riots in Turkey

How is the power divided between the PM and the President? Why does the President seem so powerless in all this?

 

The President has no role in government. He can't be a member of a political party. He has ceremonial duties and plays a certain advisory role, like the monarch in the UK.

The current president was the PM for the ruling party for a short time when they won the first election, since Erdogan couldn't stand in the election because he was banned from politics. So they are cronies.

Actually, the President has made a slightly lame apology but until we hear from the PM there will continue to be some unrest. Mind you, since yesterday things really have been much quieter and my city's back to work again even if the mood is not 100% normal. The tourist resorts are fine--it's a shame people have been scared off, although I can understand why they'd give Istanbul a miss.

The best joke of the week is Syria "advising its citizens not to travel to Turkey because of the protests" LOL.

 

Has anybody else noted the escalation in the reporting od the current troubles in Turkey?

It seems the first 12 days of protesting/police brutality was covered up or at best glossed over by Western media, since yesterday the coverage has been blanket on CNN, BBC, Russia Today. Aljazeera - all TV (not looked online).

Have the West suddenly fallen out of love with Erdogan who is now offering a nationwide vote to keep the park? Like this whole thing is about saving a few trees...

Any thoughts?

 

Well there is still little reporting on Turkish TV apart from the heroic coverage of Halk TV, heroic because they've been fined for "falsehood" and stand to get thrown in jail but they battle on regardless, good for them. The Guardian's correspondent is someone who was a blogger married to a Turkish woman and in Istanbul anyway. Christine Amanpour tries to give meaning to the situation but generally gets it wrong. The only time we had full coverage was when the government invited the TV companies to film what was obviously a staged "threat" by "marginalists" with Marxist banners as their theatrical props. The PM is definitely not living in the 21st century or even the last half of the 20th century.
So far there are over 7,500 people injured according to the Turkish medical association, but the figure may be nearer 10,000 as people are probably getting treatment from doctor friends, medical students etc. About 10 people have been blinded, I think all in one eye. This is because the tear gas cannisters are being fired like weapons directly at people's heads.
In spite of this daily life goes on ok. My daughter had her high school graduation this week but the kids couldn't go into the city centre to celebrate as parents were too jittery--that night there was a lot of action in Istanbul. Thankfully my city has settled into a Woodstock-eque gathering although it could easily turn ugly. It's been hard for my students to concentrate on final exams and projects. The last exam is Monday.
It's pretty stressful and exhausting.

 

So is the Turkish govt's staging of events, clearing of areas, putting up of props and the West's TV awakening all a coincidence or are the West just now showing what they want the world to know, painting the protesters as Marxist trouble makers? By they I mean Ardogan, Cameron and Obama et al .

 

This is a Turkish situation. I can't really relate it to Obama etc. Erdogan has been in power for 10 long bitter years and as he loves to tell us he was elected with 48% (he says 50%) of the vote so it's not a coalition situation. He's cock of the walk. He thinks can crush the other half of the country. The Marxist props were just handy, he could have used any other obscure group as an accessory.

The half that didn't vote for Erdogan have been trying to explain to the West why he is an anti-democratic meglomaniac since even before he came to power, but the West was totally entranced by what they for some obscure reason wanted to see as "Islamic Democracy".

It makes me so sick that they credit him with Turkey's economic prosperity--no other party could press ahead with any reforms, they were always blocked by the other parties because they had such a slim proportion of the votes. You have to realise that there are way too many political parties in the country which splits the vote catastrophically. Erdogan just implemented an IMF plan that was there before he was even voted in. And also he was successful partly because he sold Turkey to the Arabs and made a personal fortune in the process.

Now I guess govnts in the West are realising they were conned, or waking up to the fact that 50% of the people won't be conned any more. They have to find a cerebral way to present the protests. The worst theory is that Erdogan is losing momentum or people are weary of him because he's nearing the end of the 10 years. So not true. Those against him have always been against him only they were scared/jailed, but now the genie is out of the bottle.

 

And since he bowed to the Zionist IMF he hasn't left office, has amassed a personal fortune, believes his shit don't stink and thinks he's the poster boy for Islamist democracies. I said two weeks ago he was a puppet for the West and that wanted to take Ataturk's mantle and now it's becoming apparent.

Maybe now people in Turkey will wake up to how undemocratic the West is and how soon they will go back to the slavery of the dollar.


Iran goes to the polls tomorrow. 60 years after the US deposed a democratic govt and basically installed the Shah.

The IMF is the root of all evil. The NWO will be here a lot sooner than we think. We should be worried.

 

Has this guy backed himself into a corner? Will he come out fighting?

“I’m making my last warning: mothers, fathers please withdraw your kids from there,” the Turkish premier Erdogan just said in a live television broadcast.

taken from http://www.thejournal.ie/turkey-protesters-reject-last-warning-to-evacuate-park-950484-Jun2013/?utm_source=facebook_short

 

The reply to that was this evening at about 19.30 hundreds of mothers descended on the park "to support their children in Gezi Park" and they marched about singing "everywhere are mothers, everywhere is revolt". Guess that backfired, then.

Don't see Erdogan giving up ever. Perhaps since he sees himself as a sultan he might like to hop on a boat with a one way ticket like the last Ottoman sultan did.

 

I hope he doesn't take it to heart and open fire.

If he has warned mothers to lock their sons in their bedrooms, and then the mothers come out in support of those sons, where does this leave him? Is it a fight or flight situation for his political career now?

 

He'll always prefer to fight. He has a lot of personal charisma and power of oratory which he'll use to try and keep his Hitler youth-style groups working for him. The protestors doing things like wearing t-shirts showing penguins with gas masks (CNN Turk showed a long documentary on penguins the first evening the police tried to break up the park protests, with spectacular violence, no news coverage was given at all) or using slogans like "gas me baby one more time" or calling themselves "the other 50%" and "The Capullers" after his talk saying they were no-good vandals--it is driving him mad. He can't see the point of humour and he's baffled as to how to fight that I think. It just makes him roar the more.

 

How are you doing, madhoca? Are you able to keep things normal in your own life or are the riots or economics posing a hardship? I wish you well.


What's worrisome here involves your neighbors. John McCain is pushing hard for the US to intervene with military in Syria. They've announced some new "Assad used chemical weapons" news an hour ago. We need to stay out of it but the NeoCons are putting a lot of pressure on Obama.

 

What?

Obama has his own thoughts on Syria, without this alleged 'pressure' put on him:

(Emphasis mine.)

So Obama's 'red line' has now been crossed, and we will see if Obama holds Assad 'accountable'. Time to put up or shut up.

 

Why does it always lead back to Israel? I mean absolutely everything.

 

I guess when your strongest ally lives in a place that is surrounded by enemies that want to obliterate them, you want to protect them?

 

so without going to much into, Israel was formed from Palestine, some would say stolen land. Is Israel worth it? Should just about every war on the planet be about protecting Israel under whatever guise? I don't have any answers, i'm just wondering if any westerner has the balls to speak out against them without fear of being accused of being an Islamist terrorist sympathiser.

But has any neighbouring country actually declared war on Israel? Is there a lingering threat or is it complete paranoia? Why should the US jump every time a car backfires or a heavy door slams in Jerusalem?

 

Why would we speak out about them? For almost 65 years, Israel has been the beacon of true democracy in the Middle East. Their own Declaration of Establishment sounds very similar to our own:

...and that was 65 years ago.

So Israel and the US are 'cut from the same cloth' so to speak. Just like a real-life friendship, we share the same values, the same principles. This is not to say that Israel is without blemish, but neither are we. Israel has voted with the US in the UN I believe 98% of the time, so we kind of stick together.

And you could say the US 'stole' its land as well. (Ask any Native American)

As far as enemies, Iran is number one, obviously. They talk about destroying Israel every chance they get. Egypt used to be an enemy, then a peace agreement was signed, then the arab-spring and now the Muslim Brotherhood controls Egypt, an Islamic party that will not deal kindly with Israel. Syria is still pissed off that Israel snagged the Golan Heights, after Syria used it to launch missles into Israel. So there's the surrounding arab countries not to mention the PLO, Fatah, Hamas, Hezbolla, etc... It's a dangerous neighborhood.

 

Typical US speak. Israel is democratic, Israel is our friend, Iran is our enemy, arabs whoah be scared be very scared...
US intelligence is pretty basic and relies on fringe informers, most recently French with an axe to grind I believe.

Syria will always be the enemy of Israel while it supports the Palestinians and hence the enemy of the US. It's also nurtured terrorists wanting to damage the Turkish Republic. It has so many fringe groups and militias it beats me how the US will know who to arm and who not to arm. Finally, totally unlike the civil war situation in Syria and the military, armed conflicts backing the Arab Spring, the protestors in Turkey are simply that--unarmed members of the general public who are protesting using peaceful resistance against great police force and government insults.

 

Edit

 

Just had a call from a friend near Taksim. He says there are more police around than ever but they are sitting about kind of waiting. A pianist has been playing for about 16 hours. This is about the only "weapon" the protesters use. Gezi Park is even more full of people than usual but the carnival mood is less and there aren't children there.

One bus after another is being brought into Istanbul. They are carrying people a long way from remote regions of Turkey to provide a suitably huge crowd of supporters for the AKP (PM's party) rally the PM is scheduled to make. For someone who hates the media Erdogan is good at setting a scene and providing an audience.

I think next Thursday my town is due for an AKP rally. There are tents all along the promenade with kids in them supporting the protests. We are all concerned there will be violent crackdowns before the PM arrives here.

So sick of these threats and bully boy tactics. The man has complete contempt for dialogue and compromise.

 

If you are all concerned there will be a violent crackdown, in other words Erdogan will take no hostages, why are you using children as a human shield? Or are you hoping he will back down if he sees kids even though he pleaded live on TV for mothers to keep their kids at home?

 

By "kids" or "sons and daughters" we mean 18-25 yr olds who are acting totally on their own. It may seem strange to a Westerner that the PM and interior minister seemed to think it was the parents' responsibility to tell their adult children to leave Gezi Park, but in this country the more conservative types meddle in their offspring's life until they are well into middle age. No one is using children as a human shield. As I said earlier, the young children have all been taken away from the park.

 

ah fair enough - misinterpretation of kids, I class kids as children 0 under 12ish

I think by Erdogan warning parents to keep their children out of Gezi, in other words keep them safe from the police brutality about to rear its ugly head in Gezi, he probably is doing you a favour. It's not right, but busted up people will not do anyone any favours. I hope he doesn't stick to his promise but at this stage he has made his bed. He has issued a threat, does he stand by his convictions or run with his tail between his legs. Like I said earlier, unfortunately it looks like 'Fight Or Flight' syndrome for him and his career.

 

For the most part, we don't.

 

or which refugees to accept...