Erdogan: ‘Social Media Greatest Threat to Society’

8 Comments

1. 

   Marie2 on June 4, 2013 at 3:09 pm

   If he thinks it’s bad while mostly true tweets, etc. about his government are being disseminated, he may go mad when all the false crap appears and is accepted as the truth by the people and foreign governments.  

2. 

   on June 4, 2013 at 4:07 pm

   The Sad State of Turkish Freedom

   The roots of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) which has dominated Turkey for more than a decade lie in the 1980 military coup, which was conducted immediately after the revolution in Iran in 1979, with the support of the CIA. As in Pakistan, the coup brutalized Turkish society and led to increased Saudization of society and culture, with increasing crackdowns on the struggles of the Left, workers, intellectuals, students and Kurds. As one communist comrade told me during my visit to Istanbul in the summer of 2012, a capitalist boss was quoted as saying, “Until now (before the coup), the workers had laughed, now we will laugh.” After the end of dictatorship, Turgut Ozal’s administration opened the economy to neoliberal policies in 1989 and kept up with repression of the Kurds. The corruption and opportunism of the 1990s produced the economic collapse of 2000, which allowed Erdogan to ease into power in 2002. The anomaly is that Erdogan, who ironically was once jailed and banned from publicoffice for reciting a Hikmet poem in public, is now the first democratically-elected leader since Adnan Menderes in 1960 to have won three successive elections, and all this has been achieved by deepening the so-called `Turkish model’ – being a loyal satrap of Washington, privatizing everything, and Islamizing everything, so that in effect they are little more than NATO’s Islamists.

3. 

   on June 4, 2013 at 4:40 pm

   Revolt in Turkey: Erdogan’s Grip on Power Is Rapidly Weakening

   Success made Erdogan even more power-hungry, thin-skinned and susceptible to criticism. Indeed, he began governing in the same autocratic style for which he had bitterly criticized his predecessors. And now, he is faced with significant dangers to his power from several quarters.

   The biggest danger facing the Turkish premier is his own high-handedness. Though he said on Monday that he understood the message being sent by the protesters, there is little evidence that is true. Indeed, his response thus far has shown the degree to which he has become distanced from realities in his country. With hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets, Erdogan has opted for confrontation rather than de-escalation. On Monday morning, he threatened that he would be unable to keep the 50 percent of Turks who voted for him from taking to the streets themselves. Critics see the comment as nothing less than a threat of civil war. […]

   In Istanbul, people have begun whispering that the military is distributing gasmasks — but to the demonstrators rather than to the police. The message is clear: The military supports the protests. […]

   Erdogan, to be sure, has done his best to reduce the military’s power. He has removed some officers and had others locked away, convicted of conspiracy. It is difficult to predict how the military might now react to the protests. But Erdogan certainly cannot rely on them remaining in their barracks.

   Spiegel is known for its sensationalism. Calling this a “revolt” is probably premature.

4. 

   on June 4, 2013 at 6:07 pm

   Defiant Erdogan Risks Turkish Economy, as Unions enter the Fray

   The protests were sparked by opposition among young people in Istanbul to a plan to get rid of one of that city’s last public green spaces, Gezi Park in the bohemian Taksim area. Erdogan wanted to restore an Ottoman barracks there, and to put a mall in the building. The combination of hero-worship of the Ottoman Empire and retail shopping may seem incongruous, but it symbolizes the Justice and Development Party’s [AKP] platform. The party represents the private Anatolian and some urban business classes who take pride in Turkey’s Islamic and Ottoman past. Its rival, the Republican People’s Party, represents public sector workers, secular intellectuals, the military, and the old Kemalist urban elite tied to Etatism or state-led industrialization and a French-style secularism that views religion with great suspicion and decries the Ottomans as reactionaries. The Republican People’s Party dominated Turkey’s politics for long stretches of the twentieth century, and actively persecuted religious activists like the current prime minister. Decades ago, Erdogan was imprisoned by the Republican People’s Party Establishment for reading out a militant poem with Muslim imagery that made minarets spears. He sees that party and its generals as centers of conspiracy and sedition, and imagines that those young people in the streets are directed by the rival party. […]

   But Turkey could be reaching the limits of public acceptance of its post 2002 model, of social and religious conservatism, vastly expanded foreign trade, and consumerism. Rapid economic and social change always produces discontents. While Erdogan may be right that young people defending their bohemian public spaces are not likely a long term challenge to the government, the entry of labor unions into the fray is much more serious. The protests could be morphing into an anti-Neoliberalism political and social movement of a sort that have shaken governments elsewhere, as with the supplanting of Neoliberals by the leftist Kirchners in Argentina or the defeat of Nicolas Sarkozy by the Socialists in France.

   One can but hope.

   As the Counterpunch article I quoted above said, the Turkish model is a combination of fealty to the Empire, neoliberalism, and Islamism. The Islamist assault on alcohol consumption and public displays of affection has struck a nerve, with unions stepping in, perhaps economics will become an issue as well. (The destruction of Gezi Park is part of a privatization scheme.)

   • 

     Oui on June 4, 2013 at 6:08 pm

     .
     After 10 years being Turkish Prime Minister, Erdogan aspires to be more of a dictator (father of the Turks) …

     Erdogan’s Bigger Game: Change the Constitution

     (Al Monitor) Nov. 3, 2012 – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the celebration of the 10-year anniversary of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), reflected on the AKP’s rise: “Not only a new party came to power, but a revolution in mentality took place.”

     Erdogan is contemplating another major change in Turkish politics: rewriting the constitution so that the country’s parliamentary system becomes a presidential one. If he succeeds, he would have the opportunity to continue as president with even more power until at least 2023, Turkey’s centennial.

     Constitutional Reform: AKP Proposes ‘Elected Sultan Regime’

     Commission progress was initially slow. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), and the other two opposition forces — the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) — are all represented equally.

     When the commission began to discuss core issues that would determine whether the new system would be a democracy, such as the constitutional setup of executive, legislative and judiciary powers, it became clear why the AKP felt the urge for a new constitution.

     In November, the AKP submitted a proposal outlining an authoritarian presidential system that subjugates the legislature to the executive power. With this proposal, the ruling party effectively destroyed the ground for any constitutional compromise with the CHP and the MHP.

     It has long been known that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan aspires to abolish Turkey’s parliamentarian regime, shift to a presidential system and become its first president. Let’s look at what this proposal — drafted based on Erdogan’s wishes — would do.

     The proposed constitution stipulates that elections for the single-chamber legislative assembly and the president, who holds the executive power, will be held on the same day. The clause is designed to ensure that the political tendency of the voters shapes simultaneously both parliament and the presidency, and that both elections eventually produce the same political outcome. As a result, the room for checks and balances between the legislative and executive powers is restricted from the very start.

     Erdogan maintains that the president should be a partisan, not an independent figure. If this materializes and if Turkey’s political party system fails to democratize — there is no sign it will — then his election as president would mean that he selects those who enter parliament, just as he does now as prime minister.

     Under the AKP proposal, the president is entitled to extraordinary powers — including dissolving parliament, calling parliamentary and presidential elections, and governing the country through presidential decrees that evade legislative processes.

     Turkish media corporatized and beholden to the Ruling party

     • Turkey: Economy heading for a financial credit bubble
     • 

       on June 4, 2013 at 7:22 pm

       Let’s hope that the current unrest will derail Erdogan’s plans to become president and Supreme Leader.

       Islamism is a monster that is very hard to kill for good. Ataturk tried, but the effort made him drink himself to death…

       If Erdogan succeeds, then, as far as I can tell, the place to look for a genuine democracy emerging in the Muslim world will be Iran.

5. 

   Don Durito on June 5, 2013 at 12:34 am

   In April, a Justice and Development party (AKP) leader warned that the liberals who had supported them in the last decade would no longer do so. This was as good a sign as any that the repression would increase, as the neoliberal Islamist party forced through its modernisation agenda.

   The AKP represents a peculiar type of conservative populism. Its bedrock, enriched immensely in the last decade, is the conservative Muslim bourgeoisie that first emerged as a result of Turgut Özal’s economic policies in the 1980s. But, while denying it is a religious party, it has used the politics of piety to gain a popular base and to strengthen the urban rightwing.

   It has spent more than a decade in government building up its authority. The privatisation process has led to accelerated inequality, accompanied by repression. But it has also attracted floods of international investment, leading to growth rates of close to 5% a year. This has enabled the regime to pay off the last of its IMF loans, so that it was even in a position to offer the IMF $5bn to help with the Eurozone crisis in 2012.

   In the meantime, the AKP has gradually consolidated its support within the state apparatus and media, and no longer needs its liberal backers. The Turkish military leadership has been compelled to accept the Islamists, having suffered a significant loss of power relative to other branches of the state such as the police and judiciary. While the erosion of the military’s power should be a gain for democracy, journalists have also ended up in jail on charges of plotting coup d’etats.

   Of course, there is a history of coup plotting. And the government charged 86 people with plotting to bring down the government in 2008, as part of its investigation into the Turkish “deep state”. But it has been able to use this fear to conflate all opposition with anti-democratic instigation, and crush it ruthlessly. During this time, its vote has risen from 34.28% to 49.90%.

   It has also demonstrated confidence in the way it has attempted to deal with the Kurdish question, and in its regional strategy. The government embarked on significant new negotiations with the Kurdish Workers party (PKK) in 2009, partly because it wants to forge a lucrative relationship with the Kurdish regional government in Iraq.

   Under the AKP, Turkey has been increasing its relative autonomy from traditional supporters in the White House and Tel Aviv, forging close relations with Iran, Hezbollah and even – until recently – President Assad of Syria. This has been interpreted, hysterically, as “neo-Ottomanism”. It is simply an assertion of Turkey’s new power.

   Thus strengthened, the government is on the offensive. It has never needed the left or the labour movement, which it has repressed. It no longer needs the liberals, as its attacks on women’s reproductive rights, and its imposition of alcohol-free zones, show.

   This is the context in which a struggle over a small park in a congested city centre has become an emergency for the regime, and the basis for a potential Turkish spring.

   Linkage

6. 

   Oui on June 5, 2013 at 8:17 am

   AP source:
   Obama to name former aide Samantha Power as US ambassador to United Nations
   http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ap-source-obama-to-name-former-aide-samantha-power-as-us-amba
   ssador-to-united-nations/2013/06/05/be110812-cdd7-11e2-8573-3baeea6a2647_story.html

   Donilon resigns as security adviser
   http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ap-source-donilon-resigns-security-adviser-19327989#.Ua8rc-
   bCTcs

   President Barack Obama’s top national security adviser Tom Donilon is resigning and will be replaced by U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, marking a significant shakeup to the White House foreign policy team.