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President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began his first 100 days last week as head of Turkeys new regime by reverting to membership in the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP). He is now set to be re-elected as chairman on the 21st of this month.

Once this happens he will no longer be the theoretical president of all the Turks but, in practice, president of the AKPs conservative, devout constituency constituting half the populace. This is certain to further alienate the already alienated liberal, secular 50 per cent of Turks.

Under the unamended constitution, the Turkish president was meant to be a neutral, largely ceremonial figure. However, as soon as he was inaugurated in August 2014, after serving for 11 years as prime minister, Erdogan usurped the powers of his previous office, with the backing of his majority parliamentary party.

Although his 18 amendments were approved by a narrow margin 51.4 per cent in the April 16th referendum Erdogans return to the AKP has demonstrated he intends to move ahead with his drive to remodel the post-Ottoman, Western-style Turkish state founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatrk in 1923. Atatrk adopted aggressive lacit and the parliamentary system of governance, appointed the military guarantor of this polity, and decreed all inhabitants of the new state to be Turks. Over the decades Turkey developed checks and balances for the executive, legislature and judiciary.

After becoming prime minister in 2003, Erdogan adopted Atatrks pro-Western external orientation by pursuing Turkeys accession to the European Union (EU). On the internal front he began to erode his countrys secularism by actively promoting religious schools, lifting the ban on women wearing headscarves in state institutions, and attempting to criminalise adultery and introduce alcohol-free zones. He criticised birth control and argued men and women are not equal.

He was able to promote his agenda because the AKP, modelled on the Muslim Brotherhood, dominated the political landscape and could count on maintaining its majority in parliament thanks to weakness and division among secular rivals. The AKPs control of parliament removed the legislature as a check on Erdogans ambitions. In 2013, following allegations of AKP corruption, Erdogan began to purge the judiciary, which he escalated dramatically last year after the failed mid-July military coup which was followed by mass arrests and dismissals of judges, prosecutors, and police.

Erdogan also purged the military in stages, beginning in 2007 with allegations of a coup plot by secular nationalists in the armed forces command and peaking after the failed 2016 coup. The military no longer has the power to act as guarantor of Atatrks state.

Since the AKP is heir to three fundamentalist parties National Salvation, Welfare, and Virtue and denied power by the military, Erdogan had no intention of permitting the generals to intervene again.

The constitutional amendments transform Turkeys parliamentary system into a presidential model by abolishing the role of prime minister and conferring on the president sweeping executive powers. He not only exercises authority over the legislature but is also empowered to draw up the state budget and appoint cabinet ministers, members of the National Security Council and 12 out of 15 judges to the constitutional court. Prosecutors and lower court judges are to be chosen by parliament and president. Checks and balances have been eliminated.

Erdogan could reign until 2029, enabling him to advance the replacement of Atatrks secular model with a faith-based system featuring conservative Sunni tenets and social practices. He claims his aim is to revert to the Ottoman model, has adopted the pomp and circumstance of the Ottoman court, and is often portrayed as a pasha in a turban and flowing garments.

He is, in fact, cherry-picking elements of the Ottoman regime, adopting some, eschewing others. The most important Ottoman practice he has rejected is toleration of multiple ethnicities, religious faiths, and cultures. Instead, he has embraced post-Ottoman, Kemalist ethnic Turkish nationalism which forced Greek and Armenian Christians to flee and angered the Kurds, 20 per cent of the population. For generations they have been dubbed mountain Turks, and their Indo-Aryan ethnic identity, language and culture have been suppressed, driving them to revolt.

Erdogans critics argue his referendum victory was undemocratic since opponents of his amendments were prevented from campaigning and the result was fraudulent due to the acceptance by the election commission of ballots without its authentication stamps. The opposition is strong in Turkeys three major cities Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir while Erdogans supporters live mainly in rural areas and provincial towns. The divide is largely between secular, urban Turks and devout, conservative, urban working class, small town and village Turks.

Reliance on his constituency without conciliating opponents could lead to demonstrations in Turkeys cities similar to the countrywide protests in 2013 sparked by Ankaras decision to build a mosque and mall in Istanbuls Gezi park, the citys greenzone. Protesters demonstrated against corruption, limitations on press freedom, destruction of the environment, and Erdogans erosion of secularism.

Despite his harsh crackdown on domestic dissent, Erdogan remains vulnerable. In 2015 he rekindled the 30-year war against the Kurds after nearly two years of ceasefire and negotiations. His promotion of war in Syria by facilitating the movement of foreign fighters and arms across Turkey into Syria, and supporting Muslim Brotherhood-linked expatriate Syrian oppositionists, has backfired.

Al-Qaeda and Islamic State have taken over from moderate rebels, prospered in Syria and Iraq, formed cells in Turkeys towns and cities and carried out bombings in Ankara and Istanbul. The Turkish army has been drawn into the Syrian conflict. Jihadis have infiltrated Europe via Turkey and mounted operations in Belgium and France. Radical recruiters have inspired attacks elsewhere in Europe.

Turkeys relations with the US, EU and Nato have been damaged. Erdogans first post-referendum journey was to India, where he was warmly welcomed by Hindu revivalist Narendra Modi. Erdogan will shortly meet his US counterpart Donald Trump who has made a practice of inviting to the White House authoritarian rulers, shunned by his predecessor.

Michael Jansen is based in Cyprus and writes for The Irish Times about the Middle East

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Erdogan remains vulnerable despite power grab - Irish Times

The Turkish community in exile targeted by Erdogan because of their interest in preserving democracy in their country is planning a series of demonstrations; and the first one will likely take place in front of the Saudi embassy. These events will place a harsh focus on Saudi Arabia's own well-documented human rights abuses right before President Trump's visit to that country on May 25th.

The Turkish nationals, whose crime is that they might be members of an opposition political party, some who have been legally living in Saudi Arabia for the past 40 years, are being deported from Saudi Arabia back to Turkey where they fear they will undergo barbaric methods of torture under Erdogan's order.

The barbarity of their detention is underscored by the fact that entire families including children are also subjected to deportation. These supposed criminals are professionals doctors, lawyers, and teachers that have demonstrated their civility and humanity while working in Saudi Arabia. They were taken into custody on March 15th, 2017, treated like terrorists by the Saudi police, and are being held without any legal rationale. In essence, they have become stateless by the Saudi's own lack of concern for basic human rights

Terrified for their loved ones' lives, the family members of the 11 individuals have hired Gotham Government Relations to resolve this matter. Whatever their political leanings, these 11 should not be unlawfully detained because an increasingly dictatorial and paranoid government wants them returned so they can be persecuted; just as thousands of Turkish citizens currently living in the country under Erdogan's reign of terror are experiencing as the whole world watches.

The Saudi Arabian government, acting as Erdogan's lapdog, has blocked any of Gotham's attempts to save these 11 innocent individuals lives. Saudi Arabia has rejected any meeting request to discuss this urgent situation which leaves the rest of the world wondering if Saudi Arabia is simply serving as a proxy for the human rights abusing Erdogan.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/saudi-arabia-serving-as-proxy-for-erdogan-as-he-extends-his-anti-human-rights-campaign-to-turks-living-all-over-the-world-300451656.html

SOURCE Gotham Government Relations

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Saudi Arabia serving as proxy for Erdogan as he extends his anti-human rights campaign to Turks living all over the ... - PR Newswire (press release)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a news conference in Istanbul, April 16, 2017.(photo byREUTERS/Murad Sezerm)

Author:Ali Bayramoglu Posted May 4, 2017

On a flight back from India this week, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed the West for criticizing Turkeys state of emergency, in place since the botched coup attempt in July 2016. Speaking to journalists accompanying him on the trip, he said, The West, which fails to see the state of emergency in France, is attempting to criticize a process that we are carrying out in tranquility. What has the state of emergency in Turkey done? Has it taken away anything from [businesspeople]? Has it affected businesses? He argued that without the state of emergency, the authorities would have failed to have struggled as well as they have against the Kurdistan WorkersParty (PKK) and followers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara calls the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organization (FETO) and holds responsible for the coup attempt.

Given the suspension of basic rights and freedoms, associating the state of emergency with social peace is simply ironic, not to mention that Ankara is flouting even the constitutional limits for the use of emergency-rule powers. For Turkish citizens of a certain age, todays atmosphere evokes the scary climate of the military rule after the 1980 coup, when the campaign of suppression was called a tranquility operation.

Erdogan may claim the state of emergency is conducted in peace, and even without harming anyone, but the toll is out thereas plain as day. On April 2, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu offered the following summary of the crackdown on Gulenistsor dissidents accused of being such: So far, 113,260 people have been detained in connection with FETO. The number of those who remain arrested today is 47,155, which is a significant number. There are 41,499 peoplewho have been released on the condition of judicial control, while 23,861 others have been freed (without any further action). Those arrested include 10,732 police officers, 7,463 soldiers, including 168 generals, 2,575 judges and prosecutors, 26,177 civilians and 208 administrative chiefs.

This, however, is only a partial picture that omits the toll of the crackdown on the Kurds. The state of emergency has seen the detention of some 9,000 members of the Kurdish-dominated Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), about 3,000 of whom remain behind bars. Eleven HDP lawmakers, including both of the partys co-chairs, are also in jail. The HDPs sister party, the Democratic Regions Party, which runs 103 local administrations in the mainly Kurdish southeast, has seen 84 of those municipalities handed over to government-appointed trustees and 89 of its co-mayors arrested.

Scores of academics who had signed declarations criticizing Ankaras Kurdish policies have been expelled from universities across the country, while the number of gagged newspapers, magazines and internet sites is beyond counting.

So one thing is obvious: Those punished through emergency-rule instruments are not armed terrorist groups, as Erdogan claims, but members of civic society and political parties. In other words, the measures have targeted legitimate representative and civic structures, bypassing democracy and the law.

There is no doubt now that this chilling policy is a systematic one. Erdogan and the government got what they wanted from the April 16 referendum, and have shown no intention of softening or moderation in its aftermath. This is clearly manifested in the new waves of detentions and suspensions that have followed the vote.

On April 26, the authorities issued detention orders for 3,224 alleged Gulenists. Two days later, 9,000 police officers were suspended from duty on the same grounds. On May 2, the government issued two legislative decrees to expel some 4,000 public employees, including 1,000 military officers and 485 academics, bringing the total to more than 102,000 expulsions since the state of emergency took effect.

The moves indicate that the government sees its narrow victory in the referendum as a vote of confidence for its authoritarian policies. This, in turn, represents the first convergence between the existing authoritarian practices and the aspired populist institutionalization.

One cannot help but wonder whether the governments war on the Gulen community is a bottomless pit, a saga that will never end. The situation has come to resemble a two-way authoritarian trap. If the presence of Gulenists in the state is a threat to the rule of law, the ferocious and often arbitrary measures against them have become another.

No one can really tell where the truth lies exactly. If the Gulenists have really entrenched themselves to an extent that justifies this massive toll, Turkey does face a predicament that will be difficult to overcome. Alternately, if the Gulenists power is exaggerated and the governments actions stem from a mix of concern, suspicion and a desire to consolidate power, Turkey faces an equally lasting problem. In either case, the blows to democracy are bound to produce the same outcome: perpetual suspicion, perpetual purges and therefore perpetual disregard of the law. The experience thus far shows that each new suspicion triggers a fresh wave of detentions and expulsions. This is so much so that some public servants, recruited to replace expelled Gulenists, have themselves faced suspension after a while.

Another alarming problem is that this atmosphere has spawned a self-spinning cogwheel that can function without political push. The onslaught on suspected Gulenists and PKK supporters has rested on tip-offs, assumptions and guesses rather than evidence and corroborated suspicion, creating a logic and a mentality of its own. All members of the state apparatus prosecutors, judges, public functionaries and the bureaucrats drawing up the expulsion lists are acting under the influence or the pressure of this atmosphere, sometimes as its executioners and sometimes as its victims. The banality of evil Hannah Arendts famous concept on the normalization of human wickedness is springing to life in Turkey, nourishing authoritarianism from inside the system.

This is also the reason for Turkeys growing introversion and international alienation. The April 25 decision of the Council of Europes Parliamentary Assembly to put Turkey on its watch list was precisely because of the rights violations and arbitrary rule that the state of emergency has produced. The definition of freedom that Erdogan made earlier this year is perhaps the best illustration of the icy rift between Turkey and the West today. Referring to big infrastructure projects by his government, Erdogan said, Hey West! Freedom is not [what you advocate]. Freedom goes through the Marmaray Tunnel. Freedom goes through the Eurasia Tunnel. Freedom goes through the Osmangazi Bridge.

Read More: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/05/turkey-referendum-emboldened-new-purges-bans.html

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No end in sight for Erdogan's purges after referendum - Al-Monitor

A senior aide to Turkish President Erdogan has stated that US forces in Syria could be accidentally hit by Turkish rockets alongside Kurdish militants, stating that Ankara won't hold back a strike against PKK militia just because US troops are present.

It doesnt matter whether they [US troops] are patrolling there. If those PKK [Kurdistan Workers' Party] terrorists continue their activities within Turkey...you know they are infiltrating from northern Syria [into Turkey]... Ilnur Cevik, a senior political adviser to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told Turkish radio station CRI TURK on Wednesday.

...If they go a little further then our forces [wouldn't care whether] there are American armors there...suddenly you happen to see there are a few missiles [that] hit them accidentally too, he continued.

READ MORE:Ankara notified US weeks before airstrikes on Kurdish-held areas in Syria & Iraq Turkish FM

Cevik's statements came after US troops were deployed to the Syrian border to prevent clashes between Turkish and Kurdish forces, after Turkish airstrikes hit two Kurdish-held areas in Syria and Iraq last month.

However, Cevik appeared to make a U-turn on Twitter on Wednesday, stating that Turkey has never and will never hit its allies anywhere and that includes the US in Syria.

He stated that Turkey will, however, hit all terrorists in Syria, adding that no one should allow our US allies to become a shield for them.

Cevik then posted a tweet which appeared to be referencing the US and its risk of alienating the Turkish people by cooperating with Ankara's enemies.

Both Turkey and the US have classified the PKK as a terrorist group. However, the two sides disagree on the classification of another Kurdish group, the People's Protection Units (YPG). Although Ankara considers the YPG to be terrorists, the US is cooperating alongside them in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

The YPG, and you know whos supporting them, is attacking us with mortars. But we will make those places their grave, there is no stopping, Erdogan said last month, referencing Washington's support, as quoted by AP.

READ MORE:Turkey bombs Kurdish-held areas in Iraq & Syria, says terrorists targeted

Instead of working with Syrian Kurds, who the US believes are the most powerful force against IS in Syria, Turkey is pressing Washington to let its army join its campaign for Raqqa.

Let us, huge America, all these coalition powers and Turkey, let us join hands and turn Raqqa to Daeshs [IS] grave, Erdogan said last month.

Erdogan will travel to Washington later this month to meet with US President Trump on May 16. It will be the first meeting between the leaders of the two NATO countries.

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US troops could be 'accidentally' hit in strikes against Kurdish ... - RT

CNSNews.com (blog)

Greek Orthodox Bishop Calls on Turkey's Erdogan to Convert or Face 'Unending Hell' With Muhammed CNSNews.com (blog) The Greek Orthodox bishop, Metropolitan Seraphim of Piraeus, sent a lengthy letter to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he detailed some of the differences between Christianity and Islam and called on Erdogan to convert to Orthodoxy or ...

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Greek Orthodox Bishop Calls on Turkey's Erdogan to Convert or Face 'Unending Hell' With Muhammed - CNSNews.com (blog)