VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

 Ali Erdem leads his Alevi community each week in a ceremony filled with symbolic ritual, music and dance, performing in a place of worship that has been thrust into political debate ahead of Turkish elections due by 2023.

As a musician plays the lute-like saz and worshippers in red sashes dance in a circle to experience union with God, Erdem recites prayers and tales of persecution that Alevis, Turkey's largest religious minority, have faced in Turkish history.

With pre-election polls showing dwindling support for his long-ruling AK Party (AKP), President Tayyip Erdogan recently sent representatives to 1,585 cemevis, the Alevi places of worship, to hear the community's long list of grievances.

Erdogan faces an uphill battle to win over a minority - 15-20% of Turkey's 84 million population - that is mostly left of centre and suspicious of the Islamist-rooted AKP's objectives after past efforts to address Alevi concerns collapsed.

Alevi groups have demanded the official recognition of cemevis, the implementation of court rulings on the issue and an end to what they say is assimilation through compulsory religious education and discrimination in public life.

"The AK Party government is trying to create its own Alevis," Erdem said before the cemevi ceremony in Istanbul.

"We were repressed for hundreds of years but never bowed down to anyone," he said, recounting a series of historical massacres of Alevis.

Alevis draw on Shi'ite Muslim, Sufi and Anatolian folk traditions, practising rituals which can put them at odds with Turkey's Sunni Muslim majority. They are associated with Shi'ite Islam because of their veneration for Ali, whom Shi'ites believe was the Prophet Mohammad's rightful successor.

In 1993, 37 people, mostly Alevi intellectuals, were killed in a hotel fire in Sivas province that occurred during a Sunni Islamist protest against the presence at an Alevi festival of a translator of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses".

WILL FOR CHANGE?

A decade ago, Erdogan launched an undertaking to help the Alevis - only for it to collapse amid the turmoil caused by anti-government unrest focused on Istanbul's Gezi Park in 2013.

But, amid signs of diminishing AKP popularity, the issue re-emerged at a recent cabinet meeting, after which Erdogan pledged to work harder to enable all Turks "to breathe easily".

Ali Yurumez, an Alevi association representative at another Istanbul cemevi, said officials who visited the pre-fabricated building had offered to reconstruct it.

But he rejected this, saying such offers of material help suggested the government was not keen on making legal changes.

"They were thinking 'can we create a division among Alevis', with an election ahead of us. But I don't think Alevis will play along with that game," he said, sitting below photographs of the victims of the Sivas blaze.

He said Alevis had recently been targeted with expressions of hate, citing a Sunni theologian's declaration that an Alevi whose faith is contrary to Islam could not marry a Sunni woman.

However, Turkish officials said there was a real will for change in the latest overture to the Alevis.

"The president wants this issue resolved," a senior AKP official told Reuters. "The status of place of worship, which has long been demanded, may be given this time."

A senior Turkish official acknowledged the potential electoral benefit of such moves on minority rights, but denied that this was the motive for the work regarding Alevis.

"There may be an impact on votes but this work was launched years ago and was interrupted by the Gezi (Park protests)," he said. "It is unjust to see this as preparation for an election."

In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Alevis were denied the right to freedom of religion and faced discrimination. Turkey's appeals court ruled in 2018 that cemevis were places of worship.

But the government has not acted on these rulings and there appeared to be diverging government views on cemevis' status. The senior AKP official said they might be designated as cultural centres, exempting them from rent and utility payments.

Such a move would fall short of Alevi demands for place of worship status, even if there were financial benefits for cemevis that rely on private donations to finance the practice of the Alevi faith in the absence of state support.

By contrast, Turkey's nearly 90,000 mosques and their staff are financed by the Diyanet, or Religious Affairs Directorate, with a budget approaching $2 billion. But Alevis repeatedly stressed financial help was not what they sought.

Erdem himself works as a minibus driver ferrying factory workers around before making his way to the cemevi, but rejected the idea of the state paying a wage to faith leaders like him.

"I would never want a salary. We would never become the men of the state or the AKP." (reuters)

New Zealand's National Party opposition leader Judith Collins has been dumped by the party as it grapples with instability that has helped strengthen Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's position even more after her historic election win last year.

The conservative National Party will now have to elect its fifth leader in four years after the majority ousted Collins, hours after she relieved Simon Bridges, a former party leader, from her shadow cabinet following allegations of misconduct.

"It's been a privilege to take over the leadership of (National Party) during the worst of times and to do so for 16 months," Collins said in a tweet.

"It has taken huge stamina and resolve & has been particularly difficult because of a variety of factors."

Collins was named the leader of the National Party in July 2020 just months before the general election, which Ardern's centre-left Labour Party won convincingly.

Collins said in a statement issued late Wednesday that her decision to demote Bridges "relates to comments made by (him) to a female caucus colleague at a function a number of years ago".

"I knew when I was confided in by a female colleague regarding her allegation of serious misconduct against a senior colleague, that I would likely lose the leadership by taking the matter so seriously," Collins said in the tweet on Thursday.

Deputy Shane Reti has been appointed the interim boss with the National Party expected to elect a new leader next Tuesday, the New Zealand media reported.

Ardern said the leadership change in the National Party was an internal matter for the opposition.

"We're in the middle of a global pandemic and so my focus needs to be on managing that," she was quoted as saying in a report in the New Zealand Herald. (Reuters)

 President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) received France's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta on Wednesday to discuss cooperation between the two countries.

“I would like to convey several messages. First, we agree to increase communication next year when Indonesia becomes the G20 chair and France becomes the European Union president,” he said.

He expressed the hope that during France’s Presidency of the EU, negotiations on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between Indonesia and the EU would be expedited to achieve concrete results.

President Jokowi also said he hoped that France would become Indonesia’s partner in the struggle for open, fair, and non-discriminatory trade, adding he supports sustainable trade.

“I highly support sustainable trade but I object to (any effort to) misuse environmental issues as trade barriers,” he remarked.

The President warmly welcomed the effort to enhance the partnership between the two nations through the new dialog mechanism and the 2+2 meeting (foreign and defense ministerial meeting).

He then thanked France for its vaccine assistance of 4.8 million doses to Indonesia.

At the meeting, President Jokowi was accompanied by Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and Cabinet Secretary Pramono Anung, while Le Drian arrived with the French Ambassador to Indonesia, Oliver Chambard.  (Antaranews)

The government targets to reap an investment of US$21.28 billion in the mining sector by increasing the added value for minerals, with some commodities' reserves and production being among the top 10 in the world.

Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Arifin Tasrif stated that Indonesia was an attractive destination for mining investment based on its potential for production and nickel reserves being largest in the world.

"According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), our nickel reserves are the largest in the world. Some 23 percent of the world's nickel reserves are in Indonesia," Tasrif remarked in a statement obtained here on Thursday.

In addition to nickel, he noted that bauxite was ranked sixth in terms of the world reserves and production.

While Indonesia's copper reserves and production are ranked seventh and 12th respectively, gold is ranked fifth in terms of potential and sixth with regard to production.

The country's tin potential is the world's second-largest that constitutes 17 percent of the global reserves and production.

Tasrif noted that Indonesia also held vast potential in terms of rare earth metals and lithium but could not yet produce them due to the lack of purification technology.

Currently, Indonesia has 19 existing smelters, 13 of which are nickel smelters.

The government has planned to build 17 new smelters, with an investment value of US$8 billion, thereby bringing the total number of nickel smelters to 30. By 2023, the government plans to have 53 smelters operating in Indonesia.

"We are optimistic that the progress would be accelerated in 2022, as 2023 is the deadline for concentrate export permits," Tasrif pointed out.  (Antaranews)