Turkish Forum

Tag: AKP vs GULEN

  • THE BEAST

    THE BEAST

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    Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common power to keep all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and as such a war, against every man. (13/8)

     To this war of every man against every man […] nothing can be unjust. The notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice have there no place. Where there is no common power, there is no law: where no law, no justice. (13/13)

     The Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (1651)

     

    Defined by its own horror, The Beast defiles the living and the dead. Lies! Cheating! Stealing! Killing! Its toxic mouth spews division, hate and felonious encouragement. It has no interests except its own and those are all-consuming. It rules in a Hobbesian world, where every person is at war with every person and The Beast is at war with all. Consumption, greed, violence and wealth are the supreme virtues. The Beast’s police are everywhere with its deadly violence. The streets are bloody with death. The Beast has strangled justice. It rules by rules, not laws. The Beast has many backs. Media, corporations, opposition politicians, the brain-washed, the brain-dead, the needy greedy, the destructive tycoons that assassinate mountains, rivers, streams, valleys, virgin forests, farmland, the air, the sea. The Beast divides all, rages against all, slaughters all opposed to its rules. It reigns supreme in triumphant arrogance. If it pleases, even the corpses of its enemies are consumed, not by some purifying fire, but as a vengeful hate-weapon to threaten and increase its power. War is perpetual. Fear of violent death rages like a plague. The arts are destroyed.  All representations, and imagination itself, are threats to The Beast. All nature, all living and inert things are raped to satisfy its brutish appetites. Bigger, better, taller, deeper, faster, more, more, more… Society has become a vast wasted land. There is no political community. Public gatherings are attacked. Life is poor, fear-filled, nasty and brutish. Death always comes suddenly in this land called Shame. And The Beast is always pleased with its beastly work.

    301 coalminers died suddenly and violently in Soma while feeding The Beast. The Beast was not embarrassed, not at all. No one believes The Beast’s death toll. But there is another number, a horrific number that can indeed be trusted. The Beast’s mass murder left 432 children fatherless. And then The Beast came to the grieving town.  It beat and gassed the mourning families. It defiled their children. It proclaimed that its own violent mass murder was really quite comfortingly beautiful and, in beastly “truth”, inevitable and, in beastly “fact,” irrelevant. It’s to be expected, said The Beast. For what is life but death? And having finished The Beast hid from its grieving subjects in a supermarket, looking quite pleased with its beastly self.

    The other day a handful of people protested the Soma tragedy in an Istanbul section called Okmeydanı. The 15-year-old Gezi murder victim, Berkin Elvan, was memorialized. It’s an Alevite neighborhood and the Alevites are open-minded and sensible people. Of course, The Beast despises Alevites. The Beast tries to do in Turkey what it failed to do in Syria—exterminate them. So The Beast’s Police developed yet another diversionary incident. They opened fire in the street, both gas and bullets. The cops heaved a few Molotov cocktails to make it look like an attack on themselves, pure self-provocation. But it’s now an old trick—they did the same provocative deadly nonsense during Gezi Park. Predictably, chaos ensued. Gunfire filled the air. Two innocent men attending a funeral died, one in the street, one in the Cemevi, the Alevite worship house. The Beast called the protesters “ruthless.” As for the dead boy from Gezi?  “He died and it’s over,” said The Beast, adding that these “terrorists see themselves as the saviors of the world.” Such biting, irreverent sarcasm. Such malice. And again The Beast seemed pleased with itself. The Beast feeds on slander, violence and provocation.

    Such name-calling! Looters, plunderers, terrorists, atheists, anarchists, Marxist-Leninist communists, screams The Beast. They may be even Maoists! The Beast does not care how stupid it sounds. We, the opposed, are all of these and more, and proudly so. Its snarling  face, its hard, black stares, its hooded eyes baggy and black… what made such a…thing?  “You are the sperm of Israel,” shouts The Beast. What fuels The Beast’s incomparable fury? Could it be hell itself? Or something even worse?

    The Beasts’s mind rages with conspiracies. When caught in a deceit, it spews hate to create war. Its so-called police and its so-called civil police and its so-called bodyguards are just deputized street thugs, some tricked out in uniforms, all of them goons on the order of Hitler’s brownshirt street gangs. All of them praised by The Beast as heroes, saving the nation from…what? Democracy? Life itself?

    War, war, war…it’s always war with The Beast. It has many backs but The Beast rides on the backs of even bigger, master beasts. These are the master killers from beyond the sea, George W. Bush, Barack H. Obama, killers and displacers of millions. Obama even won the Nobel Peace Prize! Such beastly, hypocritically evil behavior. It’s their nature. So get used to it.

    James (Cem) Ryan
    Istanbul
    29 May 2014

     http://www.brighteningglance.org/

     

    Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security. [….] In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit therefore is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. (13/9)

    Reference: Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), Oxford University Press, 2008.

     

  • MEN IN MASQUERADE

    MEN IN MASQUERADE

    Photo taken in the northern Syria town of Raqqa. (Courtesy: Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently)

     

    In case you are one of the millions of Turks still celebrating the fact that Fenerbahçe, to no one’s great surprise, won the league football championship, well, you need to get a grip on reality, painful as that might be. The so-called “news”-papers still regurgitate this gloriously boring “news.” Tapes of the melodramatic fan and player antics after Sunday’s no-score game still runs on the sports channels. And thus all seems right with the world. Except it’s not. The world is horrible.

    One really must wonder about the mentality of the Turkish people. Their government is causing a slaughter, if not a genocide, of the Syrian people. And I mean, specifically, that the Syrian Alevites are being directly targeted by Sunni Jihad proxies financed by Turkey. It’s a political “thing” dealing with pipedreams of a neo-Ottoman Sunni empire. By definition, that targeting constitutes a genocide. But the terror spread throughout Syria by Turkey and America affects all the Syrian people, Islamic, Christian, Jewish, atheist, all of them. These bankrolled gangsters are cutthroat killers. Killers kill. But cutthroat killers mutilate. All this should make one wonder. So I do.

    Mostly I wonder why the allegedly good-hearted, the self-proclaimed “hospitable” Turks show such little interest and concern about the bloody massacre just next-door caused by their bloody-handed government. It’s no secret. It’s been no secret for years. After all, Seymour Hersh’s article was more affirmation than news. But in Turkey, the approved story on Syria is mostly simple-minded propaganda. Suddenly two years ago, Bashar al–Assad became a bad guy. And Erdoğan was hired by America to do what he does best. But now the truth is out. And things have moved from horrible to catastrophic.

    So what consumes their interest, these Turkish people? Why do they now fixate ad nauseam, on television and in the press, on the Ottoman slaughter, if not genocide (the words all mean “mass murder”) of the Armenians in 1915?  1915! Then, a war was on. The Russians were enemies. Turkey’s eastern Armenians collaborated. War is murder. Blah-blah-blah. 100 years ago! 100 years ago! Yet today, the Turkish government openly exports death and destruction and Jihadist terrorism to their neighbor, Syria. And nothing happens. Football. Family. Life is busy. What’s for dinner?

    Turkish people! What kind of a social conscience do you have? To silently sit while events of Nazi proportions are being done to the Syrian people by your government? It seems inconceivable that you can fill the streets for Fenerbahçe football but not even mumble a care about what your tax money is doing to the Syrian people. You know the story of the people who watched the freight trains come and go through the tiny town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz). They also said they didn’t “know.” But the camps were only a kilometer away. “We didn’t know.” Will that also be your alibi? Denial.

    Turkish people, get real! Wake up from your football-slumber! You allowed the prime minister to appear on the Charlie Rose Show and lie, misrepresent, and double-talk to the world. He does to the world what he does at home. It is ridiculous.

    He said that during legal protests every other country beats and gasses and kills its citizens. So what’s the problem? And neither you nor Charlie said anything.

    He said, how can a country be corrupt when it has had such dramatic economic growth? And neither you nor Charlie mentioned that he (the prime minister) sold ALL the assets of the nation to finance the destruction of the cities and nature itself. And that everyone in favor politically has a piece of the action. That this growth “miracle” is based on plunder and crony-capitalism. And that’s the economic truth.

    He said, how can he be a dictator when 45.5% of the people vote for him. And neither you nor Charlie asked about the majority of the people—54.5%—that voted against him. And why!

    He said that he didn’t know Fethullah Gülen was such a threat until 17 December 2013 when he made a “coup.” And neither you nor Charlie Rose said, “Nonsense!”

    Nonsense, it is. As everyone knows, Gülen disclosed his own treacherous plan 15 years ago. That’s why he escaped from his country into the warm embrace of the CIA and the Green-Card Land called Pennsylvania. Surely everyone knows that Gülen, a master of disguise, was recorded advising his treasonous followers that: 

    “You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers…. You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey.” 

    And fifteen years ago Erdoğan was one of his adherents. Without Gülen and the CIA, Erdoğan would never have left the Kasımpaşa neighborhood of Istanbul. And even an ordinary journalist, let alone Charlie Rose, should have known this. Does Charlie know the real reason why Gülen, no angel himself, is now Erdoğan’s sworn enemy? If Charlie only knew a few journalistic facts he would have quickly figured it all out. We all have, and we’re not respected journalists at all.  We’re not even respected. So here’s the truth (and now I’m whispering): On 17 December 2013, a Gülenian wind blew the roof off the massive corruption enterprise called the government of Turkey.

    Actually Charlie Rose only masquerades as a journalist, as elementary-school educated Gülen masquerades as an Islamic scholar, as Erdoğan masquerades as a statesman, as Abdullah Gül masquerades as a head of state and as the CIA masquerades as a patriotic, law abiding part of the American government. In Turkey, everyone is someone else and everyone plays dress-up. Welcome to the Mardi Gras a la Turka. It’s a political-social condition called Deceit.

    Speaking of which, now the terrorists gangsters, financed, fed and armed by Turkey, are performing a new trick, crucifixion. They apparently grew tired of eating the pulsating hearts of their victims and mutilating their corpses. This is what happens when nitwits make foreign policy. False-flag Turkey supplies thugs with sarin gas. America supplies them with TOW missiles. The inmates run the asylum. Everything is out of control. Crucifixions! The mind cannot grasp the horror. Turkey no longer has borders. Turkey no longer has a viable military chain-of-command. Nor has it a viable judiciary. All of this has been brought about by the man who would now be president. Do the Turkish people know his credentials for the job? Is this the ultimate masquerade?

    Turkish people, Get real! Wake up! The day will come when this Turkish government will be in the dock at The Hague for war crimes. Turkish people! By your silence, by your media’s collaboration in this criminal enterprise, by everyone passively accepting the commission of these war crimes, so too will your consciences be on trial. You and the country may never recover from these awful deeds done in your name.

    Oh, what have you allowed your ballot boxes to do to your Syrian friends and neighbors and even families! How needy you must be to sell out for bribes of coal and rice, and some of you for so much more.

    Oh, what have you allowed your passive, inept political opposition parties to do…and not do!

    All the plunder, all the gold, all the dollars, all the shoeboxes, the airports, the money-counting machines, the tunnels, the bridges, the million-dollar wristwatches, the power plants, the shopping centers, the football frenzies and their obscenely expensive stadiums, all of this stuff that masquerades as democracy and capitalism and social value will not buy one second of relief from the coming guilt and shame. Murder, destruction, sickness, starvation, complete barbarism has been unleashed from Turkey. Turkey has raped and murdered Syria. And this is happening now, not a century ago. Crucifixion, a final act of savagery, killed a man named Christ and created Christianity. From evil came good. But in Turkey’s case…one wonders.

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    Would you not agree?

    James (Cem) Ryan
    Istanbul
    1 May 2014

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  • Turkey’s Political Civil War

    Turkey’s Political Civil War

    By CLAIRE BERLINSKI

    Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    A power struggle is brewing in Turkey. It is a contest not among the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and the country’s secularists, but between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the populist religious movement of expatriate cleric Fethullah Gulen. It is not about elections or democracy. Rather, it is a struggle for control of the Turkish state itself.

    From his self-imposed exile in the Poconos, where he has lived since 1999, Gulen has explicitly declared that he wishes his followers to control the state to encourage a kind of a cargo-cult Westernization, one that may be described as bringing to Turkey what he views as the good part of the West – technology and global commerce – without the bad: liberal democracy’s inherent resistance to Islamic conservatism. Superficially, there is no huge difference between Gulen’s and Erdogan’s worldviews. Gulen presents himself – nowadays – as more liberal, reasonable and friendlier to the United States. But he has not always done so, and unlike Erdogan he enjoys the luxury of being unaccountable to the electorate.

    The Gulen movement has spent the past three decades aggressively expanding its presence in the education sector, both in Turkey and abroad. It is one of the largest players, for example, in the American charter school market. The movement seeks to create a well-educated “Golden generation,” friendly to the movement and possessed of the technical skills to assume high positions in strategic sectors of the economy, government and armed forces.

    The contemporary Gulen presents himself as an elderly, humble champion of interfaith dialogue, and perhaps this is now true. Age, after all, mellows many a man. But Gulen has never unequivocally reversed his early teachings, on which his senior cadres have been raised, including his early sermons, which are replete with bracing exhortations to Muslims to “become bombs and explode,” and “tear to pieces the heads of the infidels.”

    Initially, the AKP and the Gulen movement formed an alliance of convenience aimed at dislodging the old, “Kemalist” establishment in Turkey. But like any alliance of convenience, it reached a natural conclusion. Today, the old guard is safely in prison or silenced for fear of arrest. As a result, what we are witnessing now is a fight among the new, ostensibly pious ruling elites about how to divide the spoils of power.

    Erdogan’s wing of the AKP is mainly in charge of the military, and the Gulenists in control of the police and judiciary. But the state isn’t big enough for them to share. The split had been papered over for years, but broke into the open when Gulenist prosecutors attempted to arrest Hakan Fidan, Erdogan’s intelligence chief. It exploded during the Gezi protests this past summer, when the movement issued an 11-article communiqué to dispute “accusations and charges” that it claimed came from AKP quarters.

    The most recent flashpoint was Erdogan’s decision to abolish the dershanes – something like private university crammer schools, and a major source for Gulen’s recruits. The movement correctly perceived this as an attempt altogether to eradicate their influence. While they’re fighting, of course, the actual business of governing has been crowded out.

    Erdogan is unlikely to encounter serious obstacles in the three approaching elections: municipal in March 2014, presidential in August 2014, and general in 2015. His support in the polls remains high, and he has no serious challengers. Unable to throw his weight behind a serious political alternative, all Gulen can do is grumble and sabotage. This may make some difference at the margins, but will not result in Erdogan’s removal via democratic means. The crucial question is who will take over the ruling party after Erdogan – and whether the Gulen movement will remain influential.

    For those still friendly to the idea of Western-style democracy in Turkey, there are two ways to look at this. In the optimistic view, any counterweight to the growing authoritarianism of Erdogan’s government is a positive development. If the Gulen movement is the last meaningful barrier to one-man rule, at least it’s a barrier. In the alternative view, a balance of power only serves a nation well if it is a legitimate one. No one has elected Gulen, he and his movement did not come to power transparently and there is no mechanism by which they may be peacefully and transparently removed.

    The optimist and Turkophile in me focuses on the former. The pessimist and Turkophile in me sees the latter and despairs.

    Claire Berlinski is senior fellow for Turkey at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, D.C.

    via Turkey’s Political Civil War – World Report (usnews.com).