SEEING THE LIGHT

"The citizen, whose life is threatened, will defend himself if he has the chance."
~ R. Tayyip Erdoğan.

I have a few bits and pieces for your perusal tonight.

Firstly, there's another example of AKP's Kurdish policy at Özgür Gündem, where you'll find a video of a Kurdish youth run over by a police vehicle in Yüksekova.

Does everyone remember when Katil Erdoğan said that PKK was using children in protests after Erdoğan's disastrous visit to Amed (Diyarbakır)? Check out this photo from Radikal:





There you see a robocop encouraging children to throw stones for him. No sign of Bahoz Erdal in the photo, however.

On this election night, Hevallo bids a fond farewell to President Bush by publishing some of his more memorable remarks.

Next, the Fethullahcı university has opened in Hewlêr:

Diplomatic relations between Ankara and Arbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi administration, were almost frozen after the foundation of the regional Kurdish government there and Massoud Barzani's election as its president. Recently the relations have seen a period of thaw, and some of the walls between the two parties have been brought down, Barzani explained yesterday after his meeting with Turkey's special envoy to Iraq, Murat Özçelik. Ankara emphasizes the importance of "silent diplomacy" with the Kurdish administration in this regard.

Along with the breaking down of walls has come the building of bridges between Turkey and its northern Iraqi neighbors. Ishik University, newly opened by the Turkish Fezalar Educational Co. in Arbil, is one of those bridges. Fezalar has been active in education in the region for 14 years and has 10 schools in Arbil, Sulaimaniya and Kirkuk. The university is now accepting student registration, and classes will begin in mid-November.

So it appears that Gülen is doing the same thing in Hewlêr as he's doing in the Central Asia and the US:

After the Soviet Union collapsed, the super powers began to fight over Central Asia’s oil and gas wealth, as well as the geopolitics of the region. The U.S. did not want Iran to have control over the Central Asian republics. The U.S. knew that it could not easily have access to the region; therefore, it used the movement of a Turkish Islamic imam, Fethullah Gülen as a perfect proxy to gain control quickly and effectively because Turkey shared the same history, culture and religion with Central Asians. However, this odd but fortuitous relationship made it easy for Gülen later to have entry into America. The U.S. used Gulen’s movement by comparing what it perceived to be a bigger threat to a lesser threat. Rather than standing by for a radical Islamic group to infiltrate Central Asia in the vacuum left by the Soviets, the U.S. choose to support Gulen’s missionaries who were armed with Turkish Sufism. Similarly, the U.S. reasoned that allowing the CIA to support Osama Bin Laden to defeat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan in1979, would ensure the defeat of the Russians.

[ . . . ]

These strange bedfellows of U.S. foreign policy and the Turkish-brand of “moderate Islam” lead Gülen into a cozy relationship with the U.S. In 1999, Gülen escaped to the U.S. citing health issues as an excuse; however, in 2000, he was charged by the Turkish government with forming a terrorist organization to dismantle the secular state in order to replace it with a pro-Islamic government. Today Gulen’s Islamic party is in charge of the Turkish government, and they seek out those who want to act against Gülen, one by one putting them in jail and naming them “the Erkenekon gang.” For example, the Turkish government has charged the owner of the Cumuhuriyet newspaper, some high military officials, and some other party leaders with various crimes, but this strategy is just another way Gülen is taking revenge and wanting the military to be under the control of the civilians or the police because most of the police chiefs are his followers.

The United States’ law allows Gülen Muslim missionaries to operate easily in America. Gülen does not have to challenge the existing political order; he knows how to achieve his goals without violating U.S. law. Actually, it is much easier to gain followers and then position them in key institutions in the U.S. than it was in Turkey. Because the Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom of religion, Gülen uses that existing system for his Islamic aims. In Turkey Gülen initially had problems and lacked the freedom to gain power because the military did not allow his religious activities to be used as a tool to take over the government. Gülen has always taken advantage of situations and used them as opportunities to spread his global Islamic missionaries’ activities under the platforms of Interfaith Dialogues, opening schools around the world, holding conferences, and starting more house mosques, as in the U.S.

Read all of it at Kurdish Aspect to find out how Gülen spreads his poison.

More on Internet censorship in Turkey from Yahoo News:

"In terms of Internet censorship, Turkey is for sure now one of the significant countries," says Clothilde Lecoz, head of the Internet freedom desk at the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. "We are very, very concerned about it."

The European Union, which Turkey hopes to join, has previously been critical of Turkey's record on freedom of expression, particularly in regard to its prosecution of writers and journalists under Article 301, a vague law that punishes those who insult the state and its institutions.

Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish author and Nobel laureate who was tried under Article 301, used his opening speech at the Frankfurt Book Fair this month to criticize Turkey's YouTube ban.

"YouTube, like many other domestic and international websites, has been blocked for residents of Turkey for political reasons," Mr. Pamuk said. "Those in whom the power of the state resides may take satisfaction from all these repressive measures, but we writers, publishers, artists feel differently, as do all other creators of Turkish culture and indeed everyone who takes an interest in it: Oppression of this order does not reflect our ideas on the proper promotion of Turkish culture."

Reporters Without Borders calls for the amendment of Law 5651, under which Turkey is currently censoring the Internet:

Commenting on the latest developments, Reporters Without Borders said: "All this arbitrary blocking of websites has demonstrated that this law is the main source for the deterioration in online free expression. Furthermore, ISPs are forced to do the blocking of access to sites that break this law. This makes them accomplices to censorship."

The press freedom organisation added: "We call for Law 5651 to be amended as quickly as possible. Rather than block an entire website, only the content regarded as 'sensitive' should be the challenged before the courts."

Turkey was ranked 102nd out of 173 countries in the 2008 press freedom index which Reporters Without Borders released on 22 October.

Bianet reports that Blogger.com is temporarily available in Turkey, pending collection of "evidence":

The 1st Criminal Court of First Instance of Diyarbakır has lifted the ban on blogger.com and thus freed the blogs, the internet journals.

According to ntvmsnbc, the decision to lift the ban on the blogs affiliated with blogger.com and blogspot.com went into effect yesterday (October 27).

Today, the internet users witnessed the lifting up of the ban gradually.

Google’s blogger.com and blogspot.com, which provide free internet journal keeping, had become inaccessible in Turkey since October 24. The internet users, the freedom of expression defenders and the telecommunications organizations had been protesting the decision that banned the blogs.

Blogger.com is one of the most visited ten internet sites. It has millions of blog users.

Finally, here's a video of a guy in Istanbul threatening DTP supporters with a shotgun:

For the record, let me point out a Erdoğan's remark on the shotgun incident:

"I advise patience. But I am also concerned about when this patience will end. The citizen, whose life is threatened, will defend himself if he has the chance," Erdogan said on Monday.

Thank you, Sayın Başbakan. This is exactly what PKK has been doing for twenty-four years. I'm overjoyed to know that you finally see the light.