Troubles In Turkey

[DKTanker]

Incirlik AFB is still being blockaded by Turkish forces. Power has not been restored and evidently no supplies are being allowed through the blockade. It is being reported that about a week's worth of fuel remains to power generators for mission essential tasks. Food and water are being strictly rationed and there remains no indication when the blockade will be, if ever, lifted.

[Jeff]

Are there going to be show trials before they shoot those enemies of the state?

 

I thought people like Erdogan used piano wire?

[Panzermann]

 

 

Are there going to be show trials before they shoot those enemies of the state?

I thought people like Erdogan used piano wire?

Nono, Erdogan likes the big show. Fills football stadiums for speeches.

 

---

 

http://yaesuft817.com/wp/turkey-gouvernement-revokes-19201-ham-radio-licenses/

 

revokes ham radio licenses?

 

Next is the reintroduction of arabic alphabet in the ottoman variation...

[Simon Tan]

Turkish comedy gold. A nice Turkish chappie here is distraught. I even have to pretend to sympathize.

[BansheeOne]

And now Turkey has announced to suspend the European Convention on Human rights, citing France as an example. Frankly, I'm not aware of such a step by the latter and can't find anything to that effect on the quick.

[Panzermann]

And now Turkey has announced to suspend the European Convention on Human rights, citing France as an example. Frankly, I'm not aware of such a step by the latter and can't find anything to that effect on the quick.

Erdogan has a different concept of "state of emergency" than Hollande...

[BansheeOne]

Okay, just saw a wire report of a European Council spokesman confirming that they are awaiting a notification by Turkey regarding Article 15 of the Convention which refers to "deviations in case of a state of emergency" and allows to suspend or modify certain articles (but not all, like the ban on torture), and that France did indeed the same earlier. Didn't know that.

[Panzermann]

Okay, just saw a wire report of a European Council spokesman confirming that they are awaiting a notification by Turkey regarding Article 15 of the Convention which refers to "deviations in case of a state of emergency" and allows to suspend or modify certain articles (but not all, like the ban on torture), and that France did indeed the same earlier. Didn't know that.

The french regularly stretching their state of emergency smells like last month's bouillabaisse, too. And did not help with the recent unniceity in Nice.

 

 

What exactly did they suspend or modify?

[Panzermann]

the blackhawk crew has been sentenced to three years on parole for illegally crossing the border. The charges for endangering flight have been dropped because there really is danger for them and they fled from it. They stay in prison though to keep them safe from probable action by Erdo followers.

 

http://www.skai.gr/news/greece/article/320907/duo-mines-gia-paranomi-eisodo-sti-hora-athooi-gia-paranomi-ptisi-oi-8-tourkoi-stratiotikoi-

[Simon Tan]

Hollande is a moron.

[rohala]

the blackhawk crew has been sentenced to three years on parole for illegally crossing the border. The charges for endangering flight have been dropped because there really is danger for them and they fled from it. They stay in prison though to keep them safe from probable action by Erdo followers.

 

http://www.skai.gr/news/greece/article/320907/duo-mines-gia-paranomi-eisodo-sti-hora-athooi-gia-paranomi-ptisi-oi-8-tourkoi-stratiotikoi-

The article doesn't say three years. It says two months.

[Simon Tan]

Are you keeping the chopper?

[Panzermann]

 

the blackhawk crew has been sentenced to three years on parole for illegally crossing the border. The charges for endangering flight have been dropped because there really is danger for them and they fled from it. They stay in prison though to keep them safe from probable action by Erdo followers.

 

http://www.skai.gr/news/greece/article/320907/duo-mines-gia-paranomi-eisodo-sti-hora-athooi-gia-paranomi-ptisi-oi-8-tourkoi-stratiotikoi-

The article doesn't say three years. It says two months.

Oh you are right. Dunno where the three years came from.

[rohala]

Are you keeping the chopper?

The chopper has already been returned.

[glenn239]

Simon Tan Hollande is a moron.

 

 

That’s way off. Here -

 

Hollande est un crétin

 

Much better!

[Panzermann]

And the cleansing continues:

 

According to Recep Tayyip Erdoğans office, the decree will close 1,043 private schools, 1,229 foundations and associations, 35 medical institutions, 19 unions, and 15 universities. Their assets will be seized by the treasury. The presidency said that parliament will be able to vote on the measure.

 

It is the first presidential decree since the announcement of a three-month state of emergency on Wednesday. This enables Erdoğans cabinet to bypass parliament and suspend rights as they deem necessary. Decrees passed during the state of emergency have the force of law and cannot be appealed.

 

The government says the measure is necessary to prevent further unrest and insists it will only target those immediately associated with the coup attempt. However, there are concerns that the crackdown has been widened to root out all potential sympathisers of Gülens movement, turning the investigation of coup plotters into an all-out witch hunt.

 

The decree also extends the current maximum pre-charge detention from four to 30 days, a move that was criticised by human rights groups who have recently flagged up an increase of cases of severe ill-treatment of soldiers currently in detention.

(...)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/23/turkey-erdogan-closure-of-1000-private-schools-gulen

[Mikel2]

Judging by how quickly the drew those lists... One would think this was already planned

[sunday]

Well, every aspiring dictator worth his salt keeps an updated list of usual suspects to arrest should opportunity arises, of course.

 

Jokes apart, this unusual focus on judiciary and education shows a worrying degree of foresight. Almost as if he was putting the foundation for a ideological upheaval of Turkish society.

Edited July 24, 2016 by sunday

[lucklucky]

How can anyone be surprised?

[seahawk]

Erdogan is a wise man.

[lucklucky]

It is the difference between someone with an religious objective and a dilettante.

[Panzermann]

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/07/turkey-independent-monitors-must-be-allowed-to-access-detainees-amid-torture-allegations/

 

Amnesty International has gathered credible evidence that detainees in Turkey are being subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, in official and unofficial detention centres in the country.

---

 

RUMINT has it that many of the incarcerated officers commit suicide.

 

 

---

 

At this very moment an exclusive interview with Erdogan is broadcast on german public TV. Maybe there is going to be an english subtitled version of this half hour.

 

video: http://www.tagesschau.de/multimedia/video/video-202649.html

Edited July 25, 2016 by Panzermann

[Panzermann]

Erdogans Self-Serving Purge Has Gone Too Far

 

In the coups sordid aftermath, Turkey's president has damaged the system that saved him

 

By Austin Bay 07/22/16 5:00pm

 

 

The Turkish people defeated the July 15th coup attempt. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan remains in office today because Turkish citizens (across Turkeys complex political and ethnic spectrum) courageously defended their hard-won democracy - a democracy nine challenging decades in the making.

 

It appears Erdogans government has now smashed the coup plot - and rather decisively. Coup détats against democratic states are criminal acts. Coup perpetrators deserve punishment as justified by law.

 

 

Erdogan is certainly dealing out the punishment. The government claims the followers of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen planned and executed the coup. Pro-Gulen personnel in the Turkish Air Force and the gendarmerie played key roles. At one time Gulen supported Erdogan. For years opposition parties objected to Erdogans tendency to give Gulenists choice positions in the bureaucracy, to include the judiciary. Gulen now lives in exile in Pennsylvania. Erdogan has requested his extradition from the U.S. to Turkey.

 

Some 9,400 security personnel allegedly involved with the failed coup are currently under arrest (most of them members of the military) and there are indications several hundred more may be detained.

 

Given the size of Turkeys military and national police forces - and emerging information about range and types of operations conducted by coup plotters - 10,000 plotters under arrest is a reasonable figure. It represents less than the troop strength of a typical infantry division.

 

Unfortunately, in the coups sordid aftermath, the lynching has started.

 

The Voice of America attributes that biting assessment:

 

Beyza Ustun, an official of the Kurdish-dominated, left-wing Peoples Democratic Party, reflecting the concern members of Turkeys minorities have expressed at what they see as a growing threat to their rights.

 

I fear we witness a bitter, hostile irony of history-in-the-making. Contrary to his claims he is defending democracy, Erdogans actions in the last five days have damaged - if not quite dismantled - key elements of the very democratic system that saved him and his government.

 

He has already moved from justified legal action to vengeful, self-serving purge. That stinks of dictatorial power grab, going Full Ottoman, with Erdogan living down to his deserved nickname: Sultan Recep.

 

Is purge a loaded word? Look at the numbers. So far he has suspended, fired or revoked the licenses of 60,000 civil servants (58,881 is one precise figure) working in various positions. If that sounds like a large number of people, it is.

 

Turkeys judiciary and educational systems are primary targets. At last count, over 21,000 employees of the Education Ministry have been fired or suspended, including more than 1,500 university deans. Over 1,600 private education institutions with links to Gulen and his movement are being closed.

 

Government officials say that purged employees will have their day in court - which makes the judiciary purge even more disturbing. So far the government has dismissed 2,745 judges and prosecutors. In The Financial Times, Istanbul human rights lawyer Ayse Bingol asks some pertinent questions: We are talking about arrest warrants issued for thousands of people. How were they issued? Based on what facts? Is it a kind of witch-hunt or is there respect for the rule of law?

 

The judiciary purge includes members of Turkeys highest court, the Constitutional Court. Erdogan had two Constitutional Court judges, Alparslan Altan and Erdal Tercal, dismissed and then detained. Both men have Gulenist sympathies. However, members of the court have opposed and struck down legislative and legal measures that Erdogan favored. According to Erdogans critics, the measures he advocated would cede even more power to the presidency.

 

* * *

 

Recent attacks by militant Islamist terrorists aligned with the Islamic State led France to declare a state of emergency.

 

Erdogan said Turkey needed a state of emergency to fully respond to the coup, and Turkeys parliament obliged.

 

Parliamentary leaders see their countrys turmoil. The Turkish people want coup participants brought to justice. However, the state of emergency suspends the European Convention on Human Rights, making it all too easy for Erdogan to pursue self-serving ideological goals. An Erdogan ally all but said thats coming.

 

Turkey must clean the state coffers fully of members of the Gulenist organization.

 

The opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) strongly opposed the coup and has been very supportive of Erdogan. The CHP is Turkeys secularist Kemalist party, the party of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey. Current CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu recognizes the danger posed by the state of emergency. On July 22 Kilicdaroglu reminded an interviewer that the CHP had long opposed Erdogans excessive tendency to appoint Gulen sympathizers to key government positions - when Erdogan and Gulen were allies. The reminder, however, wasnt the heart of Kilicdaroglus statement:

 

Any kind of wrongdoing with regard to legal proceedings [by the government] would only help strengthen the coup mentality. We should carefully avoid this. We want all those who are prosecuted on coup-related charges to be tried in line with democracy and the rule of law. We dont want a witch huntWe are a strong state with the rule of law. There have been setbacks in democracy from time to time but Turkeys face has always been turned toward democracy.

 

Thats an eloquent statement and eloquent warning. If Erdogan consolidates personal power in the process of ending the current turmoil, he risks seeding further civil conflict.

 

* * **

 

Contrary opinions rattle Erdogan. Yes, Big Ego Erdogan is a bit thin-skinned. Allegedly the Gulenist deans on his purge list promote anti-democratic and anti-government ideas. More likely they hold anti-Erdogan opinions.

 

Erdogans demand that Germany squelch and prosecute comedian Jan Boehmermann provides an international example of the fierce treatment Erdogans domestic critics confront within Turkey.

 

In March, Boehmermann mocked Erdogan in a satirical and obscenity-laced poem the comedian read on his ZDF-neo channel talk show program, Neo Magazin Royale.

 

As the BBC reports, the comedian acknowledged his poem included material that broke German laws on free speech, so Boehmermann was seeking confrontation. In May, a German court ruled Boehmermanns animal sexual reference obscenities (read the BBC article) were unacceptable. However, the comedians criticism of Erdogans clamp down of free expression in Turkey was completely legalhe has freedom of political speech. Boehmermann claims German Chancellor Angela Merkel filleted me, served me for tea to a high-strung despot He has a point.

 

During the state of emergency Erdogan can fillet his domestic critics, and unlike Boehmermann they will have limited legal recourse.

 

* * *

 

Erdogan styles himself a moderate Islamist. His AKP is a moderate Islamist party. Erdogan has renounced the speech he gave two decades ago where he said Democracy is merely a train that we ride until we reach our destination. Mosques are our military barracks. Minarets are our spears. He claims his views have changed and he is committed to Turkish democracy.

 

In a column I wrote for Creators Syndicate shortly after the coup I argue that the big message emerging is this: in crisis, Turks courageously defended their democracy. This indicates that the secular Republic of Turkey, founded by Kemal Ataturk in 1923, has achieved one of Ataturks most fundamental goals: embedding democratic values in Turkish society. Despite the turmoil and uncertainty, that rates as very good news.

 

A week after the coup I think that remains true.

 

Ataturk is the only person -so far- to have taken a culturally Muslim society and create a parliamentary democracy. Hes the leader who, to paraphrase the CHPs Kilicdaroglu turned Turkeys face toward democracy. In the process, Ataturk emancipated Turkish womenanother extraordinary reform. In 1924 he abolished the Islamic caliphate. Ataturk believed religious tolerance and free speech are essential rights in a modern and just society, so he insisted that the laws of the republican Turkey be secular, not Islamic.

 

For abolishing the caliphate and demonstrating Muslims can create a parliamentary democracy, radical Islamist terror organizations like al-Qaida and ISIS despise Kemal Ataturk more than they do George W. Bush.

 

Which takes us back to bitter irony. Ataturks revolutionary reforms -the reforms that created modern Turkey- are threatened and under attack, and the biggest threat comes from President Erdogan, the very man Turkeys democracy-protecting citizens saved.

 

Austin Bay is a contributing editor at StrategyPage.com and adjunct professor at the University of Texas in Austin. His most recent book is a biography of Kemal Ataturk (Macmillan 2011). Mr. Bay is a retired US Army Reserve colonel and Iraq veteran. He has a PhD in Comparative Literature from Columbia University.

http://observer.com/2016/07/erdogans-self-serving-purge-has-gone-too-far/

[Panzermann]

now it has reached the football leagues:

Aug 2, 11:48 AM EDT

TURKISH SOCCER FEDERATION SACKS 94 STAFF, INCLUDING REFEREES

 

 

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) -- Turkey's soccer federation says it has sacked 94 members of the association, including a number of referees.

 

The Turkish Football Federation said the action was taken as a "necessity" without saying whether those dismissed were suspected of links to U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkey accuses of masterminding the country's July 15 failed coup.

The decision came days after the federation said all members of all of its committees had tendered their resignations to help the investigation into Gulen's movement.

 

Gulen, who heads an international network of schools, charities and businesses, denies any knowledge of or participation in the coup.

 

The private Dogan news agency said those dismissed included an assistant Super League referee, adding that no other top league referee was sacked.

http://staging.hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_TURKEY_MILITARY_COUP_SOCCER?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2016-08-02-11-48-37

[bojan]

So where is an outcry over dictator?