Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is obviously dangling at the bottom end of the political chain. He is fighting the battle of his life to survive a forthcoming election in June 2015, which he apparently fear will nail his political coffin. Desperate time, he has heard, calls for desperate measures. These measures, he thinks, should involve suffocating the press. So last weekend, Erdogan renewed attacks on a section of the media outside his pockets, arresting over 20 journalists and other media workers.
The outpouring of condemnation that greeted the media attack was expected. The criticism came from countries, organisations and prominent individuals, including the European Union, EU, a body Turkey has been craving to join. But the Turkish dictator would not have any of that. Erdogan, instead, gave his critics a bashing, particularly the EU.
Arguing that the assaults did not constitute an attempt to gaggle the press, he retorts: “The EU should mind its own business and keep its own opinions to itself. What do you [Europe] know about these operations to feel yourself competent to make such comments? We have no concern about what the EU might say, whether the EU accepts us as members or not.” He would further claim that the operations were meant to stop “dirty operations” aimed at toppling his regime.
The EU had rightly said the raids and arrests “are incompatible with the freedom of media, which is a core principle of democracy.” Unfortunately, the attempt by the Turkish authorities to silence the media didn’t begin last Sunday, only that it reached its crescendo then. The recent raids is obviously an offshoot of his renewed campaign against Futhullah Gulen, his friend-turned-foe.
For example, Emre Uslu, a columnist critical of the government and eastwhile lecturer, said after the assault, “Unlike previous threats, I now face much more intense and organized threats for criticizing the government. First I received death threats from organized groups. I faced threats from the PKK, which is very likely to have been coordinated with the intelligence agency to scare me off of criticism. Even a PKK militant, who was sent to Istanbul to kill me, was arrested by the police.
“The government pressured my university to either silence my tweets and writings or fire me. The university I was teaching at was only able to resist the government pressure for one year, after which they told me they couldn’t resist the pressure anymore and fired me in September 2013, even after classes had already been scheduled.
“Even after I lost my job, the government has not stopped harassing me. Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan directly pointed a finger at me during his March 2014 election victory speech. He filed lawsuits against me, and ordered the intelligence agency and government agencies to find any possible reason to harass me, but they found nothing illegal.”
The allegation by the Turkish President that the media houses were being used to carry out dirty operations targeted at removing him from power is both vague and laughable. And his government’s reaction to the EU’s condemnation reflects the position of a regime going southward. Is it not the same Erdogan that frantically laboured to convince everyone that he was passionate to have his country join the EU? How did his age-long associate suddenly become his greatest foe and a terrorist? And why?
Fate has been gracious to Erdogan in an unprecedented manner. Second chance in politics, or in life general, is rare. But for him, it has been different. Even though he was disgraced out of office as a mayor and hauled into prison, he later bounced back as a legislator…then a prime minister… and now a president. It appears, however, that he is now determined to squander what is left of his political capital. I don’t know of any despot in recent age that successfully crippled the press. The kind of war he has started can’t even succeed in Nigeria, a country of shorter political and democratic history. Turkish new “emperor” is surely embarking on a journey leading to political oblivion.
The recent operations against the Zaman media group are once again the result of the group’s efforts to expose the wrongdoings in the government. Pro-government dailies claim that the Teshiyeciler group of the Nurcu network – the first time I have heard of this organization — was one of the reasons for the operation. When I looked into who this Teshiyeciler group was, I found the dirty business of the intelligence agency.
Teshiyeciler group appears to be one of the small Nurcu groups with a few hundred followers. Their leader, Molla Mehmet Dogan, is nothing but ignorant. It seems that intelligence officers wanted to penetrate the Nurcu network through the Teshiyeciler group and use them as a shield to find al-Qaeda supporters among them in order to label the non-violent Nurcu groups as a violent organization. When al-Qaeda affiliated people – encouraged by intelligence agencies – contacted the Teshiyeciler group, police raided the operation and destroyed the intelligence agency’s plan to criminalize the peaceful Nurcu network, this of course infuriated the intelligence agency. That is why many of these people are arrested.
You decide, which one is a crime? Plotting against peaceful networks in order to criminalize them and turn the peaceful Nurcu networks into recruitment centres for al-Qaeda or requesting that government authorities not engage in these activities?
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