Nichole Sobecki's Notebook:

Turkey detains 120 Al Qaeda suspects

Wire services are buzzing this morning with news that Turkish police arrested 120 alleged Al Qaeda members during simultaneous predawn raids in 16 provinces.

Al Qaeda has occasionally attacked foreign targets in Turkey — the 2003 bombings in Istanbul that targeted two synagogues, the British Consulate and a bank, and the 2008 U.S. consulate attack — and police occasionally round up small cells. Saturday's raid, however, is unusually large. Unnamed security sources told the BBC police seized weapons, fake identity cards and "camouflage clothing."

The arrests came after police detained Serdal Erbasi — a local Al Qaeda leader, also known as Abu Zahr — and several other high-level figures during raids last week against the group in Turkey’s southeast. The information gathered after his arrest led to today's raids, the country's semi-official Anatolian News Agency reported.

Erbasi fought the Russians in Chechnya before moving on to Afghanistan. A report in the newspaper Zaman said some of the suspects had been planning an attack on the Kabul regional command center of the NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan. Turkish forces took over the center’s rotating command in November.

Speculation abounds over who exactly all of the 120 people arrested are. While some are taking it as a given that this is one of Turkey’s largest round-ups of Al Qaeda members to date, others are arguing that it is likely that some of those detained might be "fellow travelers" — people who share Al Qaeda's ideology but aren't explicit members of the group — while others might be members of Turkish Hizballah.

Authorities conducted raids in parts of Turkey that include Ankara, Istanbul, Bursa, Adana and Diyarbakir, according to the report.

Sticking up for al-Bashir?

No one is saying who lost the game of chicken, but it was probably Turkey.

What is certain is that Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court, has pulled out of an Islamic summit in Istanbul.

Until the last minute Turkey, which has deepened economic ties with Sudan, had made it clear that it welcomed the attendance of al-Bashir at the meeting, despite the international warrant for his arrest on war crimes charges. Turkey has not ratified the statute that established the ICC and had said it had no plans to arrest al-Bashir.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also downplayed accusations against al-Bashir, saying: “A Muslim can never commit genocide.”

Western governments have been careful not to challenge Turkey too directly but it is likely that quiet pressure from the U.S. and the EU helped to change Turkey's mind over al-Bashir. International human rights organizations have also urged Turkey repeatedly to arrest al-Bashir if he arrived in Istanbul

The ICC has indicted al-Bashir on charges of masterminding a campaign of rape, murder and other crimes in Sudan's Darfur region – a charge al-Bashir has repeatedly denied. The United Nations says as many as 300,000 people have been killed since conflict erupted in Darfur in 2003.

International Crisis Group analyst Fouad Hikmat said the decision showed how much the ICC warrant had hindered al-Bashir's movements.

"I don't think he'll be able to venture out beyond the immediate neighborhood, or maybe the Gulf. His people don't want to take any risks. Once he's in international airspace, he is in no man's land," he told Reuters.
 

Turkey and Armenia sign deal (finally!)

In the drawn-out saga over whether to sign, or not to sign, the dime seems to have landed in favor of reconciliation. After a last-minute dispute over wording, Turkey and Armenia met at the table on Saturday and signed a historic agreement to establish normal diplomatic relations and reopen their borders.

The gains made on Saturday came only after frantic, down-to-the-wire diplomacy on the part of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other diplomats as they tried desperately to salvage the deal.

“There were several times I said to all the parties involved, ‘This is too important, this has to be seen through, we have come too far,’ ” Clinton said, although she declined to describe the differences between the two sides.

For the two neighbors, divided by a century of animosity of over the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks, the turbulent day was a reminder of how difficult it can be to leave history behind and move forward towards a distinctly different future.
 

Pausing before peace

Like the saying goes — “If it's too good to be true, then it probably is.” In the case of Turkey and Armenia, hopes for reconciliation were to be disappointed yet again today.

After six weeks of intense debate over the proposed signing of an accord to restore diplomatic ties between Turkey and Armenia both countries met in Zurich today — but they never made it to the signing ceremony.

The accord, which would establish diplomatic ties in hopes of reopening their border and ending historic enmity, was delayed at the last minute Saturday due to objections by Turkey to Armenia’s planned statement.

Ian Kelly, a U.S. state department spokesman, was quoted by AFP news agency as saying there had been a "last-minute hitch."

Al Jazeera reported that the main problem surrounded the word "holocaust" and how it was going to be used. The Armenians were told that the Turks found their language unacceptable and therefore they are staying in their hotel for the time being.

"When you've had almost a hundred years of hatred, of animosity, of distrust, people are thinking that the delay of an hour or so isn't that much to bear," said Al Jazeera's correspondent Alan Fisher, reporting from Zurich, in response to a statement by the Swiss officials that the signing would still take place.

The accord, while facing opposition from nationalists on both sides, has been strongly supported by major countries, with the foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, France and the European Union in the room to watch the signing. Of the attendees none was a more influential witness than U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, who abruptly returned to her hotel just before she was to attend the ceremony.

In Armenia’s capital Friday about 10,000 protesters rallied to oppose the signing, followed by protests in Lebanon and France, with demonstrators in Paris shouting "Traitor!"

Flash floods kill 31

ISTANBUL – Often the bad news, the stories of death and destruction, are the result of armed conflict, of politics, or the result of failed economies and the brutality of poverty. In other words, they are caused by the dramas of man. But the forces of nature can prove just as aggressive.

Flash floods killed 31 people in northwest Turkey on Wednesday, sweeping through the city of Istanbul, swamping houses, turning highways into fast-flowing rivers as the area struggled with its heaviest rainfall in 80 years.

Twenty-six died in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city with 14 million inhabitants, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said late on Wednesday. Another five died in Saray, west of Istanbul, reportedly all from the same family. Nine more were missing, Erdogan said.

The floodwaters rose quickly. After just a few hours of heavy rain, water had covered many of the city’s low-lying areas as well as one of the primary highways connecting the city center and the main airport. News stations showed video of people running and climbing on top of vehicles to escape the rising waters.

Rescue missions were in full swing on Wednesday with about 400 workers equipped with heavy machinery, and two helicopters, said Veysel Eroglu, the minister of environment and forestry.

Istanbul, the business and cultural capital of Turkey, is home to about 14 million people and has historically been vulnerable to natural disasters. The city has grown rapidly over the last 50 years, with uncontrolled and mostly illegal settlements rising on the outskirts.

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