Turkey Promises Orthodox Policy at Private Central Bank Meeting

Feb 19, 2014
By Onur Ant
Source: Bloomberg News

Turkey’s central bank promised economists that its policy is becoming simpler and more predictable, according to two people who attended a private meeting in Ankara today.

Deputy Governor Mehmet Yorukoglu and Abdullah Yavas, a member of the monetary policy committee, told the economists that the bank is moving toward a more orthodox policy where the benchmark one-week repurchase rate will be the main instrument for funding banks, according to Bora Tamer Yilmaz of Ziraat Investment and Inanc Sozer of Odeabank AS, who were at the meeting.

“Bank officials said that they wanted their policies to be viewed as more orthodox and more predictable,” Yilmaz said.

Turkey’s central bank developed an interest-rate corridor since 2010 that allowed it to vary monetary conditions on a daily basis. Critics said the system was over-complicated, and called it a way of circumventing political opposition to higher rates. The bank reversed course last month, raising all its main rates at an emergency meeting as it sought to stem a plunge in the lira.

The bank will keep policy tight until it’s confident that inflation, which was 7.8 percent last month, is slowing toward the target of 5 percent by mid-2015, Sozer said.

The move toward orthodoxy suggests the rates corridor will be symmetrical, with the overnight lending and borrowing rates that mark its boundary at an equal distance from the benchmark, Yilmaz said.

Link:  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-19/turkey-promises-orthodox-policy-at-private-central-bank-meeting.html?cmpid=yhoo.
 

Halkbank Profit Beats Estimates After Former CEO’s Arrest

Feb 18, 2014 
By Isobel Finkel
Source: Bloomberg News

Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS (HALKB) reported full-year profit that beat estimates, two months after the Turkish lender’s chief executive officer was arrested amid a corruption probe.
Net income rose to 2.75 billion liras ($1.3 billion) from 2.6 billion liras in 2012, the Istanbul-based lender said in a stock exchange filing today. That beat the 2.7 billion-lira estimate of 22 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Halkbank stock has dropped 24 percent in Istanbul trading since former CEO Suleyman Aslan was arrested on Dec. 17 after police found $4.5 million in shoe boxes at his home. His lawyer has said the money was charitable donations Aslan had gathered to build Islamic schools in Turkey and Macedonia. Aslan is awaiting trial.

Ali Fuat Taskesenlioglu, who was named CEO earlier this month, made no mention of his predecessor in yesterday’s statement. Instead, he commented on how Halkbank will work toward Turkey’s “2023 vision” by supporting the import and export activities of small and medium-sized Turkish companies. The year 2023 is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic and is a symbolic date for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development party.

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Halkbank fell 0.4 percent to 11.95 liras as of 3:16 p.m. in Istanbul trading.

“While earnings exceeded our forecast, the quality was weak,” Duygun Kutucu, an analyst at Burgan Yatirim Menkul Degerler AS, said in an e-mailed report. “The decline in the loan-deposit spread and the below-sector fee growth signify a mediocre operating performance.”

Halkbank’s cost of deposits in the fourth quarter increased 50 basis points to 4.8 percent from the third quarter, its earnings presentation showed. The yield it receives on loans remained at 9.4 percent, down from 11.3 percent in the year-earlier period. The lender’s loan-to-deposit ratio was 84 percent, which Elvan Oztabak, head of investor relations, described as a “comfortable level” compared with the industry average of 111 percent.

Deputy General Manager Mehmet Hakan Atilla said on a conference call with reporters the bank hired three external auditors to review its transactions and compliance procedures. “None of them submitted any negative findings or notices,” he said.

Halkbank’s fourth-quarter net income was 741 million liras, little changed from a year-earlier and beating the 682 million-lira mean estimate of 17 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Earnings have been better than analysts’ estimates for at least the past eight quarters.

Link:   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-17/halkbank-profit-beats-estimates-following-former-ceo-s-arrest.html?cmpid=yhoo.

Turkey president signs controversial Internet law into force

February 18, 2014
Source: Yahoo News

Ankara (AFP) - Turkey's president, Abdullah Gul, said Tuesday he had signed into force a controversial law voted in by the government that would tighten controls over web use.

Gul said on his Twitter feed he promulgated the law -- which the opposition and rights groups say infringes on citizens' freedoms -- after the government assured him it would soften parts of it through later amendments.

"I am aware of the problems mainly on two points.... These concerns will be taken into account in the new law," he said.

An opposition lawmaker earlier confirmed the planned amendments to aspects of the bill concerning some powers of Turkey's telecommunications authority.

"The steps are positive but not enough," Akif Hamzacebi of the Republican People's Party (CHP) was quoted as saying by NTV television.

Under the bill, the Telecommunications Communications Presidency (TIB) can demand that Internet providers block pages deemed insulting or considered an invasion of privacy.

But the government is now proposing that the TIB will have to inform a judge about any decision to block a web page, according to the Hurriyet newspaper.

The judge would then have to issue a ruling within 48 hours or the TIB move would be deemed invalid.

The Internet bill has sparked outrage both at home and abroad and fuelled concerns over the state of democracy in the EU-hopeful country under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The legislation came on top of moves to curb the judiciary and a government purge of police and prosecutors in the face of corruption probe that has targeted close Erdogan allies.

Erdogan has vehemently denied accusations of online censorship, and said Tuesday the proposed Internet curbs were aimed at countering "blackmail" and "threats". 

"The Internet will not be censored, freedoms will not limited," Erdogan told his lawmakers from his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in parliament.

He said the number of Internet subscribers in predominantly Muslim Turkey had swelled to 34 million from 20,000 since the AKP came to power in 2002. 

Defenders of the law say the new restrictions protect individual rights while critics argue they amount to nothing more than a fresh assault on freedom of expression and an attempt to stifle dissent.

For Israel, it's all about the population figures

February 18, 2014
By KARIN LAUB and DAN PERRY
Source: Yahoo News

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian construction worker Nael Yassin and his wife, Wafa, are the proud parents of a new baby girl — the fifth child for the couple in their early 30s.

Such fecundity is usually a private affair, but in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a broader issue is in play. A race for "demographic" prominence — and the fact that Israel may be losing it — has become critical to the current peace effort led by John Kerry.

The U.S. secretary of state himself has started warning Israel that it stands to become a binational state unless it ends the occupation of the lands it captured in the 1967 war. Kerry, who is expected to present a framework for a deal soon, said last month that failure "will make it impossible to preserve (Israel's) future as a democratic Jewish state."

The idea — emphasized as never before — is being listened to in Israel.

In a speech Monday, Finance Minister Yair Lapid presented the issue as the main reason Kerry must succeed: "Every moment we don't separate from the Palestinians is a clear threat to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state."

The "demographic issue" is focusing Israeli minds in a way that moral arguments against occupation have not, particularly when they are weighed against forgoing the West Bank's strategic hinterland and Jerusalem with its unrivaled religious and historic sites.

Some experts are predicting Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel plus the areas it captured in 1967 — the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Continued occupation, they say, would force Israel into a hard choice: Formalize Jewish minority rule over disenfranchised Palestinians — or give them the right to vote and end the Zionist dream of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine.

In this context, those arguing for a pullout on these terms are essentially trying to save Israel as a "Jewish state" — where the degree of Jewishness is a function of the size of the majority.

In a century of Arab-Jewish conflict, the population balance shifted because of Jewish immigration and war-driven displacement of Arabs.

About 750,000 people lived in historic Palestine at the beginning of British rule after World War I, including 78 percent Muslims, 11 percent Jews and 10 percent Christians, said Joseph Chamie, former head of the U.N. Population Division. The Christians and Muslims were generally both Arabs.

In 1947, the United Nations voted to end British rule and partition Palestine into "independent Arab and Jewish states." At that time the population of 1.8 million was 60 percent Muslims, 31 percent Jews and 8 percent Christians.

In the war that followed, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled from what became Israel, and many Jews then immigrated to the new country. Jews made up 87 percent of Israel's population in 1950, Chamie said.

The West Bank and the Gaza Strip were seized by Jordan and Egypt, respectively — but when Israel captured those areas in 1967, the demographic equation changed again.

Currently, just over 12 million people live in the combined territory, according to figures from the Israeli and Palestinian statistics bureaus.

Israel's population stood at some 8.1 million in 2013, said Pnina Zadka of Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics. That includes West Bank settlers, Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, captured in 1967 from Syria. The figure breaks down to 6.1 million Jews, or roughly 75 percent, and 1.68 million Arabs, or 21 percent, she said.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics put the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem last year at just over 4.4 million.

Subtracting some 300,000 Palestinians in east Jerusalem from the Palestinian bureau's total because Israel already counted them, the result would still indicate near-parity in the Holy Land — 6.1 million Jews and close to 5.8 million Arabs, including those with Israeli citizenship.

Without a partition deal, Jews will eventually become a minority because of higher Arab population growth, said demographer Sergio Della Pergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Arnon Soffer, a geographer at Haifa University.

Some Israelis would like to exclude Gaza from the count, since Israel pulled out troops and settlers in 2005 and it is now controlled by the Hamas militant group. But Palestinians see it as an integral part of Palestine and argue that Israel's sea blockade and continued control of airspace mean the occupation continues in another form.

If Gaza residents are removed from the count, then Jews would make up 61 percent of the population in Israel and the West Bank, but would still end up as a minority in 20 to 25 years, Della Pergola said.

In Israel itself, the higher Arab and lower Jewish growth rates will converge in about a generation, said Zadka of the Israeli statistics bureau.

So if Israel gives up most of the West Bank, it can assure a Jewish majority at home "for eternity," Soffer said.

On the other hand, Della Pergola said, keeping the West Bank means "you must give up on a Jewish state."

Several former right-wing Israeli politicians, most prominently prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, seem to have come to the same conclusion despite past support for the occupation. Sharon oversaw Israel's pullout from Gaza while Olmert pursued a partition deal in talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that broke down in 2008.

Current premier Benjamin Netanyahu, long a hard-liner, now seems to be at least a partial convert as well. He speaks of a two-state solution and vows to prevent a binational state.

But his Likud Party still formally opposes a Palestinian state and his messages can appear halfhearted and mixed. Palestinians especially distrust him, pointing to his refusal to freeze the settlement effort that has complicated partition by placing 550,000 Israelis on occupied land.

Much of Israel's current thinking involves how to keep as much as possible of the West Bank — to minimize the number of settlers that will have to be moved — while at the same time incorporating as few Palestinians as possible. The Palestinians bristle at significant changes to the pre-1967 border.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman caused a stir in recent weeks by proposing to swap parts Arab-populated parts of Israel proper for areas of the West Bank with Jewish settlements.
Some on the Israeli right still argue that the demographic threat is overstated.

The American-Israel Demographic Research Group, a private initiative led by Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli consul in Texas, claims Palestinians in the West Bank number only about 1.5 million — or about 1 million less than the Palestinian count.

Ettinger's group alleges that two Palestinian censuses, of 2007 and 1997, were flawed. He argued that in 1997, Palestinian demographers counted some 325,000 Palestinian emigres and presumed large-scale immigration that didn't materialize.

Ola Awad, the chief Palestinian demographer, said the 2007 census was based on a detailed head count, with advice from the U.N. and Norway. Anders Thomsen of the U.N. Population Fund backed her up, saying the census was "done according to international standards," with support by his and other U.N. agencies.

Yacov Faitelson, a member of Ettinger's group, also argued that Arab fertility is falling in much of the region while Jewish fertility — already exceptionally high for a developed country with three children per woman — is on the upswing.

Della Pergola said he factored declining Arab fertility rates into his forecasts, and charged that his critics ignore that Palestinian society is younger, with more people of reproductive age.

The Yassins, who live in the Qalandiya refugee camp north of Jerusalem, illustrate some of those trends. Like others in their generation, they tend to have smaller families than their parents, but still have more children, on average, than Jewish couples.

Nael Yassin, 34, who was one of seven siblings, said he hopes baby Rahaf will be his last. At his wife's bedside, he objected to the idea of a demographic race, calling it unsustainable.
"Where would everyone go?" he said.

___

Perry reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed reporting.

 

Israeli Minister Slams Boycotts as ‘New Form of Anti-Semitism’

Feb 17, 2014 
By Calev Ben-David and Fadwa Hodali
Source: Bloomberg News

Using economic sanctions to influence Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians is a “new form of anti-Semitism,” Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said, even as boycott activists contended that recent successes had Israeli leaders “panicking.”

Bennett told a Jerusalem conference of American-Jewish leaders today that despite boycott efforts, Israel continued to draw record foreign investment, especially in its technology sector.

“I’m not at all ignoring this sort of threat, but let’s be very clear: Anyone who suggests to boycott Israel, that’s an unacceptable approach, that’s a new form of anti-Semitism,” Bennett said. He asked conference participants to campaign against boycotts.

Finance Minister Yair Lapid and other Israeli officials have warned that the sanctions’ still-negligible economic effect may deepen after several European companies and institutions cut ties in recent months with Israeli companies that operate in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Palestinians claim the territories, captured by Israel in 1967, for a future state.

The sanctions campaign also won a higher profile after actress Scarlett Johansson cut her ties last month with the U.K.-based humanitarian group Oxfam, which criticized her for acting as a celebrity spokeswoman for SodaStream International Ltd. (SODA), the Israeli maker of home soda machines with a factory in the West Bank.

Boycott leaders, meeting today in the West Bank near Ramallah, said a decade of activism was bearing fruit.
The boycott initiative has “reached a tipping point in its struggle for comprehensive Palestinian rights under international law,” said Omar Barghouti, a founder of BDS, the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “The Israeli government is panicking because of the recent fast growth of BDS around the world, particularly in countries that have always been considered Israel’s closest allies in the world: the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, among others.”

Link:   http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-17/israeli-minister-slams-boycotts-as-new-form-of-anti-semitism-.html?cmpid=yhoo.
 

Abandoning Egypt: Travel Operators Report Further Declines

Feb 11, 2014
 By  By Christina Zander
Source: The Wall Street Journal

 Companies in the European travel business are crossing their fingers for Egypt, after political unrest in late 2013 put another dent in the North African nation’s appeal as a vacation destination.

British travel companies Thomas CookTCG.LN -0.05% and TUITT.LN +1.29%, and Helsinki-based FinnairFIA1S.HE -0.74% all cited slack demand for winter holidays in their most recent earnings calls. “The whole European travel industry was hit by the decline in the Egypt market and we were no exception,” Thomas Cook Chief Executive Harriet Green said in a call Tuesday.

The direct impact could be seen at Finnair, a Nordic carrier with hefty reliance on flights to warmer locales, such as Thailand or Southern Europe. The airline said fourth-quarter leisure traffic sagged 20% compared with the prior year, and a lack of interest in Egypt played “a major part” in the decline.

Finland’s largest airline by passenger numbers posted a net loss of $18.7 million in the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of EUR4.8 million the same period 2012, as sales fell by 8.5% to $767 million.
While many travel companies have avoided Egypt altogether, even customers interested in visiting face complications. Insurers, for instance, have been hesitant to write policies for package tours due to the uncertain situation in the country.

Thomas Cook posted 0.9% drop in sales in the three months ended Dec. 31 to $2.78 billion. Excluding Egypt, first-quarter revenue grew 4.1% compared with the same period a year earlier.

Thomas Cook’s Ms Green said the company was “very encouraged to see people beginning to return, particularly from the U.K., Germany and Russia.”

No such optimism could be detected from Finnair. For 2014, the airline said uncertain economic outlook in Europe and Asia is contributing to weak consumer demand in some of its main markets. The carrier noted in its report for the third quarter that the impact of Egypt cancellations would be reflected in the fourth quarter as well as in the first quarter 2014.

Finnair said Egypt package tour cancellations will also impact the first quarter and the drop in leisure traffic can be seen in the traffic data for January that the company reported last week.

British travel operator TUI also cited Egypt as a challenge. “We had pretty much no customers there during the month of October,” Chief Financial Office William Waggot said in an earnings call last week.  ”And the program for the rest of winter is about 50% down on where we were planning to be.”

- Jana Weigand contributed to this article

Link:   http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2014/02/11/abandoning-egypt-travel-operators-report-further-declines/?mod=yahoo_hs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Egypt's Morsi sees spying trial adjourned after stormy start

February 16, 2014
By Haitham El-Tabei
AFP
Source: Yahoo News

Cairo (AFP) - Egypt's deposed president Mohamed Morsi claimed he was being muzzled in a soundproof dock at the start of his trial on espionage charges Sunday, as his defence lawyers staged a protest walk-out.

The court adjourned the trial, the third for the Islamist since his July 3 ouster, to February 23 to allow the lawyers' syndicate to appoint new lawyers.

Morsi, who has shouted that he was Egypt's legitimate and elected president in hearings of other trials against him, said the court was trying to silence him.

"We are in a farce, all this because you are afraid of me. You are afraid that the president speaks," Morsi cried out.

"If this farce continues, don't come to the court," Morsi told his defence.

Mohamed Selim al-Awa, a member of the defence team, told AFP: "We have withdrawn until the court removes the glass cage, we will not get in the room today."

The soundproof dock is designed to stop Morsi and the other defendants from interrupting the proceedings with outbursts. On Sunday, 20 defendants were brought to court, including Morsi, who was placed in a separate dock with a former aide, and the Brotherhood's supreme guide Mohamed Badie and his deputy Khairat al-Shater.

The accused include former presidential aides and renowned political scientist Emad Shahin, who is being tried in absentia.

The latest court case is part of a relentless government crackdown targeting Morsi and his Islamist supporters since he was ousted by the military after a single year in power.

Morsi and 35 others, including leaders of his Muslim Brotherhood, are accused of espionage "for the international organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood, its military wing and (Palestinian) Hamas movement."

If found guilty, the defendants could face the death penalty.

Morsi, who was Egypt's first democratically elected and civilian president, is already on trial for alleged involvement in the killing of opposition protesters in December 2012.

Along with 130 others, including dozens of members of Hamas and Lebanon's Shiite militant group Hezbollah, he is separately being tried on charges linked to a jailbreak during the 2011 uprising that toppled strongman Hosni Mubarak.

The ousted leader also faces trial for "insulting the judiciary". A date for that has yet to be set.

In the espionage trial, the prosecution aims to implicate Morsi in a vast conspiracy involving foreign powers, militant groups and Iran to destabilise Egypt.

The defendants are accused of "espionage for foreign organisations abroad to commit terrorist attacks in the country", a prosecution statement said.

Some defendants, including Essam Haddad, Morsi's second in command when president, also stand accused of betraying state secrets to Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

During Morsi's short-lived presidency, ties flourished between Cairo and Hamas, a Palestinian affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood which rules neighbouring Gaza.

But since July, Egypt's military-installed government has accused Hamas of backing Morsi and his Brotherhood and carrying out terrorist attacks inside Egypt.

The army has destroyed several hundred tunnels used to smuggle crucial supplies, including fuel, into the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip.

Since Morsi's ouster, his supporters have faced a relentless crackdown by Egypt's government that has left more than 1,400 people dead, according to Amnesty International, and seen thousands more arrested.