Turkey and the DNC

THE ABSURD TIMES

Remember Turkey?  Latuff.

Remember Latuff?  Banned in Turkey and accused of all sorts of things.

These Two Weeks

By

@honestcharlie

In just about the entire world, people know about the staged coup in Turkey.  They know about the ISIS terrorist attacks in France most recently and before that Germany.  Actually, they know that Daesh not only gives Islam a bad name as nothing about the group is remotely Moslem, but they also give terrorism a bad name.

They also know that there is a new Prime Minister in England and that the funny fat guy who keeps running over children on the football field is Foreign Minister there (the one who looks like a fat Donald Trump).

In the United States, however, corporate media has pretty much blanketed the news channels with 24/7 infomercials about the two largest political parties, the neo-fascist and the neo-liberal, or Republican and Democratic, respectively.

Wikileaks released a ton of e-mails that showed, or rather documented what was already clear, the D party had no intention of allowing Sanders to be elected.  Now, there are accusations that Russia, Putin, was behind it.  The only real indication of this consists of a few letters from the Cryllic alphabet found in the code, or said to have been found in the code.  As any mid-level programmer, or coder, know, there are many places to insert meaningless bits of information in the code that will have no effect, but that will help authenticate the programmer, or forge something.  The fact is, however, those e-mails, or leaks, tell us nothing we did not already know.  They simply documented it.

This was much like the leaks on Iraq and other glorious foreign policy moves the U.S. has made over the years.

Well, Das ist Alles fur Heute.

Turkey, Nice, and Black Lives Matter

THE ABSURD TIMES

NB.: Latuff is banned in Turkey.  (So you know he's right)

TURKEY, NICE, &

By

Czar Donic

Too much going on for just a succinct title.

Erdogan is demanding the mastermind of the recent "coup" to be sent to him.  This mastermind is ensconced in the hotbed of Islamic Thinking, Pennsylvania, the Pocono's, on a farm.  Oh yes, he planned the coup and ordered it.  "I send people to the U.S. all the time," he said.

Kerry, Secretary of State, explained that there are procedures to go though first.  What a wimp.

So, to save the country for himself, er Democracy (sorry), Erdogan jailed about 2,800 soldiers and about as many judges.  Pity our democracy does not allow Obama to just throw Clarence Thomas in jail, but we have so much red tape, don't you know? 

But at least Turkey is still a good place for the U.S. to launch jet bombers and drones over Syria. 

Nice (Neece)

A guy got into a truck and drove it down the road in Nice, France, killing about 200 and wounding many others.  He was killed.

Now, it turns out he had a wife who divorced him and threw him out of the house and got a restraining order against him.  Of course, France locked her up.  She shouldn't have pissed him off, I guess.  She was NOT arrested, just "detained".  She is still "detained". 

ISIS snapped into action and claimed he was a "Soldier in their cause," although from what little has come across about his life, he was a two-bit thug that no self-respecting mobster in the U.S. would hire.  But then, perhaps standards are different in Nice.

As of yet, no judges have been arrested in France.

BLACK LIVES MATTER

Not until self-proclaimed hero of 9/11, Rudy Gulliani, said that "Black Lives Matter is racist" did it seem worth investigating and explaining what that phrase means.  It can be confusing, even to some well-meaning people of privilege, as an immediate response seems to be "Of course, all lives matter."  Such a reaction, however, shows a lack of reflection.

It should be clear, even to such literalists as our staff, that the motto is an affirmation that police kill blacks as if they do not consider them human.  The phrase is a way of calling attention to the fact that they are.

So place this recent rise of racist sentiment with the election of Obama, but such thinking does not take into consideration the proliferation of hand-held devices that can record and even transmit live sense of killing and beating of blacks by white officers.  The reverse incident in Dallas is much more rare, but still the hand-held cameras are what made it so prominent.

We have had enough for now, thank you.

BERNIE OR BUST, EMPORER ERDOGAN

THE ABSURD TIMES

BERNIE OR BUST, EMPORER ERDOGAN

Illustration is self-explanatory.  The seven are Hillary's and the six are Bernie's representatives on the pre-convention committee.  Arguments in favor of Clinton only hold credibility to the extent that she is not Donald Trump.

There is something to this, however.  In 1964, there was a choice between Barry Goldwater and Lyndon Johnson.  Most felt at the time that they were voting for the peace candidate, but Johnson was responsible for the deaths of thousands of young Americans, perhaps hundreds of thousands of civilians in Southeast Asia.  However, it is highly unlikely that the Republican would have allowed the civil rights bill, the voting bill, and Medicare while Johnson accomplished these things to an extent. 

Still, the illustration explains quite clearly what the problem is with Hillary.  Also, note that all Republican attacks on her have nothing to do with her war mongering. 

TURKEY

Erdogan sold out to Israel just before the attacks by ISIS at the airport.  Apologists point out that such an attack could not be planed so quickly.  However, they overlook the fact that many attacks have been planned all over (no, I don't know where), and the participants are simply waiting for an excuse.

Here is some detail on the situation:

 

TOPICS

Funerals have begun in Turkey for some of the 42 people killed in a triple suicide bombing Tuesday targeting Turkey's main airport in Istanbul. The attack also left 239 others injured. Authorities said three attackers arrived at the airport's international terminal by taxi and blew themselves up after opening fire. The airport is the 11th busiest in the world. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but Turkey's prime minister said the initial probe pointed to the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or Daesh. A senior Turkish official told the Associated Press the three suicide attackers were nationals of Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Earlier today, Turkish police raided 16 locations in Istanbul and detained 13 people on suspicion of involvement in the attack. Turkey has seen an uptick in bombings since last year, when the United States began using Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to carry out bombing raids in Syria and Iraq targeting ISIS strongholds. We speak to Koray Çaliskan, associate professor of political science at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul.

---

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Funerals have begun in Turkey for some of the 42 people killed in the triple suicide bombing Tuesday targeting Turkey's main international airport in Istanbul. The attack injured more than 230 people. Authorities said three attackers arrived at the airport's international terminal by taxi and blew themselves up after opening fire. The airport is the 11th busiest in the world. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Turkey's prime minister said the initial probe pointed to the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or Daesh. A senior Turkish official told the Associated Press the three suicide attackers were nationals of Russia, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Earlier today, Turkish police raided 16 locations in Istanbul and detained 13 people on suspicion of involvement in the attack.

Turkey has seen an uptick in bombings since last year, when the United States began using Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to carry out bombing raids in Syria and Iraq targeting ISIS strongholds. Tuesday's attack came just one day after Turkey restored diplomatic ties with Israel after a six-year rupture.

On Wednesday, I got in touch with Koray Çaliskan, associate professor of political science at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul. We reached him at his home byDemocracy Now! video stream and asked him to respond to the attack.

KORAY ÇALISKAN: It's really sad that this happened. We know that there is a threat of international terrorism, but unfortunately this threat got materialized more in Turkey. In the last 12 months, we saw 17 bombings that costed the lives of 294 people, wounded 1,009. Not even a single official left office, resigned. And the Islamist authoritarian AKP government did not accept that there was a security breach in Turkey.

Remember that these three ISIS terrorists entered Istanbul airport passing a security check with hand grenades, AK guns, Glock guns, and then they entered the airport building after the first security check and began to shoot at people during and after the second check. This is a great problem, and I believe, because Erdogan decided to be a president in a presidential system—as you know, Turkey is a parliamentary regime—they have not been working well to take care of security measures and also take aim at the heart of terrorist organizations.

One of the most important sources for open source security and intel, intelligence, is Twitter and Facebook and internet correspondence, right? In Turkey, Twitter is blocked right now. Facebook is blocked. We can't talk to each other through Twitter. We can't talk to each other through Facebook. Why? Because the government and Erdogan himself do not want people to criticize them, criticize their weakness.

I'll give you another example. We had another unfortunate bombing in Brussels a few months ago, you would remember. It took Belgian authorities to open the airport six days, because they studied every security breach in that airport and fixed them and opened the airport. Six weeks—six days, excuse me. In Turkey last night, only six hours after the bombing, despite the unacceptable security breach in the gates of the airport, the government decided to open the airport. It costed 41 lives. Not even a single elected official resigned or forced to resign.

Nothing really works in this country. The economy is going bad. Democracy, we lost it. Technically, Turkey is a competitive authoritarian regime ruled by Islamists, authoritarian Islamists. In terms of security, you see what's going on. No one really feels secure in this country anymore. And because of the Kurdish question and the increasing terrorist activities of PKK, the government doesn't know what to do, other than bombing people, other than using military means, other than shutting down Twitter, other than doing what authoritarian leaders do, from North Korea to Syria, from Russia to Turkey.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the warnings, Professor Çaliskan, the warnings that had come in a few weeks ago of something like 30 or so ISIS fighters coming over the border from Syria? The Turkish government very much understood this, the possibility of an attack during Ramadan, and especially in these last days when people are traveling.

KORAY ÇALISKAN: There has been intelligence about it. And, unfortunately, we hear about intelligence regarding what's going to happen in Turkey from either U.S. Embassy or French Embassy or German Embassy. Our government doesn't tell us anything about it. The U.S. told about possibility of bombings and that there has been—there have been close to 30 terrorists entering Turkey, planning attacks. We didn't hear anything from our government.

This happened before. The last bombing in Istanbul was in Istiklal Street, very close to Gezi Park. And German Embassy asked German schools to be emptied, told their citizens to not to go to Istiklal Avenue and around it. Less than 24 hours later, we had a bombing in Istiklal Avenue. Our government didn't tell anything, because, first, in their mind, if they warn people, they think that people will think that they are not doing their job properly. But on the contrary, if they warn us, if they take intelligence seriously, we would think that they are doing their job. Right now, no one really thinks that they are doing their job. They are just shouting at journalists, academics, intellectuals, for criticizing them.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you again about the timing. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a restoration of ties with Turkey, including increased cooperation in oil and gas production. This is what he said.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU:[translated] Israel has reached an agreement of a strategic significance to the state of Israel, to security, to regional stability and the Israeli economy. ... The gas field Leviathan can supply both the Egyptian market, which we intend to work with, but Leviathan can also supply the Turkish market and the supply of gas via Turkey to Europe. This is a strategic matter for the state of Israel. This matter could not have been advanced without this agreement, and now we will take action to advance it.

AMY GOODMAN: You have the re-establishment of ties between Turkey and Israel this week, and also Turkey seeing an uptick in bombings since last year, when the United States started using Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to carry out bombing raids in Syria. Well, on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke after the deadly attack on the airport in Istanbul.

SECRETARY OF STATE JOHN KERRY: We are still collecting information and trying to ascertain what happened and who did it. And I won't comment further on it, except to say that this is daily fare. And that's why I say the first challenge we need to face is countering nonstate violent actors, for a host of reasons.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Çaliskan, can you respond to both Kerry and also the re-establishment of ties with Israel, if you think these issues are related?

KORAY ÇALISKAN: I don't think the bombing in Istanbul is related to Turkey's establishing of the diplomatic relations with Israel and Kerry's comments, for two reasons. First, you can't—you don't have time to respond that fast, if you're a terrorist organization, two days after Israel and Turkey announced that. Two, in the last 12 months, there have been 17 bombings, Amy, in Turkey. You're talking about one bombing, one terrorist attack, every three weeks. This is another threat. There is a war against Turkey that President Erdogan and the government of Islamist authoritarian AKP do not take seriously.

On the issue of rapprochement between Israel and Turkey, I think it is very sad that Turkey stepped back from its principles, its foreign policy principles. They said that they were against the blockade, the embargo of Palestinians, and they legitimized the blockade itself by agreeing to give the aid to Israel so that it can distribute the aid to any Palestinian anytime it wants. They got the money for the families of nine people the Israeli Defense Forces killed in international waters, thus violated international law. And Turkey accepted that they won't be sued in Turkey or they won't be taken to court in international justice system. This is a disgrace.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Israeli military attack on the Mavi Marmara, that was trying attempt to break the blockade of Gaza.

KORAY ÇALISKAN: Yes. So, that's why, for two reasons, they are not related. I believe what Erdogan is trying to do is that he realized that he has been making a lot of mistakes. Russian planes were bombing ISIS, and they downed a Russian plane, with no legitimate reason. And they had to apologize from Russia. And in Turkey, they say that they didn't apologize; they just said they were sorry, as if that was a substantive difference. They are planning to pay for the downing of the plane, and they are planning to get the money from Israel.

I don't really understand what principles are changing here. On the one hand, they are criticizing the military coup d'état in Egypt; on the other hand, they are willing to make peace with them. On the one hand, they pretend as if they have principles; on the other hand, they do their best to violate those principles. I think they are losing control of foreign and domestic policy because of one reason: Erdogan's dream of becoming a president of a presidential system.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor, earlier this year, more than a thousand Turkish academics signed a peace petition. Several of them were jailed. Can you talk about Erdogan government's reaction to dissenting voice and how that relates to the climate of terror in Turkey right now?

KORAY ÇALISKAN: Of course. I signed that letter, too. First, it was signed by more than 1,200 academics. When Erdogan called us terrorists or voices of terror, 1,000 more academics signed it. Since then, more than 100 academics lost their jobs. They were fired from public and private universities. Four academics were jailed for more than a month; they are free right now. And many academics are being prosecuted, just because they criticized AKP's handling of Kurdish question. This is another move of Erdogan to silence civil society in the country. He silenced the media. The most important editor-in-chief in the country, Can Dündar, was about to be killed, less than two months ago, after Erdogan targeted him. A fascist just began shooting at him, and the journalist's wife prevented him from taking aim at Can Dündar. So the press is being silenced. The academics are being silenced. How can academics, who have PhDs from states, Europe, Turkey, accept to be terrorists? What Erdogan does is to do what all authoritarians do: If there is—if he is being criticized and if he doesn't agree with academics or journalists, he accuses them of being with terrorists.

He has another strategy in addition to that. When you criticize him, he considers it as an insult or libel against the president. I have a court case. My next hearing will be in September. And I—the prosecutor general wants me to be jailed by eight years, three months for writing a tweet criticizing Erdogan. And the tweet didn't even mention his name. So, imagine, there are hundreds of court cases like this. He is winning them. He is making money out of them. People are being in jail.

But what we see, unfortunately, is the following: Turkey is leaving democracy, and United States is just watching it. You cannot have a secure world with authoritarian leaders. Remember what happened in Cold War: We were at the brink of a nuclear war. And right now, world democracy is being threatened by poverty, mostly organized by capitalism, and by terrorism, mostly organized by organizations like ISIS. There is only one way to deal with this double threat: democracy now.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you afraid to be making comments like that, speaking to us from Istanbul, where you teach?

KORAY ÇALISKAN: I'm not afraid, because my job is to tell the truth. I don't tell the truth, I don't do my job. How am I going to explain this to my children and to my students in the future? Am I afraid? I think right now intellectuals in Turkey are not afraid. They are concerned about their colleagues. They are concerned about Turkish democracy. But we will continue to tell the story of democracy, freedom, equality and liberty.

AMY GOODMAN: Koray Çaliskan, associate professor of political science at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey. We were speaking to him at his home.

Turkey, Daesh, Isilanity, Erdogan, Putin

THE ABSURD TIMES

The Emperor and the Holy Man

Latuff

Scorecard

by

Arthur Schopenhauer

A well-know American expression is that you "can't tell the players without a scorecard," an expression going back to pre-portable radio days of baseball, still applies today when trying to follow the Mid-East.  This is a modest attempt to provide one.  Everything here follows from my indisputable treatise on life called "The World and Will and Idea," or  Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, if I remember accurately.  In other words, everybody is defining reality they way they want to.

Turkey just shot down a Russian fighter jet.  That much is objective reality.  After that, everything become a matter of interpretation.

Erdogan wants to be an Emperor.  Ever since his party gained a majority, he feels invincible and all-powerful.  He says that he shot down the Russian jet as an act of "self-defense" as the jet was in Turkey's airspace for over 30 seconds, yet was warned 10 times.  Fast talkers, these Turks.

Daesh, is pretty indefinable other than to say it is sort of a religion, best called Isilanity.  It is derived from Wahabism, a form is Islam invented in the 18th Century by a nut called Wahabbi, a guy whose father and brother said to him, to translate freely, "You're nuts!"  It is also the practiced religion of Saudi Arabia and other gulf states that call it Islam.  It includes such ideas that a thousand lashes and a fine is appropriate as a reaction to a blogger who says things you don't like.  Isilanity is similar, but more idiotic.

Erdogan supplies Daesh with money in exchange for safety and cheap oil.  In this respect, Daesh is similar to the Mafia, but lacking the moral compass.

Putin is the leader of Russia and does not like his country's interests or people to be harmed.  If any entity does that, he will inflict pain on them, but in his own way so as to deter them from further activities in that direction.  No western country has shot down a Russian plane since the 50s, so now, about 60 years later, it is time for Russia to make sure that it does not become a habit.  One should also realize that the last would-be Emperor to attack Russia was Napoleon, and he was not successful, far from it.  Putin will not attack Turkey with bombs -- yet.  But Turkey will be the worse for this action.

Daesh attacked a Russian passenger plane over Egypt, and the next day almost 200 Daesh targets were hit.  Daesh then claimed responsibility for the bombing and another 200 targets were hit.

The United States thinks that Assad needs to leave, but Putin disagrees.  Some call Assad the "lesser of two evils," but such a notion has not relevance here.  Without Assad, Daesh takes over. 

Since most of our readers are in Europe, there is some confusion about the Republican candidates.  Donald Trump claims he had a vision and predicted 9/11 and also saw people cheering as the towers went down.  Objectively, this never happened, especially in New Jersey (still noted as the place that took the Orson Welles' Broadcast of the War of the Worlds as real), but that did not happen.  It does not matter, if Trump says it happened, people believe it did.

The black guy running is named Ben Carson, no relation to Johnny Carson.  There is no truth to the rumor that he had to retire from medicine as a result of dementia (at least so far as we know).  He also saw the "film", but that was a video clip that was ten years old at the time.

There is no point to any further explanation right now.  The entire thing is absurd beyond words.  We only need to close by saying that the only refugees that posed a significant danger in North America came over on the Mayflower and gave the indigenous population small-pox, a disease lethal to them and that is what is being celebrated here in the U.S. this holiday.

Napoleon (er, Erdogan) and Turkey

THE ABSURD TIMES

Illustration: Erdogan, Emperor of Turkey and the World

Napoleon (er, Erdogan) and Turkey

by

Czar Donic

            Someone pointed out that this is November and there has been no edition for this month, so here goes.

            A Russian airliner crashed in Egypt.  ISIS and God have claimed credit for it.  Seems to be a retaliation for Putin's action in Syria.

            Assad said, recently, in a PBS interview with Charlie Rose that Erdogan thinks of himself as an Emperor.

            The natural follow up was not asked, but perhaps now it is more obvious.  Does he thing of himself as the new Charlemagne, Napoleon, Saladin?  

            He managed this by a combination of playing on fear of ISIS and his persecution of Kurds (who, by the way, are the Polish joke version of the Middle East). 

            Latuff's illustrations clearly indicate both.

Oh, yeah, here is Alexander Cockburn's discussion of the event.   

AMY GOODMAN: In a stunning development in Turkey, the Islamist party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has regained its parliamentary majority in national elections. On Sunday, Turkish voters elected Erdogan's Justice and Development Party—the AKP—to the majority of the Parliament seats. It's a major comeback for the AKP, after losing its majority in the last campaign five months ago.

The victory will help Erdogan strengthen a hold on power that critics say has become increasingly authoritarian and divisive, with harsh rhetoric against opponents, a crackdown and raids on the media, and allegations of vote rigging. Turkish voters went to the polls in a climate of violence and fear. Since the June election, Erdogan has resumed the government's war on the Kurds and escalated strikes on the Islamic State. Turkey also suffered its worst-ever terrorist attack with a bombing that killed over a hundred people at a peace rally in Ankara last month.

Despite his victory, Erdogan fell short of the super-majority needed to change the constitution and expand the powers of the presidency. But it's still a surprising and divisive win for a leader who came under major protest with the Gezi Park demonstrations two years ago. Erdogan's most vocal opponent, the leftist Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, or HDP, retained its parliamentary bloc by again winning over 10 percent of the vote—but just barely.

For more, we're joined from Istanbul, Turkey, by Patrick Cockburn, the Middle East correspondent for The Independent, who's been reporting on the elections in Turkey.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Patrick, from Istanbul. Talk about the significance of these elections.

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, this means that President Erdogan is back, with an impressive mandate. His powers seem to be under pressure. But he got 49 percent of the vote. And although there are allegations of vote rigging, I think that this is pretty real. But it's sort of a consequence, in the eyes of critics, that he won because he whipped up an atmosphere of fear, of crisis, confrontation with the Kurds, you mentioned. We had two devastating ISIS, Islamic State, bombs. And people were fearful, so they clung to the existing authorities. Now, the ruling party, the Justice and Development Party, had pushed the line that they were the only people who could deal with this. The opposition party said, "Yeah, because you're the guys who provoked this over the last five months." But if they did so, that's been pretty successful. So there's no doubt that this is—you know, this is a tremendous victory for Erdogan.

AMY GOODMAN: And what about the repression? What about the repression of the Kurds, using, for example, U.S. support, saying they're fighting ISIS but going after the Kurds, who are actually allies of the United States? The attack on the media? Can you describe the climate there?

PATRICK COCKBURN: Well, you know, it's sort of edgy. I mean, it's understandable. There wasn't in the—during most of the campaign, there were no rallies on the part of the opposition, because a demonstration in Ankara on the 10th of October had been hit by Islamic State suicide bombers that killed 102 people. Earlier, there was another suicide bomb close to the Syrian border in Turkey that killed 32 people. So this made people very nervous. The fighting in southeast Turkey were in Kurdish-majority areas. That had been a sort of shaky ceasefire before this resumed. The Turkish Air Force was attacking the Kurdish guerrillas, the PKK, so-called, both in southeast Turkey and in northern Iraq. And people were watching on television every night the funerals of soldiers and police.

So, there's no doubt that Erdogan was playing the nationalist card and portraying the Kurdish parliamentary opposition as being hand-in-glove with people who were shooting Turkish soldiers and police. So, you have this sort of edgy, fearful atmosphere. But, you know, we'll now see how long that goes on. Do things escalate? Do they get a bit quieter now? What does Turkey do over the Syrian Kurds having taken over northeast Syria? And now they control half the 550-mile-long frontier with Turkey. Whatever Turkey wanted to happen in Syria, it certainly wasn't that.

AMY GOODMAN: Patrick Cockburn, I want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Istanbul, Turkey, Middle East correspondent for The Independent. His latest book is The Rise of Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution. He's been reporting on the elections in Turkey. His most recent article, which we'll link to at democracynow.org, "President Erdogan tightens his grip on power in surprise landslide victory."