Monday, August 1, 2016

The Hitler of Our Time

From Ellis Washington:
Much like Stalin used the long-arm of the Soviet Union to execute his hated rival Trotsky who was hiding in Mexico, Aug. 21, 1940, Erdogan desperately wants Gulen to be repatriated back to Turkey to torture and execute him before the people of Turkey, but the Obama administration officials so far disagree, demanding that Turkey must present legally verifiable evidence of crimes committed by Gulen before they will agree to deport him back to Turkey. Of course Erdogan has no evidence of crimes committed by Gulen—tyrants operate by Robespierre’s aphorism of expediency—There are no crimes, only criminals. Erdogan’s paranoia which imprisoned the 58,000 police, judges, clerics and social workers claim that they were all involved in a grand conspiracy against him operated by Gulen while living in the mountains of Pennsylvania. You couldn’t write a better movie script than this. To Erdogan, free speech is terrorism. (Read more.)
And some insights from Chronicles:
Two weeks after the failed coup and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s subsequent mass purge, three facts seem clear. Turkey has ceased to be a democracy in any conventional sense. The army’s reputation and cohesiveness have suffered a massive blow, with uncertain consequences for its operational effectiveness. Most importantly, Turkey’s foreign policy and regional security strategy will become more difficult to predict and less amenable to Western interests.

The military that has long served as a trusted unifying force for the country is deeply divided, diminished and discredited. Hundreds of its senior officers are under arrest. Almost 1,700 have been dishonorably discharged, including 40 percent of all active-service generals and admirals. That once staunchly Kemalist army, which had been for nine decades one of the key institutions of the Turkish state and society, is gone. It is likely to emerge from the purge as a pliant instrument under Erdogan’s direct control—a hundred reliable colonels have already been promoted to generals—and not a suprapolitical institution accountable to the prime minister’s office as before. This change requires a constitutional amendment, which may well pave the way for the new constitution which would grant Erdogan unprecedented executive powers. (Read more.)
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