Turkey at ‘crossroads’ to authoritarian rule, Amnesty says

EU Observer ^ | 06/11/2014 @ 09:38 | Andrew Rettman

[Olog-hai]

British rights group Amnesty International has painted a disturbing picture of EU-aspirant Turkey as a country on the way to authoritarian rule.

Its report, published on Tuesday (10 June)—one year after mass protests which broke out in Gezi Park, Istanbul—warns that thousands of people are at risk of prison for exercising their right to freedom of assembly, while police officers are getting away with acts of severe brutality.

It says that after 12 years in power the ruling party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan “is perhaps at a crossroads”.

“It can choose to acknowledge legitimate grievances and reach out to those who have become disaffected. Or it can seek to bolster its support amongst … loyalists through the politics of blame and polarization. Prime Minister Erdoğan has chosen the latter course. His default reaction to these crises has been to seek to silence or crush his critics.” …

[Soul of the South]

While a Muslim country, Turkey had a secular government through most of the 20th Century thanks to its early 20th Century visionary leader Mustafa Ataturk who worked to turn what was left of the old Ottoman Empire into a modern, democratic, and secular nation.

The Islamist AKP party took control of the government in 2002 and has been cracking down on dissent as well as fundamental freedoms since particularly speech, religion, and the press. Turkey has more journalists imprisoned than any other nation.

[the anti-mahdi]

AN Atheist Pakistani that we had contracts with for the fuel for Kabul number one turbine generator told me that Kemal Ataturk told all the mullahs and imams that he would transport them all to the annual Haj in Mecca.

He told me that he loaded them on to a cruise ship and that a turkish submarine torpedoed and sunk the ship, all aboard died.

Is it true? I really do not know. I would to think that it is true.

[Forward the Light Brigade]

What is wrong with a bit of Auhortarian rule? Works well in Putin’s Russia and China? Worked well for thousands of years? let Turkey sort out her own problems. Looks like they will need a new Attaturk to fix their many problems—they may face a war with Iraq insurgents and in Syria as well. They are now at a place where they need to step up to the plate and act like a real country again—they have in the past—the new time is now. Time to be great again. Islamic solutions to Islamic problems. Let them cut a path of blood and horror though the Middle East all the way to Mecca.