Turkey

[Vato]

RIP

This shit will never end will it? The human race really is the most self destructive life form that has ever existed. We're a disgrace.

 

[2cents]

HDP leader Demirtaş calls out Pm Davutoğlu for his response to the bombings. Whatever the truth of his allegations (that there was no security at the rally, that the police actually withdrew from the area just before, that they then proceeded to tear gas people attempting to help out after the bombings), he's an impressive politician, and he certainly captures the anguish of a growing number of Turkish Kurds. The speech is worth watching to the end:

 

[Nick 0208 Ldn]

Three-year-old left scarred and partially blind while six children suffered burns after attacker sprayed them with acid in restaurant playroom

 

[Samid]

What. Not even going to bother clicking that link.

 

[VidaRed]

Turkey is looking more and more like its troubled neighbors

It should have been a moment of unity against a backdrop of horror.

At a qualifying match this month for next year’s Euro 2016 soccer championship in the central Anatolian city of Konya, the teams of Turkey and Iceland stood, heads bowed, for a minute of silence commemorating the 102 victims of suicide bombings in Ankara three days earlier.

But sectors of the crowd erupted in jeers and booing, shouting right-wing slogans and Allahu Akbar (God is Great). Instead of a closing of national ranks, the moment spotlighted Turkey's raw divisions.

The bombings, carried out by Islamic State followers from inside Turkey, targeted the pro-Kurdish coalition the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), left-wing activists and trade unionists as they gathered for a rally against fighting in southeast Turkey between security forces and insurgents of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

It was the deadliest terror attack in Turkey’s history but, far from uniting the country, it increased the polarization. Turkey’s qualifying victory over Iceland was eclipsed by the rancor on show in Konya’s stadium.

“Don’t we have a heart that beats for them (the Ankara victims) and the lips to hush? What does it take to respect a person who passed away? Are we so unfamiliar with these feelings?” wrote former national team manager Mustafa Denizli in Hurriyet newspaper.

Turkey, a NATO ally and candidate for EU membership, risks sliding into the sort of ethnic and sectarian strife that has torn Iraq and Syria to its south. In the view of some alarmed analysts, Turkey is starting to resemble its neighbors.

“We are becoming more and more Syrianised and we are turning into more of a Middle Eastern country than a European country,” said veteran analyst Cengiz Candar.

Some analysts say the Suruc bombing was an inevitable consequence of the government’s Syria policy. The practice of allowing jihadi volunteers to cross the border to fight in Syria has seeded Turkey with IS sympathizers.

Yet even when Turkish press reports identified cells in towns such as Adiyaman, little action was taken. The Turkish government denies it supports Islamic State sympathizers, tacitly or otherwise, or that attacks were not properly investigated.

“Too many of the attacks against the HDP are not investigated,” said Hakan Altinay, from Washington’s Brookings Institute. "The social contract has been broken..(And this is) key to (the Kurdish) sense of alienation. If you carry on that way the social fabric unravels."

Sinan Ulgen, a former diplomat who heads the liberal EDAM think-tank in Istanbul and is a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Foundation in Brussels, said the government's response to the bombings has been inadequate.

“The government so far has been unable to come up with any convincing explanation why they failed to investigate correctly and accept responsibility for our freedom and security.”

“Turkey is in turmoil (and) the flames are engulfing everyone,” said Ulgen, referring to the fallout from Syria.

Altinay said Turkey was beginning to resemble its neighbors, adding: "Once you let that genie out of the bottle it’s difficult to get it back in.”

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015...on-polarisation-insight-idUSKCN0SL12Y20151027

 

[Kaos]

The Sultan's cracking up...

Two children face two years in jail for tearing down Erdoğan poster

AFP photo

Two children aged 12 and 13 have been arrested on charges of “insulting the Turkish president” after allegedly tearing down posters showing a photo of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, news website Radikal has reported.

The two cousins, identified only by the initials R.Y. and R.T., now each face up to two years and four months in prison, upon approval of the case by the Justice Ministry.

R.Y. and R.T., two cousins, were detained on May. 1 for tearing down the posters outside the local highway directorate in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır.

In his testimony, R.Y. reportedly said the two were heading back home from the market and they wanted to remove the posters from the billboards in order to sell them to a junk dealer.

“We did not care about whose posters they were. We just wanted to remove them in order to sell them to a junk dealer,” R.Y. said.

The Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office applied to the Justice Ministry to file a lawsuit against the two children, as Article 299 of the Turkish Criminal Code (TCK) states that filing a legal case on charges of “defaming the Turkish president” must be done upon approval from the Justice Ministry.

After approval from the ministry, the case was filed against the two cousins in the Diyarbakır 1st Children Court.

The prosecutor’s office also asked for implementation of Article 5 of the Child Protection Law, which means counselling the family of the children in question, assuring their school attendance, and assuring their health conditions.

The article also includes the settlement of children implicated in criminal activities in a children’s home after serving their time in a young offenders’ prison.

The first court hearing will be held on Dec. 8 this year, as the indictment prepared by the prosecutor’s office has been accepted by the Diyarbakır First Children’s Court.

The children’s lawyer, İsmail Korkmaz, said the charges of “insulting the Turkish president” were “unclear” and it was difficult for children to even know who the posters showed.

“It is devastating to see two children being tried for tearing down a poster of the president,” Korkmaz added, slamming Turkey’s “illiberal” justice system.

 

[2cents]

AKP heading for >50%. If the HDP fail to break 10%, which is looking possible right now, their votes will be redistributed among the other three parties, which may give the AKP the power to change the constitution, or at least put it to a referendum.

 

[2cents]

So AKP win majority and will return to rule alone, but HDP just about hang on to their seats.

 

[Aussie_Red_Devil]

In Turkey right now. Not a bad place. That is all i have to add lol

 

[LeChuck]

A victory for the Syrian Revolution. It's a good day.

 

[PedroMendez]

Can anyone explain, why the AKP gained enough votes to govern by itself?

In a way it is probably the best possible outcome. The HDP is still in, so the kurds won´t go into complete meltdown and at the same time the AKP might focus on governing again instead of terrorising its population.

 

[RedTiger]

In Turkey right now. Not a bad place. That is all i have to add lol

Where abouts are you mate?

 

[2cents]

A victory for the Syrian Revolution. It's a good day.

Not sure Syrian Kurds will agree, but in any case the main thing I've learned from this election is that Erdogan is a genius and the PKK are total idiots.

 

[2cents]

Can anyone explain, why the AKP gained enough votes to govern by itself?

This should explain it:

One thing wrong with it though - 330 seats can only put proposed constitutional changes to a referendum - they need 367 to change it unilaterally. So Erdogan is going to have to bide his time or pursue alternative means to achieve his goal.

 

[PedroMendez]

so, why were the HDP and the MHP so strong in the June election, but lost their gains again? Shouldn´t at least the MHP benefit from instability and chaos?

 

[2cents]

To be honest I don't know anything about the MHP except that they're ultra nationalist and therefore extremely anti-Kurdish. Seems the AKP successfully took loads of seats off them by portraying themselves as just as tough on 'terror' (i.e. the Kurds), and the PKK fools fell for it.

 

[Kaos]

Wonder what constitutional tricks Erdogan will have up his sleeve, will probably try and declare himself Sultan elect of a neo Ottoman empire. Perhaps it's time for Iraqi kurds to test his resolve by flirting with imminent independence. Edit: just realised the AKP (thankfully) fell short of a constitutional majority.

 

[2cents]

Some good analysis here:

http://ottomansandzionists.com/2015/11/01/a-quick-reaction-to-the-akp-victory/

I need some time to absorb today’s election results and think about them more thoroughly, but a few brief points in the immediate aftermath.

I certainly will not pretend to have foreseen this result. Had someone predicted to me yesterday that the AKP would replicate its 2011 parliamentary victory, I would have laughed at the idea and dismissed the person as naive or a Turkey neophyte. I know of no serious Turkey analyst, either Turkish or otherwise, who saw this coming, and the polling whiffed entirely, so both I and everyone else need to figure out where the gap is between the polling/analysis and actual results. I will, however, take credit for writing on the day after the previous election that it was not a loss for the AKP, that Erdoğan was still going to control the direction in which Turkey moved, and doubting the analysis of a liberal wave or new era in Turkish politics. At least I got something right!

Assuming that these results are accurate – and I’ll get to why that may be a question in a minute – Erdoğan and the AKP’s strategy has been vindicated beautifully. After the June 7 election, Erdoğan took the gamble that introducing some instability into the system, linking the HDP to the PKK and Kurdish terrorism, turning even more nationalist and polarizing, and arguing that not handing the AKP a parliamentary majority was a recipe for further chaos, would all result in a second election that would net the AKP a larger vote share. A lot of people, including me, thought that this strategy spun out of the AKP’s grasp and that the AKP would end up either in the same spot or even lose some ground given the violent clashes between the army and the PKK, terrorist attacks inside Turkey that were almost certainly carried out by ISIS, the introduction of Russia into the Syrian civil war in a direct way and on Assad’s side, and an economy that is not improving. As has been the case repeatedly over the last decade and a half, Erdoğan’s political instincts are better than everyone else’s, and while the preliminary results do not have him getting the supermajority he has so craved in order to install his beloved presidential system, the AKP is back to a majority of seats in parliament.

How does something like this happen? After everything that has gone on in Turkey over the past five months, how is it possible that the AKP increased its vote share in every single city? How is it possible that the AKP is only a few seats short of its 2011 victory despite a worse economy, a foreign policy that has blown up, terrorist attacks in Turkey’s streets, renewed fighting with the PKK, and far greater political polarization? Looking at the results that have been released, the AKP has picked up seats from the nationalist MHP and from the Kurdish HDP, and turnout overall is up. That says to me that the nationalist positioning worked exactly as it was supposed to, since nationalist voters figured that they may as well vote for the suddenly ultra-nationalist party that will be the largest party rather than the ultra-nationalist party that will come in third. In terms of the loss of vote share for the HDP, it’s probably a combination of the AKP’s constant allegations tying the HDP to the PKK and some HDP voters getting fed up with the system since the HDP’s historic success in June did not translate into any increased power for the party or an increased voice for Kurds, and some of the voters who cast their ballots for the HDP last time but are historic AKP voters returning to the AKP fold. People who pay attention to Turkish politics spend a lot of time reading the Turkish press online and conversing with each other on social media, but the vast majority of Turkish voters get their information from Turkish television, and last week’s seizure of Koza Ipek television stations reinforces that if you get your news from Turkish television, you are getting a relentless pro-government message. So in hindsight, it is easy to see how the AKP’s message that instability was the result of not giving the AKP a majority in June and that the only way to restore things was to correct course today, and drowning out every alternative argument to the contrary, could have produced the desired result.

Of course, there is also another possibility, which is that what seems to be impossible actually is. As of this writing, the AKP has received an additional 4.3 million votes over what it received in June. Also as of this writing, the Turkish Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) has not released any official results and the YSK website is down, and it has been ever since voting ended. I’m an Occam’s Razor kind of guy, and quite frankly, the prospect of the AKP doing so much better five months later despite things being so much worse seems like it should be statistically impossible. The central elections website is down, votes were counted hours faster than they were last time, the ban on broadcasting results was lifted before it was supposed to…I’m not in a position to make accusations of fraud, but there is definitely some unusual stuff going on. The bottom line, however, is that even if there turns out to be nothing irregular at all about the actual vote tally, the facts are that the AKP spent five months harassing opposition politicians, arresting opposition journalists, shutting down television stations and newspapers, accusing the HDP of supporting terrorism, and warning the entire country that the instability that has wracked the country would look like child’s play if the AKP were not handed a majority this time. Whatever you want to call the sum total of those tactics, they do not make for a free and fair election. Welcome to the era of competitive authoritarianism, Turkey.

More to come…

 

[Aussie_Red_Devil]

Where abouts are you mate?

Istanbul

 

[Nick 0208 Ldn]

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And yet there remains a fairly strong lobby amongst European politicians for Turkey's admittance into the EU.

 

[Fener1907]

A movement that was the intellectual backbone of the AKP is being gutted? My heart bleeds for them.

Also, Turkey doesn't want to be in the EU, so Europe can rest its little head and stop fearing.

 

[VidaRed]

Turkey will become the next pakistan and launch pad for terrorists into europe.

 

[Fener1907]

Turkey will become the next pakistan and launch pad for terrorists into europe.

No, it won't.

 

[RedTiger]

Turkey will become the next pakistan and launch pad for terrorists into europe.

OK Nostradamus.

 

[Nick 0208 Ldn]

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[PedroMendez]

I Germany a mini-scandal continues to evolve. It is quite funny to say the least. A german comedian (Jan Böhmermann) called Erdogan a goat-fecker in a poem in his TV show. There is a law, that penalises insulting foreign heads of states. Usually nobody would care; this law was never actually used, doesn´t apply in this case (satire) and only comes only in effect when the foreign head of state actually files charges. Erdogan did just that. The catch is that Merkel struggles to deal with the situation. Instead of defending freedom of expression, she said, that the poem was intentional hurtful and tried to be sympathetic with Erdogan. Well, that back-fired after he officially filed charges.

The context is also quite significant. The turkish government frequently summons the German ambassador to complain about critical media coverage - and the German government usually avoids to rebuff Erdogan harshly. It is quite sad to see, that Merkel is kind of in the pocket of Erdogan because of this refugee "deal".

 

[berbatrick]

http://rudaw.net/english/middleeast/turkey/100520164

UN rights chief: Turkish military actions in Cizre ‘extremely alarming’

 

[PedroMendez]

I guess you could say that history is repeating itself.

The Turkish parliament approved stripping its members of immunity from prosecution. In total 138 MPs are affected (50 of the 59 HDP MPs). If MPs are convicted, their mandates are up for grabs again. That will ensure the necessary majority for the AKP to change the constitution and move further to a presidential system with Erdogan as their Führer.

 

[Nick 0208 Ldn]

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[Dr. Dwayne]

Probably the right thing to do, all things considered.

 

[2cents]

First call to prayer inside Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia in 85 years

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/fi...ears.aspx?pageID=238&nID=101161&NewsCatID=341

A muezzin’s call to prayer reverberated inside the sixth-century Istanbul landmark Hagia Sophia for the first time in 85 years on July 1.

The building in the city’s historic Sultanahmet district broadcast the azan from its minarets following July 1’s Laylat al-Qadr, or night of power, marking the first revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad.

The broadcast of the morning call to prayer from within Hagia Sophia is likely to reignite controversy over the use of the building, which was designated a museum in 1935 under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. Although the call to prayer has been played from Hagia Sophia’s minarets for the last four years, the muezzin has always chanted from a prayer room in the museum grounds rather than from inside the former mosque and cathedral.

Built as an Orthodox Christian basilica during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in 537, the famous domed structure, known as Ayasofya in Turkish, was converted into a mosque following Sultan Mehmet II’s conquest of the city in 1453.

In recent years there have been calls to return the building to Muslim worship. Last month, the Greek government complained about the reciting of the Quran in Hagia Sophia during Ramadan – criticism the Turkish Foreign Ministry described as “unacceptable.” For the azan call that was televised in a July 2 program featuring Mehmet Görmez, the head of the Religious Affairs Directorate (Diyanet), Greek Foreign Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Efstratios Eftimiu said: “We express our intense concern and discomfort at yet another step that undermines the nature of Hagia Sophia as a monument of global cultural heritage and that obviously is not compatible with the principles that should govern a modern, secular state.”

 

[antihenry]

Turkey’s ‘Deep State’ Has a Secret Back Channel to Assad.


https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/12/turkeys-deep-state-has-a-secret-backchannel-to-assad/

Spoiler

ISTANBUL — In the past month, Turkey has worked to turn two old rivals into new friends. On June 27, Turkish officials announced a deal normalizing relations with Israel after a six-year rift in the wake of the deadly Mavi Marmara incident. That day, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also expressed regret to Russia over the downing of a Russian warplane in November 2015, which paved the way for the two countries to patch up their relationship.

The fate of Syria looms large over Turkey’s foreign-policy “reset.”

Could Ankara alsoextend an olive branch to its greatest enemy: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime?Could Ankara also extend an olive branch to its greatest enemy: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime?

Turkey cut all diplomatic ties with Syria in September 2011, after Assad refused to institute reforms to defuse the growing protest movement against his rule. Since then, Turkey has been supporting the Syrian opposition, which aims to topple the Assad regime, and hosting more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees on its soil. A small, left-wing nationalist political party now claims that the rising refugee crisis, Russia’s heavy-handed military campaign in Syria, and a powerful Syrian Kurdish militia’s land grab in the northern part of the country leave Turkey no choice but to engage with the Assad regime. In fact, the leaders of that party already claim to be passing messages between Turkish and Syrian government officials.

The Homeland Party (Vatan Partisi), a nationalist movement with an anti-Western and anti-American platform, is chaired by Dogu Perincek, a well-known socialist politician in Turkey; its vice chair is Lt. Gen. Ismail Hakki Pekin, the former head of the Turkish Armed Forces’ Military Intelligence. Perincek and Pekin told Foreign Policy that they had meetings with members of the governments of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria during the last year and conveyed messages they received during these visits to high-ranking Turkish military and Foreign Ministry officials.

Perincek and Pekin — a socialist leader and an army general, respectively — may seem like something of an odd couple. Their political collaboration started in prison, as both men were detained in 2011 in relation to the Ergenekon case, which alleged that a network belonging to the “deep state” was plotting a military coup against the elected government. Both men share a staunch Kemalist political outlook based on a very strict adherence to secularism and Turkish nationalism, as well as an “anti-imperialist” outlook that makes them wary of American and Western influence over Turkish politics. In 2016, the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned convictions in the Ergenekon trials, ruling that the “Ergenekon terror organization” did not exist at all and that evidence had been collected illegally.

Perincek and Pekin first met Assad in Damascus in February 2015. During this meeting, Perincek said, both parties agreed on “the need of Turkey and Syria to fight separatist and fanatical terror groups together.”

Pekin and other retired senior Turkish officers who are also members of the Homeland Party, Rear Adm. Soner Polat and Maj. Gen. Beyazit Karatas, subsequently visited Damascus three times. Pekin said that during these visits — which took place in January, April, and May — the delegation met with several of the most influential security chiefs, diplomats, and political officials in the Syrian government. They included the head of the Syrian General Security Directorate, Mohammed Dib Zaitoun; Ali Mamlouk, the head of the National Security Bureau; Foreign Minister Walid Muallem; Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad; and Abdullah al-Ahmar, assistant secretary-general of the Syrian Baath Party.

The main theme of these meetings, according to Pekin, was “[h]ow to prepare the ground for Turkey and Syria to resume diplomatic relations and political cooperation.”

According to the retired Turkish army general, his meeting with Mamlouk, Syria’s powerful security chief, reached directly to the top of the state.

“Mamlouk would often ask permission to go to the next room to talk to Assad directly on phone” Pekin said.“Mamlouk would often ask permission to go to the next room to talk to Assad directly on phone” Pekin said.

Pekin said that he debriefed senior Foreign Ministry and military officials after each visit, and that he has sensed a gradual change in Turkish officials’ attitudes over the past 18 months. “In January 2015, Turkey was not ready to change its policy,” he said. “However, during my last visit I observed that they [Foreign Ministry officials] were more open and flexible about that issue.”

A senior Turkish Foreign Ministry official confirmed that he met Pekin, yet vehemently denied that Turkey was negotiating with the Assad regime.

“Yes, we listened to Pekin,” the official said. “We listen to millions of people, even truck drivers, who say they possess sensitive information about conflict zones. But there was no exchange in these meetings whatsoever.”

But Pekin and Perincek believe that the growing power of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has carved out a large autonomous area in northern Syria along the Turkish border, could persuade Turkish officials to come around to their argument. The PYD is closely affiliated with the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish state and is considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Ankara.

The two leaders of the Homeland Party argue that Turkey and the Assad regime are bound by this common enemy. “Bashar Assad told us that the PYD is a traitor organization, a separatist group. He said he will not tolerate such a separatist group in Syria, and he had no doubt that the PKK and PYD are the pawns of the U.S.,” Perincek said. “I heard him say this with my own ears.”

Pekin and Perincek said that the PYD is receiving important support from the United States, and made the case that the only way to counteract this is to build ties with other regional countries — including Assad’s regime. “Turkey is fighting against the PKK at home, yet this is not enough,” he said. “Turkey has to cut the foreign support to the PYD and fight against them to defeat the PKK. To cut the foreign support to the PKK, Turkey has to collaborate with Syria, Iraq, Iran, [and] Russia.”

At least some Turkish government officials might be sympathetic to that line of argument.

“Assad is ultimately a killer. He tortures his own people. But he doesn’t support Kurdish autonomy. We may dislike one another, but we pursue similar politics with that regard,” an unnamed senior official with the Justice and Development Party (AKP) told Reuters on June 17.

However, several senior Turkish officials rejected the claim that Turkey is changing its stance against the Assad regime. One official told Foreign Policythat the idea of Turkey collaborating with the Assad regime against the PYD was “ludicrous.” The official asked rhetorically:

“Assad cannot protect his own neighborhood — how can he help us fight the PYD, which he empowered against Turkey and the Syrian opposition?”“Assad cannot protect his own neighborhood — how can he help us fight the PYD, which he empowered against Turkey and the Syrian opposition?”

But the Syria issue isn’t the first time Perincek and Pekin claim to have delved into diplomacy — they say they also played a role during the rapprochement between Turkey and Russia.

“A group of businessmen close to Erdogan approached us to improve ties with Russia,” said Pekin, who visited Russia in December immediately after the downing of the Russian warplane. Pekin’s group introduced the businessmen to Alexandre Dugin, an ultra-nationalist Russian philosopher close to the Kremlin, who explained that the Russians expected some gesture that would amount to an apology. Perincek claimed that Alparslan Celik, the Turkish citizen who Russia alleged killed the pilot of the downed jet, was arrested immediately after this meeting. “We made a significant contribution to this [reconciliation] process and both parties, Turkey and Russia, wanted us to be a part of it.”

Presidential sources said they have no information concerning such a meeting.

 

[antihenry]

continues here.

Spoiler

Asked whether the Homeland Party acts as an interlocutor between Turkey and Syria, Perincek said, “We don’t take directions from anyone.” Pekin and Perincek refrained from using the term “mediator” to define their work — instead, Pekin said, “We lay the groundwork.”

“There are a lot of people within the AKP, especially around Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who see that being enemies with Syria and Russia is not sustainable,” Perincek said. “In fact, this is why the new cabinet was formed.”

Indeed, Turkey’s foreign-policy shifts toward Russia and Israel corresponded with a political shift in Ankara. After long-standing disagreements with Erdogan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu resigned on May 4. He was replaced by the Binali Yildirim, who signaled that he would not pursue the policies of his predecessor.

“We will continue to improve ties with our neighbors,” Yildirim told AKP’s Politics Academy on July 11. “There is no reason for us to fight with Iraq, Syria, or Egypt, but we need to take our cooperation with them further.”

The power balance among different security actors in Turkey has also been changing. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Turkish Army is regaining leverage over politics, as the Kurdish issue and regional security threats escalate. For decades, the Turkish Armed Forces exerted direct control over democratically elected governments and staged four coups to protect its political privilege. The military lost influence under the AKP government — but the ugly divorce between the AKP and the Gulen Movement, which split in late 2013, has empowered the old establishment. While the Gulenists used to have a powerful influence in state institutions, he said, “these people are being replaced with those who are loyal to the republic, nation, and against religious brotherhoods.”

A senior AKP official said that there had been “some unfortunate incidents in the past” between the government and the army, but that the relationship was now healthy. “[C]oordination between the army and government has been intensified during the last several years,” the official said.

The Turkish Army is known to be wary of the country’s policy against Assad.The Turkish Army is known to be wary of the country’s policy against Assad. A senior government official, who used to be among the makers of Turkey’s Syria policy, said that the government wanted to establish a buffer zone in northern Syria, but that the Turkish Army resisted this decision as early as 2011.

“From the very beginning the Turkish Army was in favor of keeping friendships, good relations, and cooperation with Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Russia,” Perincek said.

Presidential and Foreign Ministry sources strongly deny rumors that Turkey is shifting its Syria policy, saying the removal of the Assad regime remains a priority for Turkey. Other observers, however, have noticed a change in emphasis in Ankara’s stance toward Syria: Abdulkadir Selvi, a veteran journalist with the Turkish daily Hurriyet, makes the case that Turkey is transitioning from an “era of idealism,” embodied by Davutoglu’s term, to what government supporters will promote as an “era of realism.” In this new era, Selvi argues, the Turkish government will continue criticizing the Syrian regime — but also expend less effort to topple Assad and cooperate with actors who want to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish corridor in northern Syria.

As Selvi argues: “The territorial integrity of Syria is now more important for the Turkish state than the fate of the Assad regime.”

 

[Fener1907]

Something's happening in Turkey right now that involves the military. Could be a coup, could be nothing. I'm not at all sure.

 

[2cents]

Something's happening in Turkey right now that involves the military. Could be a coup, could be nothing. I'm not at all sure.

Any sources?

 

[adexkola]

Something's happening in Turkey right now that involves the military. Could be a coup, could be nothing. I'm not at all sure.

Nothing on the net yet.

 

[2cents]

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[Fener1907]

Any sources?

Right now, no. It's just speculation on Twitter and other questionable sources, but there are undoubtedly military movements underway. In addition to what you've just posted, it's being reported that jets are flying low over Ankara and the military's presence is building up in certain places.

 

[prateik]

Just checked twitter.. nothing known.. but something definitely seems to be happening.
https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=news&q=Turkey&src=typd

 

[prateik]

Why are people assuming a coup? Why not just reacting to some imminent terrorist threat?