The Guardian reports: Thousands of protesters have controlled Istanbul’s main square once more after two days of violent clashes with rampaging riot police, as Turkey’s prime minister vowed to press on with the controversial redevelopment that provoked the clashes.

Calling the protesters an “extremist fringe”, Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the opposition Republican People’s party for provoking the protests.

“We think that the main opposition party, which is making resistance calls on every street, is provoking these protests,” Erdogan said on Turkish television, as an estimated 10,000 demonstrators streamed into the area waving flags and calling on the government to resign.

“There is now a menace which is called Twitter,” Erdogan said. “The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”

Yavus Selim writes: “What’s going on in Turkey?” is a common question on the lips of people as varied as Joseph Gordon-Levitt and some American Muslim scholars. People are finding it hard to wrap their head around the facts. The most stable, economically successful and popular democratically elected government in the Middle East has been experiencing widespread protests over… a planning application? That doesn’t sound right and of course, it isn’t the case at all.
I do not condone violence against protestors-there is definitely some police brutality at play which President Erdogan himself hinted at and said that it would be investigated and dealt with- but do want to take a closer look at the why people are gathering in Taksim Square and elsewhere in Turkey.

Here are ten tweets that expose what the current “protests” in Turkey are all about:

Tweet 1: So much for the trees

PM Erdogan live: In 10 years we planted 2 billion new trees across Turkey. More 160 new parks built. More than 3 million older trees planted

— Ziya Meral (@Ziya_Meral) June 2, 2013

Yes. The figures are astronomical but in the last ten years this Turkish government has planted enough trees to repopulate a sizable section of Amazon. So we can now establish that these protests have nothing to do with the environment at all and they were merely using it as a cover. A cover for what?

Tweet 2: With friends like these

Turkey: Violent protests against Islamization in Istanbul and Ankara: Obama’s favourite and “most trusted ally… bit.ly/14j60Tv

— Pamela Geller (@Atlasshrugs) June 1, 2013

For once, Pamela Gellar (the well known anti-Islam blogger who stated that she hopes Israel bombs Mecca and Madīnah) is right. This isn’t about trees at all. It is about the secular bloc in Turkey making a final anarchic stand against what they hate most in this world – their nation coming closer to Islam once more.

Tweet 3: Don’t believe me?

To my Arab friends who support the protestors, look at their tweets: “I want at least one hijabi woman dead today.” twitter.com/ceylanozbudak/…

— ceylan ozbudak (@ceylanozbudak) June 1, 2013

[Continue reading…]

Mustafa Akyol and H.A. Hellyer dismiss the idea that the protests currently sweeping across Turkey should be viewed as a “Turkish Spring,” but Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan needs to draw the right lessons.

Erdoğan has certainly attracted the ire of his opponents more prominently recently. He named Istanbul’s new intercontinental bridge after an Ottoman Sultan, who is widely respected among the Sunni majority, but also seen by the Turkish Alevi minority as a bloody tyrant; and he’s implemented limitations on alcohol consumption, which infuriated secularist Turks, who feel that a conservative and intimidating Erdoğan threatens their lifestyle. Erdoğan has other illiberal enemies as well: nationalist groups despise Erdoğan for initiating a peace process with the PKK, the Kurdish separatist guerrilla army, while communist groups condemn him for being “an American collaborator,” & an enemy of the Assad regime in Syria, which they hold dear.

These protests weren’t begun by any of these groups – and Erdoğan’s government made a grave mistake by not restraining the police, resulting in state brutality upon the protestors. Indeed, had the police not responded so viciously, it’s likely the protests would have fizzled out quite quickly. That brutality brought out many Turks without any particular political agenda onto the streets, including those who took seriously the allegations of corruption with regards to the construction projects. Perhaps less than interested in the serious environmental issue that results from the loss of green spaces (which is rare indeed in Istanbul), many political groups then found a locus for their cumulative discontent.

Nevertheless, none of this means that Erdoğan has to resign, as some protestors have demanded: he is the most popular Turkish Prime Minister in the past half-century, and while thousands went on the streets to protest him, millions who support him remained in their homes. Yet that ought not be a reason for Erdoğan to be complacent either. Indeed, it is he who needs to take the greatest lesson from all this. He and his government ought to recognise that the ballot box is not the only thing that counts in truly participatory democracy – and those that govern the largest Arab country on the other side of the Mediterranean sea should acknowledge the same. Here, there are indeed some similarities – as governments in both Turkey and Egypt need to identify that the lack of consensus does come at a price, and causes unnecessary tensions.

A report in The Independent reveals no signs of Erdoğan expressing an interest in consensus building as he contemptuously dismisses his critics.

Turkey’s Prime Minister has rejected claims from protesters, who have taken to the streets across the country over the past two days, that he is an authoritarian leader, as thousands of people marched and reoccupied the centre of Istanbul.

Protesters returned to Istanbul’s Taksim Square on Sunday, the site where a small protest over plans to redevelop a park spiralled into violent confrontations on Friday when police moved to evict the demonstrators.

The heavy-handed tactics of authorities sparked more than 90 demonstrations around the country on Friday and Saturday, officials said. More than 1,000 people have been injured in Istanbul and several hundred more in Ankara, according to medical staff.

In Taksim Square on Sunday afternoon, people were chanting slogans against Mr Erdogan and calling for him to resign. Undeterred, Mr Erdogan used a television interview to rebuke the demonstrators, who he dismissed as “a few looters”.

“[They say] Tayyip Erdogan is a dictator. If they call one who serves the people a dictator, I cannot say anything,” said the Prime Minister during a televised speech. Erdogan insisted the project to revamp Gezi Park would go on despite the protests. “We will build a mosque in Taksim and we do not need the permission of the CHP [Republican People’s Party, the main opposition party in Parliament] or of a few bums to do it.”

Today’s Zaman reports: Global “hacktivist” group Anonymous has announced a campaign to disrupt communications channels of the Turkish government in response to its handling of the Gezi protests, with reports of two cyberattacks on Sunday.

Turkish media reported on Monday that Anonymous had “managed to take down access” to the Official Gazette, the Turkish government’s journal for publishing legislation and announcements, on Sunday. As of Monday morning, the site appeared fully functional.

An early-Monday attack on the website of the private news channel NTV was also reported. NTV is among the many Turkish media outlets that have been criticized for their scant coverage of the ongoing protests and violence.

Addressed to “citizens of Turkey,” a video apparently posted by Anonymous on Sunday on YouTube and titled “#opTurkey” took aim at the Turkish government’s response to protests against the demolition of İstanbul’s Gezi Park, a small sit-in that morphed into demonstrations involving thousands after police responded with tear gas and water cannon.

Tulin Daloglu writes: Just like that iconic picture in 1989 known as the “Tank Man of Tiananmen,” Reuters’ top photo on Tuesday [May 28] showing a young woman wearing a short-sleeve burgundy dress, carrying a white tote bag over her shoulder while a police officer wearing a gas mask spraying pepper into her face will be equally remembered as a historic picture down the road.

Something changed for the decade-long rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Friday [May 31], as the police crackdown took a turn for the worse. Pepper was sprayed and pressured water canons were used on the peaceful protesters in downtown Istanbul; protesters who have been unable to stop the government’s plan to demolish one of the city’s few remaining parks, cutting down 70-year-old trees to rebuild the Ottoman Artillery Barracks that were originally built in 1740 and destroyed in 1940.

Addressing the General Convention of Turkey Exporters Assembly (TIM) on Saturday [June 1], Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, however, stressed over and over again in his speech, “We will build that Ottoman Artillery Barrack there.” The prime minister insists that this protest “is not an issue about those 5 or 6 trees [in the park]. This has now become an ideological struggle. They say that we will build a shopping mall there, but there is no concrete decision. Whoever is my counterpart here [on the side of the protesters] should sincerely say what they want, but we will build that Ottoman Artillery Barracks there because it was once there.”

Erdogan does not seem to be getting the message. While this protest may now turn ideological, it all started as a small gathering of about 500 people on Monday [May 27]. The reason it got out of control with massive protests in 10 other cities around the country — Adana, Konya, Tunceli, Mersin, Mugla, Marmaris, Izmit, Adana, Izmir, Van and Sivas — is that Erdogan has shown no culture of consensus building with those who disagree with him. Instead, he painted the protesters as “anti-democratic” and engaging in “illegal” activities. [Continue reading…]

AFP/Al-Akhbar: Islamists attacked a group of kissing couples who locked lips in a Turkish metro station to protest a morality campaign by the authorities in Ankara, the local press reported on Sunday.

One person was stabbed when about 20 Islamists chanting and some carrying knives attacked the demonstrators on Saturday, the Milliyet and Hurriyet newspapers reported.

About 200 people staged the kissing protest after officials in the Ankara municipality, which is run by Turkey’s ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), admonished a young couple for kissing in the street.

Ali Yenidunya writes: Last week, two car bombs exploded in Reyhanli in southern Turkey, close to the Syrian border, killing almost 50 people and injuring more than 100.

While nobody claimed responsibility for the deadly incident, it raised the immediate question of whether Turkey would escalate its intervention in Syria, either alone or with others.

However, that reaction was too narrow and missed the wider context. This is not just about the Syrian conflict but also Turkey’s internal politics, specifically its attempt to resolve the sensitive Kurdish issue.

The primary concern for the Erdogan government is the ongoing peace drive with the Kurdish leadership, including imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. So the question is not just whether the events in Reyhanli complicated Turkey’s position inside Syria but also whether they threaten these delicate internal negotiations.

Despite the token advance of the initial PKK withdrawal, the fundamental challenge for the process remains: this is not just a negotiation, but a play for power by both Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the PKK. [Continue reading…]

F. Stephen Larrabee writes: Last week, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), declared a cease-fire in his party’s nearly three-decade-long struggle with the Turkish state. Before then, the insurgency — which had claimed some 40,000 lives — had seemed intractable. Ankara’s attempts to put it down had only inflamed Kurdish nationalism and made the PKK stronger. But with Ocalan now apparently ready to try to resolve differences peacefully, the prospects that the uprising will come to an end have improved.

Ocalan’s announcement came at an opportune time. Several factors had already made the moment ripe for peace. First, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the broader Turkish public had come to recognize that trying to end the insurgency with force was a dead end and that the government would have to make a more determined effort to find a political solution to the Kurdish conflict.

Second, the Kurdish issue is closely linked to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political ambitions. Under AKP bylaws, Erdogan cannot run for another term as prime minister when his second term ends next year. Instead, he is widely expected to try to run for president. If he wins, he will be the first popularly elected president in Turkish history, capping his political career and giving him the chance to shape Turkish politics until 2023, the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. [Continue reading…]

The Economist: The Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has recently been seen sporting a Cossack-style hat like Ataturk’s. Kemalists were horrified. Yet nobody could dispute that Mr Erdogan has been Turkey’s most impressive leader since the great man’s death in 1938. His mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party came to power in 2002 on a wave of popular support and a rejection of decades of inept rule. Mr Erdogan has lifted Turkey out of stagnation and political paralysis and made it an inspiration in its region.

He has chipped away at the generals’ might, improved the rights of women and Kurds, doubled GDP per head, built modern roads and hospitals and empowered the downtrodden. His reforms prodded the European Union into opening membership talks in 2005. Despite worries about a gaping current-account deficit, the economy has slowed but not crashed, unlike others in the Mediterranean.

It was no surprise when AK won a third term of single-party rule in June 2011. Yet a year on Mr Erdogan is being tested as never before. Setbacks include an alleged bout with cancer, a row with the powerful Muslim Gulenist group, escalating Kurdish violence and the war in Syria. He has grown increasingly authoritarian, his judgment perhaps clouded by an ambition to be elected president when the term of the incumbent, Abdullah Gul, ends in 2014.

It is this ambition that critics say is undermining Mr Erdogan’s promises to deliver a new democratic constitution. A parliamentary committee supposed to produce a draft text appears designed to fail. It needs unanimous approval from all its members for every article. “Are the nationalists going to agree to the Kurds’ demands for Kurdish-language education? Of course not,” says Levent Gultekin, a pro-Islamic commentator. Many suspect Mr Erdogan wants the AK party to produce its own blueprint that would boost the powers of the presidency, enabling him to keep running the country after the party’s rules require him to step down as prime minister. Since he does not have a two-thirds majority in parliament, a new constitution would need to be put to a referendum; most polls give AK a big lead.

Still, he is not taking chances. Over the past year he has been increasingly hawkish over the Kurds, scrapping secret talks with the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to end their bloody 28-year insurgency. He has reverted to force and the mass arrests of thousands of Kurdish activists. “The bond between Turks and Kurds is growing weaker by the day,” warns Selahattin Demirtas, leader of the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party.

Media bosses fearful of losing government contracts have sacked critical journalists. At least 80 journalists are in jail, many of them Kurds accused of PKK membership. The government’s intolerance extends to students, 2,824 of whom are in prison, almost a quarter of them charged with “membership of a terrorist group” for calling for free education and other “sins”. [Continue reading…]

As Egypt’s military rulers consider how or if they manage a transition to civilian rule, they will no doubt be clearly mindful of the fate of their counterparts in Turkey.

Reuters reports: They once bestrode Turkey the masters of all they surveyed. Governments were swept aside, a prime minister dispatched to the gallows. Even in quiet times, from their staff headquarters opposite parliament, they commanded obedience.

Now around 20 percent of serving generals are in prison accused of plots against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, imaginatively codenamed Sledgehammer, Ergenekon, Blonde Girl, Moonlight.

So sudden has been this reversal the generals appear robbed of their voice. Erdogan has for now succeeded in his aim of taming the “Pashas”, officers, who disdain his Islamist roots. But as coup trials stutter over technical appeals, his position ranging over a demoralized military has its perils.

Turkey’s military guards the front line in the West’s campaign against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and may yet be called upon to fight. Last Friday saw a Turkish warplane shot down by Syrian air defenses. Public sympathy may grow as fears of a war spread. An officer in jail is one less in the barracks

“We spend our time writing letters and books,” said one senior officer held at a military prison in the Hadimkoy neighborhood of Istanbul.

“To explain how the future of our country has been darkened, putting the screams of our souls down on paper,” he added in comments relayed to Reuters through his lawyer.

The resort to literature finds an ironic echo in the past.

Bulent Ecevit, a prime minister arrested and interned by the generals in a 1980 army coup, wrote poetry during his captivity, his verse mostly an avowal of love to his wife, Rahsan.

Erdogan himself fell foul of the military in the years before his election and served a jail term for publicly reciting a verse declaring “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets” – words considered by a court to be incitement to religious militancy.

Now the Pashas take their turn in court. Even the 94-year-old leader of the 1980 putsch, general Kenan Evren, is on trial over hangings, torture and disappearances.

“I never really thought that one day I would see this,” wrote Mehmet Ali Birand, author of books on Turkey’s military.

The main military prison at Hasdal in Istanbul is now so overcrowded that many serving officers were transferred to the smaller Hadimkoy, while retired officers are held at Silivri jail outside the city, where the biggest trials are being held. [Continue reading…]

In his ongoing effort to atone for Davos 2009, David Ignatius writes: As President Obama was feeling his way in foreign policy during his first months in office, he decided to cultivate a friendship with Turkey’s headstrong prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Over the past year, this investment in Turkey has begun to pay some big dividends — anchoring U.S. policy in a region that sometimes seems adrift.

Erdogan’s clout was on display this week as he hosted a meeting here of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that celebrated the stability of the “Turkish model” of Muslim democracy amid the turmoil of the Arab Spring. One panel had the enraptured title “Turkey as a Source of Inspiration.”

In a speech Tuesday, Erdogan named Turkey’s achievements over the decade he has been in power: Its economy has grown an annual average of 5.3 percent since 2002, the fastest rate of any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; gross domestic product has more than tripled, as have its foreign reserves; investment from abroad has increased more than 16 times.

For Erdogan, receiving a visit from the WEF was a kind of vindication. The Turkish leader walked angrily offstage at the group’s 2009 meeting in Davos, Switzerland, after a panel moderator (yours truly) didn’t allow him time to respond to Israeli President Shimon Peres’s remarks about the Gaza war. This week, that moment seemed well in the past. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: In a tale which could have come straight from the time of the sultans, when one wrong word could seal your fate, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is threatening to withdraw state support from the country’s theatres after his daughter said she was insulted by an actor during a play.

Erdogan, who dabbled in amateur dramatics as a student, has a reputation for wearing his heart on his sleeve. But his tirades against “arrogant, alcoholic actors” and an arts establishment he claims holds ordinary people in contempt have shocked Turkey.

Theatres cannot take government subsidies and then criticise the hand that feeds them, he said. “They have started to humiliate and look down on us and all conservatives.”

Actors took to the streets in protest after civil servants were handed artistic control of Istanbul theatres overnight last month in a separate row over an “obscene” play.

“If support is needed, then we the government can support the plays we want,” Erdogan said. “I am privatising the theatre. No theatres are being run by the state in almost any developed country. Here there is freedom. When we privatise the theatres you can play whatever you want. Sorry, but you cannot get your salary from the municipality and then criticise the management. There is no such absurdity.”

He railed against the “despotic arrogance” of intellectuals who always think they know best: “For God’s sake, who are you? From where do you get the authority to express opinions on every issue, to argue that you know everything? Are theatres your monopoly in this country? Are arts your monopoly? These days are gone.”

What some are calling “Turkey’s culture war” began in April last year when his youngest daughter, Sümeyye Erdogan, 30, walked out of a performance of Young Osman at the Ankara state theatre. Its story of a young, reforming sultan overthrown by a boorish military has a rich echo for the Erdogans and the AK party, who have broken the army’s hold on Turkey. What exactly happened during an improvised sequence when the uncouth soldiers growl at the audience is still disputed, but she claims she was humiliated by an actor, Tolga Tuncer, who picked on her because she was wearing a headscarf, mimicking her chewing gum and making offensive “haka-style” gestures at her.

Sümeyye Erdogan went to university overseas – studying in the US and at the London School of Economics – because headscarves were banned at the time in Turkish academic institutions. In an impassioned letter to Tuncer on Facebook, she appealed for the kind of tolerance she was accorded in Britain and the US. “As an artist you should be first to treat people who are different with respect … you had better get used to people with headscarves. Half of the people of Turkey are women and many of them wear headscarves. I don’t want to live my life fighting you. I will continue to love art and theatre and continue attending the theatre with my headscarf.” [Continue reading…]

Mustafa Akyol writes: In a speech last August, Ayatollah Hashemi Shahroudi, who was Iran’s chief justice from 1999 to 2009 and is now a member of the Guardian Council, argued that “arrogant Western powers are afraid of regional countries’ relations with [Iran].” He went on to assert that, in their fear, those same powers were backing “innovative models of Islam, such as liberal Islam in Turkey,” in order to “replace the true Islam” as practiced by Iran.

Leaving aside his conspiratorial tone, recent developments in the Middle East have somewhat confirmed Shahroudi’s concerns. The Arab Spring has heightened the ideological tension between Ankara and Tehran, and Turkey’s model seems to be winning. Last spring, Iran often claimed that the Arab revolutions were akin to the Iranian one decades before and would usher in similar governments. Yet in Tunisia and Egypt, for the first time, leading figures in mainstream Islamist parties have won elections by explicitly appealing to the “the Turkish model” rather than to an Iranian-style theocracy. What’s more, in December 2011, the Palestinian movement Hamas salted the wound when a spokesman announced the organization’s shift toward “a policy of nonviolent resistance,” which reflected its decision to distance itself from Syria and Iran and to move closer to Egypt, Turkey, and Qatar.

The clash between Turkey and Iran has been more than just rhetorical. Tehran has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest supporter, whereas Ankara has come to condemn the regime’s “barbarism” and put its weight behind the opposition, hosting the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, the rebel government and army in exile. In Iraq, Iran is a patron of the Shias; Turkey is, at least in the eyes of many in the Middle East, the political and economic benefactor of the Sunnis and the Kurds. And the two countries have had tensions over the missile shield that NATO deployed in Turkey in September 2011. The Turkish government insists that the missile shield was not developed as a protection against Iran. Nevertheless, in December, an Iranian political official warned that his country would attack Turkey if the United States or Israel attacked Iran.

The falling-out between Iran and Turkey discredits those political commentators in the West who, since the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to power in Turkey in 2002, have lamented Turkey’s shift from the West to the East. [Continue reading…]