Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is firing judges, sacking policemen and raising concerns about the fragility of the country’s democracy according to diplomats and academics
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters at the parliament in Ankara, Turkey Photo: AP
By Ruth Sherlock, Istanbul
Posters of the candidates plaster the walls of Istanbul’s Qassim Pasha district, urging residents to vote in local and national elections later this year.
For the past decade the electoral decision within the ramshackle apartment blocks and tea houses of this neighbourhood – one of the poorest in the city – was a foregone conclusion. Recep Tayyip Erdogan,Turkey’sprime minister, grew up here and its residents are proud supporters of their man.
Now, however, a different mood is quietly infiltrating the air.
“Erdogan was a perfect leader but now we need someone new,” said Zulfu Yaroman, 65, a resident supporter of the ruling AKP Justice and Development party. “Erdogan can stay in the party but I don’t want him to head it any longer.”
So how is it that Mr Erdogan, the ultimate populist who was once awarded the People’s choice for Time 2011 Person Of The Year, who has enjoyed 11-years of unhindered rule has so mortally offended even his most loyal support base?
The answer lies in corruption scandals that have seen Mr Erdogan’s closest ministers, their families, and even his own son becoming embroiled. And it also lies in a furious response by the government, ordering sweeping arrests of police officers, the prosecution and the judiciary.
The scandal is rocking Turkish politics, even, on Thursday, prompting fist-fights among politicians in parliament.
Tezcan, a member of parliament from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, scuffles with ruling Justice and Development Party’s parliamentarian Saral (REUTERS)
The response to the scandals – a mixture of accusations of bribery and passing business contracts to family members – has left Mr Erdogan open to criticism of appearing increasingly autocratic and paranoid about holding on to power, at whatever cost. So serious is this charge that international observers question whether the country’s democracy is at threat.
“In Turkey you get the disappointing sense that there is insecurity at work,” a diplomat from one EU country told the Telegraph. “We are a champion of Turkey’s accession to the EU, but this threatens the momentum we’ve had in making that happen.”
This week saw the biggest overhaul of the judiciary in the country’s history when Mr Erdogan fired or reassigned 96 judges. Among these men were several who had spearheaded the corruption probe.
In all Mr Erdogan has purged more 2000 police officers from their post, replacing them with his own appointees. He is trying to push a bill through parliament that would give to his loyalists the vital role of appointments in the judiciary.
However, many agree, it is Mr Erdogan’s choleric temperament when faced with these challenges that is now most damaging his reputation as a strong progressive leader.
When under stress, both during the popular protests at Gezi park last year and during this corruption probe, Turkey’s premier has “lashed out”.
“There isn’t a politician in government that hasn’t felt the full weight of the prime minister,” said one source with contacts in the prime ministry.
Mr Erdogan’s AKP party members appeared to show their temper on Thursday, beating in parliament Bülent Tezcan, the main opposition party’s deputy chairman until he had to be admitted to hospital, after he raised the sensitive topic Bilal Erdogan, the prime minister’s son, being implicated in the corruption probe.
In public speeches Mr Erdogan has unhelpfully associated himself with autocrats, employing the fallback position used by strongmen – past and present – of the Middle East, of dismissing his problem, the corruption probe as a “dirty foreign plot”.
Based on little more than a rumour circulating in the Turkish press that Francis J. Ricciardone, the American envoy was “meddling” in domestic affairs during the corruption probe Mr Erdogan attacked foreign diplomats in Turkey. He said ambassadors should “mind their own business”, and that “we have no obligation to keep you in our country”.
(AFP)
With a hint of exasperation, an EU diplomat told the Telegraph said: “When there has been an internal problem in Turkey, to deflect attention from the government, a foreign threat is invoked.”
But the real reason behind Turkey’s political turmoil is much more complicated.
It is rooted in a bitter struggle between Mr Erdogan and Fethulleh Gulen, a spiritual leader who now lives in self-imposed exile in a Pennsylvania redoubt but whose movement, Hizmet, remains powerful in Turkey.
The war between Mr Erdogan and Mr Gulen comes after a decade of friendship, in which the two men worked together to advance the other’s interests. Mr Erdogan gave opportunities to Hizmet’s members, staffing his offices with its followers. And in turn Mr Gulen used his sizeable connections in the business community and with foreign diplomats to promote Mr Erdogan’s tenure at home and abroad.
They worked together to defang the Turkish military, whose generals were notorious for plotting coup attempts against the country’s political rulers. But once the threat of the military was gone, the Gulen-Erdogan alliance broke down as they began to vie for power among themselves.
“Mr Erdogan allowed Gulen to staff his offices with Hizmet’s followers. But now the alliance is broken, he fears that they are more loyal to Gulen than to him; that the people who helped him [against the military] are plotting to destroy him. He feels threatened,” one source inside the government said.
Government officials say the decision by the judiciary to publicly announce the corruption charges in an election year is evidence that the probe is political, and they claim that behind the judges lies the influence of Mr Gulen who is using the probe as a tool to destroy the prime minister.
Whatever the truth it is incontrovertible that the recent turmoil has exposed as cosmetic many of the reforms that have built Mr Erdogan reputation as a moderniser for Turkey.
Despite sweeping constitutional reforms, which had made Turkey’s ruling system more compatible with the democratic requirements for entry to the EU and had improved the confidence of foreign investors to come to the country, the scandal has exposed a judiciary and police still riven with political alliances.
“What is happening in this process is the erosion of Turkey as a state. It is a meltdown. We see institutions are no longer dealing with one another as is written in the constitution,” said Soly Ozel, a political scientist at Kadir Has university.
The political turmoil has been deeply damaging to Turkey’s economy. The Turkish Lira has plunged almost 10% per cent since mid-December, as investors worry about the country’s future.
That is perhaps the most serious concern for Mr Erdogan, who faces elections this year, either for prime minister or president depending on what he decides to stand for.
Mr Ozel said: “I don’t believe he will lose his election. He remains the most powerful politician in the country and he constantly goes for broke.
So far he has won but at the end of this fight it will be like the World War One; even the winners will not be winners.”
“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
The government of Turkey, in primary collaboration with the government of the United States of America, has dared to attempt to destroy the duly constituted government of Syria. In that process it has funded, encouraged and armed a motley gang of terrorist killers that include numerous members of Al-Qaeda and other recognized terrorist groups. The Hatay region of Turkey is being used as a staging area for attacks on a neighboring country, a country that until relatively recently had enjoyed great favor with Turkey. Hatay, perhaps the most enlightened, peaceful region in Turkey, now is under occupation by gangs of terrorist killers. The people are regularly accosted on the streets by these ruffians, and asked if they are Alevites. You will be next, they are told. This anti-Alevite dialogue is fostered by divisive statements made by the Turkish government.
In 2012, a rash of hate crimes broke out in Turkey against members of the Alevite religious sect (20 million in Turkey), an enlightened, modern-thinking branch of Islam. (It is important to note that there is a long, violent history of hate crimes committed against the Alevites in Turkey.) Last year, verbal insults, beatings, and the painting of threats on houses spread throughout the country. Inexplicably, there were no statements of warning, concern or reproach issued by the government. Making matters worse and fanning the flames of violence, the prime minister called the houses of worship of the Alevites “ucube,” a “freak.” Clearly this should have been deemed as “hate speech” and punished as such under the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 20 (as ratified by The Republic of Turkey on 23 September 2003). Interestingly, Turkey, a majority Sunni Islamic country, has no specific hate crimes laws.
And there are many Alevites in Syria. Many innocent Syrian people have been murdered by this assembled-in-Turkey terrorist machine. Moreover, the citizens of Hatay are daily threatened by these terrorist gangs that the government of Turkey has organized, of course, with the help of the CIA, proven by history to be experts in unspeakably violent subversions. These crimes are well known and now well-documented. This lawless behavior, indeed a crime against the Syrian people, and a war crime in terms of the Geneva Conventions, is the supreme insult to all truth, all justice, all morality and all religion.
As these government and foreign operatives have dared to drag the Turkish people through their filth of deceit, lies and murder, so shall I dare. Dare to tell the truth, since the normal channels of the media and the Turkish justice system have failed so miserably to do so. If people fail to speak out they become accomplices to this murderous travesty of justice. But there is more to this, much more.
At the root of it all is one man, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. A man of great ambition and great scowls. A perpetrator of epic police violence against the peaceful Gezi Parl protesters, he and his henchmen were also revealed to be epic story tellers. The entire world has witnessed their performance so there is little to add. Since he came to power he has relentlessly embarked on a policy to divide and weaken the republic. Who is this man, Erdoğan? Or as Cassius asked the reluctant assassins of Julius Caesar, “Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he is grown so great?”
In the Turkish case I suspect American hamburgers and hotdogs. For he and his ilk are of them. And now, during these days of tragedy, there are no longer any secrets. The truth is as bare as an eyeball hanging from its socket. Blood and death in the Turkish streets, poisonous pepper gas supplied by valiant allies like America and Brazil. Government street thugs wielding machetes. Beatings, clubbings, mass arrests. Roundups of lawyers, physicians, anyone who provided humanitarian aid to the protesters. Savage reprisals are now in full sway. And threats, threats, threats.
And of late, the finish of the destruction of the Turkish military, for how else to divide and reparcel the once integral Republic of Turkey in order to conform to the dictates of its American master’s pipe dream of regional stability? The ludicrous show trials called Ergenekon and its related fantasies that polluted all concept sof legal jurisprudence. Hundreds falsely imprisoned: military officers, journalists, writers, academicians. Secret witnesses, false testimony admitted without cross-examination. Lawyers jailed for making procedural objections in court. It all boils down to two words, justice raped.
Turkey is a nation held captive by the not-so-secret Obama-Erdoğan cabal. This is aided and abetted by its foreign policy, intelligence and espionage operations, and includes nongovernmental freelance organizations, both financial and mercenary. It is a stunning and deceitful array of destructive operators. The target? To destroy Turkish secularity, replacing it with a post-modern blend of religious fascism and uneducated compliance, a lethal long-term cocktail indeed. But they are adamant to once and for all create a compliant Turkish puppet state. And that’s where Erdoğan comes in. And Mustafa Kemal Atatürk departs. And that’s where Turkey is today, under occupation by a cabal of domestic ruling (AKP) and foreign (USA) powers. The army secular leadership is in jail. The police are feral and rabidly loyal to the ruling power. The situation is dire.
But we in Turkey do live in a wider world though this is rarely obvious in the discourses of the two occupying powers. And, believe it or not, there are indeed laws that are upheld and enforced in this wider world. Below are a few that are being violated by the prime minister of Turkey and the President of the United States and the members of their cabal. The dimensions are of Hitlerian proportions which was the motive force for establishing many of these laws and protocols. We, the real people of the real world, should demand their enforcement. The nightmare is here. It is time.
James (Cem) Ryan, Ph.D.
Istanbul
14 August 2013
LAWS AND PROTOCOLS BEING VIOLATED
UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY RESOLUTION 3314: Definition of Aggression Aggression is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations. INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS
Article 20. 1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law.
2. Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.
NUREMBERG TRIBUNAL CHARTER
The Tribunal established by the Agreement referred to Article 1 hereof for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries shall have the power to try and punish persons who, acting in the interests of the European Axis
countries, whether as individuals or as members of organizations, committed any of the following crimes. The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility: (a) Crimes Against Peace:namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;
(b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;
(c) Crimes Against Humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common Plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.
Note: the above provisions were codified as legal principles by the International Law Commission of the United Nations.
PROTOCOL ADDITIONAL TO THE GENEVA CONVENTIONS OF 12 AUGUST 1949, AND RELATING TO
THE PROTECTION OF VICTIMS OF INTERNATIONAL ARMED CONFLICTS (PROTOCOL 1) (2ND PART) Article 50. Definition of civilians and civilian population 1. A civilian is any person who does not belong to one of the categories of persons referred to in Article 4 A (1), (2), (3) and (6)
of the Third Convention and in Article 43 of this Protocol. In case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian. 2.The civilian population comprises all persons who are civilians. 3.The presence within the civilian population of individuals who do not come within the definition of civilians does not deprive the population of its civilian character.
Article 51. Protection of the civilian population
1. The civilian population and individual civilians shall enjoy general protection against dangers arising from military operations. To give effect to this protection, the following rules, which are additional to other applicable rules of international law, shall be observed in all circumstances.
2.The civilian population as such, as well as individual civilians, shall not be the object of attack. Acts or threats of violence the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population are prohibited.
3. Civilians shall enjoy the protection afforded by this Section, unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities. 4.Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are:
(a) Those which are not directed at a specific military objective; (b) Those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; (c) Those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and
consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.
5. Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: (a)An attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated
and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects; and
(b) An attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated. 6.Attacks against the civilian population or civilians by way of reprisals are prohibited. 7.The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations. The Parties to the conflict shall not direct the movement of the civilian population or individual civilians in order to attempt to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield military operations. 8. Any violation of these prohibitions shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians, including the obligation to take the precautionary measures provided
for in Article 57.
Article 52. General protection of civilian objects 1.Civilian objects shall not be the object of attack or of reprisals. Civilian objects are all objects which are not military objectives as defined in paragraph 2. 2.Attacks shall be limited strictly to military objectives. In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military of advantage. 3.In case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.
Article 57. Precautions in attack 1. In the conduct of military operations, constant care shall be taken to spare the civilian population, civilians and civilian objects. 2. With respect to attacks, the following precautions shall be taken:
(a)Those who plan or decide upon an attack shall:
(i) Do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked are neither civilians nor civilian objects and are not subject to special protection but are military objectives within the meaning of paragraph 2 of Article 52 and that it is not prohibited by the provisions of this Protocol to attack them; (ii)Take all feasible precautions in the choice of means and methods of attack with a view to avoiding, and in any event to minimizing, incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians and damage to civilian objects;
THE NUREMBERG PRINCIPLES These principles define a crime against peace as the “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for accomplishment of any of the forgoing.”
INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT Rules of Procedure and Evidence U.N. Doc. PCNICC/2000/1/Add.1 (2000). http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/iccrulesofprocedure.html
They are singing that old sweet song in Turkey again, the big, black lie song. Play it again, Tayyip. Except no one listens to you anymore. You, the nation’s prime prevaricator, cannot fool any of the people any more of the time with your nonsensical flights of fancy. The last one did you in, the vintage Jewish-conspiracy alibi last played by your fellow fascist-moustache up north in Turkish Diaspora-land. You have nothing left. Your thugs have taken over. None of us can escape our past. And you cannot escape your future.
Now your primary objective seems to be maiming, and, if appropriate, killing the nation’s youth. It is no secret. We see the cops whose inhuman behavior seems to be from another planet, perhaps Pennsylvania. We see the street gangs that dress like you. These are your thug-people, presumably doing their bloody work in the name of your bizarre hallucination of what Allah would like. Hitler had his Sturmabteilung, the SA Brownshirts, who also specialized in street violence. And they didn’t like Jews either. You and yours are definitely of their ilk.
You call it self-defense—against terrorists, or against foreign powers, or against alcoholics, or against Europe, or against doctors, or against the European Union, or against the Divan Hotel or against, why not?, the Jewish Diaspora. But your nose is much too long now, growing and getting bloodier by the day. It is all so unsightly. Your idiot puppets like the so-called media, and outright jerks Mutlu, Guler, and Atalay and assorted other boobs you’ve scraped up from obscurity still chirp in your choir. You might be so deluded to call it loyalty. But they are nitwits—you know it, we know it, the world knows it. And that’s what nitwits do, chirp nonsense, your nonsense. This is some poor excuse of a government.
Lies, beatings, gassings, shootings, stabbings, slashings, ooof, it’s disgusting and it’s enough! Isn’t it enough? Yet you and your goons persist. For hoodlums like your thugs, even funeral processions are targets. Surely you are joking about being a prime minister. Crime minister maybe, but leading a nation’s people, never. In the great tradition of tragic figures, you will end alone. And you will become comic. That is inevitable. It’s already happening. America is laughing at you on evening TV. Don’t worry, your reaction is normal. Bullies hate humor. Laughs threaten them. So it’s quite alright that you might feel oddly out of sorts. When someone laughs at a bully, the game is over. Turkey is alone too, at least your Turkey. Thanks to you and yours Turkey is a rogue state. Inhuman, conscienceless police violence. A craven army that allows the government to destroy it every time it beats a kid in the street. Rampaging violence on the order of Pinochet. Mayhem in the streets on a Hitlerian scale. Mass arrests to intimidate. It’s all part of the endgame. The increasing chaos only hastens your end. History says so. Your government is drowning in blood while grasping at straws.
And it’s all coming home to roost on your well-protected roof top. The world has seen the pictures of the machine gunners dressed in black that protect you. You will need ten million more of them. The end is nearing. You will begin to hear helicopters in the night. This is how you will leave. Under cover of darkness. And no one will care. You will vanish like the night.
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Cem Ryan
12 July 2013
The Fall of Saigon, 29 April 1975.
Evacuation of CIA station personnel from roof of US embassy.
Altruistic Society or Sect? The Shadowy World of the Islamic Gülen Movement
By Maximilian Popp
Photo Gallery: The Mysterious Gülen Movement
Photos
AP
Millions of Muslims around the world idolize Turkish preacher Fethullah Gülen, who likes to present himself as the Gandhi of Islam. His Gülen movement runs schools in 140 countries and promotes interfaith dialogue. But former members describe it as a sect, and some believe the secretive organization is conspiring to expand its power in Turkey.
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The girl is singing a little off-key, but the audience is still wildly enthusiastic. She is singing a Turkish song, although her intonation sounds German. The room is decorated with balloons, garlands in the German national colors of black, red and gold, and crescent moons in the Turkish colors of red and white. Members of the audience are waving German and Turkish flags.
The Academy cultural association is hosting the preliminaries of the “Cultural Olympics” in a large lecture hall at Berlin’s Technical University. Thousands of people have come to watch the talent contest. They applaud loudly when a choir from the German-Turkish Tüdesb school sings “My Little Green Cactus.” And they listen attentively when a female student recites a poem, while images of women holding children in their arms appear on the screen behind her. The poem is called “Anne,” the Turkish word for “mother.” The name of the poem’s author, Fethullah Gülen, appears on the screen for a moment.
Everyone in the auditorium knows who Gülen is. Millions of Muslims around the world idolize Gülen, who was born in Turkey in 1941 and is one of the most influential preachers of Islam today. His followers have founded schools in 140 countries, a bank, media companies, hospitals, an insurance company and a university.
The cultural association hosting the contest at the Berlin university is also part of the Gülen movement. Hence it isn’t surprising that many participants attend Gülen schools, that companies associated with Gülen are sponsoring the cultural Olympics, and that media outlets with ties to Gülen are reporting on it.
The images from the evening show Germans and Turks learning from one another, making music together, dancing and clapping. The obvious intent is to emphasize the peaceful coexistence of different religions. “We are the first movement in the history of mankind that is completely and utterly devoted to charity,” says Mustafa Yesil, a Gülen confidant in Istanbul.
A Sect Like Scientology
People who have broken ties to Gülen and are familiar with the inner workings of this community tell a different story. They characterize the movement as an ultraconservative secret society, a sect not unlike the Church of Scientology. And they describe a world that has nothing to do with the pleasant images from the cultural Olympics.
via Gülen Movement Accused of Being a Sect – SPIEGEL ONLINE.
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