Secretary GeneralJens Stoltenberg on Monday.

Erdogans meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday marked the first-ever official face-to-face meeting, as relations between the two were highly strained during Netanyahu's previous terms in office (2009-2021).The two countries restored their diplomatic ties last July as part of Ankaras regional fence-mending push, which aimed to overcome Turkeys regional isolation and economic hardships by restoring its ties with Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

In the statement after the meeting, "The two leaders mutually invited each other for visits to Israel and Turkey and it was agreed that these visits would be coordinated and take place soon, the Israeli side said.

Shortly before the New York meeting, Israels Channel 2 reported thatErdogan is interested in arranging a trip to Israel as soon as possible to pray at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque to mark the centennial of the Turkish Republic, which was founded on Oct. 29, 1923.

Netanyahu was scheduled to travel to Turkey last July in what would have been the first visit to Ankara by an Israeli prime minister in 14 years but the trip was postponed, with the Israeli government citing health reasons.

Erdogan also reached out to Israel's supporters in a meeting with 15 Jewish leaders, where he denounced anti-Semitism.

The meeting according to the Jerusalem Post included "attendees from the Conference of Presidents and various other Jewish organizations, as well as rabbis, leaders of the Turkish Jewish community, and Turkish Jewish Americans."

The Turkish leaders meeting withGreek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday, meanwhile, saw an agreement on a date for the resumption of the confidence-building talks between the two countries' defense ministries. The setting of a date for talks came as the latest in a series of steps the two countries have taken to resolve their conflicting territorial claims in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas following the disaster diplomacy after the devastating February earthquakes that hit southern Turkey.

No NATO breakthrough

Following Erdogan-Stoltenberg meeting, the Turkish president said: "We will remain one of the most active supporters of NATO missions." But he gave no indication of a timeline for the Turkish parliament to ratify Sweden's membership.

Erdogans postponement of a Turkish parliament vote on Swedens pending NATO membership accession after he greenlighted it in July drew the ire of Western capitals, particularly Washington.

The tensions became public when Erdogan said earlier month that his country was seriously upset over Washingtons linking a Turkish request to buy new F-16 fighter jets from the United States to Swedens NATO membership, which is pending ratification by Turkey and Hungary. His remarks came after his brief chat with US President Joe Biden on the sidelines of the G20 summit in New Delhi.

Dropping his yearlong objections, Erdogan greenlighted the Swedish accession to NATO under a trilateral statement by NATO, Turkey and Sweden on the sidelines of NATOs Vilnius summit in July. Yet later he announced that he would not initiate the ratification process until October when the Turkish parliament returns from a summer recess.

His remarks on the sidelines of the G20 summit earlier this month further increased uncertainty over the Swedish bid."It is not possible for me to say 'yes' [to Sweden] alone unless such a decision is approved by our parliament, he told journalists in New Delhi.

The issue will likely be a top agenda item during Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidans scheduled meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday.

Read more from the original source:
Erdogan returns to Turkey after securing thaw with Israel on US trip - Al-Monitor

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President Erdogan warns against military intervention in Niger in UN address - Anadolu Agency | English

Turkey and Israel will explore joint energy drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday told journalists who accompanied him to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

Erdogan on Tuesday met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York, with the Turkish leader saying that "ties between the two countries were improving after more than a decade of tensions.

Erdogan told reporters the two countries agreed to cooperate on energy and build an energy transmission line between them, linking to Europe.

Hopefully, we will take this step without too much delay and start energy drilling work with Israel, Erdogan told journalists. He added that he had extended an invitation to Netanyahu to visit Turkey, after which he would make a trip to Israel.

Erdogan proposed a new mechanism with Israel that would deepen cooperation between the countries energy, industry, and tourism ministries. He also said they reached an agreement that they would increase the value of bilateral trade from $9.5bn dollars to at least $15bn dollars.

In a separate statement, Netanyahus office said the two leaders committed to continue advancing bilateral relations in trade, economic matters and energy", and that reciprocal visits between the leaders would take place "soon".

The meeting marks a vast turnaround in ties between Israel and Turkey.

The two have historically enjoyed cordial relations, but ties frayed after an Israeli raid on a Turkish ship carrying aid to the besieged Gaza Strip killed 10 civilians in 2010.

Erdogan is a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause and Israeli officials have criticised what they say is Turkeys support for Hamas, the group that governs Gaza, which the US and Israel consider a terrorist organisation.

Erdogan, however, has been mending fences with Turkeys neighbours. Middle East Eyereportedearlier that Erdogan threw his support behind recent attempts to normalise ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, Turkey has been patching up relations with Greece, its historic foe in the Eastern Mediterranean.

On Wednesday, Erdogan held a more than one-hour-long meeting with his Greek counterpart, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in New York.

Cyprus eyes Israel pipeline after elections in Turkey, Greece

Athens and Ankara have competing claims to maritime zones that hold potentially lucrative gas reserves. The two came close to conflict in 2020 after their warships collided in the Mediterranean.

Turkey and Greece have both courted Israel as a partner to develop energy infrastructure.

Turkey has said that Athens' plan for anEastern Mediterranean pipeline linking Israeli gas fields to Greece and Italy is unrealistic, and that it infringes on its maritime rights. The plan was eventually shelved as energy companies balked at its $6bn price tag and the US criticised its feasibility.

More recently, MEE reported that Cyprus, a close ally of Greece, is pushing for a downsized version of the pipeline that would link Israel to the divided island nation from where gas can be shipped in the form of liquified natural gas.

That pipeline could compete with Anakara's plan.

Turkish Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said last week that Turkey was still discussing a pipeline from Israel to Turkey and on to Europe.

"Its economically much more feasible, much more viable. You can easily attract capital and make money for the investors with this project," he said.

Read the rest here:
Turkey and Israel will explore joint drilling in East Mediterranean ... - Middle East Eye

Recep Tayyip Erdoanbegan his passionate and wide-ranging speech by highlighting the humanitarian crises, political conflicts, and social tensions plaguing various regions worldwide, emphasizing the difficulty in addressing these issues amid global economic problems.

He expressed grave concern about the use of terrorism as an instrument in proxy wars in regions like Syria, North Africa, and the Sahel, asserting that it was undermining international security.

The President also touched upon the growing threat of xenophobia, racism, and islamophobia, warning that these issues were reaching alarming levels globally. He stressed the importance of addressing these challenges for the sake of social harmony.

On having expressed gratitude to the international community, including the UN, for coming to his countrys aid after it suffered a major earthquake which claimed over 50,000 lives and caused extensive destruction in February 2023, Mr. Erdogan noted, that the friendship shown to our country on that very dark day was an important source of consolation.

Acting in the same spirit, Trkiye, he added, mobilized extensive help to Libya, where 12,000 people lost their lives with thousands still unaccounted for after the recent devastating storms and floods.

Presenting his country as an active international player, President Erdogan outlined multiple contacts Trkiye had developed with lands both near and far. The countrys relations span the whole world from China and South Asia to Africa and Latin America, but the main scope of attention is on its neighbouring region.

Referring to the war on Europe's eastern borders President Erdogan said, Since the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, we have been endeavouring to keep both our Russian and Ukrainian friends around the table with the thesis that war will have no winners and peace will have no losers, the Turkish President said.

He stated readiness to step up efforts to end the war through diplomacy and dialogue based on Ukraines independence and territorial integrity.

In this context he highlighted the Black Sea Initiative launched together with the UN, which aimed to prevent a global hunger crisis by facilitating the transport of grain through the Black Sea to global markets.

Lamenting the fact that the initiative was no longer in operation, he mentioned a new plan new plan whereby another. Some 1,000,000 tonnes of grain will be released to the countries in dire need around the world.

Mr. Erdogan spoke of the need of the reform of the United Nations, expressing the idea that the institutions established after the Second World War no longer reflect today's world.

The world is bigger than five, he said referring to the five Permanent Members of the Security Council. Advocating for reform, he noted that the Security Council has ceased to be the guarantor of world security and has become a battleground for the political strategies of only five countries.

He urged a re-evaluation of the current international institutions to better reflect the realities of today's world.

He spoke also about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), underscoring the need to eradicate hunger and poverty.

We find it difficult to accept hunger as an issue, as an unsolved problem, here in the 21st century, said the President, urging all countries to demonstrate a strong will to realize Sustainable Development Goals.

Here is the original post:
'Peace has no losers', Erdogan says, vowing to step up efforts to end ... - UN News

On September 18, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gave an exclusive interview to the U.S. television program PBS NewsHour ahead of his speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

Under Erdogan's two-decade-plus rule, Turkey has become one of the worlds most prolific jailers of journalists and human rights activists.

The interviewer, Amna Nawaz, asked Erdogan if he is threatened by these people.

Erdogan became combative, questioning why Nawaz was interested in the topic and chalking up the prosecutions to the countrys courts, which he implied are independent:

Turkey has a state of law. Such decisions can only be made by the judiciary. And if this is what the judiciary has decided to do, let the decisions or the judgments of the judiciary be respected and executed.

When asked follow-up questions regarding the prosecution of his opponents, the Turkish president became combative:

Don't interrupt. You have no right to interrupt. You're not going to interrupt me. And respect me. And you are going to respect the judgment of the judiciary, as well.

The American judiciary is a full-fledged judiciary. So is the judiciary of Turkey. And you have to respect that. We are a state of law, and inside that state of law, this is how we lived, and this is how we will keep on living.

That is misleading. Despite claims of judicial independence, Erdogan has used Turkeys courts to target dissent.

Following a failed July 15, 2016, coup, Turkish authorities sought to purge followers of Fethullah Gulen, an exiled cleric living in the United States, from the civil service, military and academia. Erdogan blames Gulen, a former ally, for the 2016 coup. Gulen denies any role in the plot.

In July 2022, Turkeys then internal affairs minister, Suleyman Soylus, said authorities had detained 332,884 and arrested 101,000 people following the coup attempt over their alleged affiliation with the Gulen movement, which Turkey labeled a terrorist organization.

Erdogan called the coup attempt a gift from God that allowed him to cleanse our army.

Critics said it gave him a pretext to purge the judiciary of dissenting voices, as Turkish authorities jailed or dismissed thousands of judges and prosecutors from their posts.

The Belgium-based Arrested Lawyers Initiative, which advocates for lawyers and human rights defenders in Turkey, said years of relentless targeting of the independence of the Turkish judiciary has given Erdogan absolute control over it.

According to a May 2020 Reuters investigation, the purge hollowed out Turkeys justice system even as the caseload exploded.

Reuters found that following the purges, 45% of Turkeys roughly 21,000 judges and prosecutors had three years of experience or less. Lacking experience, the loyal and inexperienced judges were tasked with handling a dramatic spike in workload from coup-related prosecutions.

Lawyers interviewed by Reuters also said the increasingly common practice of switching judges during trials was a means for the government to exert control over the courts.

Lawyers who opted to defend individuals in terrorism cases have been targeted with prosecution.

In its 2022 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the U.S. State Department, citing human rights organizations, said that as of November 2022, Turkish authorities had prosecuted more than 1,600 lawyers, arrested 615, and sentenced 551 to lengthy prison terms on terrorism-related charges since the 2016 coup attempt.

Authorities have charged people, including members of parliament, with supporting terrorism merely for sharing news articles on social media advocating peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is banned in Turkey.

Turkey Tribunal, a Belgium-based nongovernmental organization set up to adjudicate human rights violations in Turkey, said Turkeys courts have failed to protect fundamental rights, leaving citizens under the arbitrary exercise of power by the Executive.

In February 2020, Dunja Mijatovic, Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, called on Turkey to restore judicial independence, saying the rule of law in the country was severely threatened.

Mijatovic said Turkish authorities needed to reverse the measures implemented under the post-coup state of emergency, which had devastating consequences on judicial independence and impartiality and threatened the rule of law and human rights in Turkey.

Mijatovic further expressed alarm that Turkeys judiciary had displayed unprecedented levels of disregard for even the most basic principles of law, particularly in terrorism-related cases.

During the PBS interview, Nawaz asked Erdogan about the prosecution of Osman Kavala, an activist and philanthropist who was sentenced to life in prison in July 2022 for financing anti-government protests.

Amnesty International said the prosecuting authorities had "repeatedly failed to provide any evidence substantiating the baseless charges that Kavala, who had been involved in civil society projects for decades, was attempting to overthrow the government.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Europes highest court, concluded that the arrest and pre-trial detention took place in the absence of evidence to support a reasonable suspicion he had committed an offense.

The court found that Turkey had essentially prosecuted Kavala to reduce him to silence as a human rights defender.

The ECHR called on Turkey to immediately release Kavala, citing the violations that occurred in his prosecution.

Although Turkey is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights and was bound to follow the courts decision, Turkish authorities refused to release Kavala.

In July 2022, the court, for only the second time in its 63-year history, initiated infringement proceedings against Turkey for not abiding by its ruling.

Helen Duffy of the Turkey Human Rights Litigation Support Project, a New York-based nongovernmental organization, said the ruling is an acknowledgment of Turkeys ever-deepening rule of law crisis."

The World Justice Project, a Washington-based international civil society organization seeking to "advance the rule of law around the world," ranked Turkey 116th out of 140 countries in its 2022 Rule of Law Index.

Continue reading here:
Dubious: Erdogan's Claim of Judicial Independence in Turkey - Polygraph.info