Things are not always what they appear to be. The same goes for people. Take me, for example. I am an American. Since my grandfather was born in Ireland, I am able to be a citizen of Ireland, hence legally Irish. Yet through birth I was always of Irish descent, whether a citizen of Ireland or not. Citizenship is a legal formality. My great-grandfather was German. So I am also of German descent, though to a much lesser degree. I was baptized Catholic as an infant, an event over which I had absolutely no control. Accordingly, I was enrolled in a mixed-gender catholic elementary school named Saint Barnabas. (I remained ignorant of who this Barnabas fellow was until I came to Turkey and learned that he was from Cyprus and preached in Antakya). I served mass as an altar boy, thus memorizing much Latin. In my last year of elementary school, I won the parish Christian Doctrine competition. One Saturday in May, I competed at the city-wide level. I hurriedly finished the examination in order to get to the Polo Grounds in time to see the New York Giants play the Brooklyn Dodgers. Both the Giants and I lost that day. I was very upset about the Giants.
My teachers in elementary school were all women, mostly religious nuns. I went to an all-boys catholic secondary school. My teachers in high school were all men, mostly religious brothers. My grades were good throughout. My close friends were mostly Christian due to my neighborhood. We competed in sports against Jews and African-Americans and Puerto Ricans without incident. We traveled freely through their neighborhoods. We rode subways and buses without fear. We played basketball in Harlem in a playground next to the Polo Grounds. My boyhood athletic hero was Willie Mays, the black centerfielder for the baseball Giants. I went to university at the United States Military Academy at West Point, then all male, including the faculty. And then I graduated and another life began. I never went to these “homes” again. And now I live in Turkey, as a Turk, since my wife is Turkish. And since my last name ends in –yan, I could nominally be mistaken for an Armenian.
What are we? What’s your story? There is an old saying about this question. “If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck then it probably is a duck.” So what are we, “probably?”
Hurry up now, decide. People are dying by the thousands because of what they are or appear to be. They are dying by the thousands because they are “different.” Am I different? Are you different? Different from what? From whom? What does “different” mean?
And now, again the question! So what am I? A Christian? Irish? An American? A CIA agent? A radical? A tree lover? An agnostic? A revolutionary? A military man? A New Yorker? A Marxist? A book lover? A Turk? An Armenian? A non-Armenian? A non-Sunni? A non-Alevi? A non-Jew? A non-Turkmen? A non-Syrian? What am I?
A prime minister! A prime minister, for his background, fortunate beyond belief, spews hate speeches, incessantly orders destruction of the environment, covets wealth and power, despises differences, sneers at the hope-filled enthusiasm of youth, orders them maimed by gangster police. He is never happy, this prime minister. He divides like a Samurai warrior cleaves. Finely, precisely, he slices and minces and dices, all people, all things, all ideas not his own. His ill repute stifles. Criminality and lawlessness describe the ruined landscape, the waste land, that is Turkey. His face tells the story of his ruination. This torment of the spirit cannot be effaced. What does his mirror tell him? Does anyone tell him? Someone should. What is he? His is the story of Dorian Gray.
And me! What am I? I don’t know. Today, looking to the coming catastrophe that is the political system of Turkey, I consider myself a duck.
James (Cem) Ryan
Istanbul
9 August 2014
Picture of Dorian Gray Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (1897-1983) As seen in the 1945 film.
Izmir beachhead established. PKK raids Gülen Gang in Saylorsburg, Pa.
Candy, flowers and laughing women. Weeping, cursing and shoeboxes.
A pre-raid aerial view of the Gülen Gang’s headquarters, Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania
Harrisburg, August 7, 2014
By Max Placid / McClatchy Newspapers
In a morning mist, Pennsylvania’s paramilitary forces landed on the Turkish coast at Izmir on August 4. They met no resistance but they did encounter a jubilant Turkish crowd who greeted the Pennsylvanians by bombarding them with Turkish delight candy and Atatürk flowers. As the Rocky Balboa Brigade, an elite unarmed (except for their fists) attack force, sprinted down Martyrs Street, hilariously laughing women streamed into the Kordon, Izmir’s magnificent seaside esplanade. “Go Rocky!” they screamed through tears of joy, “Get Bulent for us!” Of course, they werereferring to the hapless Turkish deputy prime minister who bizarrely admonished Turkish women for laughing in public. It seemed to the surprised Pennsylvanians that they were participating in some sort of weird liberation. As the Balboa Brigade veered left onto Kemalpasha Street tables of sliced melon, white cheese and glasses of rakı (the Turkish national beverage) appeared. But the highly disciplined Pennsylvanians ignored the temptation. “Yo Turks! On the way back! On the way back!” shouted Colonel Rocky Balboa, brigade commander. It was obvious that their immediate objective was not Izmir.
On the home front, on the same day as the Izmir landing, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett launched a pre-emptive pre-dawn raid on the CIA safe-house of an alleged imam, Fethullah Gülen. Gülen is a longtime, infamous ally of the Turkish prime minister. Both have been previously convicted—Gülen in absentia—of seditious behavior. Governor Corbett, now commander-in-chief of the hastily formed Pennsylvania Kombat Kommand (PKK), announced that he is fully aware of the conspiracy between the current Turkish government and what has been labeled the “Hey Pennsylvania” movement. “Gülen and Erdoğan are cut from the cloth,” said Corbett and elaborated in the following statement:
“Together they have conspired to destroy Turkish democracy. They have used the most disgusting, criminal methods in their treason. And I am ashamed to say that America’s CIA aided and abetted their crimes. Regardless of what others may think or say, the people of Pennsylvania have no place for these ‘religious’ two-faced criminals. An undercover gang in Pennsylvania will be quickly uprooted and brought to justice. And that’s the reason for the raid by the PKK.”
The Pennsylvania Kombat Kommand (PKK) is another quickly assembled strike team consisting of a highly-trained special weapons contingent of state policewomen, Pittsburgh Penguin hockey players and the starting lineup of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team. All three groups are skilled in insertions, extractions and evacuations.
Jimmy Rollins
The raid of Gülen’s hideout at 1857 Mt. Eaton Road in Saylorsburg, often referred to as “Feto’s Farm,” was a complete success. Silence prevailed as the Kombat Kommand encircled the premises. Guards at the front gate were neutralized by Jimmy Rollins, the Phillies shortstop, who leveled his bat at the two gatekeepers. One of them, a Turk named Imdat Aptal, volunteered immediately to act as an interpreter. In appreciation, Rollins generously autographed Aptal’s copy of Pearls of Wisdom, by F. Gülen.
Thus having secured the entrance, a barrier of interlocking hockey sticks was implaced by the defensemen of the Pittsburgh Penguins. (Note: Being summer, the Penguins wore roller skates in this operation.)
“No one can pass!” ordered Rollins.
“Kimse geçemez!” echoed Aptal.
Immediately thereafter an impenetrable defensive perimeter was established by Rollins baseball teammates and the Penguins.
Meanwhile great wailing and lamentation came from the main house. Beddua this and beddua that, here a beddua, there a beddua, and every so often the word “parallel” was heard .
“What’s all this yelling about beddua?” asked A.J. Burnett, the Phillies big right-handed starting pitcher.
“The boss is angry again,” said Aptal. “He’s bedduaing, I mean, cursing and talking to Allah.”
“Yeah? Well you come with me and tell him that he better watch his mouth and that he’s being busted in the name of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
“Of course,” said Aptal.
Behind the mansion a backhoe was digging huge holes in a green field. Inside the mansion, sobs were gushing from the main office, as smiling police women searched Gülen and his premises. The air was electric. The full horror story of religious intrigue, espionage, prostitution, forgery, blackmail, narcotics trafficking, judicial corruption and treason might soon be revealed.
It was. The bookcases in the main office were not bookcases at all. Officer Mary Jane Stonebreaker leaned against a copy of Love and Tolerance, also by F. Gülen. and—wow!—the bookshelves suddenly swung open to reveal a vast storage vault. Endless ranks and rows of boxes filled the space. A warehouse of shoeboxes!
“Who lives here, Imelda Marcos?” asked the astonished police officer. “What the heck is this place? A shoe factory or something?”
Ryan Howard
Ryan Howard, his 36-ounce Louisville Slugger bat acting as her backup weapon, opened one of the boxes, this one labeled T. Erdog.
“This is a money factory, Officer Stonebreaker.”
“Gee, I only touched the book,” said the policewomen with an ironic laugh. “What would have happen if I read it?”
“Yeah,” agreed Howard, “I make 25 million dollars a year with the Phillies. These guys make that much in a day. We’re both in the wrong business.”
“But at least we’re honest,” said Officer Stonebreaker.
“Yeah,” said the big first baseman, “Let’s find this creep so you can bust him.”
Meanwhile the results of the outside excavation and the inside investigation were being displayed in the lobby. In addition to firearms and enough explosive devices to launch Pennsylvania into the afterlife, evidence of the long-term, continuing connection of the subversive relationship between the Gülen movement and the Erdoğan government abounded, to wit:
A box of counterfeit Marmara University graduation diplomas.
30 years of handwritten correspondence, birthday cards, thank-you notes and travel post cards between Gülen and Erdoğan. The latest from Erdoğan, dated July 4, 2014 and encoded in Turkic-English as follows:
DEER ESTEAMED FRIEND FETO, WE SHURE FOOLING THEM NOW. ALL THINK PARRRALLLELLL STATES IS TROO. HA HA HA. TANKS A LOT FOR STASH FOR KASH. I WILL BE A PRECEDENT OF TURKEY SOON NOW FOR SHURE. YOU BETCHA IN VON MINIT OR TOO. PLEEZE GIVE RIGARDS TO LOAF OF BREAD FRIENDZ AT AGENTSY. HEH HEH HEH. MEANS CIA. RTE
Scores of video cassettes revealed the auditioning of Deniz Baykal body-doubles. Outtakes show Fethullah Gülen sitting in a director’s chair wearing a beret and smoking a cigar. Every time he yells “CUT!” he takes a drag on his stogie, blows smoke, then curses frantically.
Feto Inc. Listening Device
Listening devices.
15 automatic signature machines.
37 cash counting machines.
Barrels of dice. Cartons of playing cards. Cases of poker chips.
236 new copies of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Treason, Blackmail, Falsification of Evidence and Embezzlement.
7,698 copies of How to Fool All the People All the Time.
11 copies of The Joys of Montage, Subterfuge and Sabotage.
4,789 copies of How to Plant Evidence and Ruin People’s Lives.
A truckload of hypodermic syringes.
The search continues. “It is astonishing how these religious hypocrites use crime in the name of God,” said Governor Corbett. “We will continue to press the attack at home. And we are pleased to hear from Colonel Balboa that the Turks are with us. Pennsylvania Kombat Kommand! Your immediate objectives are Ankara, the parliament and the prime minister! Forward!”
All Gülen Gang personnel were booked at the Saylorsburg police station. Under the terms and provisions of the Patriot Act of 2001 and the Espionage Act of 1917, the accused gang members were remanded to the Monroe County Correctional Facility in Stroudsburg pending completion of the investigation.
In this Sunday, Aug. 3, 2014 file photo released by the Turkish Prime Minister’s Press Office, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine Erdogan wave to supporters during a rally in Istanbul, Turkey. Erdogan is the unquestionable front-runner in Turkey’s first direct presidential election on Sunday. And critics accuse him of using his position as premier to make the contest even more lopsided. Erdogan, a skilled public orator who has dominated Turkish politics for a decade, undisputedly enjoys far more popularity than either of his rivals: a newcomer on the national political scene supported by several opposition parties; and a high-profile, ambitious young Kurdish politician. (Kayhan Ozer, Turkish Prime Minister’s Press Office, HO/Associated Press)
By Associated Press August 6 at 6:20 AM
ISTANBUL — Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the unquestionable front-runner in Turkey’s first direct presidential election on Sunday. And critics accuse him of using his position as premier to make the contest even more lopsided.
via Turkey’s lopsided presidential election campaign – The Washington Post.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is almost certain to be Turkey’s first popularly elected president
When Turkey holds direct presidential elections for the first time on Aug. 10, the people will speak. Turks are eager to be heard following a wave of protests in the last year against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which were followed by a violent police crackdown. Erdogan faces criticism for his authoritarian leadership style, as well as corruption allegations. Yet it is all but guaranteed that he will be Turkey’s first popularly elected president.
Why? It is a numbers game.
AKP policies over a decade improved the country’s infrastructure and raised Turkey’s living standards significantly.
–
Local elections on March 30 brought the AKP 45% of the vote. The two main Turkish opposition parties, the Republican People’s Party and the Nationalist Action Party, together also received 45% and announced their joint presidential candidate. This move splits the Turkish public about evenly into pro- and anti-Erdogan camps, but the prime minister holds several trump cards.
The first is perhaps the most obvious: The economy has tripled in size since the Erdogan administration came to power in 2002. As the rest of the world suffered from the 2008 economic crisis, economic growth and development in Turkey continued unabated. AKP policies over a decade have improved the country’s infrastructure and raised living standards significantly.
This is why Erdogan continues to enjoy widespread support. He wins because he offers high-speed rail and mortgages. The high-speed rail system he built includes a recently inaugurated line from Ankara to Istanbul that halves travel time from seven hours to 3 1/2. Meanwhile, inflation — historically at dizzying three-digit levels — has come down to single digits, allowing many Turks to buy their first homes using a new mortgage system.
Turkish Prime Minister and presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan, center, poses wearing traditional Turkmen clothes during a meeting of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Ankara. (Adem Altan / AFP/Getty Images)
The base rallies around this economic success, but it will not bring Erdogan a simple majority; a boost from voters in the Kurdish community at home will.
The prime minister’s charm offensive with the Kurds — who account for 15% to 20% of the country’s population — will secure their votes. The Erdogan administration passed reforms advancing Kurdish linguistic and cultural rights and laid the groundwork for the disarmament and reintegration of Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, militants into Turkish society.
The 2013 cease-fire declared by the PKK’s jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan — a victory that has proved elusive for other parties for more than 30 years — stemmed violence in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish southeast and helped the AKP win local elections in March. Since then, a new law has created a framework for formal peace talks with the PKK, and Erdogan revealed further plans to devolve some powers to Kurdish provinces. The Kurdish nationalist Peace and Democracy Party, which received 6.5% of the vote in March, is thus virtually guaranteed to back Erdogan should there be a runoff.
A year ago, it looked as though protests could bring down the administration, but the political fallout has proved to be relatively modest. Erdogan has a knack for portraying himself as a political victim forced to crack down harshly on those who use lies and conspiracies to undermine his government. He is the man leading Turkey into an ever-brighter, more peaceful future in the face of challenges from a malicious opposition. What he lacks in diplomatic tact, he makes up for in passion. He pushes his vision for Turkey with the conviction that even his least popular decisions hold paramount the best interests of Turkish citizens.
The dark side of this electoral strategy, of course, is that his image as an authoritarian underdog demonizes the opposition and creates a powerful — and dangerous — cult of personality. With that as his shield, he has time to play the numbers. Turkey’s economic successes of the last decade will carry him most of the way to victory, and his campaign focus on the margins will push him over the top. But once elected, Erdogan is likely to consolidate all three branches of government. He will then become Turkey’s strongman president, one elected by Turks themselves.
Soner Cagaptay, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is the author of “The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty-First Century’s First Muslim Power.” Beril Unver is senior programs officer at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles.
via Why Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be Turkey’s first directly elected president – LA Times.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters in Istanbul. (Kayhan Ozer/Turkish Prime Minister’s Press Office via Associated Press)
In a television interview Tuesday, Turkish Prime Minister and presidential hopeful Recep Tayyip Erdogan complained that people had questioned his family background.
“I was called a Georgian. I apologize for this, but they even said [something] worse: They called me an Armenian,” Erdogan said during an interview with NTV, according to a translation from Today’s Zaman newspaper. “But I’m a Turk.”
The comment immediately sparked outrage, with CNN-Turk asking on Twitter whether it was really so “ugly” to be an Armenian and others accusing Erdogan of racism:
Erdogan is known to be a skilled orator, and this may have been just a slip of the tongue, but the history between Armenians and Turks make his comments especially ill-advised. In 1915, during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, soldiers slaughtered hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians living in what is now Turkey. Armenians and historians alike refer to it as a genocide, though Turkey and, notably, the United States have officially refused to use that terminology.
The Turkish prime minister is just days away from his bid to become president and is facing considerable backlash after more than a decade of authoritarian rule. And while his Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish initials AKP) is known for its combination of capitalism, nationalism and Islamist governance, it has made significant inroads among Turkey’s minority communities.
Erdogan enjoys good support in the Kurdish-dominated southeast of the country, for example, and the AKP has pushed policies that supported Kurdish linguistic and cultural rights. If Erdogan wants to become president, this Kurdish support may well be vital. There are also signs that Erdogan had hoped to reach out to Armenians before his election, with reports that Turkey might open the Alican border crossing between the countries. Erdogan even took a tentative step toward acknowledging Turkey’s role in the mass killings of Armenians, offering condolences for the “inhumane” acts (his comments, while unprecedented, left many Armenian observers cold: One complained that Erdogan had used “euphemisms and the age-old ‘everyone suffered’ denialist refrain”).
Despite this, Erdogan has been criticized for repeatedly talking about ethnic and religious differences in what appears to be a bid to shore up his support among his Sunni Islam base. Earlier this week, he had called on his rivals to be clear about their backgrounds. “I am a Sunni, Kemal [Kılıcdaroglu of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP] is an Alevi [a branch of Shiite Islam], Selahattin [Demirtas, presidential candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party] is Zaza [a type of Kurdish people],” he said, according to Hurriyet Daily News, later adding. “I respect Alevis. Just as I make my sect public, so should he.”
70,000 or so Armenians still call Turkey home, and many in that community felt marginalized or even threatened before the comments. Erdogan often uses “extremely aggressive and bellicose language when referring to the Armenians or Armenian issue,” Richard Giragosian, an American-born Armenian analyst, told Today’s Zaman in July. Erdogan may have made an unfortunate verbal slip on Tuesday, but to critics it confirms their worst fears.
Adam Taylor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. Originally from London, he studied at the University of Manchester and Columbia University.
via Is ‘Armenian’ an insult? Turkey’s prime minister seems to think so. – The Washington Post.
While violence consumes its neighbors, it’s holiday time in once secular Turkey, now under occupation by a religious fascist government, all praise to Allah and America. Celebratory candy and sweet pastry abound. And naturally Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç is worried about decay. No, not tooth decay, moral decay. And so he spoke out about moral decay, ignoring the fact that he and his American-puppet partners have destroyed any aspect of secular democracy in Turkey and in its neighbor countries. And that they sponsor one of the most brutal, barbaric gangs ever assembled to slaughter, rape, behead and crucify innocent people…well, it must have slipped the deputy prime minister’s mind. What also slipped his mind was the fact that his party members in general, and the prime minister and his cronies in particular, have surely set unofficial Guinness world records in immorality. But our intrepid deputy prime minister dropped neither tear nor syllable about these inconveniently immoral truths.
Instead he spoke of the moral decay caused by women laughing in front of anyone, that is, in public. What is indeed decadent is how this sanctimonious religion-mongering ruling party uses any excuse to give stupid advice. Not only shouldn’t women laugh in public, they should not display their attractiveness. “Their” women have certainly achieved the latter. As far as their laughter, who noticed? But laughing in public as being an offense? This is hilariously pathetic. Who writes the speeches for these people?
This deputy prime minister is famous for spewing crocodile tears at the hint that moisture might be required. He is also famous for his melodramatics in the hoax that was Ergenekon. His histrionics regarding imagined assassination attempts were epic. Adding further moral disgrace to his ill-repute, he had also given his moral judgment that in Ergenekon “Turkey is cleaning its intestines.” That the whole Ergenekon-Balyoz affair that destroyed the Turkish military and the nation’s security system was a phony also escaped his moral decay concerns. That his own party has admitted it, also eluded him. His no-laughing-in-public agenda item is the sickest joke of all. Except for the following.
That he lied…that he cooperated with the Gulen movement…that he was complicit in treason…that he collaborated with the CIA…all this has escaped his moral compass. And all this has escaped the moral compass of his “pious” followers who pride themselves on their religious piety. Such weirdness! To have a piety with so little to do with morality and so much to do with decay.
But take heart. The deputy prime minister also feels that teenage sex addiction is caused by certain TV programs. And that this causes violence to women. And therefore, women should never laugh in public and should look as ugly as possible in public. A brilliant policy indeed. In short, the deputy prime minister wants all of us to look like them…
Gentlemen! Ladies! Children of all ages! On the count of three, let us together give the deputy prime minister a great big public laugh. One…Two… THREE!
