Let Mr. Erdogan Fight His Own Battles

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

May 2, 2014

Not long ago, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish preacher in Pennsylvania, were the best of allies. Mr. Erdogan heads an Islamist government, and Mr. Gulen promotes a moderate, pro-Western brand of Sunni Islam that appeals to many well-educated and professional Turks. The two men had a common purpose in confronting and weakening the country’s once-dominant secular military and political leadership.

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What happened to the 'Turkish model'?

Ramazan Kilinc

The only guarantee of a consolidated democracy in Turkey is the emergence of a new coalition to balance the increasing power of the government vis-à-vis society. 

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Corruption, Islamism, and Twitter in Turkey

Ahmet T. Kuru

Erdoğan has consolidated the executive, legislative, and the judicial powers under his authority; yet he has been unable to control another source of power— Twitter.

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The rise and fall of Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan in three acts

By Turan Kayaoglu

Like a figure in a Greek tragedy, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan has fallen from a Jefferson-could-be into a Putin-wannabe, all within the swift span of a year.

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/03/09/3087255/the-rise-and-fall-of-turkeys-prime.html#storylink=cpy

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What happened to the Turkish model of passive secularism?

Ahmet Kuru

In 2006 I wrote an essay to refute the depiction of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) as anti-secular. The argument was based on the two types of secularism.

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Fethullah Gulen’s interview with The Wall Street Journal in English

Joe Parkinson and Jay Solomon

1. The Prime Minister has repeatedly attacked you and Hizmet in recent weeks. Do you believe that your alliance with his faction of the AKP is now definitively at an end?

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As it happens:Turkey’s graft investigation and PM Erdoğan’s response

Kerim Balci

Last updated Jan. 08, 2014   Turkey is passing through interesting times. Very recently the country has been shaken by two corruption investigations involving ministers from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). The related investigations heralded the final parting of the ways between two strong players in Turkey: the AK Party and the Hizmet movement (a faith-inspired community affiliated with the now US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen). Once allies against military tutelage and staunch secularist elite control of power centers in the country, recent events and the Turkish prime minister’s response demonstrate the differing views and positions of both sides. 

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Turkey’s Struggle for Checks and Balances

Husain Haqqani 

Prime Minister Erdogan is blaming a corruption case on his political nemesis, but the reality is that the government has been overstepping its democratic bounds.

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Attacks on free press in Turkey

Abdullah Bozkurt

It appears that Turkey's powerful prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has adopted a two-pronged assault on the right to freedom of expression and free press in Turkey against the background of increased criticism of his government amid outrageous revelations that the government has been running a massive profiling program on unsuspecting innocent citizens with no reasonable cause whatsoever.

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"Turkish government defiant as battle over prep schools rises"

The tension recently peaked, with Erdoğan describing the group’s objection to his government’s plans as a “smear campaign.”

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Erdoğan launches another war

Mustafa Akyol

Last week I wrote a piece in this column titled, “Behind the war over prep schools.” In fact, it was not a full-scale culture war then, but rather a growing tension. But Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan made it obvious to everyone this week by announcing on a TV show that he is determined to close all prep schools and he, as usual, will “not take a step back.”

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At home and abroad, Erdogan shoots himself in the foot

Mahir Zeylanov

“I voted for [Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party] but I feel ashamed for their move,” Nazlı Ilıcak, a columnist with pro-government daily Sabah and long supporter of the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, recently said, referring to a government intention to inspect mixed-gender student housing.

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Transnational Conspiracy Theories and Vernacular Visual Cultures: Political Islam in Turkey and America

Pelin Gurel, Ph.D.*

“Seeing is believing, but feeling is the truth,” states an epistemological folk theory. Successful theories of conspiracy – those that are ultimately true as well as false – all depend on what Stephen Colbert would call “truthiness”: “the quality by which you know something purely by feeling, without regard to logic, evidence, or intellectual examination.” While visual documentation, including photographs and charts, has long been used as “proof” in conspiracy theorizing, the role unrealistic images might play in generating feelings of truthiness has not been subjected to sustained analysis. This gap is even more jarring in the case of contemporary conspiracy theories regarding political Islam, given the importance of “looking” Muslim to both hate-crimes and conspiracy theorizing. An even larger gap in scholarship exists in terms of images and conspiracy theories regarding political Islam in Muslim-majority countries like Turkey.

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The quest for Muslim liberalism: An Egyptian’s journey from ultraconservatism to liberalism

Ahmed M. Abou Hussein *

An Egyptian man waves the national flag 

next to a graffiti on a newly whitewashed wall

 in Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday, Sept. 21. 

(PHOTO ap, Nasser Nasser)

I come from a typical Egyptian family that did not emphasize religious teachings as much as it did morals in general. Stealing, lying and cheating are bad traits because they are immoral, not because they are forbidden.

My relationship with Islam was very opaque until the age of 15, when a friend of ours started attending religious seminars and listening to Islamic recordings by state-banned sheikhs. I started to indulge myself in conservative Islamic teachings so fast that, as I remember, in the first few months of being a practicing Muslim, I read dozens of Islamic books and booklets (printed in the Gulf), listened to multiple recordings and attended dozens of Islamic seminars. The excitement of getting to know my religion and doing something against the state was quite gratifying, yet not fulfilling. Soon and at the age of 16, I stopped talking to girls or shaking their hands, listening to music, watching television or going to the movies. My family had some objections, but the more they objected, the more stubborn I became.

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Will Erdoğan and Gül really clash?

Etyen Mahçupyan

The back-to-back speeches given by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the recent Justice and Development Party (AK Party) congress and then by President Abdullah Gül in Parliament have triggered some vocal comparisons.

These types of analyses have been very popular for a while now in the secular media. Some of the same voices who just five years ago lent support to the political intervention carried out by the General Staff headquarters over the Internet, without even a vague attempt to recall the past, are now voicing support for Gül. Actually though, the five years that have passed since that Internet intervention have changed neither Erdoğan nor Gül at all. The prime minister is a character who draws strength from his own charisma, who puts no distance between his stance as a politician and as a human and who does not shy away from reactive behavior. As for the president, he is careful, with a personality that is somewhat distanced and likes to listen and hear things. There are actually no great differences between them when it comes to their shared desire to integrate the sensitivities of Islamic factions with the global world system. Both men have voter blocs that they appeal to and to whom they listen, and actually, their dual stances seem to come together in one united bloc.

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Obama praises Turkish PM for call for calm over anti-Islam film

U.S. President Barack Obama called Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan yesterday to discuss regional and global issues with the Turkish leader, the White House announced. Obama commended Erdoğan's "leadership" in his calls to resist provocation in the wake of deadly protests which erupted after a U.S.-made anti-Islam film spread over the Internet.

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AK Party faces risk of losing popular support

Lale Kemal

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which came to power for the third term after the June 12, 2011 elections, has increasingly been enjoying a situation in which it faces no real opposition from other political parties in Parliament.

There is no pressure forcing the AK Party to feel the heat and force it to rethink its highly controversial policies, which have included a departure from reformist policies and resorted to a more conservative stance such as dictating policies on a possible ban on abortion. It is a known fact that Turkey's greatest democratic deficit is the lack of an opposition. The existing opposition parties in Parliament are ideologically motivated, but trapped in narrow politics.

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