In this mailing:
- Peter Martino: Will the Pirates Capture Germany?
- Veli Sirin: Erdogan the Aesthete
Will the Pirates Capture Germany?
by Peter Martino
April 24, 2012 at 5:00 am
April 24, 2012 at 5:00 am
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"I
recognize we have a Nazi problem in the Pirates," Harmut Semken, head of
the Berlin Prates' Party said." It is, however, a strange for a party not
to allow any criticism of immigration and religion, such as Islam, while at the
same time condoning anti-Semitic activities under the pretext of freedom of
expression. Meanwhile, a poll indicates that 37 percent of the Germans would
want to see the Pirates enter the German Parliament next year.
The crisis surrounding the euro is leading to
growing dissatisfaction with existing parties all over the eurozone. In France,
as explained
here last week, the current crisis has breathed new life into the far left.
In Germany, where the far-left Die Linke party is the successor of the
Communist Party of East-Germany, an altogether new party has emerged: the Piratenpartei,
the Pirates' Party.
"I recognize we have a Nazi problem in the
Pirates," Harmut Semken, the head of the Berlin PP said.
"There's no alternative: a party which accepts members without any
pre-screening can't help but attract people trying to hide their contempt for
humanity behind freedom of expression," he added. It is, however, a
strange position for a party not to allow any criticism of immigration and
religions, such as Islam, while at the same time condoning anti-Semitic
activities under the pretext
The Pirate movement, which originated in Sweden
in 2006, began as a loosely organized group of digital activists whose main aim
is the free sharing of information online, including through less stringent
copyright laws. Their political activities began with protesting the raid of
the Swedish police on the Stockholm servers of the website The Pirate Bay,
where music and movies could be downloaded illegally. In 2009, the Swedish Piratpartiet
won 7.1 percent of the votes and two of Sweden's 20 seats in the European
Parliament. In the EP, the Pirates belong to the Green Group, led by the
Franco-German former revolutionary Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Following the Swedish
example, PPs were established in some 40 countries, but none has had the
electoral impact of the German branch.
The Pirates want an exemption of non-commercial
activity from copyright regulations and advocate the abolishment of patents.
They want to strengthen civil rights and abolish anti-terrorism laws which violate
people's right to privacy.
The German PP's party
platform states that "migration enriches society" and advocates
open borders and unlimited access to immigrants. According to the Pirates all
cultures and religions are equal. The party says it strongly opposes
discrimination and racism. It also favors further European integration. The
party is mainly perceived to be critical of the EU because it opposes the
European data retention policies. Regarding social issues, the Pirates are
extremely liberal. They even advocate abolishing
the legal ban on incest.
May 6 is D-day for the European Union: there
will be three elections then. That day the French will elect their new
president. If Nicolas Sarkozy loses, the EU's common currency, the euro, will
lose one of its staunchest supporters. There will also be general elections in
Greece. These will probably be won by opposition parties rejecting the EU
imposed austerity measures. Without these measures, Greece will not be able to
remain in the eurozone and the euro will begin to unravel. There will also be
state elections in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, probably marking
another step in the Pirates' march on Berlin.
Opinion polls predict that Germany's PP might
win over 10 percent of the votes in next year's general elections. In the 2009
European elections, the party won only 0.9 percent of the votes. In the
September 2011 Berlin state elections, however, it won 8.9 percent and in last
March's Saarland state elections it won 7.4 percent. The Pirates are also
expected to do well in two important state elections in early May: May 6 in the
northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, and May 13 in Germany's most populous
state, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW).
The Pirates' advance is causing a serious
headache for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. During the past two years, Merkel
and Sarkozy formed the tandem upholding the euro. If Sarkozy is beaten and the
Pirates' appeal keeps growing, Merkel seems bound to lose next year's Bundestag
elections.
The disenchantment of European voters with the
euro, will, however, have repercussions for the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, the parties that are currently profiting from the euro's
unpopularity are endangering the good relations between Europe and its Western
allies, America and Israel. The Piratenpartei's surge has come at the
expense the Germany's mainstream parties. The Pirates pushed the centrist
Liberal Party FDP under the electoral threshold in both Berlin and Saarland.
Polls predict that the same thing will probably happen in Schleswig-Holstein,
where the Pirates are polling 10 percent, and in NRW, where they are polling 8
percent.
If the Pirates manage to do the same thing in
next year's general elections – which seems ever more likely – Merkel's ruling
Christian-Democrat Party will lose its coalition partner and Germany, like
France, will move dramatically to the left.
On major issues of the day, however, such as
the eurozone debt crisis, the PP platform lacks policies. "We have to be
honest: We should just say that we don't know yet what our position is," says
Matthias Bock, a Pirate candidate in NRW. Bock wants the collective
intelligence of the community to find solutions for the budget deficit through
crowd-sourcing.
Last week, the Pirates were criticized
by the Central Council of German Jews. Dieter Graumann, the Council's
president, questioned the PP's decision not to oust PP member Bodo Thiesen,
despite comments he made about the Holocaust and Germany's role in starting the
Second World War. In a 2008 YouTube video, Thiesen defended convicted Holocaust
denier Germar Rudolf. Thiesen also tried to alter entries on the German
Wikipedia regarding the Holocaust and the German invasion of Poland in 1939,
which he claimed was provoked by the Polish.
Meanwhile, however, a poll
indicates that 37 percent of the Germans would want to see the Pirates
enter the German Parliament next year. 24 percent would even welcome their
participation in a government coalition. Nevertheless, 83 percent are convinced
that a vote for the Pirates is a protest vote while only 8 percent think that
voters are convinced by the Pirates's proposals. It is surprising that, given
the Germans' earlier experience with political adventurers, almost a quarter of
them would not object to Pirates in government.
Related Topics: Peter Martino
Erdogan the Aesthete
by Veli Sirin
April 24, 2012 at 3:00 am
April 24, 2012 at 3:00 am
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The
monument [symbolizing reconciliation between Armenians and Turks], Erdogan
said, was "monstrous;" he issued a categorical order for its demolition.
The minister of culture and tourism tried to calm the resulting uproar. But
Erdogan shut him up, repeating, "Yes, I said the monument is monstrous and
the responsible mayor should make sure it disappears as quickly as
possible."
Early in 2011, while visiting the Turkish city
of Kars, less than 20 miles (30 kilometres) from the Armenian frontier. the
country's neo-fundamentalist prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the
Justice and Development Party (known by its local initials as AKP), discovered
a memorial to the Armenian victims of Turkish massacres in 1915.
The stone sculpture, 115 feet (35 metres) high,
entitled "A Statue of Humanity," represented a human body severed
from top to bottom, with the two halves facing each other. It was intended to
include a hand reaching between the separated forms.
Its creator, artist Mehmet Aksoy, believed the
art installation would symbolize relations between Armenians and Turks, and
their reconciliation. The former mayor of Kars, Naif Alibeyoglu, had
commissioned the art piece in 2006, when Turkish-Armenian relations were, as so
often before, at a low point, so it would be visible across the border.
Armenians and their supporters have long called
on Turkey to recognize the mass slayings and deadly deportations of Armenians
to the Syrian desert during the first world war as a genocide; and, as the
legal successor to the Ottoman empire, to accept responsibility for these
crimes.
In recent years, attitudes have changed in
Turkey. It is no longer taboo to discuss the tragedy inflicted on the
Armenians. Politicians have shifted position: in 2009 a plan was adopted to
establish diplomatic relations with Armenia and open the borders between the
two countries. But such a normalization has been delayed.
When Erdogan saw the Kars memorial, however, he
professed shock. The monument, he said, was "monstrous;" he issued a
categorical order for its demolition to the Kars mayor, Nevzat Bozkus, a member
of Erdogan's AKP. The minister of culture and tourism, Ertugrul Gunay, who
accompanied Erdogan on his excursion in the eastern districts, tried to calm
the resulting uproar, noting that the creator of the piece, Aksoy, is his
friend. But Erdogan shut him up, repeating, "Yes, I said the monument is
monstrous and the responsible mayor should make sure it disappears as quickly
as possible."
Erdogan argued that the memorial overshadowed
the tomb of a spiritual Sufi, Ebul Hasan Harakani, who lived in the 10th
century CE, and a mosque associated with him, both rebuilt in 1996.
The artist Aksoy replied that when he selected
the location the authorities responsible for preservation of historic buildings
and monuments had approved the proposal without problems.
Aksoy also had recourse to the legal system. He
obtained a court order against the razing of his work, but the decision was
ignored. The Kars town council continued with its vandalism. Hundreds of
supporters of the artist held a protest in Kars. Aksoy compared Erdogan to a
totalitarian dictator and declared that most citizens of Kars opposed wrecking
the monument.
For many opponents of Erdogan and the AKP, the
disagreement about a sculpture revealed several negative aspects of the prime
minister's personality. Erdogan has been accused repeatedly of autocratic and
increasingly dictatorial traits. He is held responsible for the arrests of
Turkish journalists under the AKP administration, whether he did or did not
order the detentions. In addition, the Turkish secular elite point to the
removal of the Kars memorial as evidence that members of the new, Islamist
governing class that Erdogan placed in power lacks education and culture.
Removal of the Kars statue is further seen as a vindictive act against ex-mayor
Alibeyoglu, who left the AKP and joined the secularist opposition in the
Republican People's Party (CHP).
The painter Bedri Baykam, a leading exponent
for secularist artists in Turkey, had demonstrated years before against the
Islamist trend of the Erdogan regime. During the debate over Aksoy's statue, a
year ago, Baykam joined a meeting in Istanbul defending the Kars memorial.
After the event, Baykam and art gallery director Tugba Kurtulmus, who was with
him, were stabbed by Mehmet Celikel, a mental patient who said he
"disliked people of that kind." Celikel had been imprisoned for
stabbing two other people in 1998. Both Baykam and Kurtulmus survived.
Erdogan claimed his criticism involved
aesthetics, not human rights. According to him, the memorial was
"monstrous." But can any monument to the victims of terrible atrocities
be uglier than the incidents they commemorate?
The expulsion of the Armenians, in death
marches running here and there across Turkey, was a precedent for the Holocaust
of European Jews. In Germany, historians are committed permanently to research
about the involvement of the military, other state institutions, and ordinary
people in the horrors of the second world war.
But in Turkey, the prime minister is terrified
at the sight of stones erected one upon another. The stones themselves neither
declare Turkish guilt nor refer to the suffering of Armenians explicitly. But
the monument is gone, and some part of collective memory will have vanished
with it. Erdogan's action was wrong: it just illustrates his preference for
demolition over reconciliation.
Related Topics: Veli Sirin
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