Middle East TV fare with ’strategic depth’Font

MUHAMMAD AYISH – FIRST PERSON
The National
Every time a foreign satellite channel steps into the crowded world of Arabic television, we are always tempted to overestimate its effects on public opinion in the region. But a new Turkish initiative may finally live up to expectations.

Related story
TRT’s multilingual broadcasts reach hundreds of millions

It all started in 2004 with the American channel Alhurra, followed by a spate of foreign Arabic television broadcasts from countries such as Iran, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Russia and, most recently, China. But a few months into operations, they all realized how frustrating it is to make the slightest dent in the deep-running cynicism in the Middle East. As the American writer Marc Lynch has noted, it is unlikely that any of those broadcasters will ever capture much of a market share or shape Arab public opinion.

But earlier this week, as I watched the online launch of TRT Arabic, the Arabic-language channel of the Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, or TRT, I thought that this newcomer might make headway where other international channels have failed. An emotional speech delivered by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the opening ceremony stressed shared Turkish-Arab history, culture and faith in describing the channel’s mission. His use of Arabic idioms and poetic verses triggered standing ovations from his audience.

But as the experience of the past six decades suggests, shared political goals and cultural kinship cannot always effectively promote regional or global communications. As we teach our students in university media programs, communication is not driven only by the compatibility of the sender and receiver, but also by the quality of content.

For TRT Arabic to establish a credible presence in the region, it needs to go beyond emotional appeals to history and faith and demonstrate the highest level of professionalism in its news, cultural and entertainment programming.

Initial reactions in the region to this Turkish initiative suggest that the channel will not have to face the same challenges as other foreign broadcasters. In the context of growing Turkish standing in the region, TRT Arabic most probably will attract remarkable attention, at least in the short term.

A recent public-opinion poll conducted by the Turkish Economic and Social Studies Foundation, or TESEV, in seven Arab countries found that the image of Turkey in the Arab world is getting better. The findings suggest that relations have every prospect of improving as Turkey’s government, led by the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, plays a more active role in the Middle East.

The incident at Davos last year, when Erdoğan publicly condemned the Israeli offensive against Gaza, was a defining moment in Turkey’s relations with the region.

The Arab public, of course, is already very familiar with Turkish television. Viewers across the region have been galvanized by Arabic-dubbed Turkish TV series such as “Noor” (Gumuş, or Silver) and “Ayrılık” (Seperation).

Recently, however, drama shows produced by Turkish television on the Palestinian issue have stirred controversy on both the Arab and Israeli sides. An episode of “Valley of the Wolves” that depicted Israeli soldiers as baby snatchers and war criminals caused a diplomatic crisis between Turkey and Israel earlier this year.

Another series, “Scream of Stone,” triggered protests by Palestinians over its depiction of the murder of a Palestinian woman, just released from prison, by her relatives because she was supposedly raped by an Israeli soldier.

Previews shown on TRT Arabic indicate the richness and diversity of the channel’s programs in areas such as news, culture, gender, cuisine, tourism and art. While classical Arabic is the standard language of news and talk shows, other programs are delivered in local dialects to reflect the diverse vernaculars of the region.

Images highlight Turkey’s multicultural outlook when it comes to women’s dress codes. Some women wear the hijab while others have their heads uncovered.

The grandeur of Ottoman history is depicted in majestic palaces and mosques, a motif that is hard to miss in most of the program previews.

What has not been previewed is the type of political and cultural discourse that will be carried regarding enduring Arab concerns about Palestine, women’s rights, terrorism, cultural identity and global peace. I believe that TRT Arabic’s handling of these questions, more than its focus on cultural relevance, will define how it fares in this region.

Unlike other foreign Arabic channels – Alhurra, BBC Arabic, France 24, Deutsche Welle-Arabic and Arabic Russia Today – it is clear that politics and culture are real assets for TRT Arabic. The Turkish broadcaster does not find itself grappling with hostile or cynical public sentiments regarding Turkey’s relations with the Arab world. But in the stormy waters of this region’s media oceans, it surely takes more than cultural and political relevance for a foreign broadcaster to keep afloat.

NOTE: Muhammad Ayish, a professor of communications at the University of Sharjah, writes for the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National (www.thenational.ae), in which this article first appeared.

A proposed treaty that would change copyright laws to allow the supply of books across borders for the benefit of blind people has survived resistance from the US, UK, France, Germany and other countries.

A committee of the World Intellectual Property Organisation agreed on Friday “to continue without delay” its work on “facilitating the access of blind, visually-impaired and other reading-disabled persons to copyright-protected works.” At the heart of this work is a treaty proposed by the charitable organisation World Blind Union (WBU) and written with the help of the UK’s Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) .

RNIB campaign manager Dan Pescod attended the five-day meeting in Geneva. Pescod told OUT-LAW today that the UK and the US were among a group of countries that did not support the treaty and preferred ’soft options’, though they stopped short of formally opposing it.

Around 95% of books are never published in any format other than standard print, according to the WBU. But visually impaired people need books in other formats, such as large print, Braille and audio. People with other disabilities, such as cognitive impairments, can also find themselves ‘print disabled’.

“Imagine if you walked into a bookshop or library, and were told that you were only allowed to choose from five percent of the books on the shelf,” said WBU president Dr. William Rowland in a speech last year. “What would such a limited choice do to your education, to your leisure reading opportunities?”

The WBU, RNIB and others have prepared a draft treaty that would relax copyright restrictions to allow the creation and supply of accessible books without the need for prior permission from the copyright owner. The treaty requires this generally to be done on a non-profit basis. In some countries, it is already legal to create accessible books without permission. It was made legal in the UK by the Copyright (Visually Impaired Persons) Act, passed in 2002. But that law is limited in scope. The rights are limited to visually-impaired persons – so while a person with dyslexia might benefit from a large-print book, or an electronic book which can be played using text-to-speech conversion software, the law does not facilitate that person. Also, the UK law, like equivalent laws in other countries, does not allow the supply of a digital book to a customer overseas.

The WBU treaty, if signed and ratified in its present form, would lift these restrictions. It seeks to protect all ‘reading disabled’ persons and it allows the supply across borders of accessible works, as a Braille hard copy or as an e-book. At present, a tiny fraction of books that are available in accessible formats can be supplied across borders because their export requires the agreement of rights holders.

Pescod said publishers have until recently seen little money to be made from converting books into accessible formats, meaning that the work is normally done by voluntary organisations like RNIB. “If we make an accessible version of a book in the UK and want to send that to another English-speaking country where they don’t have the resources to make books accessible, we should be able to do that,” he said. “But the copyright law as it stands doesn’t allow the transfer of that accessible info. The exceptions in place in national legislations stop at the border.”

The preamble to the treaty notes that “90 percent of visually-impaired persons live in countries of low or moderate incomes.” These countries tend to have the most limited ranges of accessible works, hence the need for a right to supply across borders.

Pescod said that voluntary organisations in Chile, Columbia, Mexico, Nicaragua and Uruguay have only 8,517 books in alternative formats between them. However, Argentina has 63,000 books and Spain 102,000. All these countries speak Spanish. . Spain and Argentina will not share their libraries with their Latin American colleagues, though, for fear of breaking copyright laws, he said.

The proposed treaty would also allow for the circumvention of digital rights management (DRM) where necessary to render a work accessible. Some books are published in a digital format that is not compatible with the assistive technologies used by disabled people.

Lobbying for legislative change in the UK, the RNIB noted recently that DRM schemes “can react to assistive technology as if it were an illicit operation.” It also said that “while e-book readers may have the facility to reproduce synthetic speech, the rights holder can apply a level of security which prevents this from working.”

The WBU treaty would allow a company to buy an e-book, hack the DRM and redistribute a DRM-free version of the work, provided copies are supplied exclusively for disabled customers.

Pescod said that main objective of RNIB and the WBU for the week was to have the treaty formally proposed within the WIPO committee. Their second objective was to have it accepted as a viable proposal. “These were met,” he said. “Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay tabled the treaty as a proposal.” That put the treaty before WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. It was strongly supported by delegates representing South American, African and Asian countries. “India and China were particularly supportive,” said Pescod. Wealthier countries, it seems, were less enthusiastic.

“Many publishers and rights holders and some states say we need a ’soft’ solution,” said Pescod. “RNIB should work with rights holders and others to resolve this, they say.” Pescod said these groups want a ’stakeholder platform’ to discuss the sharing of files, but not a treaty. “We’re more than happy to speak,” he said. “But where we part company is that the stakeholder platform is looking at one set of solutions only.” It would address some technical challenges, he said; but it would not address other issues, including the production of unprofitable Braille works, or the extra work needed to describe images.

“We’re insisting that you need to work with rights holders – and we’ll continue to do that – but we still need a treaty which would do three things: encourage national copyright exceptions for disabled people in all countries; allow transfer of accessible books in all countries; and allow tightening of rules on DRM systems that can block accessibility.”

“No country opposed the proposal [for a treaty] outright,” said Pescod. “Those who wanted to suggest that they weren’t happy with it used more coded language, like saying discussions were ‘premature’ or that they wanted to take it back home and discuss it [at a national level].” The published conclusions of the committee include the unattributed objection “that deliberations regarding any instrument would be premature.” “Those attacking this [treaty] fear it is going to undermine copyright law,” he said. “We disagree completely. Ensuring access for a bunch of people who the market was not selling to in the first place doesn’t undermine copyright law.”

“This whole idea that it’s ‘premature’ is bizarre,” he said. “A WIPO and UNESCO working group looked at this in 1982. If that’s premature, at what point does it become mature and ready to go?” Pescod said that support for the stakeholder platform instead of a treaty is coming only from those who are not disabled. “They’re not blind and they know better? I would question that,” he said.

The UK was represented in two capacities: as a member of the European Union and as a member of the so-called ‘Group B’ countries, a WIPO term that refers to 17 EU member states, the US, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the Vatican. Neither the EU nor Group B representatives supported the proposal. “Both are sceptical,” said Pescod.

According to another meeting attendee, James Love of Knowledge Ecology International, a group that promotes access to knowledge, the opposition from the US and other high-income countries “is due to intense lobbying from a large group of publishers that oppose a ‘paradigm shift’, where treaties would protect consumer interests, rather than expand rights for copyright owners.”

Ville Oksanen, a member of European digital rights group EDRi said Group B and the EU “did their best to derail the process of getting the treaty under serious consideration.” He described the given reasons as “rather perplexing” and described them as excuses designed to avoid being seen as opposing help for disabled people. “It remains to be seen how sceptical they will be next time,” said Pescod. “At the end of the day, though, we are happy with the way things went.”

On Friday night the WIPO copyright committee reached agreement to discuss the treaty at its next meeting in November, in spite of the objections. In the meantime, the committee’s conclusions note that “Member States will continue to consult on these issues at national level and report on the activities and views on possible solutions.” James Love is confident that the treaty will make progress.

“Group B came in the May [copyright committee] meeting to block any agreement to discuss a treaty,” he told OUT-LAW. “We’ll be back in November, discussing a treaty. The members of Group B will not be able to consistently avoid dealing with the treaty proposal. They will have to say yes or no in terms of moving this forward, and to explain why.” “The core issue will be, what will it take to liberalize the cross-border movement of accessible works created under copyright limitations and exceptions?” said Love. “Given how harsh the access reality is for people who are blind or have other reading disabilities, Group B cannot long avoid addressing this topic. There will be more and more data, and fewer and fewer chances to claim strategic ignorance.”

Source

http://www.out-law.com/page-10059

The groundbreaking operation brought significant improvements in vision within a matter of weeks.

The procedure uses a person’s own cells to heal damage to the cornea – the transparent outermost layer of the eye. It is carried out under local anaesthetic, with patients returning home within two hours of surgery, removing the need for expensive hospital stays.

The three patients treated so far had very poor vision caused by corneal disease – the fourth most common form of blindness, affecting around 10million worldwide.

How it works: The treatment can restore eye sight using stem cells It is caused by genetics, surgery, burns, infection or chemotherapy, and treatments usually include grafts and transplants and drugs such as steroids.

The team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney harnessed the power of stem cells – “master cells’ with the ability to turn into other cell types. They removed small samples of stem cells from the eyes of two men and a woman with corneal disease and grew them on a contact lens. The stem cell-coated contacted lenses were then put into the patients’ eyes for around three weeks. During that time, the stem cells moved off the lenses and began to heal the damaged corneas, the journal Transplantation reports. Using a person’s own cells removes any need for donors and means the transplant will not be rejected.

Researcher Dr. Nick Di Girolamo said: “The procedure is totally simple and cheap.”Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient’s own serum, and is completely non-invasive. “There’s no suturing, there is no major operation. You don’t need any fancy equipment.” The contact lenses used in the operation are already widely used after eye surgery.

The researchers hope the technique can be adapted for other parts of the eye, such as the retina, and even elsewhere in the body.

Damage to retinal blood vessels is behind a range of conditions that can lead to loss of sight including many cases of age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, the most common cause of blindness in the elderly.

Dr. Di Girolamo said: “If we can do this procedure in the eye, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in other major organs such as the skin, which behaves in a very similar way to the cornea.”

Dr. Kuldip Sidhu, a stem cell expert at the same university, said the “clever strategy’ was a step towards using stem cells to treat debilitating human diseases.”

Professor Loane Skene, of the University of Melbourne, said: “Provided that patients are told that the new procedure is experimental and possible risks are not yet known, and they then consent to have it, this use of a patient’s stem cells is no more ethically contentious than a skin transplant.”

In Britain, Sonal Rughani, of the RNIB, said: “This small-scale study reveals promising outcomes with the use of contact lenses. We await further developments of this innovative nature.”

The work is one of several studies being carried out around the world which aim to use stem cells to cure blindness.

This complete article is located at:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1188967/The-contact-lens-make-blind-again.html

by Aslı Sağlam

ADANA – The Adana Golden Boll Film Festival continued with Honorary Awards ceremony Thursday night that recognized four notable names in Turkish cinema, director Ömer Lütfi Akad, actress Filiz Akın, actor Yusuf Sezgin and composer Cahit Berkay for their great contributions to film sector.

Of the many events at the Golden Boll Film Festival in Adana, one was the star attraction Thursday evening, drawing hundreds of attendees. Four important names in the Turkish cinema sector received honorary awards on an unforgettable and somewhat melancholy night. These traditional awards rarely surprise, but are always well deserved. This year, they were presented to one of the best-ever directors of Turkish cinema, Ömer Lütfi Akad, along with actress Filiz Akın, actor Yusuf Sezgin and famous composer Cahit Berkay.

At the award ceremony, short presentations were screened on the honorees’ lives and careers. Three of the recipients appeared in person, all except for Akad, 93, who was not able to participate due to illness but sent a video message. He was loudly applauded and the video of the ovation will be sent to Akad so he can see how much his work is appreciated.

Adana Gov. İlhan Atış thanked all the participating artists, saying that Adana “witnessed a flood of celebrities to the city and we are so happy about it.” Before calling Akın, one of the most attractive actresses in Turkish cinema, onstage to receive her prize, Atış said Turkey needs more female role models.”Filiz Akın is an example for all Anatolian women,” he said. “I am proud to present her award tonight.”

Akın had been nominated for the Golden Boll award many times, but had never won before. “I now understand how exciting it is to win the award, as I now have a Golden Boll as well,” she said. Composer Berkay, his eyes filled with tears, said he was touched to receive the award. Sezgin, who has devoted his 46 years of life to cinema, said he was proud to be standing on the stage and receiving the award.

The crowded ceremony held at Zirve restaurant in Zaimoğlu Park continued with a concert by the legendary Turkish band Yeni Türkü.

The one-week festival was full of events that included local residents in different activities. One activity involved primary-school children who live in the slum areas of Adana and were taught how to shoot short films as part of a project aiming to boost their interest in cinema.

A five-person group from Selçuk University’s communication department, led by Associate Professor Aytekin Can, gave lessons to the children to teach them how to shoot a movie. The 23 young participants in the project, called “Children Tell About Children,” became screenwriters, camera operators, set officers, actors and montage technicians. They began shooting after a brainstorming session to come up with the treatment for the film.

Films accessible to everyone
The Adana event also saw the kick-off of a project that was a first for a Turkish festival, holding special film screenings for citizens with disabilities and prisoners. The film “Beyaz Melek” (White Angel) was used for an experimental technique that narrates what is happening in a movie for blind people.

According to Engin Yılmaz, the director of Boğaziçi University’s Visually Handicapped Technology Laboratory, or GETEM, the environment can be designed to remove the obstacles. The project, which was first held at the Orthopedic Hospital, kicked off in 2006. “With this technique, the scenes are described by a third person, a technique used on some recently produced DVDs,” Yılmaz said.

The 16th Golden Boll Film Festival also succeeded in involving nearly 100,000 students through the “Schools are in Cinema Ğ Cinema is in Schools” program, which included 170 schools this year. A special selection of the festival’s films were screened at schools with the necessary facilities, while students from other schools were transported to the cinema venues on Adana Metropolitan Municipality buses.

A Short Film Workshop is also being conducted for primary school students in collaboration with the cinema and television department of Selçuk University’s Communications Faculty. The students learn filmmaking, from script writing to production processes.

For World Day Against Child Labor on Friday, a special event was held that brought 600 child workers to the film-screening venues as guests of the festival. Special screenings have been held every day for prisoners as well.

The festival ends Sunday, making this weekend viewers’ last chance to see films, as well as the art exhibitions included in the festival program: “Faces From Cinema in the Golden Boll,” put on by the Adana Amateur Photographers’ Association, or AFAD, is on display at the M1 Tepe Shopping Center, while “Historical Photographs of Adana,” selected from the archives of Mehmet Baltacı and Dr. S. Haluk Uygur, and the “2009 Golden Boll Honorary Awards, Yeşilçam Posters” exhibition are taking place at the Adana Culture and Art Center until Sunday afternoon.

ISTANBUL – Pegasus Airlines, a Turkish low-cost carrier, said domestic passengers rose 29 percent in the first four months of the year compared to the same period last year.

International passengers rose 16 percent over the same period, Pegasus Chairman Ali Sabancı told reporters Friday in Istanbul. The airline carried about 200,000 domestic and 600,000 international passengers in the first four months, Chief Executive Sertaç Haybat said.

Turkish fuel retailer Petrol Ofisi signed an agreement with Pegasus to reward the retailer’s customers with free domestic flights. Petrol Ofisi Chief Executive Melih Türker made the announcement at a news conference in Istanbul Friday.

Meanwhile, Turkish Airlines on Thursday said passenger numbers rose 9 percent from a year earlier to 9 million in the first five months of 2009.

Global transit passengers jumped 43 percent and business-class passengers traveling on international flights increased 3 percent, the company said.

key word: hotel, fly, ticket

Bloomberg

BOSTON – In need of raising capital against loan losses, Barclays, the third-largest bank in Britain, agrees to sell its investment unit to BlackRock. New York-based BlackRock will thus become the world’s largest money manager. The new company, in which Barclays will hold a 19.9 percent stake, will oversee $2.7 trillion in assets.

BlackRock, started 21 years ago in a one-room office by former mortgage-bond trader Laurence Fink, agreed to buy Barclays’s investment unit for $13.5 billion to become the world’s largest money manager.

BlackRock will pay $6.6 billion in cash and the rest in stock for Barclays Global Investors, the New York-based company said Friday in a statement. Barclays will hold a 19.9 percent stake in the combined company. Financing will include $2.8 billion from the sale of equity to institutional investors and as much as $2 billion in loans from Barclays and other banks.

The purchase, the biggest of a fund manager, creates a company overseeing $2.7 trillion in assets, more than the Federal Reserve. BlackRock will add about $1 trillion in investments that track market indexes, which are attracting clients at the expense of funds whose managers choose securities to buy and sell. It’s the first top-ranked firm to attempt to combine both types of businesses.

“This will bring the greatest sweep of products to our clients,” Fink, BlackRock’s chairman and chief executive officer, said in an interview. “This transaction is transformational.”

Barclays, Britain’s third-largest bank, agreed in April to sell BGI’s iShares exchange-traded fund unit to London-based CVC Capital Partners for $4.4 billion. The bank, which is seeking to raise capital to replenish loan losses, had until June 18 to find a better deal for iShares or all of San Francisco-based BGI, which analysts last month valued at more than $10 billion. The sale is scheduled to be completed by December.

The combined company will have a market capitalization of more than $34 billion, Fink said Friday in a conference call. The transaction will add to per-share cash earnings by 10 percent in 2010, Fink said.

Market capitalization
John Varley, Barclays’ CEO, and President Robert Diamond will join the board of the new company, to be called BlackRock Global Investors, according to the statement. Blake Grossman, CEO of the Barclays investment unit, will be vice chairman of BlackRock.

Barclays will have a 4.9 percent voting interest in the company, with restrictions on the sale or acquisition of shares. It will have the right to maintain its ownership percentage if BlackRock issues additional shares in the future.

Bank of America will see its stake in BlackRock drop to 34.2 percent from the 47 percent it held on March 31. Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services Group will own 24.6 percent, down from 32 percent.

Barclays, along with Citigroup and Credit Suisse, will provide BlackRock with a 364-day revolving credit line of as much as $2 billion. The credit would be drawn at closing as necessary and repaid from proceeds of any capital-raising transactions. BlackRock plans to refinance any draw-down under this facility with proceeds of term-debt financings.

BlackRock said a group of undisclosed investors agreed to buy 19.9 million new shares for about $140.70 each. That’s a 10 percent discount to the 10-day moving average of the stock price prior to the agreement, Fink said.

BlackRock, currently the No. 3 fund company, and Bank of New York Mellon were the main bidders for BGI and its $1.5 trillion of assets, the most in the industry.

BlackRock was able to win BGI partly because its stock price has risen 36 percent this year, compared with a gain of 2.2 percent by BNY Mellon. State Street Corp., which has $1.44 trillion in assets, mostly in index-based products, probably was hindered by antitrust concerns.

Private-equity firms like CVC Capital haven’t been able to finance a deal of this size since banks stopped lending for leveraged buyouts in mid-2007. The biggest LBO of a money manager was the $5.6 billion purchase of Nuveen Investments by Madison Dearborn Partners, which was announced in June 2007.Banks and insurance companies, once active buyers of asset-management firms, are selling those units as the global financial crisis has resulted in $1.48 trillion in writedowns and credit losses.

ISTANBUL – Renowned banker Akın Kozanoğlu leaves his vice president seat at Akbank to become the chief executive of ERGOİsviçre, an insurance company. Speaking to reporters, Kozanoğlu says the insurance sector in Turkey is expected to record rapid growth in the coming decades.

Insurance company ERGOİsviçre plans to boost its market share and local presence, and to direct those goals, the company has hired Akın Kozanoğlu, a former vice president of Akbank, as its new chief executive.

According to a statement earlier this week, Kozanoğlu has left his vice president position at Akbank after working at Sabancı Holding for 33 years. Kozanoğlu said during a press conference late Wednesday that his decision to leave Akbank came after he decided to move on to seek “new excitement in his career.”

“During my nine-year-long career at Akbank as vice president, I was part of many mergers, acquisitions and critical decisions. But that job started to slacken in the last couple of years, which pushed me to look for new excitement,” Kozanoğlu said during a joint press conference with Jochen Messemer, the chairman of ERGO International AG.

Kozanoğlu decided to continue his career in the insurance sector, which is expected to record fast growth in the coming decades, he said, adding he is no stranger to the sector with his former positions as the board chairman of Ak Sigorta, as well as AvivaSa.

Messemer said one of his company’s basic principles is to hire CEOs for their local operations from the countries they operate. “High-level executives help us to understand the market and customer tendencies. Turkey is one of the most important markets for us,” he said.

ERGO International, the primary insurance group of Munich Re, acquired 100 percent of local insurance company İsviçre Sigorta in November for an undisclosed price and entered the Turkish market. According to the information given during the press conference, ERGOİsviçre is the fifth largest insurance company in Turkey with a total gross premium of 743.7 million Turkish Liras in 2008.

Segments targeted
ERGOİsviçre eyes to expand its operations in life insurance and retirement segments in Turkey, Messemer said, adding the company prefers to have brokerage agencies sell the products but did not rule out a possible deal with banks for the service. Turkey’s fast growing and fragmented insurance sector has seen a wave of foreign acquisitions in the last couple of years. Currently the market share of foreign companies hovers around 50 percent in Turkey’s $9 billion insurance sector.

The executives declined to give any figures regarding their objectives in the Turkish market, saying new plans will be made in the coming months.

“First, examination and recognition will be made. Then we will start working on the planning. I assume all of these will take two to three months. The real work will begin afterwards and then we will share our opinions with you,” Kozanoğlu said.

He sounded optimistic about the Turkish economy and said the recent slowdown in activity might bring opportunities, especially for companies that are on the edge of new planning. Messemer echoed similar views and recalled that Munich Re, the owner of ERGO, is among one of the most stable financial institutions and has the same credit rating as the Republic of Germany.

ERGO’s total assets rose to 133 billion euros in 2008 from 127.8 billion euros the previous year. But the company’s net income in 2008 plummeted to 92.2 million euros from 781 million euros on a yearly basis as a side effect of the ongoing global crisis.

During the press conference, Kozanoğlu declined to reply to any questions regarding his 33 years at Sabancı Holding, one of Turkey’s largest conglomerates.

“It was a tough decision to leave a group like Sabancı. I wouldn’t make such a decision unless I got this offer and the appropriate circumstances were under way,” he said, adding the decision was made nearly a month ago.

ERGO delivered its proposal through a headhunter company, and Messemer said they knew Kozanoğlu personally from his work at a global insurance association based in Geneva. Messemer also said Kozanoğlu will have a seat on the advisory board of ERGO International, which consists of four CEOs from the company’s operations in other countries.

by Şafak Timur

ISTANBUL – A prosecutor in the town of Digor decides speaking Kurdish in election campaigns is not a crime, setting a precedent the country sees as a new set of rules similar to the Copenhagen Criteria that Turkey had to follow to begin EU membership talks.

A prosecutor’s decision not to prosecute three Kurdish politicians for speaking their mother tongue in their election campaigns is a brave step that promises hope, according to lawyers and experts.

They say the decision should pave the way to change the Political Parties Law, which bans the use of any language other than Turkish in political propaganda.

In February 2009, during the opening ceremony for the election communication desk of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party, or DTP, in the Digor district of the eastern province of Kars, three politicians, Ayhan Erkmen, Veli Mükyen and Cemal Coşkun, delivered their speeches in Kurdish. Digor police made a criminal complaint against them, saying that the three candidates had acted against the Political Parties Law, which prohibits the use of any language other than Turkish in campaign materials and speeches or in party regulations.

But Digor prosecutor Ömer Tütüncü declined to prosecute the three politicians for their alleged act. What was critically significant about the decision is that Tütüncü said the relevant articles of the law had become null and void since the state-owned Radio and Television Corporation, or TRT, has been broadcasting in Kurdish since the beginning of 2009 and since high-level state officials address “Turkish citizens from the Kurdish race” in Kurdish during their visits.

“Once a person does what they are supposed to do, it is seen as an act of courage in Turkey. And what the prosecutor did is a courageous thing,” said lawyer Mithat Sancar.

“The European Convention on Human Rights is a part of our law that is above domestic law. According to our Constitution, if a law is in contradiction with [it], you should apply the [convention]. The prosecutor, in a very simple and normal way, fulfilled the Constitution’s order.” Lawyer Fikret İlkiz also weighed in on the decision not to prosecute. “This is a lawful decision. A prosecutor not only collects evidence against suspects, but also collects [evidence] for the benefit of the suspect,” he said. “This is a non-prosecution decision indicating that the relevant laws have, in a sense, lost their function.”

The prosecutor’s decision came at a time when state television is broadcasting in Kurdish on TV channel TRT 6, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke in Kurdish at the station’s opening, and Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ, in his visit to southeastern Anatolia, spoke with people of Kurdish origin with the help of a translator.

But Kurdish politicians have still been judged for speaking in Kurdish. Kurdish politician Orhan Miroğlu, who is also a columnist for daily Taraf, said the prosecutor’s decision is very significant. “Someone had to make this decision,” said Miroğlu, who last year was convicted for speaking in Kurdish during the campaign for the 2007 general elections.

Miroğlu applied to the European Court of Human Rights, which accepted his case. Miroğlu was prosecuted again this year in a separate case for the same reason; although he spoke in both Kurdish and Arabic, he was only charged with speaking in Kurdish.

Those who commented on the issue said the next step is to amend the Political Parties Law. “The law on political parties should be changed,” Miroğlu said. Lawyer Sancar, like Miroğlu, said that using Kurdish in all aspects of the society while avoiding it during political campaigns was irrational. “It was a schizophrenic situation, and it was not difficult to amend that,” Sancar said. “In the end, a prosecutor came out and with extremely clear and effective reasoning, under the light of international law principles, attempted to end this situation.”

Sami Tan, the head of the Istanbul Kurdish Institute, agreed that the decision eliminates the contradiction between the law and common practice. “There is a TV channel broadcasting in Kurdish 24 hours a day, while people are tried for speaking in Kurdish. This was our critique against TRT 6,” Tan said.

Unlawful decision
Not everyone applauded the decision, however. “If the Justice and Development Party wants to amend the Law on Political Parties, it will make a proposal and change it. How can this law be regarded as non-existing while it exists?” asked Oktay Vural, the head of the parliamentary group of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP.

Vural found the decision politically oriented. Lawyer Hakan Hanlı found the prosecutor’s decision unlawful, saying that only the legislative power is entitled “to enact or to vacate a law.”

The judicial power “applies and interprets” the law in general, he said, but only in exceptional cases would it enact a law. Hence, the legislative body is not entitled “to interpret the law” since the interpretation would be done by higher courts. “A prosecutor does not have the authority to interpret a law,” said Hanlı, who added that a decision by a prosecutor cannot create jurisprudence; only the decisions of supreme or higher courts can create that..

*Göksel Bozkurt contributed to this report.

SOWETO – South African football supporters are ready to cheer for Bafana Bafana at the Confederations Cup. They will be carrying unusual equipment: vuvuzelas to make sound, a type of horn once used to call people to come together, and makarapas, which are originally worn as protection against flying bottles in the bleachers.

Long horns blare as crowds wearing elaborately decorated miners helmets burst into song — all part of South African fans’ strategy to intimidate rival football teams.

It’s a scene that will replay again and again as the world gets an up-close look at how the nation celebrates sport with the kick-off of the Confederations Cup on Sunday, curtain raiser to the 2010 World Cup.

“This is exhausting, but if your team wins it’s all worth it,” said Themba Tsietsi, a 35-year-old from Soweto who calls himself the “number one fan” of South Africa’s national team Bafana Bafana.

His plastic yellow horn, known as a vuvuzela and extending a meter in length, flashes from beneath his helmet decorated in the colors of South Africa’s flag on the left side and the black and white colors of his favorite team on the right.

The hats are called makarapas, and are a source of intense pride for their owners.

Blow hard

“You blow the vuvuzela as hard as you can, you sing and shout at the top of your voice,” he explained during a friendly match last weekend between South Africa and Poland.

Vuvuzelas sound like foghorns — or more generously, trumpeting elephants — and are modern spin-offs of traditional instruments made from spiraling kudu horns, said Pedro Espi-Sanchis, an African music expert.

Such horns were once used to call people to come together, he explained, though how they became a fixture in football stands remains a mystery. Makarapas were originally worn as protection against flying bottles in the bleachers, until creative fans decided to carve and decorate helmets to show their support for the team.

“A makarapa is a true reflection of our hands-on, passionate South Africa football culture,” said Michael Souter, a graphic designer who formed a community project called Makaraba Makoya to create the hard hats.

Cutting and trimming the hard hats is a skill that takes three to four days to perfect, Souter said, saying each one is a work of art that reflects each fan’s personality.

Football fans spend hours adorning makarapas with the logo and colors of teams, images of a favorite player and embellishments such as giant sunglasses.

Tsietsi, wearing a green and yellow Bafana Bafana T-shirt, said he takes his job as a fan seriously. “Because I am unemployed, it took me months to get together my outfit. I had to do piece jobs and save a lot to buy an original Bafana T-shirt. “Then I bought the vuvuzela, a large flag. I made the makarapa myself — it took me about a month. My children helped with the decorations.”

Vuvuzelas blare loudest and most often at the beginning of the game, but as the match progresses, the singing starts. The songs, accompanied by clamping and stomping, get much louder when Bafana scores a goal.

Espi-Sanchis said most of the crowd’s football music has been adapted from traditional songs or anti-apartheid anthems.

He’s been working to harness the crowd’s energy into organized performances, creating a vuvuzela orchestra that performs around the country in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup. “Vuvuzela is a special instrument, uniquely South African,” he said.

As much as some fans love to blow their vuvuzelas, others are irritated by the jolting and haphazard noise. Espi-Sanchis hopes the orchestra will show people how to play the horns together.

“People don’t play it together rhythmically, so its full potential is not realized,” he said. “My objective with the vuvuzela orchestra, in light of Confederations Cup and 2010 World Cup, is to create a legacy.”

“Imagine, for 90 minutes, fans — especially international ones — will hear the sound of the vuvuzela and that sound will get entrenched as the sound of South Africa.”