#recep tayyip erdoğan

[nevzatboyraz44]

ABD'li Albay Douglas McGregor:

▪️"S*vas kapıda ve Erdoğan ısrarla ülkesini s*vaştan uzak tutmaya çalışıyor."

▪️"Türkiye'ye s*ldırması için Suriye'de P*K'yı hazırlıyoruz."

Devlet-i Aliyye tüm adımlarını Melhame-i Kübra'ya göre atıyor, Devlet hertürlü senaryoya hazır!

[dadsinsuits]

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

[kasimpasali-omer]

Saatleri kurun, geliyor MURAT KURUM!

İstanbul Murad'ına kavuşacak!!!

🇹🇷💡🤘🇹🇷

[demvakti]

İzlerken çok duygulandım..

[yildirimkemalsworld]

Suriyelinin Cebinden Çıkan Kağıt

Ülkesine Ne Yararı Vardı da Senin Ülkene Yararlı Olsun…

Ben bir Suriyeliyim ve ülkemde ki savaştan korkarak kaçtım evet kaçtım geride doğup büyüdüğüm ülkemden, arkamda akrabalarımın cesedini, annemi, babamı, kardeşimi ve hatta sevdiğim kadını bırakarak kaçtım.

Şimdi Türkiyedeyim sınırı geçmek eski oturduğum evimden bakkala ekmek almaya gidercesine rahat geçip geldim.

Ve evet unuttum ne savaş aklımda ne yanımda ölen annem babam kardeşim. Çünkü mutluyum, Türkiye her ay 1.700 lira para yardımı yapıyor. İstediğim hastaneye girip muayene olabiliyorum. İlk geldiğim zamanlar hırsızlık yapıp bir kıza tecavüz etmeme rağmen hakim karşısında ağlayıp şeytana uydum dediğim an serbest bırakıldım. Bu harika bir şey, Suriye’de büyük ihtimalle asılırdım. İyi ki Türkiye’deyim.

Bir çok arkadaşım kaçtı. Avrupa’ya umrumda değil heyecan aramak bana göre değil bir evde 8 kişi kalıyoruz. Kirayı bir kaç aydır vermiyoruz. Vermeyi de düşünmüyoruz. Ev sahibi bizden korktuğundan ses de çıkaramıyor yani anlayacağız her şey mükemmel….

Her bayram da Türkiye’den otobüslerle Suriye’ye gidiyor. Eski mahallede turluyoruz. Her şey aynı kaçtığımız gibi ama umurumda değil. Çünkü yeni Türkiye göçmenler için bulunmaz bir nimet…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Henri J. Barkey at The UnPopulist:

Trump has not concealed his admiration for populist authoritarians worldwide. He has gone out of his way to praise and laud “strong leaders,” such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin—whom he admired for “being able to kill whoever,” calling him a “genius.” And he’s on record noting that Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has “made some smart decisions we could learn from in the United States,” adding that there’s no one “smarter or a better leader” than the Hungarian strongman. Much has been written about Trump’s parallels with these two leaders. But there is another strongman whom Trump could turn to for inspiration who has not received nearly as much attention: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s president since 2014.

The two leaders represent opposite and conflicting ends of the civilizational pole: Erdoğan, a deeply devout Muslim, sees himself as the leader of the Islamic world and an antagonist of the West. Though not religious, Trump is positioning himself as the defender of Western Civilization.

But both are thoroughgoing illiberals who engage in populist politics and claim to represent the forces of “good” (the populace) against “evil” (the elites). They both rail against the Deep State, “derin devlet” in Turkey, even after Erdoğan, through his cunning, has defanged it. (The notion of the Deep State actually came to America from Turkey and referred to an unelected military brass that functioned as a shadowy parallel government, not anything that has ever existed here.) They both reject the current liberal-international order and harbor a deep disdain for their respective countries’ institutions that check executive power.

Understanding how Erdoğan transformed Turkey’s political system—rooted in the secular ideology of its founder, Kemal Atatürk—and quasi-democratic institutions into an illiberal regime that imposes a religious, nationalist ideology dominated by him would therefore be instructive. He has already reshaped the Turkish state and society in his image, just as Trump and his MAGA acolytes want to do in the United States. Both Erdoğan and Trump are narcissistic, thin-skinned figures who expect unquestioning, cult-like loyalty, especially when they go after the enemies that they see everywhere. They engage in demagoguery and conspiracy theories, creating an alternate reality that helps them solidify their hold on their allies and sympathizers. This gives them a solid basis to try to flatten civil society and governing institutions—and impose their will on the country.

Contempt for Courts and the Rule of Law

Consider how, instead of fixing Turkey’s admittedly imperfect rule of law, Erdoğan has coopted it. He has attacked the judiciary, sacking thousands of judges and prosecutors who wouldn’t bend to his will, replacing them with inexperienced judges who would. He has then used the courts to punish antagonists and, equally importantly, protect cronies, allies, and friends (Trump himself is no stranger to protecting and rewarding loyalists and friends). In essence, he has given a real-life demonstration of what a system that a strongman uses to “punish his enemies and reward his friends,” as Trump and his allies are overtly seeking, would look like. Turkish prisons are chock full of people whose sole crime was crossing or standing up to Erdoğan, like civil society leader Osman Kavala, who was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for supposedly initiating the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations against an urban development project and destabilizing the government. The scale of the two-and-a-half-million-strong demonstrations rivaled those in Arab Spring countries two years prior and badly spooked Erdoğan. The case against Kavala has received much international attention and resulted in a constitutionally binding ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) for his release, which Erdoğan ignored.

The leader of the opposition Kurdish party, People’s Democracy Party, Selahattin Demirtaş, was also sentenced to life imprisonment on terrorism charges for allegedly inspiring protests in 2014 and insulting the president, a crime in Turkey. This was a naked attempt to neutralize Demirtaş, a charismatic politician who was responsible for his party’s unexpected election success and setbacks for Erdoğan’s party. Trump, likewise, has made no secret of his wish to prosecute his opponents. During his presidency, the Department of Justice initiated politically motivated cases against former Obama secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, as well as former FBI Director James Comey, on an assortment of charges but they didn’t go anywhere.

It isn’t just opposition party officials Trump wants to go after but even his own if he thinks they are crossing him. He has called for the “execution” of the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley—because he kept a line of communication open with the Chinese during the last few turbulent months of the Trump presidency to avoid any dangerous misunderstandings. But his deepest desire for “retribution”—his word—is against Republicans who have had the temerity to attempt to hold him accountable to the rule of law. He’s vociferously called for former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney from Wyoming to be tried for treason—in a military court reserved for enemy combatants and war criminals, no less—because she cooperated with Democrats on the House Jan. 6 Committee to investigate his efforts to overturn the election and foment the attack on the Capitol. In other words, as far as Trump is concerned, he is the state.

Erdoğan has reached deep into civil society and charged tens of thousands of people, from journalists and politicians to ordinary citizens and even minors, with “insulting President Erdoğan”—in each case, the delineation of what constitutes an “insult” was primarily left to the the presidential palace. Similarly, countless newspapers and news websites have been subjected to capricious fines or shut down.

Likewise, Trump wants to silence the media—calling it the “enemy of the people”—and, most recently, threatened to scrap ABC’s broadcasting license after his poor debate performance that he blamed on the network’s moderators. He also wants Mark Zuckerberg to “spend the rest of his life in jail” for election interference should the Facebook founder, like in 2020, extend funding to boost local election infrastructure, which Trump believes, without any basis, went primarily to blue states and handed the election to Biden.

While the U.S. judicial system is significantly more resilient than Turkey’s, it is far from clear that it will hold in the face of outright contempt and open defiance that the Trump team, just like Erdoğan, has exhibited. Consider how both have handled the highest court in the land. On the rare occasion when the Constitutional Court diverged from Erdoğan’s preferred outcome, he defied its ruling. This year, for example, the court ruled that an opposition member elected to parliament should be released from jail and permitted to assume his seat. In refusing to implement the ruling, Erdoğan absurdly argued that a lower court’s prior verdict overruled that of the country’s highest court. Likewise, JD Vance, Trump’s vice-presidential choice, has declared that if the Supreme Court objects to the duo’s plans to fire civil servants and replace them with loyalists, the administration should ignore the ruling. It should “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say the Chief Justice has made the ruling, now let him enforce it.”

[...]

Ending the Separation of Religion and State

Religion and religious identity have become integral to Turkey’s politics since Erdoğan came along. He has prioritized the creation of a “pious generation” that identifies being a Turk with being a Muslim and has used the school system to accomplish this goal. He has created religious schools that equally divide their classes between a regular curriculum and core classes on Islam. Trump, unlike Erdoğan, may not be personally devout, but he has been supportive of evangelical Christians’ demands for public schools to sport Christian religious symbols, such as displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms or teaching the Bible. Republican governors in some red states are following through. Louisiana became the first state to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in schools. Oklahoma has gone even further and ordered Bible teaching to be part of the regular school curriculum.

Mongering Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy discourses are a standard tool of authoritarians because they serve to project an image of victimhood, which they use to solidify their bonds with the public. Erdoğan used this to great effect when he blamed Washington, without any evidence, for organizing the failed 2016 military coup. Similarly, Trump blamed his 2020 loss on outlandish theories about voter fraud, machine swapping, deliberate local miscounting of votes, and much else. He is already yammering that this will be the most corrupt election in history if he loses.

Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan have lots of things in common: oppress their peoples, bloviate about enemies real or perceived, religious nationalism, and more.

[delitay]

Yurt dışında yaşayan aziz vatandaşlarım

Önceki iktidar sahipleri yıllarca sizleri görmezden geldi, sadece döviz ihtiyacı olduğunda sizi hatırladı.

Biz ise her sıkıntınızda yanınızda olduk, pek çok sorununuzu çözdük, haklarınızı teslim ettik.

Peki bundan sonra ne yapacağız?

TOKİ vasıtasıyla sizler için özel konut projeleri üreteceğiz.

Aile ataşeliklerimizin ve gezici konsolosluk hizmetlerimizin sayısını arttıracağız.

Yurt dışında yetişmiş nitelikli beyinlerin ülkemizde istihdam edilmelerini sağlayacağız.

Parlamentoda sizlerin temsiline ağırlık verecek, taleplerinizin karşılanmasını temin edeceğiz.

Yurt dışı borçlanması yoluyla emekli olanlara yurt dışında tam zamanlı çalışma hakkı tanıyacağız.

Mobil cihazların Türkiye’de kayıtsız kullanım sürelerini sizler için 180 güne çıkartacağız.

Türkiye’ye getirdiğiniz araçların tekrar girişi için, yurt dışında kalma şartını 30 güne düşüreceğiz.

Askerlik yapanların ikili anlaşmalar çerçevesinde vatani görevlerinin Türkiye’de de tanınmasını sağlayacağız.

Yurt dışında yaşayan 10 bin gencimizi her yıl ülkemize getireceğiz.

Ülkemizin dünyadaki temsilcisi olarak gördüğümüz siz kıymetli vatandaşlarımıza sahip çıkmaya devam edeceğiz.

Biriz, iriyiz, diriyiz. Sizlerle birlikte Türkiye’yiz.

Türkiye Yüzyılı’nı inşallah “Güçlü Türkiye Güçlü Diaspora” şiarıyla beraber inşa edeceğiz.

Bunun için, sizlerden sandıklara koşmanızı, 14 Mayıs’ta yine bir destan yazmanızı bekliyorum.

“SEN VARSAN TÜRKİYE

[derdiderun]

Tarafsız insan olmaz. Tarafsızlık münâfıklık maskesidir. Hak tarafı olacaksın...

Safımız belli, kararımız net...

[gregor-samsung]

“ La Guerra fredda aveva un senso. Fu una guerra ideologica in cui il vincitore, verosimilmente, avrebbe imposto al nemico sconfitto, per usare parole ormai screditate dal troppo uso, la propria filosofia e i propri valori. Può sembrare retorico, ma vi era in quello scontro fra giganti una certa nobiltà. Due grandi idee – la dittatura del proletariato e il capitalismo democratico – offrivano al mondo due strade diverse verso un futuro migliore. Le due diverse prospettive hanno creato speranze, attese, impegno e sacrifici che non sarebbe giusto ignorare. Oggi ogni traccia di nobiltà è scomparsa. Il comunismo è fallito e, come accade sempre in queste circostanze, la memoria collettiva ricorda soltanto le sue pagine peggiori: i massacri della fase rivoluzionaria, la fame ucraina, la persecuzione del clero, le purghe, i gulag, il lavoro coatto, i popoli trasferiti con la forza da una regione all’altra. La democrazia capitalista non è in migliori condizioni. Il trasferimento del potere economico dai produttori di beni ai produttori di denaro ha enormemente allargato il divario fra gli immensamente ricchi e i drammaticamente poveri. Il denaro governa le campagne elettorali. Le grandi piaghe della prima metà del Novecento – nazionalismo, militarismo, razzismo – si sono nuovamente aperte. Il linguaggio della competizione politica è diventato becero e volgare. Le convention americane sono diventate un circo equestre in cui i candidati esibiscono i muscoli della loro retorica. Il meritato riposo e un busto nel Pantheon della nazione, che attendevano gli uomini di Stato alla fine della loro carriera politica, sono stati sostituiti da posti nei consigli d’amministrazione, laute consulenze e conferenze generosamente retribuite (come i 225.000 dollari pagati da Goldman Sachs a Hillary Clinton per un dibattito dopo i suoi quattro anni al Dipartimento di Stato). Anziché affidarsi a leader saggi e prudenti, molti popoli sembrano preferire i demagoghi, i tribuni della plebe, i caudillos. Anche Putin appartiene per molti aspetti a un club frequentato da Erdoğan, Al Sisi, Orbán, Jaroslaw Kaczyński, Bibi Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, Lukašenko, per non parlare dei loro numerosi cugini in Africa e in Asia. Ma ha anche altre caratteristiche.

Deve governare un enorme spazio geografico popolato da una moltitudine di gruppi nazionali e religiosi. È il leader di un grande Paese che ha interessi legittimi e ambizioni comprensibili. È responsabile di una potenza che è anche un tassello indispensabile per l’amministrazione di un mondo caotico e pericoloso. Possiamo deplorare molti aspetti del suo carattere e della sua politica. Ma vedo sempre meno persone in Occidente che abbiano il diritto di impartirgli lezioni di democrazia. Occorrono 541 giorni per formare un governo in Belgio. Occorrono due elezioni politiche a distanza di sei mesi per formare un governo in Spagna. Occorrono tre commissioni bicamerali e due riforme costituzionali approvate dal Parlamento, ma sottoposte a referendum popolare, per cercare di modificare la costituzione in Italia. Nell’Unione Europea sono sempre più numerosi i cittadini che invocano il ritorno alle sovranità nazionali, ma in alcuni Stati nazionali (Belgio, Gran Bretagna, Spagna) la sovranità nazionale è contestata da regioni che chiedono il diritto di secessione. Mi chiedo: la democrazia è ancora un modello virtuoso che l’Europa delle democrazie malate e gli Stati Uniti delle sciagurate avventure mediorientali e del nuovo razzismo hanno il diritto di proporre alla Russia? “

Sergio Romano, Putin e la ricostruzione della grande Russia, Longanesi, 2016¹. [Libro elettronico]

[mcanylm34]

[nevzatboyraz44]

Reis 🇹🇷❤️

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ❤️

[dadsinsuits]

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

[perge]

İzmir

[leftistfeminista]

Peoples' Equality and Democracy Party Party executive council member and Youth Assembly spokesperson Edanur İbrahimoğlu was tortured in police custody in Turkey. Despite the state terrorism deployed against her, she continues to speak out. The far right Islamist regime of Erdoğan singles out women political leaders for special violence. Based on misogynist patriarchal myths that women are easy to make docile from abuse.

[tomorrowusa]

Turkey/Türkiye held local elections over the weekend and the secularist democratic opposition did surprisingly well. It spells bad news for authoritarians – both at home (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) and potentially across the Black Sea (Vladimir Putin).

The Turkish party led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan suffered big losses in local elections held on Sunday. Ekrem Imamoğlu, the incumbent from main opposition party CHP, led the mayoral race in Istanbul by nearly 10 percentage points after more than half the votes had been counted, Reuters reported early on Monday. CHP also retained its mayoral seat in Ankara and gained another 15 seats in cities across the country. Erdoğan conceded defeat for the AK Party, the AFP reported. The opposition's win is a blow to Erdoğan, who has been in power as Turkey's prime minister or president since 2003. Since he is also a close partner of Russian President Vladimir Putin — even though Turkey is a NATO member — the defeat of Erdoğan's party could change the two countries' relationship. If Erdoğan's AK Party had won resoundingly, the victory would be used in Ankara to "justify a close relationship with Russia in the eyes of the Turkish public," Marc Pierieni and Francesco Siccardi, researchers at think tank Carnegie Europe, wrote last week. [ ... ] Erdoğan's administration has been talking to Moscow about setting up a gas hub in Turkey as Europe weans itself off natural-gas imports from Russia.

The Financial Times has more specific figures on the shift in fortunes for the two largest parties. Erdoğan's AK Party is often called the AKP.

Overall the CHP captured 38 per cent of the national vote, while support for the AKP fell to 35 per cent. In the 2019 local election the AKP notched up 44 per cent of the vote, with the CHP well behind at around 30 per cent, according to Anadolu data

As an aside, Turkey has a great sounding national anthem called İstiklal Marşı. It's the only anthem I'm aware of that has the word coy in its lyrics.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Ruth Ben-Ghat at Lucid:

The benchmark of democratic political systems used to be elections, and the practice of holding elections was often used to determine whether a country could be classified as a democracy. Today, as "electoral autocracies" take hold around the world, that's no longer the case. Many illiberal leaders come to power through elections, and then manipulate the electoral system to get the results they need to stay in office. As the U.S. election approaches, it’s useful to remember that the history of autocracy is the history of war on the idea and practice of free and fair elections. For authoritarian leaders on the right and the left, allowing a population to determine through their votes who is in government and for how long is unthinkable. Why should lesser beings decide the fate of the strongman, who alone can lead the nation to greatness?

Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini derided elections as a “childish game” that had “already humiliated the nation for decades.” Il Duce replaced democratic elections with occasional plebiscites. In 1934, as he prepared to invade Ethiopia and was dealing with increased internal unrest, he staged a vote. Italians were actually weighing in on a purge of the political class: a single list he had approved of nominees for seats in Parliament, with the choices YES or NO. The real point of the exercise was to show Italians and the world that he had popular approval for his governmental measures. To that end, voting was “assisted” by Fascist "poll watchers," (squadrists in black shirts, armed with knives), and the regime’s communications about the vote can be summed up as “vote yes or else,” in the Fascist manner. This propaganda piece, on the façade of Palazzo Braschi in the center of Rome, depicted Mussolini's face as a kind of death mask, suggesting what could happen to those who voted no. The result of the plebiscite --99.85% YES, and only .15% NO--suggests that Italians got the message.

Today’s autocrats may keep elections going, but they won’t hesitate to game the competition by finding ways to silence rivals. Here’s Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2018 when CNN asked him if he was a dictator. "Here we have a ballot box...the democracy gets its power from the people. It's what we call national will," But in advance of the 2023 Turkish presidential contest, Erdoğan sentenced popular Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu to several years in jail. That way İmamoğlu could not be the opposition candidate. The newer autocratic tactic, facilitated by disinformation, is to discredit elections before the election is held so the public will believe you when you say, in the event of defeat, that the whole contest was “rigged” against you or invalidated by fraud. If the authoritarian is able to marshal his party and allies into sustaining the falsehood in public, then the idea of an illegitimate election can gain traction. This is called institutionalized lying: when a lie that is particularly important to the leader and his survival in politics becomes party doctrine. Then anyone who wants to have status in the authoritarian party or state must perform the lie in public, or at least refuse to refute it. Propagandists know that a lie, when repeated with enough frequency, becomes familiar and eventually can be taken as truth.

[...] The outcome of this scenario In Brazil offers an example of gatekeeping as democracy protection. After President Jair Bolsonaro lost the 2022 election, he decided to try and replicate the Donald Trump playbook, claiming that the election was rigged and planning an insurrection for January. Stephen Bannon and Jason Miller were among his advisors. Lack of military participation was among the reasons for the failure of Bolsonaro’s insurrection. Brazil had a military coup in 1964, which led to a military dictatorship that only ended in 1985. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva acted promptly to prosecute participants. In 2023, Bolsonaro was convicted of abuse of power in office and banned from running for office until 2030 for spreading lies about election fraud. In America, Trump, who incited a far bloodier insurrection, continues to maintain he won the 2020 election as he prepares to possibly contest the 2024 outcome. Trump has worked hard for almost a decade to get Americans to give up their quaint ideas about voting as a valued democratic right. He has conditioned them to see democracy as a failing system, and to view elections as an inferior and unreliable way to choose leaders.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Lucid post on how elections are the enemy of the autocrat is a must-read.