Free Republic

For decades his picture dominated Turkey, piercing blue eyes staring from hoardings, keeping watch over city streets and army barracks. Schoolyards echoed every morning to his oath: "Happy is he who can say 'I am a Turk!'" Now that oath rings out no more and the image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the secular republic, seems for some to be retreating into the shadows, victim of a new ruling class they suspect of cherishing a new more 'Islamic' Turkey. Turkey's "Kemalists" flinch at Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan advising women on the number of children they should have, fostering restrictions...

“These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” ~ Erdogan, PM of Turkey Turkey took another step backwards this week … lurching toward Sharia … when 4 female MPs marked the end of a ban enforced since the early days of the Turkish Republic. The female MPs were wearing headscarves, as they walked into Turkey’s parliament in Ankara on Oct. 31st, designating the end of a prohibition vigorously imposed since the dawn of a secular Turkey. On its face, this step...

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan rebuffed intensified international criticism over Turkey’s choice to agree a missile defense deal with China, a day after NATO declared that it wanted a say in the decision-making process. “Nobody has the right to overshadow our understanding of independence,” Erdoğan said Oct. 22 before departing for Kosovo. Recalling NATO’s discontentment over Turkey’s decision to accept a Chinese bid to build its first long-range anti-missile system, Erdoğan noted that many NATO members have Russian weapons in their inventory. The prime minister’s statement came a day after NATO Chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s remarks expressed the hope that...

Early last year, the Erdogan government blew the cover of up to 10 Israel agents in Iran who had been meeting inside Turkey with their Mossad case officers. This story was published in The Washington Post, by David Ignatius, who has excellent connections in the US capital, Thursday, Oct. 17 – the day after a two-day conference in Geneva between six world powers with Iran on its nuclear program. A chorus of Western powers led by the US hailed the event as “substantive” and “forward-looking.” But on the quiet, the WP story was directed against Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu...

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan voiced support for U.S. President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform, known as “Obamacare,” while simultaneously underlining his government has been acting with an understanding based on prioritizing the individual rather than the state. Obama has taken a step to reform the health service sector, but some circles have been standing in his way, said Erdoğan, who at the time described the separation of powers and “bureaucratic oligarchy” as the government’s main obstacle, saying it was preventing them from introducing “further services.” “And here, actually, there is a need to support Mr. Obama, why isn’t this...

Turkey says Syrian forces have shot down one of its air force jets. After a two-hour security meeting, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's office said the warplane that disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea Friday was shot down by Syria. The statement said the two pilots remain missing. The prime minister's office said Turkey will decide on how to respond to the incident but did not elaborate. Turkey has joined nations such as the U.S. in saying that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should step down because of the uprising in his country. Meanwhile, U.N. Envoy for Syria Kofi Annan told reporters...

Limited strikes in Syria are not enough, declares Turkey's Prime Minister as the U.S. mulls action in Syria. The goal of any military intervention in Syria should be to topple Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday. Erdogan said that the limited strikes which the United States is reportedly planning against Syria would not be enough and pushed for a broader military offensive. "A limited operation cannot be satisfactory for us," he was quoted as saying by the NTV news channel. "An intervention akin to that decided for Kosovo must be launched. An operation of...

In a landmark trial, scores of people —including Turkey's former military chief, politicians and journalists — were convicted on Monday of plotting to overthrow Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government soon after it came to power in 2002. Retired Gen. Ilker Basbug was the most prominent defendant among some 250 people facing verdicts after a five-year trial that has become a central drama in tensions between the country's secular elite and Erdogan's Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party. The trial has sparked protests, and on Monday police blocked hundreds of demonstrators from reaching the High Criminal Court in Silivri, 40 kilometers...

Turkey's former armed forces chief has been jailed for life for plotting to overthrow the government, after five years of trials involving officers, lawyers, writers and journalists. Gen Ilker Basbug was among dozens of people convicted of involvement in the so-called Ergenekon plot. Critics of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have accused him of staging show trials to eliminate his enemies. His supporters say the trials have pushed the military out of politics. Verdicts are being read out one by one at a specially constructed courtroom in Istanbul. Twenty-one people have been acquitted and some 40 convicted so far, including...

Hundreds of people from across North America are expected to flood Saylorsburg on Saturday to protest a controversial Turkish figure, Fethullah Gülen, who has lived in the area for more than a decade. … Gülen is a polarizing figure and Turkish cleric whose vision of Islam embraces science, education and interfaith dialogue. Millions support him, but his critics in Turkey’s secular establishment believe he is a dangerous man with a secret agenda. The protest comes on the heels of weeks of conflict on the streets of several Turkish cities against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who the couple claims is...

ISTANBUL — Unlike its key Arab allies, Turkey has condemned the overthrow of the Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Analysts warn that the fall of Morsi has dealt a major blow to Turkey's ambition of extending its influence across the Middle East. Turkey's prime minister on Friday condemned the military intervention that toppled Egypt's Islamist president Mohamed Morsi as an enemy of democracy, and criticized the West for failing to brand the ouster a coup. Referring to his country's history of coups, Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that such military uprisings come at a heavy price. "Coups are evil. Coups target people,...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Gulf Arab states welcomed Egypt's interim leader on Thursday, hopeful his appointment would stem the rise of Islamists in the Middle East, but the military overthrow of an elected president drew a guarded response from Iran and condemnation from Turkey. The United States expressed concern at the ouster of Mohamed Mursi on Wednesday and called for a swift return to democracy, as did the European Union. But they stopped short of calling it a coup, which might have led to sanctions. The 54-nation African Union was likely to suspend Egypt for allowing "unconstitutional change", a senior AU...

The Turks are marching, yelling, protesting, throwing bombs, burning cars, and destroying businesses as officials try to restore order. Istanbul’s center is burning. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reported that 89 police vehicles, 42 private cars, four buses and 94 businesses had been destroyed by the “vandalism” in two days. Protestors charge that the prime minister is moving the nation toward extreme Islam and many of the people don’t want to go there. The same is happening in America but no one is protesting! Do we want to go there? Erdogan is identified as a Muslim “moderate”; however, his own...

After two weeks of protests, each side in the Turkish tumult is starting to produce its own narrative, explain the origin of the protest and plan the next step. … (O)ver the last few days and especially since returning from a visit to north Africa, the Turkish PM has constructed his own theory of the ongoing events. At first he comprised a long lists of supposed suspects behind the protests—opposition supporters, hooligans, foreign governments—but recently, the government’s narrative is taking a more stable shape and accusations are mostly directed at businessmen and large-scale investors Erdogan has been terming “the interests...

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Thousands of black-robed Turkish lawyers stormed out of their courthouses Wednesday, shouting about the rough treatment police dished out to their colleagues amid Turkey's biggest anti-government protests in years. The rallies by clapping, chanting jurists added a new twist to the nearly two weeks of protests that started in Istanbul and spread to dozens of other Turkish cities. The protests have shaped up as the biggest test yet in the 10-year rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamic-rooted government. Police and protesters mostly retrenched Wednesday after fierce overnight clashes in Istanbul's Taksim Square...

For years, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was generally considered an example of “moderate Islamism”, a loose label that was generally based on a comparison with other Islamist dictatorships, like Iran, or with the various semi-secular autocratic regimes that dot the Arab and Muslim world. There was never a comparison with a liberal Muslim democracy, simply because none existed. In other words, Erdogan earned his credential as the moderate, Islamist democrat in the Middle East, partly because of his success in Turkey, but also due to the lack of any democratic competitors. Admittedly, it was not just the west that...

(CNN) - It's a congested, sprawling transport hub surrounded by 1950s architecture and predominantly used by commuters or tourists to cross the city of Istanbul. But proposed changes to Taksim Square have seen it become the flashpoint for protests that have swept through Turkey in the past week, leaving thousands injured and focusing the world's attention on the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Taksim has been no stranger to violence. In 1977, at least 34 protesters died during May Day clashes with police. May 1 rallies in the square were banned in 1980 and were only allowed to...

Something shocking happened on Saturday night during the uprisings against Erdogan’s AKP rule in Turkey. CNN’s local news provider, called CNN-Turk, aired a documentary on penguins during the climax of the protests. Turkish people have been suffering a lack of press freedom for a while; however, this has reached to a ridiculous point in the last few days. There is a phenomenal difference between how CNN international and CNN-Turk cover the protests and the Turkish people are furious, feel mocked and betrayed, and they rightfully demand CNN international to take action. On Saturday night, people who turned on their televisions...

1. Turkey's political ideology Since the 1920s Turkey has been vigorously secular in its public sphere. Now protestors accuse Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of blurring the line between religion and state by trying to impose the Islamist values of his Justice and Development party (AKP) on society as a whole. Last month the government introduced a new law cracking down on alcohol, banning the sale of drink between 10pm and 6am and forcing restaurants near schools or mosques to be dry. The government has also tried to clamp down on kissing in public. Some have also perceived a state...

[more background info on events in turkey; read the article at WSJ.Com, with the link provided]