The Sudanese president, who in March became the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC at The Hague, is among heads of state and government that İstanbul will host on the occasion of an economic summit at the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s (OIC) 25th session of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC).
An official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Turkey was simply playing host to the OIC meeting. “The OIC is the organizer of the summit. ... In the past, participants not even recognized by Ankara, such as the GKRY [Greek Cypriot Administration of Southern Cyprus] were present at such meetings hosted in Turkey,” the official told Today’s Zaman. The official also signaled that Bashir’s arrest during his visit would be out of the question, underlining that Turkey was not a party to the 2002 Rome Statute, which established the ICC, thus is not bound by the court’s ruling for his arrest. A UN Security Council resolution regarding the matter also does not contain language strong enough to create a compelling legal obligation for UN members to cooperate with the ICC in all the steps that it would take in the Darfur situation, the official went on.
Turkey, a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council, has paid heed to the objections of African and Arab nations, which fear the court ruling will destabilize the whole region, bring even more conflict to Darfur and threaten the fragile peace deal that ended decades of civil war between northern and southern Sudan. The official said Ankara was taking into account both the legal dimension as well as the political and practical implications that implementation of the ICC ruling would create.
South Sudan and the Muslim north fought a two-decade civil war that ended in 2005 with a power sharing peace deal that included provisions for a general election in 2010 and a referendum on southern independence a year later. “There is an ongoing comprehensive peace process which is trying to be implemented there. This process is very sensitive, when one also takes into consideration the fact that general elections and a referendum are ahead. The international community should let this process function in a robust way so that the Sudanese can make their own decision, but they should not be imposed on to make any particular decision,” the diplomatic sources went on to say. “If we ignore the political perspective and look at the matter only from the legal viewpoint, this could be problematic,” they warned.
Meanwhile, activists, speaking with Reuters, said there was sure to be opposition from civil society to the visit, suggesting that Turkey, as a UN member, had obligations to arrest Bashir. The Turkish Coalition for the ICC is expected to release a statement today arguing that arresting Bashir is also an obligation for Turkey because of articles relating to war crimes in the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).
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