Turkey News Gazette

ANKARA: France on Thursday condemned the attacks by illegal Israeli settlers on a Jordanian humanitarian convoy destined for Gaza. Speaking at the weekly news conference, Foreign Ministry's spokesman Christophe Lemoine, called on Israel to allow access of humanitarian aid to Gaza as requested by international courts. "We condemn the attacks perpetrated by Israeli settlers against a Jordanian humanitarian convoy intended for the civilian population of Gaza," he said. Lemoine added," We express our full solidarity with Jordan. It is the responsibility of the Israeli authorities to put an end to these Israeli violence and to protect humanitarian convoys." Israel has waged an unrelenting offensive on the Palestinian enclave since a cross-border attack by Hamas last Oct. 7 which killed some 1,200 people. More than 34,500 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and thousands injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities. More than six months into the Israeli war, va st swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave's population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN. Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza. Source: Anadolu Agency

ANKARA: Trkiye's parliament on Thursday rejected the adoption of a resolution regarding Assyrians and Chaldeans by the French National Assembly. After deliberations on the agenda items proposed by political parties in Trkiye's parliament, a memorandum titled, Declaration Against the Decision of the French National Assembly, bearing the signature of parliament's speaker Numan Kurtulmus was presented for reading. The memorandum expressed disapproval of the French National Assembly's April 29, 2024 decision regarding Assyrians and Chaldeans, denouncing it as prejudiced and devoid of legal and historical foundation. "We regret and strongly condemn the resolution regarding Assyrians and Chaldeans, adopted by the French National Assembly on April 29, 2024, which lacks legal and historical basis and is based on prejudices," it said. It was also stated that there is no justification for baseless accusations against Trkiye by those who have not truly faced their own colonial and bloody past. "We vehemently reject the distortion of history for political motives. We believe that parliaments should strive to foster friendship and cooperation among countries and peoples, rather than deriving enmity from history, and to create a more peaceful world for current and future generations. "Making decisions about the history of other countries, attempting to judge other nations is not the task of parliaments. Parliaments cannot replace historians and judges. Reminding these truths once again, we strongly condemn this malicious, unjust, and illegal decision, and urge the French National Assembly and other authorities to act in accordance with international law with the spirit of friendship and alliance," the memorandum added. *Writing by Gizem Nisa Cebi from Istanbul Source: Anadolu Agency

ANKARA: Trkiye's parliament on Thursday rejected the adoption of a resolution regarding Assyrians and Chaldeans by the French National Assembly. After deliberations on the agenda items proposed by political parties in Trkiye's parliament, a memorandum titled, Declaration Against the Decision of the French National Assembly, bearing the signature of parliament's speaker Numan Kurtulmus was presented for reading. The memorandum expressed disapproval of the French National Assembly's April 29, 2024 decision regarding Assyrians and Chaldeans, denouncing it as prejudiced and devoid of legal and historical foundation. "We regret and strongly condemn the resolution regarding Assyrians and Chaldeans, adopted by the French National Assembly on April 29, 2024, which lacks legal and historical basis and is based on prejudices," it said. It was also stated that there is no justification for baseless accusations against Trkiye by those who have not truly faced their own colonial and bloody past. "We vehemently reject the distortion of history for political motives. We believe that parliaments should strive to foster friendship and cooperation among countries and peoples, rather than deriving enmity from history, and to create a more peaceful world for current and future generations. "Making decisions about the history of other countries, attempting to judge other nations is not the task of parliaments. Parliaments cannot replace historians and judges. Reminding these truths once again, we strongly condemn this malicious, unjust, and illegal decision, and urge the French National Assembly and other authorities to act in accordance with international law with the spirit of friendship and alliance," the memorandum added. *Writing by Gizem Nisa Cebi from Istanbul Source: Anadolu Agency

ISTANBUL: Israeli writer and academic A.B. Yehoshua's short story Facing the Forests[1] is an allegory about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Controversial when published in 1963, Yehoshua exposed the reality that Israel was constructed on territory taken from others: the 'forest' of the story represents the Israeli state and society, and the story's unnamed Israeli protagonist is tasked with making sure that no fires emerge in the forest. The Palestinians in the story are referred to only as 'Arabs,' and late in the story, the forest turns out to be constructed on the ruins of an Arab village. After 75 years as one of the globe's most contentious conflicts, we now seem to be witnessing the turning point for the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Israeli state's horrific and bloody destruction of Gaza, and the intransigence shown by both the Israeli and United States political leaderships, has sparked not just widespread protests on US campuses, but worldwide outrage and a formal case brought by South Africa again st Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This reckoning has taken a long time to arrive. As I mentioned in a previous commentary,[2] US President Harry Truman's need for votes in 1948 motivated him to establish the US policy of supporting Israel. That support led to many subsequent compromises in US foreign policy towards the Eastern Mediterranean, to numerous wars and disasters, and ultimately, to the current crisis and protest movement. Gaza and TikTok: The US and Israel lose control of the narrative The protests now sweeping across the US campuses immediately brought to mind the turmoil on US campuses that erupted in the late 1960s.[3] Notably, those protests were fueled by the new communication media of the era: television. The Vietnam War was the first war filmed on the battlefield and presented to citizens through television the same day; the result was that public perception of US policies in Vietnam turned negative and intensified opposition to the war. The long-term consequence was that the US government, in later conflicts, gave intense attention to controlling the media narrative. That gave rise to the various techniques, such as the 'embedding' of reporters with soldiers that featured so prominently in the 1st Gulf War in 1991, intended to ensure that the messages and images desired by the US government were those encountered and digested by media consumers. When the Internet was opened to public use in the early 1990s, new opportunities for information dissemination and control appeared, and the US remained at the forefront of what commonly became known as 'information warfare.' TikTok seems to have brought us back to the situation with television in the 1960s. TikTok is outside of the US government's control, so it has long sparked calls to ban it.[4] Israel's actions in Gaza over the past 6 months have been broadcast to the world unfiltered over TikTok, which played a major factor in turning world opinion against Israel. Unsurprisingly, the US Congress's efforts to ban TikTok spe d up considerably amid claims that the Chinese state was using TikTok and Gaza to foment disorder in American society.[5] Students are using a variety of social media apps to organize their protests, but TikTok remains the focus of attention from pro-Israeli groups. South Africa and international protest movements The international campaign against South Africa's former apartheid regime is the other protest movement that comes to mind while observing the current worldwide protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. Little nuance was displayed in the coverage of South Africa's ICJ case against Israel, but the significance of South Africa's intervention stems from the long fight to end the racist apartheid regime that dominated that society for decades. Many South Africans see a parallel between the Palestinians' struggle for rights and self-determination and the extended struggle by Black South Africans for their rights and self-determination.[6] In fact, the figure associated with that long struggle, Nelson Mandela, and the party he was associated with, the African National Congress (ANC), were once armed militants. South Africa's apartheid regime received support from the US during the Cold War because Mandela and the ANC received support from the communist bloc. Mandela and most of the ANC's leadership were imprisoned from the 1960s until 1990. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the surge in international activism against the apartheid regime made South Africa a pariah regime and Mandela an international hero.[7] The same is now happening in regard to Gaza, and once again despite the efforts of the US government. Truman's ghost Yehoshua's story ends, after the unnamed Arab burns the forest, with the simple statement: 'And so it will be all the days and nights after.' Maybe that's how the situation looked to a conscientious Israeli intellectual in the early 1960s but, as Heraclitus stated 2500 years ago, nothing remains the same forever. Eventually, the Palestinians would develop the means to assert their right s and claims to self-determination; eventually, the fact that Israel was founded on land taken from other people would rise to prominence; eventually, the consequences of the choice that Truman made for votes in 1948 would materialize. Now, with a national election only 6 months away, Truman's Democratic Party is starkly split between an older generation that stubbornly maintains a willingness to tolerate the Israeli state's flagrantly criminal behavior, and a younger generation appalled that anyone could have ever accepted such actions.[8] And Donald Trump appears to be the main beneficiary. [1] Miriam Arad's English translation was originally published in 1970, but republished in the anthology New Writing from the Middle East from Mentor Books in 1978, pp. 225-247. [2] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/opinion-us-and-the-palestine-israel-quandary-policy-inertia-and-the-dictates-of-logic/3055622 [3] https://www.kent.edu/may-4-historical-accuracy [4] https://www.npr.org/2023/05/18/1176805559/montana-tikt ok-ban [5] https://twitter.com/hakancopur1/status/1783312265296433462 [6] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/world/middleeast/israel-icj-genocide-south-africa.html [7] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25256818 [8] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/us/politics/biden-israel-college-protest.html *Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu. Source: Anadolu Agency

ISTANBUL: Israeli writer and academic A.B. Yehoshua's short story Facing the Forests[1] is an allegory about the Israel-Palestine conflict. Controversial when published in 1963, Yehoshua exposed the reality that Israel was constructed on territory taken from others: the 'forest' of the story represents the Israeli state and society, and the story's unnamed Israeli protagonist is tasked with making sure that no fires emerge in the forest. The Palestinians in the story are referred to only as 'Arabs,' and late in the story, the forest turns out to be constructed on the ruins of an Arab village. After 75 years as one of the globe's most contentious conflicts, we now seem to be witnessing the turning point for the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Israeli state's horrific and bloody destruction of Gaza, and the intransigence shown by both the Israeli and United States political leaderships, has sparked not just widespread protests on US campuses, but worldwide outrage and a formal case brought by South Africa again st Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). This reckoning has taken a long time to arrive. As I mentioned in a previous commentary,[2] US President Harry Truman's need for votes in 1948 motivated him to establish the US policy of supporting Israel. That support led to many subsequent compromises in US foreign policy towards the Eastern Mediterranean, to numerous wars and disasters, and ultimately, to the current crisis and protest movement. Gaza and TikTok: The US and Israel lose control of the narrative The protests now sweeping across the US campuses immediately brought to mind the turmoil on US campuses that erupted in the late 1960s.[3] Notably, those protests were fueled by the new communication media of the era: television. The Vietnam War was the first war filmed on the battlefield and presented to citizens through television the same day; the result was that public perception of US policies in Vietnam turned negative and intensified opposition to the war. The long-term consequence was that the US government, in later conflicts, gave intense attention to controlling the media narrative. That gave rise to the various techniques, such as the 'embedding' of reporters with soldiers that featured so prominently in the 1st Gulf War in 1991, intended to ensure that the messages and images desired by the US government were those encountered and digested by media consumers. When the Internet was opened to public use in the early 1990s, new opportunities for information dissemination and control appeared, and the US remained at the forefront of what commonly became known as 'information warfare.' TikTok seems to have brought us back to the situation with television in the 1960s. TikTok is outside of the US government's control, so it has long sparked calls to ban it.[4] Israel's actions in Gaza over the past 6 months have been broadcast to the world unfiltered over TikTok, which played a major factor in turning world opinion against Israel. Unsurprisingly, the US Congress's efforts to ban TikTok spe d up considerably amid claims that the Chinese state was using TikTok and Gaza to foment disorder in American society.[5] Students are using a variety of social media apps to organize their protests, but TikTok remains the focus of attention from pro-Israeli groups. South Africa and international protest movements The international campaign against South Africa's former apartheid regime is the other protest movement that comes to mind while observing the current worldwide protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. Little nuance was displayed in the coverage of South Africa's ICJ case against Israel, but the significance of South Africa's intervention stems from the long fight to end the racist apartheid regime that dominated that society for decades. Many South Africans see a parallel between the Palestinians' struggle for rights and self-determination and the extended struggle by Black South Africans for their rights and self-determination.[6] In fact, the figure associated with that long struggle, Nelson Mandela, and the party he was associated with, the African National Congress (ANC), were once armed militants. South Africa's apartheid regime received support from the US during the Cold War because Mandela and the ANC received support from the communist bloc. Mandela and most of the ANC's leadership were imprisoned from the 1960s until 1990. In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the surge in international activism against the apartheid regime made South Africa a pariah regime and Mandela an international hero.[7] The same is now happening in regard to Gaza, and once again despite the efforts of the US government. Truman's ghost Yehoshua's story ends, after the unnamed Arab burns the forest, with the simple statement: 'And so it will be all the days and nights after.' Maybe that's how the situation looked to a conscientious Israeli intellectual in the early 1960s but, as Heraclitus stated 2500 years ago, nothing remains the same forever. Eventually, the Palestinians would develop the means to assert their right s and claims to self-determination; eventually, the fact that Israel was founded on land taken from other people would rise to prominence; eventually, the consequences of the choice that Truman made for votes in 1948 would materialize. Now, with a national election only 6 months away, Truman's Democratic Party is starkly split between an older generation that stubbornly maintains a willingness to tolerate the Israeli state's flagrantly criminal behavior, and a younger generation appalled that anyone could have ever accepted such actions.[8] And Donald Trump appears to be the main beneficiary. [1] Miriam Arad's English translation was originally published in 1970, but republished in the anthology New Writing from the Middle East from Mentor Books in 1978, pp. 225-247. [2] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/analysis/opinion-us-and-the-palestine-israel-quandary-policy-inertia-and-the-dictates-of-logic/3055622 [3] https://www.kent.edu/may-4-historical-accuracy [4] https://www.npr.org/2023/05/18/1176805559/montana-tikt ok-ban [5] https://twitter.com/hakancopur1/status/1783312265296433462 [6] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/world/middleeast/israel-icj-genocide-south-africa.html [7] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25256818 [8] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/us/politics/biden-israel-college-protest.html *Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu. Source: Anadolu Agency

ANKARA: Finland and Sweden expressed on Thursday full support for Trkiye's fight against terrorism, as delegations from the three countries met in Helsinki for the sixth meeting of a permanent joint mechanism established within the framework of a 2022 trilateral memorandum. On June 28, 2022, the three countries signed a trilateral memorandum at the NATO summit in Madrid to address Trkiye's legitimate security concerns, paving the way for Finland and Sweden's NATO membership. According to a statement from Trkiye's Communications Directorate, it was the first meeting after Finland and Sweden's acceptance into the NATO military alliance and was chaired by Akif Cagatay Kilic, chief adviser to the president on foreign policy and security. The Finnish delegation was led by Permanent State Secretary of Foreign Ministry Jukka Salovaara, while the Swedish delegation was chaired by Henrik Landerholm, national security adviser to the prime minister. During the discussions, the current state of affairs was assessed, and future steps to be taken were thoroughly examined in order to fulfil the commitments set in the trilateral memorandum through specific actions, the communications office said. The Finnish and Swedish delegations said the process has contributed to a better understanding of Trkiye's sensitivities and expectations, particularly in the fight against terrorism. They reiterated their full solidarity and cooperation with Trkiye in the fight against "all forms and manifestations of terrorism" as defined in the trilateral memorandum, and pledged their full support against threats to Trkiye, particularly from the PKK terrorist organization. The delegations reiterated their commitment not to provide support to terrorist organizations to PKK offshoots the PYD and YPG, and FETO, the terrorist group behind the 2016 defeated coup in Trkiye. Next meeting to be held in Stockholm The parties agreed to strengthen cooperation at all levels between relevant institutions on issues discussed within the mechanism. Emphasi zing the importance and continuity of the mechanism, the next meeting was decided to be held in Stockholm. Exchange of views also took place on the European security architecture, NATO's upcoming Washington Summit, the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and attacks on the holy Quran in Europe. Source: Anadolu Agency

ANKARA: Finland and Sweden expressed on Thursday full support for Trkiye's fight against terrorism, as delegations from the three countries met in Helsinki for the sixth meeting of a permanent joint mechanism established within the framework of a 2022 trilateral memorandum. On June 28, 2022, the three countries signed a trilateral memorandum at the NATO summit in Madrid to address Trkiye's legitimate security concerns, paving the way for Finland and Sweden's NATO membership. According to a statement from Trkiye's Communications Directorate, it was the first meeting after Finland and Sweden's acceptance into the NATO military alliance and was chaired by Akif Cagatay Kilic, chief adviser to the president on foreign policy and security. The Finnish delegation was led by Permanent State Secretary of Foreign Ministry Jukka Salovaara, while the Swedish delegation was chaired by Henrik Landerholm, national security adviser to the prime minister. During the discussions, the current state of affairs was assessed, and future steps to be taken were thoroughly examined in order to fulfil the commitments set in the trilateral memorandum through specific actions, the communications office said. The Finnish and Swedish delegations said the process has contributed to a better understanding of Trkiye's sensitivities and expectations, particularly in the fight against terrorism. They reiterated their full solidarity and cooperation with Trkiye in the fight against "all forms and manifestations of terrorism" as defined in the trilateral memorandum, and pledged their full support against threats to Trkiye, particularly from the PKK terrorist organization. The delegations reiterated their commitment not to provide support to terrorist organizations to PKK offshoots the PYD and YPG, and FETO, the terrorist group behind the 2016 defeated coup in Trkiye. Next meeting to be held in Stockholm The parties agreed to strengthen cooperation at all levels between relevant institutions on issues discussed within the mechanism. Emphasi zing the importance and continuity of the mechanism, the next meeting was decided to be held in Stockholm. Exchange of views also took place on the European security architecture, NATO's upcoming Washington Summit, the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and attacks on the holy Quran in Europe. Source: Anadolu Agency

ANKARA: Antalya, the Turkish resort city in the southwest, hosted 2 million tourists in the first four months of the year, up 14.10% on an annual basis, according to a recent statement from the country's Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The statement noted that the number of 2 million tourists was highlighted as the best start to a year of all time in Antalya's tourism history. The number of tourists in Antalya was recorded as 1 million in April, up 4.86% on an annual basis. The ministry stated that German tourists ranked first in April with 259,700 visitors, followed by Russian tourists with 194,900 and 141,400 tourists from the UK. In the four-month period, the number of tourists to Antalya from Germany toppled the ranking with 539,600 visitors. Following German visitors, for the same four-month period, visitors from Russia came in second with 366,700, and visitors from the UK ranked third with 266,100. Tourists from Poland, the Netherlands, Iran, Belgium, Ukraine, France, and Lithuania followed the U K. The number of visitors from Germany soared 21% year-on-year and the number of UK visitors 32%. As for the rest of the countries listed, the ministry data showed that the number of Polish tourists rose 30%, Iranian tourists 52%, Belgian tourists 42%, Ukrainian tourists 51%, and French tourists 52%. *Writing by Emir Yildirim in Istanbul Source: Anadolu Agency

ANKARA: Antalya, the Turkish resort city in the southwest, hosted 2 million tourists in the first four months of the year, up 14.10% on an annual basis, according to a recent statement from the country's Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The statement noted that the number of 2 million tourists was highlighted as the best start to a year of all time in Antalya's tourism history. The number of tourists in Antalya was recorded as 1 million in April, up 4.86% on an annual basis. The ministry stated that German tourists ranked first in April with 259,700 visitors, followed by Russian tourists with 194,900 and 141,400 tourists from the UK. In the four-month period, the number of tourists to Antalya from Germany toppled the ranking with 539,600 visitors. Following German visitors, for the same four-month period, visitors from Russia came in second with 366,700, and visitors from the UK ranked third with 266,100. Tourists from Poland, the Netherlands, Iran, Belgium, Ukraine, France, and Lithuania followed the U K. The number of visitors from Germany soared 21% year-on-year and the number of UK visitors 32%. As for the rest of the countries listed, the ministry data showed that the number of Polish tourists rose 30%, Iranian tourists 52%, Belgian tourists 42%, Ukrainian tourists 51%, and French tourists 52%. *Writing by Emir Yildirim in Istanbul Source: Anadolu Agency