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Tag: Recep Tayyip Erdogan

12th president of Turkey

  • KILLER KOAL

    KILLER KOAL

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

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

    George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, 1937

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The air is as heavy as lead.

    No more words…

    James (Cem) Ryan
    Istanbul
    14 May 2014

    EXCEPT…

    HUKUMET İSTİFA!

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  • Turkey: Q&A with Freedom House’s Press Freedom Report Project Director

    Turkey: Q&A with Freedom House’s Press Freedom Report Project Director

    Turkey: Q&A with Freedom House’s Press Freedom Report Project Director

    May 5, 2014 – 2:58pm, by Yigal Schleifer The Turko-file Press Freedom Turkish Domestic Politics Turkish Media

    For those who follow Turkey closely, that Freedom House moved the country from “Partly Free” into the “Not Free” category in its annual Freedom of the Press report was not particularly surprising. Still, the report provides an interesting look into just how Turkey’s record on press freedom has become so tarnished (despite the government’s insistence that it’s doing better on this issue than some countries that aren’t on the “Not Free” list).

    To get a better sense of the report, the methodology behind it and just what the Turkey has done to earn its new ranking, I reached out to Karin Karlekar, the Freedom of the Press index’s project director. Our resulting email interview is below:

    In your report, Turkey had the biggest drop in press freedom in Europe and one of the largest globally. Why was that?

    During 2013, systematic political pressure from the executive branch led to scores of journalists to be fired for critical reporting of the government. For example, during the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul in May 2013, several media outlets were slow to cover protests and those outlets which did endeavor to cover the protests were subjected to government pressure to fire journalists and editors. Dozens were fired or forced to resign due to sympathetic coverage of the protestors. On several other occasions during the year, high-profile journalists were forced from their positions for covering sensitive topics such as official corruption or talks between the government and the [outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK)]. Prime Minister Erdoğan publically confirmed that he had interfered personally with editorial content on at least once occasion. Journalists were physically harassed while covering the Gezi protests as well. In addition, with 40 journalists behind bars on December 1, 2013, Turkey was the world’s leading jailer of journalists, who are often prosecuted under restrictive provisions in the criminal code and the Anti-Terrorism Act. In addition, censorship of online content is a continuing concern.

    Based on your research, what are the most troubling aspects of Turkey’s decline in press freedom?

    A troubling aspect of Turkey’s decline is the increasingly close ties we’ve seen between the government and many media owners in recent years, which has led to self-censorship and politically-motivated firings. This was highlighted in the now famous incident in June 2013 when CNN International offered 24 hour coverage of widespread protests in Turkey while the local CNN affiliate, CNNTurk, was airing a nature show on penguins.

    When you compare Turkey to other countries that moved into the “not free” category, what similarities do you see?

    Countries in the Not Free category tend to exert a great deal of influence on the editorial content of news outlets, prevent or impede coverage of politically sensitive issues, and impose onerous legal restrictions on the press resulting in criminal charges against journalists. Similar to countries that also moved to Not Free this year, such as Ukraine, we saw restrictions and targeting of reporters who attempted to cover breaking news and protest movements and attempts to control editorial content.

    Could you explain Freedom House’s methodology in layman’s terms?

    We aim to examine the entire enabling environment for media freedom, which includes the ability of journalists and news outlets to report freely and without fear of repercussions, as well as the ability of people in each country to receive diverse news and information. Our examination of the level of press freedom comprises 23 methodology questions and 132 indicators divided into three broad categories: the legal environment, the political environment, and the economic environment. Freer countries receive a lower number of points while less free environments receive a higher number of points. A country’s final score (from 0 to 100) is based on the total of the scores allotted for each question: A score of 0 to 30 places a country in the Free category, 31 to 60 in the Partly Free category, and 61 to 100 in the Not Free press group. Turkey, with its score of 62, means it is now in the Not Free press group.

    Turkey’s Foreign Minister said Turkey is “freer” than some of the countries in your report’s “partially free” category and called on Turkish journalists to “reject” your report. How would you respond to his words?

    Taken as a whole, Turkey is less free than countries in the Partly Free group. However, examining the scores of the specific categories – the legal environment, the political environment, and the economic environment – says a lot about where Turkey needs to improve. Turkey’s economic environment received a score of 13, which is relatively good when compared to the political environment’s score of 26 and the legal environment’s score of 23. It is in this sense only that Turkey’s economic environment for journalists (which includes the structure of media ownership; transparency and concentration of ownership; the costs of establishing media as well as any impediments to news production and distribution, and others) may be superior to the economic environment of some Partly Free countries. However, it is worth keeping in mind that all three categories worsened in Turkey in 2013. In terms of issues such as the number of jailings of journalists, Turkey was the worst in the world on this issue in 2013. The level of internet censorship is also quite bad for a democratic country.

    via Turkey: Q&A with Freedom House’s Press Freedom Report Project Director | EurasiaNet.org.

  • Turkey Opposition Mulls Options 100 Days Before President Vote

    Turkey Opposition Mulls Options 100 Days Before President Vote

    By Isobel Finkel May 02, 2014

    With 100 days left to Turkey’s first direct presidential elections, the opposition has yet to choose a candidate to run against its likely opponent: either incumbent Abdullah Gul or Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

    “It’s wrong to have a debate simply about whether it will be Gul or Erdogan,” Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, said at a press conference in Istanbul today. “First we have to talk about what kind of a president we want, and whether it’s right to have someone accused of corruption occupying that seat.”

    While just over three months remain until the August 10 poll, Kilicdaroglu said his party is still in the process of reviewing its options. He declined to name candidates who might make the shortlist.

    Turkey’s most recent elections, for mayors nationwide on March 30, occurred against the background of a sweeping corruption probe into Erdogan’s government, which resulted in a market sell-off and the largest leadership shake-up in the ruling party’s 11 1/2-year rule. The CHP increased its share of that vote to 28 percent from 23 percent in 2009, leaving it more than 10 percent short of the ruling party’s almost 46 percent tally. The government also boosted its share of the national vote by almost 10 percent compared with the previous poll.

    Kilicdaroglu said his party faces a challenge in a country where power has been centralized around Erdogan and it struggles to get media attention. He said he’ll focus on spreading responsibility for opposition wider, rather than on a single candidate.

    “In a country where all the state’s institutions have been co-opted by the government, the job of opposition is no ordinary task,” Kilicdaroglu said. “Opposition is not just the job of political opposition; it’s the job of the universities, of intellectuals, it’s the job of women,” he said.

    A Turkish prosecutor today said he wouldn’t pursue charges against suspects in an investigation into real estate corruption, one of three simultaneous probes into graft that were made public on Dec. 17. Erdogan has said the probes are politically motivated and has vowed to purge followers of U.S. cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he blames for the investigation, from Turkish state institutions.

    There’s no friction within the ruling party about the selection process for its presidential candidate, Erdogan told reporters today in Ankara. Erdogan and President Gul are in consultations and will decide which of them will run, Gul said in a press conference from the city of Zonguldak.

    via Turkey Opposition Mulls Options 100 Days Before President Vote – Businessweek.

  • Let Mr. Erdogan Fight His Own Battles

    Let Mr. Erdogan Fight His Own Battles

    NYTBy THE EDITORIAL BOARD

    Not long ago, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish preacher in Pennsylvania, were the best of allies. Mr. Erdogan heads an Islamist government, and Mr. Gulen promotes a moderate, pro-Western brand of Sunni Islam that appeals to many well-educated and professional Turks. The two men had a common purpose in confronting and weakening the country’s once-dominant secular military and political leadership.

    But the collaboration has since devolved into a bitter power struggle, and now Mr. Erdogan is trying to drag the United States into the argument by threatening to demand Mr. Gulen’s extradition to Turkey. The American government is obliged to examine the request if Mr. Erdogan follows through and formally files one. But right now the threat seems to be nothing more than a crass and cynical attempt to exploit the law, and Turkey’s alliance with the United States, for political payback.

    The power struggle, which erupted last year, has been fueled by a corruption scandal that has ensnared Mr. Erdogan, many of his cronies and his son. Recordings of telephone conversations that surfaced in recent months appear to show widespread corruption in the government. Mr. Erdogan, a once-promising leader who has grown increasingly authoritarian, has charged that Mr. Gulen’s network of followers is behind the scandal.

    In an interview on Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show this week, Mr. Erdogan said that the telephone wiretaps were clearly illegal and that he expected the United States to respond positively to the request. That is not a given.

    Some experts say there is no legal basis for an extradition request because there are no charges or legal cases against Mr. Gulen, who has permanent-resident status and has lived in rural Pennsylvania since 1997. He left Turkey in the 1990s after being accused of urging the overthrow of the secularist government; he denied the charges, which were dropped when Mr. Erdogan came to power. Mr. Gulen has broad influence in Turkey through followers who hold jobs in the judiciary, the police and the media. But he has denied encouraging them to pursue graft investigations against Mr. Erdogan and his allies.

    For the United States to approve an extradition request, the person must be accused of a crime recognized in both jurisdictions, and there must be a reasonable belief that the person committed the crime. It seems unlikely those conditions exist. Washington has not considered Mr. Gulen a threat, or he would not have been able to remain in the country.

    So far, the Obama administration has declined to comment publicly on the issue, which has the potential to cause serious and unnecessary new tensions with Turkey. It would be an abuse of extradition law to use it for political reasons. Mr. Erdogan should fight his political battles on his own.

    The New York Times,

  • MEN IN MASQUERADE

    MEN IN MASQUERADE

    Photo taken in the northern Syria town of Raqqa. (Courtesy: Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently)

     

    In case you are one of the millions of Turks still celebrating the fact that Fenerbahçe, to no one’s great surprise, won the league football championship, well, you need to get a grip on reality, painful as that might be. The so-called “news”-papers still regurgitate this gloriously boring “news.” Tapes of the melodramatic fan and player antics after Sunday’s no-score game still runs on the sports channels. And thus all seems right with the world. Except it’s not. The world is horrible.

    One really must wonder about the mentality of the Turkish people. Their government is causing a slaughter, if not a genocide, of the Syrian people. And I mean, specifically, that the Syrian Alevites are being directly targeted by Sunni Jihad proxies financed by Turkey. It’s a political “thing” dealing with pipedreams of a neo-Ottoman Sunni empire. By definition, that targeting constitutes a genocide. But the terror spread throughout Syria by Turkey and America affects all the Syrian people, Islamic, Christian, Jewish, atheist, all of them. These bankrolled gangsters are cutthroat killers. Killers kill. But cutthroat killers mutilate. All this should make one wonder. So I do.

    Mostly I wonder why the allegedly good-hearted, the self-proclaimed “hospitable” Turks show such little interest and concern about the bloody massacre just next-door caused by their bloody-handed government. It’s no secret. It’s been no secret for years. After all, Seymour Hersh’s article was more affirmation than news. But in Turkey, the approved story on Syria is mostly simple-minded propaganda. Suddenly two years ago, Bashar al–Assad became a bad guy. And Erdoğan was hired by America to do what he does best. But now the truth is out. And things have moved from horrible to catastrophic.

    So what consumes their interest, these Turkish people? Why do they now fixate ad nauseam, on television and in the press, on the Ottoman slaughter, if not genocide (the words all mean “mass murder”) of the Armenians in 1915?  1915! Then, a war was on. The Russians were enemies. Turkey’s eastern Armenians collaborated. War is murder. Blah-blah-blah. 100 years ago! 100 years ago! Yet today, the Turkish government openly exports death and destruction and Jihadist terrorism to their neighbor, Syria. And nothing happens. Football. Family. Life is busy. What’s for dinner?

    Turkish people! What kind of a social conscience do you have? To silently sit while events of Nazi proportions are being done to the Syrian people by your government? It seems inconceivable that you can fill the streets for Fenerbahçe football but not even mumble a care about what your tax money is doing to the Syrian people. You know the story of the people who watched the freight trains come and go through the tiny town of Oświęcim (Auschwitz). They also said they didn’t “know.” But the camps were only a kilometer away. “We didn’t know.” Will that also be your alibi? Denial.

    Turkish people, get real! Wake up from your football-slumber! You allowed the prime minister to appear on the Charlie Rose Show and lie, misrepresent, and double-talk to the world. He does to the world what he does at home. It is ridiculous.

    He said that during legal protests every other country beats and gasses and kills its citizens. So what’s the problem? And neither you nor Charlie said anything.

    He said, how can a country be corrupt when it has had such dramatic economic growth? And neither you nor Charlie mentioned that he (the prime minister) sold ALL the assets of the nation to finance the destruction of the cities and nature itself. And that everyone in favor politically has a piece of the action. That this growth “miracle” is based on plunder and crony-capitalism. And that’s the economic truth.

    He said, how can he be a dictator when 45.5% of the people vote for him. And neither you nor Charlie asked about the majority of the people—54.5%—that voted against him. And why!

    He said that he didn’t know Fethullah Gülen was such a threat until 17 December 2013 when he made a “coup.” And neither you nor Charlie Rose said, “Nonsense!”

    Nonsense, it is. As everyone knows, Gülen disclosed his own treacherous plan 15 years ago. That’s why he escaped from his country into the warm embrace of the CIA and the Green-Card Land called Pennsylvania. Surely everyone knows that Gülen, a master of disguise, was recorded advising his treasonous followers that: 

    “You must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers…. You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey.” 

    And fifteen years ago Erdoğan was one of his adherents. Without Gülen and the CIA, Erdoğan would never have left the Kasımpaşa neighborhood of Istanbul. And even an ordinary journalist, let alone Charlie Rose, should have known this. Does Charlie know the real reason why Gülen, no angel himself, is now Erdoğan’s sworn enemy? If Charlie only knew a few journalistic facts he would have quickly figured it all out. We all have, and we’re not respected journalists at all.  We’re not even respected. So here’s the truth (and now I’m whispering): On 17 December 2013, a Gülenian wind blew the roof off the massive corruption enterprise called the government of Turkey.

    Actually Charlie Rose only masquerades as a journalist, as elementary-school educated Gülen masquerades as an Islamic scholar, as Erdoğan masquerades as a statesman, as Abdullah Gül masquerades as a head of state and as the CIA masquerades as a patriotic, law abiding part of the American government. In Turkey, everyone is someone else and everyone plays dress-up. Welcome to the Mardi Gras a la Turka. It’s a political-social condition called Deceit.

    Speaking of which, now the terrorists gangsters, financed, fed and armed by Turkey, are performing a new trick, crucifixion. They apparently grew tired of eating the pulsating hearts of their victims and mutilating their corpses. This is what happens when nitwits make foreign policy. False-flag Turkey supplies thugs with sarin gas. America supplies them with TOW missiles. The inmates run the asylum. Everything is out of control. Crucifixions! The mind cannot grasp the horror. Turkey no longer has borders. Turkey no longer has a viable military chain-of-command. Nor has it a viable judiciary. All of this has been brought about by the man who would now be president. Do the Turkish people know his credentials for the job? Is this the ultimate masquerade?

    Turkish people, Get real! Wake up! The day will come when this Turkish government will be in the dock at The Hague for war crimes. Turkish people! By your silence, by your media’s collaboration in this criminal enterprise, by everyone passively accepting the commission of these war crimes, so too will your consciences be on trial. You and the country may never recover from these awful deeds done in your name.

    Oh, what have you allowed your ballot boxes to do to your Syrian friends and neighbors and even families! How needy you must be to sell out for bribes of coal and rice, and some of you for so much more.

    Oh, what have you allowed your passive, inept political opposition parties to do…and not do!

    All the plunder, all the gold, all the dollars, all the shoeboxes, the airports, the money-counting machines, the tunnels, the bridges, the million-dollar wristwatches, the power plants, the shopping centers, the football frenzies and their obscenely expensive stadiums, all of this stuff that masquerades as democracy and capitalism and social value will not buy one second of relief from the coming guilt and shame. Murder, destruction, sickness, starvation, complete barbarism has been unleashed from Turkey. Turkey has raped and murdered Syria. And this is happening now, not a century ago. Crucifixion, a final act of savagery, killed a man named Christ and created Christianity. From evil came good. But in Turkey’s case…one wonders.

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    Would you not agree?

    James (Cem) Ryan
    Istanbul
    1 May 2014

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  • Turkey Reaction To Gul on TIME 100 Notes Absence of Erdogan

    Turkey Reaction To Gul on TIME 100 Notes Absence of Erdogan

    Abdullah Gul (President, Turkey)Turkey’s controversial Prime Minister is more used to the spotlight than his ally and rival, President Abdullah Gul

    First reactions in Turkey to the inclusion of President Abdullah Gul on the 2014 TIME 100 list of the world’s most influential people took note of the absence of Prime Minister Recept Tayyip Erdogan, the country’s most powerful political figure, from the list. “TIME 100: Gul is there, Erdogan Isn’t,” read the headline on the Hurriyet news site. Said the daily Vatan: “Flash! Gul is on the list, Erdogan doesn’t exist!”

    Twitter – the social media site that Erdogan ordered shut down in Turkey after it posted links to apparently incriminating corruption wiretaps — echoed with skepticism of the choice: “JOKE OF THE DAY: Turkish President Gul in Time’s “The most influential people in the world” list..:) :)@TIME > Influential for what??” wrote @GayeAkarca

    “Is he even influential in Turkey? Discuss,” quipped Bloomberg’s Turkey bureau chief, Benjamin Harvey @benjaminharvey.

    In a mainstream media largely intimidated by Erdogan’s heavyhanded attentions, most early reports cited what novelist Elif Shafak had written on Gul without further comment. Gul has tacked his own course through the controversies that have erupted around Erdogan over the past year. The two men were among the founders of the moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party that has dominated Turkish politics for almost a dozen years, but Erdogan has strongly signaled his interest in running for the president’s office that Gul now holds.

     

    For his part, Gul has largely refrained from being drawn on the subject, except to signal his reluctance to leave the office in order to take Erdogan’s place as prime minister.

    via Turkey Reaction To Gul on TIME 100 Notes Absence of Erdogan | TIME.com.