Freedom of speech - NL vs Erdogan

[Zhivago]

Lots of discussions in work about the riots in Rotterdam, blocked Turkish minister. Etc...

What is the view here?

[Adder]

Erdogan is stirring up shit on an election week in the Netherlands. Wilders winning would weaken Europe and then benefit Turkey.

[Sandydragon]

Erdogan referring to the Dutch government as Nazis is a bit rich from someone who is veering rapidly towards a more authoritative form of government. Other European governments are not allowing Turkish ministers to campaign in their countries; I'm not sure if that's the right approach or not to be fair, unless there are genuine concerns over security.

[rowan]

He's a horrible man. Takes out law suits against multitudes of politicians, journalists and so on for saying unkind things about him, and then calls the Germans and Dutch 'Nazis' for not doing what he tells them to do. We've gone from Zero Problems with Neighbors to problems with almost all of our neighbors in a very short time. But I've told you before, the basis of Erdogan's power is Washington. He was the only prominent politician in 2003 to actually support America's genocidal war on Iraq. The military refused to play ball, and so the US has removed its long-standing support for the military and backed Erdogan instead, and suddenly we have Turkey involved in more international conflicts at present than over the past 80 years combined - notably in neighboring Syria.

[rowan]

The other thing to understand about Erdogan is that, much as Trump has been described as the embodiment of America, he too is a fairly accurate representation of his nation. They even have a popular series of comedy films named after the character 'Recep Ivedik' (Recep is Erdogan's actual first name, Tayyip is his middle name) - a rude, domineering, arrogant fellow who goes about trying to get what he wants through force and intimidation. So the Turks know this only too well themselves. Erdogan's tactic is to make the unthinking masses believe he is taking Turkey back to its former grandeur as a world power in Ottoman times, and it is perhaps no coincidence that a very popular, long running drama series was recently made about the greatest of sultans, Suleyman, and that another about Abdul Hamid has just started. But I think it would be wrong to assume Erdogan is that fanciful himself. Some people even think that he may not be particularly religious at all. He's simply shrewd enough to know what the unthinking masses want.

[zer0]

[rowan]

The Europeans are within their rights to prevent foreign politicians campaigning in their nations, though there doesn't seem to be much of a precedent for it, so Turkish grievances are perhaps not so unreasonable. It's this hateful, juvenile name-calling that is really reprehensible, especially coming from a man who has taken legal action against so many on often tenuous claims of libel himself. Also unprecedented was the deportation of a foreign political figure from Holland. However, it has come to light that the Turkish protests in Holland were being orchestrated by the minister herself. Now she's back in Turkey claiming the Dutch police overreacted during the protests, as if the police over here were the epitome of fairness and restraint during demonstrations (Gezi Park was a picnic compared to what goes on in the South East). But it's all just political grandstanding, of course; Erdogan wanting to show Turks he's a big tough man who can stand up to the Europeans ahead of the referendum (on scrapping the parliamentary system in favor of enhancing the powers of the presidency). At present polls suggest Erodgan is not going to get his way. But that was also the case before the last elections, and in the end Erdogan got his way as usual . . .

[rowan]

It's worth noting that the longest suffering among the victims have been the Kurds, who are actually indigenous to the eastern half of Turkey, and in terms of total casualties, social and economic devastation and deprivation of cultural rights are way beyond the others. This has been going on for almost a century, in fact, since WWI, following which they were treated at least as badly as the Greeks and Armenians simply because they refused to assimilate. This has continued right up to the present, with countless massacres along the way, such as the so-called Dersim rebellion of 1937 in which between 50 & 80,000 Kurds were killed with a further 12,000 forced migrations. Turkey has one of the largest armies in the world yet, prior to Erdogan's reign, all but one of their interventions since WWI had been within Turkey itself, and you don't need to guess who the victims were. Out of this arose the PKK in the mid-80s, who the US and EU regard as terrorists (though others don't). As far as I can tell, they seem to target the military and police, mostly. I regard them in about the same light as the ANC during Apartheid rule. Meanwhile, the fight against the PKK has claimed an estimated 40,000 lives, about 90% of them Kurdish (probably more). & it should be noted that America & Britain have been complicit in all this to some extent through arms sales, satellite serveillance & the failure to utter even a worse of censure over the atrocities. There was certainly as much reason to invade their NATO ally as there was to invade Iraq, Libya, Syria or any of the others, probably more in the latter two cases, in fact. On top of which we all know about Britain's failure to keep its promises to the Kurds after WWI and provide them with a homeland. Instead Churchill bombed them with chemical weapons, charming fellow that he was. So the Kurds, numbering about 30 million (half in Turkey) remain the largest ethnic group in the world without an independent homeland - although the atonomous region has emerged in northern Iraq out of the ashes of that humanitarian catastrophe. Meanwhile the Kurds in Turkey have been making headway on the cultural rights front in recent decades, but I've never heard anyone speaking the language in Istanbul nor seen signs in Kurdish anywhere, personally; while none of the mainstream media uses it.

[rowan]

& while Erdogan is calling everybody Nazis, let's juxtapose that with the treatment of the currently imprisoned leader of the Kurdish-focused HDP within Turkey itself:

The court on Feb. 21 sentenced Demirtaş, who was arrested on Nov. 4, 2016, to five months in prison for “Openly humiliating the Turkish people, the republic and parliament” by using the term “government terror” in a speech made during the Nevruz celebrations on March 19, 2016.

Meanwhile, HDP co-chair Figen Yuksekdag is also serving time for comments regarding the YPG, a Kurdish militant group which led the fighting against Saudi-backed Jihadists and mercenary terrorists during the proxy war in Syria.

“We rely on the YPG,” Yüksekdağ had said on July 20, 2015, over which a complaint was filed based on “making propaganda on behalf of a terrorist organization and being a member of an armed terrorist group.”

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/hdp-co ... sCatID=338

[rowan]

The latest diatribe . . .

Turkey knows the Netherlands and the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said March 14, as tension between the two countries continue to grow.

“One cannot open fire on a medical team even during war. But I am saying that if it is the Dutch, one can do so because we know the Netherlands and the Dutch from the Srebrenica massacre. We know how their character is depraved from how they slaughtered 8,000 Bosnians there,” Erdoğan said in an event commemorating Doctor’s Day.

“Nobody should give us a lesson on modernity,” he added.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/we-kno ... sCatID=510

[Sandydragon]

Hang on, the Dutch slaughtered 8000 people? Interesting take on events.

[rowan]

The Foreign Minister is now threatening to open the floodgates and allow Turkey's three or four million Syrian refugees to head for Europe. Cavusoglu also says he is very worried about the state of the EU, and fears Europe is falling apart the way it did prior to WWII...

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkis ... sCatID=510

[rowan]

& so it goes on

Turkey will intensify its efforts against racism, Islamophobia and xenophobia on all international platforms, especially at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) as Turkey’s government is currently the term president, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said March 14.

“This matter is not a matter merely for Turkey. This fascism that shows its dirty face is negatively impacting all Muslims and foreigners living in Europe,” he said at a Doctor’s Day meeting.

Erdoğan called on Turks, Muslims and foreigners living in Germany and the Netherlands not to vote for parties that espouse anti-Turkey policies.

The Sultan has spoken . . .

[Stones of granite]

Frankly, I'm a little surprised that Erdogan wants such depraved people to be able to enter Turkey without requiring a visa.

[rowan]

Avoid picking a fight with a Turk, because he will never let it go. Believe me, I've seen these guys screaming threats at each other for hours on end while their mates hold them back and it doesn't stop until the cops show up due to complaints about the noise pollution.

So having labelled the Dutch Nazis, fascists, and authors of the Srebrenica massacre, and threatened to release a flood of Syrian refugees Europe's way, Erdogan unilaterally terminates Istanbul's sister city pact with Rotterdam

President Erdoğan said on March 15 that he has ordered Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım to end Istanbul’s sister city pact with Rotterdam following a diplomatic row between the Turkey and the Netherlands.

“I told our prime minister last night. I told him that he should urgently inform our Istanbul mayor [Kadir Topbaş] and break our sister city agreement with Rotterdam unilaterally for it is impossible for us to be sister cities with such people,” Erdoğan said a rally in the inner Aegean province of Afyon.

Family Minister Fatma Betül Sayan Kaya was prevented from Dutch police from reaching Turkey’s consulate in Rotterdam on March 11 after being told not to enter the Netherlands to conduct political campaigning for the April 16 charter referendum.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/i-told ... sCatID=510

[rowan]

Turkey has now begun expelling Dutch cows. This is getting serious . . .

Turkey’s red meat association has ordered a consignment of prize Dutch cattle to be sent back to the Netherlands, saying it no longer wants to farm the cows due to the diplomatic crisis between the countries.

Bülent Tunç, the head of the Turkish Association of Red Meat Producers, told the Turkish media that a symbolic consignment of 40 Holstein Friesian cattle was already being sent back to the Netherlands.

“The Dutch Holstein cows have become very common in our country. But this breed is starting to cause serious problems,” he told the Anadolu news agency.

“In future we do not want animal products from Holland. The first batch of Holsteins have been loaded and we will send them back,” he added.

He said Turkey should start focusing on breeding its own cattle. “We have our own quality breeds,” he said.

Tunç later told the Hurriyet daily that a symbolic number of 40 cattle had been loaded for sending back to Holland from the Biga dairy production site in the western province of Çanakkale.

“If they don’t accept them back then we will distribute the cuts” after slaughter, he added.

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey ... sCatID=344

[Stones of granite]

Don't tell me the cows have been massacring some Armenians....

[kk67]

Erdogan is another Western puppet that will be destabilised. We are scum.
Our market forces create genocide, tribal war and famine. It's patently obvious. Companies like Haliburton and DeBeers are just monopolies that create war. And they're supported by all the related industries and governments.

It's the ultimate self-fulfilling prophesy.

[rowan]

Erdogan is another Western puppet that will be destabilised. We are scum.
Our market forces create genocide, tribal war and famine. It's patently obvious. Companies like DeBeers are just a global cartel.

Indeed. The deep state is an international cartel, dominated by but not exclusive to Americans. In fact, countries themselves are a fabrication and all part of the deception.

[kk67]

In fact, countries themselves are a fabrication and all part of the deception.

Yes. This is the biggest con of all time.
When future, more enlightened generations, look at current images of our planet from outer space,...........they'll wonder just how fecking stupid our bunch of knuting politicos were. I hope the EMP won't delete the knowledge that we all knew they were a bunch of profiteering, self important, self righteous, bumptious twats at the time.
'Cos we all knew it.

[rowan]

In fact, countries themselves are a fabrication and all part of the deception.

Yes. This is the biggest con of all time.
When future, more enlightened generations, look at current images of our planet from outer space,...........they'll wonder just how fecking stupid our bunch of knuting politicos were. I hope the EMP won't delete the knowledge that we all knew they were a bunch of profiteering, self important, self righteous, bumptious twats at the time.
'Cos we all knew it.

Future generations will view our times with the same degree of utter abhorrence as we ourselves view the European colonial period. & they'll blame it on ignorance, of course...

[kk67]

In fact, countries themselves are a fabrication and all part of the deception.

Yes. This is the biggest con of all time.
When future, more enlightened generations, look at current images of our planet from outer space,...........they'll wonder just how fecking stupid our bunch of knuting politicos were. I hope the EMP won't delete the knowledge that we all knew they were a bunch of profiteering, self important, self righteous, bumptious twats at the time.
'Cos we all knew it.

Future generations will view our times with the same degree of utter abhorrence as we ourselves view the European colonial period. & they'll blame it on ignorance, of course...

Back then they had the excuse of exploration. Since then it's all been financial exploitation and a Boys Own version of Patriarchal hegemony.

I worry about our middle class wannabes who holiday and work in countries that we know support slavery.
I think that psychopathic psychology is far more widespread than we've realised. Our Super Rich are undisguised megalomaniacs, they are immune from the law....but getting the middle class twonks involved is a master stroke.

We have trouble.

[rowan]

The Turks will be happy about this development anyway:

The far-right politician Geert Wilders fell short of expectations in Dutch elections on Wednesday, gaining seats but failing to persuade a decisive portion of voters to back his extreme positions on barring Muslim immigrants and jettisoning the European Union, according to early results and exit polls.

The results were immediately cheered by pro-European politicians who hoped that they could help stall some of the momentum of the populist, anti-European Union and anti-Muslim forces Mr. Wilders has come to symbolize, and which have threatened to fracture the bloc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/worl ... -vote.html

[Digby]

Erdogan says we've started a crusade against Islam. This might be worth telling people you know as I suspect most people will have no idea we're doing any such thing, if for no other reason than we're unlikely to need/want to start a crusader against people we don't care about, and more specifically day to day don't even think about.

[rowan]

Erdogan says we've started a crusade against Islam. This might be worth telling people you know as I suspect most people will have no idea we're doing any such thing, if for no other reason than we're unlikely to need/want to start a crusader against people we don't care about, and more specifically day to day don't even think about.

& in the next breath he's trying to rally all Muslims to a 'holy war' against Europe. But you have to understand that no one here is taking that seriously. There's more hyperbole in Turkish politics in one day than there is in an entire season of WrestleMania. They roar like wounded bulls for hours on TV, threatening and ridiculing each other, so it's only natural that it now spills over into the international arena because Erdogan thinks he's sultan of a revived super power (or, at least, he wants his unthinking masses to believe he is). That's the context. None of it excuses the trash talk he's coming out with. Welcome to the Turkish way . . .

Oh, & the PM has also taken credit for Wilders' failure in Holland. It was all because of Turkey