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IN TURKEY under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tweet has been turned into a crime, and a troubled democracy is being turned into a dictatorship. Gradually but inexorably, a nation that once aspired to be an exemplar of enlightened moderation is being transformed by Mr. Erdogan into a dreary totalitarian prison. In the latest setback, last week, 23 journalists were sentenced to prison for between two and seven years on patently ridiculous charges that they were members of a terrorist organization and had tweeted about it. Two others were convicted on lesser charges of supporting a terrorist organization.

Mr. Erdogan, the target of a failed coup attempt in July 2016, has embarked on a campaign of repression against perceived enemies in the press, government, academia and law enforcement, among other pillars of Turkish society. More than 60,000 people have been arrested and 150,000 forced from their jobs. Mr.Erdogans prime targets are the perceived followers of the opposition cleric Fethullah Gulen, who now lives in Pennsylvania. Mr. Erdogan claims Mr. Gulen once his ally in Turkish politics had incited the coup attempt, hence the charge of a terrorist organization. Mr. Gulen denies it.

Turkey once had a robust, independent press, but Mr. Erdogan has waged a multifront campaign: closing media outlets, forcing others into new ownership, and using friendly judges and prosecutors. In the latest cases, some reporters and editors were convicted for what they said on Twitter. A lawyer representing two journalists, Baris Topuk, said at an earlier hearing: In our opinion, the name of the organization in which the defendants are accused of being members should be TTO: Tweetist Terrorist Organization. There are no weapons or bombs in the case, only news articles and tweets. Ali Akkus, who was news editor of the now-defunct Zaman daily, had said on Twitter, No dictator can silence the press. The use of the word dictator was singled out by a prosecutor in the charges against him. Mr. Akkus received a sentence of seven years and six months in prison.

Cuma Ulus, the editor of the daily Millet, got the same sentence and declared earlier during the proceedings: I have been a journalist for 21 years. I stood against terrorism and violence, [and] defended expression of freedom during all my life. In the indictment, prosecutors cited three tweets and 22 retweets, accusing him of stirring up frenzy against the government.

Separately, 17 current and former writers, cartoonists and executives from the Cumhuriyet newspaper are also on trial. Mr. Erdogan is reportedly planning an assault on Internet broadcasting and free expression online, as well.

The show trials underscore how far Turkey has fallen from Western norms of democracy, human rights and rule of law. Mr. Erdogan is happily marching alongside Russia, China, Egypt, Cuba and others where legitimacy to rule rests on coercion and thought control. Mr. Erdogans dictatorship must be called out for what it is. Even if he covers his ears, the United States and other nations must protest, and loudly.

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Erdogan is transforming Turkey into a totalitarian prison ...

The 6-year-old child who cried in front of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has become a global sensation. Erdogan spotted the weeping girl wearing a military uniform during an address at his partys congress last week, brought her onto the stage, and told her that if she died as a martyr, her coffin would be covered with the Turkish flag she held in her pocket. You are ready for anything, arent you? the Islamist strongman asked. The terrified child managed to utter yes, though it was hard to hear it through her sobs.

Nationalism is running high in Turkey. Ankara is at war with Kurdish insurgents in the countrys southeast, and across the border in Syria since January. Moreover, Turkey has been under a state of emergency since mid-2016, when a rogue group within the military attempted a coup against Erdogans government, killing some 200 civilians. Amid the growing number of enemies at home and abroad, Erdogan has done his best to promote militarism among the populace, including by openly encouraging the formation of civilian militias claiming to defend his governmentand the Turkish nation.

Children have not been immune to these efforts. Over the last year, the Turkish government sent ministers to facilitate militaristic student parades, while Turkeys state-run religious affairs directorate has been publishing its own propaganda materials, to teach Turkish children about the grandeurs of martyrdom. Turkish students, including kindergarteners, around the country have been made to conduct military marches and recite ultranationalist poems at schools. Some state-run schools even replaced their recess bells with Ottoman military marches to raise students national consciousness. One 17-year-old commented, sometimes we get so excited that we march like the military during recess.

These are all extensions of Erdogans decade-old efforts to raise a pious and zealous generation of Turks that exalts martyrdom to defend the new Turkey that the president has worked tirelessly to construct. Erdogans shocking 2008 request from Turkish women to produce three to five children eacha request he backed up with financial incentives in 2015is part and parcel of this strategy. With Turkeys state-backed Islamic vocational schools proliferating throughout the country, Ankara also amended student-placement procedures to automatically enroll studentsincluding non-Sunni and non-Muslim onesinto these institutions. Tellingly, the presidents son Bilal, in his address to students at one such vocational school in January, told the teenagers, You are Erdogans generation.

These efforts, along with the relentless propaganda of pro-government Turkish media, paid off in July 2016, when groups of vigilantes heeded Erdogans televised callechoed by the mosquesto take to Istanbuls streets and resist the coup. While the massive public demonstrations promoting democracy and denouncing a military junta may have been a sign of a maturing civil society, images of vigilante groups physically abusing captured soldiers on Istanbul streets appalled manyand terrified roughly half the electorate that does not support Erdogan. Since then, the rise of civilian pro-Erdogan militias has made headlines in opposition media and stirred heated debates in parliament. Erdogan, meanwhile, decreed impunity for all the groups who partook in the resistance to the coup.

U.S. officials are watching with growing concerns. The Turkish government has stirred and sponsored anti-Americanism, and this is a major motivating force for these vigilantes. Ankara blames Washington for both the failed putschwhich has all but become the founding myth of Erdogans new Turkish republicand the rise of Kurdish self-rule in northern Syria. Erdogans ministers and media continuously slander American citizens as coup-plotters and depict the Turkish war against Kurdish militants in Syria as a fight against pro-Kurdish Americans. Most Turkish people, opinion polls show, now consider the United States the top threat to their national security. And the so-called peoples militias appear ready, Erdogan-willing, to face any enemy of the nation as proclaimed by the all-powerful president. Erdogan has also promised to deliver an Ottoman slap to the U.S. and bury U.S. special forces soldiers operating in northeast Syria.

The challenge for the U.S.-Turkish relationship is that it cannot survive in the long run if the bulk of the Turkish population sees the United States in such adversarial terms. Moreover, the importance of Turkey to the United States has long been as an exemplar of majority Muslim society that was making its way along a long road of democratization and meeting the standards of rule of law and human rights that are associated with the European Union and NATO. Erdogans rhetoric sounds more like one might expect from a state sponsor of terrorism than a sound democratic ally. Indeed, Turkey is moving in the direction of an autocratic, militarized, semi-Islamist dictatorship rather than a liberal democracy.

American officials who write off the presidents anti-American rhetoric as Erdogan pandering to his base fail to understand that demonizing the United States is an integral part of Erdogans agenda. Only tough love will put the U.S.-Turkish relationship on a steadier long-term course. The state of Turkeys democracy and the governments shameless promotion of anti-Americanism must be addressed if we are to salvage this relationship. We can no longer postpone the day of reckoning. If we dont address these problems now, we will share in the blame for what went wrong.

Eric S. Edelman is a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where Merve Tahiroglu is a research analyst.

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Erdogan's Rising Islamist Militarism | The Weekly Standard

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkeys military and its rebel allies have besieged the northern Syrian town of Afrin and were nearing its town center, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, in what would mark a major advance in Turkeys military operation.

Turkey launched its operation, dubbed Olive Branch, in northern Syria nearly seven weeks ago to sweep the Syrian Kurdish YPG from the Turkish border. Turkey sees the YPG as a terrorist group and an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

On Thursday, Turkish forces and their Free Syrian Army (FSA) allies seized control of the nearby town of Jinderes, state media reported. Turkey now controls five out of seven of the settlements in the northwest Afrin region, state media said.

Now the center of Afrin is surrounded and our entry is imminent, Erdogan said in televised speech in Ankara.

We are removing the last remaining obstacles standing before our besieging of Afrin city center, he said, adding there was still about six kilometers (3.7 miles) to go to reach Afrin from the outskirts of Jinderes.

Later on Friday, a spokesman for the YPG denied that the Afrin town had been besieged, and said several of the regions Turkey has claimed to have taken control of were still battlegrounds.

The forces of Erdogans Turkish army ... are 10 to 15 km away from it (Afrin), YPG spokesman Nouri Mahmoud said. Today, there were also clashes around Bulbul, where they announced around 30 days ago that they captured, occupied it.

Erdogan said Turkeys armed forces will push on after operations in Afrin and Manbij, further east, to sweep Syrian Kurdish fighters from the length of Turkey border with Syria.

We are in Afrin today, we will be in Manbij tomorrow. The next day we will ensure that the east of Euphrates will be cleared of terrorist up to the Iraqi border.

Erdogans repeated threats to push on to Manbij have caused complications with NATO ally the United States, which has its troops deployed in the area.

Turkey has been infuriated by U.S. support for the YPG. Washington has backed the group in the fight against Islamic State.

The PKK, which has carried out a three-decade insurgency in Turkeys mainly Kurdish southeast, is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, Turkey and the European Union.

On Thursday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Turkey would complete the Afrin offensive by May and carry out a joint operation with Iraqs central government against Kurdish militants in Iraq.

Cavusoglu said the operation could begin after Iraqs parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2018, signaling that Turkish forces may move to northern Iraq following the ongoing operations in northern Syria.

Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu, Ece Toksabay and Ali Kucukgocmen; Additional reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut; Editing by David Dolan and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

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Turkey's Erdogan says Syria's Afrin town under siege ...

Operation Olive Branch will continue until it reaches its goals. We will rid Manbij of terrorists, as it was promised to us, and our battles will continue until no terrorist is left until our border with Iraq, Erdogan said during a speech in Ankara on Friday.

Before the Turkish president made these remarks, there was apprehension about Turkish forces pushing beyond their initial objective of Afrin to Manbij, where U.S. troops are deployed. Erdogan seemed to be not only confirming that Manbij would be attacked, but that he will push even further east.

American troops were deployed to Manbij in part to keep hostile Syrian rebel factions from attacking each other, and to keep the Turks from moving into the area. Also, the U.S. response to Turkeys incursion has been somewhat muted so far because American officials say the Kurdish forces occupying Afrin are not directly linked to the anti-Islamic State operation or the Kurdish militia commands supported by the United States. That delicate diplomatic position will become untenable if Erdogan strikes eastward and begins hitting Kurdish units that unquestionably are part of the battle against ISIS.

In an interview with Reuters, Erdogan adviser Gulnur Aybet implied one goal of Turkeys drive into Syria is to force the United States to reassess its policies and show more respect for Turkeys positions.

The moment Turkey starts using its military power instead of soft power in the region, however sour ties are at that moment, it encourages Washington to stop and think, said Aybet. I believe the U.S. will put forward some truly satisfying alternative solutions to ease Turkeys security concerns.

She said that everyone is aware of the risk that Turkey could provoke a crisis by pushing into Manbij, and added darkly, We hope that the Americans are aware, too.

Reuters notes that Aybet implied the alternative solutions Turkeydesires pertain to restoring restoring trust between NATO allies so that American proposals for a safe zone on the Turkey-Syria border could be taken seriously.

One of Turkeys biggest complaints along those lines has been U.S. support for Syrian Kurdish militia forces, which the Erdogan government sees as allies of Kurdish separatists in Turkey. Among Turkeys greatest fears throughout the Syrian civil war and battle against ISIS has been the possible formation of a new Kurdish state that would consume portions of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq.

Erdogans address on Friday included the latest iteration of his slam at the United States for arming Syrian Kurdish forces he considers to be terrorists.

How can a strategic partner do this to its partner? he asked. If we will wage a battle against terror together, we will either do this together or we will take care of ourselves.

Erdogan insisted that Turkeys invasion of Syria was entirely about targeting terrorists.

Turkeys Afrin operation is clear warning to those who dont want to understand Turkeys determination in the fight against terrorism, he said. Turkey will rid Syrias Manbij of terrorists following Afrin. Nobody should be bothered by this. Turkey is not occupying Afrin, only fighting against terrorists there.

We will continue to fight until no terrorist is left on our borders. Our only concern is to ensure our national security and the safety of our citizens and our Syrian brothers and sisters, Erdogan insisted.

Erdogan compared his Afrin-and-beyond operation to Turkish military interventions in the fall of 2016 against al-Rai and Jarabulus, which were towns held by the Islamic State. The Turks said Kurdish YPG forces would also be targeted during those operations.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag openly threatened American forces with attack if they attempt to shield the Kurds from Turkeys Operation Olive Branch.

Those who support the terrorist organization will become a target in this battle. The United States needs to review its soldiers and elements giving support to terrorists on the ground in such a way as to avoid a confrontation with Turkey, Bozdag warned after Erdogan spoke with U.S. President Donald Trump by telephone.

Turkey has disputed the White House account of that phone call, which holds that Trump pressured Erdogan to scale back his operation in Syria. Instead, Turkish officials claim Trump promised to stop supporting Kurdish forces.

Yeni Safak columnist Ibrahim Karagul, a reliable barometer for the more hot-blooded pro-Erdogan wing of Turkish politics, was positively spoiling for a fight with the United States in his Friday editorial.

Karagul declared the U.S. is no longer a trustworthy country for Turkey and none of its guarantees can ever be trusted againbecause the U.S. has been using ISIS, the Kurdish PKK separatist group in Turkey, and of course the treasonous followers of Fethullah Gulen as proxy forces to wage acovert war against Ankara. He said the American goal is to destroy Turkey by provoking a civil war similar to the one in Syria, which he claimed the United States also orchestrated.

Karagul freely indulged in the nasty Crusader rhetoric Erdogan himself has been toying with latelythe very same rhetoric used by Islamist jihadis like ISIS to justify terrorist warfare against the West as a defensive operation:

This plan is identical to the map operations the Crusaders applied in our region. The entire region spanning the Mediterranean and the Iranian border are being dehumanized, and cleared of Arabs and Turkmens; demographic deportation is being applied. This zone that is being vacated is going to be turned into a foreign garrison and filled with U.S.-Israeli military bases. All attacks on Turkey and the region will be made from this zone.

Turkey is showing and is required to show the same resistance that was shown toward the invasion of Anatolia after World War I. Now, the national struggle, a new war of independence, and homeland defense are all being carried out against the U.S. and its close allies.

Most disturbingly, Karagul called for Turkey to immediately shut down Incirlik Air Base, a vital base for American air operations in the region, because in his fevered imagination the United States is coordinating ISIS and PKK forces from there. He predicted a coming moment when thousands of people surround and siege the Incirlik base, an event that would threaten the safety of thousands of American personnel and their dependents.

Threats against the air base are a common expression of anti-American sentiment in Turkey, even from sources otherwise critical of Erdogan. American officials have good reasons to worry that Erdogan could arrange a mob action against Incirlik if he doesnt like the U.S. response to his actions in Syria.

Deutsche Welle reports that European leaders are growing uncomfortable with Erdogans action in Syria as well. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini warned this week that Turkeys invasion could undermine U.N.-backed Syria peace talks in Geneva.

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Erdogan: Turkish Forces Could Sweep Across Syria to the Iraqi ...

As legend has it, Sultan Murad IV, who was known for his brutality, in 1634 killed with a slap two janissaries who assaulted his grand vizier. The incident was the origin of the so-called Ottoman slap (Osmanli tokadi in Turkish), which Ottoman soldiers were trained to perform. Such a slap, so it was said, could crack a mans skill and even kill a horse.

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Some two weeks ago, the Ottoman slap returned to the political lexicon. After the U.S. administration threatened to returned fire if its troops in Syrias Kurdish areas were attacked, Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded with a threat of his own. Those who say that they would respond if they are hit have never tasted an Ottoman slap, the Turkish president warned. His foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, had warned a few days earlier that Ankaras relationship with Washington had reached such a critical point that they would either be fixed or totally destroyed.

Two days after Erdogans Ottoman slap speech, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stopped in the Turkish capital for a three-and-a-half-hour meeting with the Turkish president and foreign minister. Its doubtful that Tillerson understood the term Ottoman slap, since in a departure from protocol he did not bring his own translator or aides to the meeting, relying on the translation skills of Cavusoglu. The media briefing held after the meeting did not hold out cause for optimism. The United States and Turkey agreed to establish three coordinating committees to discuss points of disagreement. The first is scheduled to convene Friday. Working groups of this kind are generally created between rival countries; allies dont need them, they simply pick up the phone and talk. But the bad blood between Ankara and Washington is so poisoned that last week, too, Erdogan waved a warning finger at the Trump administration, saying he expected deeds and not words from the United States, as if Turkey were a superpower telling a client state how to behave.

Concurrently, the U.S. Congress is in an uproar over plans to impose sanctions on Ankara in the wake of its attitude to Washington. There has even been talk on Capitol Hill of placing visa bans on senior Turkish officials and prohibiting imports of Turkish-made handguns, which generate an estimated $100 million in annual revenue for Turkey. The proposals are anathema to the U.S. State Department, however, which believes that Turkeys chutzpah notwithstanding, its cooperation is vital to Americas unfocused policy in Syria; above all, sanctions could push Turkey even closer to Russia and perhaps even lead Ankara to leave NATO.

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Erdogan understands Washingtons dilemma and has kept up his assaults. Last week, after the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling for a 30-day cease-fire in Syria, mainly to help the 300,000 residents of eastern Ghouta under heavy Syrian bombardment, Erdogan declared that the resolution does not apply to Turkish military operations in the Kurdish-controlled enclave of Afrin. In response, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said that she would encourage Turkey to go back and read the UN resolution. Erdogan apparently was just waiting for such a remark: Saying that Nauerts comments were baseless and showed that she couldnt understand the focal point of the resolution or wants to distort it, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy argues that in Afrin, Turkey is exercising its right to self-defense based on Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Russian-Turkish axis

But the incursion into Afrin is not only a Turkish military operation with the cynical name Operation Olive Branch, whose goal is to drive the Kurdish military forces from the Turkish-Syrian border. It confronts Washington with a difficult dilemma, forcing it to choose between its alliance with Ankara and its support for the Kurdish militias, which have proved effective against Islamic State militants. Turkey is demanding that the United States not only end its cooperation with the Kurdish units but also recover the heavy weapons it provided to them, as it supposedly promised to do after the war against Islamic State. Turkey believes it can make demands of the U.S. administration, which has yet to decide on a clear policy regarding its future presence in Syria mainly on account of Turkeys alliance with Russia, which for its part is using Ankara to drive out the U.S. forces. Russia, however, is also in no hurry to fully support Turkey, both because the Turkish presence in Syria will interfere with the creation of a united state-controlled by the Assad regime and because the Russians ascribe great importance to Kurdish participation in the Moscow-led political process to end the crisis in Syria. The Russian response starkly highlighted Moscows vacillations. It allowed Syrian President Bashar Assad to dispatch to Afrin pro-regime militias to aid the Kurds, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov could not have been more clear when he said last week that Turkeys security concerns can be met through direct dialogue between Turkey and Syria.

Turkey, which staunchly refuses to negotiate with Assad, shrank in the face of the Russian stance. As a side in the Russian-Iranian-Turkish axis overseeing the implementation of the decision to create safe zones in Syria and a partner to the talks on the countrys future, Ankara cannot afford a head-on confrontation with Moscow. To reassure the Russians, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kaln engaged in a bit of verbal gymnastics, saying in televised remarks last week that Turkish intelligence officials may establish direct or indirect contact when it is required to solve certain problems under extraordinary conditions: neither recognition of Assad nor a move to ignore him entirely. In this diplomatic tango, Russia is also making an effort not to step on Turkeys feet. Moscow does believe the United Nations Security Council resolution includes the Turkish military operation in Afrin, but at this stage it isnt pressuring Ankara. Last week Alexander Venediktov, the assistant to the secretary of the Russian Security Council, said that it was the United States, with its deliveries of modern weapons and encouragement of separatist sentiments among the Kurds, that had provoked Turkey into carrying out the military operation in Syrias northern Afrin region. The language used neither places the responsibility on Erdogan nor does it offer support for the operation.

Ongoing oppression

Turkeys actions in Syria cannot be separated from the political strategy that has guided Erdogan in recent weeks. Turks believe he will call early presidential and parliamentary elections, perhaps as soon as July, around a year and a half before their scheduled date. The speculations are fueled by his alliance with the ultranationalist opposition with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), led by Devlet Bahceli. Bahceli, who last week declared that he was ready to sacrifice his life in Operation Olive Branch, if necessary, needs Erdogans support no less than Erdogan needs the support of nationalist extremists if he is to win a majority in the election.

Erdogan seeks to exercise the numerous authorities ranted to him by the constitutional amendments that were just barely approved in an April 2017 referendum. The amendments, which include abolishing the office of prime minister and transferring its powers to the president; wide authority in choosing parliamentary candidates for his party; changes to the procedures for appointing judges and the authority to dissolve the parliament, will go into effect in the next election.

The military operation in Afrin has broad public support in Turkey, and not only among supporters of Erdogans Justice and Development Party. Presumably, his strong stance against the U.S. administration and the European Union member states Erdogan has used the threat of terror attacks in Europe by members of Islamic State in the event Turkey were to loosen its borders have contributed to his popularity, Erdogan, whose government continues to arrest dozens of citizens every week for suspected involvement in the failed coup of July 2016 and acts to destroy the pro-Kurdish party, is not particularly impressed by international reprimands over its human-rights abuses.

Prominent authors and journalists Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan and Nazl Ilcak were sentenced to life in prison; seven Kurdish lawmakers were expelled from the Turkish parliament; Selahattin Demirtas, a leader of the pro-Kurdish party, has been in jail for 18 months without trial; the state broadcaster has banned due to their content 208 Turkish and Kurdish pop songs, many of them performed by well-known singers for years; all this, in addition to the ongoing persecution of newspapers and other media outlets.

Erdogan backed down in only one instance, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel threatened to cancel a deal to upgrade Turkeys Leopard tanks if Turkey did not release Deniz Yucel, a German-Turkish journalist who was arrested over a year ago. Yucel was charged with involvement in terror, but his real offense was insulting the regime. He was released in mid-February and returned to Germany.

Andrew Brunson, a Christian pastor from North Carolina, has not been so lucky. He was arrested in October 2016, suspected on involvement in the failed coup. Erdogan has said he is willing to trade Brunson in exchange for the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, the U.S.-based Muslim cleric that Erdogan says was behind the coup attempt. It would seem that Merkel is willing to do much more for her citizens than Trump; either that, or she is clearer and more precise in her threats. In any event, Turkeys domestic front, excited over the armys actions in Syria, is ready for early elections that will give Erdogan a period of rule equal to that of Ataturk.

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Turkey's Erdogan threatens to give Trump a lethal Ottoman ...