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TURKEY İS DİVİDİNG; ERDOGAN SAYS: ALLAHU AKBAR by Rabia kazan

First, the police brutally battered peaceful young people who wanted to protect their green urban areas by rolling them on the ground. Then, the resistance for trees turned into a struggle of a nation that has been keeping its silence for the last 11 years against the AK Party’s authoritarian rule. Millions poured into the streets and were exposed to pepper spray, plastic bullets and systematic violence.. They were beaten by batons, kicked, some lost their eyes and some even their lives. Today, Islamist street gangs supported by the state police still continue their bloodshed. In many cities of Turkey, in its parks and alleys, men with butcher knives attack Taksim Square (Gezi Park) protesters, most of whom are were university students and young girls . . . and they were attacked brutally with the intention of killing..

Well, why did they act like that ?

Year 1994, place: the Refah Party’s headquarters in Umraniye; a province of Istanbul, the then Mayor of Istanbul, PM Erdogan delivered a declamatory speech to the crowd and said that:
• “Of course secularism will be gone!”
• “They keep saying secularism is disappearing. Sure it will be gone! You can’t stop it .”
• “99 % of the population of this country is Muslim. One cannot be both secular and Muslim. Either you are a Muslim or secular. It is impossible for one claiming that if one is a Muslim then to say that he or she is also secular at the same time. Why? Because Allah, the Creator of Muslims is the absolute sovereign.”
• “The Islamic World, with one and a half billion people, has been waiting for the Turkish Nation to stand up. We will.”
• “We are coming slowly by making people digest what we do, with Allah’s will.”

Although back in 1998, Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor Erdogan’s political party, the Refah Party, was banned by the Constitutional Court on the grounds of “actions against the Secular Republic Regime,”. However, his dream of bringing down the Secular Regime of Turkey did not end there.

One may also remember that during his interview in a TV channel, he defined the democracy as a tram which one can get off before the last stop.That very much explains his approach to the democracy and its values. He goes with them as long as they serve to his ultimate goal which is actually changing the secular country into a Pro-Sunni Islamic State.

Year 2001, Tayyip Erdogan founded the AK Party (Justice and Development Party) along with some other prominent politicians from Fazilet Party which was also banned by the Constitutional Court on charges of acts against country’s secular regime. He announced that his place in the political spectrum would be a conservative democrat. This time, he started delivering very moderate speeches within the framework of “Islamic Democracy” and “Justice and Development”. In his interviews, he said that he was ready to be the leader of the Right Wing, and he was not the old pro-Islamist Tayyip Erdogan. He also turned on the green light for the negotiations of European Union accession which he had stated before that he had never wanted to be a part of and defined it as “Catholic Christians, Union of States” He also stated that his party would not be against secularism by announcing; “I have changed!”

When in fact, after the AK Party came to power in 2002 and Tayyip Erdogan became the Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic in 2003, everybody knew that he had not changed at all.
However, business community supported Erdogan because of his important initiatives for the economic development of the country, his successes in the economy through privatizing public enterprises and his positive contributions to such things as industrial growth and health reforms. He, then, thought that he would not need “Moderate Islam and the Central Right,” and put Turkey onto the path of aggressive “Islamization.”

He started overtly challenging the Secular Turkish Republic, which was founded in 1923 by Ataturk after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which until then had been ruled under Sharia law.
He did not hesitate to insult Ataturk at every opportunity. He also removed Ataturk’s writings from school books, replacing them with Qur’an verses; he was opposed to the National Festivals; he stated that he considered himself as an “Ottoman,” stating, “We will raise a religious youth” in every opportunity. Wearing the Headscarf was granted to female students in Universities first and then to lawyers in the courts. All of a sudden, the number of women covering their heads increased by fifty percent in ten years He created a media group after putting all secular generals, intellectuals and journalists in prison under an operation of political suppression called “Ergenekon.”

The “partisan press” they did not publish news against Erdogan. Televisions and newspapers started religious broadcasts to please the ruling party. Their growth was quite easy, thanks to the considerable support of the AK Party government in matters such as tax payments and getting loans. Media companies were either bought or forced to make pro-government broadcasts by using political power of the ruling party.

Again in 2008 ; Yalcinkaya, Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals, filed a lawsuit for the permanent closure of the “Justice and Development Party” because of above-mentioned kinds of activities. He demanded that 71 people, including President Gul and the Prime Minister Erdogan, should have been banned from politics for 5 years. The AK Party was not banned through a “NO” vote by the president of the constitutional court, although 6 members out of 10 voted for the Party’s closure.

Erdogan purged both the judicial and executive branches after successfully saving its party from banning by the Constitutional Court and managed to establish a legal system serving only the AK Party. Subsequently, the police units were filled with the AK Party supporters. Particularly, religious high school graduate candidates were placed into Riot police units.
These “Riot Police Units” became an army assigned to protect Erdogan during any potential uprisings by the people.
So today, during the “Gezi Park Resistance,” which has been widely covered by the international media , these “Riot Police Units” continue to use excessive force, to kill and to blind people by aiming pepper spray cans at people’s heads and eyes.

In Turkey, TV Channels and newspapers keep their silence while people are being murdered because of fear from the government. Erdogan even became extremely angry at CNN International, which broadcast a small portion of what happened. He did not want to watch any news about the resistance. He praised and gave bonuses to his soldiers under the name of “Riot Police” while they caused the deaths of young people.

He knows that the real issue is that of Secularist regime of the country, not trees in Gezi Park. The opposition lawyers were cuffed and arrested ; the doctors were arrested just because they had treated the protesters, and university youth resisted for “Secular Regime.” If Erdogan does not defeat them, he will lose the war; if he does not teach them a bitter lesson, he will not be able to implement his dream of Postmodern Sharia by changing the constitution.

June 17 2013, Istanbul, Kazlicesme:
The Prime Minister of secular Turkey is creating propaganda as if he is a kind of Ayetollah Khomeini.
He is giving courage and signals to the religious youth during his political rallies by saying “ALLAH, ALLAH”. He covertly incites them toward a civil war. The crowd enthusiastically chants together with their fists raised high in the air, “YA ALLAH BISMILLAH, ALLAHU EKBER” (With the name of Allah, Allah is one).
That angry crowd, which Erdogan transported to the rally field via hundreds of buses, was chanting furiously, “Let us crash Taksim.” They continued to repeat these slogans .

Erdogan said:
“I salute Mecca and Medina”
The crowd became even more agitated and shouted:
“YA ALLAH BISMILLAH, ALLAHU EKBER”
Then Erdogan kept going on with frowned eyebrows:
“They drank alcohol in our mosques; they walked into our mosques with their shoes on.”
The crowd in the rally field started roaring this time. They shouted with their veins swelling in their necks:
“Tell us to hit, we hit! Tell us to die, we die!” and “YA ALLAH, YA BISMILLAH, ALLAHU EKBER.”

And Erdogan’s war against Turkey’s secular regime continues. There are two polarized segments in Turkey now, one being “secular” and the other “religious.” All other identities have disappeared between these two poles. Erdogan only recognizes the “religious segment,” and he protects, feeds and promotes them.
Nobody knows when Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is getting angrier and more despotic every day, is going to be much tougher against the protesters of this resistance after day 45, and when he will turn his supporters, who are waiting for his command with “ALLAH” shouts, into a “lynch mob.” On the streets, men with meat cleavers batter women as if they are having a rehearsal of the future, and then they go free while the police are throwing gas bombs into houses.
On the other hand, the protesters still have hope as the people of the new Turkey, who have said “enough is enough” to the AK Party’s dictatorial regime, which put the legislative, executive and judicial powers under its monopoly, and consider this its natural right, are not afraid of making their voices heard against all odds.

From here on out, they can see how pro-Sharia minds in the Erdogan government leads the country towards a dead end, and how they must defend the secular and democratic regime established by Ataturk, which is obviously in jeopardy, even at the cost of their lives.

Rabia Kazan

Rabia Kazan started her career as a TV reporter in 1996 with Later hosting Istanbul, for the Turkish channel Flash TV. Then, she became a journalist for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) affiliated newspaper Ortadoğu, where she worked for six years. Meanwhile, she became famous in Turkey through an important interview to the terrorist Mehmet Ali Ağca, who tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981. In 2004 she founded the magazine Haber Revizyon.

In 2007, she wrote a reportage on female condition in Tehran, Iran titled Tahran Melekleri (“The Angels of Tehran”), in which she talks about temporary marriage (Arabic: Nikah mut‘ah‎), too, that hides often a sort of legal prostitution. That work generated soon reactions in the Middle East.

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