Censor on Rise, Report Reveals (Turkey, totalitarianism?)

Forty-six books were banned, withdrawn from the market or saw their authors sued during the last year in Turkey, while dozens of writers and publishers were tried for their published works, a recent report by Turkey’s Publishers Union has revealed.

“Judicial oppression is gradually increasing, and arrested writers and journalists whose trials are pending have been portrayed as terrorists by state officials,” the report said.

Probes against publications have been justified on the grounds that the works are defamatory, feature obscene content or illegal terrorist propaganda, humiliate religious values or attack personal rights.

The report also lists cases opened against expressions published on social media outlets.

In Turkey the right to free speech is being lost Erdogan is using a series of alleged plots to justify a crackdown on dissent that threatens basic freedoms

The Guardian (blog)
Mehdi Hasan
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 10 June 2012 12.00 EDT
Which country in the world currently imprisons more journalists than any other? The People's Republic of China? Nope. Iran? Wrong again. The rather depressing answer is the Republic of Turkey, where nearly 100 journalists are behind bars, according to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Yes, that's right: modern, secular, western-oriented Turkey, with its democratically elected government, has locked away more members of the press than China and Iran combined.

But this isn't just about the press - students, academics, artists and opposition MPs have all recently been targeted for daring to speak out against the government of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his mildly Islamist Justice and Development Party, or AKP...
what I discovered in Istanbul is that there is still a long way to go. The truth is that Turkey cannot be the model, the template, for post-revolutionary, Muslim-majority countries like Tunisia and Egypt until it first gets its own house in order. ..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/10/turkey-free-speech-erdogan-crackdown

Kurds need Obama's support to gain rights in Turkey
U-T San Diego - June 14, 2012
... Yet his silence about Turkey’s tyrannical policies on its sizable Kurdish minorities, over 20 million, is a contradiction not only to the former, but also to the very principles that our nation was built upon.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/14/kurds-need-obamas-support-to-gain-rights-in-turkey/

Gee, I wonder what Fethullah Gülen leader of the active in Turkey and popular Gülen Movement thinks about all this.

He's now an American citizen and lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania on what would be called a compound if he were a right winger.

Gülen is a Turkish author, educator, and Muslim scholar. "Gülen has been described in the English-language media as 'one of the world's most important Muslim figures.'" (ref wiki)

I bet the Movement kind of, sort of goes along with Erdogan.

I bet the Movement kind of, sort of would like to see someone here become an all powerful Islamist (political Islam, sharia law advocate) like Erdogan.

A year or so ago I heard an interview with Ms Claire Berlinski on San Francisco KSFO Barbara Simpson show. Ms Berlinski lives in Istanbul and she is an American journalist.

here

I intended to keep up with her reporting but I failed. So I do not know her "take" on these and other critical matters.

Ms Berlinski (see link at Reply #3) wrote a year ago

"On January 20, 2004, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric S. Edelman penned a report of nearly impeccable insight into Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP. He correctly emphasizes the luck that ushered the party into power in November, 2002, notes the Islamist milieu from which Erdogan emerged, and aptly characterizes his political talent and pragmatism . . . [Ambassador Edelman wrote] 'Erdogan has traits which render him seriously vulnerable to miscalculating the political dynamic, especially in foreign affairs… [his] authoritarian loner streak… prevents growth of a circle of strong and skillful advisors, a broad flow of fresh information to him, or development of effective communications among the party headquarters, government, and parliamentary group.'

"Edelman also observes central problems of AKP governance–lack of technocratic skill, corruption and influence-peddling–that are now well-known to foreign observers but were at the time little-remarked. Finally, he notes the 'Islamist complexes and prejudices' of several key Erdogan appointees:

"'Erdogan’s refusal to condemn these positions, the question of the level of influence of Islamic brotherhoods and groups (including the followers of Fethullah Gulen) on the government, and the presence of Turkish Hizbullah supporters in AK Party provincial structures in the Southeast have also raised deep concerns among many long-standing Embassy contacts who themselves are pious. …how well [Erdogan] can control the phenomenon remains a very open question.'"

My emphasis.

"[A]n old Soviet academic joke: the faculty party chief assembles his party cadres and, warning against various ideological threats, proclaims, 'The future is certain. It’s only that damned past that keeps changing.'

Obama's struggle about how to represent his first term?

Actually this came from a website of an American reporter Claire Berlinski living in Istanbul.

Her very interesting column that includes what wikileak cables from our ambassadors to Turkey revealed especially Bush's U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Eric S. Edelman. Here.

Washington had a lot of very good information from Edelman about what newly elected (at the time Ambassador Edelman did his analysis) Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP would do to Turkey. Despite that, Washington seemed to welcome Erdogan and the AKP.

(Obama seems to be an awful lot like Erdogan. IMO.)

There is a lot of information about American citizen Fethullah Gulen and his Movement in today's tending-Islamist, more and more Iran-like Turkey. Their HQ is in Pennsylvania and Gulen is a darling of rich dingbats who give him millions of dollars.

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