(The Independent) – Turkish police have let off tear gas and pressurised water against groups of protesters trying to reach a main Istanbul square for a second day of anti-government demonstrations. Police also cracked down on hundreds of people trying to march toward Parliament in the capital, Ankara.
The protests grew out of anger at heavy-handed police tactics to break up a peaceful sit-in to protect a park in Istanbul’s main Taksim square on Friday.
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It turned into a wider protest against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is seen as becoming increasingly authoritarian, and spread to other Turkish cities. A human rights group said hundreds of people were injured in scuffles with police that lasted through the night.
On Saturday, police clashed with several groups of youths trying to reach Taksim. Some threw stones at police. Some 500 people marched along the Bosporus Bridge from Asian shore of the city, toward Taksim, on the European side, but were met with pressurized water and tear gas that filled the air in a thick coat of smoke.
Protest grows against authoritarian Islamic AKP
Öztürk Türkdogan, the head of the Turkish Human Rights Association, said hundreds of people in several cities were injured in the police crackdown and a few hundred people were arrested. The Dogan news agency said 81 demonstrators were detained in Istanbul.
The protest was seen as a demonstration of the anger had already been building toward Turkish police who have been accused of using inordinate force to quash demonstrations and of firing tear gas too abundantly, including at this year’s May Day rally.
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There is also resentment from mainly pro-secular circles toward the prime minister’s Islamic-rooted government and toward Erdogan himself, who is known for his abrasive style. He is accused of adopting increasingly uncompromising stance and showing little tolerance of criticism.
In a surprise move last week, the government quickly passed legislation curbing the sale and advertising of alcoholic drinks, alarming secularists. Many felt insulted when he defended the legislation by calling people who drink “alcoholics.”
“The use of (tear) gas at such proportions is unacceptable,” Turkdogan told The Associated Press. “It is a danger to public health and as such is a crime. Unfortunately, there isn’t a prosecutor brave enough to stand up to police. The people are standing up against Erdogan who is trying to monopolise power and is meddling in all aspects of life.”
Thousands marched through streets in several cities on Friday, calling on Erdogan to resign. Cars honked and residents banged on pots and pans in a show of solidarity with protesters.
Main opposition protests gas use with booklet depicting Turkish PM as `Gazman’
(Hürriyet Daily News) – In order to show his reaction against the steadily increasing use of tear gas during demonstrations under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, a deputy leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has issued a booklet titled “Gazman: The AKP’s history of tear gas,” in reference to “Gas Man” in English.
While issuing the booklet on his personal website, CHP Deputy Chair Umut Oran also introduced a bill to the Office of the Parliament Speaker for banning both the export and use of tear gas.
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“Politically, tear gas shows two realities. The first is `the gas phase’ of the AKP. Those who have been exposed to tear gas have also been experiencing what the AKP really is. The second reality is that those who fire tear gas are growing in their intoxication of power. The governing party becomes dizzy as it fires pepper gas, and it gets tipsy day and night as it puts pressure via tear gas. What has been experienced at Taksim Gezi Park is an example for this. This government does not love people, but has love for tear gas. The prime minister’s name from now on is `Gazman,'” Oran said in a written statement released on May 30.
Not just in Turkey, but across Europe against austerity.
German tanks protecting Deutsche Bank headquarters? According to RT.
wrt Turkey, can the secularist protesters for once not lose? For once not starting a movement that ends up increasing the power of fundamentalist religion.
“the revolutionary spark of the Colored Revolutions of Eastern Europe”?
I thought that everyone knew by now that those were bogus populist movements set up by the CIA/USAID.
Even “bogus movements” have to tap into a wider pre-existing sentiment to get any traction. But regardless of success or failure “bogus movements” have a short shelf life. So, your point is valid.
The radical leftist (from the point of view of this blog) site dKos has an excellent diary on this:
Something Tremendulous is Happening in Turkey
No change at US State Department:
And the dKos leftist diarist notes:
And further highlights:
(the “tent” might be bigger here at least on the leftie side and a bit more tolerant of an errant intemperate comment.)
Yes, that is the subject of the current top recommended diary at (what can only be from the point of view of this blog) the anti-President Web site dKos:
Without Irony, the U.S. Rebukes Turkey for Cracking Down on Protesters
It was the substantial presence of the “Obama walks on water” folks at dKos that after many attempts, finally succeeded in getting me banned last year after almost ten years of commenting there. So, I’m not in tune with the argument that dKos is left of Booman.
I don’t think you would get banned there today. I got a lot of hide ratings for this comment I made last April (which I guess you can’t read), in which I said:
That was in response to a response to this comment of mine, which is not hidden:
I made two subsequent posts in that thread that were also heavily hide-rated, including one in which I described Obama as a magical negro. The fallout from that was that I lost my trusted user status; I didn’t get autobanned. I got my trusted user status back a few weeks later.
I used to be “Alexander” (as opposed to “Alexandre”) at dKos, too. Alexander got autobanned when I asked a question about why Kerry was giving Israel a free pass about something (don’t remember what) after he got the nomination in 2004.
Not as raw as what I said. But maybe it was returning a few hours later to discover all the hide ratings and making attempts to defend my original comment that were all also promptly hide rated as well that did me in. It was swift and permanent. It was determined that I am a racist — even though a couple of people rejected that assessment while continuing to denounce my comment — and that cannot be appealed.
I looked up that comment. Yes, they sure went after you. It never would have occurred to me to make Obama speak using black language, since he doesn’t come across to me as black. In any case, what I did in my hide-rated posts was suggest that the appeal of Obama to white progressives is based on their reverse racism. So I did not directly attack the Führer himself.
Still, it’s odd that you got autobanned and I didn’t. You got 41 hide ratings for the original comment and 2 for a subsequent comment. I got 50 hide ratings for the first comment that was swept down upon, and 21 and 27 hide ratings for two subsequent comments. So either they have “relaxed” the autoban algorithm, or it is not as automatic as we are led to believe.
Truthfully, I have trouble remembering that Obama is black. Could have easily made the same comment in 2004 when Kerry and Bush were vying for who would be the better killer but not in 2008. It wouldn’t have been quite on target in 2004, because we expect an incumbent Republican POTUS to order such actions and hope that Democratic challengers are only engaging in electioneering rhetoric and will not behave like that if elected. Except they usually do. Had Kerry won in 2004 and demonstrated that he was as bad or worse in sending the US military abroad and was competing with “killer” McCain in 2008, would have made the same comment.
That happened to me also. I see I’m in very good company. Thanks for mentioning your being banned. I feel much better about my banning now.
Two things that ticked me off about being banned. First I was one of the earliest readers (summer 2002) and contributors (November 2002) to the site. Second was being labeled a racist (not that anyone in this country could ever claim not to carry elements of racism in his/her being) when I was the first person there to call out the Clinton campaign for using the race card in NH, and was called nuts and sexist for pointing that out. Funny how that wasn’t such an “out there” observation by the time the primary campaign got to SC and Jimmy Carter no less noted the same Clinton tactic down there.
There are so many users there that when it comes to getting autobanned, it’s basically a hive mind, and so not very rational.
Like I said above, I recently got more hide ratings than you did when you got banned, but I didn’t get banned. So maybe they have tweaked the autoban algorithm.
Don’t know that I was autobanned. Just shut out with the skull and crossbones logo slapped onto my user page.
I’m okay here. With one exception, the debates here are more honest. Not so much of that dippy liberalism.
I just logged in and I see the Skull and Crossbones. My God! I actually have (had) followers!
.
A Ratzinger Inside? My Dear KOS Community …
and banned a second time within a few months.
Armando and I had some royal battles back in 2003-2004. Then at some later point he was banned.
Missed your dust-up at dKos — not surprising since I rarely wondered into meta-GBCW diaries. And wasn’t on-line much that year. But it was nice to see that my bud Matt in NYC supported you.
I too was there for the Propagannon effort. Then it hit a brick wall and rather quickly disappeared. Wrote up my observations and thoughts in Funhouse Part I and Funhouse Part II. Some good comments to Part II.
Wow! That is an even worse case than Marie’s. I tried to google and search threads but couldn’t find her actual radioactive post. Apparently Marie referred to Obama in terms using black dialect and it was considered racist. I could see that, but only if someone was very thin skinned and Marie apologized for giving offense.
In my case, after Obama attacked career civil servants (I had forgotten about that earlier attack), I changed my sig line to “Obama – Kenyan for Lying Son of a Bitch”. Someone I had never heard of warned me to remove my racist sig or be HR’d into oblivion, which happened. I appealed to Kos, saying that I didn’t consider it any more racist than say “Schwarzenegger – German for Lying Son of a Bitch”. i.e. a personal insult rather than racial. Nevertheless, I offered to remove it and never again criticize Obama or uprate a criticism of Obama if he would re-instate me. It fell on deaf ears. I greatly appreciate the Frog Pond where I have seen people personally insult Boo himself and still not be banned. Also, periodic trolls are not silenced but ignored. The only banning I have ever heard of came not from violating political correctness but commercial spamming.
Marie, Oui, I am proud to be in company with you. And Booman, thank you again and again. I’m going to look for the contribute link and make another of my (regrettably token) donations.
Ooops! Reminding everyone who uses Adblock plus to log an exception for http://www.BoomanTribune.com
Sorry, Boo, no intent to cut into your ad revenue.
Adblock Plus hides the donate button also.
Honestly, I didn’t apologize except in that “if you were offended” form that is common in response to a demand for an apology. Anyone that is sincerely sorry for what one has said or done (the act and not the consequences of the act) needs no demand to attempt to make amends. Thus I find such demands and the extracted insincere apology of no value and somewhat offensive. It’s difficult enough sorting out the spontaneous sincere apologies from the bs apologies without adding the extracted bs apologies to the mix.
Fair enough. And “I don’t care that you are offended” should be OK if you really intended to offend as I really intended to offend Obama. Maybe I shouldn’t have groveled to be re-instated but that’s what comes of a lifetime of school and work. You get pulled up before the Principal or the Boss and you grovel. It’s like baboons presenting, something in our genes. Oh, but when you don’t care what happens how sweet it is to tell them to go do anatomically impossible acts or just engage in dumb insolence. That reminds me of a favorite childhood memory. I had a fourth grade teacher that was teaching the class incorrectly that the Moon doesn’t rotate. I had read about this and corrected her and she got offended. She really lost it when she appealed to the class and said,”Who do you believe, me or him?” and class chorused,”Him!” So she had me stand in the corner face to the wall. At the end of the day when she told me to go, I just kept standing there, oblivious, putting on a perfect expressionless Sicilian Mask with eyes unblinkingly forward. When the Principal came and told me leave, I just stayed put, rigid, non-blinking, oblivious. They called my father to come to school and it was sweet, very sweet, when Miss S. screamed hysterically at my father,”Get him out of here! He’s not human!” My father touched me on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go, son”. I immediately came out of the brace and said, “OK, Dad” and walked out with him, ignoring the b___. Of course, this got me kicked out of class, but Mr. Neokos, a Greek refugee, took me in. He offered me a bargain. He would happily discuss anything with me after school until 6:00PM if I wanted, but when he cut off discussion in class, I was to stop arguing. I agreed and he was true to his word, allowing a reasonable amount of time for discussion, never dogmatic and willing, even eager, to stay after school for a student who wanted intellectual exercise, a wonderful teacher. And that’s how I left the “smart track” and joined the “dumb track”. I liked the dumb track kids better anyway. They were mostly Italian and Polish blue collar kids like me, although I had several friends in the mostly Anglo/German/Jewish white collar smart track and still do.
Didn’t have “smart track” and “dumb track” in elementary school. We were all mixed up which I’ve always thought was a good thing. Well, except when I was out of work and had little to nothing to do until the others caught up. Fifth grade was the worst — took the boys an extra two months to learn fractions. Forced me to learn how to be a bit more patient, understanding, and less stubborn, but not enough less of a loudmouth to earn an “excellent” grade in citizenship.
Was also fortunate enough not to get stuck with a terrible teacher as you did.
I think it was more than a little prejudiced. My grandsons, except for the deaf one who was in special ed for the hearing impaired, were in the slow track which I noted from the assignments posted on the windows were where most of the Hispanic kids were. That’s OK. I thought they had a better education, socially at least, growing up with the Hispanic kids.
Me too. User number 648, a year later than you in October 2003. Your number must have been in double or even single digits.
Criticize Obama and you’re gone. It’s positively Stalinist. I’m very grateful to Booman that he allows dissenters.
Not such a low UID for me as I first debated whether or not I wanted to continue reading/contributing when the site converted to Scoop (all the “Wesley Clark rocks” fanboys at that time were very tiresome and exceedingly naive) and then was off line dealing with a major move from the east coast back to CA.
Disagree that no criticism of Obama is tolerated at dKos. OPOL has long been one of the more fierce critics of Democrats and Obama and he remains in good standing. Not that his diaries lead to any substantive debates — more preaching to the choir and his choir it too large for the “Obama is perfect” gangs to bother trying to take him out.
Marie, why the “warning” rating? Not complaining, just don’t understand what you are warning me about. We don’t always agree, sometimes diametrically opposed, most recently on DNA. That’s OK, but we are having intellectual debates here, what did I do wrong in your opinion? I don’t know.
Neglected to hold the key down long enough to get to “Excellent.” Now corrected.
Thanks
Haha, you gave me a “Good” once; I figured that was a typo.
You figured correctly.
A sign of the end of a government, IMHO.
Soldiers refusing to fire at the Winter Palace, the Bastille, the Berlin Wall, or Boris Yeltzin, all ominous signs for those3 in power for Mao was right, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun and when the soldiers refuse to bear those guns against their class, it’s the beginning of the end.
The next step is to bring in foreign mercenaries or troops from a different ethnic region or elite fanatic troops.
Gen. McChrystal following in footsteps of Erik Prince of Blackwater into an Advisory Job for the Royal Family in the UAE.
More of what Jeremy Scahill exposes in “Dirty Wars?”
linkage
I ran across an article on Erdogan: Obama’s Turkey
So, I think it’s safe to say that Turkey is less of a democracy than Russia, for example. And yet it’s a member of NATO.
Turkey, Iran, Syria Top List for Worst Journalism Countries
Iran has 45; Turkey—49.
A bit surprised at you, Alexander, that you haven’t pursued the Ergenekon case so far as to identify the involvement of the Gülen movement; or to see the recent response to the protests as a possible further erosion of Tayyip Erdoğan’s support in favour of Abdullah Gül by them.
There is much going on in Turkey right now and it is interesting that such an important piece of the Great Power puzzle over Syria has been briefly taken out of play. We have been looking for the traces of nascent Islamist hegemony everywhere in the Sunni world except under the desk of the prime minister of our only Islamic NATO ally. Strange days indeed.
Assuming that the Gülen movement is a creature of the Western ‘deep state’ only raises the question of whether the tail is wagging the dog. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the caliphate sprung forth fully formed like a Muslim Athena in the one corner of the Sunni world we actually felt comfortable about.
My bad. I guess I pretty much dismissed the Ergenekon case at the time. My excuse is that as a liberal, I had gotten used to the idea that there is one Muslim country—Turkey—that has a democratic, secular government, so that a counterexample exists to the proposition that Islam is incompatible with modernity.
Googling to find out what Gülenism is, I ran across this, which I will read later, to “dig” further:
Kemalism replaced by Gülenism in Turkey
Until then, I will hold off judgement on whether is a product of some master Western plan.
Speaking of Turkey more generally, Perry Anderson has argued that the West’s giving Turkey a free pass on Cyprus is unconscionable:
The Divisions of Cyprus
Given how much Israel/Palestine is discussed, it really is bizarre the extent to which Turkey’s occupation of Northern Cyprus is ignored by Europe. It is almost enough to make you think Zionists might have a point when they claim that criticism of Israel is a variety of antisemitism. (I raised the occupation of Northern Cyprus at dKos yesterday, and got the response that Anderson’s article is “heavily slanted”.)
A bit. I am having trouble sorting it out myself and the Kurdish link you provided is also helpful, if perhaps overstating the Kemalist/Gülenist parallel; it is bad enough as it is. My thesis is that there is a shifting loyalty away from Erdoğan as his personal power and aspirations aggrandise.
The shocker to me it to realise just how fragile that corner of NATO seems to be; all things considered. I can’t help but see, from this perspective, the shift in Turkish/Israeli relations of recent years as an intentional diplomatic manoeuvre on Erdoğan’s part; the Islamic populist distancing himself from the corrosive relationship with Israel and now strongly supporting the Sunni insurrection in Syria.
I failed to link to this further analysis of the Erdoğan-Gülen rift in the comment above:
It is getting tricky keeping track of the players in this game.
Thanks.
Off topic, but I think these recent developments are going to make me finish watching Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, which I found to be extremely boring. I really liked A Separation, although it took a while to get used to the women wearing head scarves. The film showed that Iranians are not really so different from Westerners, and by itself should have stopped Western hostilities towards Iran.
By the way, the best introduction to Islam for a Westerner I know is No God But God. The author is Iranian but was raised in America, so he is effectively bicultural, so he is able to present Islam by reducing its weirdness probably as much as is possible.
Tricky? Closer to incomprehensible for me. I’m reading (and very much enjoying) Snow by Orhan Pamuk that may (or may not) help me understand Turkey’s social and political trends over the past decade or so.
Didn’t quite appreciate the power of the Gülen movement in Turkey’s domestic politics when the topic surfaced in relation to the Tsarnaev brothers’ uncle. But it scared the beejeebus out of me to learn of its significant presence in US charter schools.
That Perry Anderson link is brilliant; though I think the Cypriot resistance owes more to the 20th century Balkan Wars than the pan-Hellenism of the 19th.
The ‘external threat’ card is played:
I really wonder who he is referring to… Interesting that he announces an investigation and makes assertions about the result in the same breath; clearly a ruse intended to intimidate, but to intimidate whom?
Nice find. I have to say that Erdoğan is now coming across to me as more crazy than any other current or recent leader of a country that I can think of. (The only person I find comparable is the president of Georgia who started a small war with Russia, with Booman supporting him, of course.)
This is definitely getting interesting, in so many different ways. (1) Turkey was the model for how a Muslim country can be modern, but now Erdoğan is undermining that idea with his rolling back of Ataturk’s reforms. (2) Erdoğan sounds a lot like Assad sounded when the protests broke out in Syria; this might make the demonization of Assad by Western powers more difficult. (3) We have possible signs of a NATO country becoming unstable. (Of course, Turkey should never have been in NATO to begin with, and NATO should have been dismantled after the Cold War ended.) (4) By going Islamicist with Erdoğan, Turkey broke with the American empire’s fantasy of what democracy in a Muslim country entails. So this can be seen as another development in the weakening of American hegemony, like Japan’s starting to steer a more independent course.
I have some empathy for Erdogan considering that events and movements beyond and outside his control were shoving him into a box. Easy to look and act crazy when trapped.
Erdogan is an Islamicist. He wants to ban alcohol. He wants to tear down a building dedicated to Ataturk, because Ataturk stood for secularism, and build a mosque instead. That’s not crazy in your book? How can you empathize with someone who wants to roll back secularism in a Muslim country, when Islam is obviously a false religion? (Like Mormonism, Islam is nothing more than a Christian heresy; atheists (even former Catholics!) should be able to see Christianity as the true religion and Islam as a corruption of Christianity, because the inner logic of Christianity is what led us to who we are, freethinkers and atheists. Liberal Christianity and atheism are two sides of the same coin, but Erdogan’s Islamism is a willful embrace of barbarism and rejection of reason, the Middle Eastern equivalent of our Republicans.)
I really don’t see how anyone can “have some empathy for Erdogan”. I have more empathy for Bush II than I do for Erdogan, and I believe that Bush II should be executed for war crimes and high treason.
Empathy doesn’t mean endorsement. Can’t say anything good about Assad and his regime, but can still have some empathy for him in his battle against the Islamists and other outside forces that want him to go.
While Erdogan ran for office on a promise to lift the headscarf ban (a potent symbol of a large portion of Turkey’s populace), that issue predated him. And his party won. Democracy. Doesn’t always produce what’s best for a nation. Pathetic that the strongest force for a secular government in Turkey is the military. Not like in this country where our military would be more likely to impose fundamentalist Christianity.
We’ll have to agree to disagree that Islam is more vile than Christianity. It may be, but Muslims have a long way to go in killing and plunder to catch up to the record of Christians. Hell, they aren’t even close to being even with us in the past two decades.
Does that make Christianity nothing more than a Judaic heresy? To me they are all merely the ‘desert religion’ and the three books sit together happily on the shelf like The Lord of the Rings.
No. If you live in the West, where most people are Christian or come from Christian families, the reference point is Christianity when it comes to religion. As Paul explains in his letters, Judaism was an attempt by God to redeem humanity after the Fall, but the Jews didn’t live up to their end of the bargain, which led God to use another solution, sacrificing his own Son. So Christianity is not a “Judaic heresy”; instead, Judaism was a failure. (Even the Jews were forced to recognize that when their Temple got destroyed for the second time, forcing them to reinvent their religion, which makes present-day Rabbinic Judaism younger than Christianity.)
In the West, both liberalism and secularism grew out of (Protestant) Christianity (John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, which was prompted by Protestant fears of Catholic tyranny). As the Turkish example has recently shown, neither Judaism (see Israel) nor Islam seem to be compatible with secularism and modernity. Thus treating the three Abrahamic religions as equivalent is misguided in my view.