habergiris.zamanaustralia.com

Author: Zaman Australia

  • Brazil releases Gülen-linked businessman arrested over Turkey’s extradition request

    The Supreme Federal Court of Brazil on Wednesday ordered the release of Ali Sipahi, who was arrested in April upon a request from Turkey for extradition due to his alleged ties to the faith-based Gülen movement, the pro-government Daily Sabah reported.

    Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered Sipahi be taken into custody on March 19. He was detained at Guarulhos Airport in Sao Paulo, where he was operating a restaurant.

    It is not clear if Brazil will approve Turkey’s extradition request for Sipahi.

    Turkey holds the Gülen movement responsible for a 2016 coup attempt, although the movement strongly denies any involvement.

    The Erdoğan government launched a global purge to bring Gülen movement followers back home to face prosecution.

    More than 500,000 people in Turkey have been subjected to prosecution on charges  of alleged membership in the movement.turkishminute

  • Greens set to retain Senate seats and increase primary vote in early count

    The Greens will retain a strong influence in the Senate after increasing their primary vote and looking set to hold all six seats they had up for re-election.

    ABC election expert Antony Green has predicted the minor party will win all six Senate seats, meaning the Greens would have nine senators, including three whose terms are ongoing.With 10 per cent of the votes tallied, the Greens looked set to collect 10.6 per cent of the primary vote, a slight increase of 0.4 per cent on the 2016 result.

    After calling the seat of Melbourne for incumbent MP Adam Bandt, all eyes were on the traditionally blue ribbon seats of Higgins and Kooyong, where the party was aiming to pick up a second lower house seat, but neither looked likely.

    The Greens’ Higgins candidate, Jason Ball, was not looking strong enough to steal the seat from Liberal candidate Katie Allen, with only about 23 per cent of first preference votes after 15 per cent of the vote had been counted.

    At his election night party in Melbourne on Saturday night, Mr Ball told a raucous crowd the mood in the electorate had been “one for change”.

    “There were a lot of people who told me they had voted for the Liberal Party their entire lives and today they voted for the Greens,” he said.

    “And they voted for the Greens because they care about the future for their children and grandchildren, and they’re worried about climate change.”

    Late on Saturday night, he said: “The Greens are very much still in this race and we are unlikely to know the result for a few days.”

    Senator Di Natale said three-way contests like the one in Higgins were “always difficult”.

    “We had this in Prahran, where it looked like we were behind in the state election and we managed to get over Labor and win that seat. That contest is still a very live one … The big unknown is the massive pre-poll numbers.”

    “Our Senate vote looks like it is holding up well,” Senator di Natale said, adding that the final result was “difficult to predict” and would not be known for “a few weeks”.

    “I’m hopeful that we will hold our team. We were written off before this election campaign but we have run strong campaigns across the country, put climate change front and centre and hopefully that’s reflected when we see the Senate numbers over the next couple of weeks.”

    Despite a tough fight in the lower house seat of Macnamara, formerly known as Melbourne Ports, the Greens were not expected to pick up the seat held by retiring Labor MP Michael Danby, with his successor Josh Burns likely to win based on early counting.

    Senator Di Natale said the Greens had been buoyed by a renewed focus on climate change in this election, with the Stop Adani convoy galvanising support.

    “I certainly think it helped,” he said.

    “It shone a spotlight on the issue of coal and climate change and, unfortunately, neither of the major parties is even prepared to talk about the role that coal plays in driving up climate change.” By Dana McCauley &with Goya Dmytryshchak

  • Scott Morrison within sight of a win despite Abbott losing Warringah

    A powerful swing to the Coalition in key parts of a divided nation has put Prime Minister Scott Morrison within sight of holding on to power after conflicting results in the north and south of the country produced a cliffhanger federal election.

    Labor leader Bill Shorten had been favoured in exit polls and made significant gains in some seats in NSW and Victoria, while independent candidate Zali Steggall defeated former prime minister Tony Abbott in Warringah. But his bid to become Australia’s 31st Prime Minister – through a platform of tax, wages and climate policy reform – was in deep trouble with his party suffering damaging defeats in key electorates the party needed to claim power.

    Scott Morrison’s presidential-style campaign focussing on income tax cuts and risks to the economy under Labor led the Coalition to significant gains in Queensland and Tasmania and has given him a realistic chance of a shock outright victory or minority government.With so many gains for the Coalition and so few for Labor, Mr Shorten’s hopes of becoming Prime Minister receded as election night went on.The Coalition, which has trailed Labor in the polls throughout its turbulent time in government, went in to the campaign with 74 seats and added to that tally across Queensland, where it defeated Labor in Longman and Herbert. The Coalition also wrested the Tasmanian seat of Braddon from Labor and appeared likely to claim the neighbouring electorate of Bass as well.

    The Coalition and Labor teams were anxiously waiting on results from Western Australia to be sure of the outcome. The Coalition’s gains left Labor clutching to the hope of negotiating with crossbench MPs to hold government in a hung Parliament.

    With the electorate enduring more than a decade of unprecedented parliamentary bloodletting – Australia has had seven Prime Ministers in 11 years – many neutral observers were hoping for a period of political stability.

    Mr Abbott said the Coalition would be able to retain government even though he conceded he would lose his seat of Warringah, a safe Liberal electorate for years that came under attack from independent candidate Zali Steggall and her campaign for more action on climate change.

    “The good news is that there is every chance the Liberal National Coalition has won this election,” Mr Abbott said.

    “This is a really extraordinary result, it is a stupendous result, it is a great result for Scott Morrison and the rest of the Liberal team, and Scott Morrison will quite rightly enter the Liberal pantheon forever.”

    The outcomes give the Coalition a narrow majority in the House of Representatives unless it suffers the loss of other seats.

    Labor gained the seat of Gilmore on the NSW South Coast and the two Victorian seats of Chisholm and Dunkley.Early in the night, Mr Shorten appeared to be on track to become Australia’s 31st prime minister after an exit poll predicted a swing to Labor, with voters naming health and climate change as key factors in their decisions.

    While the Liberal Party appeared likely to regain Wentworth, independent MPs made gains elsewhere with Victorian independent Helen Haines on track to win Indi and succeed former independent MP Cathy McGowan.

    Combined with the victory for Ms Steggall, the election appears to leave Parliament with a crossbench that includes Greens MP Adam Bandt, Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie, Queenslander Bob Katter, South Australian Rebekha Sharkie as well as Ms Steggall and Dr Haines.

    Mr Wilkie has ruled out doing any deal with a minority government while Mr Katter has backed the Coalition in the past. Others have named climate change policy as a factor in their decisions on whether to support a minority government on votes of confidence and supply.

    Labor described its election effort as its largest “field campaign” in history, putting more than 25,000 volunteers into the field to knock on more than one million doors. Labor claimed its supporters made more than one million phone calls to urge Australians to back their party.

    Activist group GetUp said it had mobilised more than 9000 volunteers who had worked on the ground, with a wider group of helpers making more than 700,000 phone calls during the campaign.

    The ACTU had about 5000 volunteers working during the campaign.

    Mr Morrison campaigned at a more hectic pace by flying to Tasmania on Saturday morning to woo voters in the marginal seat of Bass before heading to Sydney for the remainder of the day.

    The Coalition adopted the same approach the previous day with a relentless tour through Queensland marginal seats.

    Labor volunteers said Mr Hawke’s death had motivated them to campaign harder, although the event also prevented Mr Shorten campaigning in Brisbane electorates such as Forde on Friday, as he had intended.

    Mr Shorten acknowledged that he felt a greater responsibility to win because Mr Hawke wanted him to secure the victory.

  • ‘I know you are hurting’: Bill Shorten quits as Labor leader after shock loss

    Bill Shorten has quit as Labor leader as his party reels after an election loss that no one in the ALP saw coming, saying “I wish we could have done it for Bob”.

    Mr Shorten called Prime Minister Scott Morrison to concede defeat on Saturday night, shortly before he took to the stage at an ALP function in Melbourne.

    “I know that you are all hurting. I am, too,” Mr Shorten said in a message to Labor supporters.

    But Mr Shorten said the task of rebuilding the party would be “one for the next leader of the Labor Party”.

    “While I intend to continue to serve as the member for Maribyrnong, I will not be a candidate in the next Labor leadership ballot”.

    As Labor MPs and members try and make sense of their defeat, Mr Shorten defended the complex and at-times controversial suite of policies he took to voters on May 18.

    “The test, even before victory, which I set myself in the lead up to this election, was that at 6pm when the polls closed … I wanted to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say there was nothing more that I could have done. No more ideas that we should have expressed.”

    Senior Labor figures have begun to blame a “scare campaign” by the Coalition, and One Nation and United Australia Party preferences for the party’s shock result.

    Despite Mr Shorten predicting a clear Labor win on Saturday morning, his party lost a raft of its own seats, suffered swing against it in Queensland and Tasmania and failed to pick up key seats it had been seriously targeting around the country.

    After more than four hours of counting on Saturday, Labor had lost Lindsay in Sydney, Braddon and Bass in Tasmania and Longman and Herbert in Queensland. Gilmore on the New South Wales south coast was a rare gain. The ALP looked set to pick up Dunkley and Corangamite in Victoria, although these had been nominally Labor after a boundary redistribution.

    “It’s not the result that we had hoped for in Queensland, obviously. And when you look seat by seat, you see One Nation and Palmer Party preferences flowing to the LNP up there. I think that that’s going to take its toll,” deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek said.

    Labor’s Senate leader Penny Wong said the government had run a “scare campaign”, alluding to its attacks on Labor’s franking credits policy. “There’s no doubt that the scare campaign has bitten in some areas,” she told ABC TV.

    Labor-aligned strategist Simon Banks said there would need to be a full assessment of how polling and voter research was conducted, given it had consistently pointed to a Labor victory over the last three years.

    “They’re missing something,” the Hawker Britton managing director said.

    “It’s a bit of a mess, really. We weren’t expecting this,” said one 19-year-old ALP member, who had been handing out how-to-votes on Saturday.

    Linda Green, who has been an ALP member for more than 40 years, said she was devastated by the Labor result.

    “I really thought, ‘this is our time’. We’re devastated, really.”

    The Labor leader cast his vote at Moonee Ponds West Primary in his safe Melbourne seat of Maribyrnong with his wife Chloe. He also ate a sausage sandwich, which he said tasted “like a mood for change”.

    Before the votes were counted, Mr Shorten was asked if he would stay in politics if he lost.

    In a sign of Mr Shorten’s confidence, he mostly visited Coalition-held seats in the final week of campaigning. On Friday, following the death of Labor legend Bob Hawke, he pared back his campaign schedule, but the Labor campaign had already been winding down.

    The Labor camp was full of sadness at the loss of Mr Hawke on Thursday, but that was mixed with razor-sharp focus going into polling day to “do it for Bob”.theage.com

  • ‘We have an obligation to keep fighting’: Labor faces an open field leadership contest

    The Labor Party faces at least a three-way leadership contest in the wake of Saturday night’s election loss with senior frontbenchers Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen to join deputy leader Tanya Plibersek in a ballot to be decided by the party’s members and caucus.

    The field could further widen with defence spokesman Richard Marles, finance spokesman Jim Chalmers and environment spokesman Tony Burke also believed to be weighing up their options.

    Ms Plibersek, who is also the party’s education spokeswoman, confirmed on Sunday morning she was considering running for the leadership after outlining her thoughts on why Labor was defeated on Saturday.

    six years, and that we continue to offer Australians real options,” Ms Plibersek told the ABC’s Insiders program.

    “I think the investment in health and education, a real plan to tackle climate change, a real plan to lift wages, these are all absolutely critical to our chances of winning next time and making sure that we’re explaining those policies is critical too.

    “We have an obligation as Labor Party people to keep fighting for a fairer Australia, for a strong economy and a fair society.”

    Ms Plibersek and Mr Albanese are both from the party’s left while Mr Bowen, the party’s shadow treasurer, comes from the powerful NSW right faction. All are from Sydney.

    Some inside the party have questioned whether Mr Bowen is too damaged by his close association with the party’s tax and franking credits policies which the Coalition campaigned against so effectively.

    Mr Albanese, who ran against Mr Shorten for the Labor leadership in 2013, will hold a press conference later this afternoon to announce his candidacy.

    Under leadership rules introduced by former prime minister Kevin Rudd leadership contenders must win support of both party members and the Labor party room.

    The process took about five weeks in 2013. Mr Albanese won the rank-and-file membership vote but Mr Shorten won the caucus vote and, when the two were combined, he was the victor.With The Age

  • Office furniture of pro- Kurdish party municipality seized due to debts of predecessor

    The pro-Kurdish party’s new co-mayor of Turkey’s eastern province of Kars said that all office furniture of the municipality were seized as a result of an outstanding debt of the previous far-right nationalist administration, Mezopotamya News Agency reported.

    Ayhan Bilgen, who was elected as the new mayor from the predominantly Kurdish Democratic People’s Party (HDP) on March 31, said they have been witnessing waves of seizures since they took office.

    The previous Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) left a total debt of more than 338 million lira ($55.8 million) to its successors and all other unlovable assets and vehicles f the municipality was previously seized by payees, Mezopotamya said. This time a company that awaited an outstanding payment of 430,000 lira ($71,000) demanded seizure of the municipality’s office furniture as there were nothing left.

    “We talked to the company. We will ask for some time to review the tender. We will bring it to the court along with our complaint over the seizure,” Bilgen told Mezopotamya.

    According to Bilgen, there are serious irregularities in the tenders of the previous administration, as  the former mayor on the one hand failed to pay electricity bills and salaries, while at the same time continued to purchase equipment for parks.

  • Teacher who pleaded with gov’t to spare children’s lives vindicated by top Turkish court

    Turkey’s Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday that the imprisonment of Kurdish teacher Ayşe Çelik, who during a TV program in 2016 called for an end to clashes between Kurdish militants and Turkish security forces in Diyarbakır and asked authorities to not let children die, was a violation of freedom of expression.

    She is expected to be released after the top court’s ruling.

    Çelik, an unemployed teacher from the southeastern Turkish province of Diyarbakır, was sentenced to 15 months in April 2017, and an appeals court upheld the sentence in October. She was jailed in April 2018 with her six-month-old daughter, Deran.

    In May 2018 she was released from prison and confined to house arrest by the court, following an appeal by her lawyer, Mahsuni Karaman.

    Karaman announced from his Twitter account on April 18 that Çelik was jailed again to serve her sentence, which was delayed three times because she was pregnant and had a newborn baby.

    An investigation was launched into Çelik after she called in to the popular “Beyaz Show“ on Jan. 8, 2016 and urged authorities to take action to prevent the killing of children in clashes between Turkish security forces and the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

    During the TV program, Çelik said: “Are you aware of what’s going on in the country’s east? What’s happening here is misrepresented on television. Don’t stay silent! Please show more sensitivity as human beings! See us, hear us and give us a hand! I’d like to address the teachers who have abandoned their students. How are they going to return there? How are they going to look those innocent children in the eye? What a pity! Don’t let people die. Don’t let children die. Don’t let mothers cry.”

    The host of the program, Beyazıt Öztürk, had the audience applaud her by saying: “We are trying our best to make it heard. Your words have been a lesson for us. We will continue to do more. Hopefully your wishes for peace will be realized as soon as possible.”

    Following the show, the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into Çelik for “praising terrorism and a terrorist organization,” and the Bakırköy Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office initiated a separate investigation into Öztürk and Çelik on similar charges.

  • Controversial right-wing politician Fraser Anning booted from Senate

    As the dust from the 2019 election begins to settle, it seems controversial Queensland senator Fraser Anning has lost his Senate seat.

    Remembered widely as the victim of an egging by teenager Will Connolly, the right-wing politician has failed to secure enough votes to win himself a place in Parliament. ABC Election expert Antony Green made the announcement stating: “Fraser Anning goes back to where he came from … he won’t be in the Parliament”.

    Mr Anning’s spot in the upper house has always been tentative, securing his seat last election with just 19 primary votes. He gained office only after One Nation candidate Malcolm Roberts was found to be a dual citizen and was therefore ineligible.

    Even though the 69-year old candidate from Fraser Anning’s Conservative National Party won significantly more votes this year, he failed to secure a seat.

    The Queenslander has commanded media attention with his right-wing exploits.

    Immediately after 50 Muslims worshippers were murdered in a right-wing terror attack in Christchurch in March, Mr Anning published a statement blaming Muslim people for the attack.

    This statement was internationally condemned and, at a press conference a short time after, he was hit over the head with an egg by Will Connolly, better known as ‘Egg Boy’.

    Mr Anning again came under fire for using taxpayer dollars to fly to Melbourne to attend an extreme far-right rally organised by convicted criminals Blair Cottrell and Neil Erikson.

    At this rally attendees were photographed goose-stepping, doing the Nazi salute and displaying swastikas.

    While Mr Anning looks be on his way out, other familiar faces may be back with Tasmanian independent Jacqui Lambie and One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts likely to rejoin the upper house.

    Both members were removed from parliament due to citizenship issues.

     

  • Opposition still ahead in Istanbul mayoral race as recount nears completion

    The gap between the ruling party mayoral candidate for Istanbul, Binali Yıldırım, and opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoğlu had dropped to 15,823 votes as of early Monday, with about 90 percent of the invalidated ballots reassessed in the partial recount.

    In the March 31 local election, the opposition not only prevailed in a tight race in Istanbul’s financial and cultural hub, it also took control of Ankara, the capital. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which held both cities for decades, contested the results, claiming the elections were tainted.

    On Sunday Turkey’s ruling party appealed to the country’s top election authority for a total recount of votes in Istanbul’s 39 districts. Later on Sunday, the election board rejected the AKP’s appeal.

    Imamoğlu urged the governing AKP to concede. “I understand that it is not easy to lose (Istanbul) after ruling it for 25 years, but this is what democracy is about,” he said.

  • Brexit: UK prime minister says there is still a chance of a compromise deal

    British Prime Minister Theresa May claims reaching out to the opposition Labour party was the only way to avoid either leaving the EU with no deal or not leaving at all.

    She has just days left to come up with a solution before the latest Brexit date due on April 12, although she has asked Brussels an extension to the June 30.

    Leading Brexit supporter, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, says the prime minister’s difficulties are of her own making and if the UK is forced to stay in the EU it should make life difficult for Brussels.

    “When the multiannual financial framework (next EU budget) comes forward – if we’re still in (EU) – this is our one-in-seven-years opportunity to veto the budget and be really very difficult and I hope that any British PM would take that opportunity”

    Talks between May’s ruling Conservatives and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party are ongoing, with the government insisting a compromise can still be reached. But the mood music coming from the Corbyn camp, while positive, is not quite as optimistic, and they’re saying it’s down to the government to move.

    “We are currently waiting for the government to come back to us now to state whether they’re prepared to move on any of their red lines, Labour’s Business Policy Chief Rebecca Long-Bailey told the BBC’s Andrew Marr. “As I say, we had great discussions and we went into a lot of technical details but so far we haven’t seen anything from government that would suggest they are prepared to change any part of the deal going forward.”

    Andrea Leadsom: It is appalling to consider another referendum

    Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom discusses her views on a second referendum on The Andrew Marr Show.

    If May can agree a compromise deal with Labour then she will have something new to take to an EU summit on April 10. If not, she will have to come up with a new plan if she is to secure an extension from EU leaders, who are losing patience with the United Kingdom.