Month: October 2018

Pro-Russia Serb leader Milorad Dodik declared victory Sunday in the race to fill the Serb seat in Bosnia’s three-member presidency, deepening ethnic divisions in the country that faced a brutal war some 25 years ago.

Dodik said he was projected to win 56 percent of the vote in the election and his main opponent, Mladen Ivanic, 44 percent. The projection was made with 85 percent of ballots counted, he said.

“The people have decided,” Dodik said.

Preliminary official results are expected Monday. After polls closed, Dodik and Ivanic both said they were in the lead.

The presidency also has a Muslim and a Croat member. Dodik advocates eventual separation of Serbs from Bosnia. His election deals a blow to efforts to strengthen the country’s unity after the 1992-95 war.

The ballot was seen as a test of whether Bosnia will move toward integration in the European Union and NATO or remain entrenched in rivalries stemming from the 1992-95 war.

More than half of Bosnia’s 3.3 million eligible voters cast ballots, election officials said. Voters chose an array of institutions in Bosnia’s complex governing system, which was created by a 1995 peace accord that ended the war that killed 100,000 people and left millions homeless.

Election officials described the voting that took place as “extremely fair” despite several incidents.

The country consists of two regional mini-states — one Serb-run and a Muslim-Croat entity — with joint institutions in a central government. Along with the Bosnian presidency, voters were electing the Serb president and the two entities’ parliaments and cantonal authorities.

The campaign was marred by divisive rhetoric and allegations of irregularities that fueled tensions.

 
…

The body of a popular Bulgarian TV journalist investigating alleged corruption involving politicians and EU funds was found over the weekend, police said.

Prosecutors said the body of 30-year-old Viktoria Marinova was found Saturday in a park in the northern city of Ruse. Her mobile phone, car keys, glasses and some of her clothes were missing.

Police say she was raped before she was killed.

“Her death was caused by blows to the head and suffocation,” Ruse prosecutor Georgy Georgiev said, adding that investigators were able to obtain a lot of DNA evidence.

Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said there have been no signs linking Marinova’s death to her work as a TV investigative journalist.

Another reporter from Marinova’s television station also said no one at the station had been threatened.

But the owner of a website involved in the investigation of the alleged corruption, and whose own journalists were interviewed by Marinova, said his group had gotten credible information that there would be trouble.

“Viktoria’s death, the brutal manner in which she was killed, is an execution. It was meant to serve as an example, something like a warning,” Asen Yordanov told the French News Agency Sunday.

Marinova worked for the Ruse-based television station TVN and hosted a talk show Detector.

The Reporters Without Borders global index of press freedom rated Bulgaria 111 out of 180 countries in 2018 — the lowest of any EU member.
…

Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who disappeared last week after a visit to his country’s consulate in Turkey, was once a Saudi insider. A close aide to the kingdom’s former spy chief, he had been a leading voice in the country’s prominent dailies, including the main English newspapers.

Now the 59-year-old journalist and contributor to The Washington Post is feared dead, and Turkish authorities believe he was slain inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, something Saudi officials vehemently deny.

The U.S.-educated Khashoggi was no stranger to controversy.

A graduate of Indiana State University, Khashoggi began his career in the 1980s, covering the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and the decade-long war that followed for the English-language daily Saudi Gazette. He traveled extensively in the Middle East, covering Algeria’s 1990s war against Islamic militants, and the Islamists rise in Sudan.

He interviewed Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan before al-Qaida was formed, then met him in Sudan in 1995. Following bin Laden’s rise likely helped cement Khashoggi’s ties with powerful former Saudi spy chief, Turki Al-Faisal.

Khashoggi rubbed shoulders with the Saudi royal family and supported efforts to nudge the kingdom’s entrenched ultra-conservative clerics to accept reforms. He served as an editor for nine years on the Islamist-leaning al-Madina newspaper and was frequently quoted in the Western media as an expert on Islamic radicals and a reformist voice.

However, he was fired from his post as an editor at Al-Watan, a liberal paper founded after the 9/11 terror attacks, just two months after he took the job in 2003. The country’s ultra-conservative clerics had pushed back against his criticism of the powerful religious police and Ibn Taymiyah, a medieval cleric viewed as the spiritual forefather of Wahhabism, the conservative interpretation of Islam that is the founding tenant of the kingdom.

Khoshaggi then served as media adviser to Al-Faisal, the former spy chief, who was at the time the ambassador to the United States.

Khashoggi returned to Al-Watan in 2007, where he continued his criticism of the clerics as the late King Abdullah implemented cautious reforms to try to shake their hold. Three years later, he was forced to resign again after a series of articles criticizing Salafism, the ultra-conservative Sunni Islam movement from which Wahhabism stems.

In 2010, Saudi billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal tapped him to lead his new TV station, touted as a rival to Qatari-funded Al-Jazeera, a staunch critic of the kingdom. But the new Al-Arab station, based in Bahrain, was shut down hours after it launched, for hosting a Bahraini opposition figure.

Khoshaggi’s final break with the Saudi authorities followed the Arab Spring protests that swept through the region in 2011, shaking the power base of traditional leaders and giving rise to Islamists, only to be followed by unprecedented crackdowns on those calling for change. Siding with the opposition in Egypt and Syria, Khashoggi became a vocal critic of his own government’s stance there and a defender of moderate Islamists, which Riyadh considered an existential threat.

“This was a critical period in Arab history. I had to take a position. The Arab world had waited for this moment of freedom for a thousand years,” Khashoggi told a Turkey-based Syrian opposition television station last month, just days before he disappeared.

He also criticized his government’s diplomatic break with Qatar and war on Yemen as well as Riyadh’s policy toward its archenemy, Iran, whose influence has grown in neighboring Yemen and in Syria.

In the Sept. 23 interview, he called Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy “narrow minded,” and ridiculed its crackdown on political Islam, urging the kingdom to realign its policy to partner with Turkey, a close Qatar ally.

“Saudi is the mother and father of political Islam. It is based on political Islam,” Khoshaggi said. “The only recipe to get Iranians out of Syria — it is not Trump or anyone else— it is through the support of the Syrian revolution. … Saudi Arabia must return to supporting the Syrian revolution and partnering with Turkey on this.”

Eight days later, on Oct. 2, he disappeared while on a visit to the consulate in Istanbul for paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancée. The consulate insists the writer left its premises alive, contradicting Turkish officials.

Before his disappearance, Khoshaggi had been living since last year in the U.S. in self-imposed exile, after he fled the kingdom amid a crackdown on intellectuals and activists who criticized policies of Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

“As of now, I would say Mohammed bin Salman is acting like Putin. He is imposing very selective justice,” Khashoggi wrote in the Post last year after he fled the kingdom, saying he feared returning home.

He described “dramatic” scenes of arrest of government critics accused of receiving Qatari funding. They included a friend of Khashoggi’s who had just returned from a trip to the U.S. as part of an official Saudi delegation.

“That is how breathtakingly fast you can fall out of favor with Saudi Arabia,” he wrote.
…

Dissatisfied Latvians rejected the right-of-center ruling coalition in Saturday’s parliamentary election, but suspicion of the left-leaning pro-Russia party makes it likely the next government will be another formation of ethnic Latvian parties to the right.

The result means a confirmation of the European Union and NATO member’s role as a bulwark against Russia in the increasingly hostile relationship between the West and President Vladimir Putin.

Latvians, fed up with corruption and weak democracy in the Baltic country of 2 million, punished the ruling three-party coalition, which lost almost half of its votes, mostly to two newcomers.

Anti-corruption

The populist KPV LV and anti-corruption New Conservatives won 14.1 and 13.6 percent respectively to become the second- and third-biggest parties.

“Our voters want a change from the old post-Soviet politics, which has been very powerful up to now,” said Janis Bordans, leader of the New Conservatives. “They want to have a stable Latvia, but a one which doesn’t stagnate.”

The New Conservatives, whose leadership features several former officers from the country’s anti-corruption agency, want to beef up law enforcement and get rid of a number of current officials who they say are corrupt.

Bordans said he would like to be the new prime minister.

“If we count out Harmony then it’s logical that we take responsibility. We have to be ready to do it and it is very realistic,” he said.

Ethnic divide

The pro-Russia party Harmony, which is supported by ethnic Russians who make up a quarter of the population, took 19.9 percent of the vote but will find it almost impossible to be part of any government.

The ethnic divide is strong in Latvian politics, and other parties have always shut Harmony out of government. It has tried to rebrand itself as a Western-style social democratic party but severed official ties to Putin’s United Russia party only last year.

“I don’t think this is a norm-breaking election. It carries on the tradition we have seen in Latvia that a quarter of the seats go to the Russian-speaking party,” said Daunis Auers, professor of comparative politics at the University of Latvia, adding that other parties would have no problem shutting out Harmony.

“Now they have no reason to form a government with Harmony. They can form a coalition among themselves,” he told Reuters.

Concerns about Russia

Before the election, some Latvians were concerned that a strong result for Harmony and the populist KPV could lead to their forming a government and bringing Latvia’s foreign policy closer to Putin’s Russia.

The result will lead to a more fragmented parliament of seven parties, of which six won between 10 and 20 percent support each. The forming of a government coalition could take months.

Harmony will get 24 seats and remain the biggest bloc. It is followed by the New Conservative Party with 16 seats, KPV LV with 15 seats, the National Alliance with 13 seats, Development/For with 13 seats, the Greens and Farmers Union with 11 seats and New Unity with eight seats.
…

The public identification this week of more than 300 suspected agents of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, is being dubbed by security analysts the largest intelligence blunder in Russian post-Cold War history.

And the cause for the bungling comes down, they say, to the simple “human factor” of wanting to avoid traffic fines, including for drunken driving.

Prompted by the midweek disclosure by Dutch and British authorities of the identities of four Russian GRU operators accused of trying to hack the headquarters of the world’s chemical weapons watchdog, the investigative journalism consortium Bellingcat subsequently trawled through a publicly available Russian traffic-records database to unearth the names and details of 305 other individuals thought to be working for the Russian intelligence agency.

Passport numbers and, in many cases, mobile telephone numbers were included in the vehicle registrations.

Bellingcat scrutinized the traffic database after one of the four GRU operatives named Thursday by the British and Dutch was found to have registered his Lada car in 2011 using the Moscow address of the GRU barracks housing his cyberespionage unit 26165.

The unit has been accused by Western authorities, including the U.S., of being responsible for a series of cyberattacks and the hacking of computer networks of international anti-doping agencies as well as organizations investigating Russia’s use of chemical agents, including the alleged nerve-agent poisoning in the English town of Salisbury earlier this year of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

By searching for other vehicles registered to the same address Bellingcat came up with a list of 305 other individuals ranging in age from 27 to 53-years-old.

‘Special list’

The GRU agents likely exposed their personal information on the database in order to gain immunity from traffic stops and to avoid punishment for violations, according to Alexander Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank.

He says the “root cause” for the data leak is “a combination of a wrecked values system,” “notorious incompetence” and “banal corruption.” Using the GRU address meant the agents “are put on a special list so the traffic police can’t stop you, the fines for drunk driving etc. never apply to you, and you don’t need to pay car tax,” he tweeted.

The disclosure of the list of 305 GRU operatives has added to a growing debate among analysts and Western intelligence officials about the professionalism — or lack of it — of the GRU when it comes to standard tradecraft.

Initially, Dutch and British authorities thought the names of the four Russian GRU operators accused of trying to hack the computers of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were aliases. But it now appears the GRU operatives, Aleksei Morenets, Evgenii Serebriakov, Oleg Sotnikov and Aleksey Minin used their real names and traveled on genuine passports.

That is an extraordinary security lapse, say current and former members of Western intelligence services, making it easier for the men’s missions, which took them not only to the Netherlands but Switzerland and  Rio de Janeiro, too, to be laid at the door of the GRU.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has described the allegations about GRU operatives mounting so-called active measures in Europe and elsewhere as “fantasies.” But Moscow’s denials have not been helped by the trail to the GRU the four men left and the surprising story of failed spycraft revealed by Dutch authorities Thursday, which is undermining Russia’s fearsome reputation in the field of espionage, say analysts.

‘Amateurish bunch’

Dutch authorities say the four men, like the alleged GRU would-be assassins of Skripal and his daughter, didn’t do much to cover their tracks. Britain’s security minister Ben Wallace has described the recent GRU operations as “more Johnny English than James Bond.” The four GRU would-be hackers in the Netherlands failed to recognize they were being monitored by the Dutch intelligence service. When they were detained in April before being expelled by the Dutch they were found to have with them laptop computers linking them to other Russian espionage operations around the world. One of them had a taxi receipt showing he’d traveled from the GRU barracks in the Russian capital to Moscow Sheremetyevo airport.

The botched tradecraft of both the Skripal poisoning and the GRU’s alleged “close-access” hacking has prompted ridicule from some Western politicians and officials. British Conservative lawmaker Tom Tugendhat, the chairman of the British parliament’s foreign affairs committee, mocked the GRU in a tweet as “an amateurish bunch of jokers.”

Another British lawmaker, Bob Seely, said recent GRU blunders reveal how hapless the organization is and “shows that subversion is probably beyond their professional capability; they can’t even cover their tracks in the most basic of ways. It is very sloppy and makes President Putin look foolish.”

Arrogant defiance?

But some analysts and Western intelligence officials are querying whether the Salisbury attack and GRU hacking operations were just a matter of clumsy spy tradecraft or a display of arrogant defiance by the GRU.

Security analyst Mark Galeotti of the Institute of International Relations in Prague, the author of a new book on Russian organized crime and Russian security forces, maintains the GRU shouldn’t be dismissed as incompetent. Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, he says the “emerging narrative about its supposed clumsiness, is dangerous.”

He adds the GRU prides itself “on having a military culture in which a mission must be accomplished, whatever the cost. The GRU’s ethos of completing the mission no matter what means that innocent lives lost or even the revelation of agents’ names are not blunders so much as irrelevancies.”
…

A village in Turkey’s remote southeastern province of Diyarbakir takes pride in the number of its university graduates. The village’s first elementary school opened its doors more than 70 years ago, and since then it has produced scores of doctors, judges, nurses and teachers. Mahmut Bozarslan files this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
…

Pope Francis has authorized a “thorough study” of Vatican archives into how a prominent American cardinal advanced through church ranks despite allegations that he slept with seminarians and young priests, the Vatican said Saturday.

The Vatican said it was aware that such an investigation may produce evidence “that choices were taken that would not be consonant with a contemporary approach to such issues.” But it said Francis would “follow the path of truth, wherever it may lead.”

The statement did not address specific allegations that Francis himself knew of sexual misconduct allegations against now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in 2013 and rehabilitated him anyway from sanctions imposed by Pope Benedict XVI.

Francis has said he would not say a word about those allegations, lodged by a retired Vatican ambassador.

Depending on the scope of the investigation, Francis’ actions may be found to have been inconsistent with what he now considers unacceptable behavior.

“Both abuse and its cover-up can no longer be tolerated and a different treatment for bishops who have committed or covered-up abuse in fact represents a form of clericalism that is no longer acceptable,” the statement said.

The Vatican knew as early as 2000 that seminarians complained that McCarrick pressured them to sleep with him. The Rev. Boniface Ramsay, a professor at a New Jersey seminary, wrote a letter to the Vatican in November 2000 relaying the seminarians’ concerns after McCarrick was named archbishop of Washington.

St. John Paul II still went ahead with the nomination and made McCarrick a cardinal the following year. McCarrick resigned as Washington archbishop in 2006 after he reached the retirement age of 75.

Francis accepted McCarrick’s resignation as a cardinal in July after a U.S. church investigation determined that an allegation that he groped a teenage altar boy in the 1970s was credible. Since then, another man has come forward saying McCarrick molested him when he was a young teen and other men have said they were harassed by McCarrick as adult seminarians and young priests.

The scandal has created a crisis in confidence in the U.S. hierarchy, since it was apparently an open secret that McCarrick, now 88, would invite seminarians to his New Jersey beach house, and into his bed.

Faced with a loss of credibility, U.S. bishops announced they wanted a full-scale Vatican investigation into how McCarrick was able to rise through the ranks, despite his misconduct.

The Vatican statement Saturday made clear an investigation would take place.

 
…

Romania is holding two days of voting on a proposed change to its constitution that would define marriage as “a union between a man and a woman” instead of  “a union between spouses.”

Same-sex marriage is already prohibited under Romanian law.  

Critics say a change in the wording of the constitution would make it just about impossible for gays and lesbians to marry in the future.  

The country’s LGBT community says the referendum will do nothing more than make people feel like second-class citizens and will fuel homophobia even further.

The ruling Social Democrats are responsible for bringing the measure, which is supported by the country’s Orthodox Church,  to a vote on Saturday and Sunday.

The referendum has alarmed Brussels and the European Union Commission’s deputy chief has reminded Bucharest of its human rights commitments.

Frans Timmermans said recently at a debate on Romanian reforms: “I don’t want family values to be transformed into arguments that encourage the darkest demons and hatred against sexual minorities.”  

Civil rights groups have urged voters to boycott the referendum.  “In a democracy, the rights of minorities are not put to a vote.  That’s the difference between the Middle Ages and the 21st century,” said the Center for Legal Resources, a non-profit NGO.

Thirty percent of the country’s registered voters must participate in the referendum for the vote to be valid. 

 
…

Montserrat Caballe, a Spanish opera singer renowned for her bel canto technique and her interpretations of the roles of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, has died. She was 85.

Caballe died early Saturday at Hospital San Pau in Barcelona, hospital spokesman Abraham del Moral told The Associated Press. Caballe’s family requested the cause of death not be released, saying that she had been in the hospital since September, del Moral said.

Spanish media said that Caballe entered the hospital last month because of a gall bladder problem.

“A great ambassador of our country has died,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a tweet. “Her voice and tenderness will remain with us forever.”

An early talent

Born into a working class family in Barcelona, Caballe unveiled her musical talents early on, singing Bach cantatas at the age of 7.

In her almost unlimited repertoire, she starred in 90 opera roles with nearly 4,000 stage performances.

At 8, Caballe entered the Liceo’s Conservatory in Barcelona with Eugenia Kenny, Conchita Badea, and Napoleone Annovazzi among her first teachers. She won the school’s Gold Medal on graduating in 1954. She went on to study opera in Milan and in 1956 joined the Basel Opera and played her first major role that year in the city’s Staatstheater as Mimi in Puccini’s “La Boheme.”

Four years later, she was a principal singer with the Bremen Opera.

In 1964, Caballe gave a highly praised performance of Jules Masenet’s “Manon” in Mexico City, but it was a year later in New York that a lucky break launched her on the road to international stardom.

Lucky break

On short notice, Caballe stood in for indisposed American soprano Marilyn Horne in a concert performance in Donizetti’s “Lucrezia Borgia” at New York’s Carnegie Hall and achieved a thunderous success. It opened the doors to all the major opera venues around the world.

She produced a highly acclaimed performance as Elisabetta of Valois in an all-star cast of Verdi’s “Don Carlo” at the Arena di Verona in 1969. The concert became famous for her “la” on the final “ah” at the very end of the opera, which lasted for more than 20 bars up, driving the audience wild with delight.

Caballe was also a noted recitalist, particularly of songs of her native Spain. She was particularly admired for her purity of voice, vocal shadings and exquisite pianissimos.

​Duet with Freddie Mercury

In a brief excursion into pop music, Caballe’s duet “Barcelona” with Freddie Mercury, of the rock group Queen, was a hit single in 1987, accompanied by an album of the same name. The title track later became the anthem of the 1992 Summer Olympics in the city.

Caballe performed the song live, accompanied by a recording of the late Mercury, at the 1999 UEFA Champions League soccer final in Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium. In 1997, she sang on two tracks on an album by New Age composer Vangelis.

In 2015, Caballe was convicted of tax fraud and was given a suspended sentence of six months in prison, which she avoided since first convictions resulting in sentences of less than two years in Spain can be suspended by a judge. She had failed to pay the Spanish treasury more than 500,000 euros ($550,000) in taxes on her earnings.

Caballe, who was born Maria de Montserrat Viviana Concepcion Caballe i Folch, dedicated herself to various charities and was a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. She also established a foundation for needy children in Barcelona. In 1964, she married Spanish tenor Bernabe Marti. They had two children, Bernabe Marti, Jr. and Montserrat Marti, herself a successful soprano.
…

The Yazidi community in Iraq and around the world expressed joy and hope after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded its 2018 Peace Prize to Nadia Murad, a Yazidi activist and survivor of sexual slavery by the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq.

Murad will be sharing the prize with  Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynecologist who treated thousands of women victims of rape and sexual violence.

The Nobel Peace Committee praised Murad’s courage because she did not accept the social codes that require women to remain silent and shamed after abuse.

“She has shown uncommon courage in recounting her own sufferings and speaking up on behalf of other victims,” the Norway-based Nobel Peace Prize Committee said.

Members of the Yazidi community told VOA their voices are now being heard and their plea for justice after the Sinjar massacre is being acknowledged by the world. 

Nagham Hasan, an Iraqi Yazidi activist and a gynecologist who offered treatment and counseling for many Yazidi women in refugee camps in Iraq including Nadia Murad, told VOA that the recognition of Murad is not just the recognition of the plight of Yazidi women, but also everyone else in Iraq who suffered at hands of extremists.

“When Nadia escaped her captivity and arrived to the camp in Sinjar she was traumatized and afraid, but now she blossomed into this strong woman and became the voice of all men and women victims of sexual violence,” Hasan said.

Hasan’s work was recognized in 2016 when she was awarded the U.S. State Department’s International Women of Courage Award for “promoting gender equality, combating gender-based violence, and providing psychological support for survivors of violence.”

Women struggle

Mirza Dinay, a Yazidi physician who helped hundreds of Yazidi girls seek asylum in Germany, told VOA that he is thrilled that Murad got this prize, which is a symbol of women’s struggle against sexual violence worldwide. 

“This is a win for Iraqis, Kurds and the Yazidi community and I hope this will encourage the Iraqi government to provide more support to the girls and women survivors of sexual violence,” Dinay said. 

Dawood Saleh, a Yazidi man from Sinjar who has resettled in the U.S., told VOA that Murad’s persistence in making the world listen to Yazidis’ plight has paid off.

“As a Yazidi survivor from IS genocide I feel happy that Nadia received this award. It means to me that Yazidis have value in the world,” Saleh said.

Murad’s reaction

According to United Nations, at least 10,000 Yazidis were either killed or abducted during the IS attack on Sinjar in 2014. The attack sparked international outcry and condemnation.  

Murad was one of those kidnapped by IS in Sinjar mountain in northwestern Iraq. She was sold several times as a sex slave to different IS members before she managed to escape after 3 months in captivity.

In reaction to Friday’s announcement, Murad told Nobel Committee that she did not think that she had the strength to do the work she has been doing. 

She said she derived her strength from thinking about what happened to her community and from the loss of many of her family members including her mother. 

“This prize will make the voices of women who suffered from sexual violence in conflict heard, especially the women in minorities like my community the Yazidis. It tells us that our voices will be heard,” Murad told the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Murad has been a strong advocate for justice for all Yazidis who were kidnapped and abused by IS and continues to raise her voice against sexual violence.

“Whatever has happened to Yazidis, from August 3rd (2014) till now, they should get their justice. An international tribunal should be formed as soon as possible and Yazidis and other minorities who cannot protect themselves should be protected,” Murad told VOA in 2016 during an exclusive interview. 

Yazidi rights groups estimate about 3,000 women and children remain missing, while thousands live under dire conditions in refugee camps in Iraq.
…

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is stepping up his rhetoric over Cyprus in a move seen by analysts as taking on a more assertive approach that could result in a permanent partition of the divided Mediterranean island.

Addressing parliament Tuesday, Erdogan issued a stark warning. “No step can be taken in Cyprus or in the Aegean Sea at the expense of Turkey. Those who do disregard Turkey would put their own existence entirely at risk,” Erdogan said to his cheering deputies in the ruling AK Party.

Cyprus is divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriots since a Turkish military invasion in 1974 in response to an Athens-inspired coup. Ankara only recognizes the Turkish Cypriot government.

Tensions over the island are being stirred by the discovery of large offshore natural gas reserves. The find has sparked an exploration rush by international companies. Ankara maintains that both administrations on the island should control the energy exploration. The Greek Cypriots reject such calls, saying it is the only internationally recognized government on the island.

Erdogan has dispatched warships to back Turkish Cypriot claims. Analysts suggest the deployment is likely to be only saber-rattling.

“There is the new deal with France where it will position its warships in Cyprus in Larnaca [Greek Cypriot port],” former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen said. “According to some other reports, there will be U.S. warships escorting the Exxon [an American energy company] exploration, so Turkey will not be able singlehandedly to stop new exploration.”

EU membership

Ankara’s robust stance over Cyprus is seen by some observers as a sign of a broader shift in policy. “Erdogan has realized the classic Turkish policy to show muscle to show strength,” said international relations professor Huseyin Bagci of Ankara’s Middle East Technical University. “I don’t expect any solution in Cyprus in political terms.”

The allure of Turkey joining the European Union has been a powerful impetus for Ankara backing reunification efforts of the island. With the Greek Cypriot side already an EU member and holding a veto over Turkey’s membership bid, Brussels says the island has to be reunified if Ankara’s bid is to succeed.

Ankara’s EU dream is now widely seen as over, with the economy in crisis and growing human rights concerns.

“With Turkey and the EU, there is no talk about EU membership; there are no talks about even a new customs union,” Selcen said. “Erdogan insists now that Turkey should have this businesslike transactional relationship with the EU. ”

The collapse in Turkey’s EU bid is seen as giving Erdogan a freer hand over Cyprus. “With Turkey not becoming a full member in the foreseeable future, why should Erdogan make any concessions on Cyprus to the Greek side?” asked international relations professor Bagci.

“In Turkish domestic politics, Tayyip Erdogan was very heavily criticized for making concessions to the Greek side,” Bagci added. “So he is now not going to make any more concessions.”

Previous reunification efforts

When coming to power as prime minister in 2003, Erdogan invested heavily in seeking a solution to reuniting the divided island. Under intense pressure by Erdogan, the then-Turkish Cypriot president, Rauf Denktas, reluctantly agreed to a U.N.-backed plan to reunite Cyprus. In 2004 simultaneous referendums, the U.N. plan was overwhelmingly backed by Turkish Cypriots but rejected by Greek Cypriots.

Subsequent U.N. efforts to reunite Cyprus have ended in deadlock, the most recent being last year. U.N. Security-General Antonio Guterres is to decide this month what to do to reunite the island.

Analysts say reunification efforts are likely to be further complicated by Erdogan’s announcement last month to increase the Turkish military presence on the island. Turkey’s military presence, estimated at around 30,000 strong, is a significant obstacle to reunification efforts. Nicosia is calling for a total Turkish withdrawal from the island.

“Not to reduce the military presence but to increase it, is showing muscles. Turkey is going back to the policy of the 1990s,” Bagci said. “That is a policy of showing military strength, and not to be open for any solution on the island.

“The Greeks have to realize there is only one solution, the recognition of the north [of the island] as an independent Turkish Cypriot state,” Bagci added.

Some observers suggest Erdogan’s shift on Cyprus is motivated by his courting of nationalist voters ahead of next year’s key local elections.

“The new muscular approach toward Cyprus could be to do with domestic politics rather than foreign policy,” said Selcen. “Because we are going toward the local elections, there is this delicate balance between AKP and nationalists, who call for a strong stance against Greek Cypriots.”

Turkish local elections are due to be held in March 2019; few observers expect any softening of Erdogan’s stance on Cyprus ahead of the crucial polls, declared a priority by the Turkish president. Analysts point out that even after the elections, there remains little incentive for Ankara to back reunification efforts given its EU bid is all but dead, at least for the foreseeable future.
…

An estimated 300,000 people, more than half of them children, have been immunized against cholera in war-torn Yemen. The weeklong vaccination campaign was led jointly by the World Health Organization and U.N. Children’s Fund.

More than 3,000 health workers fanned out across Hodeidah and Ibb governorates. Both are areas where Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia-backed government forces are engaged in war.

A spokesman for the U.N. Children’s Fund, Christophe Boulierac, said the campaign went ahead because the warring parties agreed to stop fighting during so-called Days of Tranquility, a period that lasted six days.

“Before the end of the year, many more people will need to be vaccinated in Yemen against cholera,” he said. “And millions more children will need to be immunized against polio, against measles, against pneumonia and other preventable diseases.”

Yemen is facing one of the worst cholera outbreaks in recent history. Since April 2017, more than 1.2 million suspected cases of cholera, including 2,515 deaths, have been reported. Practically no part of Yemen has been spared.

World Health Organization spokesman Christian Lindmeier said a recent increase in cholera cases in 12 governorates prompted two mass vaccination campaigns.

“The most recent data in al-Hodeidah shows that only 50 percent of health facilities are still operational in the governorate,” said Lindmeier. “The conflict in Hodeidah has severely impacted this access to water and sanitation, to all preventive and clinical service, to increasing the risk of disease outbreaks among those who remain in the governorate.”

Lindmeier said that poses significant challenges to effectively control outbreaks of cholera as well as for diphtheria, measles and malaria.
…