Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has become his country’s first head of government to acknowledge publicly that his country displayed a “fascist approach” in dealing with its minorities in the past, when Christians and Jews fled abroad after coming under pressure. “For years, these things were done in this country,” Mr Erdogan told a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party in Duzce, north-western Turkey, last weekend. “People of other ethnicities were driven from the country. Did we win anything because of that? This was the result of a fascist approach.” Members of Turkey’s tiny non-Muslim minorities are regarded with suspicion by Turkish nationalists, who see them as agents of such foreign powers as Greece or Israel. With his comments, Mr Erdogan touched a delicate subject in Turkey. In several waves over the past several decades, thousands of Greeks, Armenians and Jews have left the country after riots or after pressure from the state in the form of punitive taxes. In one incident, Turkish nationalists destroyed hundreds of shops owned by Greeks and Armenians in Istanbul in one night on Sept 6 1955. The subject was taboo in Turkey for a long time and has been discussed openly only for a few years.
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic says The Hague should drop charges against him as he was given a US indemnity. The former president, now awaiting the International Tribunal decision, told the court that United Stares' peace envoy to Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke, had assured him of immunity back in the 1990s provided that Karadzic kept a low profile. Karadzic's legal team has declared it possesses compelling evidence to prove its claims. His lawyer, Peter Robinson told reporters on Monday, "This agreement was made on the 18th and 19th July 1996 in Belgrade and we have 15 witnesses to this agreement, and that set forth in the motion of 139 pages with annexes that was filed today." Bosnian foreign minister and that country's first ambassador to the United Nations, Muhamad Sacirbey, has long affirmed that Holbrooke promised Karadzic immunity from prosecution for the crimes he committed in Bosnia, provided Karadzic stepped back from public life, which he complied with.
The closed meeting of some of the most powerful business, media and political leaders in North America and Western Europe heard from top Obama diplomats James Steinberg and Richard Holbrooke, who detailed the administration’s foreign policy, while economic adviser Paul Volcker, chairman of President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, also gave a presentation at the heavily guarded seaside resort in Greece that hosted the event. A meeting attendee tells POLITICO that Holbrooke, a State Department special envoy, briefed attendees on the Obama administration’s unified approach to dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Bilderberg group, which takes its name from the Dutch hotel where it held its first meeting in 1954, exists solely to bring together between 100 and 150 titans of politics, finance, military, industry, academia and media from North America and Western Europe once a year to discuss world affairs.
IV. World Heritage Committee to meet in Seville to inscribe new sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List
The World Heritage Committee will consider requests for the inscription of new sites on UNESCO's World Heritage List when it meets for its 33rd session in Seville, Spain, from 22 to 30 June. 35 States Parties to the World Heritage Convention will present properties for inscription on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Thirty new properties in total were submitted for inscription on the World Heritage List this year: 4 natural, 23 cultural and 3 mixed (i.e. both natural and cultural) properties, including 4 transnational nominations. In addition, 7 extensions to properties already listed have been proposed. Please note that States Parties can withdraw a nomination request before the start of the Committee meeting. To date, the World Heritage List recognizes 878 properties of "outstanding universal value," including 679 cultural, 174 natural and 25 mixed properties in 145 States Parties.
Few would peg Hebun Akkaya, a 17-year-old with a high, nasal voice and polite manner, as a criminal convicted of supporting a terrorist organization. But the criminal court here in Diyarbakir did. The crime: protesting the prison conditions of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed head of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Designated a terrorist organization by the European Union and United States, the PKK enjoys grass-roots support among citizens here in Turkey's predominately Kurdish southeast. Minors, some as young as 13, have been arrested and jailed in Turkey over the past few years under strict new antiterrorism laws that allow for juveniles to be tried as adults and even be accused of "committing crimes in the name of a terrorist organization" for participating in demonstrations. Critics and rights defenders say the amended antiterrorism laws are deeply flawed and also violate international conventions on the detention of children. "There is a lack of proportionality between the crime and the sentence," says Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey researcher for the New York-based watchdog group Human Rights Watch. "Counting what these children do, such as throwing stones or damaging property, as a terrorism offense is a problem. You are subject to a court system that doesn't see you as a child." Turkish Policy Conflicts with UN and EU.
The Cyprus row, Turkey's EU bid, as well as the situation in the Middle East topped the talks held in Athens between Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyannis and her British counterpart David Miliband. "We want to see a European Turkey in our border. We believe that it is to the benefit of both countries, provided that Turkey will have met its obligations and EU standards," commented Bakoyannis. "It is up to Turkey to opt for radical reforms that will bring it closer to the European vision. Greece openly and clearly backs this choice, yet it will not allow any compromises that would threaten the Union's cohesion or harm Greece's national interests," she added. Touching on the Cyprus row, the Greek Foreign Minister said the negotiations have reached a turning point, further underlining, "It takes courage and good will. And the most important of all, it takes Turkey's constructive stance, if we want to see any progress." Also commenting on the efforts to resolve the Cyprus standoff, Miliband stressed the solution should be provided by the Cypriots, also claiming that Britain is determined to play a supportive role in the crucial negotiations.
Christianity was a Greco-Roman religion founded within this world, and gradually grew accustomed to Greco-Roman culture. This had a major long-term impact on how the adherents of these two religions treated the Greco-Roman legacy. Roman architectural achievements were impressive but purely functional. In their technical skill Roman architects far surpassed those of classical Greece: they introduced the arch, the dome, and the vault from the Near East, yet Roman art and architecture had a mass-produced character and often lacked some of the genuine beauty that you could find in earlier Greek works. Christianity gradually formed within a Greco-Roman political and cultural context had a huge impact on its development. In some cases it was clearly an extension of Judaism; for instance the Christians adopted the entire Hebrew Bible as their own, including the Ten Commandments. While many Jewish ethical ideas with no Greco-Roman precedent were continued and spread though the vehicle of Christianity, either directly or in an altered form, Christians added some new ideas of their own and adopted others from their Greco-Roman environment. The Christian emphasis on pictorial arts and sculpture as a means of worship, for instance, clearly owed vastly more to the Greco-Roman than to the Jewish tradition. As a young Jew, Jesus’ main language was probably Aramaic, but he may well have been familiar with Hebrew, the language of the Hebrew Bible and a Semitic tongue closely related to Aramaic. It is also possible that he was competent in Koine Greek, although the details of his linguistic skills are disputed among critical scholars. Nevertheless, it is conceivable that the founder of Christianity spoke Greek. In contrast, we know with absolute certainty that Paul, who shaped Christianity more than any other person other than Jesus himself, was proficient in Greek, as were many of the early Christian leaders.