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ISTANBUL The scenes of Turkeys bloody and abortive military coup last July still scar Uskudar, an old waterside district of Istanbul that was a deadly front of violence that night and remains, nearly a year later, a wellspring of the nations rage.

Residents nervously recall the armored vehicles that appeared thatnight, the rattle of gunfire and the snarling of motorcycles whisking the wounded to the hospital. At least 13 people from Uskudar were killed during the attempted coup, a cataclysm in Turkey that left more than 200 people dead, an anxious country betrayed and the government consumed with a vigorous hunt for it enemies.

So it came as some surprise last month when the residents of Uskudar voted to defeat a measurethat gave the president greater powers rejecting a set of constitutional changes that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his allies had pitched to the country as a patriotic response to the treachery in July. ThatErdogan has a house in Uskudar and votes in the district made it all the more surprising.

The presidents resolute loyalists ultimately propelled him to anationwide victory in the referendum, as they have time and again in votes since 2002, defiantly rejecting criticism that the changes doomed Turkey to one-man rule. But thenarrow win and the defeat of the measure in places such as Uskudar, as well as in Turkeys three largest cities, has also prompted an unusual degree ofintrospection among some supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and even a hint of dissent.

In interviews with supporters of the party in Uskudar and elsewhere, there was an acknowledgment that voters had delivered the AKP a message, although its meaning was disputed. Erdogans most hardcore advocates brushed off the losses in big cities, insisting that the slim margin was due to campaign blundersor the obdurate views of opposition party voters.

Others, though, conceded that the vote had aggravated unsustainable societal divisions in Turkey. And in more damning, albeit guarded, critiques, the party was accused of arrogance and thegovernment of being fixated onits purge of enemies, which for some had gone too far.

Melih Ecertas, the 30-year-old national youth leader of the AKP, who splits his time between Uskudar and Ankara, the capital, said the partys no voters fell into roughly two camps. They included a cohort loyal to elder statesmen in the party who had been shunted from Erdogans inner circle over the past few years and who had remained noticeably silent during the governments all-out effort to pass the constitutional changes.

[Inside a nervous Turkish newsroom as the government closes in]

Then there were those who questioned why the party, given its success, felt compelled to pursue such a drastic transformation in Turkeys system of governance.

They say, Why the change? We are powerful, Ecertas said.

In one subtle but high-profile complaint, Abdullah Gul, a founder of the AKP and Turkeys former president, on Thursday broke the relative silence he had maintained during the referendum campaign and called for a comprehensive reform process in Turkey.It was ostensibly a response to a decision by a leading European human rights body to begin monitoring Turkey for the first time in more than a decade. But Gul also appeared to be drawing a contrast between his partys earlier era when he was a key figure and the present.

Reform, he said, will bring democracy, law and human rights standards closer to universal criteria by rapidly expelling the psychological trauma created by the treacherous July 15 coup.

Growing up with Erdogan

Ecertas, the youth leader, was one of the AKPs most tireless advocates in the run-up to the referendum, shepherding a direct-mail campaignto young Turks that he said reached more than 14 million voters.He used PowerPoint slides and handouts to argue the merits of the constitutional amendments to journalists changes that converted Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system and brought the country critically needed stability, he said.

Ecertas was among a generation first drawn to politics in the 1990s as Erdogan rose to prominence, revered for his charisma and his vows to champion the values of conservative Muslims in Turkeys largely secular public sphere.

My father admired him a lot, said Ecertas, who was 7 when Erdogan became the mayor of Istanbul. All of Turkey admired Erdogan.

Ecertas attended religious schools in Istanbul and Emerson College in Boston as a Fulbright scholar. After university, he formally joined the AKP in 2011, seeingthe party as a force for change not just an Islamist movement advocating for conservatives such as himself, but a challenger to Turkeys ossified politics and a modernizing force.

The referendum victory was the culmination of the partys struggles. The day of the vote, he said, is the day we changed the system, that once forbade religious schools, the Koran. The system will never allow anyone to do anything that the Turkish population doesnt want.

Asked about the defeat of the referendum measure in places such as Uskudar and the AKP members who voted against the party Ecertas said it wasimportant to acknowledge and understand all of the no voters.

Not good for the country

The AKP seems more likely to plot a path toward victory in the next elections, rather than reflect on the complaints of disaffected supporters, according to Fehmi Koru, a journalist who is close to senior AKP figures and said he had voted with the party since it came to power.

Koru, who has known Abdullah Gul since the two participated in a religious youth movement together, said that when the AKP came to power in 2002, it was very much interested in making the country more free, he said. The government served the people, he added, saying that people who voted for the AKP like me voted with a clear conscience.

His disappointment had grown over thepast five years because of Turkeys economic problems, the governments foreign policy decisions and the feeling that, increasingly, Turkey was not a united country. In the aftermath of the coup attempt, his journalist friends were imprisoned as the government widened a crackdown beyond the followers ofFethullah Gulen, anexiled Turkish cleric the authorities accuse of orchestrating the unsuccessful attempt to take over the government.

Cracks were visible in the relationshipbetween Turks and the AKP-led government, Koru said. When people look at them, they dont say they are very modest and alleviate the peoples problems. How do I say this they are too sure of themselves, he said.

He voted against the referendum measure partly because a parliamentary system was more in line with Turkeys history, he said, but also because it was a radical change that appeared designed to serve Erdogan.The president, he said, loves the people, and the people love him.But Turkey would be stuck with the changes after Erdogan left the scene.

This is not good for the country, he said.

Sharpened battle lines

For some AKP supporters in Uskudar, acknowledging Turkeys malaise did not mean a loss of faith in the president. In shops that stood empty because of the struggling economy, among residents frustrated with a lack of municipal services, there was a conviction that Erdogan would persevere.

The presidentis very clever, said Selen Ulustu, 40, who runs a beauty supplies store. Thats why he is the winner.

More importantly, she said, the referendum had clarified a struggle between observant Muslims like her, whose frame of reference was Turkeys Ottoman history, and Erdogans opponents, for whom history began with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk,the founder of Turkeys modern secular republic.The coup attempt had only sharpened the battle lines.

There are some people who are not aware of its seriousness, said Ulustu, adding that she had reported at least eight members of her family to the authorities for being suspected Gulenists.

Down the street from her shop, Huda Ozdemir, 24, who attended university in Uskudar and said she came from a conservative Muslim family, was the kind of voter whom the AKP might have reliably courted in the past.

But she balked at thepresidents accumulation of power, at the level of nationalism during the campaign and at what she called the rhetoric of victimhood that the AKP had created in the name of defending conservative women like her.

Shevoted no. And she persuaded her 20-year-old sister, once a determined AKP supporter, to do the same.

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As Turkey's Erdogan savors new powers, there are whispers of dissent among his loyalists - Washington Post

Published time: 2 May, 2017 13:50 Edited time: 3 May, 2017 09:45

Turkey will say goodbye to the EU if it refuses to open new chapters on its accession into the bloc, President Erdogan has stated. It comes after an EU commissioner said Ankaras actions and policies have made it impossible to meet EU criteria to join.

From now on there is no option other than opening the chapters you have not yet opened. If you do not open [them], goodbye, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a Tuesday ceremony to mark his return to the ruling AK Party, as quoted by Reuters.

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His comments came after European Commissioner Johannes Hahn, who oversees EU membership bids, told Reuters that Turkeys limits on press freedom, mass jailing, and diminishing civil rights have made it almost impossible for Turkey to meet EU joining criteria.

Hahn said on Tuesday that EU rules are not negotiable, and that the bloc will not put aside the human rights situation in discussions with Ankara.

Everybodys clear that, currently at least, Turkey is moving away from a European perspective, Hahn said.

There is no version of Turkish democracy. There is only democracy. Turkish people have the same rights to live in freedom as Europeans do.

He stated that the focus of the relationship between the bloc and Ankara has to be something else we have to see what could be done in the future, to see if we can restart some kind of cooperation.

Ankara and Brussels have been in talks for years over the possibility of Turkey joining the EU. The already slow negotiations were stalled even further following Erdogans sweeping crackdown after a failed coup in July 2016.

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Relations have since become even more strained following last months referendum results, which allow Erdogan to be granted sweeping powers when it comes to national matters of legislation, finance, appointments, and civil society. The European Commission has called for an investigation into alleged voting irregularities.

Last year, Ankara agreed to a landmark migrant deal with the bloc which would see it take back all illegal migrants landing in Greece from its shores, in exchange for accelerated talks on becoming a member of the bloc and billions in refugee assistance from the EU.

Turkey also rallied for visa-free travel to Europes Schengen zone as part of the deal, but was told by the EU that a list of 72 conditions must first be met a key sticking point of which is Turkeys strict anti-terrorism laws, which Europe has said must be loosened in order for that agreement to go ahead.

Erdogan has repeatedly threatened to destroy the deal if Brussels does not hold up its end of the agreement, a move which could see Europe once again struggling to deal with an overwhelming influx of refugees.

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Erdogan threatens to say goodbye to EU as official warns ...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began his first 100 days last week as head of Turkeys new regime by reverting to membership in the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). He is now set to be re-elected as chairman on the 21st of this month.

Once this happens he will no longer be the theoretical president of all the Turks but, in practice, president of the AKPs conservative, devout constituency constituting half the populace. This is certain to further alienate the already alienated liberal, secular 50 per cent of Turks.

Under the unamended constitution, the Turkish president was meant to be a neutral, largely ceremonial figure. However, as soon as he was inaugurated in August 2014, after serving for 11 years as prime minister, Erdogan usurped the powers of his previous office, with the backing of his majority parliamentary party.

Although his 18 amendments were approved by a narrow margin 51.4 per cent in the April 16th referendum Erdogans return to the AKP has demonstrated he intends to move ahead with his drive to remodel the post-Ottoman, Western-style Turkish state founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatrk in 1923. Atatrk adopted aggressive lacit and the parliamentary system of governance, appointed the military guarantor of this polity, and decreed all inhabitants of the new state to be Turks. Over the decades Turkey developed checks and balances for the executive, legislature and judiciary.

After becoming prime minister in 2003, Erdogan adopted Atatrks pro-Western external orientation by pursuing Turkeys accession to the European Union (EU). On the internal front he began to erode his countrys secularism by actively promoting religious schools, lifting the ban on women wearing headscarves in state institutions, and attempting to criminalise adultery and introduce alcohol-free zones. He criticised birth control and argued men and women are not equal.

He was able to promote his agenda because the AKP, modelled on the Muslim Brotherhood, dominated the political landscape and could count on maintaining its majority in parliament thanks to weakness and division among secular rivals. The AKPs control of parliament removed the legislature as a check on Erdogans ambitions. In 2013, following allegations of AKP corruption, Erdogan began to purge the judiciary, which he escalated dramatically last year after the failed mid-July military coup which was followed by mass arrests and dismissals of judges, prosecutors, and police.

Erdogan also purged the military in stages, beginning in 2007 with allegations of a coup plot by secular nationalists in the armed forces command and peaking after the failed 2016 coup. The military no longer has the power to act as guarantor of Atatrks state.

Since the AKP is heir to three fundamentalist parties National Salvation, Welfare, and Virtue and denied power by the military, Erdogan had no intention of permitting the generals to intervene again.

The constitutional amendments transform Turkeys parliamentary system into a presidential model by abolishing the role of prime minister and conferring on the president sweeping executive powers. He not only exercises authority over the legislature but is also empowered to draw up the state budget and appoint cabinet ministers, members of the National Security Council and 12 out of 15 judges to the constitutional court. Prosecutors and lower court judges are to be chosen by parliament and president. Checks and balances have been eliminated.

Erdogan could reign until 2029, enabling him to advance the replacement of Atatrks secular model with a faith-based system featuring conservative Sunni tenets and social practices. He claims his aim is to revert to the Ottoman model, has adopted the pomp and circumstance of the Ottoman court, and is often portrayed as a pasha in a turban and flowing garments.

He is, in fact, cherry-picking elements of the Ottoman regime, adopting some, eschewing others. The most important Ottoman practice he has rejected is toleration of multiple ethnicities, religious faiths, and cultures. Instead, he has embraced post-Ottoman, Kemalist ethnic Turkish nationalism which forced Greek and Armenian Christians to flee and angered the Kurds, 20 per cent of the population. For generations they have been dubbed mountain Turks, and their Indo-Aryan ethnic identity, language and culture have been suppressed, driving them to revolt.

Erdogans critics argue his referendum victory was undemocratic since opponents of his amendments were prevented from campaigning and the result was fraudulent due to the acceptance by the election commission of ballots without its authentication stamps. The opposition is strong in Turkeys three major cities Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir while Erdogans supporters live mainly in rural areas and provincial towns. The divide is largely between secular, urban Turks and devout, conservative, urban working class, small town and village Turks.

Reliance on his constituency without conciliating opponents could lead to demonstrations in Turkeys cities similar to the countrywide protests in 2013 sparked by Ankaras decision to build a mosque and mall in Istanbuls Gezi park, the citys greenzone. Protesters demonstrated against corruption, limitations on press freedom, destruction of the environment, and Erdogans erosion of secularism.

Despite his harsh crackdown on domestic dissent, Erdogan remains vulnerable. In 2015 he rekindled the 30-year war against the Kurds after nearly two years of ceasefire and negotiations. His promotion of war in Syria by facilitating the movement of foreign fighters and arms across Turkey into Syria, and supporting Muslim Brotherhood-linked expatriate Syrian oppositionists, has backfired.

Al-Qaeda and Islamic State have taken over from moderate rebels, prospered in Syria and Iraq, formed cells in Turkeys towns and cities and carried out bombings in Ankara and Istanbul. The Turkish army has been drawn into the Syrian conflict. Jihadis have infiltrated Europe via Turkey and mounted operations in Belgium and France. Radical recruiters have inspired attacks elsewhere in Europe.

Turkeys relations with the US, EU and Nato have been damaged. Erdogans first post-referendum journey was to India, where he was warmly welcomed by Hindu revivalist Narendra Modi. Erdogan will shortly meet his US counterpart Donald Trump who has made a practice of inviting to the White House authoritarian rulers, shunned by his predecessor.

Michael Jansen is based in Cyprus and writes for The Irish Times about the Middle East

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Erdogan remains vulnerable despite power grab - Irish Times

The Turkish community in exile targeted by Erdogan because of their interest in preserving democracy in their country is planning a series of demonstrations; and the first one will likely take place in front of the Saudi embassy. These events will place a harsh focus on Saudi Arabia's own well-documented human rights abuses right before President Trump's visit to that country on May 25th.

The Turkish nationals, whose crime is that they might be members of an opposition political party, some who have been legally living in Saudi Arabia for the past 40 years, are being deported from Saudi Arabia back to Turkey where they fear they will undergo barbaric methods of torture under Erdogan's order.

The barbarity of their detention is underscored by the fact that entire families including children are also subjected to deportation. These supposed criminals are professionals doctors, lawyers, and teachers that have demonstrated their civility and humanity while working in Saudi Arabia. They were taken into custody on March 15th, 2017, treated like terrorists by the Saudi police, and are being held without any legal rationale. In essence, they have become stateless by the Saudi's own lack of concern for basic human rights

Terrified for their loved ones' lives, the family members of the 11 individuals have hired Gotham Government Relations to resolve this matter. Whatever their political leanings, these 11 should not be unlawfully detained because an increasingly dictatorial and paranoid government wants them returned so they can be persecuted; just as thousands of Turkish citizens currently living in the country under Erdogan's reign of terror are experiencing as the whole world watches.

The Saudi Arabian government, acting as Erdogan's lapdog, has blocked any of Gotham's attempts to save these 11 innocent individuals lives. Saudi Arabia has rejected any meeting request to discuss this urgent situation which leaves the rest of the world wondering if Saudi Arabia is simply serving as a proxy for the human rights abusing Erdogan.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/saudi-arabia-serving-as-proxy-for-erdogan-as-he-extends-his-anti-human-rights-campaign-to-turks-living-all-over-the-world-300451656.html

SOURCE Gotham Government Relations

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Saudi Arabia serving as proxy for Erdogan as he extends his anti-human rights campaign to Turks living all over the ... - PR Newswire (press release)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Istanbul, April 16, 2017.(photo byREUTERS/Murad Sezerm)

Author:Ali Bayramoglu Posted May 4, 2017

On a flight back from India this week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed the West for criticizing Turkeys state of emergency, in place since the botched coup attempt in July 2016. Speaking to journalists accompanying him on the trip, he said, The West, which fails to see the state of emergency in France, is attempting to criticize a process that we are carrying out in tranquility. What has the state of emergency in Turkey done? Has it taken away anything from [businesspeople]? Has it affected businesses? He argued that without the state of emergency, the authorities would have failed to have struggled as well as they have against the Kurdistan WorkersParty (PKK) and followers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara calls the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization (FETO) and holds responsible for the coup attempt.

Given the suspension of basic rights and freedoms, associating the state of emergency with social peace is simply ironic, not to mention that Ankara is flouting even the constitutional limits for the use of emergency-rule powers. For Turkish citizens of a certain age, todays atmosphere evokes the scary climate of the military rule after the 1980 coup, when the campaign of suppression was called a tranquility operation.

Erdogan may claim the state of emergency is conducted in peace, and even without harming anyone, but the toll is out thereas plain as day. On April 2, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu offered the following summary of the crackdown on Gulenistsor dissidents accused of being such: So far, 113,260 people have been detained in connection with FETO. The number of those who remain arrested today is 47,155, which is a significant number. There are 41,499 peoplewho have been released on the condition of judicial control, while 23,861 others have been freed (without any further action). Those arrested include 10,732 police officers, 7,463 soldiers, including 168 generals, 2,575 judges and prosecutors, 26,177 civilians and 208 administrative chiefs.

This, however, is only a partial picture that omits the toll of the crackdown on the Kurds. The state of emergency has seen the detention of some 9,000 members of the Kurdish-dominated Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), about 3,000 of whom remain behind bars. Eleven HDP lawmakers, including both of the partys co-chairs, are also in jail. The HDPs sister party, the Democratic Regions Party, which runs 103 local administrations in the mainly Kurdish southeast, has seen 84 of those municipalities handed over to government-appointed trustees and 89 of its co-mayors arrested.

Scores of academics who had signed declarations criticizing Ankaras Kurdish policies have been expelled from universities across the country, while the number of gagged newspapers, magazines and internet sites is beyond counting.

So one thing is obvious: Those punished through emergency-rule instruments are not armed terrorist groups, as Erdogan claims, but members of civic society and political parties. In other words, the measures have targeted legitimate representative and civic structures, bypassing democracy and the law.

There is no doubt now that this chilling policy is a systematic one. Erdogan and the government got what they wanted from the April 16 referendum, and have shown no intention of softening or moderation in its aftermath. This is clearly manifested in the new waves of detentions and suspensions that have followed the vote.

On April 26, the authorities issued detention orders for 3,224 alleged Gulenists. Two days later, 9,000 police officers were suspended from duty on the same grounds. On May 2, the government issued two legislative decrees to expel some 4,000 public employees, including 1,000 military officers and 485 academics, bringing the total to more than 102,000 expulsions since the state of emergency took effect.

The moves indicate that the government sees its narrow victory in the referendum as a vote of confidence for its authoritarian policies. This, in turn, represents the first convergence between the existing authoritarian practices and the aspired populist institutionalization.

One cannot help but wonder whether the governments war on the Gulen community is a bottomless pit, a saga that will never end. The situation has come to resemble a two-way authoritarian trap. If the presence of Gulenists in the state is a threat to the rule of law, the ferocious and often arbitrary measures against them have become another.

No one can really tell where the truth lies exactly. If the Gulenists have really entrenched themselves to an extent that justifies this massive toll, Turkey does face a predicament that will be difficult to overcome. Alternately, if the Gulenists power is exaggerated and the governments actions stem from a mix of concern, suspicion and a desire to consolidate power, Turkey faces an equally lasting problem. In either case, the blows to democracy are bound to produce the same outcome: perpetual suspicion, perpetual purges and therefore perpetual disregard of the law. The experience thus far shows that each new suspicion triggers a fresh wave of detentions and expulsions. This is so much so that some public servants, recruited to replace expelled Gulenists, have themselves faced suspension after a while.

Another alarming problem is that this atmosphere has spawned a self-spinning cogwheel that can function without political push. The onslaught on suspected Gulenists and PKK supporters has rested on tip-offs, assumptions and guesses rather than evidence and corroborated suspicion, creating a logic and a mentality of its own. All members of the state apparatus prosecutors, judges, public functionaries and the bureaucrats drawing up the expulsion lists are acting under the influence or the pressure of this atmosphere, sometimes as its executioners and sometimes as its victims. The banality of evil Hannah Arendts famous concept on the normalization of human wickedness is springing to life in Turkey, nourishing authoritarianism from inside the system.

This is also the reason for Turkeys growing introversion and international alienation. The April 25 decision of the Council of Europes Parliamentary Assembly to put Turkey on its watch list was precisely because of the rights violations and arbitrary rule that the state of emergency has produced. The definition of freedom that Erdogan made earlier this year is perhaps the best illustration of the icy rift between Turkey and the West today. Referring to big infrastructure projects by his government, Erdogan said, Hey West! Freedom is not [what you advocate]. Freedom goes through the Marmaray Tunnel. Freedom goes through the Eurasia Tunnel. Freedom goes through the Osmangazi Bridge.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/05/turkey-referendum-emboldened-new-purges-bans.html

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No end in sight for Erdogan's purges after referendum - Al-Monitor