Although Europe ignores it, the Turkey’s PM Erdogan is turning into the Turkish version of Vlad. Putin, writes Kemal. (more…)

Just hours before Turkey’s top prosecutor presented arguments in court that the AK Party should be closed and 70 of its top officials, including Prime Minister Erdogan banned from politics, police took yet another 22 people into custody ostensibly for plotting to overthrow the government. Three others are still “at large,” but expected to be taken into custody soon. (more…)

The terrorist attack in Ankara was, indeed, caused by a suicide bomber: 28-year-old Güven Akkuş, of Sivas. Akkuş “had spent two years in prison for hanging illegal posters for the Communist Workers Party, but he became affiliated with the PKK in prison.”

Governor of Ankara Kemal Önal said: “”The type of explosives and equipment employed is similar to those used by the separatist group.”

Today’s Zaman also has more information up about the victims. One of them: “Muzaffer Savaş, who died in Tuesday’s bombing in Ankara, was going to get married this week. Twenty-four-year old Savaş, at the time of bombing was looking for a tuxedo for himself. His friends and relatives, who recently received his wedding invitation, were shocked by the news of his death.”

Turkish Daily News adds that “Turkish Police captured two people yesterday, a day after a powerful bomb killed six in Ankara. In the raid that took place in the Southern city of Adana the police seized 11.3 kilograms of A-4 explosives, a detonation device and two hand-grenades.” The woman has been identified by Adana Governor İlhan Atış as a “suicide bomber.”

As a result of the bombing and of the arrests, “Turkey’s top anti-terror board convened yesterday under the leadership of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül early in the morning to review possible measures to prevent new attacks. The Turkish Daily News learned that the police and gendarmerie units will tighten security measures in the cities, airports, bus terminals, metro and train stations. The National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the police will conduct detailed investigations to find out the organizers of this attack.”

Meanwhile, Amnesty International, with seemingly too much time on its hands, compared “the ban imposed on women in Turkey and France for wearing headscarves in public places to the obligations imposed on women in Iran and Saudi Arabia for putting on a veil.” Amnesty:

The state has the obligation to safeguard a woman’s freedom of choice, not restrict it. To take an example, the veil and headscarf of Muslim women have become a bone of contention between different cultures, the visible symbol of oppression according to one side, and an essential attribute of religious freedom according to the other. It is wrong for women in Saudi Arabia or Iran to be compelled to put on the veil. It is equally wrong for women or girls in Turkey or France to be forbidden by law to wear the headscarf. And it is foolish of Western leaders to claim that a piece of clothing is a major barrier to social harmony,” Kahn said in strongly worded remarks.

It’s called laicism. Is AI now saying that laicism is in breach with human rights? It has nothing to do with choice in these women’s private lives, it’s about what they are allowed to wear in public buildings. Besides, Amnesty’s approach might work very well in a situation in which the headscarf is not used, and even a sign of, the oppression of women, but sadly reality shows that it is the family of the woman who demands of her to wear a headscarf.

The headscarf is, among other things, a sign that one considers women to be less than men. I thought that AI would encourage equality instead of oppression.

A Kurdish singer, Zulfu Kizildemir aka Xemgin Birhat, might face five years in prison for “performing a song that praises imprisoned Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.” Ocalan is, of course, the leader of the PKK. Ocalan is, of course, quite simply a terrorist. His men have killed tens of thousands of Turks. As TDN points out, “Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in Turkey and are denied rights granted to other minority groups,” but that’s not an excuse for terrorism.

Lastly, Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan slammed the opposition in a speech yesterday. He said that “the existence of sound and active political opposition was crucial to the preservation of democracy in any country and said that being in opposition was not tantamount to trampling underfoot the lines of legitimacy, casting a shadow over democracy or ignoring universal values.”

He also “harshly criticized President Ahmet Necdet Sezer for abusing the legal period of 15-days granted to make a decision on a draft send from Parliament. Erdoğan said the president, who is supposed to either veto or ratify a new law enabling the president to be elected by a referendum, was purposefully trying to delay the Parliament’s willingness to refer the presidential elections to the people.”

Meet Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan (quotes from speeches delivered by him from 1994-1998 when he was mayor of Istanbul):

PM Erdogan on Secularism:

“If the people want it, of course secularism will go away. You cannot rule this people by force; you don’t have the power to do that. This [i.e. secularism] cannot work in spite of the people.

“And anyway, for the love of Allah, what is this secularism? You ask them to define it. They can’t. They say that it varies from place to place. So what sort of a strange thing is this [secularism]?

“Today, for every concept there is a definition in the dictionary. Every concept must have a definition […] The interior minister comes and says that the state can interfere with religion. What about the rest? Why don’t you say the rest? No! He does not say that the religion can interfere with the state.

“Yesterday I was at the Bosphorus University; and some of the - probably impressionable - young people there asked me, ‘Mr. Mayor, what do you think about secularism? There are concerns that secularism is disappearing. What will happen?’

“This is what I said to those young friends: ‘In the West they say, Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s. But this country’s interior minister says that Caesar has rights but God does not!’

“But the fact is that 99% of the people of this country are Muslims. You cannot be both secular and a Muslim! You will either be a Muslim, or secular! When both are together, they create reverse magnetism [i.e. they repel one another]. For them to exist together is not a possibility! Therefore, it is not possible for a person who says ‘I am a Muslim’ to go on and say ‘I am secular too.’ And why is that? Because Allah, the creator of the Muslim, has absolute power and rule!”

On the Turkish Constitution and Democracy:

“”As for [the motto of Turkish democracy] ‘Sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the people.’ Now, look here. This is a lie! And it’s a huge lie! We [former PM Erbakan’s Islamist RP (Welfare) Party] suggested this to them for their constitution: We said ‘Let’s put brackets next to ’sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the people’ and write within the brackets, ‘once every five years.’

“They began to laugh. I asked them why they were laughing. Do the people have such a privilege, other than once every five years? Then what’s-his-name says - and where does he say this? - it is in 1985 and we are having a discussion on the constitution in a meeting in the Marmara Hotel. He gets up and says ‘No, this is not right.’

“At that moment, the former finance minister, who was completely drunk, also joins in to give advice. I told them that they must have prepared this constitution at the same table [at which they together consume alcohol]. Why? Because they do not prepare these constitutions with sober heads, but with drunken heads! That is why their constitutions last no more than two years.”

Some other nice quotes:
- “There is no need to stand up to honor Ataturk”
- “They [secular Turks] make such a big fuss every November 10th [the anniversary of Ataturk’s death]”
- “We will turn Istanbul into Madina”
- “I am the Imam of Istanbul”
- “Our reference [guide] is Islam. Our only goal is an Islamic state. They can never intimidate us. If the skies and the earth open up, if storms blow on us, if the lava of volcanoes flow on us, we will never change our way. My guide is Islam. If I cannot live according to Islam, why live at all? [Turk], Kurd, Arab, Caucasian cannot be differentiated; because these peoples are united under the roof of Islam.”

What in the world were the Turkish people thinking when they voted for this man? “He changed…” Yeah right, that’s because Islamists often change their ways, right? I mean, he wouldn’t be acting to have changed just to be able to push through some of the reforms he deems necessary (to re-establish the caliphate)… rrrright?

Oops: and here’s the YouTube video, only problem… it’s Turkish, for translation click on the link above.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg3hkWCnA8c]

Today’s Zaman seems to endorse Erdogan and Gül (in other words, the AK Party):

Almost all the failures of the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) four-and-a-half-year incumbency are attributable to factors uncontrollable by the government itself, a record prepared by Today’s Zaman Ankara office reveals.

A comparison of the electoral promises of the AK Party recorded in the Emergency Action Plan published before the elections of 2002 and the current situation on related issues shows that the AK Party managed to “keep its promises” on issues related to the economy, European Union reforms, foreign policy and certain areas of the legal apparatus. The AK Party’s performance on issues related to legal reform packages by means of compliance with the Copenhagen Criteria even thrilled the Europeans, but on certain issues the Europeans still await implementation rather than legal reformation alone. It would be unjust to claim that the government was entirely successful on that front.

The real success story of the government, and something that the AK Party will doubtless base its next electoral campaign on, is the economy. The AK Party was delivered an economy in the early stages of recovery after one of the worst crises in the republic’s history. Inflation was no longer in three-digit numbers, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank strategies were already running. The AK Party did quite well in almost all areas of the economy apart from the current account deficit. The record level of increase in exports is praiseworthy indeed (on the cusp of $100 billion a year) and the increase in imports is understandable, as the country’s share of energy and raw materials for industry are on the rise. Unemployment figures have not dropped dramatically, but the quality of life increased at almost every level of economic stratification: The rich got richer and the poor started to look at the future with hope at least.

So? Nothing negative?

The human rights reforms of the government were revolutionary, but were far from enough. Turkey has forgotten the days of media censorship, police torture, homicides by unknown assailants and misconducts in southeast Anatolia. But the government was never given the chance — and it didn’t insist on having it — to have human rights standards also penetrate the military sphere. The Şemdinli scandal remains unsolved. Verbal or virtual intervention of the military into the political sphere continues to be a day-to-day experience of the Turkish public and the best the government could do was to remind the army that what they are doing was not nice! On sensitive issues like the education rights of covered girls or the graduates of vocational schools, and the reformation of the Higher Education Board (YÖK) the government tried to do its best, but was not ready to put its relations with the army at risk.The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) promised to amend the Constitution and various laws to comply with the Copenhagen criteria, drafting and passing nine EU harmonization packages containing the changes that would ensure compliance with EU accession conditions.

Read the entire article: even though I do not agree with much of the views of Today’s Zaman (which are, for Turkish standards, quite conservative: pro-AK Party), it still is an interesting read, and, no matter what one might think of Erdogan’s Islamist views, he did push through some important reforms and he did drastically improve Turkey’s economy.

What does not make me, and (Turkish) Kemalists of course, happy is that Today’s Zaman wants girls to be able to go to school while wearing a headscarf and seems to favor a bigger role for religion in (Turkish) society. Since the Revolution, led by Atatürk, there has always been a division in Turkey between Kemalists and religious conservatives.

The anti-AKP rally in Izmir was a success:

Hundreds of thousands of pro-secular Turks gathered in the third largest city of Turkey Sunday to protest against the Islamist-rooted government that they fear is working to raise the influence of religion on society and pressure the secularist center-left parties unite ahead of parliamentary elections set for July 22.

Organizers of the pro-secular rally estimated the participating crowd at around two million. This was the first ever rally which was staged simultaneously both on land and sea as scores of small ferry boats and fishermen boats packed with demonstrators joined the rally from the sea.

Izmir is a port city on the Aegean coast that is a bastion of secularism, and Islamic parties fare poorly there. According to eyewitness accounts the demonstration was the biggest ever held in the port city of Izmir since the 1977 campaign rally in the city by late Bülent Ecevit, who was then heading the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The CHP had won the 1977 parliamentary elections with a 43 percent landslide…

“Turkey is secular and will remain secular,” protesters chanted. “No to sharia (Islamic law).”

The CHP and other opposition parties hope to use the protests to build momentum for the parliamentary elections (July 22). At this moment, the AK Party is, sadly, doing quite well in the polls: more than 40% of Turkish voters say that they support Erdogan’s party.

Two million people, quite amazing.

The New York Times has an article up about today’s protest in Izmir as well.

You can leave it up to Western media to embrace Islamists: Ruling Party Charms a Turkish City With New Take on Secular Heritage.

Six decades of work has arched his back, age has slowed his speech. But Ahmet Hamdi Gul was quick to praise the people running this city in the heart of Anatolia, awash in a transformation from backwater to bustling entrepot, from stronghold of Turkey’s ultranationalists to redoubt of the religiously rooted party that rules the country.

“They’ve done well for the city,” the 81-year-old Gul said simply, during a visit to a factory where he worked until last year.

The words were not unusual, but the speaker was. He is the father of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, whose nomination as Turkey’s president, eventually derailed, touched off a political crisis last month. The father’s modesty says something about Gul’s grass-roots appeal in Kayseri. And his words say something about the ruling Justice and Development Party’s draw here — as modernizers, populists and devout guardians of the poor.

Long the most secular and modern of Muslim nations, Turkey is in the throes of a social and political transformation that began nearly 60 years ago and crested with the Justice and Development Party’s surprising ascent to power in elections in 2002. It is sometimes cast as a simple contest between the secular orthodoxy of Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and the ruling party’s origins in the country’s Islamic movement of the 1990s. But the party’s success in Kayseri shows how it has leveraged the rise of a new elite to create a broad, subtle, sometimes visceral appeal.

It is undoubtedly true that the AK Party has improved Turkey’s economy quite tremendously, but there are bigger issues at stake here. This is not just about the economy, this is also about Turkey’s secular system.

It is quite nice that the Washington Post decided to publish an advertisement for Erdogan / the AK Party, instead of truly giving space to the other side of the debate to make their case as well.

I am sure Erdogan et al. appreciate it.

Quite surprising news (at least the timing of it): Abdullah Gül has withdrawn from the ‘race’.

Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has withdrawn from the race to be Turkey’s president after supporters were unable to gather the necessary two-thirds quorum in the parliament for a vote on his candidacy.

The parliament’s speaker twice counted heads in the chamber Sunday but each time announced it was just eight members short of the needed 367 for a quorum.

It is the second time parliament has been unable to vote on Gul, due to a boycott by opposition parties.

Turkey’s Constitutional Court declared the first vote held on April 27 void because a two-thirds quorum was not present for the balloting.

Gul, a member of the ruling AK Party and the only candidate being considered, indicated he was no longer a candidate as he left the parliament building Sunday.

The news as such is not that surprising; the timing, however, is. I expected Gül to play the game like the CHP plays it: till the very end.

It will be interesting to see where they will go from here: early elections, will the AKP win / keep its majority or will the CHP (whose leader is highly unpopular) make a comeback?

Two interesting articles about the political situation in Turkey right now: yesterday was an exciting day, to say the least.

Today’s Zaman:

Justice and Development Party (AK Party) leader and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, speaking Wednesday at the meeting of his party’s parliamentary group meeting, commented on the decision of the Constitutional Court concerning the first round of the presidential election.

“This is a bullet fired at the heart of democracy,” he said, and argued that they would however pay due respect to the decision, which would fuel significant controversies in legal circles. Noting that the election of the president by the Parliament has been blocked, Erdoğan maintained that it will almost impossible for future parliaments to elect presidents.

He suggested that it had been made possible for the minority to rule the majority, and added: “A party that represents the minority of the people will bargain with a party that represents the majority, insisting on its case. This is unacceptable for democracies. We risk even a referendum in order to eliminate this blockade.”

Nonsense of course. Yet another sign that Erdogan does not know much about democracy. Having early elections is the ultimate democratic thing to do in a situation like the one in Turkey right now. If a sizeable majority raises hell, like it does now, the majority should pay attention to that minority. Besides, as I understand it, polls show that a slight majority of the Turkish people oppose Gül.

Asking the people what they think of it is, obviously, not an attack against democracy at all. In fact, I would say, perhaps this will cause Turkey to become more democratic: perhaps this will teach them that it are not the members of Parliament who should elect the President, but that the President should be elected directly by the people.

Turkish Daily News:

The late British statesman Winston Churchill was not describing Turkish politics when he coined the adage, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” But the phrase summarizes the mood in Ankara yesterday as the capital reacted to effective cancellation of a nomination round for a new president with more questions than answers amid a cacophony of calls for early elections, constitutional amendments and even an interim, caretaker president to replace the retiring Ahmet Necdet Sezer…

The lingering confrontation in the presidential election process, with Turkey’s powerful military, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Constitutional Court and the opposition all at odds, continued yesterday with questions far more plentiful than answers.

Following interference in the process by the military and the country’s top court, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) offered a constitutional package, which proposes to swap the current parliamentary nominating system the president with direct elections by the public.

The package, however, added to controversy in the Turkish capital. Former Supreme Court of Appeals chief prosecutor Sabih Kanadoğlu, who first raised the issue that led to cancellation of first-round nominations – the now-famous number of 367 for a legal quorum — argued that the current Parliament cannot enact a constitutional amendment while engaged the presidential election process. It also remains unclear whether the public will face twin elections or if the constitutional package could be implemented before the early general elections proposed for a variety of dates, including June 24 and July 1.

Legal experts are divided as to who will be acting president until the new president is elected. The current parliamentary speaker, Bülent Arınç, suggested himself for the caretaker job yesterday. Others insist only the current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, is legally available.

Whatever happens, not Arinc please. He is just as bad, if not worse than Erdogan and Gül, at least that is how I understand it.

More from Turkey:

Top court ruled the first round of presidential elections invalid on Tuesday, raising the possibility of early national elections. The government said another round of presidential polls would be held in parliament on Wednesday.

The Constitutional Court upheld an appeal from the secularist opposition that wants to stop the ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party’s candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, becoming head of state. A decision was taken to stop the process, Haşim Kılıç, deputy head of the top court, told a news conference.

The Constitutional Court ruled 367 members of parliament had to be present during voting for it to be valid. A total of 361 deputies voted in last Friday’s ballot, 357 of them for Gül, the sole candidate. The court ruling was binding.

All this stress is not good for Turkey’s economy:

Turkish financial markets recorded their biggest falls in a year on Monday and the currency lost more ground on Tuesday. The lira recovered some ground on the news late in trade.

Economy Minister Ali Babacan said the economy was ready for early elections, a comment seen as an attempt to calm markets.

An important victory for Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s party (CHP) nonetheless. The CHP will use the same tactic time and time again until general elections will be necessary. General elections might result in quite a different Parliament: if the CHP wins (overwhelmingly) Gül will definitely not become Turkey’s next President.

Will it work? Who knows, but it beats a military coup.

We will see what happens now. To say that it are exciting times for Turkey would be quite an understatement.

It seems that the Turkish army has said that it will do everything necessary to to defend Turkey’s secular system.

In a statement released late on Friday night, the General Staff says it is following with ‘concern’ the debate over secular system in the presidential elections and would ‘openly display its position and attitudes when it becomes necessary’

The military issued a memorandum-like statement saying that Islamic reactionary activities were expanding in scope and vowing that it would fulfill its “lawful duties” to protect the state. The statement came on Friday night, hours after Parliament held the first round of the presidential election.
In a statement posted on its Web site, the General Staff said it was following with “concern” the debate over Turkey’s secular system in the presidential elections and would “openly display its position and attitudes when it becomes necessary.”

The is very powerful in Turkey and has several times in the past acted / overthrown governments. In other words, when the army makes statements like this, everybody takes it very serious.

Some Turkish civilians meanwhile responded with anger, as did some politicians and the EU.

The Turkish government itself did not remain silent either. Turkish Daily News:

The Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) government said Saturday a military warning against it was democratically unacceptable.

In a rather unaccustomed manner the Turkish government lashed out at the army, which accused it of endangering secularism, saying that the general staff “remains under the orders of the prime minister.”

“I would like to underline that it is inconceivable in a democratic state based on the rule of law for the general staff, which remains under the orders of the prime minister, to speak out against the government,” government spokesman Cemil Çiçek told a news conference.

He stressed the government’s commitment to the secular order of the country and said it was “unacceptable” for Turkey to resolve its problems outside the democratic system.

This is an extremely complicated matter. Turkey is secular and it would be a disaster for itself and for Europe if Erdogan and company destroy it bit by bit. On the other hand, a take over by the army would be quite disastrous as well, at least in the short term.

It seems to me that the army won’t act yet… but Erdogan and Gul have to be very, very careful. One mistake and the army might act.

Meanwhile, Ataturk’s party, the CHP, goes to court:

Turkey’s election of a new president headed to court Friday, after opposition deputies boycotted in an effort to deny a 367-vote majority to the nominee, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül. If the resort to the 11-judge Constitutional Court by opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is successful, it would mean the effective annulment of Gül’s election late in the afternoon by 357 votes of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and a handful of maverick deputies and new parliamentary elections.
Turkey’s unicameral legislature was the scene of day-long, high-stakes political maneuvering, as all sides sought to slalom through arcane procedures and interpretations of the Constitution, resulting in an ambiguous result that could take days or weeks to resolve. The skirmishing turns on a provision that requires a two-thirds majority — 367 votes — to elect a new president in the first two rounds of voting. If a choice is not made in the first two rounds, a final third round only requires a simple majority — 276 votes. After failing early Friday to win the support of independent and minor party deputies, the AKP strategy appeared to be a plan to muddle through two inconclusive voting rounds and put Gül in office on the third. The opposition, however, has countered that a 367 majority must at least be present during voting for the round to be legally completed and a second round authorized.

I wrote one week ago that we could expect more mass demonstrations in the coming weeks in Turkey. A Turkish commenter stopped by and said that I was wrong: there would be no protests. Well, if I were the “I told you so” type of person, I would say so now: “Some 700.000 Turks waving the red national flag flooded central Istanbul on Sunday to demand the resignation of the government, saying the Islamic roots of Turkey’s leaders threatened to destroy the country’s modern foundations.”

A retired government employee said (about Gül and Erdogan): “They want to drag Turkey to the dark ages.”

Ayse Bari on Gül’s headscarf wearing wife: “We don’t want a covered woman in Atatürks presidential palace. We want civilized, modern people there.”

More protests to come I am sure.