Turkey candidate for presidence threatens to invade Greece
The World War III became common use for a hypotetical third world large scale military conflict that can disrupt diplomatic relations, supranational organs and distablish the hegemony of some coutries and its respective Geopolitics. Recently, the former politician and leader of the Turkish Democratic party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, gave a sttement that he will invade Greece if he becomes the next president, in next year's election.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the CHP ("Republican People's Party"), and the major leader of the Main Opposition in Turkey since 2010 - also served as a member of Parliament for İstanbul's second electoral district from 2002 to 2015 and as an MP for İzmir's second electoral district as of 7 June 2015 - declared that if he wins the country’s election when Turks go the polls next year he will wage war against Greece to take over the islands after declaring Athens has “no document” to ownership over them.
According to the Express, Kemal stated that "he would “invade and take over 18 Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, just as former Turkish PM Bulent Ecevit invaded Cyprus in 1974”."
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, promissed that he will “invade and take over 18 Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, just as former Turkish PM Bulent Ecevit invaded Cyprus in 1974.” He said that there is “no document” proving that those islands belong to Greece.
 |
| Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu |
Meanwhile, the inflammatory comments were supported by the head of the newly formed “Good Party”, Meral Akşener, who will also make a bid to run Turkey and hinted that they could wage war against Greece.
The statements come at a time when president Erdoğan finds himself emboldened after conducting a military operation in the northern region of neighbouring Syria, Afrin.
In a recent speech, he continued his aggressive rhetoric and hinted he too could confront Greece after issuing a warning to “those who have crossed the line in the Aegean and Cyprus.”
This dispute is historic after the Ottoman Empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers, Britain renounced the agreement and all Turkish claims over Cyprus and declared the island a British colony. In 1915, Britain offered Cyprus to Constantine I of Greece on condition that Greece join the war on the side of the British, which he declined.
Then Turkey invaded Cyprus in July 1974, when Turkish forces invaded and captured 3% of the island before a ceasefire was declared. The Operation was called 'Cyprus Peace Operation' and Greek: Τουρκική εισβολή στην Κύπρο, code-named by Turkey as Operation Attila Turkish: Atilla Harekâtı) was a Turkish military invasion of the island country of Cyprus. It was launched on 20 July 1974, following the Cypriot coup d'état on 15 July 1974.
The Greek military junta collapsed and was replaced by a democratic government. In August 1974 another Turkish invasion resulted in the capture of approximately 40% of the island. The ceasefire line from August 1974 became the United Nations Buffer Zone in Cyprus and is commonly referred to as the Green Line.
The coup had been ordered by the military Junta in Greece and staged by the Cypriot National Guard in conjunction with EOKA-B. It deposed the Cypriot president Archbishop Makarios III and installed the pro-Enosis Nikos Sampson. The aim of the coup was the annexation of the island by Greece, and the Hellenic Republic of Cyprus was declared.
Erdogan, by this operations and regarding that his ultimate goal to surpass the legacy of all the previous Turkish leaders, set some objectives for the future elections, in 2023, the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Turkish Republic, and for 2071, the 1000th anniversary of the Batthe of Manzikert, that Muslim Turkic from Central Asia defeated the Christian Greek Byzantine forces in the Armenian Byzantine Empire.
The idea behind these goals is to create nationalistic cohesion towards annexing more land to Turkey
If Erdogan wants to change the Geopolitics and the borders of the Turkey, he must annul the Lausanne Treaty. Ironically, ahead of his two-day official visit to Greece in December announced as a sign of a new era in Turkish-Greek relations.
During this visit, the first official visit to Greece by a Turkish leader in 65 years, Erdogan told Greek journalists that the Lausanne Treaty is in need of an update.
Meanwhile, the CHP has been equally aggressive in its rhetoric, with Kılıçdaroğlu telling the Turkish parliament that Greece has "occupied" 18 islands.
When Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos was described as "uncomfortable" with this statement, CHP's deputy leader for foreign affairs, Öztürk Yılmaz, responded, "Greece should not test our patience."
The idea behind these goals is to create nationalistic cohesion towards annexing more land to Turkey
If Erdogan wants to change the Geopolitics and the borders of the Turkey, he must annul the Lausanne Treaty. Ironically, ahead of his two-day official visit to Greece in December announced as a sign of a new era in Turkish-Greek relations.
During this visit, the first official visit to Greece by a Turkish leader in 65 years, Erdogan told Greek journalists that the Lausanne Treaty is in need of an update.
Meanwhile, the CHP has been equally aggressive in its rhetoric, with Kılıçdaroğlu telling the Turkish parliament that Greece has "occupied" 18 islands.
When Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos was described as "uncomfortable" with this statement, CHP's deputy leader for foreign affairs, Öztürk Yılmaz, responded, "Greece should not test our patience."
This averment was while Turkey is into a dilema in military operations in Syria, while is supporting Assad government and joining NATO operation, that recently put Turkey in some diplomatic problems, like the bombins of a group of rebels pro-US operations and the problems with Kurdish separatists inside Turkey, supported by rebels.
Despite various shifts in Turkish policy towards the conflict in Syria, opposition to Kurdish autonomy has been constant and absolute.
Neo-Ottomanists in Turkey still proudly embrace the concept of jihad (Islamic holy war) against the kafirs (infidels). The head of the state-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs, the Diyanet, has openly described Turkey’s recent military invasion of Afrin as “jihad.”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/921193/World-War-3-Turkey-threaten-invade-Greece-Aegean-Sea
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11907/turkey-greece-invasion
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-28/why-turkey-wants-invade-greek-islands
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-28/why-turkey-wants-invade-greek-islands
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42818353
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/syrian-rebels-are-using-the-turkish-offensive-to-take-revenge-against-kurds/2018/03/06/85c36eea-1e2d-11e8-8a2c-1a6665f59e95_story.html?utm_term=.d87ef7e72498
Turkey Threatens to Invade Greece
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11907/turkey-greece-invasion
In an incident that took place less than two weeks after the Greek Defense Ministry announced that Turkey had violated Greek airspace 138 times in a single day, a Turkish coast guard patrol boat on February 13 rammed a Greek coast guard vessel off the shore of Imia, one of many Greek islands over which Turkey claims sovereignty.
Most of the areas within modern Greece's current borders were under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-15th century until the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1832. The islands, however, like the rest of Greece, are legally and historically Greek, as their names indicate.
Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), however, and even much of the opposition seem intent on, if not obsessed with, invading and conquering these Greek islands, on the grounds that they are actually Turkish territory.
In December, for instance, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main Turkish opposition CHP party, stated that when he wins the election in 2019, he will "invade and take over 18 Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, just as former Turkish PM Bulent Ecevit invaded Cyprus in 1974." He said that there is "no document" proving that those islands belong to Greece.
Meral Akşener, the head of the newly established opposition "Good Party," has also called for an invasion and conquest of the islands. "What is required must be done," she tweeted on January 13.
...
The Ottoman dynasty and empire was established by a nomadic Turkmen chief sometime around the year 1300. During the more than 600 years of the Ottoman period, the Ottoman Turks, who also represented the Islamic Caliphate, regularly launched wars of jihad, invading and occupying lands across three continents.
Neo-Ottomanists in Turkey still proudly embrace the concept of jihad (Islamic holy war) against the kafirs (infidels). The head of the state-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs, the Diyanet, has openly described Turkey's recent military invasion of Afrin as "jihad."
This designation makes sense when one considers that Muslim Turks owe their demographic majority in Asia Minor to centuries of Turkish Muslim persecution and discrimination against the Christian, Yazidi and Jewish inhabitants of the area. In the 11th century, Turkic jihadists from Central Asia invaded and conquered the Greek-speaking, Christian Byzantine Empire, paving the way for the gradual Turkification and Islamization of the region through methods such as murder, kidnapping, rape and forced conversions.
Op-Ed: Erdogan the Magnificent, Turkey's Neo-Ottoman Revival
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/03/13/op-ed-erdogan-magnificent-turkeys-neo-ottoman-revival.html
THE ROOTS OF NEO-OTTOMANISM
The term neo-Ottomanism is not new. It has been around since the 1970s and was often used to describe Ankara's irredentist land claims, especially with respect to Greece. It resurfaced again during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and has reappeared intermittently ever since. Its use has become more prevalent in the last decade, however, and now applies equally to both Ankara's irredentist claims as well as the increasing Islamization of Turkish society.
Neo-Ottomanism reflects, in part, political expediency by Erdogan and the AKP. It has been a successful strategy for mobilizing the AKP's base and its nationalist component has been used to isolate the Erdogan regime's enemies. It also, however, is the result of the complex evolution that Turkey's relations with Europe and the United States have undergone since the establishment of the Turkish Republic.
The Kemalist revolution was both modernizing and nationalistic. It represented a decisive turn toward Western concepts of modernity while still extolling Turkish culture and nationalism. Those aspects of Turkish culture that were deemed incompatible with modernization, like the historic Arabic script or traditional dress, for example, were eliminated. Hence, among other things, the Arabic alphabet was replaced with the Latin alphabet, Turkish was purged of Arabic and Persian words and the wearing of a fez, a headdress associated with an oriental cultural identity, was made illegal by Ataturk.
Islam, while not proscribed per se, was seen as an impediment by the Kemalists to Turkish modernization. Hence, while religious life was allowed, and freedom of religion was specifically protected under the Turkish constitution, Ataturk insisted that the new Turkish state would be secular.
Religion would not be allowed in Turkish politics, a proscription that was regularly enforced, as Erdogan found out, as recently as the 1990s. The military, even more so than the courts and the government in general, took upon itself the responsibility of protecting the secular nature of the Turkish state from religious interference.
The Kemalist revolution's embrace of modernity on occasion went even beyond the European practices it was designed to emulate. The Turkish constitution, for example, gave women the right to vote more than a decade before French women won the same right in 1944.
Nationalism was an explicit part of the Kemalist revolution. Ataturk himself had been a war hero. His actions as an Ottoman Army officer during the Gallipoli campaign was what first brought him to national prominence.
The role of the Ottoman Army during the Gallipoli Campaign or against Russian military forces in the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia was extolled and a source of Turkish pride. Turkish nationalism, however, was stripped of any religious context. As defined by Ataturk and the Kemalists, it was Turkish and secular even when it was praising military events that had occurred during the Ottoman caliphate.
Turkey began its discussion to enter the European Union (EU) in 1963 when Ankara signed an association agreement with the European Economic Community. Its stated aim then was to eventually be a full member in the EU. The process would proceed by fit and starts for the next 50 years -- far and away the longest negotiation of any prospective member. Ultimately, it would fail.
Three military coups over this period -- in 1971, 1980 and 1997, as well as the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 -- resulted in a suspension of the ascension process. European misgivings, first about the state of the Turkish economy, Ankara's respect for the rule of law and human rights, and later about the consequences of giving 80 million Turkish citizens, many of whom were practicing Muslims, immigration rights into the EU, also acted to slow down the process.
Nonetheless in October 2004, the European Commission extended an invitation to Turkey to begin formal negotiations for full membership in the EU. Membership would require Turkey to institute a series of legal, economic and political reforms designed to bring it into compliance with EU standards and regulations.
Full membership in the EU seemed like the culmination of the Kemalist revolution launched some 80 years earlier. The AKP then in power, with Erdogan as prime minister, began implementing the prerequisite reforms required for EU membership.
The timing was perfect. Turkey was about to enter a prolonged period of economic expansion that would see its GNP grow from $400 billion in 2004, to more than $850 billion in 2016. Per capita income doubled to $11,230 during this period. While still significantly below the more advanced EU economies, that number was comparable to newly entered states such as Poland and Hungary.
The ascension talks, however, went nowhere. In the wake of the rise of jihadist violence in Europe and the Middle East, significant political opposition began to emerge, first among right-wing parties, but as the decade wore on also among centrist political parties, opposing Turkish membership in the EU.
In June 2016, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued a report in which it noted that, "recent developments in Turkey pertaining to freedom of the media and of expression, erosion of the rule of law and the human rights violations in relation to anti-terrorism security operations in southeast Turkey have ... raised serious questions about the functioning of its democratic institutions."
In short, the growing consensus within Europe was that Turkey was simply not ready for membership in the EU.
Starting around 2007, the AKP began moving away from its goal of full membership in the European Union. Officially, Ankara continued to insist that it wanted to join the EU but, within the AKP, there was a growing realization that it was not going to happen.
Even though many of the elements of neo-Ottomanism had been around for decades, it was at that point that they began to feature more prominently in the AKP's politics. In other words, rejected by modern, secular Europe, the AKP looked to define a new role for Turkey -- one that would embrace its Ottoman and Islamic heritage rather than rejecting it as the Kemalists had done. Neo-Ottomanism was the ideology that would position Turkey as an Islamic and Middle Eastern power.
The roots of the AKP had always been in Turkey's rural areas among socially conservative voters who had never fully embraced Ataturk's vision of a completely secular Turkey. The fact that Islamist political themes resonated well in these areas meant that Ankara's search for a new role for Turkey also played well to its domestic political base. Even now, the AKP generally loses the urban vote in Turkish elections but makes up for it with widespread support in rural areas.
As the main guarantors of Turkish secularism, the AKP's domestic political agenda was bound to bring it into conflict with the Turkish military. Starting in 2007, Erdogan began to rid the military of senior officers he believed would stand in the way of a more politically Islamist Turkey. The government, claiming that it had uncovered plots to stage a military coup, brought court cases against what it claimed were complicit senior officers in the armed forces.
The court cases against the Turkish Armed Forces, known as the Sledgehammer and Ergenekon cases, were highly controversial and tainted by questionable evidence. For example, a document produced by the government purported to have been written in 2003, laying out the plans for the coup, was later shown to have been written with a 2007 version of Microsoft Word.
Erdogan's efforts to rid the leadership of the Turkish Armed Forces of potential opponents reached its crescendo in July 2016, when he announced that the Turkish military had attempted to stage a coup against the government.
Using the alleged coup as a pretext, Erdogan would, between July 2016 and December 2017, dismiss some 150,000 government and military officials. He also imprisoned or had dismissed almost 2,000 journalists and he shut down more than 50 media outlets that the government accused of spreading falsehoods and insulting the Turkish president.
In 2017, Erdogan also orchestrated a popular referendum designed to amend the Turkish constitution to expand the executive powers of the presidency at the expense of the Turkish parliament. The referendum narrowly passed. It was defeated in Turkey's main urban centers such as Istanbul or Izmir but got widespread support in rural areas.
The referendum, combined with the crackdown of his critics following the alleged coup, was cited by Erdogan's opponents as proof of his growing authoritarianism.
TURKEY'S NEO-OTTOMANISM TODAY
1. THE RESTORATION OF MANY TRADITIONAL ISLAMIC PRACTICES TO TURKEY'S SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LIFE.
2. A GLORIFICATION OF TURKEY'S OTTOMAN HERITAGE.
3. PROMOTING SUNNISM.
4. MOVING TOWARD AUTHORITARIANISM.
5. CHALLENGING POST-WWI TREATIES.
Erdoğan makes “grey wolf” sign at rally
https://ahvalnews6.com/recep-tayyip-erdogan/erdogan-makes-grey-wolf-sign-rally
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made a hand gesture associated with a far-right street-fighting group at a rally, left-wing BirGün newspaper said .
He made the gesture, which is meant to look like a wolf and is associated with the far right Idealist Hearths movement, who are also known as the Grey Wolves, while reciting one of his favourite slogans: “One nation, one flag, one state, one homeland.”
The Grey Wolves have traditionally been associated with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), a right-wing political party which is expected to contest the next election as part of an alliance with Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
After the gesture, Erdoğan made the Rabia gesture, a four-fingered salute with thumb bent signifying Muslim Brotherhood defiance of the Sisi regime in Egypt.
When the crowds began shouting for Erdoğan to enlist them for the Afrin operation, he conjured up an image of a mass campaign.
“When the time comes to order the campaign, first I, and then we all will go,” he said. “Because we believe in martyrdom.”
Turkey's iron lady: 'It's time for the men in power to feel fear'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/03/turkey-meral-aksener-time-for-the-men-in-power-to-feel-fear
Meral Akşener stood near a statue of the Turkish republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in the Black Sea town of Giresun earlier this year, as she lambasted and mocked the ruling party of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
His apparatchiks had hurt their hands, she told the farmers in the crowd, counting the millions of euros with which they’d enriched themselves while in office. Across the square a giant banner implored: “Save us, iron lady.”
Whatever the president touches turns to dust, she said. He once dubbed Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator and ally turned foe, “Brother Assad.”
“Back when everything was up in the air, I was the first person to declare my candidacy against Erdoğan,” Akşener, the leader of the İyi (Good) party, told the Guardian. “I have said this since the beginning of the process, in the first round, everyone should simply vote for their own candidate. In the second round, for the sake of our democracy, for our country, the opposition should leave aside its bickering and support the opposition candidate, whoever it is.
“This election is one of the most important elections of our country’s history.”
“Turkey is mainly a right-wing country – since the country became a multiparty democracy in 1950, the left has ruled for only 17 months,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute and author of a biography of Erdoğan. “Her party will be a serious challenge, at least a major headache to him from his soft flank, the right.”
But that rightwing appeal means Akşener will also have to contend with the ultranationalist and racist history of her political forebears, a legacy that has earned her İyi party comparisons with Europe’s populist, anti-immigrant wave, a charge she vehemently denies.
The Grey Wolves, the once-paramilitary wing of the MHP, was implicated in numerous incidents of political violence in the 1970s and 80s, the massacre of Alevis, and an attempted assassination of pope John Paul II.
Kurdish voters in Turkey’s southeast have always been wary of nationalist politicians, and Akşener’s tenure as interior minister occurred during one of the worst periods of human rights violations by the state against Kurds in the region.
She will face an uphill battle in convincing them to back her in a possible second round of presidential elections, and she has said little on efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue, speaking in more general terms about preserving the nation’s identity while respecting the rights of minority groups. Akşener has said her party, headed as it is by the granddaughter of immigrants, is open to all identities.
Turkey Threatens to Invade Greece
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11907/turkey-greece-invasion
In an incident that took place less than two weeks after the Greek Defense Ministry announced that Turkey had violated Greek airspace 138 times in a single day, a Turkish coast guard patrol boat on February 13 rammed a Greek coast guard vessel off the shore of Imia, one of many Greek islands over which Turkey claims sovereignty.
Most of the areas within modern Greece's current borders were under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-15th century until the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1832. The islands, however, like the rest of Greece, are legally and historically Greek, as their names indicate.
Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), however, and even much of the opposition seem intent on, if not obsessed with, invading and conquering these Greek islands, on the grounds that they are actually Turkish territory.
In December, for instance, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main Turkish opposition CHP party, stated that when he wins the election in 2019, he will "invade and take over 18 Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, just as former Turkish PM Bulent Ecevit invaded Cyprus in 1974." He said that there is "no document" proving that those islands belong to Greece.
Meral Akşener, the head of the newly established opposition "Good Party," has also called for an invasion and conquest of the islands. "What is required must be done," she tweeted on January 13.
...
The Ottoman dynasty and empire was established by a nomadic Turkmen chief sometime around the year 1300. During the more than 600 years of the Ottoman period, the Ottoman Turks, who also represented the Islamic Caliphate, regularly launched wars of jihad, invading and occupying lands across three continents.
Neo-Ottomanists in Turkey still proudly embrace the concept of jihad (Islamic holy war) against the kafirs (infidels). The head of the state-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs, the Diyanet, has openly described Turkey's recent military invasion of Afrin as "jihad."
This designation makes sense when one considers that Muslim Turks owe their demographic majority in Asia Minor to centuries of Turkish Muslim persecution and discrimination against the Christian, Yazidi and Jewish inhabitants of the area. In the 11th century, Turkic jihadists from Central Asia invaded and conquered the Greek-speaking, Christian Byzantine Empire, paving the way for the gradual Turkification and Islamization of the region through methods such as murder, kidnapping, rape and forced conversions.
Op-Ed: Erdogan the Magnificent, Turkey's Neo-Ottoman Revival
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/03/13/op-ed-erdogan-magnificent-turkeys-neo-ottoman-revival.html
THE ROOTS OF NEO-OTTOMANISM
The term neo-Ottomanism is not new. It has been around since the 1970s and was often used to describe Ankara's irredentist land claims, especially with respect to Greece. It resurfaced again during the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and has reappeared intermittently ever since. Its use has become more prevalent in the last decade, however, and now applies equally to both Ankara's irredentist claims as well as the increasing Islamization of Turkish society.
Neo-Ottomanism reflects, in part, political expediency by Erdogan and the AKP. It has been a successful strategy for mobilizing the AKP's base and its nationalist component has been used to isolate the Erdogan regime's enemies. It also, however, is the result of the complex evolution that Turkey's relations with Europe and the United States have undergone since the establishment of the Turkish Republic.
The Kemalist revolution was both modernizing and nationalistic. It represented a decisive turn toward Western concepts of modernity while still extolling Turkish culture and nationalism. Those aspects of Turkish culture that were deemed incompatible with modernization, like the historic Arabic script or traditional dress, for example, were eliminated. Hence, among other things, the Arabic alphabet was replaced with the Latin alphabet, Turkish was purged of Arabic and Persian words and the wearing of a fez, a headdress associated with an oriental cultural identity, was made illegal by Ataturk.
Islam, while not proscribed per se, was seen as an impediment by the Kemalists to Turkish modernization. Hence, while religious life was allowed, and freedom of religion was specifically protected under the Turkish constitution, Ataturk insisted that the new Turkish state would be secular.
Religion would not be allowed in Turkish politics, a proscription that was regularly enforced, as Erdogan found out, as recently as the 1990s. The military, even more so than the courts and the government in general, took upon itself the responsibility of protecting the secular nature of the Turkish state from religious interference.
The Kemalist revolution's embrace of modernity on occasion went even beyond the European practices it was designed to emulate. The Turkish constitution, for example, gave women the right to vote more than a decade before French women won the same right in 1944.
Nationalism was an explicit part of the Kemalist revolution. Ataturk himself had been a war hero. His actions as an Ottoman Army officer during the Gallipoli campaign was what first brought him to national prominence.
The role of the Ottoman Army during the Gallipoli Campaign or against Russian military forces in the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia was extolled and a source of Turkish pride. Turkish nationalism, however, was stripped of any religious context. As defined by Ataturk and the Kemalists, it was Turkish and secular even when it was praising military events that had occurred during the Ottoman caliphate.
Turkey began its discussion to enter the European Union (EU) in 1963 when Ankara signed an association agreement with the European Economic Community. Its stated aim then was to eventually be a full member in the EU. The process would proceed by fit and starts for the next 50 years -- far and away the longest negotiation of any prospective member. Ultimately, it would fail.
Three military coups over this period -- in 1971, 1980 and 1997, as well as the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 -- resulted in a suspension of the ascension process. European misgivings, first about the state of the Turkish economy, Ankara's respect for the rule of law and human rights, and later about the consequences of giving 80 million Turkish citizens, many of whom were practicing Muslims, immigration rights into the EU, also acted to slow down the process.
Nonetheless in October 2004, the European Commission extended an invitation to Turkey to begin formal negotiations for full membership in the EU. Membership would require Turkey to institute a series of legal, economic and political reforms designed to bring it into compliance with EU standards and regulations.
Full membership in the EU seemed like the culmination of the Kemalist revolution launched some 80 years earlier. The AKP then in power, with Erdogan as prime minister, began implementing the prerequisite reforms required for EU membership.
The timing was perfect. Turkey was about to enter a prolonged period of economic expansion that would see its GNP grow from $400 billion in 2004, to more than $850 billion in 2016. Per capita income doubled to $11,230 during this period. While still significantly below the more advanced EU economies, that number was comparable to newly entered states such as Poland and Hungary.
The ascension talks, however, went nowhere. In the wake of the rise of jihadist violence in Europe and the Middle East, significant political opposition began to emerge, first among right-wing parties, but as the decade wore on also among centrist political parties, opposing Turkish membership in the EU.
In June 2016, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued a report in which it noted that, "recent developments in Turkey pertaining to freedom of the media and of expression, erosion of the rule of law and the human rights violations in relation to anti-terrorism security operations in southeast Turkey have ... raised serious questions about the functioning of its democratic institutions."
In short, the growing consensus within Europe was that Turkey was simply not ready for membership in the EU.
Starting around 2007, the AKP began moving away from its goal of full membership in the European Union. Officially, Ankara continued to insist that it wanted to join the EU but, within the AKP, there was a growing realization that it was not going to happen.
Even though many of the elements of neo-Ottomanism had been around for decades, it was at that point that they began to feature more prominently in the AKP's politics. In other words, rejected by modern, secular Europe, the AKP looked to define a new role for Turkey -- one that would embrace its Ottoman and Islamic heritage rather than rejecting it as the Kemalists had done. Neo-Ottomanism was the ideology that would position Turkey as an Islamic and Middle Eastern power.
The roots of the AKP had always been in Turkey's rural areas among socially conservative voters who had never fully embraced Ataturk's vision of a completely secular Turkey. The fact that Islamist political themes resonated well in these areas meant that Ankara's search for a new role for Turkey also played well to its domestic political base. Even now, the AKP generally loses the urban vote in Turkish elections but makes up for it with widespread support in rural areas.
As the main guarantors of Turkish secularism, the AKP's domestic political agenda was bound to bring it into conflict with the Turkish military. Starting in 2007, Erdogan began to rid the military of senior officers he believed would stand in the way of a more politically Islamist Turkey. The government, claiming that it had uncovered plots to stage a military coup, brought court cases against what it claimed were complicit senior officers in the armed forces.
The court cases against the Turkish Armed Forces, known as the Sledgehammer and Ergenekon cases, were highly controversial and tainted by questionable evidence. For example, a document produced by the government purported to have been written in 2003, laying out the plans for the coup, was later shown to have been written with a 2007 version of Microsoft Word.
Erdogan's efforts to rid the leadership of the Turkish Armed Forces of potential opponents reached its crescendo in July 2016, when he announced that the Turkish military had attempted to stage a coup against the government.
Using the alleged coup as a pretext, Erdogan would, between July 2016 and December 2017, dismiss some 150,000 government and military officials. He also imprisoned or had dismissed almost 2,000 journalists and he shut down more than 50 media outlets that the government accused of spreading falsehoods and insulting the Turkish president.
In 2017, Erdogan also orchestrated a popular referendum designed to amend the Turkish constitution to expand the executive powers of the presidency at the expense of the Turkish parliament. The referendum narrowly passed. It was defeated in Turkey's main urban centers such as Istanbul or Izmir but got widespread support in rural areas.
The referendum, combined with the crackdown of his critics following the alleged coup, was cited by Erdogan's opponents as proof of his growing authoritarianism.
TURKEY'S NEO-OTTOMANISM TODAY
1. THE RESTORATION OF MANY TRADITIONAL ISLAMIC PRACTICES TO TURKEY'S SOCIAL AND CULTURAL LIFE.
2. A GLORIFICATION OF TURKEY'S OTTOMAN HERITAGE.
3. PROMOTING SUNNISM.
4. MOVING TOWARD AUTHORITARIANISM.
5. CHALLENGING POST-WWI TREATIES.
Erdoğan makes “grey wolf” sign at rally
https://ahvalnews6.com/recep-tayyip-erdogan/erdogan-makes-grey-wolf-sign-rally
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has made a hand gesture associated with a far-right street-fighting group at a rally, left-wing BirGün newspaper said .
He made the gesture, which is meant to look like a wolf and is associated with the far right Idealist Hearths movement, who are also known as the Grey Wolves, while reciting one of his favourite slogans: “One nation, one flag, one state, one homeland.”
The Grey Wolves have traditionally been associated with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), a right-wing political party which is expected to contest the next election as part of an alliance with Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP).
After the gesture, Erdoğan made the Rabia gesture, a four-fingered salute with thumb bent signifying Muslim Brotherhood defiance of the Sisi regime in Egypt.
When the crowds began shouting for Erdoğan to enlist them for the Afrin operation, he conjured up an image of a mass campaign.
“When the time comes to order the campaign, first I, and then we all will go,” he said. “Because we believe in martyrdom.”
Turkey's iron lady: 'It's time for the men in power to feel fear'
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/03/turkey-meral-aksener-time-for-the-men-in-power-to-feel-fear
Meral Akşener stood near a statue of the Turkish republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in the Black Sea town of Giresun earlier this year, as she lambasted and mocked the ruling party of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
His apparatchiks had hurt their hands, she told the farmers in the crowd, counting the millions of euros with which they’d enriched themselves while in office. Across the square a giant banner implored: “Save us, iron lady.”
Whatever the president touches turns to dust, she said. He once dubbed Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s dictator and ally turned foe, “Brother Assad.”
“Back when everything was up in the air, I was the first person to declare my candidacy against Erdoğan,” Akşener, the leader of the İyi (Good) party, told the Guardian. “I have said this since the beginning of the process, in the first round, everyone should simply vote for their own candidate. In the second round, for the sake of our democracy, for our country, the opposition should leave aside its bickering and support the opposition candidate, whoever it is.
“This election is one of the most important elections of our country’s history.”
“Turkey is mainly a right-wing country – since the country became a multiparty democracy in 1950, the left has ruled for only 17 months,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute and author of a biography of Erdoğan. “Her party will be a serious challenge, at least a major headache to him from his soft flank, the right.”
But that rightwing appeal means Akşener will also have to contend with the ultranationalist and racist history of her political forebears, a legacy that has earned her İyi party comparisons with Europe’s populist, anti-immigrant wave, a charge she vehemently denies.
The Grey Wolves, the once-paramilitary wing of the MHP, was implicated in numerous incidents of political violence in the 1970s and 80s, the massacre of Alevis, and an attempted assassination of pope John Paul II.
Kurdish voters in Turkey’s southeast have always been wary of nationalist politicians, and Akşener’s tenure as interior minister occurred during one of the worst periods of human rights violations by the state against Kurds in the region.
She will face an uphill battle in convincing them to back her in a possible second round of presidential elections, and she has said little on efforts to resolve the Kurdish issue, speaking in more general terms about preserving the nation’s identity while respecting the rights of minority groups. Akşener has said her party, headed as it is by the granddaughter of immigrants, is open to all identities.
Comentários
Postar um comentário