Erdoğan’s crackdown: ‘Free speech is being rebranded as terrorism’
Author Archives: News Sources
‘What is FaceTime? Why don’t I have it?’ asked one of Erdoğan’s ministers
The Guardian recounts the events during the coup attempt in Turkey: President Erdoğan himself was at the resort of Marmaris, but had left the residence where he was staying some 20 minutes before coup plotters attacked it. Around 25 soldiers in helicopters descended on a hotel there on ropes, shooting, in an apparent attempt to seize him just after Erdoğan had left, broadcaster CNN Turk said.
But as he flew from Marmaris on a business jet, two F-16 fighter jets locked their radar targeting system on the president’s plane, according to an account first reported by Reuters and later confirmed to the Guardian.
The jets didn’t fire after the presidential plane’s pilot told the fighter jet pilots over the radio that it was a Turkish Airlines flight, a senior counter-terrorism official told the Guardian.
But that came later. At around 9pm, General Mehmet Dişli, the brother of a long-serving MP with the ruling AK party, allegedly gave the order that set the coup in motion, sending army special forces officers to arrest the military’s senior command. Tanks began rolling out into the streets of Ankara, and an hour later they had closed down Istanbul’s Bosphorus and Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridges.
Cemalettin Haşimi, a senior adviser of prime minister Binali Yıldırım, watched it all with a sense of foreboding. At 10.24pm, after surveying besieged Ankara, he walked into the office of the prime ministry’s undersecretary.
“Is it real?” he asked.
“Yes, it’s real,” came the reply. “But we are not sure if it’s within the chain of command or just a group in the army.”
By 10.37pm they had conferred with Yıldırım, who was in Istanbul, deciding to declare it an attempted coup on national television. They called TRT, but 10 minutes later the channel was overrun. So Haşimi called the private channel NTV, and minutes later Yıldırım was denouncing the plot.
Meanwhile, there were chaotic scenes in Ankara and Istanbul. A statement appeared on the military’s website and was circulated by email declaring it had taken control to restore democracy, feeding into the fears of government officials who worried the military chain of command had endorsed the takeover. Haşimi claimed that judges aligned with the coup had begun calling on associates to adhere to the military’s demands.
The national intelligence building and the police headquarters were attacked from the air. In the latter, helicopters had targeted the intelligence department in the top three floors of the facility, unleashing a hail of shattered glass and concrete that still scars the building.
“It was a nightmare,” said Murat Karakullukcu, a police official who spent the night at the headquarters through the attack and had served at UN peacekeeping missions in Kosovo. “Our first thought was how to survive, and then we started shooting at the helicopters with small arms.”
Back at the prime ministry, despair was setting in. They had resolved to make a final stand in the parliament, when Erdoğan appeared on a live broadcast at 12.37am on a reporter’s iPhone, exhorting the people to defend democracy.
“What is FaceTime? Why don’t I have it?” asked one of the ministers in attendance.
“That was the moment when the psychology were reversed and we thought we were going to win,” said Haşimi. [Continue reading…]
U.S. holds split view of cleric Erdogan blames for Turkish coup
The Wall Street Journal reports: [Fethullah] Gulen’s championing of Turkish democracy and nonviolence discredits to many the idea that the spiritual leader could have played a role in the coup, even if followers within the military did.
Still, supporters of Mr. Gulen have directly challenged Mr. Erdogan in recent years.
Their break was sealed in 2013, said Turkey watchers, when Gulenist media and supporters in the judiciary and police force made public tapes implicating Mr. Erdogan and other members of his government in an alleged kickback scheme. Mr. Erdogan’s government has responded by purging the ranks of both institutions in recent years.
Mr. Gulen, in the past, hasn’t made secret his hope that his supporters, who promote Turkish nationalism and Islamic values, would gradually dominate the ranks of the country’s bureaucracy.
“You must move into the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers,” Mr. Gulen said in a famous 1999 sermon to his supporters that was broadcast on Turkish television. “You must wait until such time as you have got all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institution in Turkey.”
Mr. Erdogan said Monday that his government is days away from compiling evidence to submit to the U.S. for Mr. Gulen’s extradition, and once more demanded Washington hand him over. While toning down previous statements by his government—his prime minister said over the weekend that any country refusing to hand over Mr. Gulen would be in a “war” with Turkey—Mr. Erdogan nonetheless was insistent.
“We are strategic partners, we are model partners,” Mr. Erdogan said in a CNN interview. “And the U.S. has to extradite that individual to Turkey. I do hope that the U.S. will do that.” [Continue reading…]
The misguided logic of keeping calm in the face of terror
Emile Simpson writes: Statistically, there is a minuscule individual chance of being killed by terrorism in the West.
Commentators will delight in finding comparisons that capture the apparent absurdity of being frightened by terrorism — perhaps telling us that more people are killed by bee stings than terrorism, or that there is more chance of being killed in a car crash than having your kids crushed by a terrorist-driven truck, or such like. Be resilient, they’ll say. Statistically speaking, we’re good here. Statistically speaking, we should all calm down, keep cool heads, and celebrate peace in the West.
But the statistical approach utterly misses the point. The essence of terrorism is that it is not just any sort of crime. It is a crime against the very fabric of the state, as the timing of the attack on Bastille Day was perhaps intended to emphasize.
To view terrorism through the lens of the personal risk of death implies an impoverished, almost nonexistent, view of the state — that is, the community of citizens that is the basis of all political life. In the statistical view, the state evaporates into a collection of atomized individuals who care only about themselves. A peace that requires — even applauds — a sort of numb, cold acceptance in the face of events like Thursday’s and calls it resilience is a rather pathetic peace to celebrate.
Peace depends on the stability of the political order. That political order has an identity in its own right. There is, in other words, a nation behind the state; when the state is attacked, the nation is attacked. Responding to terror with a cold, individualized, statistical message only opens the doors to Europe’s populists, who then appear the only ones not allergic to the recognition that the nation, a body with its own history, culture, and identity, has been wounded. Their response to that is identity politics, which is the path to social disaster. But until the political mainstream stands up for the idea that the state does have certain basic values that demand the loyalty of all its citizens — not just in terms of the law but in spirit as well — they can’t expect to tame today’s populist zeitgeist. [Continue reading…]
Nice attacker had fascination with extreme violence
The Wall Street Journal reports: The man who killed 84 people in Nice was a violent drinker and drug taker with an “unbridled sex life” who developed a fascination with Islamic State and other terrorist propaganda, prosecutors said as they deepened their probe into whether a broader network fostered his radicalization.
François Molins, the chief Paris prosecutor overseeing the investigation into the Bastille Day attack, said Monday that police haven’t found any evidence that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel explicitly pledged allegiance to Islamic State or had links to any people associated with the Sunni Muslim militant group.
However, the prosecutor painted a picture of a man who underwent a rapid transformation in the weeks leading up the massacre and became suddenly enthralled with extremist messages and ultra-violent images.
Data recovered from Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s computer included pictures of militants draped in Islamic State flags and corpses as well as photos of Osama bin Laden and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the head of an al Qaeda-aligned group called Murabitun. His computer also turned up searches for “horrible car accidents” and “shock videos,” Mr. Molins said. [Continue reading…]
Boris Johnson says Assad must go if Syrians’ suffering is to end
The Guardian reports: Boris Johnson has said Bashar al-Assad cannot remain in power in Syria as he prepares for his first talks as the British foreign secretary on Tuesday with his US counterpart, John Kerry.
Johnson, who had previously argued Assad could help defeat the Islamic State (Isis) in Syria, made the statement within days of being appointed the UK’s top diplomat by its new prime minister, Theresa May.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph in December, Johnson, then mayor of London, said the west could not afford to be picky in its choice of allies since Isis in Syria could not be defeated without terrestrial forces.
“We need someone to provide the boots on the ground; and given that we are not going to be providing British ground forces – and the French and the Americans are just as reluctant – we cannot afford to be picky about our allies,” he wrote.
“We have the estimated 70,000 of the Free Syrian Army (and many other groups and grouplets); but those numbers may be exaggerated, and they may include some jihadists who are not ideologically very different from al-Qaida.
“Who else is there? The answer is obvious. There is Assad, and his army; and the recent signs are that they are making some progress. Thanks at least partly to Russian airstrikes, it looks as if the regime is taking back large parts of Homs. Al-Qaida-affiliated militants are withdrawing from some districts of the city. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so.”
In a statement before Tuesday’s talks, Johnson said: “I will be making clear my view that the suffering of the Syrian people will not end while Assad remains in power. The international community, including Russia, must be united on this.”
The official Foreign Office view is that Assad can stay only for a short period as part of a transitional government. [Continue reading…]
IMF says Brexit has ‘thrown a spanner in the works’ of global recovery
The Guardian reports: The International Monetary Fund has slashed its forecast for UK growth next year after warning that the decision to leave the EU has damaged the British economy’s short-term prospects and “thrown a spanner in the works” of the global recovery.
The IMF, which voiced strong misgivings about a vote for Brexit in the runup to the EU referendum, said it expected the UK economy to grow by 1.3% in 2017, 0.9 points lower than a previous estimate made in its April world economic outlook (WEO).
The fund said it had cut its forecasts for the global economy due to the likely knock-on effect of the vote on other countries, particularly in Europe. [Continue reading…]
The EU must move closer to reality
Vernon Bogdanor writes: ow should Britain leave the European Union? The question hangs over Theresa May’s new administration as it considers when to invoke article 50, which will lay out the procedure for a withdrawal agreement, and indicate what sort of future relationship Britain wants with the EU.
Will it be membership of the European Economic Area, like Norway? A trade agreement with the EU, or reliance on World Trade Organisation rules? Yet the future relationship depends not only on the conditions in Britain but also on developments in the EU. And in that respect there are encouraging signs that European leaders are, at long last, listening to what their peoples have been telling them.
As Donald Tusk, president of the European council, declared before the referendum, the EU needs to take a “long hard look at itself and listen to the British warning signal”. After the vote for Brexit, that is needed more than ever. During the campaign much was made of the dangers of an overweening Europe, aiming to become a federal superstate. Yet things have changed following the eurozone and migration crises.
Despite the rhetoric of ever closer union, the member states are no longer prepared to sacrifice more of their sovereignty. Germany has no appetite for fiscal union, and Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, has said that integration has gone “too far”. Poland has no wish to adopt the euro; there is clearly little desire for a common migration policy; and anti-EU feeling is growing throughout the continent. The EU has become economically, politically and culturally too diverse for any drive towards ever closer union to be successful. [Continue reading…]
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Six wealthiest countries host less than 9% of world’s refugees
The Guardian reports: The six wealthiest countries in the world, which between them account for almost 60% of the global economy, host less than 9% of the world’s refugees, while poorer countries shoulder most of the burden, Oxfam has said.
According to a report released by the charity on Monday, the US, China, Japan, Germany, France and the UK, which together make up 56.6% of global GDP, between them host just 2.1 million refugees: 8.9% of the world’s total.
Of these 2.1 million people, roughly a third are hosted by Germany (736,740), while the remaining 1.4 million are split between the other five countries. The UK hosts 168,937 refugees, a figure Oxfam GB chief executive, Mark Goldring, has called shameful.
In contrast, more than half of the world’s refugees – almost 12 million people – live in Jordan, Turkey, Palestine, Pakistan, Lebanon and South Africa, despite the fact these places make up less than 2% of the world’s economy. [Continue reading…]
The Nice attack heralds a new kind of terror — one we can’t define
Peter Beaumont writes: After attacks such as Nice, we demand answers. A requirement to understand is necessary both to protect ourselves in the future and to deal with the consequences of horror. What was the motivation? Are there links to other individuals? How did the killer arrive at the decision to kill?
That desire to understand is hardly a new phenomenon, although modern media have made it more pervasive. Joseph Conrad, in the complex character of Verloc – the anarchist bomber, double agent and provocateur of the The Secret Agent – was an early explorer of this territory.
White people who buy guns to shoot up cinemas and schools are put into one category: “lone wolves”. And inevitably the focus is on psychological and social problems. Individuals from a Muslim background are instantly placed in another category: “terrorists”. But when it comes to attacks such as those in Nice and Orlando, the distinction is increasingly unclear.
If those two attacks – as seems very possible – were as much about the inadequacies of the attackers as about Islamic State; if Isis, or simply the fact of the attention given to such mass killings claimed by Isis, is no more than a nudge that legitimises, in the perpetrator’s mind, mass killing – then perhaps there is no meaningful distinction. [Continue reading…]
Sovereign citizen fears realized in Baton Rouge shooting
CBS News reports: Kansas City native Gavin Eugene Long, who died on his 29th birthday on Sunday after ambushing and killing three Baton Rouge police officers, said in online postings that he didn’t want to be affiliated with any group.
Long was, however, a member of a group involved in the sovereign citizen movement.
Since 2011, the FBI has considered sovereign citizens “a growing domestic threat to law enforcement.” In a bulletin, the agency wrote that they consider “sovereign-citizen extremists as comprising a domestic terrorist movement.”
Simply put, sovereign citizens believe themselves to be above the law of the land. Their reasons vary, but they don’t believe they have to do things like pay taxes or respect law enforcement officials, because in their minds all governments are operating illegally.
The movement’s most high-profile member to date has been Terry Nichols, the accomplice in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
According to the Kansas City Star, Baton Rouge shooter Long “declared himself a sovereign in records filed with the Jackson County recorder of deeds last year.”
Specifically, Long said he was a member of the Washitaw Nation of Mu’urs. J.J. MacNab, a fellow at George Washington University’s Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, told the Star that the group believe themselves to be native of the North American continent and therefore about the laws of any country, state, or city. [Continue reading…]
Slain Baton Rouge officer days before shooting: ‘I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me’
The Associated Press reports: Just days before he was shot and killed, a Baton Rouge police officer posted an emotional Facebook message saying he was “physically and emotionally” tired and expressing how difficult it was to be both a police officer and a black man, a friend said Sunday.
“I swear to God I love this city but I wonder if this city loves me,” Montrell Jackson wrote.
Friends and family of Jackson, 32, were mourning the 10-year veteran of the police force that relatives described as a “gentle giant” and a “protector” after he and another two law enforcement officers were shot and killed Sunday morning by a gunman.
Sgt. Don Coppola Jr. of the Baton Rouge Police Department identified the other slain Baton Rouge police officer as 41-year-old Matthew Gerald, who had been with the department less than a year. The third officer killed was 45-year-old sheriff’s deputy Brad Garafola, a 24-year veteran, spokeswoman Casey Rayborn Hicks for the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office said. [Continue reading…]
Coup attempt in Turkey accelerates drive towards an authoritarian state
The Guardian reports: In the aftermath of the Turkish coup attempt, the country’s parliament delivered an ode to democracy that represented an extremely rare display of unity between the government and opposition parties.
“It is precious and historic that all party groups in the parliament have adopted a common attitude and rhetoric against the coup attempt,” the assembly said in a statement on Saturday. “This common attitude and rhetoric will add to the strength of our nation and national will.”
The moment of solidarity, built on shared repulsion at the prospect of another military intervention in Turkish politics, was fleeting. Once he had regained his footing, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan showed no signs of gratitude to opposition parties whose condemnation of the attempted putsch contributed to the speed of its collapse, describing the failed coup as a “gift from God” that would allow a thorough purge of his enemies.
If the abortive coup does provide Erdoğan with the momentum he needs to achieve his central goal of changing Turkey’s constitution and concentrating power in a dominant presidency, it could have long-term repercussions for the country’s political stability, and consequently for its economic prospects and its place in the world, not least as a bastion of Nato’s south-eastern flank.
“We would have liked Erdoğan to use this as an opportunity for a more open democratic society, but the rhetoric has been one of vengeance,” said Hişyar Özsoy, an MP and spokesman on foreign affairs of the leftist pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP).
The HDP’s unexpected success in elections last year presented a significant obstacle to Erdoğan’s constitutional ambitions. Since then, the president has sought to link them to Kurdish militants, lifting their parliamentary immunity and pursuing HDP members in the courts. “We expect this coup attempt to lead to even greater repression,” Özsoy said.
For the time being, the post-coup purges ordered by Erdoğan have been focused on alleged followers of Fethullah Gülen, a US-based Islamic scholar. However, the scale of the crackdown, with more than 6,000 detentions, and the targeting of the judiciary in general and the constitutional court in particular, suggest to many observers that the aim is to use the passions raised by the abortive coup to eliminate the last vestiges of independence in Turkey’s justice system. [Continue reading…]
Erdoğan’s ‘Reichstag fire’
Matthew Karnitschnig writes: Even before the last shots were fired in the small hours of Saturday, it was clear that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wouldn’t let a coup attempt go to waste.
Whatever faint hopes there may have been in Washington and Europe that he would capitalize on the outrage over the attempted putsch among the Turkish population and the political opposition to show a commitment to democratic ideals quickly faded, however.
Within hours, the purges of the judiciary and military had begun. While it could take months to determine what this “cleansing” will mean for the future of Turkey, this much is certain: Ankara’s fraught relations with the West just got a lot more complicated.
“He had a golden opportunity to change the narrative,” said Jonathan Eyal, associate director at the Royal United Services Institute, a U.K. think tank. “Instead, he chose the path of vengeance and score-settling. That will make it far more difficult for Western allies to stand by him.” [Continue reading…]
‘No excuse’ for Turkey to abandon rule of law, says EU’s Mogherini
Reuters reports: EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned the Turkish government on Monday against taking steps that would damage the constitutional order following a failed weekend coup.
“We were the first… during that tragic night to say that the legitimate institutions needed to be protected,” she told reporters on arrival at an EU foreign ministers meeting, which was also to be attended by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
“We are the ones saying today rule of law has to be protected in the country,” she said in Brussels. “There is no excuse for any steps that takes the country away from that.”
She also said: “The democratic and legitimate institutions needed to be protected. Today, we will say together with the ministers that this obviously doesn’t mean that the rule of law and the system of checks and balances does not count.”
“On the contrary, it needs to be protected for the sake of the country itself. So we will send a strong message.”
Other ministers also expressed concerns about events after the coup. Mogherini’s fellow EU commissioner, Johannes Hahn, who is dealing with Turkey’s membership request, said he had the impression that the government had prepared lists of those such as judges to be arrested even before the coup took place.
“It looks at least as if something has been prepared. The lists are available, which indicates it was prepared and to be used at a certain stage,” Hahn said. “I’m very concerned. It is exactly what we feared.” [Continue reading…]
Coup attempt highlights widening faultlines in Turkish alliance with U.S.
Martin Chulov reports: US jets have resumed operations in the fight against Islamic State after being grounded for two days at an airbase in southern Turkey amid uncertainty over what the country’s failed coup might mean for bilateral ties and for the war itself.
The early signs were confusing. While Barack Obama spoke out in support of his counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, as Friday night’s plot unfolded, dialogue since has underlined a mistrust that has plagued the fight against Isis and left two nominal allies once again struggling to find common ground.
Erdoğan’s demands that his foe, Fethullah Gülen, in self-imposed exile in the US, be extradited over claims that he drove the plot, were perceived as a slight in Washington. Officials quickly disavowed links to Gülen, demanded evidence of any connections, and rejected an implication that the US itself may have been involved. [Continue reading…]
Turkey widens post-coup purge, demands Washington hand over cleric
Reuters reports: Turkey purged its police on Monday after rounding up thousands of soldiers in the wake of a failed military coup, and said it could reconsider its friendship with the United States unless Washington hands over a cleric Ankara blames for the putsch.
Nearly 20,000 officials from the police, civil service, judiciary and army have been detained or suspended since Friday night’s coup, in which more than 200 people were killed when a faction of the armed forces tried to seize power. [Continue reading…]