Action on Geneva Proposals according to Constitution: President 

2015-11-17

President Maithripala Sirisena said today every action in relevant to Geneva Proposals would be taken in accordance with the Constitution of Sri Lanka.

The President expressed these views at the second phase of the all party meeting held this evening at the Presidential Secretariat.

The President also instructed to appoint a committee to take ideas, based on the mechanisms of truth seeking, accountability, reparation and enforcing of laws.

The President stated that the government would sensitively consider the 12 proposals presented by the political parties, concerning of the common agreements as well as common objections to make this all party meeting successful.

He pointed out this opportunity was a new experience to everybody including the government, politicians and public servants.

He said these issues should be solved in a manner that the dignity of the country was safeguarded.

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President Maithripala Sirisena says every action in relevant to Geneva Proposals will be taken in accordance with the Constitution of Sri Lanka.

The President was speaking at the second phase of the all party meeting held today (Nov. 17) at the Presidential Secretariat.

He said the all party meeting will be held according to a fixed agenda and time frame in the future. In accordance with the agreement of the meeting, he instructed to give Sinhala, English and Tamil translations of the proposals of each political party to the parties attended in the meeting, fulfilling the request made by them at the first all party meeting.

The President also instructed to appoint a committee to take ideas, based on the mechanisms of truth seeking, accountability, reparation and enforcing of laws.

According to the decisions taken at the first all party committee, 12 proposals have been presented by the political parties.

The President stated that the government will sensitively consider these proposals, concerning of the common agreements as well as common objections to make this all party meeting successful. He pointed out this opportunity is a new experience to everybody including the government, politicians and public servants. He said these issues should be solved in a manner that the dignity of the country is safeguarded.

Leader of the Sri Lanka Communist Party Mr. Dew Gunasekara pointed out the agreeable ideas should be adopted in parliament and come agreement on disagreeable areas.

Mr. Dinesh Gunawardena, leader of the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna pointed out it is important to personally study every proposal presented by each party, by the President. He said these discussions should not be done with an idea that the only thing which is remaining is implementation of the human rights reports by the United Nations. He said the proposals on hybrid court violate the constitution of Sri Lanka. He emphasized that there are facts in Geneva Proposals which not acceptable to us.

The leader of Sri Lanka Samasamaja Party Mr. Thissa Witharana said he has three years experience in organizing all party committees. He said it should give an opportunity for every party to express their independent ideas, and also every decision should be taken according to the discussions at the all party meeting.

The President then stated this all party meeting is a free platform for everybody to express their ideas.

Mr. Senthil Thondaman, leader of the Sri Lanka Labour Congress stated that the Tamil people have confidence over the President’s accountability to make the all party discussions successful. He said it is seen in his intervention to free political prisoners. He added that the minor communities have confidence that the all party discussions will be practically implemented.

The leader of the Democratic Front Mr. Sarath Fonseka said the proposals of this new government should not be similar to the agenda of the former government. He pointed out we should learn from previous mistakes when entering into a new journey.

Mr. Mono Ganeshan, leader of the Democratic People’s Front pointed out the interest shown by the political parties on Geneva Proposals should be proceeded for the solution of ethnic problem. He said nobody wants to create a separate country but everybody should acknowledge this as a multi-racial and multi-religious country. He also pointed out the importance of understanding the problem that the people in the North think the North is their’s and the people in the south think that the entire country is of them.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Mangala Samaraweera stated that the 20 facts related to the proposals should be studied separately. He said the political parties should express their likes and dislikes for each issue.

Mr. Vijitha Herath, JVP Member of Parliament said solutions should be found within a local frame. He stated the government should explain to the people about the discourse on this intervention.

Mr. Amir Ali, All Island People’s Congress Member of Parliament said the time frame of the investigations about the human rights violations should go back to 1985.

Leader of Democratic People’s Liberation Front D. Siddharthan said the government has responsibility to cure the hearts of the Tamil people. They have confidence over President’s commitment of the President on this regard.

Rajitha’s Son Denies Daddy’s Rs. 5 M Bribe From Avante Garde, Says Never Spied On Harin Fernando

November 18, 2015

Parliamentarian Chathura Senaratne, the son of Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne today denied a charge that his father had taken money from the Avant Garde owner Nissanka Senadhipathi.

Chathura Senaratne

The Lanka e news web site last night carried a story with a recorded telephone conversation which the website says is between Senadhipathi and Senaratne’s Secretary Dr. Sayuru Samarasundera. In the conversation Senadhipathi says Samarasundera had accepted Rs.5 million on behalf of Senaratne.

In the conversation the person identified as Senadhipathi in a threatening manner asks the person identified as Samarasundera to reveal whether he had pocketed the money instead of giving it to Senaratne for which Samarsundera says he had given it to Senaratne as requested.

The web site identifies this conversation as evidence to prove that Senaratne had accepted money from the Avant Garde boss.

Senaratne has openly said in the past that he had declined offers from the maritime security services to fund his election campaigns.

Attempts by Colombo Telegraph to contact Dr. Senaratne failed with Chatura Senaratne claiming that his father was on an official visit overseas.

However, Chathura said that his father will give an appropriate reply to the charges as soon as he arrives from the foreign visit.

Meanwhile Chathura also denied a charge leveled against him.

Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure Minister Harin Fernando told journalists today that he would brief the Cabinet tomorrow on an incident where a minister’s son intruded into his ministry and tried to spy on him.

When queried, Fernando declined to name the person he was referring to.

However speculation was rife that the person Fernando was referring to was Chathura Senaratne.

Fernando said that this was related to the Avant Garde fiasco. Fernando’s name too is mentioned along with several other powerful politicians as those trying to defend the Avant Garde.

“In fact we are good friends” Senaratne added.                            Read More

Why the Bribery and Corruption Commission is inefficient?

Nov 17, 2015

Commissioner General of the Bribery & Corruption Dilrukshi Wickramasinghe alleges that the inefficiency of the Bribery & Corruption is due to the lack of man power.

Addressing a media conference yesterday the 16th she said there are 10,000 complaints have been piled up. She said the institution has a requirement of 800 officers but there are only 150 officers at present. She said due to this lack of manpower the institution cannot efficiently function.

She said this year alone there are 4000 complaints has been lodged and another 6000 complaints were stacked before this year.

Complaints in 2001
She said some of the complaints are lodged in the year 2001. However she said that the institution would not drop any previous complaints. Director General said that before appointing new commissioners there were many hindrances for her independent function but under the new commission the investigations are conducted without any impediment.

Last 22nd new members were appointed to the commission and their first duty was to recruit 50 officers who were rejected by the former commissioners.

When BBC’s Azard Ameen questioned the commissioner general is there any investigation with regard to the controversial Avantgarde company she said currently there is an investigation in progress in the commission. Since investigations are on progress she refused to give any comment.

She said “I am a person who don’t wish to speak much but prove from my actions”

Request from public
She urged the public and the government servants not to produce complaints in a single paper but to compile and submit more information’s.

She said due to the witness protection act which was passed at the beginning of this year the witnesses would not face hindrances and she promised to protect the witnesses.

She said her institution has organized a walk against corruption on the International Anti Corruption Day which falls on the 9th of December by joining with other civil society organizations and on that day the commission would present its new mechanism.

Doctors and conductors

Editorial-November 16, 2015, 7:04 pm 

Health Minister Dr. Rajitha Senaratne has torn into some of his ministerial colleagues. They are not even fit to be bus conductors, a Sinhala daily has quoted him as saying. One may argue that Dr. Senaratne has made no revelation. But, his considered opinion of some of his fellow ministers serves to confirm the widely held view of parliamentarians in general and members of the Cabinet in particular. However, it may be wrong to say that ministers are less competent than bus conductors where siphoning off funds is concerned.

Bus workers are said to be of the view that a conductor who does not buy a gold chain within three months of securing employment is not worth his salt. Ministers don’t take that long to amass enough wealth for them to live in clover for the rest of their lives!

Last Parliament had nearly 150 members who had failed the GCE A/L examination and about 90 of them had sat the GCE O/L unsuccessfully. Now, according to what the Cabinet Spokesman himself tells us the present Parliament is no better. What the future holds for a country which has misfits governing it is not difficult to foresee.

The Budget 2016 is scheduled to be presented to Parliament shortly. Legislators are required to take part in the debate thereon, which will go on for days. The ministers, Dr. Senaratne has lambasted, won’t be able to make head or tail of the budget. How can they discuss issues concerning public finances? No wonder they either keep away during crucial parliamentary debates or make much noise and say very little. A cantankerous minister of the Rajapaksa government cut a pathetic figure when he was challenged by the then Opposition firebrand Dayasiri Jayasekera to define real income during a TV debate on a budget a few years ago. The question is whether a country can manage its affairs with such politicians at the levers of power.

Doctors turned lawmakers find themselves in the exalted company of misfits and imbeciles who have become ministers by securing nominations to contest elections and pulling the wool over the eyes of the voting public. If the holier-than-thou political party leaders including the self-appointed champions of good governance had prevented those elements from entering the fray and, instead, nominated some intelligent, capable persons to contest elections the country could have achieved some progress.

The blame for burdening the country with ministers not fit to be bus conductors should be apportioned to the leaders of the SLFP-led UPFA and the UNP-led coalition. They promised to field only capable, decent men and women at the Aug. 17 general election, didn’t they? They have reneged on that solemn pledge. Putting the right people in the right jobs is half the battle in developing a country as evident from Singapore’s success story.

Minister Senaratne has also said the government has within its ranks prethas (hungry ghosts) and kumbhandas (misshapen spirits). Being one of the architects of the present government, he knows the ruling party MPs and ministers for what they really are. He has stressed the need to banish them. We thought only the leaders of the previous government were credulous enough to solicit the services of exorcists and astrologers. However, if the government is troubled by evil spirits, it has to do something about them.

Some of the prethas, kumbhandas and other such spirits which assume the human form and go places in politics are difficult to get rid of. People succeed in exorcising them with the help of their franchise at elections. But, some of those evil spirits make a comeback through the medium called the National List which has become a stinking sewer!

Second Editorial: Avant Garde: Twisting the Facts

SECOND EDITORIAL

Oh, what a tangled web we weave
When first we practise to deceive! ~ Canto VI, XVII

(November 17, 2015, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) An interesting twist on the real facts have started floating around on the recent decision of the President followed by the investigative reports by the relevant authority on the Avant Garde Maritime Service (AGMS), the private entity which had the monopoly on maritime security since 2012.

Second Editorial Avant Garde Twisting the Facts by Thavam Ratna

Rajitha tries to forfeit Sayuru and try to become clean suit – Intimidates to resign 

Nov 17, 2015

Reports reaching us confirm that health minister Rajitha Senarathna following coming to light his involvement in taking bribes is intimidating his friend and the chairman of the State Pharmaceutical Corporation Sayuru Samarasundara to resign from his post citing that he has taken bribes from the owner of Avantgarde Nissanka Senadipathi.

Many ministers has informed the president that he should take action against this bribes which has caused a great chaos within the government.

Meantime Rajitha’s daughter in law Sujatha Senarathna too is intimidating Sayuru Samarasundara to give a statement to the media citing that it was not the minister who took the bribe but himself. Reports confirm that she is trying to meet high echelons of the government and lawyers and trying to find a way out from this alleged bribe.

However Nissanka Senadipathi is compiling all documents to prove that there were dealings between him and minister Rajitha.

The below is the five million cash cheque given to Dr. Sayura in August

Nagadeepa & Nainathivu: Upholding All Parts Of The Cultural Mosaic

By Chandre Dharmawardana –November 17, 2015

Prof. Chandre Dharmawardana

It has been reported that some Northern Provincial Council (NPC) members have initiated moves to change the name of Nagadeepa to Nainathivu, triggering polarization of opinion back to the feverish days of the TNA rallies in Vaddukkoddai (a town known even up to 1900 as Batakotte, marked as such in Dutch maps). That was a time when the gory verses of Kasi Ananthan calling for the blood of “traitors” were hailed as liberating “poetry”.

Ever since the railway connected Colombo with Jaffna in 1905, Northerners have moved into Colombo and suburbs, and then more well do to went on to even better climes abroad. Today, in Colombo we see a vibrant multi-ethnic society where Tamil culture is more alive than in Jaffna. Some businesses in Dehiwala have Tamil and English sign boards with names like “Dehiwalai”. But the Sinhalese have not protested. It is common to see buses with Tamilized destination names (in Tamil characters) where Tangalle becomes Tangallai and Halavatha becomes Chilapam, with absolutely no protest from the Sinhalese.

Unfortunately, Tamil nationalism and its cousin, Sinhala nationalism changed the open discussion of such topics. Toponymic studies have become a hot potato where a mere discussion of place names becomes like the positioning of “kajan” fences in Jaffna as they move back and forth claiming territory! The souring of the minds of even scholars of the caliber of A. J. Wilson from about 1965 onwards has been documented by Michael Roberts (Michael Roberts: Tamil nationalism: Journal of South Asian Studies, n.s., Vol.XXVII, no.1, April 2004

A vast number of place names in the North and East are most likely to be of Sinhala origin, as was pointed out even by Tamil Pandits like Rasanayagam, K. Velupillai and colonial civil servants. Velupillai, in hisYalpana Vaibhava Kaumudi devotes a whole chapter to Sinhala place names in Jaffna. These were further extended by Paul E. Peiris, Nicholas, Paranavithana and others, and in a doctoral thesis by Dr. Indrapala Karthigesu. Ven. Medhananda and others have followed suite. I have attempted to complement and compile what is known, and put them together as a website for scrutiny by interested scholars.

However, the question of etymology is not an issue to the ordinary citizen. For him, Colombo can be “Kolomba” or “Kolompu” depending on his language, just as Brussels is Bruxelles to a Francophone. They constitute the rich cultural tapestry that Sri Lanka acquired by being a nation on the silk route. Scholars like Rasanayagam and Velupillai were overjoyed to see that Iluppaikadavai identifies as the Meepaathota of the Sinhalese (Madhupatheetha of the Mahavamsa), while “Chenakaladi” near Batticaloa (Madakalapuwa) is identified as “Sinhala vaadiya“. On the other hand, place names like Chempian aru, Chempiyan pattu are most likely of Chola Origin, evoking the name of a Chola queen. I have listed some three thousand place names and their tentative toponymic details in the website that I referred to, while noting uncertainties in such research.

                                                                            Read More

Retd. Professor nabbed for stealing David 

Paynter's paintings 

2015-11-17
A retired Professor who had been entrusted with 19 paintings worth of Rs. 37 million drawn by renowned artist David Paynter was arrested by Police Financial Crimes Investigations Division for not handing them over to the University of the Visual and Performing Arts according to Paynter’s last wish.

 A retired Professor of the University of the Visual and Performing Arts Albert Dharmasiri who had been entrusted with 19 paintings of David Paynter to be handed over to the university according to Paynter’s last wish had not done so.

 Instead the Professor had kept seven precious paintings to himself and sold 11 others to various people for large sums of money, Police Spokesman ASP Ruwan Gunasekara said. 

The FCID acting on a complaint lodged by the University of the Visual and Performing Arts conducted an inquiry and took the Professor into custody. 

The police found 18 paintings following the inquiry and the Professor was produced before the Nuwara Eliya Magistrate yesterday. 

The Nuwara Eliya Magistrate ordered to release the Professor on a cash bail of Rs. 5,000 and a surety bail of Rs. 100, 000 and ordered to appear again on February 29, 2016. 

The Magistrate ordered the police to hand over the drawings to the Dean of the University’s Visual Arts Faculty. David Shillingford Paynter (1900 –1975) was a renowned Sri Lankan born painter who’s most celebrated works, his murals were painted in the chapels of Trinity College, Kandy and St. Thomas’s College, Mount Lavinia. (Kurulu Koojana Kariyakarawana) 

Good Governance is a trading floor of commission agents

Nov 17, 2015

Reports reaching us confirm that the current Good Governance in power is planning to privatize the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation.

The workers of the Sri Lanka Insurance corporation told us that Keith Bernard is planning to privatize the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation and when the latter went to the Insurance Corporation office last week the workers has chased him.

Lanka Hospitals, Shell Gas, Kanovill Holdings, Kanovill Hotel, Inpat and Ceynor Lanka are being administered under the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation.

This Keith Bernard was working as a director of the Maga Neguma Project of the Rajapaksa regime and later he was working as a director Melstar Sfar Regal of businessmen Harry Jayawardana.

The Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation was once initiated to privatize by the then UNP government in the year 2000 when Ranil Wickramasinghe was serving as the Prime Minister. The Insurance corporation trade unions filed a petition against the privatization in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court ordered to pay the money owed to Harry Jayawardana and ordered the treasury to take over the institution back to the government.

Parliament MP. Vasudewa Nanayakkara also filed a petition against the privatization of the Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation.

It is reported that one Rikaz Hussain, working as the secretary to Kabeer Hasim’s Enterprise and Development ministry is working on his personal whims bypassing the tender procedures of Shell Gas, Lanka Hospitals and Insurance Corporation.

Hussain is reported to be the brother in law of Minister Kabeer Hashim. It is reported that the latter is transferring million of illegally earned money to minister Hashim’s wife.

Further reports reaching us confirm us that trade and international relationship minister Malik Samarawickrama is trying to bring former parliament MP Thiru Nadesan back to Sri Lanka. Thiru Nadesan is reported to be an agent to collect commissions from foreign investors and Malik Samarawickrama has brought him to fulfill that purpose.

Senseless attacks and killings in Paris

Wait for few more days-You will know the truth

BY Latheef Farook-November 17, 2015

Are these senseless attacks and the killing of  128 innocent people in the French capital Paris on Friday 14 November 2015 yet another 9/11 type conspiracy to deceive the world to enhance the

New World Order  by further oppressing and brutalizing Muslims in the West and the world at large?

Senseless Attacks and Killings in Paris by Thavam Ratna

'These girls matter': US tycoon helping Chibok pupils back into the classroom

Inaction and fading global interest in plight of those who escaped Boko Haram spurred Robert F Smith to support local efforts with offer to pay for schooling

Nigeria marks 500 days since the kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls

Monica Mark-Tuesday 17 November 2015

Monica Mark

Tuesday 17 November 2015 16.58 GMT

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America’s richest black man found himself losing sleep this year over a problem that had nothing to do with running a business worth billions of dollars.

Robert Smith was used to powering through life’s hurdles, both personal and political. But he couldn’t shake off what he had heard on the radio one May morning. A newsreader was debating the fate of the dozens of girls who escaped when the Islamist militants Boko Haram snatched 276 female pupils from their dormitories in north-eastern Nigeria’s Chibok.

“I was driving two of my own children to school, and it just hit [me] as a parent,” he said. “And then the scale of [Chibok]. Even if it was just two or three, it’s a tragedy, but 300?”

Fifty of the girls had escaped but, traumatised and ostracised, they had then been largely left to their own devices, bar a handful sought out by aid workers.

It was not just the sight of two of Smith’s own children giggling on the back seat that gave the news a raw edge. Like the Chibok students who had dared go to school – putting them among just 29% of girls in northern Nigeria to make it past primary school – Smith, a product of the newly desegregated schools of Colorado, understood the struggle to complete education in defiance of society’s expectations.

The more the atrocities in north-eastern Nigeria piled up and then quickly faded from the international spotlight, the more it bothered him.

“We’ve got the Black Lives Matter campaign going on [in the US] at the moment, and these girls matter too. Their lives matter not just because of the events that happened, but just because their lives matter,” he said.

And so he began thinking about how he could help the girls 6,000 miles away.

Traumatised and often ostracised

Margee Ensign roamed around her cobbled courtyard trying to find a clear signal under the desert sky of north-eastern Nigeria’s Yola state. Even then, she wasn’t sure she was hearing clearly.

“I immediately thought of Publisher’s Sweepstakes,” the popular US lottery show that many believe is a scam.

As director of the American University of Nigeria, Ensign and her colleagues journeyed down dirt tracks in the heart of Boko Haram’s territory to Chibok this year to offer the escaped girls scholarships – often having to spend days persuading traumatised families to put their children back in education.

Now a voice on the other end of the line was offering to pay for the school fees and expenses of all 21 girls. “He said, I’ll cover their expenses for as long as they needed it. And then – it was just incredible – he basically said, see if you can find the rest of the [escaped] girls, and we’ll help them too,” said Ensign, whose team this summer found and began caring for a further three escapers.

Community spirit has periodically spun a safety net for devastated north-eastern towns and villages in the face of often soporific official responses. The violence has continued despite the incoming government pledging to eradicate the insurgency by next month.

“We are working tirelessly around the clock … to rout out terrorists in all known camps and enclaves before the end of the year,” said a military spokesman, Sani Usman.

In two years, violence from Boko Haram has displaced about 2.5 million people in the Lake Chad region – approximately four times the number of refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean this year. While the latter’s plight has prompted frequent summits, changes in government policies and an outpouring of donations that has included offers from an Egyptian billionaire to buy two islands for those streaming to Europe, in Nigeria picking up the pieces has largely fallen to a handful of dogged local activists.

In Yola, where some of the Chibok girls have found a new home, local imams and priests feed up to 350,000 displaced people daily as those fleeing the violence have outnumbered the city’s own inhabitants. Much has depended on the goodwill of donations, oftenfrom local people who themselves are struggling to make ends meet in Nigeria’s poorest region, workers on the ground say.

Smith, who grew up in a tightly knit community that rallied together after an uncle was killed in a racist attack, said those values resonated with him.

“If [what happened in Chibok] had happened to me, I’d have lost my faith in people. I hope the girls see there’s a kindness in the human spirit. There are people out there who want to help them become the people they want to be,” said Smith, who also runs a foundation for disadvantaged schoolchildren.

One young student recently told him at a dinner in their honour that it was the first time someone had followed his progress at school. It’s a sentiment echoed by classmates on the other side of the world.

“Since I came to this school … I have full confidence now that I can express myself everywhere I go,” said Mary, an escaper who had never seen a computer before leaving Chibok. “I never thought for once in my life that I will be in this kind of environment. I feel much better because of the love and care shown by everyone.”

Her friend Rachel, a classmate who also recalled the dingy schoolrooms in Chibok, was quiet for a long time before answering. Finally, she spoke quietly. “I don’t know what to say and how to express my feeling to those people who are sponsoring me. I pray God will bless them and their families.”

Once-jailed lawmaker again uses Kurdish in Turkey's parliament

Pro-Kurdish lawmaker Leyla Zana takes her seat as she arrives at the Turkish Parliament in Ankara October 1, 2011.-REUTERS/UMIT BEKTAS/FILES

BY GULSEN SOLAKER AND AYLA JEAN YACKLEY-Tue Nov 17, 2015

A member of Turkey's parliament spoke Kurdish while taking her oath of office on Tuesday, but the acting speaker said her vow was invalid.

Leyla Zana, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, spent a decade in prison for links to Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants after speaking Kurdish in parliament in 1991. A representative from her office said Tuesday's gesture was to raise awareness of the renewed conflict that has killed hundreds of people in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast since July.

At the swearing-in ceremony, Zana, who won a seat in a parliamentary election on Nov. 1, began her oath by saying, "With the hope of an honourable and lasting peace" in Kurdish.

She finished by changing the oath's official wording of "Turkish people" to "people of Turkey."

The provisional speaker of parliament, Deniz Baykal, asked Zana to return to the lectern for an exact recitation but she left the chamber, media reported.

"If she sees fit, she should come and read the text of the oath exactly, or the oath is not valid," Baykal said.

It was not immediately clear whether speaking in Kurdish or changing the wording, or both, had rendered her oath invalid.

Many Kurds have called the parliamentary election unfair because it was conducted against the background of renewed clashes between security forces and the PKK.

JAILED FOR 10 YEARS

Zana rose to prominence in 1991, causing uproar in Turkey's parliament by speaking in Kurdish at her oath-swearing ceremony.

The speech prompted parliament to strip her of her immunity and eject her from the legislature. It was used as evidence against her when she and three other MPs, elected as independents, were jailed in 1994 for links to the PKK. They were freed in 2004.

Turkey has since broadened human rights and boosted Kurdish linguistic and political freedoms.

In June, Zana's Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) won seats in parliament as a party for the first time, depriving the ruling AK Party of a majority. Zana then took her oath in Turkish.

A new election was called after the AKP failed to form a coalition and a 2-1/2 year ceasefire was shattered following Turkish strikes against PKK targets.

The HDP lost a quarter of its seats in the re-run election.

Two bomb attacks, in July and October, blamed on Islamic State, targeted pro-Kurdish activists, killing 135 people and raising concerns about stability in NATO member Turkey, which borders Syria. The AKP tapped into people's security fears and was able to regain a majority in this month's poll.

(Writing by Ayla Jean Yackley; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)