Bank Asya shares surge after Turkish election results
Bank Asya
Date posted: June 10, 2015
The AK Party’s failure to secure enough votes to form the government reflects on the stock market, with the politically-seized Bank Asya’s shares observing a 10.75 percent increase at opening on Monday amidst an overall drop in Borsa Istanbul.
Bank Asya had long been subject to political attacks and repeated demands by President Erdoğan to be taken over despite the fact that the publicly traded Islamic lender had one of the best capital adequacy ratios of the sector. Defamatory rumors published by pro-government press have been challenged, but unpunished.
As a result, in late May Turkey’s Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) seized the publicly-traded Islamic bank, placing it under the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (TMSF), causing mass outrage by financial markets and banking experts.
The controversial move came months after the BDDK took control over its management after a long government-orchestrated campaign against it.
Bank Asya’s shareholders’ lawyers have voiced a strong demand for the return of the management to its rightful owners, and have applied to the courts to take action.
Businessmen released following operation against Gülen movement
Based on the government’s much criticized “reasonable suspicion” law, a large number of businessmen in Uşak province were detained last week as part of an investigation into the so-called “parallel structure,” although most of them were released late on Friday night due to a lack of evidence to support a possible prosecution.
Erdoğan says his gov’t will carry out ‘witch hunt’
There are rumors that the only criteria behind these purges is links to a “parallel state,” a term the government has been using to define the Hizmet movement, which is a grassroots movement based on voluntary participation to spread interfaith dialogue and tolerance, with a particular emphasis on education.
Erdoğan’s harsh, xenophobic rhetoric damages fight against Islamophobia
The increasingly punitive and xenophobic discourse adopted by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in recent years has done a huge disservice to the fight against Islamophobia, dealing a blow to the decades-long efforts of organizations such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Hizmet movement in international forums.
AK Party gov’t searches for scapegoat for stalled PKK talks
Having failed to make progress on the settlement process, which was supposed to pave the way for the disarming of Kurdish militants and address long-standing Kurdish demands, the Turkish government has now turned its attention to finding a scapegoat on which to place blame for the stalled talks ahead of national elections slated for June 2015.
Handcuffed justice
The ruling party has been undermining rule of law since the graft and bribery investigation that became public on December 17, 2013. It sees itself unfettered by laws and the Constitution. It has been sticking to the hoax of “parallel structure” –a veiled reference to members of the Hizmet movement inspired by Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen– in a desperate attempt to cover up the graft investigations.
Islam, terrorism and the media
We unfortunately live in an unfair world. Injustice is so ubiquitous that we can categorize it based on our neighborhood, our city, our region, our country and the world. Any kind of injustice, discrimination or otherization — such as social injustice, class injustice, inequity in income distribution and a lack of equal opportunities in education, business and social mobility — may rear its ugly head at any moment in our daily life. Not only the cases of social injustice we encounter in our daily life, but also the sentiments of rage and revolt stemming from national or international injustice may trigger reactions that are against the nature of people who normally have psychological integrity.
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