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Tag: Recep Tayyip Erdogan

12th president of Turkey

Turkey’s leader vies for role of strongman

ISTANBUL — Turkey’s Islamist prime minister, barred from seeking a fourth term, is exploring ways to create a strongman presidency and run for the powerful new office next year, but critics fear his political engineering could undermine the country’s secular democratic tradition.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, prime minister since 2003, has rejected the American constitutional blueprint of checks and balances between the White House and Congress, and instead has called for a “Turkish-style presidential system.”

“The U.S. president cannot appoint an ambassador. He cannot even solely decide on the sale of a helicopter,” Mr. Erdogan told Turkish reporters during a recent trip to Spain.

Members of parliament from Mr. Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party recently outlined a proposal to transfer executive power from the prime minister to a muscular presidency, now largely a ceremonial post. The office would include the authority to hire and fire Cabinet ministers at will.

“He doesn’t do ‘checks-and-balances,’” said Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat who now heads the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies in Istanbul. “In succeeding elections, every time he has actually become more polarizing, and that’s certainly been his modus operandi lately.”

Mr. Erdogan’s domestic critics fear that he is establishing an authoritarian state with a hidden agenda to impose strict Islamic laws, but Turkey’s allies largely have been reluctant to criticize him.

Strategic ally

Turkey, which sits strategically between Europe and the Middle East, is a strong U.S. ally and a member of NATO since 1952 — only three years after the establishment of the Western military pact.

NATO countries have pledged to send Turkey six Patriot missile batteries and troops to defend itself against missiles from Syria, whose 21-month-old civil war has spilled over the Turkish border.

Mr. Erdogan, 58, has denounced Syrian President Bashar Assad for his indiscriminate attacks on civilians and is sheltering members of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

The foreign policy implications of a strong Turkish presidency are unclear, but a domestic uproar against any power grab by Mr. Erdogan could force Western democracies to scrutinize his motives.

“Changing Turkey’s regime to a presidential system is a huge challenge,” said Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, director of the German Marshall Fund office in Ankara. “And it will be the major issue in Turkey in the upcoming years.”

Mr. Erdogan is trying to use his party’s dominance in parliament to change the constitution.

Opposition parties, fearful of Mr. Erdogan’s apparently limitless political ambitions, are resisting. The conflict could spark a political fight that likely would decide the limits to Mr. Erdogan’s power as president after the 2014 election.

Mr. Erdogan was re-elected unopposed as party leader in September, but party rules will prevent him from running again for prime minister after his third term expires in three years. He recently said he is prepared to serve in public office for the next 10 years.

via Turkey’s leader vies for role of strongman – Washington Times.

more : https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/1/turkeys-leader-vies-for-role-of-strongman/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

January 3, 2013
Iraqi bloc to sue Turkey PM over meddling in internal affairs

An Iraqi political movement says it is planning to sue Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over what it calls Ankara’s interference in the Iraq’s internal affairs.

According to the al-Qanoon News Agency, Ahrar al-Iraq bloc will file charges against the Turkish premier for harboring Iraq’s fugitive vice-president Tariq al-Hashemi, who has received multiple death sentences in absentia over involvement in terrorist activities and running death squads in post-war Iraq.

The movement also criticized Turkey’s President Abdullah Gul for calling Shias a minority group in Iraq, saying his remarks aimed at fomenting discord among Iraqis.

On Sunday, several Iraqi lawmakers and politicians condemned as “unacceptable” Turkey’s interference in their country’s internal affairs after Erdogan accused the Iraqi government of sectarian behavior.

Ahmad al-Hosseini, an Iraqi political activist, said the Turkish government’s interference in Iraq is increasing day by day especially after the recent demonstrations in Iraq’s western province of Anbar following the arrest of Finance Minister Rafia al-Issawi’s bodyguards on terrorism charges.

Iraqi lawmaker Yasin Majid demanded the expulsion of Turkey’s ambassador to Baghdad in response to anti-Iraq remarks made by Erdogan.

Ankara-Baghdad relations turned sour last year after Turkey expressed support for Hashemi and gave him refuge. Turkish air strikes against PKK positions in northern Iraq have also created more tension in the relations.

The two countries are also at odds over the Syrian unrest. While Turkey has become one of the main supporters of anti-Damascus militants, Baghdad has refused to join calls for President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

HM/PKH/SS

via PressTV – Iraqi bloc to sue Turkey PM over meddling in internal affairs.

January 3, 2013
Erdogan dreams of full sharia law in Turkey

Daniel Pipes

From: The Australian

THE menu for meals on my Turkish Airlines flight this month assured passengers that food selections “do not contain pork”. The menu also offered a serious selection of alcoholic drinks, including champagne, whisky, gin, vodka, raki, wine, beer, liqueur and cognac.

This oddity of simultaneously adhering to and ignoring Islamic law, the sharia, symbolises the uniquely complex public role of Islam in today’s Turkey, as well as the challenge of understanding the Justice and Development Party (known by its Turkish abbreviation, AKP) which has dominated the country’s national government since 2002.

Political discussions about Turkey tend to dwell on whether the AKP is Islamist or not: In 2007, for example, I asked “what are the AKP leadership’s intentions? Did it retain a secret Islamist program and simply learn to disguise its Islamist goals? Or did it actually give up on those goals and accept secularism?”

During recent discussions in Istanbul, I learned that Turks of many viewpoints have reached a consensus about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: they worry less about his Islamic aspirations than his nationalist and dictatorial tendencies.

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Applying the sharia in full, they say, is not a feasible goal in Turkey because of the country’s secular and democratic nature, something distinguishing it from other Muslim-majority countries (except Albania, Kosovo and Kyrgyzstan). Accepting this reality, the AKP wins ever-greater electoral support by softly coercing the population to be more virtuous, traditional, pious, religious, conservative, and moral.

Thus, it encourages fasting during Ramadan and female modesty, discourages alcohol consumption, attempted to criminalise adultery, indicted an anti-Islamist artist, increased the number of religious schools, added Islam to the public school curriculum, and introduced questions about Islam to university entrance exams. Put in terms of Turkish Airlines, pork is already gone and it’s a matter of time until the alcohol also disappears.

Islamic practice, not Islamic law, is the goal, my interlocutors told me. Hand chopping, burkas, slavery and jihad are not in the picture, and all the less so after the past decade’s economic growth which empowered an Islamically oriented middle class that rejects Saudi-style Islam.

An opposition leader noted that five districts of Istanbul “look like Afghanistan,” but these are the exception. The AKP seeks to reverse the anti-religiousness of Ataturk’s state without undermining that state, aspiring to create a post-Ataturk order more than an anti-Ataturk order.

It seeks, for example, to dominate the existing legal system rather than create an Islamic one. The columnist Mustafa Akyol even holds the AKP is not trying to abolish secularism but that it “argues for a more liberal interpretation of secularism”. The AKP, they say, emulates the 623-year-old Ottoman state Ataturk terminated in 1922, admiring both its Islamic orientation and its dominance of the Balkans and the Middle East.

This neo-Ottoman orientation can be seen in the Prime Minister’s aspiration to serve as informal caliph, by his change in emphasis from Europe to the Middle East (where he is an unlikely hero of the Arab street), and his offering the AKP’s political and economic formula to other Muslim countries, notably Egypt. (Erdogan staunchly argued for secularism during a visit there, to the Muslim Brotherhood’s dismay, and looks askance at Mohamed Morsi’s ramming sharia down Egyptians’ throats.)

In addition, Ankara helps the Iranian regime avoid sanctions, sponsors the Sunni opposition against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, picked a noisy, gratuitous fight with Israel, threatened Cyprus over its underwater gas finds, and even intervened in the trial of a Bangladeshi Islamist leader.

Having outmanoeuvred the “deep state,” especially the military officer corps, in mid-2011, the AKP adopted an increasingly authoritarian cast, to the point that many Turks fear dictatorship more than Islamisation.

They watch as an Erdogan “intoxicated with power” imprisons opponents on the basis of conspiracy theories and wiretaps, stages show trials, threatens to suppress a costume television soap opera, seeks to impose his personal tastes on the country, fosters antisemitism, suppresses political criticism, justifies forceful measures against students protesting him, manipulates media companies, leans on the judiciary, and blasts the concept of the separation of powers. Columnist Burak Bekdil ridicules him as “Turkey’s elected chief social engineer”. More darkly, others see him becoming Turkey’s answer to Vladimir Putin, an arrogant semi-democrat who remains in power for decades.

Freed of the military’s oversight only in mid-2011, I see Erdogan possibly winning enough dictatorial power for him (or a successor) to achieve his dream and fully implement the sharia.

Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum.

via Erdogan dreams of full sharia law in Turkey | The Australian.

January 1, 2013
Turkey: Erdogan Redefining Turkish Democracy?

Turkey: Erdogan Redefining Turkish Democracy?

December 20, 2012 – 4:41pm, by Yigal Schleifer

It’s generally accepted that a strong separation of powers between the various branches of government is the bedrock of a functioning democracy. But recent comments made by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, indicating that he believes Turkey’s current separation of powers is hindering the country’s progress, has left some observers concerned the PM might have a different understanding of how a democracy works.

During a speech made earlier this week in the city of Konya, Erdogan complained of obstacles that had been put in front of his government’s efforts to introduce “further services” to the Turkish public. “You know this thing they call the division of powers; this turns up in front of you as an obstruction. The legislature, executive and judiciary in his country must consider the benefit of the nation first and then the benefit of the state,” the PM told his audience.

Erdogan’s comments come at a time when the Turkish parliament is in the midst of drafting a new constitution, and there are concerns that MP’s from Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) are pushing for a document that will give the office of the president — currently more of a ceremonial position — increased powers. Of course, the leading contender to become Turkey’s next president and the one who would reap the benefits of those expanded powers is Erdogan himself (for more on that subject, take a look at this previous post), which gives the PM’s words an added heft. Writes analyst Semih Idiz in the Hurriyet Daily News:

What Erdoğan and the AKP basically want is a president that will have the sole privilege of deciding, without any obstacles from the judiciary or the legislature, what is best for the citizens of Turkey. One assumes, of course, that it will also be the office of the president, and not Parliament, which will hold the purse strings under the AKP’s proposed system.

Erdogan’s complaints about the obstacles put forward by Turkey’s judiciary and entrenched bureaucracy are not without merit. The system created by the generals who were behind the 1980 coup and the constitution that it led to, which is still being used today, was designed to limit the ability of any elected government to act freely by installing a judiciary and building a bureaucracy whose main obligation was to look out for the interests of the state.

In many ways, Erdogan seems to be following the “Egyptian Model.” Like Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who last month issued a decree that gave him almost absolute power and put him beyond the traditional system of checks and balances, Erdogan seems to be saying that the Turkish political structure is so deeply flawed and corrupt that it can’t be fixed unless the leadership is allowed to step outside it and rebuild it without any interference. But the PM is asking for too much. After ten years of single party rule and the introduction of various reforms — including a constitutional amendment that gave the government more power over the appointment of judges — it’s harder for the AKP and Erdogan to claim that they are victims of the system. In fact, they now are the system.

via Turkey: Erdogan Redefining Turkish Democracy? | EurasiaNet.org.

December 23, 2012
Turkey’s Erdogan has eye on new, strong president’s role

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan took a step towards extending his powers on Tuesday after his ruling AK Party presented a proposal to parliament for setting up a presidential system.

Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics since the party came to power in 2002, is widely viewed as wanting to consolidate his position by becoming the head of state in a presidential election in 2014.

The plan drew criticism from the opposition, however, with one politician saying it could lead Turkey into a “dark dictatorship”.

Under the current system, the president is a largely ceremonial figure. The AK Party aims to create an executive presidency within the framework of a new constitution which the government says will advance Turkey’s democratization.

Erdogan’s plans will be challenged by other parties in parliament who fear such a reform will hand him too much power. However, the AK Party has a large majority in parliament which leaves it strongly positioned to push through reform.

“We presented a measure to the parliamentary speaker’s office. Within that there is an AK Party proposal on the formation of a presidential system,” Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag, a leading advocate of the reform, said.

“We think it is right to move Turkey to a presidential system which can establish strong leadership and create stability rather than disputes in the years ahead,” he said.

The move coincided with an announcement from Erdogan that local elections would go ahead in March 2014 as scheduled. He abandoned an attempt to bring the vote forward by five months after failing to win enough parliamentary support for the plan.

An earlier date for local elections would have given him more time to prepare for the presidential contest in 2014.

Under the AKP proposal, the president would appoint ministers, who would not be members of parliament and there would no longer be parliamentary mechanisms such as confidence votes and censure motions, Bozdag said.

The proposal, presented to parliament on Monday evening, was expected to be sent to an all-party parliamentary commission formed after last year’s election to work on a new charter.

Opposition parties were fierce in their criticism.

“Turkey would walk into a dark dictatorship,” said Riza Turmen, a deputy from the opposition Republican People’s Party.

“Turkey is already on this path. The parliament is unable to fulfill its duties even in a parliamentary system. The judiciary is not independent, the press is not free,” he told Reuters.

The nationalist MHP also rejected a move to a presidential set-up, calling for a strengthening of the parliamentary system.

Erdogan “losing hope” on consensus

The AK Party has yet to spell out exactly what its reform plans are but Erdogan is expected to seek the presidency in the 2014 vote as under party rules he cannot run for prime minister again when his term ends in 2015.

He was reported as saying last Friday that he was losing hope of building cross-party support for the constitutional reforms but that he was determined to push the plans forward.

His Islamist-rooted party, which trounced the opposition in three parliamentary elections, has transformed Turkey during its decade in government, creating unprecedented prosperity and bringing a staunchly secular military to heel.

At his party congress in September, Erdogan said he would forge a constitution that would boost political freedom and democracy to replace one drawn up after a military coup three decades ago.

He invited opposition parties for consultations but opponents fear the new system would hand too much power to a man whose intolerance of dissent is viewed with increasing concern in Turkey and abroad.

Hundreds of activists, lawyers, politicians, military officers and journalists are being held on charges of plotting against the government or supporting outlawed Kurdish militants.

One obstacle to Erdogan’s presidential ambitions could be the current president himself.

A survey by Turkish pollster MetroPOLL in September showed Turks would prefer incumbent Abdullah Gul as their next president.

The two men, who co-founded the AK Party in 2001 but could in theory face each other in the presidential election, have had increasingly public differences.

via Turkey’s Erdogan has eye on new, strong president’s role – Tehran Times.

November 8, 2012
Turkey: America’s new key ally in the Middle East?

Relations between the US and Turkey have soared during Obama’s first term

By Suzanna Koster, GlobalPost
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Credit: AP/Burhan Ozbilici)
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.

Global Post ISTANBUL, Turkey — It’s probably a matter of geography. But the Turkish government has been masterful in recent years at keeping friends in both the Middle East and the West, despite all the conflicts in between.

Turkey has carefully calibrated relations with countries in its neighborhood — which include perennial thorns like Iran, Syria, Iraq and Russia — and with the United States, which is so engaged in the region some there feel they should be able to vote in the US presidential election.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sought to expand trade with its immediate neighbors, irking the West but never alienating it — no easy task.

But with the Arab Spring and the Syrian conflict, things are changing in the region, and it might be the administration of US President Barack Obama that wins out in the end.

Since Obama took office, relations with Turkey are perhaps the best they’ve ever been.

“Turkey-US relations reached almost its peak under Obama,” said Sinan Ulgen, chairman of the Center for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies, a think tank in Istanbul. “[It] is obviously the consequence of the Arab revolts where Turkey and the US are very much standing side by side.”

Turkey and the United States also both support the Syrian opposition. And there are other factors too. Tensions between Turkey and Iran recently heightened in part because of Iran’s support for the Syrian regime. Turkey had previously tried to engage Iran, worrying its NATO allies, including the United States.

“Now that’s over. Now Turkey’s relationship with Iran and a number of other countries in Turkey’s neighborhood is very different, much more antagonistic,” Ulgen said.

Turkey’s increasing alienation from Europe has also brought the importance of its alliance with the United States to the fore. “Europe’s ineffectiveness as a regional policy actor, bogged down and mired in its own economic crisis, in a way accentuates the role of the US for Turkey policymakers,” he said.

From the US perspective, Turkey’s importance as a regional ally has grown as the Arab Spring remakes the politics of the region. Egypt, for decades an all-important ally to the United States, for example, is now charting a new path that isn’t necessarily in its interests.

“[Obama] appreciated more the Turkish strength in dealing with the Middle East. So he wanted to benefit from that possibility that the influence of Turkey on that neighborhood may be useful for the American interests as well,” said Oktay Aksoy, a former Turkish ambassador now working for the Foreign Policy Institute in Ankara.

Things were not always so rosy. Turkey did not support the US invasion of Iraq and refused to let America use its territory to move troops. The United States responded by preventing Turkey from pursuing Kurdish independence fighters in Iraqi territory.

But Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 made it possible to mend relations and again cooperate on foreign policy, according to Ilter Turan, a political science professor at the international relations department at Bilgi University in Istanbul.

According to media reports, Turkish soldiers are again in Iraq pursuing Kurdish militants, who seek to create an autonomous region in parts of Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

In a sign of improving relations between Turkey and the United States, in 2011 Turkey agreed to host a US early warning radar system. The radars are part of NATO’s larger missile defense system, created to counter ballistic missile threats from Iran.

Suat Kiniklioglu, a columnist for Today’s Zaman, wrote last September that a senior US administration official described it as one of the “biggest strategic decisions taken between Turkey and the United States in the last 15 to 20 years.”

The happy relationship, however, is tenuous at best. And it could be the issue of Syria that does it in.

Ulgen said Turkey is increasingly frustrated by the lack of US support for intervention in Syria. “The US has been reluctant to entertain Turkish demands for an outright intervention in Syria. That is one area which increasingly tends to fall outside the scope of this very good relationship.”

And for all the improvement in relations, many Turks aren’t buying it. Like many others in the region, they distrust the United States.

Only 15 percent of Turks have a favorable view of the United States, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

“If anything happens to Turkey, many people assume it is either an Israeli or American conspiracy,” said Mensur Akgun, director of the Global Political Trends Center in Istanbul.

Opposition politicians still find support by linking government policies to the United States. “They tend to believe, or present, the Turkish government policies as sort of being proxy to the US,” Akgun said.

There is little truth to that accusation, he added.

“Turkey has been pursuing a rather autonomous policy vis a vis many of these countries. Having joint or common interests doesn’t mean Turkey is behaving like a US proxy.”

via Turkey: America’s new key ally in the Middle East? – Salon.com.

November 7, 2012