Pro-government Yeni Şafak daily fires critical columnist
Date posted: December 30, 2013
İSTANBUL
Pro-government newspaper Yeni Şafak has fired journalist Osman Özsoy after the columnist hinted government pressure on the newspaper to let him go on his Twitter account on Monday.
After announcing that he was notified by the newspaper about the decision to quit his column, Özsoy said that “it is not difficult to guess that a will that goes beyond the newspaper administration led to this.”
He said that defamation of former companions does not suit his character just because their ways parted due to a disagreement, a behavior he said belongs to the prime minister.
Özsoy said these kind of incidents are not “period but a comma” and that the most important thing is that the “nation is walking towards the future.”
Özsoy wrote a column on Dec. 24 in Yeni Şafak, trying to justify Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen‘s “conditional curse” on those who are trying to cover up the corruption investigation.
He also posted several tweets in the past few days, criticizing the government’s intervention in judiciary and slamming the defamation of Gülen.
Over the past 11 years, Turkey has been undergoing an important transformation. While it seems to defend secular and modern-looking Western lifestyles, it is trying to come out of the tangle of Kemalism, which is a regime disregarding democratic values of the West. Even if Kemalism had at first dreamed of establishing a real Western democracy, it was later defiled and turned into a hegemony of the elite.
GYV calls on President Gül to investigate interference with judiciary
Yeşil said the GYV is calling on Gül to take action to prevent these risks to the constitutional order, the separation of powers, checks and balances, the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law. He said: “The public expects him [Gül] to use his powers and authorities under the Constitution to investigate the interventions that sought to render the law dysfunctional, in terms of the graft and bribery investigations.
Unbelievably corrupt!
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GYV Chairman Mustafa Yeşil said the foundation has received very positive reactions to its 11-article statement, adding that many people found the statement an “honorable” and “courteous” one. AK Party Adıyaman deputy Mehmet Metiner said by releasing Tuesday’s statement, the GYV has taken a very valuable step that “spoils the games of some evil circles that want to create hostility between the government and the Hizmet movement.”
Replacing Turkey’s purged elite
On Wednesday, Reuters reported that Turkey has recalled, dismissed, and imprisoned the cream of the crop of its military, its NATO envoys. 400 NATO military envoys in Europe and the United States, the most trained and experienced, have been purged.
Report: Police chief sets up teams to torture post-coup detainees
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