PoliGazette posts on Turkey's ruling party

Today PoliGazette has two interesting posts on Turkey.

First, the news: Turkish leaders face court case

Turkey's constitutional court has decided unanimously that it can hear a case aimed at closing down the country's governing AK Party.

The chief prosecutor earlier filed a petition calling for the party to be banned for "anti-secular activities".

He also wants 71 AKP officials, including the prime minister and president, to be banned from politics.

PoliGazette posts, Erdogan's Inflammatory Rhetoric - UPDATE: Court Accepts Case

What's troubling about Erdogan's words is that nothing has been decided yet; the judges still have to decide upon the matter. Normally, the Prime Minister (and MPs by the way) don't comment on pending cases, but Erdogan is in such a great panic that he isn't able to keep his mouth shut for a while. In fact, today is the day that the court will decide whether it will take on the case or not. In other words, the court won’t decide today whether the AK Parti should be closed or not, it'll only decide whether it'll accept the case.

He’s clearly trying to influence the outcome of the case, which isn't something a PM should do. He should wait… and if the court decides to accept the case and later that the AK Parti should be closed, he can speak out against it, appeal, etc. But until that time, he shouldn't comment on it.

But he does, and this proves that he truly fears that the court may very well decide to give the prosecutor what he wants. As I understand it, this is quite likely indeed. The AK Parti has tried to destroy secularism from within for months and even years now. They started slowly, but ever since Erdogan won the elections last year he has ignored the opposition. Since those elections, Erdogan has been busy transforming the country, thinking that he's untouchable.

Today may very well be the day that Erdogan starts to realize he's not.

Don't miss also PoliGazette's post, European Ignorance When It Comes To Turkey - AKP Closure by guest blogger Kemal.

The court has decided to consider the case. The future of Turkey hinges on their decision.



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"Support Wanes in House for Genocide Vote" [UPDATED]

says the NYT

"Turkey obviously feels they are getting poked in the eye over something that happened a century ago, and maybe this isn't a good time to be doing that," said Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who dropped his sponsorship of the resolution Monday night.

Mind you, Congress has waited decades for this gesture over the Armenian Genocide; the Ottoman Empire committed genocide nearly a century ago, for decades the Turkish government has spent millions of dollars trying to obscure that fact, and Nancy Pelosi and the Dems in Congress wait until now to bring up a resolution.

Where was Nancy when Bill Clinton also worked to block an Armenian genocide resolution from passing the House? (h/t Sister Toldjah) She's been in Congress since 1987. Why wait 20 years?

Where's Nancy when her friend Assad wreaks havoc in Lebanon - now, not a hundred years ago?

But back to the genocide resolution:

Blackfive:

I will grant that the killings of many Armenians was particularly heinous and worthy of all kinds of condemnation, but calling it genocide in the US Congress is a foolish attempt to make Nancy and some others feel good. She claims we must do this now before the last survivors die, but the damage done to our operations in the entire region will be huge. The loss of Turkey as a transport hub alone would force us to use more dangerous paths to get 70% of our supplies to Iraq, and that would certainly cause more US deaths.

Captain's Quarters

Second, the business of Congress isn't to make sweeping historical indictments, regardless of whether they have their information correct or not. This Congress hasn't even produced its first funding bill for FY2008, even though we are now at Day 17 of the calendar. Instead of issuing resolutions about the real or imagined crimes of a government from 90 years ago, it should be focusing on meeting its Constitutional obligations now. It's not the timing of the bill that's objectionable as much as it is the waste of time it represents for a Congress that has much more pressing business on its agenda.

The WSJ

If Nancy Pelosi and Tom Lantos want to take down U.S. policy in Iraq to tag George Bush with the failure, they should have the courage to walk through the front door to do it. Bringing the genocide resolution to the House floor this week would put a terrible event of Armenia's past in the service of America's bitter partisanship today. It is mischievous at best, catastrophic at worst, and should be tabled.

Yet another example of Madame as a 'Brilliant Political Tactician'.

In the real world, however, the present-day Turks are doing some muscle-flexing of their own.

Update
Ed Morrissey calls it The Nancy Pelosi Invasion:

It goes without saying that we would have had more influence on the situation in Turkey had Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress made themselves the arbiter of the Armenian genocide of 1915. If the troops cross the border, we can thank Pelosi and her colleagues for reducing our ability to avoid a shooting war that could cost thousands of lives here and now.

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Sarko's keynote foreign policy speech

Nicolas Sarkozy announced to the world that "An Iran armed with nuclear weapons is unacceptable," (link in French), raising the possibility of bombing Iran if needed.

I just did a brief translation for Pajams Media. Go read it.

Curiously, the France2 newscast didn't spend much time on that part, choosing instead to talk about Turkey.

Sarko meets Tony

In yesterday's podcast, one thing Siggy and I discussed was how Blair made the British people proud of being British again. Then in last night's France2 news they showed Nicolas Sarkozy giving a speech saying he wants the French to be proud of being French again.

I find that a very refreshing idea but I'm not optimistic for its prospects. Instead of a collective show of EU hands, it's time for individuals to take pride for their own heritage and what their nations have and can contribute. On the other hand, Sarko's proposing a mini-treaty to replace the failed EU constitution, which would mean that people wouldn't be able to reject it through referendums as they did the first time.

So much for the individuals.

Sarko's EU strategy has two other points:

• calls for Europe to "protect" its citizens from globalisation
,
• his call for an explicit statement that Turkey will never become a full member of the EU.

Sarko will take office on May 16. There's more in the works:

• Today he's meeting with Tony Blair in Paris. They will discuss the EU. There's another meeting scheduled on a different date with Angela Merkel. The emergence of leaders like Merkel and Sarcozy signals to perhaps not a new Europe, but perhaps a Europe less hostile to America. (No, anti-Americanism didn't start with GWB. It's been around for decades.)
• Chirac and Sarko met with Saad Hariri, the son of slain former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, signalling continued support of the Lebanese over Syria. Will the Sarko years reflect Chirac's customary duplicity? We'll have to wait and see.
• Sarko's been criticized for taking a 2-day luxury cruise on a billionaire's yatch. Not only is he unapologetic - since the trip was not at taxpayers' expense - he asserts his position that he wants rich people to remain in France and to invest in France.
  (and according to Erik, apparently he was wearing a NYPD t-shirt while jogging)

Next month's Parliamentary elections are crucial.

Meanwhile, out on the streets, the link above states that there have been over 1,200 cars torched in France since last Sunday's election: 730 on Sunday, 296 on Tuesday, 200 on Wednesday. I don't know how many were torched on Monday night, but we'll know Sarko has changed things when whatever few French automotive insurance companies are left in the country lower their rates.

In other French news, Erik Svane made it to the front page. He looks marvelous.

Update: The French Left Pitches A Fit

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For an excellent essay on how Tony Blair's attitude towards the EU went sour, read Richard North's article at Pajamas Media

Two posts on wars we're still fighting

Beware of those rewriting history:
Armenian Martyrs' Day

Denialists of all stripes, from US and EU officials who find turkey's past "annoying", to the turks themselves who believe such raids were justified to "pick up deserters" (yeah, little old men, deserters. right.) have managed to decrease the general public's awareness of these atrocities. But they happened. There was no Photoshop in 1915. All of the horrible pictures you see here are real.

Turkey has funded the $750,000 Chair for Ataturk Studies at Princeton University. Two years ago at PU there was a debate on the subject

In FrontPage Mag: Armenia's Tears

Q. Most readers are not familiar with the historical background, so could you briefly review the Abdul Hamit era, and the triumvirate of the Young Turks or the Ittihad, in other words, the origin of the genocide.

A. The Armenian genocide was the culmination of a decades long process of persecution of the Armenians in the Ottoman empire. That persecution was punctuated in the last two decades of the 19th century during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamit, the so-called Red Sultan.

Q. Red for blood?

A. Yes. In the period of 1894-1896, some quarter of a million Armenians fell victim, directly and indirectly, victim to a series of atrocious massacres, and what is significant about these pogroms was that there was no retribution against the perpetrators. In other words, impunity became the hallmark of the history of the Armenian persecution and it is the dominant feature of the tragedy of the Armenian people. We have yet to appreciate the incredible ramifications of the problem of impunity in international conflicts. In the most recent three volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, I have a separate article analyzing this problem in order to emphasize [its] immense destructive potential.

And what does that have to do with today's events?

I believe that the greatest danger to Armenia comes from Islamic Turkey. I think the Turkish government that is also essentially Islamic, even though the Turkish government is going through the motions of embracing European values, I call this expedient adaptiveness. That is, to accede to the European Union, and then to use sheer demography, to become a dominant force in the future in Europe. By sheer demography, I mean by rapid population growth, Europe may be inundated by Moslem Turks, who then are bound to change the nature and design of European civilization. It should be noted that the present Turkish government is a reflection of an overwhelming ascendancy of Islam in Turkey, in particular in terms of the Islamic Turkish masses, The proliferation of mosques in Turkey today is a signpost of the ascendancy of Islam; the same proliferation is observable in those European countries with sizable and growing Muslim populations.

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Jeremayakovka looks at "The Battle of Algiers" - A Black & White Blueprint For Full-Color Fauxtography

"Human beings were created"

The Atlas of Creation book says, "human beings did not evolve (from another species) but were indeed created."

The Atlas of Creation says that the theories of Charles Darwin are "the true source of terrorism."

The Atlas of Creation is being distributed to tens of thousands of schools and universities. In fundamentalist Christian middle America?

No - in France and Germany.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear that Turkey wants to join the EU.

Update Le Monde (link in French) has more.