Press-Review: Turkey in International Media

Washington Post describes Erdoğan’s “New Turkey” as “Clientelism 2.0”– Orhan Pamuk calls it “a populist, intolerant democracy.”
The Washington Post carries an analysis of President Erdoğan’s clientelistic rule by political scientist Kadir Yıldırım. He describes Erdoğan’s rule as clientelism 2.0,” a systematic rather than simple abuse of power. Massive corruption makes it possible for Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to consistently extract resources to increase its patronage. This upgraded form of clientelism is sustained by a rent-seeking system. No-bid government contracts supply the cronies close to the ruling AKP with generous business deals.

Yıldırım explains the lack of popular outcry as the result of both press and judiciary being under the thumb of the executive. Subsidies in health care and education ensure loyalty and compliance of the worst off in society.

Most of the citizens in developing countries are more concerned with economic growth than the state of democracy, adds Turkish author Orhan Pamuk in an interview with German weekly Die Zeit. The Nobel laureate for literature voices his critique of radicalization of the government and the restrictions on freedom of speech in Turkey, calling the system a populist and intolerant democracy where citizens are allowed to vote but then have no choice but to comply with everything the government then decides.
 
Four more Brits on their way to join ISIS are stopped by Turkish authorities.
Last month, three British schoolgirls were recruited by Isis as “jihadist brides” and made their way to Syria via Turkey. More recently, a trio of teenage boys two 17-year-olds and a 19-year-old, were detained in Istanbul while also attempting to make the journey to Syria. The three were suspected of planning terrorist attacks and were repatriated to the UK the following day.

Last Monday, a 21-year-old British woman was stopped at a bus terminal in Ankara. Images and correspondence on her mobile phone substantiate suspicion that she was on her way to Syria, Turkish officials said.

Turkey also announced that it had arrested the man who helped the runaway schoolgirls’ cross the Turkish-Syrian border. According to the Turkish newspaper Milliyet, he was an intelligence agent for the US-led coalition in their fight against ISIS but was also working as a courier, transferring money from an unknown source to the jihadists.
 
Turkey spares Islamist websites the strict censorship it applies elsewhere – suggesting a drift away from its Western allies.
Turkish officials have banned access to the webpages of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo as well as the country’s only atheist association; on the other hand Islamist sites escape the ban. The telecommunication authority’s tolerance of Islamist webpages like Takva Haber and countless Twitter accounts promoting ISIS shows that Turkey prioritizes censorship in cases of religious defamation and “protection of political figures”, says cyber law expert, Yaman Akdeniz.

A reluctance to make the fight against Isis its first priority in Syria Turkey demonstrates that it is more concerned about the Assad-regime and Kurdish separatism, according to Richard N. Haass, president of the US-Council on Foreign Relations. Prime Minister Davutoğlu did nothing to contradict this suspicion by stating at a party rally, that shaking hands with Assad would be equal to a handshake with Hitler. Turkey though its Syrian policy and support for the Muslim Brotherhood is marginalizing itself in the region, Al-Monitor concludes.

 “Other priorities and interests,” an unsigned editorial in the New York Times says, prevent Turkey’s from fully joining in the fight against the terror group. Turkey – with its porous borders for jihadists heading towards Syria, its negotiations with China about an air defence system and its supposedly agreement with Russia about a gas pipeline – is acting in defiance of NATO interests. The country is drifting away from its Western allies.
 
President Erdoğan plans to set up a surveillance centre in his palace in order to monitor 77 million Turkish citizens.
Soon the new presidential palace in Ankara won’t just host a laboratory to test the president’s food for poison but also a control centre with 143 TV monitors, reports Al-Monitor citing the Turkish daily Taraf. The centre will have access to data of a closed-circuit TV system and transmissions from unmanned aerial vehicles making it possible for Erdoğan to both monitor all popular incidents like demonstrations and police operations and to control military operations from his residence.

With this new step Erdoğan faces further critique for his control mania and for personalizing the Turkish state.

But maybe the surveillance centre will prevent the president from referring to an incident that never happened. Turkish journalist, Berivan Oruçoğlu describes in Foreign Affairs how a non-event during the Gezi Park protests in summer 2013 came to to be mistaken as the truth.

A woman wearing a headscarf claimed that she and her baby had been assaulted by a group of protesters during a rally. Erdoğan and pro-government media frequently alluded to this incident to demonize the protesters. However, the final police report revealed that neither 42 hours and 40 minutes of video footage nor testimonies could confirm the woman’s allegations.
 
Crackdown continues on critics of President Erdoğan and his government.
With a former Miss Turkey and a 16-year-old schoolboy now facing charges of insulting the Turkish president, a new wave of  detentions has attracted the notice of the German press.

After calling then-Prime Minister Erdoğan a “dictator” during the 2013 Gezi Park protests, Aykutalp Avsar, a student of engineering has been sentenced with 14 months of custody. In his speech last Friday Erdoğan countered accusations that he was trying to grab power, and condemned the protesters of Gezi Park as “vandals” and "provocateurs in skirts who set the streets on fire" – a reference to last month’s feminist protests of men wearing miniskirts.

Making use of the Turkish law sanctioning defamation of the president with up to four years of prison the police arrested three more people in Istanbul and Fethiye at the Mediterranean Sea for using Twitter to insult Erdoğan and other high-ranking politicians.
 
Ministry’s call to ban video game “Minecraft” a source of bemusement in international media.
Last week, Turkey’s Family and Social Ministry demanded the prohibition of the video game “Minecraft” provoking reactions of amused incomprehension in social media and national as well as international newspapers. According to daily Habertürk and Hürriyet Daily News, the ministry came to the conclusion that the popular game, where users have to build structures out of little blocks, encourages violence in children. The ministry’s report notes that the game is “built on violence” as players have to kill pixelated enemy creatures in order to protect their worlds.

Spiegel Online comments that in Germany the game is rated suitable for children +6 and is used in some schools to spark children’s interest for natural sciences.

Now it is up to the Turkish courts to decide whether the government is right or the ban should be rejected.
 
The situation of Syrian refugees in Turkey displaced by civil war deteriorates
Officially 1.6 Million Syrians have fled the war in their home country to seek shelter in Turkey’s refugee camps or struggle on alone in the big cities of Istanbul and Izmir. Some 75 percent of them are women and children, as their husbands stay in Syria to fight or to defend their properties, explains Pulitzer Prize awarded journalist Paul Salopek quoting aid agencies.

Spiegel Online reports on the fate of two Syrian families who lost their houses in Aleppo and made their way to Turkey. One of them still waits to be registered as refugees to receive public aid in the form of food, whereas the other spends its days in one of the state-run refugee camps.

The situation in these camps like AFAD Suruç in Turkey’s south close to Rojava is not bad at all with health care centres and schools in Arabic language, according to Al-Monitor. However, many Kurdish families refuse to leave their makeshift municipal camps for the government-run faculties mistrusting the Turkish state and fearing other refugees for their ISIS sympathies.
 
For a Samsung ad dozens of strangers learn sign language to surprise deaf man in Istanbul.
A new and affecting advertisement for Samsung Türkiye promoting a video call service for hearing impaired people has gone viral with more than 9 Million clicks on YouTube so far.

The video features a young deaf man from Istanbul, named Muharrem, who is followed by hidden cameras as he experiences one of the most surprising mornings of his life. Setting off for a walk with his sister, Muharrem gets more and more confused, when all the people they encounter communicate with him using sign language.

The setup, which has been planned by ad agency Leo Burnett Istanbul for months, ends after a cab ride with a Samsung representative explaining the situation by signing the words “a world without barriers is our dream as well.”
 

Tags: censorship Erdogan surveillance, ISIS, Minecraft banned, orhan pamuk