Unidentified individuals have graffitied offensive remarks on a wall of the Turkish Cultural Center (TCC) in the city of West Haven, Connecticut.
The graffiti echoes Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s hate speech against the Hizmet movement inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, with which the cultural center is affiliated.
The TCC has been serving the Turkish-American community in Connecticut for seven years. Mehmet Elmacı, the coordinator of the organization, told Turkish media outlets that the incident was unprecedented. “We are a cultural center that does not take part in politics. Our goal has been to share Turkey’s cultural heritage with our community. We condemn those individuals who are inspired by Erdoğan’s hate speech toward the Hizmet movement to write offensive remarks on our walls,” he said.
The fact that the government practically stalled the investigation with a major reshuffle of the judiciary, police, watchdog agencies that track money, and finance and banking activities, while pushing emergency laws through Parliament to prevent further investigations and leaks, casts a shadow on how far the Erdoğan government had gone in these dirty deals.
What we learned from the operation
While the government works to finish off the Hizmet movement, it may even call for the expulsion of the US ambassador from the country. The real duty of Halkbank is to act as Iran’s opening door to the world, and the US blockade has been violated for years. We learned that the pro-government media is allergic to shoe boxes [money used in alleged bribery was found in shoe boxes in one of the suspects’ homes].
Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication Crossing Culture Borders
Jennifer Mercado, August 2012 A small group of University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication (SJMC) faculty opened a line of dialogue with educators and professionals during a trip to Turkey last month. Hosted by the Niagara Foundation, a handful of SJMC faculty and eastern Iowa-area professionals travelled to Turkey June 15-24 to […]
Questions we dare not ask: Gülen and the coup
Gareth Jenkins once criticized Turkey’s infamous Ergenekon indictments on the grounds that they were “products of ‘projective’ rather than deductive reasoning, working backwards from the premise that the organization exists to weave unrelated individuals, statements and acts into a single massive conspiracy.” Other than being a far more extreme example of “projective” rather than “deductive” reasoning, how is the Turkish government and its media’s attempt at connecting Turkey’s failed coup with Fethullah Gülen and the Hizmet movement he inspires any different?
Turkish Airlines stops distribution of Zaman and Today’s Zaman on its planes
Turkey’s flagship carrier Turkish Airlines (THY) has put an embargo on dailies affiliated with the Fethullah Gülen Movement, which has been in at odds with the government over an ongoing corruption investigation. The airline, 74 percent of which is owned by the state, had already stopped delivering the English-language daily Today’s Zaman in airport terminals and on planes before slashing the distribution of its Turkish sibling, daily Zaman, by two-thirds.
Political thunder from Turkey rumbles all the way to New Orleans
And how appalling that they should now be exposed to the atrocious anti-Muslim diatribes of a U.S. presidential candidate not all that different from Erdogan in his threats and his bigotry.
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