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Turkey’s Erdogan Plays Dictator in Constitutional Fight: Divides Nation as Popularity Wanes – Forbes


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Turkey's Erdogan Plays Dictator in Constitutional Fight: Divides Nation as Popularity Wanes
Forbes
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan secured near dictatorial powers in the recent constitutional referendum. Yet all is not well for the would-be sultan. He predicted that he'd win 60 percent or more of the vote, but barely broke 51 percent after ...
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Turkey's Erdogan Plays Dictator in Constitutional Fight: Divides Nation as Popularity Wanes - Forbes

Turkey arrests more than 800 as Erdogan launches fresh clampdown – Evening Standard

Turkish authorities arrested more than 800 people accused of trying to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in one the biggest operations since a failed coup attempt last year.

Dozens of police officers were among those detained for alleged links with US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Detention orders had been issued for 1,000 people, of which 803 had been detained, security sources said, in operations carried out across all 81 of Turkeys provinces.

Those detained would be taken to the capital Ankara, the sources added.

After the abortive coup in July, authorities arrested 40,000 people and sacked or suspended 120,000 others from a wide range of professions including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with terrorist groups.

The latest arrests come 10 days after a tightly contested referendum approved the expansion of President Tayyip Erdogans powers, according to preliminary results.

The referendum bitterly divided Turkey. Mr Erdogan argues that strengthening the presidency will avert instability associated with coalition governments at a time when Turkey also faces security threats from Islamist and Kurdish militants.

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Turkey arrests more than 800 as Erdogan launches fresh clampdown - Evening Standard

Erdogan’s Referendum Victory Has Left Turkey With an Uncertain Future – The Wire

External Affairs Erdogans referendum victory confirms that the AKP tried to disguise its Islamist identity under the banner of conservative democracy all along.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Credit: Reuters

The Arab Spring shook some societies to the core, precipitating their disintegration. But it was the rise of ISIS, and the ease with which it spread through Syria and Iraq, that truly laid bare the incoherence of the existing states in the Middle East. However, one can get a glimpse of this new Middle East, a chaotic one, from what President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) intend to do in Turkey.

Erdogans victory in a referendum on April 16marks a new era for Turkey and the Middle East. Turkey will slide into an illiberal constitutionalism, which will allow Erdogan to appoint ministers, senior government officials and half the members of the countryshighest judicial body. He will also be able to issue decrees and declare emergencies. According to Erdogan and his supporters, this Ottoman-style political system will bring stability and economic welfare to a country divided by a failedcoup in 2016 that left more than 200 people dead and 100,000 imprisoned. For his opponents either pro-Kemalist, pro-Kurdish or simply secular democrats this has a bad taste of dictatorship, with rights being repressed and freedoms being curbed, while the president receives powers to govern until 2029 with few checks and balances. However, if we look back, we can see that the guiding idea behind Erdogans winner-takes-all strategy has been multiple attempts to advance a sultanate form of constitutionalism thatrelies on Islamic principles.

What came to be known as Turkish post-Islamism after Erdogans victory in 2003, was actually the outcome of a long political confrontation between the secularists and Islamists in Turkey. The forceful dissolution of traditional religious orders during the 1920s when the republic was established led many Islamist groups to organise as underground religious communities. Despite this resurgence of radical Islamist movements by 1990s, the authoritarian conditions that strengthened radical Islamists in the late 1970s in Iran were absent in Turkey. Turkeys Islamists failed to mobilise a broad coalition against the secular regime thathad restricted public expressions of Islam. The failure was partly due to the diversity of Muslim responses to Turkish secularist modernisation.

In the pluralistic and competitive Turkish political environment, Islamists often favoured centre-right parties until the electoral victory of Necmettin Erbakans Welfare Party (RP) in 1995. In 1995 national parliamentary elections, the RP took 22% of the votes and in 1996, it formed a coalition government with the centre-right True Path Party. Erbakan became the prime minister. The RP originates from the National Outlook Movement, which constituted the Islamic political identity in Turkey on the basis of an opposition to the West and the Westernisation process. The political discourse of the RP was anti-liberal, anti-EU and to some extent anti-capitalist. Once in power, it tried to deviate from traditional Turkish foreign policy and tried to improve the relations with the Muslim world. The Turkish military the fierce keeper of Kemalisms secular-nationalist flame saw the RP as a sign of Islamist ascendancy. In 1997, the military launched what was later called a post-modern coup, manipulating the courts and the parliamentary process to suspend Erbakans government. The RP was formally banned by the constitutional court in 1998.

In the meantime, the party activists had already established the Virtue Party in accordance with the National Outlook tradition in 1997, foreseeing the courts decision. However, the military-bureaucratic establishment was also hostile towards the Virtue Party and the Supreme Court filed a claim to ban the party. These developments led to an intense internal debate within the National Outlook Movement about the movements future political strategy and agenda.

A growing philosophical and political rift emerged between traditionalists centred on Erbakan and his chief lieutenant Recai Kutan, and modernists/reformists led by Erdogan and Abdullah Gul. The reformists argued that the party had to rethink its approach to the fundamental issues of democracy, human rights and relations with the West. After the Virtue Party was formally shut down by the constitutional court in 2001, the movement also formally split. The reformists founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001 and the traditionalists, the Felicity Party. In the November 2002 national elections, the AKP gained a huge majority of the seats in the parliament and came to power, while the Felicity Party won only 2.5 % of the vote, short of the 10% needed for parliamentary representation. The AKP sustained its power by its success in the local elections and the national elections since 2003.

The literature on the ideology, character and the social base of the AKP has been growing, revealing its Islamist-conservative character. However, according to some analysts the AKPadopts a new Islamism under the guise of conservative democracy which is different from the Islamism of the National Outlook Movement. This new political vantage carries it towards the centre-right of Turkish politics, embodied by the Democrat Party, Justice Party and Motherland Party. The adoption of neo-liberal economic policies (which is a very radical departure from National Outlooks state-dominated planned economy) makes the party economically neo-liberal, but culturally and socially a conservative party.

Just after its establishment, the AKP advanced a new political identity for the party, called conservative democracy. Not only the term was new to Turkish politics, but it also sounded somewhat like an oxymoron. The notion of conservative democracy has been contested ever since. However, there was a point in this expression which became clearer as time passed. It was argued in Turkish media circles that the AKP tries to disguise its Islamist identity under the banner of conservative democracy.

Today, this suspicion has proved true. We need to ask what is left of the liberal values of human rights and civil liberties proclaimed by the AKP in 2003. Time will tell if Erdogan will be able to govern with authoritarian measures, renewing violence with Kurdish militants, sending troops into Syria and straining relationships with Europe.

Ramin Jahanbegloo is the director of the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace at Jindal Global University.

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Erdogan's Referendum Victory Has Left Turkey With an Uncertain Future - The Wire

Exiled Turkish journalist urges EU to confront Erdogan – Yahoo7 News

AFP on April 27, 2017, 2:20 am

Exiled Turkish journalist urges EU to confront Erdogan

Brussels (AFP) - The exiled former editor-in-chief of Turkish opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet urged EU leaders Wednesday to stand up for their principles and confront President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Can Dundar, who fled to Germany last year while appealing against a near six-year jail term for revealing state secrets, told AFP in an interview however that it could be too late after they abandoned their "ideals" to win a refugee deal with Ankara.

Speaking shortly after Turkey detained more than 1,000 people in a new crackdown against alleged supporters of a cleric accused of orchestrating a coup bid last year, Dundar added that the "whole country is under arrest".

"This is the first time that one president has that kind of power and this is really dangerous. We are fighting against this aggression, all we have is just this - with a pen, it's really difficult to fight against this kind of oppressive government," Dundar said.

"That's why we need Europe, because we are defending the European principles in Turkey -- but unfortunately we see the European leaders at the other side of the fence."

Dundar was in Brussels to address European civil society leaders just days after the EU's enlargement commissioner said the bloc may have to find a new form of relationship with Turkey, whose EU membership bid has stalled.

The EU has expressed concerns over a referendum to extend Erdogan's powers and over the post-coup bid crackdown, but Dundar said that Europe was now largely powerless due to the "dirty" refugee deal negotiations.

"I guess Europe has lost its chance to have an impact on Turkey, because from the beginning, after the refugee deal, they gave a lot of support to this government, just to stop the refugees coming to European soil and to keep them in Turkey," he said in Brussels.

- 'Stick to your principles' -

He added: "You have to mention the importance of press freedom, democracy, human rights those issues and unfortunately no European leaders have done that. So that's the main problem, I mean just stick to your principles and don't sacrifice them for your daily business."

Dundar said the latest arrests showed that Erdogan was using the coup as an "excuse and an opportunity to enhance his power. That's why the whole country is under arrest, not only his opponents."

He pointed out that Turkey had slipped to 155th in the world media freedom rankings published by watchdog Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday. A string of other Cumhuriyet journalists have been jailed since Dundar left.

Dundar, who was sentenced by a Turkish court in May 2016 to jail for a story about a shipment of arms intercepted at the Syrian border, and escaped an apparent assassination attempt before sentencing, said he was hopeful he would be able to return home one day.

"The good thing about Turkey is that it's a surprise chocolate so you never know what's in it.... I am optimistic, especially after the referendum results when we saw that half of the people were still resisting him," he said.

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Exiled Turkish journalist urges EU to confront Erdogan - Yahoo7 News

EU Struggles to Reset Ties With Turkey, Erdogan – Wall Street Journal (subscription)

EU Struggles to Reset Ties With Turkey, Erdogan
Wall Street Journal (subscription)
BRUSSELSEuropean Union officials are struggling to figure out how to improve vital economic and security cooperation with Turkey amid a widening political rupture that threatens the fraught relationship. After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ...

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EU Struggles to Reset Ties With Turkey, Erdogan - Wall Street Journal (subscription)