2 Turkish journalists, detained for posting critical tweets

Fethullah Gulen warns against Turkey's unilateral war

Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen has warned against the dire consequences of Turkey's unilateral involvement in a mission in Syria or Iraq that goes against the mission of the international community. The Turkish authorities should avoid any action that may cause the Turkish people to experience sorrows similar to those of World War I.

In a speech published on Oct. 4 on herkul.org, a website that publishes his speeches, Gülen said those who are working to turn Turkey into an intelligence state -- in a clear reference to the government of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) -- should not be overcome by aspirations to make Turkey enter a war “here and there,” referring to Syria and Iraq, and make people experience a disaster similar to World War I. What Mr. Gulen was referring to is President Erdogan’s insistence that the mission include toppling of the Assad regime.

“My wish from God is that they [government officials] do not enter a war here and there and make the people [of Turkey] experience a new World War I as did the Committee of Union and Progress [İttihat ve Terakki Cemiyeti, which is accused of dragging the Ottoman Empire into World War I] after they [the committee] were overcome by their aspirations and made the Devlet-i Aliye [the Ottoman Empire] victim of an adventure,” Gülen said.

22 killed in protests against ISIL siege of Kurdish town

 22 people were killed and dozens injured across Turkey on Tuesday and Wednesday as sympathizers of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) resorted to violent demonstrations in protest of the Turkish government's failure to help prevent the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani from falling to the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Journalists attacked by Erdogan's bodyguards in NY, media outraged

Turkish and international media representatives have expressed outrage following the announcement that Washington-based Turkish journalists Adem Yavuz Arslan and Ali Aslan were forced out of the lobby of a hotel in New York and attacked by the bodyguards of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Thursday.

According to Arslan, the Washington representative of the Bugün daily two advisors of President Erdoğan said, “your existence is a crime,” in reference to journalists critical of the government.

Yavuz and Aslan, the Washington representative of the Zaman daily, were trying to report on the meeting between Erdoğan and US vice president Joe Biden in the Peninsula Hotel in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.

Fethullah Gulen condemns ISIL atrocities in ads in leading newspapers

Turkish Islamic scholar Fethullah Gulen, who resides in Pennsylvania, placed ads in leading US newspapers on Wednesday to condemn the atrocities of the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

In the ads, which appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, Gülen said the actions of ISIL -- referred to in the ad as ISIS, another name it goes by -- are a “disgrace to the faith they proclaim and crimes against humanity.”

Weak Demand Hits Turkey's Second-Quarter GDP

by Yeliz Candemir - Turkey's economy grew less than expected in the second quarter because of weak domestic demand.

The news, announced by the Turkish Statistical Institute on Wednesday, suggests the government may miss its 4% economic growth target this year. The currency and stocks fell on the news while bond yields rose.

Gross domestic product rose by an annualized 2.1% in the second quarter, according to the institute, below the 2.5% rise forecast by economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. That reflects a setback from a 4.7% growth rate, revised up from 4.3%, in the first quarter. The statistics agency revised Turkey's 2013 economic growth to 4.1% from 4%.

Turks mobilize to join solidarity campaign for Bank Asya

The government-led assault to sink Turkey's largest Islamic lender, Bank Asya, due to its affiliations with the Hizmet movement, has stirred a public movement, with thousands of people rushing to deposit money with the bank to aid its struggle for survival.

Mobilized by waves of social media messages, such as those under the Twitter hashtag #MilletBankAsyayaSahipÇıkıyor (NationProtectsBankAsya), people are flocking to the bank's branches to deposit their money. Some have sold their jewelry, some have sold their cars, and some have even drawn loans from other banks to deposit them with Bank Asya so that the bank is not short of money, amid an unprecedented government attempt to collapse a private bank out of animosity towards a civil society organization.

Turkey risks setting dangerous precedent, Bank Asya CEO says

By Emre Peker - ISTANBUL--Turkish authorities haven’t responded to pleas by Bank Asya that they act to prevent what the bank has called unfair attacks on it, Chief Executive Officer Ahmet Beyaz said. The lack of action risks setting a dangerous precedent about the independence of regulatory agencies, he said.

In his first interview since Thursday, when a spokesman for Turkey’s Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency said that the bank had been put under review under a law that gives the regulator broad powers over the lender, Mr. Beyaz accused BRSA officials of improperly revealing that the bank was under review under Article 70 of the nation’s banking law, and damaging its brand.

New indictment accuses Gezi protestors of coup attempt

 

A new indictment arising from the anti-government protests of last summer -- commonly known as the Gezi Park protests -- accuses 35 protestors, including leaders of a football fan club, of working to overthrow the government.

The indictment seeks aggravated life sentences for the protestors.  It also accuses the protestors of “being members of an armed group,” “resisting public officials,” “staging demonstrations in violation of the law” and “possessing unlicensed weapons.”

Erdoğan verbally attacks top state figures for critical comments

Photo Credit: Today's Zaman

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has targeted the Chief of General Staff, Gen. Necdet Özel, President of the Constitutional Court Haşim Kılıç and the head of the Supreme Court of Appeals, Ali Alkan, criticizing them for their comments expressing concerns about the government's recent policies on domestic issues, a media report has said.

According to the Hürriyet daily, on Thursday, while en route to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit being held on Sept. 4 and 5, Erdoğan responded to questions from several journalists who had been invited to accompany him during his flight, excoriating the three figures for their critical attitudes.
Erdoğan reportedly first targeted Özel, who previously said that the military was not given any solid evidence regarding allegations that the military has been infiltrated by the “parallel state,” a term President Erdoğan uses to refer to alleged members of the faith-based Hizmet movement within the state bureaucracy who he believes aim to topple him, saying: "If there are anonymous letters concerning the acts of the 'parallel structure' then first examine them. If you find any solid evidence on the matter, then you may launch a legal procedure. If you cannot find anything, then you throw it away.”

Davutoğlu says ISIL is driven by anger, avoids calling it terrorist

Photo: Reuters

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has continued Ankara's tradition of avoiding to call the Islamic State as a terrorist organization, says militants of the group are driven largely by anger.

"The structure called ISIL, in its core, could be viewed as a terrorized, radical group, but people joined there ... and there are significant numbers of Turkmens, Sunni Arabs, Kurds... we should know it like this. Previous discontent, anger, discrimination and insults gave birth to a wide reaction in a big front," Davutoğlu told NTV news channel on Thursday.

Erdoğan gov't transforms Turkey into land of oppression, bans

Credit: Today's Zaman

An upward trend of democratic achievements and efforts to make Turkey a more civilized and democratic country have been reversed recently -- particularly after the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) grew more authoritarian and intolerant toward criticism starting from the Gezi Park protests of last summer.

Since then, Turkey has turned inward and transformed into an anti-democratic regime.

The blame largely rests on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his AK Party government. For many, Turkey is now a country where criticism is not tolerated; social media platforms such as YouTube and Twitter are blocked very easily; people are killed for participating in anti-government street protests; and journalists are fired for speaking against the government.

Report: Religious communities profiled by AK Party government

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government reportedly ordered the profiling of all religious groups in Turkey: the İsmailağa community led by Mahmut Ustaosmanoğlu, the Süleymancılar community led by Süleyman Hilmi Tunahan, the Nur movement, the Nakşi movement, and the Kadiri movement, as well as the Hizmet movement, a faith-based civil society initiative intensely disliked by President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

According to a report in the Taraf daily on Sunday, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the National Police Department Intelligence Unit may have jointly been illegally collecting data about religious communities and profiling them on orders from the AK Party. In 2009, former National Police Department Intelligence Bureau Chief Hüseyin Namal, who was assigned to the post to replace Ramazan Akyürek, reportedly sent an official document to the police departments of the 81 provinces demanding that the departments provide detailed intelligence to the government regarding the religious communities in their provinces.

Erdoğan spends vacation in controversial Urla villas

Prime Minister and President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his family have been on vacation recently in their controversial villas in the Urla district of İzmir province that were allegedly built in an environmentally protected zone, according to the Hürriyet daily.

Ankara keeps silent about German spying on Turkey

Despite initially demanding an explanation, Ankara has since decided to remain publicly silent over the allegations that Germany has been spying on Turkey for five years, while reports circulating in the German media allege that Turkey's silence is due to the information in the hands of the German intelligence service.

Erdogan names loyal ally Davutoglu as new Turkey PM

 

Credit: AFP Photo/Adem Altan

Turkey's president-elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday named Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to succeed him as ruling party leader and prime minister, promoting an ally who is expected to show unstinting loyalty to the new head of state.

Erdogan -- who has dominated Turkey's political scene for 11 years as prime minister -- is to be inaugurated as president next week after his election victory earlier this month.

Erdoğan uses 'fake' license plate to avoid election ban, daily says

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan allegedly placed another car's license plate on his official car in order to be able to continue using his car during the presidential election campaign and avoid an election ban that prohibits public officials from making use of public resources during an election campaign, a Turkish daily claimed on Friday.

Government using TÜRGEV to form religious community alternative to Hizmet

The Foundation of Youth and Education in Turkey (TÜRGEV), on whose executive board Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's son Bilal sits and which was involved in a corruption scandal that became public on Dec. 17, is going to be used as a means to create an alternative religious community to the faith-based Hizmet movement, some politicians and analysts have argued.

Police officials who carried out graft operation detained in raids

Photo Credit: Today's Zaman

As many as 100 high-ranking members of the police force were detained in a large-scale operation which began late Monday night/early Tuesday morning in over 20 provinces as part of the government's attempt to contain an embarrassing graft scandal which has implicated several ministers and dozens of pro-government businessmen.

Report on tapes prepared outside but signed by TÜBİTAK

Experts have strongly criticized a report by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) stating that a voice recording between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his son Bilal suggesting that the two were attempting to hide unknown amounts of cash in their family home was a "montage,” saying the report was far from scientific and is instead politically motivated.