Closure Case Erdogan’s Fault
Filed under: Europe, Europeans who don't know what they're talking about, Fake European Parliament, Turkey — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on April 24, 2008 @ 10:35 am CEST
European Parliament: Erdogan only has himself to blame for the closure case against his party, the AKP. The reason, according to the enlightened members of this fake Parliament? “The government put on the brakes on reforms. Article 301 [of the penal code, which criminalizes insulting Turkishness] still stands and no step has been taken in terms of freedom of speech. Now the AKP suffers the consequences of its own mistakes.”
Partially true, of course, but there’s more to it than that, as anyone who knows a little bit about Turkey knows. Namely, it’s also Erdogan’s fault in the sense that he has pushed through Islamic reforms, even though he knew that the country’s Kemalists opposed those reforms, and that they were willing to go to war for the Kemalist principles. They told him, he knew it, yet he was arrogant enough to say ‘well, we were the winners during the last elections, so the Kemalists will simply give in to our mandate. They have to.’
No they don’t.
Stupidity and arrogance are more to blame than ’stalling reforms proposed by the European Parliament.’
1 JudasPriest
April 24, 2008 @ 7:34 pm CESTRight on. We are seeing ineptitude and bad policy making at the executive and representative wings of the Turkish democracy. The crux of this problem, i.e., why Turkey cant seem to recruit its elected officials among educated, able, open-minded people is the fact that the parties are run by self-interest seekers who base their selection processes on feudal-like principles. Sadly and equally contradictory, the only party who demonstrated some diversion from this old oligarchic administration style is AKP. There is undeniable attraction from among a layer of the society who are educated, full of passion, and slanted to overlook the erosion of secular foundation in return of personal gain towards politics since they are given a chance to be in the process by AKP. If CHP or a new formation, could revitalize themselves by bringing the quality human potential of Turkey in their ranks towards the good of the country by keeping loyal to the secular foundation, the democratic reforms, most important of all, free speech, free media, no judicial immunity for apolitical reasons, would all be put in effect in no time. But then EU would not have had any excuse to stall its negotiations with Turkey. Though, I have no doubt that they’ll find something else.