Turkey's Erdogan presses Assad's envoy over unrest (Reuters)

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan held crisis talks with an envoy of Syria's president on Wednesday as Ankara pressed its once well-regarded neighbor to end a crackdown on protesters that it has called "savagery."

Relations between Turkey and Syria have been strained as some 8,500 Syrian refugees have poured across the border into Turkey seeking sanctuary in makeshift camps of tents from an onslaught by President Bashar al-Assad's security forces.

Assad envoy Hassan Turkmani met for almost three hours with Erdogan, who has expressed impatience over Assad's repressive tactics and slowness to reform, as well as anger over a burgeoning humanitarian crisis.

No statements came out of the meeting. But Erdogan, who had a close rapport with Assad, had said before his re-election on Sunday that once the vote was over he would be talking to Assad in a "very different manner."

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the architect of Ankara's policy of cultivating closer ties with Middle East countries including Syria and Iran, went to the border and talked to refugees, including wounded men lying on beds in camp hospitals.

Seeing Davutoglu approach, the Syrians -- men, women and children -- gathered together chanting "Freedom" and "Erdogan."

"I'll talk to Turkmani and will share with him with all frankness what I saw. We are seeing a humanitarian situation here and developments are concerning," Davutoglu told reporters after visiting a camp in Yayladagi, across from the restive Syrian town of Jisr al-Shughour, 20 km (13 miles) away.

He said he would meet with Turkmani in Ankara on Thursday.

Turkmani told journalists before meeting Erdogan the refugees would stay in Turkey for a "short period of time."

"Soon they will be returning. We have prepared everything for them, they have started returning," he said.

Assad asked to send an emissary when he called Erdogan on Tuesday to congratulate him on winning a third term in office.

On Wednesday, a group of refugees in Yayladagi got their message out, chanting "People want freedom!" and "Erdogan help us!," while journalists watched on the other side of the gate.

The crowd was made up of veiled women and young men, some with children on their shoulders. Police did not interfere.

"THEY TREAT US LIKE INFIDELS"

With Assad facing mounting international condemnation, Erdogan has become regarded as a saviour by Syrian refugees.

A 36-year-old Syrian man in a street in the Turkish border village of Guvecci, who gave his name as Ahmed and refused to be filmed, gave a taste of what Davutoglu was likely to hear.

"We decided to flee to Turkey after learning troops arrived in Jisr al-Shughour: I, my wife and six kids. We heard they were burning down the city, including the mosques," he said.

"We came here to protect our family, we're not against them, but they fight us like we were infidels.

"I don't plan to go back until the situation improves there. Some of my relatives were wounded during protests in Jisr al Shughour, one of them was shot in the foot, two were killed, one was shot in the head and is in intensive care now."

Preparations are being made for another influx of refugees far to the east along the 800 km border.

A Turkish Red Crescent official, who requested anonymity, said more tent camps, able to shelter 10,000 people, were being set up near the Turkish city of Mardin and the town of Nusaybin.

Erdogan has called Assad several times since public unrest first broke out in Syria three months ago, each time urging reforms and an end to the bloodshed.

In a telephone call on Tuesday, Erdogan told Assad to avoid using violence against his people and advised him that reforms should be undertaken as soon as possible. Erdogan also raised concern over protests outside Turkey's embassy in Damascus.

The Turkish English-language newspaper Today's Zaman reported that some 2,000 demonstrators marched to the Turkish embassy in Damascus on Sunday and tried to hoist a Syrian flag.

Yahoo! News

Turkey's state TV: Ruling party wins election (AP)

ISTANBUL – Turkey's state-run television says the ruling party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won a third term in parliamentary elections.

The website of the television station, TRT, is carrying a headline that says: "Turkey decides to continue with AK Party."

AKP is the Turkish acronym of the ruling Justice and Development Party.

State TV says that with 98 percent of the results counted Sunday, the ruling party has 50 percent of the votes. The Republican People's Party, the main opposition group, has 26 percent and another opposition party, the Nationalist Action Party, has 13 percent.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey's ruling party led by a wide margin in nearly complete returns from parliamentary elections on Sunday, state-run television reported, setting the stage for a third term in which the government is expected to seek an overhaul of the military-era constitution.

However, results indicated that the Justice and Development Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not heading for a two-thirds majority in parliament, a shortcoming that would force it to seek support for constitutional change from other political groups.

With 97 percent of votes counted, Erdogan's party had won 50 percent of the votes, TRT reported. It said the Republican People's Party, the main opposition group, had 26 percent of the vote.

TRT said another opposition party, the Nationalist Action Party, had 13 percent of the vote, signaling it could stay in parliament by crossing a 10 percent vote threshold designed to keep out smaller parties.

According to the tally, the ruling party stood to win 327 seats in the 550-seat parliament, a comfortable majority that would ensure the continuation of its single-party rule. It had 331 seats in the outgoing parliament. Lawmakers serve four-year terms.

Several thousand supporters gathered Sunday night outside the ruling party headquarters in Ankara, chanting pro-government slogans and waving Turkish flags as they awaited Erdogan, who has made it a tradition to deliver a victory speech from the building's balcony.

About 50 million Turks, or two-thirds of the population, were eligible to vote.

For the first time, voters cast ballots in transparent plastic boxes in which the yellow envelopes could be seen piling up. The measure was designed to prevent any allegations of fraud. In past elections, wooden boxes were used.

"We have spoken, and now it is time for the people to speak," Erdogan said at a polling station Sunday morning in Istanbul. "For us, this will be the most honorable decision and one that we will have to respect. As far as I know, the election process is continuing through the country without any problems."

The Anatolia news agency reported later that police detained 34 people in the southeast province of Batman for allegedly trying to coerce people into voting for the Peace and Democracy Party, a Kurdish party accused by officials of links to Kurdish rebels.

The party is fielding independent candidates in order to work around the 10 percent vote threshold for Turkey's parliament. It seeks more rights and autonomy in the southeastern strongholds of the ethnic minority, which makes up about 20 percent of Turkey's 74 million people.

Turkey, a NATO ally with a mostly Muslim population, stands out in a region buffeted by popular uprisings as a rising power with traditional Western alliances as well as growing ties in the east and elsewhere. In the past decade, the government has sharply reduced the political clout of the military, and taken some steps to ease restrictions on minorities, though reforms have slowed in recent years.

Despite its successes, Turkey's government faces opposition accusations that it seeks to consolidate power at the expense of consensus-building.

Erdogan has promised that a new constitution would include "basic rights and freedoms," replacing a constitution implemented under the tutelage of the military in 1982. However, he has provided relatively few details on a possible new draft.

The government has Islamic roots, long a source of suspicion among secular circles that once dominated Turkey and fear that Erdogan seeks to impose religion on society.

Turkey's leaders, however, describe themselves as moderates and "conservative democrats" who are committed to the ideals of Western-style democracy. After winning election in 2002, they implemented economic reforms that pulled the country out of crisis. The growth rate last year was nearly 9 percent, the second highest among G-20 nations after China.

Still, political reforms faltered in the ruling party's second term. Turkey's bid to join the European Union has stalled, partly because of opposition in key EU nations such as Germany and France. Critics point to concerns about media freedom and the Turkish government's plans for Internet filters as signs of intolerance toward views that don't conform to those of Turkey's leadership.

Four people were detained Sunday in the southeast province of Sanliurfa for allegedly voting more than once with other people's ballot papers. In the capital, Ankara, police fired in the air and used pepper spray to break up scuffles at a polling station where a group of voters wrongly accused another group of having fake ballot papers, the Anatolia agency said.

But for all of Turkey's challenges, Sunday's vote was an indicator of stability in a country that suffered fractious coalition politics and military coups in past decades. Most voting was peaceful and orderly, with large crowds gathering early to cast ballots.

"We have come to the end of a long marathon," Kemal Kilicdaroglu, head of the opposition Republican People's Party, said after arriving at a polling station with his wife and son. "Today is the time for a decision by the people. We will respect their decision. There is a good mood. There is a democracy feast."

___

Suzan Fraser and Gulden Alp contributed from Ankara, Turkey.

Yahoo! News

Turkey's Election Offers a Last Chance to Integrate the Kurds (Time.com)

Sirri Sureyya Onder is neither a Kurd nor a politician. Yet, when the popular filmmaker and writer was approached by Turkey's Kurdish party to run for an Istanbul parliamentary seat in Sunday's elections, he felt he could not refuse. "This parliament has an opportunity to make history," he said, between campaign stops at coffeehouses in Zeytinburnu, a working-class district near Istanbul's airport populated by Kurds who migrated here over the past three decades years to flee fighting in the southeast. "It will be tasked with drafting a new constitution which could finally secure democratic rights and freedoms for everyone. For the first time, I feel as if I can make a difference."

With the Arab Spring having reached its doorstep in neighbouring Syria, Turkey may finally have run out of time to defer addressing the grievances of its restive Kurdish population, estimated at around 14 million. For years Ankara denied the Kurds existed - they were called mountain Turks - and banned the Kurdish language from being spoken. In 1984, the PKK took up arms in a fight for Kurdish independence, and some 45,000 people have been killed in the ensuing conflict. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who took power in 2002, vowed to seek a political solution to the conflict, declaring in a historic speech that "the Kurdish problem is my problem". Erdogan acknowledged that the government had mismanaged relations with the Kurdish population, and promised greater democracy. (Turkey's Election: The Massive Implications of a Foregone Conclusion)

But Erdogan's initiative to allow the PKK to disarm and reintegrate were abandoned under nationalist pressure; Kurdish language reforms were stalled; and clashes between Kurdish youth and the authorities continued in the southeast. So, the Kurdish issue has returned to the top of the political agenda as Turkey goes to the polls on Sunday. "A new constitution and resolving the Kurdish problem ... are the most important jobs awaiting the new Turkish parliament," says Cengiz Candar, an influential columnist for Radikal newspaper.

The good news is that conditions for addressing Kurdish grievances have never looked so promising. Despite numerous obstacles, the country's pro-Kurdish party BDP is poised to take more seats than ever before, energised by a clever move to integrate pro-peace Turks like Onder, other minorities and more mainstream Kurds. Meanwhile, the main opposition CHP party, standard-bearer of the hawkish nationalism against which the Kurds butted heads for decades, has abandoned its longstanding pro-military line and is fielding a well-known Kurdish human rights lawyer as its deputy leader. In the current election season, politicians have been allowed to campaign using the Kurdish language for the first time ever, part of a series of reforms introduced by Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which is all but guaranteed to win on Sunday.

"We are no longer afraid," says Gulcin Erdemci, 50, part of an enthusiastic crew of Kurdish women dressed in bright pink sweaters canvassing door-to-door in Zeytinburnu on behalf of Onder. "Before I could never say who I was voting for, or even wear this in public," she says, pointing to her loose white headscarf embroidered in typically Kurdish tradition. "We just want full equality."

Regardless of who wins on Sunday, the Kurds - both the BDP and the armed rebel group PKK (whose leader, Abdullah Ocalan, is serving a life sentence for treason) - have given the new government until June 15 to meet their demands for more autonomy, the right to be educated in Kurdish and an end to military operations. Already, waves of popular unrest have swept the mainly Kurdish southeast in recent months. (Why Syria and Turkey Are Suddenly Far Apart on Arab Spring Protests)

"These elections are like a referendum for the Kurds," says Mustafa Gundogdu, Turkey and Iraq officer at the London-based Kurdish Human Rights Project. "They are looking to see how many MPs they can post and what happens next. There is the question of whether this might be a last chance."

What happens next depends on the slimmest of calculuations. Prime Minister Erdogan is set to secure a third term in power, but it remains to be seen whether his party will gain the legislative supermajority that would allow it to draft a constitution without needing to compromise to win the votes of opposition parties - an alarming prospect to many given his self-professed desire to set up a presidential system like France or Russia, with greater executive powers. "For the new constitution to stick, it must be the product of a genuine consensus, including the Kurdish national movement, not a top-down imposition," says Hugh Pope, of the International Crisis Group.

Tarhan Erdem, a pollster renowned for the accuracy of his forecasts, sees the AKP falling just short of its goal of 330 out of 550 seats. Less than 330 seats would mean that while the AKP would still form a single party government, it would also be forced to compromise with the CHP and the BDP to legislate. "This would be very good," says Candar."It looks like the elections will deliver good results."

Onder is similarly optimistic. "If we can replace the war-mongering with lasting peace, then we'll all feel alot lighter," says the affable filmmaker, dragging on a cigarette at the end of twelve hours on the campaign trail. He gazes briefly out of the car window at Istanbul's bumper-to-bumper evening traffic. Then he smiles. "And you never know, if that happens I might even be able to shoot again next summer."

Photos of Kurdish Rebels

Turkey's Unconventional Muslim Minority

View this article on Time.com

Most Popular on Time.com:

Yahoo! News

Turkey's Role in Arab Spring: Can Erdogan Influence Assad? (Time.com)

On Oct. 13, 2009, the Oncupinar border gate between Turkey and Syria played a starring role in a diplomatic photo op. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Moualem, shook hands, smiled for the cameras and - en route to signing an agreement to end visa requirements between the two countries later that day - lifted the border barrier. The symbolism was lost on no one. Only 11 years earlier, thousands of Turkish troops had massed along the same border, awaiting orders to deploy. Throughout the 1990s, the Syrian government had sheltered Turkey's public enemy No. 1, Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK, the Kurdish terrorist group. If Syria refused to expel him, the Turkish leadership made clear in 1998, then the Turks would march on Damascus. The Syrians flinched. Ocalan was sent packing.

In the years that followed the standoff, Syria and Turkey became close allies. Long-running land and water disputes were either settled or shelved. Trade boomed, from $773 million in 2002 to $2.5 billion in 2010. In April 2009, the two countries held joint military exercises. Just last year, together with Jordan and Lebanon, they signed a free-trade agreement that many Turkish commentators hailed as the dawn of a Middle East Union. (See pictures of the protests in Syria.)

In reaching out to the Syrian regime, Turkey managed to inspire its confidence, says Khaled Khoja, a Turkish-based member of the Damascus Declaration committee, a Syrian opposition group. In 2005, Khoja recalls, Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose government had been accused of orchestrating the assassination of Lebanese President Rafiq Hariri, found himself in a major bind. But Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan refused calls by the U.S. and others to isolate the Syrian regime. Instead, says Khoja, he helped bring Assad's regime in from the cold: "He made Turkey a bridge to Syria." What Turkey got out of all this, more than anything else, says Khoja, was Syria's trust - the kind of trust that allowed it to mediate between Syria and Israel in 2008. This, says Khoja, "was a very good approach."

But, he adds, it was not enough. "Turkey should have pushed Bashar to make reforms in past years," says Khoja. "You cannot have an attitude, an active role, unless you are brave enough to step behind the reforms. You have to say this strongly." Turkey did not. Over the past few years, in the face of Syria's dismal human-rights record and its legacy of authoritarian rule, the government in Ankara has remained silent. If autocrats like Assad were to be prodded into changing course, Turkish officials argued, it would be through diplomacy, not pressure. "We tell our counterparts the importance of being respectful of human rights," Davutoglu once said. "But we don't do it in public." (See "How Syria and Libya Got to Be Turkey's Headaches.")

Turkish officials were wrong to assume that a policy of behind-the-scenes prodding could yield tangible results in Syria, says Walid Saffour, president of the London-based Syrian Human Rights Committee. "All the time they were hearing that the Syrians were going to do so and so," he says. "The Turkish government believed what Bashar and his advisers told [them]. That was a game of deception on the part of the Syrian government."

In recent weeks, with the turmoil across its southern border showing no signs of coming to an end - threatening not only its rapprochement with Syria but also the stability of the entire region - Turkey has gone into emergency mode, with Erdogan regularly on the phone with Assad and top officials, including Davutoglu and an intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, who was dispatched to Damascus. As a senior Western diplomat in Damascus tells TIME, Turkey's backdoor diplomacy might now be the outside world's last remaining chance to persuade Assad to introduce new reforms and avoid more bloodshed. "The Turkish approach allows the Syrians to listen to the outside world's concerns without feeling as if they are being lectured," the diplomat tells TIME, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It allows them to make changes without giving the impression that someone is forcing their hand." (See pictures of tempers flaring across the Middle East.)

Oppositionists like Saffour would prefer for the Turks to align themselves squarely with the demonstrators. "Today Erdogan condemns the killing, the detentions and the repeated massacres," says Saffour, "but he is not blaming Bashar for this." As much as the Turkish leader might want to ensure Assad's survival, he adds, he will soon have to choose between the leadership and the protesters. "The people inside Syria are now calling for a change of regime altogether," says Saffour. "The Turkish stand shouldn't be [opposed to] the stand of the people. If they want to do something, they should support the people, not the regime."

Reached by phone during a visit to Turkey, Riad al-Shaqfa, secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, says he believes Assad can step back from the brink. "The doors of reform always remain open if Bashar is serious in this matter and if the people feel that he is serious about it," al-Shaqfa says through a translator. "To make the reforms does not take much. It took them 15 minutes to amend the constitution so that Bashar could inherit the country from his father. They can issue orders to withdraw the security forces and the tanks from the streets and to the stop bombardment of the people in a matter of hours." However, the outlook is getting bleaker by the day, says al-Shaqfa, who adds, "There can be many initiatives and the Turks are demanding this, but nobody is listening." Khoja sees no room for optimism. "If Bashar is not listening to Turkey," he says, "then he is not listening to anyone."

Piotr Zalewski is the Turkey correspondent for the Polish newsmagazine Polityka. He has contributed to Foreign Policy, the Atlantic.com and the National.

See TIME's special report: "The Middle East in Revolt."

See the world's most influential people in the 2011 TIME 100.

View this article on Time.com

Most Popular on Time.com:

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.