Turkey: Erdogan under new pressure to quit as protesters take to the streets

[BelgianMadCow]

Source: The Guardian

Riot police use teargas, water cannon and plastic bullets to break up demonstrations as corruption scandal grows


SNIP

In scenes reminiscent of this summer's massive anti-government revolts, hundreds of people took to the streets in cities across Turkey on Friday night calling for the government to resign following a high-profile corruption scandal that involves sons of cabinet ministers, leading businessmen and the head of a state-owned bank.

In Istanbul, riot police broke up demonstrations using teargas, water cannon and plastic bullets. According to Turkish media reports, 70 people have been arrested. Protesters chanted "catch the thief", in reference to a highly political corruption probe that started with orchestrated dawn raids on 17 December and is continuing to send shock waves through Turkey, edging ever closer to the heart of the Turkish government.

SNIP

Many domestic commentators believe that the probe is a sign of increasing discord within the country's conservative power base, between the AKP government and its former moderate Islamist allies, the so-called Hizmet movement, led by influential exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen, who is based in the US.

SNIP

On Thursday, public prosecutor Muammer Akkas, who was overseeing part of the inquiry, was also taken off the case, allegedly for leaking information to the press and for failing to keep his superiors sufficiently informed. However, in a letter to the Turkish media he accused the government of actively hindering the investigation. "The judiciary was subjected to open pressure by the police force, and the execution of court orders was obstructed," he said.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/28/erdogan-pressure-quit-turkey-protests

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Looks like Turkey is dropping the veil. I think you can see the brick wall at the end of the theatre.

Check out who isn't covering this at http://realtime.rediff.com/news#!protest%20turkey

RT has "Demonstrators use fireworks against riot police during an anti-government protest in central Istanbul."

[KoKo]

1. This is Not Good News...Erdogan has been a "sometimes ally of us"

..but, I worry that it's his "sometimes ally of us" is why this violence is breaking out.

Is there something he's not aligning himself with in foreign policy promoted by US that he's under attack...or is it that he truly has some personal problems and alliances he might have been "double dealing on."

I'll wait to try to read more international news to try to figure out if we know the truth or will ever know it. But, he does seem to have problems at home and with allies...these days. Just from my trying to read and put together nuances from both foreign and the little reporting about him...here at home.

[BelgianMadCow]

3. I'm not sure - a re-surgence of the Taksim spirit could be considered "good news"

but for any protest movement, we have to consider the chance that it is being either staged or used. As starroute points out below, that opposition figure looks like a washington consensus dream team member. MSM here in Belgium had a protester say - we want neither Erdogan nor the opposite clan - we want a third way...

[starroute]

2. That "influential exiled cleric Fethullah Gülen" is the charter schools guy

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Erdogan-Gulen-and-the-U-by-Michael-Collins-Gulen_President-Barack-Obama-POTUS_Rejep-Tayyip-Erdogan_Turkey-131227-518.html

Gulen's movement is massive in Turkey, wielding influence through a series of private prep schools that focus on gaining scarce university admissions for a broad audience of applicants. The movement presents itself as a moderating force in politics, a compassionate form of Islam based on a Turkish Muslim scholar. Gulen, the man who encompasses the movement, is reputedly worth billions of dollars. His empire operates largely in secret and, according to former insiders who left, it has authoritarian structures like the Church of Scientology.

Gulen was accused advocating an Islamic takeover of the state in Turkey in 1999 and has lived in "self imposed" exile in Pennsylvania since that time. He continued to manage his worldwide efforts, including Madrasas throughout Asia, and also helped lay the foundation for the AKP political movement.


http://www.france24.com/en/20131228-turkey-gulen-opposition-movement-cult-erdogan-islam-muslim-hizmet/

Bolstered by powerful connections to Turkey’s police departments and court system, and financed by rich businessmen, the Gülen movement is a force to be reckoned with in Turkish society. Erdogan has expressed deep discomfort with the network’s far-reaching influence, calling it “a state within a state”.

Alongside the major tenets of Islam, the Gülen movement – often called “Hizmet” (which means “The Service”) by its followers – also preaches Turkish nationalism, interfaith dialogue and the teaching of creationism.

While it has an estimated 3 million official members and 10 million additional supporters, the group’s inner workings are shrouded in secrecy. “It’s organised like a cult,” a French researcher told FRANCE 24, speaking on condition of anonymity. “In certain places where they meet in Istanbul, it really feels like you’re in a Scientology centre. Leaders make speeches about universal love, and distribute pamphlets with photos of celebrities on them. Private classes are given, but we don’t know if the teachings are religious or not.”

The movement’s leaders are indeed known as masters of discretion. “They are very concerned about their image, which they control entirely. Most members are not even allowed to talk about the movement,” the French researcher explained.


http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/p/gulen-school-characteristics.html

In 1999, members of the Gulen Movement, a secretive and controversial cult-like religious group, opened their first charter school in the U.S. (in Ohio). Rapid expansion of the Gulen Movement's network has resulted in the largest charter school chain in the U.S. ... During the 2011-2012 school year, 135 Gulen charter schools operated in 26 states.

This increasingly well-rooted network provides the Gulen Movement with daily access to the minds of over 45,000 students, and yearly access to hundreds of millions of hard-earned tax dollars. How did it come to pass that most Americans, including these students' parents, are completely unaware of this phenomenon?

The Gulen Movement is one of the most powerful and influential forces within Turkish society. Outside of Turkey, it also operates as an expansive, coordinated, and ambitious transnational human energy force comprised of the devoted followers of Fetullah Gulen. Estimates place the number of Gulen followers at between one and eight million.

For nearly two decades, Gulen's followers have been traveling to other countries in order to operate schools, Turkish "cultural" centers, "interfaith dialog" centers, and business organizations out of which they work to advance their movement's goals. This is an ambitious religious group with a serious geopolitical agenda.

[starroute]

4. Gulen has also been accused of CIA ties

These entries are by Sibel Edmonds -- and I'm quite aware that there have been persistent questions about whether she may be attempting to state more than she actually knows. Nonetheless, she does appear to be basing these allegations on mainstream sources.

http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/01/06/turkish-intel-chief-exposes-cia-operations-via-islamic-group-in-central-asia/

January 6, 2011

Yesterday Washington Post’s Jeff Stein published a very interesting but incomplete story regarding a recently published memoir by former Turkish Intelligence Chief Osman Nuri Gundes. Here is the title of his post: Islamic group is CIA front, ex-Turkish Intel chief says. For those of you familiar with my case and what I’ve been covering here at Boiling Frogs Post this exposé is ‘old news’ but nonetheless a vindication. As for those who are first-timers here or not that familiar with my case, this is an opportunity for a bit of background and to learn a few important points and facts that you won’t be getting from this ‘half-picture’ presented by the Washington Post.

In his memoir Gundes claims that Fethullah Gulen’s worldwide Islamic movement based in Pennsylvania has been providing cover for the CIA since the mid-1990s, and that in the 90s, the movement “sheltered 130 CIA agents” at its schools in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan alone. . . .

-In 1999 Gulen defected to the US shortly before his scandalous speech, where he is heard calling on his supporters to “work patiently and to creep silently into the institutions in order to seize power in the state”, became public. Turkish prosecutors demanded a ten-year sentence for Gülen for having “founded an organization that sought to destroy the secular apparatus of state and establish a theocratic state”. Mr. Gulen has not left the United States since.

-The Netherlands has taken major steps to cut funding to all Gülen associated organizations and is investigating his operations. The Turkish Fethullah Gülen movement is really an Islamic fundamentalist group, claims Rotterdam council member Anita Fähmel (Leefbaar Rotterdam) on the basis of her own study of the Turkish movement.


http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2011/06/07/new-york-times%E2%80%99-expose-imam-gulen%E2%80%99s-charter-schools/

June 7, 2011

For the last two years I have been pounding on Imam Fethullah Gulen’s web of organizations and his charter schools empire in the US. For years I have been marveling about the consistent media blackout on the Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen’s past and present nefarious activities and highly suspicious partnerships with various US government agencies and elected officials. And of course for almost two years I have been writing and discussing Gulen with you over here at Boiling Frogs Post. Now the New York Times appears to be catching up; at least with a fraction of this notorious Imam’s multi billion dollar network of organizations and businesses. Yesterday, the Times ran a fairly detailed and long exposé on Gulen’s dubious and highly secretive penetration of US school systems via his rapidly growing charter school operations; let’s start with the attention grabbing intro:

"TDM Contracting was only a month old when it won its first job, an $8.2 million contract to build the Harmony School of Innovation, a publicly financed charter school that opened last fall in San Antonio. It was one of six big charter school contracts TDM and another upstart company have shared since January 2009, a total of $50 million in construction business. Other companies scrambling for work in a poor economy wondered: How had they qualified for such big jobs so fast?

"The secret lay in the meteoric rise and financial clout of the Cosmos Foundation, a charter school operator founded a decade ago by a group of professors and businessmen from Turkey. Operating under the name Harmony Schools, Cosmos has moved quickly to become the largest charter school operator in Texas, with 33 schools receiving more than $100 million a year in taxpayer funds."

[Coyotl]

5. "hundreds of people took to the streets in cities across Turkey" Geeez!

Turkey's resistance image forged as pepper spray burns woman in red dress
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022955934