Tag: Gezi protest

  • TODAY ERDOĞAN SAID “GODDAMN THE GEZI PARK MOVEMENT.”

    TODAY ERDOĞAN SAID “GODDAMN THE GEZI PARK MOVEMENT.”

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    ERDOĞAN SAID “GODDAMN THE GEZI PARK MOVEMENT.”
    I SAY, “GOD WILL DAMN  ERDOĞAN!”
     
    ERDOĞAN, GEZİ HAREKETİNE “LANETLER OLSUN!” DEDİ.
    BEN ERDOĞAN’A “ALLAH SENİ LANETLİYECEK!” DİYORUM.

    29 March 2014

    Today, Erdoğan said “Goddamn the Gezi Park Movement!” Who are you, Erdoğan?

    Who are you to say such things, to defame and curse our people? Aren’t you the head of the government of the Republic of Turkey? How shamefully you speak. Like a street-corner thug. You curse the youth of Gezi Park? You ask Allah to damn the youth of Turkey? Our innocent, brave, incorruptible youth, people, unlike you, who do not lie, cheat or steal. You curse the honest future of this nation? How dare you!

    Erdoğan, the simple truth is that you have no standing with Allah. Your ranting and cursing insults Allah. In Allah’s eyes you stand with the apes and swine. Allah despises you, Erdoğan. And here is why.

    Don’t you know your Koran? You are a murderer, Erdoğan, a murderer, by design, of “believers.” You have murdered eight Gezi Park young people. You and your terrorists and your war criminal American sponsors have murdered tens of thousands of Syrian believers. And many more throughout North Africa. Rather than curse believers, you should tremble in fear of what Allah will do to you here and in the hereafter. And if you truly knew the Koran you would indeed lament and tear your clothing.

    Do you know verse 4:92? It says:

    “It is unlawful to kill another believer. He that kills a believer shall burn in hell forever. He shall incur the wrath of God, who will lay His curse on him and prepare for him a mighty scourge.”

    You are the one who is damned, Erdoğan, not the Gezi Park movement. You have cursed your victims and slandered their mothers. And now you damn them? Your bestial words disgrace you, the Turkish nation and Islam.

    Moreover, the world knows of your many slanderous lies. Do you know the punishment for slander? Read verse 24:19 and again become very afraid! It says:

    “Those who delight in spreading salacious slander against the faithful shall be sternly punished in this life and in the life to come. God knows, but you do not.”

    As for your thieving, the world and Allah, who is mighty and wise, know about this too.

    Again, be afraid! Verse 5:39 says: “As for the man and woman who is guilty of theft, cut off their hands to punish them for their crimes. That is the punishment enjoined by God. God is mighty and wise.” Do you know this, Erdoğan? Do you know that all the $500,000 dollar wrist watches will not save you.

    Do you know the full horror of the curse of Allah? If not, you should learn it well. It awaits you.

    Verse 5:58: “Shall I tell you who will receive a worse reward from God? Those whom God has cursed and with whom He has been angry, transforming them into apes and swine, and those who serve the devil.”

    You are serving the devil already, Erdoğan, betraying your country, conspiring with America to murder hundreds of thousands of innocent believers throughout northern Africa and the Middle East.

    But while Allah is mighty and wise, He is also merciful. He says so. Read, Erdoğan! “But whoever repents after committing evil, and mends his ways, shall be pardoned by God. God is forgiving and merciful.”

    So there is still hope for you, Erdoğan. But, sadly, I despair of your ability to understand Allah when He says, “The life of this world is nothing but a fleeting vanity.” God knows this, Erdoğan, but you do not. And that’s why God will damn you. And why the Gezi Park Movement will flourish.

    James (Cem) Ryan
    Istanbul
    26 March 2014

    Source: The Koran, Penguin Books. New York, New York, 1999.

     

     

  • ‘Retaliation Campaign’: Erdogan Punishes Protesters in Turkey

    ‘Retaliation Campaign’: Erdogan Punishes Protesters in Turkey

    Following mass anti-government protests in Turkey, Ankara is now taking revenge on its critics. Activists and demonstrators are being investigated and intimidated, while journalists are getting fired and insubordinate civil servants transferred far afield.

    Tayfun Kahraman met the prime minister five weeks ago, but now he is sitting in a hotel in Gaziantep in southeast Turkey, feeling distraught. The city is 1,150 kilometers (715 miles) from Istanbul, but less than 100 kilometers from the Syrian border. Kahraman is an urban planner and an official with the historic preservation division of the Turkish Ministry of Culture. Until recently, the 32-year-old was in Istanbul, where he led the protests against a development project in Gezi Park, which grew into mass demonstrations against the government in early June. Now he has been transferred to this provincial city as a punishment, he says. The official explanation is that there is a personnel shortage in the southeast.

     

    Turkey Protests

    “In Istanbul, my friends are being arrested and chased through the narrow streets with tear gas,” says Kahraman. “And I’m stuck here.” But he risks losing his job if he objects to the transfer. He is also receiving death threats, probably from supporters of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He scrolls through the emails on his Blackberry, which include hate-filled Twitter messages. One person wrote: “We want to see you hanging on Taksim Square.” In Istanbul, he didn’t go home for weeks. He changed hotels four times, or slept in offices and friends’ apartments — when he could sleep at all.Until recently, Kahraman headed the conferences of a group called Taksim Solidarity, wrote press releases and was part of a group of protest leaders invited to speak with Prime Minister Erdogan in June. He also did the preparatory work for an expert report on which an Istanbul court based its decision to declare the construction project in Gezi Park illegal three weeks ago.

    A ‘Retaliation Campaign’

    The demolition of the park in downtown Istanbul was only the initial cause of the protests, which have continued and are now directed against the government. The protesters’ numbers have dwindled from the hundreds of thousands who had been attending the mass protests, though. Many are exhausted, but many are also afraid.

    Largely unnoticed by the public, a big cleanup has begun, in which those who opposed Prime Minister Erdogan and his administration in recent weeks are now being punished. Activists are being locked up, journalists bullied and demonstrators persecuted. The Turkish parliament has deprived the chamber of architects and engineers of its voice in urban planning projects. The Turkish education ministry has ordered schools to provide it with the names of all teachers who took part in the protests, who could now face adverse consequences. “Erdogan is engaged in a retaliation campaign against his critics,” says opposition politician Ayse Danisoglu. “And he will stop at nothing to get his way.”

    According to Turkish human rights organizations, the police have arrested at least 3,000 people, including children. Although some have been released, no one knows how many are still in prison.

    Those arrested were primarily the leaders: activists with Taksim Solidarity, fans of the Besiktas football club, who have played a significant role in the protests, and members of opposition parties. But some people who were only marginally involved were also arrested. Most are accused of demonstrating without permits or damaging government property. Last week, security forces also raided dormitories in Istanbul and arrested dozens of students.

    Locked Up for No Reason

    Many, like Umut Akgül, are in prison without knowing why. A business student, Akgül had come to Istanbul from Eskisehir in northwestern Turkey to visit his parents. The family drove into the downtown area on July 6 to take part in a peaceful rally on Taksim Square, which has become the main site for protests there. As in the preceding weeks, the police used water cannons and tear gas against the protesters. Akgül fled into a building entrance, while his parents found shelter in a café. From there, Ali Akgül saw the police taking away his son. He rushed up to the officers and shouted: “That’s my boy!” But the police pushed him away. Others were also arrested, including a street vendor who was selling flags.

    Akgül was taken to the police station, together with several dozen other protesters, while his parents waited all night in vain outside the police headquarters. Their son was arraigned the next day and sent to a prison in the Bayrampaa neighborhood, where he now shares a cell with murderers and rapists. His parents, who were only permitted to visit him once, say that he told them the other prisoners beat him and forced him to scrub the floor.

    “No one in this country is safe anymore,” says his mother Gül Akgül. The television set in her living room is on all the time now, with images of the protests flickering across the screen. The parents are both real estate agents, but they haven’t worked since their son was arrested. They have hired an attorney, but it is still unclear what the charges against Umut Akgül are and when his trial could begin.

    The parents say that their son was not active in any political group and had never attended a demonstration before. In the worst case he, like other Gezi demonstrators, could be indicted under the Turkish anti-terrorism law, known as Act Nr. 3713, on suspicion of founding a terrorist organization to overthrow the government. If convicted, he could face life in prison. Since 2005, when the government significantly expanded the anti-terrorism law, a number of Kurds, journalists, attorneys and mayors have been in prison on terrorism charges, with no prospect of a fair trail.

    The arraignment judge based his decision to have Akgül detained on a surveillance video that allegedly shows the student attacking a police officer. But the person on the video is wearing a sweater, whereas Akgül was wearing a T-shirt on that day.

    “There is no justice in Turkey,” says his father. “We will take our case to the European Court of Justice, if necessary.”

    Police Brutality and Intimidation

    When Erdogan became prime minister 10 years ago, he promised more democracy and constitutionality, and to put an end to the persecution of political opponents and police repression. But it now appears that Erdogan has adopted the methods of his predecessors. Emma Sinclair-Webb of Human Rights Watch criticizes the massive curtailing of basic rights in Turkey, saying that the government is doing nothing to investigate the excessive violence of recent weeks. On the contrary, she says, the police continue to treat peaceful demonstrators with brutality.

    The week before last, a young demonstrator died in Antakya in southern Turkey. Eyewitnesses say that police officers beat him to death. He is the fifth fatality since the beginning of the Gezi protests. Close to 8,000 people have been injured, including 111 photographers and journalists who, according to the Istanbul Photography Foundation, were victims of police brutality.

    Turkish journalists have suffered from repression for years. No other country in the world has as many journalists behind bars. But it wasn’t until the Gezi protests that the public became aware of how limited freedom of speech actually is. Most media organizations sided with Erdogan, and journalists whose reporting on the unrest was too positive, in the government’s opinion, have lost their jobs. Some were even arrested.

    For the first time, the policy of intimidation is also directed against foreign journalists. A cameraman with the Arab Al-Jazeera network was injured, and an Italian journalist was expelled from the country. Amberin Zaman, a correspondent with the British magazine The Economist, says that she has never experienced this level of violence against journalists in her career.

    Spirit of Resistance Remains

    Mehmet Kacmaz, a photographer with the Turkish Nar agency, believes that the public has been alarmed by the images of police brutality, and that police have targeted journalists and photographers to stop them from producing more images.

    Kacmaz documented the protests from the beginning. He recounts cases of colleagues who were beaten up, had their pictures deleted, or their cameras seized or smashed on the ground. A friend’s foot was crushed by a gas shell. “They are trying to intimidate us,” says Kacmaz.

     

    He almost lost his left eye when he and four colleagues were taking pictures near Taksim Square two weeks ago. The police had driven away the demonstrators with tear gas and rubber bullets. Kacmaz was standing on the side of the street, without a helmet or a mask. He raised his hands when the police approached him. There wasn’t a single demonstrator nearby, and yet a police officer fired a rubber bullet at Kacmaz’s face. The photographer heard the sound of the gun, and then there was blood streaming over his eye. His colleagues took him to the hospital. He was blind for three days and had to have stitches on his eyelid, but has since regained his sight.Conservative journalist Yigit Bulut is already firing up the Turks for a “war” and has said that he would “die for Erdogan.” Bulut claims that the German and British governments are behind the protests, and that they aim to weaken Turkey. “But the Turkish people will win this war.” Prime Minister Erdogan seems to share these views. He has since appointed Bulut to be his chief advisor.

    But the government’s attempts to intimidate are only fueling a spirit of resistance among some people. Tayfun Kahraman, the activist who was transferred to Anatolia, has already found a new mission. A small group of environmentalists are protesting against plans to cut down the trees in a public park in Gaziantep. Kahraman paid them a visit, and offered to provide them with an expert report to file a complaint. Gezi is everywhere, even in Gaziantep.

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

  • Declaration on Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay’s statement

    Declaration on Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay’s statement

    Türk Musevi Cemaati

    Declaration regarding the questions that were posed to us based on Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay’s statement, indicating: “Jewish Diaspora is behind Gezi protest”

    Following closely from the media, we are trying to obtain information about the meaning, the scope and details on Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay’s statement about “Jewish Diaspora being behind Gezi protest”.

    But in any case, based on the fact that Turkish Jewish citizens as well as other Jewish people living all around the globe may be affected and pointed as a target of such a generalization, we wish to express our concerns, and share our apprehension and worry of the consequences that such perceptions can cause.

     

    Chief Rabbinate of Turkey – Turkish Jewish Community

  • Tear gas is a symptom of Turkey’s weak democracy

    Tear gas is a symptom of Turkey’s weak democracy

    Claire Berlinski

    Special to The Globe and Mail
    Published Saturday, Jun. 29 2013, 6:00 AM EDT

    claire-berlinski
    Claire Berlinski

    I live blocks from Taksim Square and Gezi Park in Istanbul. I never imagined that Gezi Park would bring what academics call Turkey’s “democratic deficits” to worldwide attention. But I never doubted that something would.

    My proximity to Taksim ensures that even when I’d rather ignore my journalistic instincts and get an early night’s sleep, I have no choice but to follow the story wherever it leads – because it leads to my apartment. When police attack, the crowds run up my street trailed by cops and tear gas. Like everyone in my neighbourhood, I’m now able to tell exactly what lachrymatory agent they’re using.

    The tear gas, however, is the symptom. The “democratic deficits” are the disease. The conventional wisdom is that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan does not understand the full meaning of “democracy,” believing that having won several elections, he is now a monarch. Partly correct. But the problems are deeper still, and even Mr. Erdogan’s megalomania is just a symptom of this disease.

    Consider this: In what kind of democracy does the prime minister decide where to build a shopping mall, particularly when the courts have already halted the project? To grasp the explosion over Gezi Park, you need to understand the details of Turkey’s “democratic deficits.” The most economical way to explain them is how Cem Toker, the secretary of Turkey’s very-minority Liberal Democratic Party, put it to me: “Democracy doesn’t exist in any shape or form here, so there are no problems with democracy in Turkey – kinda like no car, no engine problems.” He is exaggerating only slightly. Yes, Turkey holds regular elections. But the rest of the institutions we associate with “democracy” are so weak that everyone living here knew this car was going to crash.

    Aengus Collins, a thoughtful observer of Turkey, suggests a deeper way to consider this. He uses Larry Diamond and Leonardo Morlino’s markers of “high quality” democracy: rule of law, participation, competition, vertical accountability, horizontal accountability, freedom, equality and responsiveness. These phrases may sound academic, but to people who daily experience their absence, the path from these terms to tear gas is a straight line.

    Behind these protests are bitter grievances. Among the most bitter is the dysfunctional Turkish legal system – in particular, the government’s use of it against opponents. Mr. Erdogan has introduced constitutional referendums enabling him to pack the courts with his supporters, and used the courts to shut down hostile media on technical grounds or through punitive taxation. The courts have imprisoned dissenters. Potentially dangerous challengers have fled the country to evade arrest.

    As for “participation,” this too has been gravely undermined, particularly for the generation that grew up in the wake of the 1980 coup. In Turkey’s very recent past, forms of organization, assembly and protest that healthy participatory democracies require have not only been discouraged, but met with consequences so terrible that parents teach their children that they cannot win, so don’t even try. Anyone who thinks this has changed since Mr. Erdogan came to power is gravely mistaken: Consider the case (one among thousands) of students Ferhat Tüzer and Berna Yılmaz, arrested for holding up a banner that read, “We want free education and we will get it.” They were sentenced to 81/2 years.

    “Competition” may be the most challenging problem of all. Turkey’s 10-per-cent election threshold ensures that a party with 9.9 per cent of the popular vote receives no representation in the National Assembly. The d’Hondt method, which favours large parties, is used to distribute the seats among the remainder. Finally, Turkey uses a closed-list system: Voters choose a party rather than an individual candidate. This keeps power in the hands of party elites; individual voters can’t choose – or hold to account – the person who represents them.

    As for freedom, the imprisonment and harassment of journalists is so ubiquitous that they scarcely need the state to censor them any more; they do it themselves. When these protests began, Turkish stations broadcast anything but news about them: They showed documentaries about penguins.

    “Vertical accountability” describes the way elected leaders are held accountable for decisions by voters; “horizontal accountability” describes the way they are held accountable by legal and constitutional authorities. Again, don’t look for either here. Without press freedom, voters have scant information by which to judge their elected officials. This has led to such deep distrust of journalists that as a friend put to me, “We don’t mind when they put them in jail. We’d mind if they locked up the streetwalkers, though. At least they perform a useful service.”

    The penultimate refuge of horizontal accountability, flawed though it was, disappeared in a 2010 referendum that changed the composition of the nation’s highest courts, giving Mr. Erdogan the power to handpick loyal jurists. The very last limit on his power was the military. Its senior figures are now in prison, convicted on the basis of evidence that would have been thrown out of anything but a handpicked court. While no proper democracy is mediated by military coup, the electorate had become conditioned to the idea that in extremis, the military would protect them from their mistakes. This promoted the growth of an immature electorate unaccustomed to thinking rigorously about voting and its consequences.

    It should now be clear why there’s no way to bring Turkey’s corruption under control. Politicians have no motivation to do so. On paper, Turkey’s Law on Political Parties requires political parties to maintain records of all income and expenditure, but it doesn’t require them to publish records. So no one has any idea where the money is coming from or going – although everyone knows it is coming from places it shouldn’t and going to people it oughtn’t.

    Turkey was no democratic paradise before the rise of the Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP). But the AKP has cynically reduced the idea of democracy to the proposition that democracy is elections and nothing more. Unsurprisingly, many are unsatisfied, particularly because rising incomes have permitted them, for the first time, to consider problems less urgent than merely putting food on the table.

    Unfortunately, it’s too late. So thoroughly has Mr. Erdogan consolidated his power that the most likely outcome of these protests will be yet another unwanted construction project – the building of new prisons. Waves of arrests are taking place now, even as the world assures itself that the protests are “dying down.” Yes, they are dying down, but in a more literal way than you might realize.

    Claire Berlinski is a freelance writer who lives in Istanbul. She is the author of There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters.

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