I’m standin’ here. You make the move. You make the move. It’s your move. Huh? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Well, then who the hell else are you talkin’ to? You talkin’ to me? Well, I’m the only one here.
Travis Bickle, TAXI DRIVER
TREASON TIME WITH TRAVIS
TREASON: The betrayal of one’s own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.
MISPRISION OF TREASON:The deliberate concealment of one’s knowledge of a treasonable act or a felony.
Hey Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu! Hey you! I’m talkin’ to you! I’m talkin’ to you, Mister Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. The leader of the that sissy-boy “opposition” party! What are you doing? All the time backin’ off, backin’ off, talkin’ away at the parliament like it all means somethin’. It don’t mean nothin’ to me and people like me, that’s for sure. Takin’ it, takin’ it for years you’ve been takin’ it from that religious mob that lies, cheats and steals like a plague of cancer. And you, playin’ word games with them while they destroy your country. Not smart, Kılıçdaroğlu, not smart at all. Them guys stole everything…everything, even the mosques and the police and the army for God’s sake. And where the hell were you, Mr. Opposition Party Big Shot? They even stole the mountains and the forests and the trees and the streets and the air and they even got the big ships. And you? You got the baby carriage and the garbage pail. And you’re the only one there, you’re the boss. So pay attention, understand? I’m talkin’ to you…man-to-man, I’m talkin’ to you! You got that? Good, because here’s a man who won’t take it anymore. Not from these government criminals destroyin’ our country while you and your rabbits sit on your collective duffs. They embarrass me, these people, so stupid they are. They think we’re stupid too and that’s the worst part. That, and lookin’ at you and your boys hangin’ around all day in them big red chairs waitin’ for the word to come from their big boss. Then you all jump up like hungry dogs at chicken bones. You try to be clever in your retorts but you don’t say nothin’ and you embarrass us a second time. So do somethin’, Kılıçdaroğlu, somethin’ with courage. I drive a taxi all day and all night. And that takes courage. So you do likewise, be brave and earn some respect. Walk out of that cesspool of a parliament. Leave shoe boxes on your desks as complementary mementos to the thieves-in-charge. Then all of you take a hike over to the criminal court and file those treason and misprision of treason cases against the gangster government. And throw in the American ambassador and his fellow agents for good luck. And we the people will hail you in the streets.
We’ll show them, won’t we Kemal? You’re the main opposition man! You can be the big dude prime minister even without kissin’ America’s feet. And I’m gonna get you in shape right now. Too much sittin’ is ruinin’ your body. Too much abuse has gone on for too long. From now on, it will be fifty push-ups each morning, fifty pull-ups. There’ll be no more pills, there’ll be no more bad food, no more destroyers of your body. From now on, it will be total organization. Every muscle must be tight. I’m one of your biggest supporters, you know. I tell everybody that comes in this taxi that they have to vote for you. You understand? Are you still lookin’ at me? Good, because I’m lookin’ at you…hard!
Mr. Travis Bickle
Somewhere in traffic in Istanbul
25 December 2013
There are two reasons Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan may not survive the current government corruption scandals in Turkey. And if he does, the cost to the “Turkish model” will be enormous.
The first is, well, the corruption charges. An important key to the success of the AK, or Justice and Development, Party that Erdogan helped to create in 2001 lay in its initials: AK means “white” in Turkish, and it can also mean “pure.” Turks were sick of the unaccountable corruption of previous governments. The AK Party rode a promise of purity to power.
Suddenly, the AK Party is looking decidedly grubby. Yes, the 89 people who have been detained so far in the corruption and money-laundering probe are all innocent until proven otherwise. And yes, the prosecutors in charge are the same ones who based the so-called Sledgehammer trial against the military on forged documents. Still, the three simultaneous cases that have been initiated, as outlined in the news media, are damaging.
One case, for example, involves about $70 million worth of alleged bribes connected to an Azerbaijani businessman, who is accused of running cash into Russia and trading gold into Iran and is now under arrest. Police found $4.5 million stuffed into shoe boxes at the home of another suspect, Suleyman Aslan, the general manager of state-run Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS. That’s a lot of money even for Jimmy Choos. This is the same bank that was the focus of a May 14 letter, signed by 47 U.S. congressmen, complaining about its gold-swap financing of trade with Iran.
So far, no cabinet ministers have been arrested, but the sons of three have been detained. According to the latest Turkish news media reports, prosecutors have asked parliament to lift the immunity that was granted to their fathers as well as a fourth minister.
All of this makes Erdogan vulnerable. He was already weakened because the coalition of religious conservatives, nationalists and liberals he had built since 2001 had disintegrated by the end of this summer’s Gezi Park protests. Now he is also at war with former close allies among his religious conservative base, a group led by faith leader Fetullah Gulen.
Precisely because Erdogan has concentrated power so closely around himself in just a few men, any perception that they are corrupt will immediately infect his personal image and support. This is why Erdogan hasn’t fired the four ministers: He says the allegations against them are part of a plot to unseat him. My guess is that he’s right, but his response gets to the second reason Erdogan may not survive, despite being far stronger than Gulen: himself.
Erdogan is an extraordinary politician, one of the most intuitive I have met. Yet since the AK Party’s third thumping election victory in 2011, when he declared his “master period” to be at hand, Erdogan appears to have lost the political compass that once told him when to be pragmatic and cut his losses. His fight-or-flight response now includes only one — to fight.
In response to the allegations, Erdogan has fired dozens of Istanbul police chiefs involved in the arrests, the same ones he defended and praised over their handling of the Gezi Park protests earlier this year. He says the corruption cases are part of the same plot he detected behind the Gezi Park protests, conducted by the same dark morass of international conspirators. Except that now the police who cracked down on the protesters must be part of the conspiracy, too.
This is just untenable. To make it stick and purge Gulen’s supporters from the police force, prosecutor’s office and courts, Erdogan will have to crack down in ways that will destroy what remains of Turkey’s independent law enforcement institutions and media freedoms. That will deal a huge blow to the so-called Turkish model, the idea that Turkey had cracked the code for implementing genuine democracy in the Muslim world. And that would be a tragedy, because the Turkish model is real and important, if overhyped, oversimplified and already under strain.
There is another possible path that Erdogan can follow. He can take this opportunity to sack some of the worst ministers in his cabinet, who also happen to be touched by the corruption scandal:
Zafer Caglayan, the economy minister who has declared himself “allergic to interest rates,” supported Erdogan’s interesting economic theory that high interest rates cause inflation.
Interior Minister Muammer Guler is the man who said recently that mixed lodgings at universities should be banned because “terrorist organizations have started to significantly abuse the relationships between the boys and girls, those among the university youth. They use it as a recruitment base.” What can one say?
Minister for Urban Planning and Development Erdogan Bayraktar once said that because Turks are Muslims and live in a difficult region, “we aren’t capable of inventing anything or making discoveries. We’re an agricultural country. What should we do?”
Minister for EU Affairs Egemen Bagis said, memorably, during the Gezi Park protests earlier this year that “Everyone who enters Taksim Square will be treated like a terrorist.” He is a reliable echo chamber for Erdogan’s latest thoughts, but he’s an unconvincing minister.
The sons of the first three ministers on this list have been arrested. While he’s at it, Erdogan should shed his new adviser, Yigit Bulut, who has accused unnamed centers abroad of trying to murder Erdogan via “telekinesis.” I hardly dare imagine what advice he gives.
These men were once at best marginal in Turkey’s government, but they have become central, displacing the steadier hands Erdogan used to rely on, such as Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan on the economy. Erdogan should make a clean break, removing the four targeted ministers so that they can give their full attention to the corruption investigations. He also needs to give his own full support to those probes, demonstrating that he isn’t protecting himself and remains committed to the original, “pure” promise of the AK Party.
I doubt this is what Erdogan will do. He would see it as a defeat, because it would mean sharing power and influence with people who haven’t always said “yes.” He wouldn’t become the all-powerful president he plans to be next year, after the country’s first direct presidential elections. I suspect he will fight back as he knows how, and he may very well win. The Erdogan of a decade ago, who deftly avoided the political traps that the military and its supporters planted for him, would have made a better choice. He wouldn’t have gotten himself into this mess. He would have been listening.
(Marc Champion is a Bloomberg View editorial board member. Follow him on Twitter.)
The Honorable Barack H. Obama President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
USA
Dear Mr. President:
KILLERS!
You have destroyed the secular republic of Turkey. But it’s not only about you, Mr. President. It’s about Bush and Clinton and the other Bush and Reagan and Carter and Ford and Nixon and all the others like them who have been trying through the years to subvert Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular, democratic republic of Turkey. It’s also about your CIA and all its directors and its agents like Abramowitz and Edelman and Fethullah Gülen and Graham Fuller. And it’s about your CIA-inspired collaborating ambassadors to Turkey like Ricciardone and Jeffrey and Wilson and Edelman and Pearson and Parris and Grossman and Barkley and Abramowitz and Strausz-Hupe and Spain and Spiers and Macomber and Handley and Komer and all their double-talking predecessors beginning on 10 November 1938 when Atatürk died. But it’s mostly about your once best friend and key hit-man, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. And, of course, your under-educated, ever-treacherous under-cover CIA agent, religious huckster, and Pennsylvania resident, Fethullah Gülen. How good of you, Mr. President, to use these two religious hypocrites to employ God as a vehicle to divide and destroy a nation like Turkey. You, Mr. President, you and all the above American agent-provocateurs are guilty of subornation of treason. As a lawyer, I am sure you know what this means.
You have aided and abetted these two traitors, Erdoğan and Gülen, to engage in high crimes and misdemeanors in destroying the sovereignty of the Turkish nation. You have allowed your puppets, Erdoğan and Gülen, to kill and maim the citizens of Turkey. You have allowed your Erdoğan and his political thugs to plunder the nation of its natural resources, its wealth, its security and its honor. You have allowed your Gülen and his Gülen-controlled police force to brutally attack the Turkish people. And now, fed up with the treacherous, embarrassing Erdoğan, you are trying to dump him. But he is your “child,” Mr. President, another made-in-America political thug. And now you are using your other “child” (via the CIA) to have Gülen’s police to topple him. How stupidly obvious can you be? Erdogan’s corruption (and his political party’s) has been known for years. As has Gülen’s treachery. Your Erdoğan and Gülen’s police killed, gassed, beat, stabbed and otherwise maimed thousands of “Gezi Park” protestors. You and your reprehensible ambassador sold the Erdoğan government tons of tear gas and tasers and long range acoustic devices to violently suppress a democratic expression of the Turkish people’s disgust with the Erdoğan government. It resulted in six murders by the police. Are you beginning to understand, Mr. President?
How nice that now you too are disgusted with Erdoğan. And how clever of you to turn CIA “asset” Gülen against CIA “asset” Erdoğan. But what now, Mr. President? Do you think the “moderately” Islamic “gülenistas” in the AKP are any better than “moderately” Islamic Erdoğan? Do you think the Abdullah Gül puppet is any better than the Erdoğan model? Do you think the opposition party, now cravenly meeting with your ambassador, Ricciardone, is any better than Erdoğan? None of them are. Why? Because it is All-American garbage, that’s why. And it is because of you and your continuation of the sordid legacy of American gangsterism in the Republic of Turkey. Mr. President, Erdoğan and Gülen and you are enemies of the Turkish state. And the Turkish people know it. But, Mr. President, do you? Do you even care?
Turkey is on a journey beyond AKP patriarchy, “Aleviphobia”, and those social classes opposed to the AKP who have their own totalitarian tendencies, who call for a restoration of the first republic. We have to show that a “third way” centered on libertarian and democratic politics, is possible.
The Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) “democratization package” was announced by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, October 1. The package offers various improvements regarding the rights of non-Muslim minorities, subordinated groups and Kurds as well as readjustments of ongoing state-society relations. Erdogan claimed that this historically important package will not be a “final point” in the country’s journey towards democracy and that it is open to revision.
Since May 31 when the “Gezi resistance” began, the existing paradigms of social relations in Turkey have been controversially mutating. Individuals who attached their political subjectivities to Gezi in varying ways claim to have launched a “resistance” against the “authoritarian” tendencies of the AKP in general and Prime Minister Erdogan in particular. Many groups called for a collective mobilization against the government for the overthrow of the existing political status quo, turning to a “Gezi spirit” expressing a yearning for some kind of “revolution”.
A huge variety of groups including Turkish nationalists, far-right extremists, leftists, secularists and anti-capitalist Muslims gathered under the heading of this “Gezi spirit”. The following months witnessed the attempts to mobilize the masses for an organized uprising against the AKP, which seems to have failed. As previously argued in my piece on the agents of resistance at Gezi Park, one of the reasons for this failure is the gulf between these activists and the more underprivileged, lower classes of society. As sociologist Caglar Keyder alsopoints out, Gezi announces the emergence of a newly visible “new middle class” with a distinct sense of society, individuality and the world; a generation which inherits its social-cultural capital from previous generations with middle/upper-middle class, secular and Kemalist roots.
Yet what may not have been expected by this new middle class after the Gezi resistance was that the AKP would embrace their own “revolutionary” paradigm for reshaping social and political dynamics in Turkey. Just one month into the events of the Gezi resistance, AKP headquarters published a book entitled The Silent Revolution (Sessiz Devrim), to be distributed not publicly but to the party’s organizations throughout the country.
The book cites the policies undertaken by the AKP for the last 11 years, focusing particularly on their struggle with the military establishment leading to a radical transformation of centre-periphery relations, as well as the reform of healthcare to create greater social equality and all sorts of social policy aimed at raising the level of welfare among the middle classes and the suburban poor.
Several AKP deputies had already claimed that the AKP’s policies constituted a “silent revolution” (a concept drawing on Gramscian analysis of hegemony and ‘passive revolution’). But these claims that a revolution is under way had not been heard since the 2011 general elections. Since then there has been unremitting criticism of the authoritarianism of the AKP.
The Gezi resistance has undoubtedly triggered the AKP’s ambition to be seen once again to embrace democratic policies and radical reforms. Therefore, the Gezi resistance must claim to have been successful in two regards: first, ecologically, in saving the green space in Gezi Park from the fate of being replaced by a shopping mall; and second, by forcing the AKP to take the bold steps towards democratization, announced last Monday.
Transforming language
The democratization package includes minor yet revolutionary steps towards democratization since it aims to go beyond the “taboos” set forth by the official republican ideology, inscribed in the foundational mission statement of the Turkish nation-state. Primary school students are no longer obliged to read the “Student Oath” every morning which goes as follows:
“I am a Turk, honest and hardworking. My principle is … to love my homeland and my nation more than my essence. … Oh Great Atatürk ! On the path that you have paved, I swear to walk incessantly toward the aims that you have set. My existence shall be dedicated to the Turkish existence. How happy is the one who says “I am a Turk !”
This nationalist and militarist narrative was a special obstacle for students of different ethnic backgrounds such as Kurds, Circassians, and Arabs, since it was designed to turn them into the obedient subjects of the nation-state, ready to sacrifice himself/herself for the Turkish race and Ataturk, the founder of the nation-state.
Complementary to the abolition of the oath, private institutions are now allowed to facilitate education in various mother tongues. Since the language of education was entirely confined to Turkish, this particular step has an historic importance in going beyond the taboos of the nation-state. The letters W-Q-X which belong to the Kurdish alphabet, for example, were prohibited by the state, which ordered the strict use of Turkish alphabet. Under these linguistic reforms, for instance, Kurdish parents will be able to name their children as they wish.
This transformation of “language” also restores the original names in the Kurdish and Armenian language banned under republican ideology of the villages and towns in Turkey. But permitting “state institutions” to undertake primary and high school education in different mother tongues is still missing from the current democratization package. The necessary adjustments have yet to be made in the constitutional law to reform the whole education system along multi-ethnic lines.
Emancipating the public space
From the time it was formed, the AKP has received immense public support for tackling the politics of the headscarf ban in Turkey. Women who wear headscarves, due to the “militant laicism” inherent in the foundational principles of the official ideology, were not allowed to work in public offices including universities, which entailed thousands of cases of human rights violations. The democratization package offers steps to be taken against such human rights violations and allows women to work in public institutions in their headscarves. Excepted from this reform, however, are those who work as judges, prosecutors, police officers and members of the army. The AKP has failed to offer a total abolition of the ban by leaving these important public institutions out of the headscarf reform.
“Hate speech” and “hate crimes” have been brought into this legislation, with judicial measures to be taken against individuals who discriminate against a person or a group of people for their ethnicity, religious beliefs and lifestyles. Yet the reform act does not mention “women” and “LGBTT” individuals amongst the groups suffering from discrimination on the basis of gender and sexual orientation. Here the criticism of the conservative AKP for being inherently “patriarchal” has been vocal. The law however, will hopefully be useful for the discrimination against women and LGBTT individuals in due course. For now it is up to civil society to form pressure groups so that the legal adjustments can be made on behalf of all underprivileged social classes; Muslim women wearing headscarves, women experiencing male violence, LGBTT individuals oppressed for their sexual orientation, Kurds, Armenians, Alevis and other ethnic/religious groups, who have been victims of discrimination and repression.
The democratization package also includes several reform acts for non-Muslim minorities. The lands of the “Mor Gabriel Monastery” will be returned to the Syriac Christian community foundation. An educational institution dedicated to the language and culture of the “Roma people” has been founded to begin to deal with their problems. While these are necessary steps towards democratization in terms of the rights of minorities, “The Halki Seminary”, which was the main school of theology of Eastern Orthodox Church’s Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, still remains banned from the list of religious facilities. The high expectations on the part of non-Muslims and democrats for the abolition of this ban led to huge disappointment. Erdogan, who during his declaration of the democratization package asserted that, “the rights of people cannot be subjected to any kinds of negotiation”, contradicts himself when the AKP waits for a response from Greek authorities to opening of a mosque in Athens, before they make any attempt to recognise the Halki Seminary. The opening of the Halki Seminary could have facilitated a dialogue between religions and paved the way for Orthodox Christians in Turkey to educate their religious staff; which could only further democratization. The opening of Halki Seminary is an important benchmark for the state’s ability to transform itself from the “militant laicism” which aims to oppress religious multiplicity in the public space, to an Anglo-Saxon type of secularism, in which the state apparatus guarantees citizens’ rights to religious expression and freedom.
There was a further huge disappointment for the Alevi people who were completely left out of the democratization package. Alevism has historically been left out of the official discourse and considered in opposition to the Sunni sect of Islam. Alevis traditionally worship in places called “Cemevi”, different from the mosques of other Islamic sects. Alevis still have no official permission for opening Cemevi in their neighbourhoods, which are not “officially” recognized as places of worship by the Presidency of Religious Affairs. Additionally since Alevi people do not feast during Ramadan, they face various kinds of discrimination in public space as they are considered “heretics” who have fallen away from Islam.
The cultural and state-based discrimination of the Alevi people should have been on the agenda for the democratization package to prevent their further alienation. The only step taken was the change of the name of Nevsehir University into “Haji Bektash Veli” University; named after an influential Alevi mystic and philosopher from the 13th century. Though this particular step seems thinly “symbolic” at best, the AKP deputies declare that they will be announcing another democratization package for the Alevi people soon. The Alevis constitute a large population who in general do not vote AKP, and so far this democratization package offers nothing which suggests that the AKP is attempting to win over this significant slice of the other “50%” of non-AKP supporters.
“Yes, but not enough”
Several groups associated with the “Gezi spirit”, especially the nationalist-Kemalists, have been furiously protesting against this package of measures. Rather than considering the headscarf reform as a step towards equal participation in the public sphere and freedom of lifestyle, Kemalist groups who are dedicated to the official ideology of the Turkish nation-state protest against the permitting of headscarves into public offices, and argue that this is part of a concerted AKP effort to convert the country into an Islamic state. The leaders of opposition parties such as the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Republican People’s Party (CHP) have protested against the abolition of the “student oath”, claiming that the AKP aims with this move to eliminate republican-nationalist ideals. The reform acts towards Kurdish language and other ethnic-groups have met similar protests by these oppositional groups.
Constructing this particular paranoia, by carefully aiming to consolidate the taboo subjects of the official ideology, the parties in opposition and their supporters are indeed reacting directly against the “Gezi spirit”, which waslibertarian in form and content. The AKP’s embrace of their ‘silent revolution’ in the name of democracy has once again exposed and wrong-footed those social classes who resist change and resent the gradual transformation of the status of various underprivileged groups in society. It also shows us that the “Gezi spirit” was heterogeneous and that not every participant was motivated by the impulse to transform the relations of subordination and oppression in Turkey. Some were rather motivated by reaction against the AKP, who had already taken some bold steps towards Turkey’s democratization.
On previous occasions, the Turkish people have declared,“Yes, but not enough”, regarding AKP reforms, and once again it is clear that this package includes minor yet important steps for democratization. These steps should not be regarded as a “gift” from the AKP or Erdogan to our society; they rather point to the success of our civil society in putting pressure on the AKP to democratize the country. They have been forced to take on the totalitarian tendencies of those social classes who internalize and would like to legitimize the structures of discrimination and domination, reproducing the nationalist, militant-laicist and militarist motives of the official ideology. The opposition parties representative of such classes constitute a hegemonic bloc which strictly supports “the first republic”, when what we need is to extend the scope of democratization with a critical approach capable of ushering in what is nowadays referred to as “the second republic”.
The word “revolution” is frequently used to describe this transition from the totalitarian discourses of the nation-state towards a multicultural society which truly respects each other’s differences. Considering the attempts by the opposition parties who insistently oppose democratization, we need the active participation of a civil society that is motivated by an anti-militarist, multi-culturalist and libertarian vision, to oversee the emergence of a democratization process that can be practiced on a sustainable basis.
The active participation of civil society will be key to Turkey’s progress towards an “open society” in forming successive pressure groups that will continue to impel the AKP into further democratic advance. But in dealing with a wide range of social taboos, we have a long way to go, on a journey which takes us safely far beyond AKP patriarchy, “Aleviphobia”, and those social classes opposed to the AKP who have their own totalitarian tendencies, who are calling for the restoration of the first republic. All we have to do, however, is to show that a “third way” centered on libertarian and democratic politics, is possible.
Turkey is a democracy enjoyed by all, says official
Monday, 14 October 2013
“There is no need for self-governance in Turkey because it is a democratic country where everyone enjoys full freedom,” Emrullah Isler said.
A member of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party told Al Arabiya’s Point of Order show that Turkey is a functioning democracy in which freedoms are enjoyed by everyone.
Emrullah Isler, a member of the foreign affairs commission, was commenting on the series of reforms that were recently announced by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The reforms include allowing private schools to teach the Kurdish language.
“There is no need for self-governance in Turkey because it is a democratic country where everyone enjoys full freedom. Abdullah Ocalan himself does not ask for self-governance,” he said, referring to the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
However, Kurds have criticized these reforms saying they do little to meet their demands.
“In the past we witnessed a denial of the Kurdish identity but the Justice and Development Party paved the way and refused to reject the identity of the Kurds and others,” Isler retorted.
In commenting on the content of the peace agreement between the Turks and the PKK which outlined that the Kurds must retreat into Iraqi territory, Isler refused to consider it a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.
He instead asked why the Iraqi government allowed what he described as a terrorist organization to establish strongholds in Iraqi territory and launch attacks on Turkey.
Despite labeling the PKK a terrorist organization, Isler underlined the strong relations between Turkey and the Kurdistan Regional Government and said that they are seeking to improve their relations further.
Isler also commented on threats emanating from the al-Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria which state that the group will attack Turkey if it does not open particular borders crossings between Turkey and Syria.
“We are not afraid of these threats because Jihadist and extremist organizations are always threatening Turkey and their members have conducted terrorist attacks inside Turkey since 2005,” he said.
Isler concluded: “We support moderate Islam and we want what is best for everyone. We do not allow extremists to cross our territories and we do not have any relations with them.”
via Turkey is a democracy enjoyed by all, says official – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Erasmus
Forget what the big-mouth crime ministers and the duplicitous oral cavities of selected foreign ministers are shouting about democracy. About political “mandates.” About how they represent the living essences of “the will of the people.” And about how they all care so deeply for all the downtrodden and abused of the world. These ignoramus champions of democracy shamelessly harangue the world ad nauseam about the importance of elections, elections, elections. Remember the purple index fingers wagging after the first post-Saddam election in Iraq? And the wonderful “democracy” that followed and is still slaughtering its citizens. If democracy only needs elections then we are all indeed lost on the road to ruin with our purple index fingers tucked securely where the sun don’t shine. All these crime ministers and “Nobel” presidents babble gibberish because they understand very little about democracy. And the biggest babbler of all? The ever-scowling, ever-treacherous winner of the 2010 (and last) Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the crime minister of that so-called democracy, Turkey. The award was cancelled after Al-Gaddafi was disemboweled and anal raped by the valiant democratic gangs aided and abetted by NATO under the inspirational leadership of the two international thugs who are now attempting to destroy Syria, “Bonnie” Obama and his partner in international crime, “Clyde” Erdoğan. They have yet to be added to the following list of democratically elected dictators. But their day may be nearing.
The following betrayers of their oaths of office also had mandates. And they all promptly forgot, ignored or destroyed the other aspects of a democratic form of government. Elections without a fully aware, fully protected, fully functioning electorate are worthless. And also worthless were the elections of these dictators:
Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan), 1991-present
Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, Paraguay, 1813-1840
Jorge Ubico, Guatemala, 1931-1944
Forbes Burnham, Guyana, 1966-1984
Artur de Costa e Silva, Brazil 1947-1969
Juan Maria Bordaberry, Uruguay, 1972-1976
Alberto Fujimori, Peru, 1992-93
Mohamed Morsi, Egypt, 2012-2013
François Duvalier, Haiti, 1959-1971
Adolph Hitler, Germany, 1933-1945
It need not even be said that those who are democratically elected are duty-bound to honor and support both the process and institution called democracy. None of the above did, despite swearing to do so.
So let’s examine today’s most vocal defender of his own “democratic” essence, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. How does his own country, Turkey, stand regarding its democratic structure? “Democracy,” Erdoğan once declared, “is like a trolley car. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.” This is a vitally important statement. While it reveals what we already know about Erdoğan, it also confirms that he knows nothing about the democratic process and, more dangerously, has no respect for the concept. Astounding it is that such a person could even be considered electable in a secular democracy. But then even the street dogs in Istanbul know how THAT happened. It undoubtedly will come as a surprise and shock to Erdoğan when learns that democracy is intended to outlast its participants and is not merely a stop at a mosque, a Turkish bath or the White House. Such deceit-filled thinking is typical of the deceptive language used throughout the decade-long Erdoğan regime.
This screwed-up thinking is akin to his and his party’s claim that the mean old dictator, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, traumatized the citizens of the new Turkish Republic by changing the alphabet from Ottoman script to Roman script. Trauma indeed, for a nation’s people of whom 90% lived in rural areas and 97% were illiterate! Forget the trauma of unlearning one and relearning another alphabet, they never knew one in the first place. Instead, it was the “thrill” of enlightenment which “traumatized” them, a learning experience (or trauma) which still seems to have eluded Erdoğan and his supporters. In fact, Atatürk knew instinctively what the new republic’s fundamentally impoverished people needed most in order to live and prosper in a modern secular state and future democracy. And that was first, literacy, then, education.
It is important to expand this point. To remediate this national educational deficit, Atatürk conceived of a nationwide rural learning system called the Village Institute. Designed to teach language skills and much more, it began in 1940. Six years later, the first fatal sign of Turkish compliance with America’s needs appeared. Godless communism had become a threat after the World War II and God-filled Turkey had a job to do. And so came the nonsense of the Islamic Green Belt protecting the west and the tagging of Turkey as a religious nation. Thus the Village Institute System must be disbanded. Too risky. Too red. Those bad communists would infiltrate and overthrow everything. So it follows that the disaster that is Turkey today regarding the great percentage of its uninformed voters began with the abandonment of the Village Institute system. How generous were the Turkish democratic politicians selling out to America’s interests. So today illiteracy rates, particularly among rural women remain uncomfortably high. But no one, least of all, Erdoğan is concerned. It keeps him afloat politically. So far.
But let’s start at the beginning. What does a country need to maintain a viable flourishing democracy? First, its citizens need guaranteed protections, else why sign-on as citizens. This is codified in a constitution which enumerates the nature and conditions of personal and political rights. It also states the terms of fair and free elections. Also vital to democracy is the inviolable presence of an independent judiciary uninfluenced by the political regime. Another key requirement of democracy is the separation of powers, namely that executive, legislative and judicial branches operate independently. And how about Mr. Erdoğan’s record after swearing to support and defend the constitution of Turkey?
He has actively worked to subvert it. He has illegally detained and/or incarcerated thousands of those opposed to his regime. Articles dealing with freedom of speech, assembly, and media expression have been trampled by the heavy boots of religious fascism. The courts are the extension of the ruling party and the ruling party is simply Erdoğan, himself. He has even declared himself to be the “chief prosecutor” of a sham case called Ergenekon. And what about the security of the nation’s borders? Erdoğan, aided and abetted by America, has destroyed the nation’s defense system. The experienced commanding general staff is in prison. The collaborators now command. Senior officers sold out their subordinates. One general is even considered to have been a secret witness against his comrades in arms. So much for moral and esprit-de-corps. So much for trust and honor. So much for the viability of the military academies. Equally worrisome, the police rule with a viciousness unparalleled since the good old days of Pinochet’s Chile and Hitler’s Germany. The Gezi Park Movement revealed the full horror of Erdoğan’s state police. Even more troublesome for the Turkish citizenry, is the questionable allegiance of the nation’s security forces. They seem to be oddly influenced and even controlled by a foreign power, namely a longstanding CIA asset/imam residing in Pennsylvania. (In case this sounds strange to you, it has been in all the newspapers, even a few in Turkey). Worse yet, Erdoğan has jeopardized the nation’s security by collaborating with America in the destruction of numerous North African and Middle East nations, most lately Syria and Egypt. Put plainly, these have been disasters for all concerned, and a political and moral disaster for Erdoğan. The integrity of the Turkish state seems at great risk, particularly regarding its eastern borders. And finally, let’s speak of Erdoğan’s favorite subject, elections. The election campaigns, aside from his usual bombast, has consisted of bribes-for-votes. Coal, food, even refrigerators (whether or not the village has electricity) are delivered to the ever-grateful, if somewhat bemused, masses living in the hinterlands.
So what, you might be saying. That’s the way democracy works in the world. And anyway, all politicians are thieves and liars. Tragically, perhaps you are right. So let’s all just lean back and enjoy our extermination. But I am talking about Turkey here, a nation chosen by America to be a role model of Islamic democracy so peace can reign throughout the carnage that has always been the Middle East. Of course, the premise is ludicrous, even delusional. We all know it. And now the world knows it. How the people of the democratic, secular Republic of Turkey have suffered from this catastrophic delusion promoted by their deluding politicians. A few questions are necessary to complete this analysis of Erdoğan’s democratic credentials.
Is it a democracy when someone writing a political opinion unfavorable to the regime is jailed?
Is it a democracy when newspapers are controlled by the political regime?
Is it a democracy when citizens exercise their constitution right to assemble and are brutally attacked by police with tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, real bullets, clubs, truncheons, boots, scimitars, butcher knives and blades of all varieties?
Is it a democracy when these same police are celebrated by the prime minister as heroes? Is it a democracy when telephone conversations are recorded without a court order?
Is it a democracy when people are arrested and incarcerated for years without due process?
Is it a democracy when a prime minister’s children openly campaign to subvert the provisions of the Turkish constitution?
Is it a democracy when houses are ransacked in “fishing expeditions” for evidence without court order? Is it a democracy when a nation’s judicial system is controlled by the ruling political party?
Is it a democracy when the police brutally assault, even murder, innocent citizens and are not held accountable? Is it a democracy when secret witnesses give testimony that is never examined in open court?
Is it a democracy when journalists, writers, academicians, political thinkers, rot in jail because they dare to have ideas?
Is it a democracy when convicted murderers of judges are bribed to give secret testimony and are afterwards acquitted?
Is it a democracy when an entire military leadership cadre is jailed on trumped-up charges that even schoolchildren would laugh at?
Is it a democracy when anyone opposed to the ruling party is considered a terrorist? I
Is it democracy when opposition parties that gain less than 10% of the total vote are denied seating in parliament?
Is it democracy when a prime minister advises neighbors to report to the police other neighbors who bang on pots and pans in protest against his regime?
Is it democracy when school authorities are told to inform on students and teachers who may have participated in the Gezi Park protests?
Is it a democracy when prime ministers insult the legitimacy of religious groups such as the Alevites in Turkey?
Is it a democracy when the houses of Alevites are marked with hate messages?
Is it a democracy when government vendettas are conducted against businesses, humanitarian organizations, lawyers and doctors, all those public spirited entities, who act to defend the constitutionally guaranteed interests of innocent citizens being brutally attacked by the state police force?
Is it a democracy when a government engages in general devastation of the environment, larceny of a nation’s treasure, captures the public space as its own, conducts unremitting surveillance of the populace, degrades the civil conscience and constantly rebukes contrary opinions?
If so, then what? If not, then what?
Regarding Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, what is he?
Cem Ryan, Ph.D.
Istanbul
19 August 2013
“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, ‘Never have I heard anything more divine’?”
Friedrich Nietzsche
Bilal Erdoğan, the Turkish prime minister’s son. 16 August 2013. At Fatih Mosque, Istanbul, participating in a demonstration for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Placards advocated against democracy and for the return of the caliphate
Demonstration at Fatih Mosque, Istanbul. 16 August 2013
Demonstration at Fatih Mosque, Istanbul. 16 August 2013
