Author: Worldcrew

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Istanbul/Washington — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh and his delegation last weekend in Istanbul amid growing criticism in Turkey of his government’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

There was no news conference after the meeting.  Erdogan’s office released a statement on the topics discussed with Haniyeh, who lives in exile in Qatar.

According to the statement, Erdogan and the Hamas leader talked about “Israel’s attacks on Palestinian territory, especially Gaza, what needs to be done to ensure adequate and uninterrupted delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and a fair and lasting peace process in the region.”

Erdogan also emphasized the importance of Palestinians acting in unity, which he called “the most robust response to Israel and the way to victory go through unity and integrity.”

In another statement, Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) revealed that a Hamas delegation, including key members of the militant group, was present in the meeting.

Haniyeh’s visit came at a time when Erdogan’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war and his support for the Palestinian people were questioned by the Islamist New Welfare Party, which came in third nationally in the local elections last month.

On April 9, Turkey’s Trade Ministry announced export restrictions of several product groups to Israel as a response growing calls in Turkey for a boycott.

Some analysts think that Erdogan’s meeting with Haniyeh is to consolidate his base.

“AKP and Erdogan have been very worn out recently regarding the Palestine issue after it was revealed that there was trade with Israel,” Erhan Kelesoglu, an Istanbul-based Middle East expert, told VOA.

“Meeting with Hamas leaders actually provides President [Erdogan] with the opportunity to refresh his image before the public. It shows that he is behind the Palestinian cause and Hamas,” Kelesoglu added.

On April 17, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan went to Doha, Qatar, where he met Haniyeh.

Later in a joint news conference with his Qatari counterpart, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, Fidan said that Hamas has accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state with the 1967 borders.

“They have told me that following the establishment of the Palestinian state, Hamas would no longer need an armed wing and they would continue as a political party,” Fidan said.

Some experts view Ankara’s recent involvement with Hamas as its intent to play a mediator role.

“Turkey intends to reassert its influence in the region by playing a mediator role, particularly as Qatar’s mediating capacity reaches its limits, and Turkey has recently emerged as one of the intermediary countries in relations with Iran,” Evren Balta, a non-resident scholar at Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington, wrote in an analysis for MEI’s blog. 

“However, it is unlikely that either Israel or the United States will agree to the role that Turkey wishes to play or see the dissolution of the military wing of Hamas as a sufficient move to engage with the organization,” Balta added.  

Israel’s reaction

Following the meeting on April 20, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz shared a photo of Erdogan shaking hands with Haniyeh on his X account.

“Erdogan, shame on you,” Katz wrote in a post in Turkish. He also listed his allegations of “rape, murder, and the desecration of corpses” committed by “the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Hamas shares the Islamist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Erdogan’s AKP also backed in the past.

Oncu Keceli, Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, reacted to Katz’s statement on X, saying, “It is the Israeli authorities who should be ashamed. They have massacred nearly 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.”

“Türkiye’s priority is to bring the massacre in Gaza to an end, and the establishment of a Palestinian state to ensure lasting peace in our region,” Keceli added.

More than 34,000 people have been killed, Palestinian health authorities say, since the beginning of the war in Gaza last October.

Comparison with Turkish militia

On April 17, in his ruling AKP’s parliamentary group meeting, Erdogan accused critics of his handling of the Israel-Gaza war of slandering him, his party, his government, and the Turkish Republic.

“Some of our steps may not be visible. We may not be able to explain some of what we do. However, those who question our sensitivity on Palestine will sooner or later be embarrassed and disgraced,” Erdogan said.

“I say it very clearly and openly: Hamas is the same as Kuva-yi Milliye in Turkey during the war of independence,” Erdogan added.

He also called Hamas “a group of mujahideen waging a battle to protect its lands and people” in the past after the Oct. 7 attack. Mujahideen is an Arabic word meaning those who fight for Islam.

The U.S., the U.K. and European Union have listed Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Kuva-yi Milliye, founded in 1918, is the name of the Turkish militia forces that fought in the early period of Turkey’s War of Independence and was later organized under the command of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Erdogan’s statement stirred a debate in Turkey as the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) rejected such a similarity between Turkish national forces and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

“Identifying Hamas with Kuva-yi Milliye means ‘the Palestinian cause started with Hamas.’ However, everyone knows very well that the [Palestinian] struggle is a struggle that has lasted for decades. And it certainly did not start with Hamas,” Oguz Kaan Salici, CHP’s Istanbul deputy and a Turkish Parliament’s Commission of Foreign Affairs member, told VOA.

CHP calls for a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians.
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Russian media say the country plans to deploy ballistic missiles close to its border with Finland. Analysts say it’s the latest in a series of military and hybrid threats that Russia has made against Finland since it joined NATO last year in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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A group of activists hopes to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza with a flotilla of vessels carrying aid. It is set to sail from Istanbul in the coming days. In a similar mission 14 years ago, Israeli forces intercepted a Turkish flotilla in a deadly raid that resulted in the deaths of 10 people. There are warnings this attempt may trigger a new crisis. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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LONDON — The European Union on Monday demanded TikTok provide more information about a new app that pays users to watch videos and warned that it could order the video sharing platform to suspend addictive features that pose a risk to kids. 

The 27-nation EU’s executive commission said it was opening formal proceedings to determine whether TikTok Lite breached the bloc’s new digital rules when the app was rolled out in France and Spain. 

Brussels was ratcheting up the pressure on TikTok after the company failed to respond to a request last week for information on whether the new app complies with the Digital Services Act, a sweeping law that took effect last year intending to clean up social media platforms. 

TikTok Lite is a slimmed-down version of the main TikTok app that lets users earn rewards. Points earned by watching videos, liking content and following content creators can then be exchanged for rewards including Amazon vouchers and gift cards on PayPal. 

The commission wants to see the risk assessment that TikTok should have carried out before deploying the app in the European Union. It’s worried TikTok launched the app without assessing how to mitigate “potential systemic risks” such as addictive design features that could pose harm to children. 

TikTok didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment. The company said last week it would respond to the commission’s request and noted that rewards are restricted to users 18 years and older, who have to verify their age. 

“With an endless stream of short and fast-paced videos, TikTok offers fun and a sense of connection beyond your immediate circle,” said European Commissioner Thierry Breton, one of the officials leading the bloc’s push to rein in big tech companies. “But it also comes with considerable risks, especially for our children: addiction, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, low attention spans.” 

The EU is giving TikTok 24 hours to turn over the risk assessment and until Wednesday to argue its case. Any order to suspend the TikTok Lite app’s reward features could come as early as Thursday. 

It’s the first time that the EU has issued a legally binding order for such information since the Digital Services Act took effect. Officials stepped up the pressure after TikTok failed to respond to last week’s request for the information. 

If TikTok still fails to respond, the commission warned the company also faces fines worth up to 1% of the company’s total annual income or worldwide turnover and “periodic penalties” of up to 5% of daily income or global turnover. 

TikTok was already facing intensified scrutiny from the EU. The commission already has an ongoing in-depth investigation into the main TikTok app’s DSA compliance, examining whether it’s doing enough to curb “systemic risks” stemming from its design, including “algorithmic systems” that might stimulate “behavioral addictions.” Offices are worried that measures including age verification tools to stop minors from finding “inappropriate content” might not be effective.
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cologne, germany — For the past year, five fit, academically superior men and women have been spun in centrifuges, submerged for hours, deprived temporarily of oxygen, taught to camp in the snow, and schooled in physiology, anatomy, astronomy, meteorology, robotics, and Russian.

On Monday, the five Europeans and an Australian graduated from basic training with a new title: astronaut.

At a ceremony in Cologne, Germany, ESA added the five newcomers to its astronaut corps eligible for missions to the International Space Station, bringing the total to 11.

ESA has negotiated with NASA for three places on future Artemis moon missions, although those places will likely go to the more senior astronauts, according to ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher. The agency is also supplying the service module for the Orion crew capsule. ESA relies on NASA and others to get its astronauts to space.

It is only the fourth astronaut class since 1978 for the 22-country agency, chosen from among 22,500 applicants. Another 12 were selected as reservists, but were not sent to basic training. Not surprisingly, the five have resumes studded with advanced scientific and medical degrees, military training, experience flying planes, helicopters, gliders and balloons, and “leisure” activities like rowing, scuba diving, hiking, skydiving, cycling, sailing, and kayaking.

The group formed “a very good team” devoid of personal rivalry, said Aschbacher. “I told them, one of you will fly first and one will fly last, and they accepted that of course, but from the heart, not just lip service … the team spirit is very pronounced.”

Sophie Adenot, a French air force helicopter test pilot, said the group was “a fantastic crew and a fantastic team.” The moment that struck her the most was leaving the airlock for underwater spacewalk simulation when the instructor said, “Welcome to space.”

“And for me it was mind-blowing, I had goosebumps. … In a few years it is going to be me in space, not in the water with safety divers.”

When she was a girl dreaming of space travel, “I couldn’t count the number of people who told me, this dream will never come true. ‘You have unrealistic dreams, and it will never happen.’ … Listen to yourself and don’t listen to people who don’t believe in you.”

In addition to Adenot, the ESA class consists of:

— Pablo Alvarez Fernandez, a Spanish aeronautical engineer who has worked on the Rosalind Franklin Mars rover intended for a joint mission with Russia that was suspended after the invasion of Ukraine;

— Rosemary Coogan, a British astronomer who has researched radiation emissions from black holes;

— Raphael Liegeois, a Belgian biomedical engineer and neuroscientist who has researched degenerative diseases of the nervous system, and also flies hot-air balloons and gliders;

— Marco Alain Sieber, a Swiss emergency physician who achieved sergeant rank as a paratrooper during his service with the Swiss army.

The group was joined by Katherine Bennell-Pegg from Australia, who underwent training under a cooperation agreement between Australia and ESA. She remains an employee of the Australian Space Agency. It’s up to the Australian agency to find a way for her to travel in space.

Their yearlong basic training included preparation for the hostile environment encountered in space. They were exposed to multiple times the force of gravity in a centrifuge and spent hours underwater using scuba gear to float around mockups of space station modules to simulate working in zero gravity.

They learned how to recognize symptoms of hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, by experiencing it themselves in a low-pressure chamber. Survival training included dealing with potential splashdown in the ocean and staying warm in winter while waiting to be recovered in case a landing goes off course. On top of that came academic work on scientific topics and learning about the space station’s modules and equipment.

Intensive Russian language is still part of the program, even though ESA has suspended work with Russia except for the space station, where one of the working languages is Russian.
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BAGHDAD — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Iraq Monday for his first official visit in more than a decade as his country seeks greater cooperation from Baghdad in its fight against a Kurdish militant group that has a foothold in northern Iraq.

Other issues also loom large between the two countries, including water supply issues and exports of oil and gas from northern Iraq to Turkey, which have been halted for more than a year.

Erdogan’s last visit to Iraq was in 2011, when he was Turkey’s prime minister.

Iraqi government spokesperson Bassem al-Awadi said in a statement that Erdogan’s visit will be a “major starting point in Iraqi-Turkish relations” and will include the signing of a deal on a “joint approach to security challenges” and a “strategic agreement on the water file,” among other issues.

Erdogan has said his country plans to launch a major operation against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist movement banned in Turkey and with operations in Iraq, during the summer, with the aim of “permanently” eradicating the threat it poses.

Turkey has carried out numerous ground offensives against the group in northern Iraq in the past while Turkish jets frequently target suspected PKK targets in the region.

Ankara now aims to create a 30- to 40-kilometer deep security corridor along the joint border with Iraq, Turkish Defense Minister Yasar Guler told journalists last month.

The group, whose fight for an autonomous Kurdish state in southeast Turkey has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the 1980s, is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and its Western allies.

Baghdad has complained in the past that Turkish operations against the PKK violate its sovereignty but appears to be coming closer to Ankara’s stance.

In March, after a meeting between the Iraqi and Turkish foreign ministers, Baghdad announced that the Iraqi National Security Council had issued a ban on the PKK, although it stopped short of designating it as a terrorist organization.

The two countries issued a joint statement in which they said the group represents a “security threat to both Turkey and Iraq” and that its presence on Iraqi territory was a “violation of the Iraqi Constitution.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told journalists during a visit to Washington last week that Iraq and Turkey have “true interests with one another and common projects.” He noted that the PKK has long had a presence in northern Iraq, “but we are not allowing any armed group to be on Iraqi territory and using it as a launch pad for attacks.”

Ankara has argued that the presence of PKK bases poses a threat to the planned construction of a major trade route, the Iraq Development Road, that would connect the port of Grand Faw in Basra, southern Iraq, to Turkey and Europe through a network of rail lines and highways.

Baghdad might take a similar approach to the PKK as it has taken to Iranian Kurdish dissident groups based in northern Iraq.

The presence of the Iranian dissidents had become a point of tension with Tehran, which periodically launched airstrikes on their bases in Iraq. Last summer, Iran and Iraq reached an agreement to disarm the dissident groups and relocate their members from military bases to displacement camps.

Talks between Erdogan and Iraqi officials are also expected to focus on energy cooperation as well as the possible resumption of oil flow through a pipeline to Turkey.

A pipeline running from the semiautonomous Kurdish region to Turkey has been shut down since March 2023, after an arbitration court ruling ordered Ankara to pay Iraq $1.5 billion for oil exports that bypassed the Iraqi central government. The sharing of oil and gas revenues has long been a contentious issue between Baghdad and Kurdish authorities in Irbil.

Water rights are also likely to be a key issue on the table.

The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which provide most of Iraq’s fresh water, originate in Turkey. In recent years, Iraqi officials have complained that dams installed by Turkey are reducing Iraq’s water supply. Experts fear that climate change is likely to exacerbate existing water shortages in Iraq, with potentially devastating consequences.

Mustafa Hassan, a resident of Baghdad said that he hopes that Erdogan’s visit “will help to solve problems related to water, because Iraq is suffering from a water scarcity crisis, and this affects agriculture.”
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Brussels, Belgium — With an energy crisis and record high inflation in the EU’s rearview mirror, Brussels believes the time has come for the bloc to focus on ensuring sound public finances.

New spending rules will be voted on in the European Parliament on Tuesday. Once in place, each member state will be required to get national spending under control, but with built-in flexibility for investment.

The old rules were suspended between 2020 and 2023 to shore up the European economy as it weathered the coronavirus pandemic and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which sent energy costs soaring.

Faced with the specter of recession, the European Union believed it was necessary to let deficit targets slip so that businesses and households could be protected.

Debt has since exploded in the most vulnerable countries, and the EU came to accept that for the rules to be brought back, changes were needed to make them workable.

After protracted negotiations over two years, a final agreement on the reform was reached on February 10.

Inapplicable rules

The old rules, known as the Stability and Growth Pact, were born in 1997 ahead of the arrival in 1999 of the single currency, the euro.  

Fiscal hawks — particularly Germany — feared some countries would pursue lax budgetary policies, so they wanted strict rules to ensure balanced government accounts.

The pact enshrines two sacred objectives, which remain in the reformed rules: a country’s debt must not go higher than 60 percent of gross domestic product, with a public deficit of no more than three percent. 

In theory, violators would have faced hefty fines. In practice, no sanctions were ever levied as that would have put those states in greater difficulty.

For instance, after Greece plunged into a sovereign debt crisis in 2009, rather than fining it, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund stepped in with bailout loans, conditioned on painful reforms.

Under the rules’ “excessive deficit procedure”, a debt-overloaded country has to negotiate a plan with the European Commission to get back on track.

The guideline was that the country was meant to slash sovereign debt by 1/20 a year until it comes back down to the 60-percent target.

But that rule was not respected and ended up being deemed inapplicable, as implementation would unleash excruciating austerity.

Changes

Both the hawks and the EU’s highly indebted southern states abhorred the old rules — albeit for different reasons.

The frugal states felt the rules were insufficiently respected, and that their interpretation by the commission was overly accommodating to rule-breakers.

The indebted countries — for example, Italy whose debt is 140 percent of GDP — believed the pact was a straitjacket that penalized public investment.

They argued it hindered them from meeting the massive needs for the green and digital transition and rearmament in the face of the Russian threat.

One of the reform’s aims is to make sure debt-reduction plans take a country’s economic situation into better consideration.

Under the new rules, each state will have to present a four-year plan to ensure the “sustainability” of their debt and how they will reduce the deficit to below three percent, in line with a trajectory formulated by the commission.

Government reforms and investments will be rewarded by allowing them to extend the horizon of their plan to seven years, easing the return to fiscal discipline.

The “sustainability” criteria means countries must put debt on a downward trajectory for the 10 years after their plan ends. The focus will be on how spending evolves, rather than the deficit itself. 

Germany secured an additional requirement in the reform that all countries with excessive deficits must reduce their deficit overshoot by at least a half a percentage point of GDP per year.

And the debt ratio must be lowered by at least one percentage point on average over four or seven years, if the debt is greater than 90 percent of GDP.

Some observers believe the straitjacket still exists.

“For many member states, it will be difficult to successfully consolidate public finances while making major investments,” said Andreas Eisl of the Jacques Delors Institute think tank. 
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London — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak pledged on Monday to start sending asylum seekers to Rwanda within 10 to 12 weeks, telling the upper house of parliament he will force the new legislation through despite its opposition.

Sunak said the government had booked commercial charter planes and trained staff to take migrants to Rwanda, part of a policy he hopes will boost his Conservative Party’s flagging fortunes before an election later this year.

“No ifs, no buts. These flights are going to Rwanda,” Sunak told a press conference.

Tens of thousands of migrants— many fleeing wars and poverty in Asia, the Middle East and Africa — have reached Britain in recent years, mostly by crossing the English Channel in small boats on risky journeys organized by people-smuggling gangs.

Stopping the flow is a prime goal for the Conservative government, but critics say the plan to deport people to Rwanda is inhumane and that the East African country is not a safe place.

The move has been held up repeatedly by the House of Lords and it could face further legal challenges if it passes parliament. The legislation is due to return on Monday to the House of Commons — the lower house of parliament — where lawmakers are expected to remove changes proposed by the Lords.

Sunak, whose party trails Labour in the polls, said an airfield was on standby and slots were booked for flights. Five hundred staff had been trained and were ready to escort migrants “all the way to Rwanda”.

“We are ready. Plans are in place. And these flights will go come what may,” he said.

Under the policy formulated two years ago, any asylum seeker who arrives illegally in Britain will be sent to Rwanda in what the government says will deter Channel crossings and smash the people smugglers’ business model.

Sunak’s team hope the pre-election pledge will help turn around his electoral fortunes particularly among wavering Conservatives voters who want to see a reduction in immigration.

Polls suggest his Conservative Party will be badly beaten in this year’s election by Labour, which has said it will scrap the scheme if it wins power.

Even if Sunak is successful in stopping the House of Lords from blocking the legislation, he may still face legal challenges.

Charities and rights groups say they would try to stop individual deportations and the trade union which represents border force staff is promising to argue the new legislation was unlawful “within days” of the first asylum seekers being informed they will be sent to Rwanda.

 
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Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelming passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill on Saturday. The measure now heads to the U.S. Senate, which is expected to take up a vote early this week. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports.
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