Indonesian President Joko Widodo with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the latter’s state visit to Indonesia. (Photo source: Cabinet Secretary websitego.id)
Date posted: August 4, 2015
Jakarta, GIVnews.com
Last Thursday (30/7), President Erdoğan started his three-day state visit to Indonesia. After a meeting with Indonesian President Joko Widodo, they held a joint press conference in the State Palace. Several agreements were made in the talks, including a promise to remove trade barriers and a proposal to improve ties in intelligence to stop Indonesians from joining the Islamic State.
On the other side, there is one very important thing that Indonesia must avoid. The Turkish government has been inching ever closer to becoming an Islamist nation, abandoning its secularity that has acted as the foundation of modern Turkey until now. The government’s power is also getting increasingly concentrated in the hands of the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who is also Turkey’s former prime minister for eleven years. Erdogan has been using rather nasty measures to eliminate challenges to his reign, most notably that from Fethullah Gülen, a moderate Turkish Muslim figure who is currently living in a self-imposed exile in the United States. Now, Erdoğan’s government suffers from allegations of corruption, politicization of the judiciary, media intimidation and censorship, electoral fraud, and political polarization.
Fethullah Gulen: Turkey’s Eroding Democracy (op-ed in NY Times)
It is deeply disappointing to see what has become of Turkey in the last few years. Not long ago, it was the envy of Muslim-majority countries: a viable candidate for the European Union on its path to becoming a functioning democracy that upholds universal human rights, gender equality, the rule of law and the rights of Kurdish and non-Muslim citizens.
Turkey, ‘The Devil’s Advocate’ and ‘Titanic’
Questions to challenge the primary and unjustified premise: What judicial (or other) process determined that these corruption investigations were a coup attempt against the government? What proof or evidence do you have to support this most serious claim? What disciplinary process did you undertake to determine that the people that were purged were members and culprits of this ‘coup’? In the absence of evidence and disciplinary process how did you determine these people’s association with Hizmet? When is government corruption not a judicial coup? How can you have the right to unilaterally determine the intent and purpose of these ongoing judicial investigations when your government is implicated in them? If your government can purge over 7,000 police officers (and thereby affect and prevent these investigations) without evidence, due process or disciplinary procedure, do you not set a precedent for every future potentially corrupt government to follow?
Albanian parliament speaker visits Turkish school after Erdoğan calls for its closure
Albania’s Parliament Speaker Ilir Meta visited a Turkish school in the capital tirana on Friday to send a message to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who called for the closure of Turkish schools in Albania during his visit last week, stirring debate among Albanian politicians and journalists, an Albanian daily wrote on Sunday.
How can a government allow damaging their very own successful educational system to please another country?
Highly regarded for their educational excellence, these schools are located world-wide and have over 20 years offered the very best of competitive standards. How can any government allow damaging their very own successful educational system due to internal political turmoil of another country even if brotherly to Pakistan?
Turkish prosecutor says Gülen movement founded by CIA!
A Turkish prosecutor in İzmir, investigating the financial links of the Gülen movement, which is inspired by the views of US-based Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen, has claimed that the organizational structure of the group is the same as that of the Mormon Church and the Church of Scientology in the United States and that all three groups were founded by US intelligence agency the CIA.
Observers: Charging Zaman’s editor-in-chief based on 2 columns, 1 report is ‘unlawful nonsense’
Charging Zaman daily Editor-in-Chief Ekrem Dumanlı for a crime based on two columns and one report published in his paper is “unlawful nonsense,” according to intellectuals and politicians observing the government-backed media crackdown in which the editor was detained.
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History will record this [AK Party’s attack on Hizmet] as well
An opposition out of Gulen Community?
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