“This makes us sad. What more do Americans need? Their strategic ally is facing a coup and it takes them 45 days before sending anyone over? This is shocking.”
Former Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has entered prison to serve his four-month prison sentence. A convoy of 2,000 vehicles accompanied Erdogan to the prison HAKAN ASLANELI Istanbul – Turkish Daily News Istanbul’s former Islamist Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone to prison to serve a conviction for “inciting hatred based on religious differences” in a speech he made in Siirt nearly a year and a half ago.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/erdogan-goes-to-prison.aspx?pageID=438&n=erdogan-goes-to-prison-1999-03-27 – 3/27/1999.
The now famous declaration from the 1997 speech delivered in Siirt:
Our minarets are our bayonets
Our domes are our helmets
Our mosques are our barracksWe will put a final end to ethnic segregation. No one can ever intimidate us.
If the skies and the ground were to open against us
If floods and volcanoes were to burst
We will not turn from our mission.My reference is Islam.
If I am not able to speak of this
What is the use of living?
(BackChannels has interpreted “, Cap” as a line break from the 1999 Hurriyet Daily News report).
As may be typical of the malignant, Erdogan, in his latest statement (at the top of this page), takes the spotlight to chide the United States for not shoring up his rapidly developing Islamist dictatorship.
States of affairs may be complicated, what with the “Kurdish Question” — Syria’s Kurds have been the best “boots on the ground” fighters against ISIS, but Erdogan has preferred to see and bomb them as Turkish rebels — numerous corruption scandals, from a massive AKP imbroglio that broke in 2013 to smuggling oil from ISIS, a claim generated by Moscow that may or may not be true — but not to worry: Assad, who incubated ISIS, has also received oil from his baby (the links section of this piece has a New Yorker piece on the matter as well), and Erdogan’s early patterns, with the persecution of journalists, for example, and latest actions in political repression, but viewed through the filter of political psychology, all becomes simple: Erdogan has transformed his NATO member state into a nascent Sunni dictatorship in business with like-minded personalities.
Different Talks – Same Walk
“He came into office with a promise of democracy and Turkey has historically been a country in which deep Islamic faith has lived side-by-side with modernity and an increasing openness, and that’s the legacy he should pursue,” Obama said. He warned Erdogan against the “repression of information and shutting down democratic debate.”
Obama made the above observation a little more than five months ago.
Published last month in Politico:
“We basically have turned a blind eye to Erdogan’s drive towards an authoritarian, one-man system of rule in Turkey,” said Eric Edelman, a U.S. ambassador to Ankara from 2003 to 2005 and a deputy secretary of defense under George W. Bush. “The president has acknowledged it, but we haven’t really done much about it, if anything.”
That needs to change, Edelman said. “If there’s anything we’ve learned from the last six years in that part of the world, it’s that one-man rule isn’t very stable.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-turkey-225659 – 7/16/2016.
Published in Medium this month, and the writer Blaise Misztal the director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Program.
Erdoğan wasted little time arresting those suspected of plotting against him. His purge, however, goes beyond the requirements of justice, removing thousands of military personnel not directly involved in the coup. Such “coup-proofing,” designed to instill fear and dissuade future putsches, is common in authoritarian states.
Misztal, Blaise. “Erdoğan’s Purge in Turkey Leaves U.S. With Tough Choice.” Medium, August 1, 2016.
While Bloomberg crows, “NATO Says Turkey is ‘Valued Ally’ After Erdogan Visit to Russia” (August 10, 2016), the interest in preventing the rise of “nationalist militarism” would seem now compromised by Turkey’s reversion toward authoritarian rule, the ousting of suspect top military leaders, and the greater allocation of authority to administrative officials and police in matters of state security.
Fast Links
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13746679 – “Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey’s Ruthless president.” – 7/21/2016 – Article summarizes Erdogan’s rise to power and covers the signs and signals of his dictatorship.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan
http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/article/trouble-turkey-erdogan-isis-and-kurds – Fall 2015
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33690060 “Turkey v Syria’s Kurds v Islamic State – 2/19/2016.
http://observer.com/2016/02/deal-with-the-devil-turkey-props-up-isis-by-buying-its-stolen-oil/ – 2/4/2016.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/12/10/isis-is-the-con-ed-of-syria.html – 12/10/2015.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/14/opinion/free-speech-isnt-the-onlycasualty-of-erdogans-repression.html – 4/13/2016 – on repression of the Kurds.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/07/turkeys-failed-coup-hands-erdo-pretext-further-repression – 7/16/2016.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-isis-oil-trade-from-the-ground-up – 12/4/2015.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-andreasen-nuclear-weapons-turkey-20160811-snap-story.html – “Let’s get our nuclear weapons out of Turkey – 8/11/2016.”
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/turkey-security-package-threatens-security.html – 2/20/2015 – articles covers Turkey’s “Internal Security Package”, a raft of laws designed to circumvent due process by allocating greaterauthority to state administrators and police and minimizing judicial review.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-idUSKCN0ZX07S – “Erdogan announces army overhaul in latest post-coup shakeup” – 7/23/2016.
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