MÜMTAZ’ER TÜRKÖNE
The prime minister is striving wholeheartedly to continue a war he has already lost. His remarks do not reflect a strategy or political plan.
They reflect anger and a desire for revenge. Suppose that he destroyed the entire [Hizmet] movement. What good would that do him? Would such a move end his troubles? He is frittering away his 11 years in power and his popular appeal to exit the swamp into which he’s fallen. It is impossible to do so with such a heavy burden on his back. “Where will the public support behind him go?” is a quite different question; but he has no way of surmounting the high wall built by the law before him. This is a very serious corruption case, and the prime minister explicitly admits the corruption. If a statement appearing in the Cumhuriyet daily, where the prime minister was quoted as saying that the “money used [in corruption] belongs to the state, not the people” reflects the truth, then this is a clear acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
Despite the fact that Turkey has recently adopted legislation against hate crimes, Turkey’s divisive Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has not stopped his attacks with verbal expressions of intolerance and hatred directed at the judiciary, opposition parties, the media, business groups and members of the Hizmet movement, a faith-based civic movement inspired by Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen.
Twelve questions Turkey’s journalists can’t ask
Erdoğan was born to a relatively poor family in Rize, along the Black Sea. His father was in the coast guard and worked at sea. Erdoğan at one point even sold snacks on the street to make extra cash. He graduated from a religious school in 1973, and immediately embarked on a political career, eventually becoming first mayor of Istanbul. So here’s the question: How did a man like Erdoğan become a billionaire several times over?
Hiring based on ‘color lists’ a violation of Constitution, analysts say
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Turkey-Kurdistan Regional Government ties: How and why did they improve this much?
ABDULLA HAWEZ ABDULLA I remember how relations between the Turkish government and northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) used to be. Both sides were ambivalent about how to deal with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and had to wrangle over the matter. But these thoughts became obsolete after 2009 and transformed into marvelous relations. […]
Report: Gülen-linked media outlets sold to pro-gov’t media groups without tender
A number of TV and radio stations that were closed down by the government in the aftermath of a failed coup attempt on July 15 due to their links to the faith-based Gülen movement have been sold to the pro-government Turkuvaz Media Group without a tender.
Inside Turkey’s Purge
The police officers came to the doctor’s door in Istanbul at 6 a.m. and one of them said, “You are accused of attempting to kill President Erdogan.” The doctor couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Really? I did that?” The police officers smiled, too. “Yes. Also for attempting to destroy Turkey and for being a member of a terrorist organization.”
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