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By Prateek Chakraborty | Updated: Dec 20, 2019 18:43 IST

New Delhi [India], Dec 20 (ANI): Describing the military offensive launched by Turkey as an attempt to divert public attention after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling party suffered a setback in this year's municipal elections, M Behzad Fatmi, a Turkish political writer and commentator, has said that the operation helped the government to silence rising voices of the opposition parties in the country.In an e-mail interview to ANI on Friday, Fatmi said that prominent Justice and Development (AKP) leaders like Ali Babacan and Ahmet Davutoglu, who were once Erdogan allies, decided to break away from the party and form their own parties to challenge the Erdogan regime.Fatmi explained how prior to the military offensive, Erdogan's hold over Turkey's politics had dwindled significantly, as was evident from the ruling party's loss in major cities including in Istanbul -- a city where Erdogan had served as a Mayor in the 1990s prior to occupying the top post of the country and had described the seat as the key to winning Turkish elections."Launching an offensive in Syria helped the Erdogan regime to silence rising opposition voices in the country. The ruling AKP party had just lost major cities like Istanbul and Ankara in the municipal elections, giving the opposition parties a reason to be assertive for the first time since the AKP had come to power more than fifteen years ago. With his immense popularity among both the conservative and liberal voters, the new Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was presenting an unprecedented challenge to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan," he said."Moreover, prominent faces from within the AKP party like Abdullah Gul, Ali Babacan and Ahmet Davutoglu were preparing to form parties of their own to challenge the ruling party. This offensive effectively diverted public attention from all these debates and development," he added."The AKP's hold over Turkey's politics has certainly reduced significantly. In a poll conducted before the municipal elections, it was found that the AKP's vote share had come down to 36 per cent. In the words of Erdogan himself -- 'those who win Istanbul, win Turkey', which also means that who lose Istanbul, lose Turkey," Fatmi said.On October 9, Turkey had launched its unilateral military operation in north-east Syria to remove Kurdish-led forces from the border area. The move came days after the US announced it was withdrawing its troops from the region, leaving the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), without American military support.Several countries, including India, had condemned Turkey's operation in Syria, a war-ravaged country. New Delhi said that Ankara's actions can undermine "stability in the region" and has the potential for causing humanitarian and civilian distress. (ANI)

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Erdogan's offensive in Syria was designed to divert attention from domestic issues: Expert - ANI News

2019-12-15T22:12:11+00:00 2019-12-15T22:12:11+00:00 2019-12-16T16:48:10+00:00.

Antigoni Zachari

Recep Tayyip Erdogan mentioned that he is open to the idea of Larkin playing for the Turkish National Team.

By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan mentioned during a TV interview that he is open to giving Shane Larkin a Turkish passport so the player can join the national team.

We will do what we need to do about it. We would like to see such a successful basketball player in our national team. Larkin can take our national team to very good results, commented Erdogan.

Larkin himself had expressed his interest to join the Turkish national team in the future, with Efes coach Ergin Ataman also supporting the idea of Larkin playing for the national team.

National team coach Ufuk Sarica also addressed the matter and the possible difficulties of the player getting a Turkish passport, however, it seems that after Erdogans comment the paperwork can be a formality.

It will remain to be seen if he finally gets to follow the path of fellow American-born and naturalized Turkish guards, like Scottie Wilbekin and Bobby Dixon. Larkin reacted with the following tweet.

It has to be noted, of course, that under FIBA rules only one naturalized player can be used in the final roster of any national team.

Photo: EuroLeague

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Erdogan on Larkin receiving a Turkish passport: We will do what we need to - Eurohoops

OpEds President Erdogan reasserts authority in Turkey

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The controversy over awarding the Nobel Prize for Literature to the Austrian writer Peter Handke has not subsided. The spokesman for the Turkish presidency, Ibrahim Kalin, has approached the Nobel Prize committee and asked that that the writer, guilty of siding with the Serbs during the Balkan war, be deniedthe prize:

The Nobel Prize to Handke is a shameful decision that must be annulled.

Turkey has taken the lead ofa number of Muslim countries that have protested aboutHandke. The Turkish ambassador to Sweden, Hakki Emre Yunt, told the Turkish broadcaster Hurriyet that he will not attend the ceremony, while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the Swedish Academy had already given the Nobel Prize to a Turkish terrorist, areference to the writer Orhan Pamuk (the only other Turkish Nobel Prize winner, the biochemist Aziz Sancar, is not known to be a government critic).

Turkey, at the same time, prevented one of its most famous writers, Ahmet Altan, from flying to Munich to receive the Geschwister-Scholl prize, which bears the names of the heads of the White Rose who were executed by the Nazis. In September 2016, Altan, founder of the now banned Taraf newspaper, was arrested on charges of taking part in the attempted coup against Erdogan. On February 16, 2018, the writer was sentenced to life imprisonment for spreading a subliminal message during a television program the day before the coup.

You can imprison me but you can't keep me here. Because, like all writers, I can easily cross your walls, Altan wrote in I Will Never See the World Again, the book written in his cell in Silivri's maximum security prison. Last November 4, Altan was released on the condition that he reported regularly to the police. A few days ago, he suffered a new arrest.

Turkish writer and Nobel Prize winner Pamuk, who in 2005 was tried in Istanbul and publicly attacked yesterday by Erdogan, told the Sddeutsche Zeitung: As long as systematic injustices against Altan continue and we remain silent, it will be shameful for us and our humanity.

Altan is not the only Turkish writer to have ended up in jail.

The poet Nedim Trfent has been in jail for 1,250 days, guilty of writing about human rights violations in Kurdistan.

Another famous novelist, Asli Erdogan, was in prison when in Germany she was awarded the Peace Prize named after Erich Maria Remarque in the German city of Osnabrck.

Someone should explain to Erdogan that the border, first of all moral and cultural, between Europe and Turkey is still drawn on the Bosphorus.The writer Sevan Nisanyan was sentenced to thirteen months for irony on the Prophet Mohammed.

And at Erdogan's request, Interpol arrested another Turkish writer on holiday in Spain, Dogan Akhanli, guilty of having set his novel Kiyamet Gunu Yargiclari (The Judges of the Last Judgment) during the Armenian genocide.

Now Turkey would like to see Handke to be deprived of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Someone should explain to Erdogan that the border, first of all moral and cultural, between Europe and Turkey is still drawn on the Bosphorus. And it should remain there.

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Erdogan's threat to Western culture - Arutz Sheva

Despite being a member of NATO, Mr Erdogan has agitated fellow member states with his foreign policy, but his feelings towards the group of nations were previously positive. Dr Simon Waldman told Express.co.uk: Before, Turkeys position was that it should harness its relations wherever it has them, so in the Middle East it should have strong ties, strong ties with Europe and strong ties with NATO.

That is what gives Turkey its strengths, having as little issues with its neighbours as possible as well as cultural engagement.

However, the attempted coup in 2016 aimed at ousting Mr Erdogan from power, has left the Turkish President with bitterness towards some Western countries as he believes they assisted the Gulen movement in its efforts to remove him from the Presidential Palace.

Expert in Turkish politics, Dr Waldman continued: But then there is the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016, from the perspective of Erdogan this is a personal attempt against him, and he thinks where are the Gulen movement, the architects of the coup, from? oh it has bases in the US.

What did NATO give Turkey, where was NATO in the post-Saddam Hussein gulf war when Turkey came under threat? Where did NATO help after the Iraq invasion when the fallout reached Turkey? Where was the help when there was a Kurdish insurgency?

And who were the officers directing the coup, many of them earned their stripes in NATO- so this distrust of NATO starts to kick in.

During the coup, NATOs F-16 fighter jets were used by Turkish anti-government pilots to bombard the Parliament in the capital of Ankara.

READ MORE:Erdogan risks fallout as Syria rant to spark Trump and Putin fury

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Why Erdogan will never trust NATO amid Putin missile deal - Express.co.uk

Turkish President Erdogan said during a news conference that he had returned the letter President Donald Trump sent him last month. USA TODAY

WASHINGTON Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a White House news conference Wednesday that he had returned the letter President Donald Trump sent him last month warning him not to be a "tough guy" as his military prepared to invade Kurdish territory in northern Syria.

"This letter was re-presented to Mr. President this afternoon," Erdogan said when asked why he ignored Trump's advice and proceeded with the military incursion.

"We gave back the letter that we have received," he repeated at the end of his response, apparently rejectingreports he had thrown the letter in the trash.

Trump wrote the letter advising Erdogan to take a diplomatic approach to the situation amid an uproar over his decision to pull U.S. troops out of the area, paving the way for Turkish forces to advance.

'A big fan': Trump welcomes Turkey's Erdogan despite bipartisan concern over Syria attack

Erdogan had frequently expressed his desire to take military action against the Kurds in the region, whom he considersterrorists allied with Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey. But U.S. forces acted as a buffer between Turkey and the Kurds,whoseSyrian Democratic Forces lost 11,000 fighters battlingagainst the Islamic State alongside American troops.

Republican and Democratic lawmakersdecried Trump's sudden decision to pull out of the area after an Oct. 6 phone call with Erdogan, warning it paved the way for the slaughter and "ethnic cleansing" of an ally, emboldened Iran and Russia, and opened the door to an ISIS resurgence.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a normally staunch Trump supporter, said the move to abandon a U.S. ally was "irresponsible" and a "stain on America's honor," though he later tempered his criticism after Trump agreed to leave some U.S. troops to protect the area's oil fields.

Who are the Kurds and what does less U.S. troops in the region mean for the war against ISIS? We explain. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY

'A reckless gamble': Four reasons critics decry Trump's 'impulsive' Syria withdrawal

In the Oct. 9 letter, Trump told Erdogan, "Let's work out a good deal!" Hesaid the Turkish president did not "want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy," in an apparent threat to apply sanctions if Erdogan went ahead with his attack on the Kurds.

"Don't let the world down. You can make a great deal," Trump wrote. He said Abdi was "willing to negotiate with you, and he is willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past."

"History will look upon you favorably if you get this done the right and humane way," Trump said. "It will look upon you forever as the devil if good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool!"

After receiving the letter, Erdogan told reporters that it "did not go hand in hand with political and diplomatic courtesy."

"Of course, we haven't forgotten it. It would not be right for us to forget it," Erdogan said last month.

On Wednesday, Erdogan took issue with the letter's suggestion of using Abdi as an "interlocutor." Referring to him by his given name,Ferhat Abdi Sahin, Erdogan said Adbi was a terrorist"instrumental in the killing of hundreds of Turkish civilians."

The U.S. brokered a cease-fire between the Kurds and the Turks, which Trump said is "holding very well," but the SDF says clashes continue with armed groups supported by Turkey. On Wednesday, the SDF shared video on Twitter of what it said were Turkish attacks on villages.

The Kurdish group says more than 500 civilians have been killed since Turkey's military incursion began and that more than 300,000 people have been displaced.

In light of Erdogan's actions in Syria, several lawmakers objected to Trump hosting him at the White House, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who said he shared his "colleagues' uneasiness at seeing President Erdogan honored at the White House."

Trump was less concerned about such appearances and declared himself "a big fan" of Erdogan, who he said has a "great relationship with the Kurds."

Contributing: Deirdre Shesgreen, David Jackson, John Fritze, Michael Collins and Courtney Subramanian

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