AK Party provincial board member resigns after insults
Date posted: February 24, 2014
İSTANBUL
Ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) İzmir provincial board member Emine Yenen has resigned from the party after being subjected to insults and discriminatory treatment by party members, Turkish news sources reported on Monday.
“At first there was the alienation and isolation of those labeled as ‘Gülenists’ within the [AK] Party. Then, we started to be labeled as members of a terrorist organization, and ‘hashashin.’ It had come to push and shove in the party. The accusations had reached an unacceptable level,” said Yenen.
Hashashins were hash-smoking hitmen who committed assassinations in the 11th century, giving rise to the English word “assassin.” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used the term in public last month in a thinly veiled reference to members of the Hizmet movement, which is inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
“For my own self-respect I resigned from my position and from the party,” said Yenen, who is a doctor and a member of the Aegean International Health Federation (ESAFED) and is known for her volunteer work in several African countries.
Western officials have preferred to raise concerns over the steady dismantling of Turkey’s free institutions only privately with their counterparts in Ankara. This approach has failed. That failure has left many millions of pro-democracy Turks to fend for themselves, while a once-fringe ideological element in the AKP, reared on Islamist supremacism, has been emboldened.
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Indeed, just last week a columnist in a pro-government daily argued that officials in certain government institutions have been expelled over their alleged ties to the Hizmet movement. This is no different from a witch hunt. In a civilized society, expelling qualified professionals because of their sympathy for a religious and social movement can only be described as discrimination.
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“Turkey desperately wants the U.S. government to extradite an imam [Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen],” Maddow explained. “They [the U.S.] have said that they are not extraditing him. But if that’s what you wanted, what if you could squeeze the personal financial interests of the American president as a way to get what you want from the American government?”
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