Turkey: what is going on?

[bourbon]

Too late, IIRC Turkey has purchased Russian weapons before today: MLRS, wheeled APCs and small arms.

It’s the big stuff like warships and fighter aircraft that counts, where it is just as much diplomacy as it is an arms deal. Then it gets into countertrades, offset agreements, industrial cooperation, etc. Nobody pays just cash in those deals.

Small arms, APCs, MLRS on the other hand are relatively simple; they don’t require significant foreign training, and spare parts can probably be sourced from other FSU countries. These kinds of deals don’t have that much money and people going back-and-forth, and do not represent a significant shift in relations.

[AdamG]

ISTANBUL, Jan 6 (Reuters) - Former Turkish armed forces chief General Ilker Basbug spent his first night behind bars on Friday, charged with trying to overthrow the government in an unprecedented development likely to exacerbate tensions with the military.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8C600320120106

[davidbfpo]

I am still trying to follow this developing situation, with the current Islamic government pursuing via the criminal justice route the leadership of the army and other critics.

Hat tip to FP Blog for offering a background explanation, 'Behind Bars in the Deep State' which is sub-titled:

Does a shadowy mullah in Pennsylvania really hold the reins of power in Turkey? If not, then why are the country’s leaders so intent on silencing a single investigative journalist?

The article points the finger at a shadowy Muslim group.

Oddly the article has been pulled and is not cached. Will try to link another day.

[tequila]

The Fetullah Gulen movement is not that "shadowy" - it is a massive outfit its own website and quite a large number of media outlets.

BBC story with some details about Ahmet Sik's case.

Recent NYTIMES story about Gulen charter schools in Texas.

I'd be worried less about the Gulen movement and more about the AKP's actions - though given the Turkish military's actions in the past, it's hard for them to complain about creeping authoritarianism.

[AdamG]

Oddly the article has been pulled and is not cached. Will try to link another day.

I think you might have encountered internet outages/hiccups over the last 48h.

Here it is

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...the_deep_state

also here
http://arunwithaview.wordpress.com/2...he-deep-state/

Meanwhile, historical precedence in the news
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-01-10/w...n?_s=PM:EUROPE

[davidbfpo]

An interesting analysis of what is going on:

Turkey's AKP government has over a decade promised a new model of governance: progressive and reformist, Islamist and democratic. But a series of developments, including the expanding power of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is now exposing the party and its policies to ever-deeper scrutiny....

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/kerem-o...ith-human-face

[omarali50]

this is an interesting article about fethullah gulen http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_...lah-gulen.html

[Fuchs]

Keep in mind some if not most of the Western-like modernisation of the Turkish state in the last decade or more was done in order to conform enough to the EU for becoming a member.

Bluntly stated, enough Europeans don't want the Turks to join - the EU is already very diverse without growing beyond actual occidental Europe. It's having its issues and doesn't need more.

The membership of Cyprus coupled with the basically unresolved conflict on Cyprus basically ensured that if Greece doesn't veto, Cyprus does and if Cyprus doesn't, some other veto will be found.

So the Turks basically gave up the idea of joining the EU and Erdogan et al instead began to develop Turkey as a comeback great power with an identity between Europe, Arab countries and Central Asian turk nations.

With Turkey going its own way, he apparently also figured that Turkey can have its own interpretation of what a modern state is like and doesn't need to accept Western ideas on this at face value.


The problem in Turkey is in my opinion a lack of political and probably also media plurality. It's either AKP or the pro-military autocrats IIRC, and there should really be a third choice which could form a coalition with both and keep the political culture from going too far towards either extreme.
I'm not well-informed on their party landscape, though.