Free Republic

For years, explaining Turkey’s democratic travails seemed an easy task. There was the persistence of an authoritarian tradition, whose source was identified as Kemalism—the secularist-nationalist founding ideology of the Turkish republic—and which the military embodied. According to the conventional narrative on Turkey, with which anyone who has only casually followed international politics during the last decades will be familiar, the Turkish military had a mission—to “protect secularism”—which explained, so we were taught, its habit of overthrowing governments. All that was needed for Turkish democracy to flourish was the emergence of a force strong enough to end the tutelage of the...

In an Orwellian nightmare, Eren Erdem, a former MP, journalist and the author of 9 books, who has courageously dedicated his career to exposing and condemning terrorist organizations, is now being accused of "aiding terrorists". The real terrorists he has condemned, however, remain free. Erdem is paying the price for telling the truth in Turkey. He has risked his life to stop ISIS and help save lives. Now is the time for human rights activists and the media to defend him. "Where are the police forces? I identified 10.000 addresses [of ISIS members] in these documents of investigations conducted...

Turkish prosecutors are investigating the leader of the main opposition party to decide whether to charge him with insulting the president for sharing a cartoon showing President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as a variety of animals in solidarity with students arrested for putting the image on a banner at their graduation, secularist newspaper Sözcü said. Thirteen years ago, a court dismissed charges that the cartoon, entitled “The World of Tayyips”, insulted Erdoğan by depicting the then-prime minister as a number of animals. The cartoon was drawn in response to Erdoğan suing another cartoonist who depicted him as a cat getting caught...

SULAIMANI — Turkey’s main opposition leader was fined on Wednesday (July 18) for defaming President Tayyip Erdogan and his family over claims about international money transfers, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.Erdogan has dismissed the allegations by Republican People’s Party (CHP) chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu, saying in November last year that his family “haven’t sent a dime abroad”.Officials at the presidency could not immediately be reached for comment.The president, who was re-elected three weeks ago and assumed sweeping new executive powers, had vowed to take Kilicdaroglu to court, saying he would “pay the price”.Kilicdaroglu has since been ordered to pay Erdogan...

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate for president Muharrem Ince on Wednesday visited his pro-Kurdish rival Selahattin Demirtas whom the incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s administration has kept in prison as the country goes to polls next month. Ince, an outspoken lawmaker and long-time critic of the government, was able to see Demirtas in a supermax prison in the northwestern Edirne Province after he got permission from the Justice Ministry. Other visitors the Kurdish politician accepted were his wife Basak Demirtas and two young daughters, Delal and Dilda. Kurdistan 24’s Istanbul desk said no...

Turkish propagandists also have been twisting facts to try to portray Greece as the aggressor. Although Turkey knows that the islands are legally and historically Greek, Turkish authorities want to occupy and Turkify them, presumably to further the campaign of annihilating the Greeks, as they did in Anatolia from 1914 to 1923 and after. Any attack against Greece should be treated as an attack against the West. There is one issue on which Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its main opposition, the Republican People's Party (CHP), are in complete agreement: The conviction that the Greek islands...

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...