Home » Now Turkey’s Erdogan has come for the journalists

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Now Turkey’s Erdogan has come for the journalists — 26 Comments

  1. I read somewhere today tat Erdogan is now also going after economic analysts, one of who talked about the feects of the coup on Turkey’s economy. In the statement I read Erdogan said that he was insulting the president. Erdogan made the same charge about a comedian in Germany. Apparently, he wants everyone to sing his praises.

  2. So glad Obama supported democracy and all that stuff.

    And ISIS transits its oil through Turkey.

  3. This isn’t really about Erdogan, he’s just Islam’s current top agent in Turkey. If he hadn’t stepped up, Islam would have found someone else. This is about Islam’s intolerance of any non-Islamic form of governance.

    Islam demands submission and will eagerly use whatever level of violence is required to achieve submission. Collaborative conversion, death or ‘living’ on your knees are the only choices it offers. Islam is an ideological cancer and, half-way measures are futile when dealing with a cancer.

    The biggest problem is that the Left is using Islam as a cancerous virus to tear down the West’s resistance.

  4. Erdogan has stated he wants to remake Turkey as the state of the caliphate. Byzantine plots and counter plots on the part of parties known and unknown appear to be unfolding in our NATO ‘ally’.

  5. Very often the story reads that Erdogan is the “democratically elected leader” of Turkey…

    I am reminded of how often after the 1973 coup Allende was described as “democratically elected,” which conveniently ignored that Allende was elected with 36.3% of the vote, and never had a majority in Congress. The phrase “democratically elected” applied to Allende also ignored that three weeks before the Coup the also “democratically elected” Chamber of Deputies passed a Resolution with a strong 63% majority which stated that Allende had repeatedly and systemically violated the laws and Constitution of Chile.

    https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Breakdown_of_Chile%E2%80%99s_Democracy

  6. I got a message today from the US embassy that there will be a huge protest (15,000) on Sunday in Cologne. It is being staged by “pro-democracy” groups that are protesting the coup. A few other demos of about 2,000 that are for or against it are also expected. The embassy warns US citizens to stay away from the area and also from other large crowds.

    Erdogan has for quite a while been telling Turks in Germany not to assimilate. It’s not a good situation. I should mention that Cologne has a large Turkish enclave, which is the type of place the least assimilated live.

  7. I don’t speak Turkish, and i don’t know anybody who lives in Turkey, but I’ve had the time and curiosity to read quite a few reports on the coup.

    So far, it looks as if it’ll be years before we know what happened. Obviously, the plotters themselves aren’t talking. On the other side, Erdogan and his supporters are using the coup to stage a purge and a putsch. A narrow definition of the plotters isn’t in their interest. As much as they can, they want to spread the coup’s stain to all of Erdogan’s enemies, rivals, and critics.

    Not especially penetrating observations, but that’s all I’ve got.

  8. Coming soon to the country we live in….a non-violent putsch. Can you say SCOTUS? The majority of Federal District and Appeals judges are Democrats now. Their rulings are increasingly partisan, without a rational legal basis.
    Open your arms and your hearts to a wave of Sotomayors under Hillary. Fat, flatulent, and female.

  9. Neo,

    Gringo (6:15) said, “I am reminded of how often after the 1973 coup Allende was described as “democratically elected,” which conveniently ignored that Allende was elected with 36.3% of the vote…”

    So true. Yes I agree that today’s media is very ignorant of getting, let alone understanding the deeper more (dare I say it) nuanced aspects of foreign affairs.

    But I also think they are simply parroting what this administration wants them to say and what it says itself. The media’s servile obedience to the left in general, and to this administration in particular has been brought pretty much out into the open to the point where they will tacitly acknowledge that they are basically the publicity arm of the democrats.

    Other recent developments in Turkey, Erdogan has today cancelled 50,000 passports. A few days ago I read that he revoked the licenses of all ham operators in Turkey (approx. 3000) also. It sounds to me like preparations to insure that the coming real clamp down, power seizure, and executions will not get into the news cycles until it’s too late.

  10. Following the 1981 Hafte Tir bombing, Ayatollah Khomeini declared the Mojahedin and anyone violently opposed to the government, “enemies of God”

    In the summer of 1988, the Islamic Republic of Iran executed in secret an estimated 5000 political prisoners across the country. The killing, ordered by an extraordinary fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini himself, was relentless and efficient. Prisoners, including women and teenagers, were loaded on forklift trucks and hanged from cranes and beams in groups of five or six at a time in half-hourly intervals all day-long. The victims were intellectuals, students, leftists, members of opposition parties and ethnic and religious minorities. Many were jailed for no more than distributing leaflets, having a banned book or being accused by “a trusted friend of the regime,” according to Amnesty International.

    The massacre was the climax of a massive elimination campaign conducted by the regime from 1981 to 1989: during that bloody decade around 20,000 political prisoners were executed across Iran.

    Iran Tribunal to Uncover Iran’s “Srebrenica”

  11. Name an Islamic country that hasn’t gotten worse in the past 7.5 years.

    Name one place / Village living in peace and no crimes no laying honest & lovable people who are under Islamic Law and Sharia

  12. Cornhead Says:
    July 29th, 2016 at 5:00 pm

    So glad Obama supported democracy and all that stuff.

    And ISIS transits its oil through Turkey.

    &&&&&&&

    ISIS transits EVERYTHING through Turkey// Erdogan.

    His own son is highly involved in ‘remarketing’ ISIS crude oil exports.

    He HAS been ‘brought ’round’ by Putin, though.

    Turkey no longer belongs inside NATO, nor inside the Common Market.

    It’s no longer a part of the West.

    It’s a caliphate.

  13. neo-neocon Says:
    July 30th, 2016 at 12:23 am

    Nick:

    Egypt? El-Sisi?

    Jordan?

    &&&

    Their economies have been destroyed — and so they are now living off of eleemosynary impulses.

    Tourism into to MENA has collapsed:

    Turkey
    Egypt
    Syria
    Jordan

    Even

    Greece,
    Yugoslavia — that whole zone

    have been torn up.

    The Greek situation gets glossed over — not admitted as being the foundation for her Euro currency distress.

    Greece has DEADBEATS all over the countryside.

    Italy is doing its best to round them up and put them in — de facto isolation// bachelor’s prisons.

    You can witness the kvetching on YouTube, BTW.

  14. The comments so far have been very interesting especially the facts about Allende, a leftist martyr, who tried to become a dictator in Chile.

    When I first read about dictators murdering their own supporters I was shocked. It seems so counterintuitive that a dictator becomes stronger by murdering his supporters but it obviously works since so many powerful dictators have done just that. So far one has mentioned the biggest murder of all, Mao, who murdered thousands of his fellow communists when he was resting up from torturing and killing innocent commoners.

  15. If you do not purge evil, evil will purge you first. That’s just how this world works.

  16. Dennis Says:
    July 30th, 2016 at 8:24 am
    The comments so far have been very interesting especially the facts about Allende, a leftist martyr, who tried to become a dictator in Chile.

    When I first read about dictators murdering their own supporters I was shocked. It seems so counterintuitive that a dictator becomes stronger by murdering his supporters but it obviously works since so many powerful dictators have done just that.
    * * *
    Early on in a revolution, all the factions have about even amounts of power and “legitimacy” – so the person who is most determined to become dictator has to eliminate potential rivals as soon as it becomes feasible for him to progress without their help.
    That’s my reading, anyway.

  17. “This isn’t really about Erdogan, he’s just Islam’s current top agent in Turkey. If he hadn’t stepped up, Islam would have found someone else. “ – GB

    Actually, it is precisely the opposite.

    Erdogan, not unlike the Ayatollah Khomeini, are using their “interpretation” of their religion to herd, cajole, and appeal to people – and eliminate or isolate the rest who cannot be.

    For tyrants and would be tyrants, it is just another way to divide and conquer. Religion is their tool.

    Is it any different from only a few hundred years ago when our “western” rulers used religion as one of their tools – “Divine Right of Kings”. Rather darn close to “Sharia Law”, IMHO.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings

  18. It is dispiriting as a parent of a son living and working in Istanbul. He’s invested 5 years working, has lots of Turkish friends and has enjoyed living there. We visit him every year and this past April it was really noticeable in the decline of tourists. It is even worse now a few months later. He says everyone is very quiet and trying to pretend things are as normal as possible. It’s not of course. This situation is very bad for their economy and of course, I worry about him as well.

  19. razzbuddy:

    I hope your son stays safe.

    The people of Turkey are among the most Westernized in the Middle East, and have been ever since Ataturk. It was not accomplished without great difficulty, and unfortunately the forces going against that are winning right now, as they did in Iran (another greatly Westernized country) back in 1979.

  20. Early on in a revolution, all the factions have about even amounts of power and “legitimacy” — so the person who is most determined to become dictator has to eliminate potential rivals as soon as it becomes feasible for him to progress without their help.

    It reminds me of Robbes Pierre’s Committee of Public Safety. His rivals in the revolution, got so afraid of him, that they purged him first, thinking Pierre was going to purge them.

    Generally having rivals in a revolution is a bad thing. Stalin vs Trotsky. That’s because your support is filtered through these different “heirs” of the Revolution, and it would be better to consolidate the support. Just like heirs fight and kill each other to pursue a throne. Revolutions did not produce anything better than mankind has known in government and power.

    External enemies are fine, so let’s look at Mao vs Chiang Kai Shek in China. Mao liked the Japanese occupation, he used it as an excuse to bleed the nationalists dry, by making the Nationalists fight the Japanese occupation, while Mao hid out and conserved his forces. All the while declaring that he was beating the Japanese back. Then when Kai Shek won the war and pushed the Japanese out, then Mao attacks the nationalists in a civil war. So the Japanese, being “external enemies” isn’t a threat to your public support or your ethnic support. Those are your people, they aren’t going to become disloyal suddenly.

    However, if the nationalists won fame, glory, and reputation, and gained enough of Mao’s allies to defeat Mao on the battlefield, then there’s a Real Problem.

  21. It’s almost NEVER commented upon, but Chiang was receiving IMMENSE amounts of American war support — especially financially. ( $43,000,000 in GOLD — the largest tranche ever given by Congress, IIRC )

    This all stopped when Japan surrendered.

    Chiang didn’t see it ( the termination, the atomic bomb, coming )

    For his domestic purposes, he proceeded to continue to spend large — but without the economic base to support his spending.

    So, he used the old, old, old, Chinese technique. He hyper-printed his currency. ( China not only invented paper, she invented paper money and hype-inflation, too. )

    Chiang was CUT OFF because he was so corrupt and thus so offended EVERY Western military officer — to include George Marshall — as Secretary of State that they all bitterly complained that the boy was no serious leader of men.

    Needless to say, Chiang was above taking ANY Western military advice.

    Instead, he pre-peated the wails of Thieu.

    “Give me, give me…”

    America DID give Chiang ENTIRE weapons factories — most notably those that manufactured the Thompson machine gun.

    ( Deemed obsolete by the War Department, but highly regarded by all Asians. Both the Russians and the Americans were jumping straight towards today’s assault guns, having recognized the significance of the German weapon. )

    It was just such weapons that faked out US troops when Mao launched Southern Chinese armies against MacArthur’s UN expeditionary forces. All concerned assumed that the racking of the bullets in the Chinese Thompsons came from friendly troops — and so dismissed the acoustic signature of ChiComs enveloping all forward positions. The key troopers making this fateful mistake had all served in WWII and recognized the distinctive sound from the first.

    Of course, Mao intended to DESTROY the Southern Chinese armies against MacArthur. They were his internal enemies — the last defenders of Chiang.

    This logic entirely eluded all Western officers — and is never brought up in the official histories of the military campaign. Yes, they never had a clue, hence such films as:

    “Pork Chop Hill” (Gregory Peck )

    YEARS after the Korean War such a film could be crafted — oblivious to the end as to why suicidal assaults were occurring all the way through.

    As you probably guessed, Mao NEVER used his own boys — his Northern armies.

    They stood way behind the front and forced the Southern armies into their own destruction, with America providing the ammo.

  22. It’s almost NEVER commented upon, but Chiang was receiving IMMENSE amounts of American war support – especially financially. ( $43,000,000 in GOLD – the largest tranche ever given by Congress, IIRC )

    Lend Lease to China, Russia, and Britain should be well known. It’s not a secret that FDR was shipping gold and supplies to Russia.

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