Tag: AKP

KILLER KOAL

“Most of the things one imagines in hell are there—heat, noise, confusion, darkness, foul air, and, above all, unbearably cramped space.”

“Watching coal-miners at work, you realize momentarily what different universes different people inhabit. Down there where coal is dug it is a sort of world apart which one can easily go through life without ever hearing about.”

George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937

Soma, a small town near Manisa in western Turkey. By the Aegean Sea, a beautiful place, if you don’t have to be a coal miner or love one.

It’s now an ant swarm. It ebbs and flows around the human conveyor belt that runs from the endless rows of ambulances and the mouth of the lignite mine. Lignite is the poorest quality coal useful mostly for power generating plants. And the people in Soma are poor too, but in a different sense, a tragic sense. The stretchers bearing the living, the dead and the dying beat an endless track from the suffocating depths to the white ambulances. The bearers stack their loads in the back of the ambulances like well-cut logs. And off they go, back to the pit. And the ambulances crawl through the swarm to the hospital whose morgue is overflowing. It’s a simple, deadly rhythm now in its twentieth hour. Most of the women are covered. They weep alone in small groups.

A transformer blew up deep in the mine. The electricity failed. No elevators. A fire down below. No way out. No air, just carbon monoxide. The death count rises. It’s now at 205, but it’s more like 250. (In the interest of accuracy. as of 2:42 pm 14 May 2014 the “official” count is 232…now 238, now 240.) There are hundreds still buried hundreds of meters underground. The fire still burns. The deaths will be in the millions because every time one sees a stretcher with a limply swinging foot, or covered over, one dies a little. And there are more than 70 million of us living here, watching this absurd tragedy. They just brought out a 15 year-old boy, dead. Turkey’s, rather the Turkish government’s treatment of children is abysmal. One weeps thinking about all of this. And then, if one is human, one gets angry. How can all these poor people die at work? The record for coal mining deaths is 263 at Zonguldak in 1992. It seems in easy reach since so many are still unaccounted for and time inexorably wears on.

Not too many years ago, five or six, there was another mine disaster, small compared to Soma, “only” 130 died. The television channel ran some file film of a miner underground. And next to the miner what should appear but a canary in a cage. Jesus, I shouted, this stuff disappeared a hundred years ago! Well, it would be nice, but extremely naïve, to think so.

For this is Turkey. And here coal mining safety is a joke. One disaster after another comes to the mining families of this saddest of countries. And again neighborhoods are devastated by the massacre of its men. Except for China, Turkey has the worst coal mining safety record in the world. This industry like most others has been privatized by the government. That means cut costs to maximize profits. That means low wages. That means Soma Group, the mining company, operates uncontrolled and unregulated despite all the official blather. But why shouldn’t it? The Turkish government operates the same way and no one does anything about it.

So who is at fault? Easy. Soma Mining is owned by Alp Gürkan. In a 2012 interview, Gürkan said the company had managed to drop the cost of coal to $24 per ton from $130 before privatization. How grand! Yes, grand, indeed. How did he do it? Well, he hired subcontractors “for hard work with low salaries” thus undercutting union workers organized by Maden-İş. But his master stroke of “genius” seems to be Gürkan’s decision to have his company simply manufacture the electric transformers instead of importing them. And it was one of these “home-made” transformers that caused this human catastrophe, this mass industrial murder, this genocide of the working class. So it seems clear that prima facie evidence of criminal negligence points toward one Alp Gürkan, Chairman of the Board. The police can find him for purposes of preliminary investigation at: Soma Holding A.Ş, Lale Sokak No:5, Levent – İstanbul.

There is also another material witness and perhaps a co-conspirator. On 29 April Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party rejected a demand for a parliamentary investigation regarding safety in the Soma mines. Why was this petition refused? Does it have to do with the hoses he has everywhere? That refusal was just two weeks ago! Question him! Erdoğan can be found somewhere in Ankara. He has yet to appear at Soma. He, like Godot, may never come. It would be good.

As I write, the students in Ankara are protesting this horrific tragedy. Everything is normal, for Turkey. The police are gassing as usual, shooting canisters directly at them. The cops are chasing them through a beautiful pine forest. TOMA and helicopters are on the scene. Beatings will follow. Students of Ankara unite! You have nothing to lose but your brains.

The air is as heavy as lead.

No more words…

James (Cem) Ryan
Istanbul
14 May 2014

EXCEPT…

HUKUMET İSTİFA!

May 14, 2014
Did Atatürk distribute Ottoman Armenians’ property to his team?

Turkey will once more mark the great Armenian tragedy of 1915 — last century’s archetypal ethnic cleansing, with systematic acts of genocide — in a mix of shame and shamelessness, confusion and clarity, ignorance and awareness, denial and admission.

It has been 99 years since the disaster, which changed the human map of Anatolia forever and has remained an issue which needs to be confronted in the name of humanity and conscience, haunting the republic ever since.

Not much has been happening on the official front this time, either. Winds of change, in terms of a rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, are much weaker. Hopes raised by the process of protocols were buried when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to the surprise of even his foreign policy team, announced at the last minute in Baku that the normalization would not happen unless the Karabakh problem was resolved. This demolition of the process brought all efforts to an impasse.

The political changes in Armenia and Turkey’s growing need for Azerbaijani energy resources do not help those who want to return to an optimistic mode. Needless to say, Russian President Vladimir Putin is rather happy with the status quo, which boosts Russia’s importance in the Caucasus.

Meanwhile, civil society keeps busy. Taboos in the public arena are now gone; those who want to call the events “genocide” are free to do so. Article 301 is no longer applied, and if any prosecution is launched, it dies before it reaches the courts. Debate in the media continues, as does the academic research.

Books pour out, often debating with each other, and bringing new data to light. One of the best in its genre, and of great interest to the reading public, is a detailed account of what happened in İstanbul on April 24, 1915 — when more than 230 Ottoman Armenian intellectuals were arrested in a sweep and sent to death camps in Anatolia — and afterwards. It is written by Nesim Ovadya İzrail, titled “24 Nisan 1915 / İstanbul, Çankırı, Ayaş, Ankara” (April 24, 1915 / İstanbul, Çankırı, Ayaş, Ankara) — a work that needs to be translated into other languages.

Another book, titled “İttihadçının Sandığı” (The Unionist’s Chest), is brand new and based on a large number of letters and documents linked to the high-ranking perpetrators of the genocide, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Its author, Murat Bardakçı, is known to be a fierce denialist, yet continues to publish books which are of deep historic value, such as the secret diaries of Talat Pasha, the architect of the mass deportations.

The new book, Bardakçı says, aims to refute claims that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the republic, did not support the Unionists’ acts and later condemned them. Indeed, there are documents and numbers that seem to indicate that Atatürk distributed Armenian properties to his republican team and paid their salaries from Armenian assets. Strong stuff.

Meanwhile, there are activities launched on various levels as the hundredth anniversary approaches. One of them is by the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSİAD), which aims to bring together experts and historians from Turkey and the Armenian diaspora, as well as international academia, to seek a common ground and language.

The Turkish state keeps busy too, in order to confront the expected wave of criticism from the international community; Turkey, to many people, appears reluctant to face a truth from the remote past. The Foreign Ministry, under the instructions of Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, is intent on burying the great Armenian tragedy somewhere in the context of World War I, talking endlessly about “fair memory.” But this approach does not seem very promising, when it comes to equating civilians’ and soldiers’ deaths.

On the political level, Prime Minister Erdoğan, having returned to his nationalist self, is categorically against any recognition or regret, let alone an apology. He recently accused some NGOs of being “paid by Armenian lobbies.” Some ministers from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) are now parroting the prime minister, saying that it was Armenians who killed Turks.

But most meaningful is what some people will do tomorrow. The mass human suffering in 1915 will be commemorated in many events in İstanbul and 10 other cities across Anatolia. This is what matters most

Yavuz Baydar
Today’s Zaman

April 27, 2014
UNITED WE WEEP, DIVIDED WE SLEEP

DUMBBELLS (English slang for stupid fools)

DÜMBELEKLER (Turkish slang for stupid fools)

I sing what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.

Willam Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

I read the news today, oh boy. Here’s what Reuters said:
“Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan has applied to Turkey’s constitutional court on Friday to challenge the alleged violation of his and his family’s rights by social media, a senior official in his office told Reuters.”

Isn’t it grand, this so-called rule of law. The prime minister is correct in his action. Long ago his family’s rights were well-established as were his. When the fox owns the chicken coop every day the menu-du-jour is chicken. We and the world know the quality of those who rule this sad country.

But who’s to argue? Not the sheep…if they whimper, they’re next. And besides, they’re well-bribed with food and coal and things magical from the bountiful Ankara sky. They have indeed learned to deeply love their Big Brother. They repay with their pathetic ballots. So, who? Perhaps young people who, like all young people everywhere, thought they had a future? Sorry. Enough of them have died and been maimed. Maimed by the prime minister who now frets about his and his family’s rights. Hah! So surely it will be the political opposition who once thought they had a patriotic responsibility, even a cause? No cause. No thought. No brains. No nothing. The military? The ones with the soundest, strongest emotional and ethical legacy? Nope. Folded up like a cheap suit. Hardly a whimper. Generals now bow their heads to thieving politicians. Cowardly submissive stuff like that makes one wonder if they ever received an education (and at taxpayer expense). Atatürk? Huh? Please, we must not speak aloud of such things. So who’s left to argue? Media? Ha! Sold-out. Universities? Ha! Ha! Expounding on pet obscurities, historical quirks, dead poets and deader laws and what once was and now will never be. There is no time left for history and literature and law and medicine and philosophy and too many more words. Speaking of which, what about writers? Well, who reads? The world is too much with all of us, and we are all too late.

So who will care? Care enough to act, to really act? To stand up and say that this is enough. That the people will no longer be governed by a corrupt political process. Nor by numbskull, repetitive political opposition parties nor by America’s CIA gangsters? Is that too much to ask?

It seems so. Time grows short. Another crooked election is coming, this one presidential. One way or another the same small people will throw the same big stones at us. Ah Turkey, the saddest country with the saddest people with the saddest stories. Always beating on, always being beaten. Ah, dear Turkey, Atatürk’s children deserved so much more. So did Atatürk.

James (Cem) Ryan
Istanbul
19 April 2014

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”

Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

April 20, 2014
Turkey’s culture of dissent

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is like a mousetrap salesman; the moment he plugs one hole, the mouse peeks out of the other.

His latest move to block dissent in Turkey is to ban Twitter, but millions of Turkish tweeters have, with characteristic ingenuity, found ways to circumvent this ban.

On the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in 2009, a former Turkish judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Rıza Türmen, noted about the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, “What they are attempting to achieve today [after coming to power in 2002] is social engineering, a radical transformation of society.”

This includes a reform of the education system, which makes it possible for pupils to attend religious schools (imam-hatip schools) after only four years of primary education, the easing of restrictions on Quran courses and an abolition of the coefficient system to enable students from imam-hatip schools to enter universities on equal terms with graduates from other high schools.

This is in keeping with Prime Minister Erdoğan’s declared goal to raise a “religious generation,” and also involves other forms of social engineering such as a ban on the sale of alcohol in municipal and public restaurants in most of Turkey’s provinces. This culminated last May with a new law that imposes severe restrictions on the consumption and sale of alcohol.

Although both the preamble and Article 24 of the Turkish Constitution stipulate that no one shall be allowed to exploit or abuse religion or religious feelings for the purpose of personal or political influence, this is precisely what Prime Minister Erdoğan and his AKP government have done. Or as the Turkish imam, Fethullah Gülen, now Erdoğan’s arch-enemy, put it in the Financial Times, “The reductionist view of seeking political power in the name of a religion contradicts the spirit of Islam.”

Gezi Park

Four days after the alcohol legislation was passed, a boiling point was reached and the occupation of GeziPark in İstanbul began. What started as an environmental protest developed into nationwide protests against Erdoğan’s tyranny, which now proves to have far-reaching consequences for Turkey. As Alev Yaman, author of the English PEN’s report on the GeziPark protests, concludes, “A culture of protest and dissent has been established among a previously politically disenfranchised younger generation.”

Social media played a significant role during the Arab Spring, and in Egypt it contributed to the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak. After the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Erdoğan advised Mubarak: “Listen to the shouting of the people, the extremely humane demands. Without hesitation, satisfy the people’s desire for change.” However, during the GeziPark uprising, he failed to take his own advice but instead supported the police crackdown on demonstrators.

Research by Eira Martens from DW Akademie on the role of social media during the revolt in Egypt showed that Twitter and Facebook mobilized protesters and helped develop a collective identity, or more precisely, a form of solidarity. Consequently, images of police brutality, also on YouTube and Flickr, made people not only angrier but also lowered their threshold of fear.

The same applied to the GeziPark protests, but whereas in Egypt the most popular hashtag was used in less than one million tweets, an analysis by New YorkUniversity estimates that out of more than 22 million tweets related to the protests in Turkey, the two main hashtags were mentioned about 6 million times. In Turkey’s case, around 90 percent of all the tweets came from within Turkey, whereas in Egypt only 30 percent were from inside the country.

In Turkey, it is estimated that the AKP government has the final word over 90 percent of the media, that is, newspapers and television. This was evidenced in an interview on CNN Türk with Fatih Altaylı, the editor-in-chief of the Turkish daily Habertürk, who complained that instructions were “pouring down” every day from somewhere.

Leaked wiretaps, one of which Erdoğan has confirmed is genuine, reveal constant pressure from the prime minister’s office and Erdoğan himself on media owners and executives. In one recording, Erdoğan’s son, Bilal, allegedly informs his father that the next day’s headlines have been agreed upon with the pro-government media.

Consequently, Turkish media coverage of the GeziPark protests was nothing short of scandalous; CNN Türk broadcast a documentary on penguins and seven pro-government newspapers ran identical headlines with the same quote from the prime minister. Four television channels that covered the events were fined for “harming the physical, moral and mental development of children and young people” and 845 journalists lost their jobs

In its report on the role of social media in the Turkish protests, New YorkUniversity said that part of the reason for the extraordinary number of tweets was a response to the lack of media coverage; furthermore, it said that Turkish protesters are replacing traditional reporting with crowd-sourced accounts expressed through social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The report concludes that this is an impressive utilization of social media in overcoming the barriers created by semi-authoritarian regimes.

There is also the fact that, according to another study, Turkey has the top Twitter penetration rate, with 31 percent of an Internet population of 36.5 million being Twitter users.

No wonder Prime Minister Erdoğan calls Twitter “a menace” and finds social media to be “the worst menace to society.”

Dec. 17

The anti-corruption operation that went public in İstanbul on Dec. 17, and the subsequent scandal, constitutes a major challenge to Prime Minister Erdoğan’s government. The response has been a massive cover-up, with the removal of thousands of police officers and hundreds of prosecutors and judges who could continue the investigation and therefore threaten the government’s legitimacy.

The AKP has made use of its parliamentary majority to block the reading of indictments that involve four former government ministers, and it has also blocked the formation of an investigative commission. As Fethullah Gülen noted in the Financial Times, “A small group within the government’s executive branch is holding to ransom the entire country’s progress.” And one of the founders of the AKP, Abdüllatif Şener, has even said that Erdoğan is prepared to drag Turkey into a civil war to retain his hold on power.

The immediate threat to the AKP government is the outcome of the local elections on Sunday, which will act as a barometer for the party’s popularity. Some 35 percent are reckoned to be the AKP’s core voters and, according to a Sonar survey, 80 percent of them don’t use the Internet. Added to this is the fact that Turkey has a relatively low newspaper circulation (96 papers bought daily per 1,000 people), which increases the importance the government attaches to the control of both public and private TV networks.

Nevertheless, since February, almost daily tweets from Haramzadeler (Sons of Thieves), joined by Başçalan (Prime Thief) and Hırsıza Oy Yok (No Votes for Thieves), have contained links to wiretaps on YouTube and other social media allegedly involving Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family and ministers in bribery, tender rigging, media manipulation and interference with the judiciary

Despite widespread international criticism, President Abdullah Gül, “Mr. Nice Guy,” has approved new legislation giving the government control over the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and the powers to block important websites. Prime Minister Erdoğan has now (ab)used these powers by imposing a blanket ban on Twitter through the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB), which has also blocked access to Google’s domain name server (DNS). Furthermore, Erdoğan has threatened to block access to YouTube and Facebook.

In the first few hours of the ban, there was a massive increase in the number of tweets sent in Turkey, and Turkish users have found ways to circumvent the ban by using virtual private networks (VPN) or Tor. Nevertheless, there has since been a marked decrease in the number of Turkish tweets. Following several complaints, a Turkish administrative court has also ordered a stay of execution, which Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said the government will implement

Erdoğan has, in turn, elevated the conflict to a “new war of independence,” with a TV commercial showing Turks from all walks of life rallying round the flag. However, as Turkish economist Emre Deliveli remarked on his blog, “There are several million people in Turkey who would believe the world was flat if Gazbogan [Erdoğan] told them so.”

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.

March 28, 2014
SCANDALOUS DAY AT TURKISH PARLIAMENT!

Today, we witnessed a historical day at Turkish Parliament. Police reports about 4 AKP ministers were sent to the Parliament by the public prosecutor. These reports were related to the latest corruption scandal of AKP government. Since ministers have immunity, public prosecutor cannot order police to arrest them but prepare official reports and send these reports to the Parliament. In the Parliament, ministers discuss the situation of accused ministers by considering police reports. But this process was impeded by AKP senators today by using various ways.

Today, the President of the Parliamentary session was supposed to be Meral Akşener from opposition party MHP. But Permanent President of the Parliament, Cemil Çiçek from AKP, prepared an official document and appointed Vice-president Sadık Yakut from AKP to lead the session! Mr. Yakut did anything necessary to impede the discussion of the police reports. He said that the police reports had a secret content and it was not possible to discuss them in the parliament! Opposition parties emphasized that the reason of the preparation of these police reports were to make accused ministers accountable to the parliament. But Sadık Yakut didn’t let the content to be revealed. Parliamentary Television (Meclis TV) was broadcasting the session. But they censored some parts of the speeches of opposition senators! At 19:00, they cut broadcasting completely! CHP senator Melda Onur made live broadcast by using her smart phone after that hour! Senators argued for hours. But of course, it was not possible to convince AKP senators and Vice-President of the Parliament. CHP senator Kamer Genç protested this situation by throwing money to the president’s bench! At the end, CHP’s proposal of reading the police reports in the parliament was rejected with the votes of AKP senators!

via Istanbul Revolution

March 20, 2014
PEA-BRAINS ON PARADE

Harp Okulu Öğrencisi, Mustafa Kemal. (1899-1902)

17 March 2014

Today, the Black Sea rages red.
Today, the missiles of the west tremble in anticipation.
And today, the Turkish navy sends a task force on a three-month circumnavigation around Africa.
How nice.
In the face of great strategic uncertainty and dangerous border vulnerability, such is what passes for a strategic maneuver.
Such is the condition of military thinking in the demolished Turkish military.
How sad.
The Turkish military, the true founder of modern Turkey.
It had hurled the western occupying imperialist powers into the sea.
The Turkish military, the pride of Atatürk.
But that was then. And today is today. And the general staff now bow their collective heads to the politicians. Bow their heads!

“Don’t fall into the temptation of trying to please pea-brains,” said Mustafa Kemal to his fellow officer, Ahmet Cemal, in 1910. “If you condescend to gain strength from the favor of this or that man, you may get it at present, but you’ll have a rotten future.”

Today, Turkey is already experiencing such a rotten future. And we already know the pea-brains.

Today, I learned that one of the pea-brains decreed that Turkish military cadets may no longer apply to West Point. Extremely competitive, acceptance there requires sponsorship by the government. Instead they will be applying to the Chinese and Korean academies. This is a major shift in Turkish foreign policy. This is a de-westernization of its best and brightest youth.
And then I thought of my first meeting with Mustafa Kemal.

My senior year at West Point, the winter of 1962.
I am fully absorbed in a course entitled The History of the Military Art.
We are now studying World War I. Except for its first few weeks of brilliant German maneuvers, it’s a blood-ridden, boring stalemate, a slaughterhouse in the trenches.

One day after class, I visit the Cadet Bookstore.

I see Gallipoli, by Alan Moorehead, an Australian by birth.
I purchase it, outside reading never hurts.
Moorehead introduces Kemal to me on page nine:

“There was one name, more important than all the rest, that is missing from the list of guests at Harold Nicholson’s dinner party.” (Nicholson was junior secretary in the British Embassy)

“He waited in resentful claustrophobia for the opportunity that never came.”

“Through all these chaotic years it was Kemal’s galling fate to take orders from this man.” (Enver)

“No one in his wildest dreams would have imagined that half a century later Kemal’s name would be reverenced all over Turkey, that every child at school would know by heart the gaunt lines of his face, the grim mouth and the washed eyes, while his spectacular rival would be all but forgotten.”

Who was this Kemal? My professors had never mentioned him, nor had our textbooks. We had studied Napoleon and Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Grant and Eisenhower and Guderian and Rommel and MacArthur. But about this Kemal, not a word.

I could not stop reading my new book, Page 129: “It was at this point that Mustafa Kemal arrived.” (It was at Chanuk Bair.)
“Kemal’s astonishing career as a commanding officer dates from this moment.”
And from this point, the book “belongs” to Mustafa Kemal.

His “air of inspired desperation.”

His “fanatical attack on the Anzac beachhead all afternoon.”

His reconnaissance during the cease fire: “It was even said that Kemal had disguised himself as a sergeant and had spent the whole nine hours with various burial parties close to the Anzac trenches.”

His detailed journal: “He always sees the battle from a fresh point of view.”

His prophecy of the landing at Suvla: “From the 6th August onwards the enemy’s plans turned out just as I expected. I could not imagine the feelings of those who, two months before, had insisted on not accepting my explanations….They had allowed the whole situation to become critical and the nation to be exposed to very great danger.”

Mustafa Kemal, the savior, the father, the inspiration of the Turkish people, or at least those who are able to comprehend his genius.

And so I graduated from West Point and did my duty.
And so went the years and the decades and by a quirk of fate I came to Turkey.
And then I read another book: Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey by Andrew Mango.

And after that I read more and more books about this splendid man and I read his writings too. And I realized how my earlier education at West Point had been severely flawed.
Why?
Because Atatürk was the exemplar of the soldier-statesman we all should have studied and emulated. My god, he had won and built a nation. He had defeated the dark-minded forces that had enslaved the minds of Turkish men and women for centuries. He was a liberator beyond compare. Military, political, social, economical, educational, philosophical, cultural…he had mastered and implemented all the arts of modernization. He had given to all an explosive burst of genuine freedom. Indeed, he had set the way to an incomparable secular, democratic, republic of Turkey. And we, in the greatest military academy in the world, failed to know anything about him!

How I wish now that sixty years ago I had a Turkish cadet classmate at West Point. How he could have inspired us all with the full story of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. And how enlightening it would have been for West Point and the “West.”

One night soon after I had arrived in Turkey, I went to a concert at the AKM. AKM stands for the Atatürk Cultural Center. It was a splendid concert auditorium with a vast stage for theater and ballet. It has since been left to ruin by the abominable government that now rules this fast-fading country. Outside were parked numerous buses. Inside was a contingent of cadets from a local military high school. I struck up a conversation. They all spoke perfect English.

“So what’s next for you guys?” I asked.
“I’m going to West Point next year,” one answered with a confident pride.
“Really?” I said, “I went there.”
He was as surprised as I was.
He was a solid kid, like all of them, facing an uncertain future. And I thought of myself, so unknowing, so long ago.
“You will have a great advantage at West Point, you know, with your military preparation,” I said.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I hope so, sir.”
“You will,” I said, “More than any of them there now.”
“Why is that, sir?”
“You have Atatürk,” I said. “And make sure you tell all of them all you know about him. Share him!”
And then the bell sounded softly three times. Last call. We said goodbye and scattered to our seats.

I wonder now about those splendid boys… By now they are officers. Army? Navy? Air Force? Are any in jail due to the ongoing criminal and nonsensical conspiracy of the CIA, Fethullah Gülen, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to destroy the Turkish military and Mustafa Kemal?

The decision to abandon West Point training, made by someone somewhere in the Turkish chain of command, is a particularly harmful one. It insults the wise heritage of Mustafa Kemal. It severs the alliance of American and Turkish military academy-trained officers. And it stinks of political opportunism and ignorance. But those details can be debated some other day, hopefully by the young Turkish cadets who will easily see the profoundly catastrophic effects of a military turning its back on the world’s preeminent military institution. It’s a decision that penalizes both West Point and the Turkish Military Academy. It’s a decision made by those pea-brains, domestic and foreign, who today cause such havoc in Turkey.

If we don’t wise up now, when will we?

James (Cem) Ryan
Istanbul
17 March 2014

Brightening Glance, http://www.brighteningglance.org

March 18, 2014