Concerns about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian leanings have been at the fore in the nation’s political dialogue since he assumed the presidency, and appear to have been well founded, as in a televised speech today he declared “democracy,, freedom, and the rule of law have absolutely no value any longer.”
Rather, Turkey is about one thing in 2016, and that’s wars, with Erdogan insisting anyone who supports his wars is a friend and anyone “on the opposite side are our enemy,” insisting the nation will treat them all with an iron fist.
Erdogan also vowed to turn the nation’s military against the opposition HDP, which opposes the war against the Kurds, saying that “wherever you run, our soldiers, police, and village guards will find you there and do what is necessary.” Erdogan had previously pushed for the HDP’s parliamentarians to lose their legal immunity so they could be charged as terrorists.
“I no longer see as legitimate political actors the members of a party which is operating as a branch of the terrorist organization,” Erdogan reiterated today, demanding parliament take quick action against opposition MPs from the Kurdish-dominated southeast.
Erdogan has increasingly sought to charge political opponents as terrorists, and has in the past few weeks not only arrested academics as “terrorists” for their positions on his government, but nationalized the nation’s largest newspaper for publishing articles critical of his ruling party.
The Turkish George W Bush.
Just look at the “greatest” democracy on earth as a shining example.
Far be it to defend Erdogan, he is right. The phrases of Western Trotskyite politbiro lecturing world on democracy and freedom have lost all meaning. Lecuting the leaders from the Rest of the globe, the West has produced talking heads that in the name of these empty phrases caused untold suffering. And Americsns in particular should care — why is Fethullah Gulen, a “moderate” Turkish cleric given shelter in US while controlling anti-government media (Zaman, others), buying influence among prosecutors, police, business, Army etc.? And how on earth has his educational foundation become so rich in US? One example is takeover of failed public schools that became privatized charter schoolls. There are over one hundred of schools that are part of Gulen educational network. His organization is modelled on Vatican’s Opus Dei. Parents have for years protested to no avail. There is a website with the names of schools that are running by Gulen in many states, most of them in the Bible waving Cruz state of Texas. So not only is the profit from running our schools going out of the country but it is going towards undermining governments, and funding schools and universities in his brand of international Islam. Just as Saudi Wahhabism believes in no borders and caliphate governance of islamic world, Gulen is spreading the same ideology –albeit in the name of “tolerance” attracting more educated in Europe and US into its web. And our kids education money is paying for this.
That doesn’t make much sense. Opposition to the Turkish government does not make anyone an extremist, and it isn’t illegal outside Turkey.
The next step in Erdogan’s delusional quest to restore the Ottoman Empire — with himself as grand poobah, of course. Mussolini had the same delusions regarding the Roman Empire.
Yet another reason to abolish NATO.
That was a really stupid thing to say, demonstrating a really stupid way to think.
However, it may not mean exactly what this interprets it to mean. Erdogan (wrongly) thinks Turkey is in the same position now as was the US when Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus and a fully free press. Of course that was temporary, and Lincoln did not say or mean that it devalued those principles, just suspended them for an emergency.
Erdogan is becoming his own worst enemy.
Erdogan is embarrassing those who have defended him as well as those he still needs to defend him.
Erdogan is Turkish for Trump.
Kurds, the new Armenians.
If Turkey is demonstrably not a democracy, then it has no place in the EU, or NATO.