New Erdogan Decree Grants Immunity For "Suppressing Terror", Paves Way For Militia Violence

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest batch of presidential decrees has transformed Turkey into a nation of government-endorsed militias and "anti-terror vigilantes."

According to Ahval, Erdogan published Turkey"s latest state of emergency government decree – the country has been under a perpetual state of emergency since the summer of 2016 failed coup - in the Official Gazette on Sunday. And not only does it condone the purging of thousands of civil servants from their jobs, but, in an unprecedented escalation, grants immunity to "those who took to the streets during the coup attempt" or "assisted with suppressing terror." Furthermore: ""Notwithstanding whether individuals hold a formal title or whether they have fulfilled a formal duty, those who have acted in the scope of suppressing the coup attempt and acts of terror on July 15, 2016, and actions that were extensions of these events"" will be exempt from being put on trial for their actions."

Of course, anyone who has been following the situation in Turkey over the past year-and-a-half (and certainly longer) knows that “suppressing terror” is Erdogan"s popular euphemism for punishing or imprisoning suspected Gulenist sympathizers, and also anyone who dares to bring attention to Erdogan"s brazen corruption.

As a result, the Turkish president has been busy lately, signing a flurry of decrees that have further consolidated political power in the office of the president – a stunning reversal from the early days of Erdogan’s political career, when he was a well-regarded moderate advocating much needed government reforms.

Experts note that decrees no. 695 and no. 696 remove legislative authority from Parliament, effectively completing the erosion of the legislature’s authority that began with April’s constitutional referendum, a vote that EU observers condemned as “neither fair, nor free."

As Ahval added, legal expert Kerem Altparmak tweeted Sunday that "with the changes arriving with the new decree, an absolute legal immunity has been put into effect for any kind of killing and the infliction of injuries that took place on the night of July 15th as well as its aftermath."

KHK ile getirilen de?i?likle 15 temmuz gecesi ve devam?nda gerçekle?en her türlü öldürme, yaralama olay?nda mutlak cezas?zl?k geçerli. Bu sald?r?lar?n ma?durlar? ve ma?durlar?n?n yak?nlar? art?k iç hukuk yolunu tüketmeden do?rudan A?HMe ba?vurabilir.

— Kerem ALTIPARMAK (@KeremALTIPARMAK) December 24, 2017

Selin Girit, a reporter with the Turkish edition of BBC, said the decree "could pave the way for pro-government militia and risks heightening tensions within an already deeply polarised society."

#Turkey emergency decree grants immunity to “civilians who take action in order to prevent coup plots and terror attacks”. Critics say this decree could pave the way for a pro-government militia and risks heightening tensions w/ in an already deeply polarised society https://t.co/NlNaEcGBTv

— Selin Girit (@selingirit) December 24, 2017

Sunday"s decree also enforces a uniform on those who have been arrested or are serving a sentence in conjunction with crimes that fall under the scope of the post-coup terrorism law: The new uniforms - which will be golden brown jumpsuits and which appear to have been inspired by Germany"s treatment of Jews in World War II - are to be provided by penal institutions.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Officials have indicated that newly implemented uniform rule will only encompass those who are suspects of what the government has labelled the Fethullah Terror Organisation (FETO) and are accused of having supported the attempted coup. Though some observers expect the definition to be widely expanded. Republican People"s Party (CHP) deputy Sezgin Tanrikulu took to Twitter in criticism of the new decrees, noting, "The enforcement of a standardised uniform is a violation of human dignity; it is an inhumane practice, it is torture."

Yeni KHK ile tutuklu ve hükümlülere tek tip elbise giyme zorunlulu?u getirildi.
Tek tip dayatmas? insan onuruna ayk?r?d?r, insanl?k d??? muameledir, i?kencedir.

— Sezgin Tanr?kulu (@MSTanrikulu) December 24, 2017

While many of Erdogan’s political allies have stood by in silence as Turkish police forces hounded hundreds of thousands of regular citizens suspected of supporting an exiled cleric and political dissident, some are finally speaking out against the supreme leader’s ruthless crackdown following a July 15, 2016 coup attempt. In a dramatic break from tradition, on Monday Abdullah Gul, Erdogan’s predecessor as president of Turkey and a longtime political ally, publicly criticized the decrees, saying it grants too much latitude to civilians to commit acts of violence without any legal repercussions, as Bloomberg pointed out.

“The language used in the writing of emergency order number 696, which I thought was made to protect our heroic citizens who took to the streets without looking back to resist the treacherous coup attempt of July 15, is vague in a way that’s inappropriate for legal language and is worrying from the perspective of rule of law,” he said on Twitter.

15 Temmuz hain darbe te?ebbüsüne kar?? arkas?na bakmadan soka?a ç?k?p direnen kahraman vatanda?lar?m?z? koruma amac?yla ç?kart?ld???n? dü?ündü?üm 696 say?l? KHK’n?n yaz?m?ndaki hukuk diliyle ba?da?mayan mu?lakl?k, hukuk devleti anlay??? aç?s?ndan kayg? vericidir.

— Abdullah Gül (@cbabdullahgul) December 25, 2017

?lerde hepimizi üzecek olaylara ve geli?melere f?rsat vermemek için gözden geçirilece?ini ümit ediyorum.

— Abdullah Gül (@cbabdullahgul) December 25, 2017

The decrees also dismissed 2,766 people from various state institutions over alleged links to "terror" organizations, while another 115 people were reinstated to their jobs by the decrees.

Since the July 2016 coup attempt – perpetrated by a faction within the country’s military that Erdogan claimed was loyal to exiled cleric Fehtullah Gulen, who is presently living in exile in Pennsylvania – Turkey has shuttered news organizations, jailed journalists, civil servants and other citizens who’ve been accused of supporting the Gulenist movement. Erdogan and Gulen were once political allies, until they had a falling out that ended with the cleric going into exile.

In the 18 months that have passed since Erdogan – who was outside of Ankara when the coup took place – took to Facetime to urge Turkish citizens to take to the streets and suppress the coup – tens of thousands of ordinary citizens have fled or simply disappeared.

Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies have spooked international investors, who have scrambled to pull their capital out of Turkey – a country whose economy is heavily dependent on foreign sources of funds - with the recent surge in outflows sending the Turkish lira to an all-time low against the dollar last month.

Two New Totalitarian Movements: Radical Islam And Political Correctness

Authored by A.Z.Mohamed via The Gatestone Institute,

• The attempt in the West to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media -- to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood -- is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell"s diseased society.


• The main facet of this PC tyranny, so perfectly predicted by George Orwell, is the inversion of good and evil -- of victim and victimizer. In such a universe, radical Muslims are victimized by the West, and not the other way around. This has led to a slanted teaching of the history of Islam and its conquests, both as a justification of the distortion and as a reflection of it.


• Thought-control is necessary for the repression of populations ruled by despotic regimes. That it is proudly and openly being used by self-described liberals and human-rights advocates in free societies is not only hypocritical and shocking; it is a form of aiding and abetting regimes whose ultimate goal is to eradicate Western ideals.

Political correctness (PC) has been bolstering radical Islamism. This influence was most recently shown again in an extensive exposé by the Clarion Project in July 2017, which demonstrates the practice of telling "deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them in order to forget any fact that has become inconvenient" -- or, as George Orwell called it in his novel, 1984, "Doublespeak."

This courtship and marriage between the Western chattering classes and radical Muslim fanatics was elaborated by Andrew C. McCarthy in his crucial 2010 book, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

Since then, this union has strengthened. Both the United States and the rest of the West are engaged in a romance with forces that are, bluntly, antagonistic to the values of liberty and human rights.

To understand this seeming paradox, one needs to understand what radical Islamism and PC have in common. Although Islamism represents all that PC ostensibly opposes -- such as the curbing of free speech, the repression of women, gays and "apostates" -- both have become totalitarian ideologies.

The totalitarian nature of radical Islamism is more obvious than that of Western political correctness -- and certainly more deadly. Sunni terrorists, such as ISIS and Hamas -- and Shiites, such as Hezbollah and its state sponsor, Iran -- use mass murder to accomplish their ultimate goal of an Islamic Caliphate that dominates the world and subjugates non-Muslims.

The attempt in the West, however, to impose a strict set of rules about what one is allowed to think and express in academia and in the media -- to the point that anyone who disobeys is discredited, demonized, intimidated and in danger of losing his or her livelihood -- is just as toxic and just as reminiscent of Orwell"s view of a diseased society.

These rules are not merely unspoken ones. Quoting a Fox News interview with American columnist Rachel Alexander, the Clarion Project points out that the Associated Press -- whose stylebook is used as a key reference by a majority of English-language newspapers worldwide for uniformity of grammar, punctuation and spelling -- is now directing writers to avoid certain words and terms that are now deemed unacceptable to putative liberals.

Alexander recently wrote:

"Even when individual authors do not adhere to the bias of AP Style, it often doesn"t matter. If they submit an article to a mainstream media outlet, they will likely see their words edited to conform. A pro-life author who submits a piece taking a position against abortion will see the words "pro-life" changed to "anti-abortion," because the AP Stylebook instructs, "Use anti-abortion instead of pro-life and pro-abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice." It goes on, "Avoid abortionist," saying the term "connotes a person who performs clandestine abortions."

"Words related to terrorism are sanitized in the AP Stylebook. Militant, lone wolves or attackers are to be used instead of terrorist or Islamist. "People struggling to enter Europe" is favored over "migrant" or "refugee." While it"s true that many struggle to enter Europe, it is accurate to point out that they are, in fact, immigrants or refugees."

To be sure, the AP Stylebook does not carry the same weight or authority as the Quranic texts on which radical Islamists base their jihadist actions and totalitarian aims. It does constitute, however, a cultural decree that has turned religious in its fervor. It gives a glimpse, as well, into the intellectual tyranny that has pervaded liberal Western thought and institutions.

The main facet of this PC tyranny, so perfectly predicted by Orwell, is the inversion of good and evil -- of victim and victimizer. In such a universe, radical Muslims are victimized by the West, and not the other way around. This has led to a slanted teaching of the history of Islam and its conquests, both as a justification of the distortion and as a reflection of it.

As far back as 2003, the Middle East Forum reported on the findings of a study conducted by the American Textbook Council, an independent New York-based research organization, which stated:

"[Over the last decade], the coverage of Islam in world history textbooks has expanded and in some respects improved.... But on significant Islam-related subjects, textbooks omit, flatter, embellish, and resort to happy talk, suspending criticism or harsh judgments that would raise provocative or even alarming questions."

Thought-control is necessary for the repression of populations ruled by despotic regimes. That it is proudly and openly being used by self-described liberals and human-rights advocates in free societies is not only hypocritical and shocking; it is a form of aiding and abetting regimes whose ultimate goal is to eradicate Western ideals. The relationship between the two must be recognized for what it is: a marriage made in hell.

Is A Tolerant Culture Being Replaced By An Intolerant One?

Authored by Saher Fares via The Gatestone Institute,

• One need not go back centuries to the Muslim conquest of the Christian late classical world -- the medieval Barbary corsair raids, the Ottoman yoke in Central and Eastern Europe or the slave markets of Kaffa in Tatar Muslim Crimea -- to understand that this violence clearly predates the European colonial era, the creation of the modern state of Israel, or the issue of climate change.


• Countries such as China, Nigeria or Kenya that are not Western, not "imperialist", not whatever the excuses that Islamists make, are still spectacularly attacked by similar stabbings. Month on month, there seems almost nowhere that Islamic terror did not strike.


• Volumes of revered Islamic texts establish in great detail the grounds of violence and oppression of non-believers and those deemed heretical. These supposed grounds -- made alive daily in madrassas and mosques across the world before being acted upon by religiously-trained terrorists -- are childishly dismissed by Western liberals as immaterial.


• The first step towards a solution is to question the received knowledge tirelessly dished out by media pundits in the West. What is lacking is simply seeing a huge body of evidence of theological justification for Islamist terror.

How thin can excuses wear every time an atrocity is committed in the name of Islam?

When 13 people were killed and scores more injured this week in a vehicle-ramming attack in Barcelona, Spain, and stabbing men shouting "This is for Allah!" on London Bridge and in Borough Market in June, what the victims least cared about was the Western elite pontificating that the latest atrocity "had nothing to do with Islam".

British Prime Minister Theresa May said, "It is time to say enough is enough" and promised a review of her country"s counter-terrorism strategy.

In the absence, however, of an honest and tempered look at the root causes of this terrorism, sacred or not, and a painful soul-searching by Muslims themselves of the grounds in their religion that give rise to such violence, it will never be "enough".

On June 4, British PM Theresa May said, "It is time to say enough is enough" and promised a review of her country"s counter-terrorism strategy. In the absence, however, of an honest look at the root causes of this terrorism, and a painful soul-searching by Muslims of the grounds in their religion that give rise to such violence, it will never be "enough". (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

One need not go back centuries to the Muslim conquest of the Christian late classical world -- the medieval Barbary corsair raids, the Ottoman yoke in Central and Eastern Europe or the slave markets of Kaffa in Tatar Muslim Crimea -- to understand that this violence clearly predates the European colonial era, the creation of the modern state of Israel, or the issue of climate change.

Only a fortnight ago, 29 Christian Copts were killed for refusing to say, "There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet" while on a trip to an Egyptian monastery on May 26. Separately, an unconfirmed number of Christians were killed and taken hostage by a mix of Saudi, Pakistani, Chechen, Moroccan and local jihadists in the southern Philippines during the past few weeks. In addition, 90 people were killed in a bombing in Kabul on May 31, and 26 people were killed at an ice cream parlor in Baghdad during Ramadan. None of these massacres had anything to do with "Bush"s war" in Iraq or U.S. President Donald J. Trump"s proposed "Muslim ban".

Countries such as China, Nigeria or Kenya that are not Western, not "imperialist", not whatever the excuses that Islamists make, are still spectacularly attacked by similar stabbings. Month on month, there seems almost nowhere Islamic terror did not strike. In January 2014, there the kidnapping and forced conversion of Christian Chibok girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria. In March 2014, there were stabbings at China"s Kunming Railway Station in by eight terrorists of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement -- male and female attackers pulled out long-bladed knives and stabbed and slashed passengers. In May 2014, there was the shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. In June 2014, there was the murder of 48 people in Mpeketoni in Kenya, and the list goes on for just the first half of 2014 alone.

The slaughter at London"s Parliament Square; the Manchester Arena; the St. Petersburg Metro; Paris"s Bataclan Theater and sports stadium; the three bombings targeting travelers in Brussels; last Christmas"s truck-ramming attack on a packed festival market in Berlin, to name but a few of the further incidents -- all really had nothing to do with avenging the Congolese from the onerous legacy of King Leopold.

Rather, volumes of revered Islamic texts establish in great detail the grounds of violence and oppression of non-believers and those deemed heretical. These supposed grounds -- made alive daily in madrassas and mosques across the world before being acted upon by religiously trained terrorists -- are childishly dismissed by Western liberals as immaterial.

Meanwhile, men, women and children are being offered as human sacrifices on the altar of political cynicism. Divine justice will doubtlessly judge not only the murderers and a creed that often seems bloodthirsty, but also those who insist, against all evidence, that this creed has nothing to do with those deaths.

The first step towards a solution is to question the received knowledge tirelessly dished out by media pundits in the West, and confirmed by too many supposed Muslim "moderates" both at home and abroad. What is lacking is simply seeing a huge body of evidence of theological justification for Islamist terror.

Have the statements by politicians in the 1990s (for example, at the time of Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman"s plot against the World Trade Center) changed from those uttered in the wake of 9/11, or again from those repeated after the San Bernardino attack in 2015? Do politicians give their "Islam is a religion of peace" platitudes out of political expediency or even the slightest knowledge of the ideology of Islam? Do they know actually know more about Islam than many of Islam"s learned ulema (scholars), including Ibn Taymiyyah, or the authentic hadith (actions and sayings of Muhammad)? One says:

"Allah"s Apostle said, "I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror."" (Sahih Al-Bukhari 122)

How does one read verses in the Quran such as:

"I will instil terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers. Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them. This is because they contended against Allah and His Messenger. If any contend against Allah and His Messenger, Allah is strict in punishment." (8:12-13)?

When it is said that Islam has nothing to do with verses such as these, is that meant to appease Muslims, comfort the victims of Islamic terror or support the comfort of the non-Muslim community? If it is the first, well, as history teaches, appeasement simply does not work. Besides, it would be an offensive to presume that Muslims, all Muslims, are to be held responsible for a creed that, in their own understanding of it, greatly varies from one individual to another. If the denial is intended to comfort victims, it does not. And as for the comfort of the non-Muslim community, what is being served up has to be based on what is visibly true. Should such arguments not first be pitched to try to convince those who are willing to kill and be killed in the name of Islam, rather than to those out to have a good time on a Saturday evening?

Will the time come when reformers in the Islamic world will have louder voices in scrutinizing Islam -- despite the obvious dangers to their lives -- than Western elites, who are merely afraid of being falsely accused of being "Islamophobes"? Why should it be "Islamophobic" to want to defend yourself?

For nearly two years, a prime-time TV program by a young Egyptian reformist, Islam el-Beheiry, has called for an overhaul of the millennium-old compilation of hadiths. He argues that much of it is incompatible with modernity and the best understanding of divinity and prophethood:

"Such tradition has very little good amid a multitude of evil, least of which is the insistence by all the Four Schools of Sunni Islam that Christians can be killed with impunity. A Muslim life is "superior" to that of a non-Muslim. Such is the Ijmaa" (jurisprudence consensus)."

Beheiry was sentenced in May 2015 to five years in prison with hard labor for "defamation of religion" -- thanks to Egypt"s blasphemy law. The sentence was reduced in December 2015 to one year. After serving most of his sentence, he was released on a presidential pardon.

Still, this Ramadan 2017, Beheiry was back again on the screen with a program he calls "The Map", in which he is trying to build a scientific way of judging what he thinks is divine and what is not in the mass of Islamic literature.

Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, an army general who in 2014 came to power following vast street protests against the short-lived rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, said it was no longer feasible that the Muslim World would set itself "in enmity against the whole world".

Now, in Europe, some rightly ask: If one in a thousand is a bad apple, why should we judge all the apples. One also needs to ask: If one in a thousand apple blows up in my yard, how many more violent incidents will Europe get after bringing in a cartload of millions more? Or, what if the problem is not really with the fruit, but with the tree itself?

Why is a desire to preserve one"s own culture deemed racist? I do not believe that I am better because I am or am not a Muslim. Is it "xenophobic" to ask such questions when the violence keeps edging closer and closer to home? Why should it be "Islamophobic" to want to defend yourself?

I do not fear Muslims, but I fear that a tolerant culture is being replaced by an intolerant, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and supremacist one -- espoused, even semi-consciously, by much of the Islamic world today. It is a world that is being assured by its scholars that such intolerant, misogynistic, anti-Semitic and supremacist manifestations are, in all ages, in the best spirit of Islam.

Is it "Islamophobic" to be angry at such atrocities committed every day, or to be angry at politicians who lie about what Islam is and is not, and merely call their challengers names while failing to do anything to stop the atrocities?

Should European courts and parliaments criminalize free speech that criticizes this understanding of Islam among the bulk of Islamic jurists, when those jurists stand at the head of an assembly-line of suicide bombers targeting Western nationals?

Should those who ask questions about Islamic terror be ostracized by the mainstream media and academia, while those institutions themselves give no answers to the jihadist problem of "holy hate" in our midst?

I do not wish the world to turn against Muslims. I only wish the sages would stop and think if all this really has "nothing to do with Islam." Can we not say, "stop justifying murderers in the name of your religion"?

Can we not simply say that such creeds will not be allowed here in the West, will not be whitewashed, glossed over, or explained away by Westerners through a mixture of cultural cringe and a misguided sense of guilt? Can we not reject jihad, accept apostasy, and be able freely to ask questions in our public spaces, on our television shows, in our schools and on our streets?

Turkey's Erdogan Slams Merkel: "Germany Is Abetting Terrorists"

Turkish-German relations were already at a breaking point before Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Germany on Monday of assisting terrorists by not responding to thousands of files sent to Berlin or handing over suspects wanted by Turkish authorities.

Already tense relations deteriorated further last month after Turkey arrested 10 rights activists, including a German, as part of a wider security crackdown. A Turkish prosecutor has accused them of links to the network of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for a failed coup in July 2016. The U.S.-based Gulen denies any involvement. Turkey accuses Germany of sheltering Kurdish and far-leftist militants as well as military officers and other people linked to the abortive coup. Berlin denies the accusations. Tensions between Berlin and Ankara were already running high after the arrest of a Turkish-German journalist and Turkey"s refusal to allow German lawmakers to visit troops at a Turkish air base.

And now, as Reuters reports, Erdogan told a conference in the Black Sea province of Rize, in comments likely to further escalate tensions between the two countries.

"Germany is abetting terrorists,"

"We gave (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel 4,500 dossiers, but have not received an answer on a single one of them," he told members of his ruling AK Party.

"When there is a terrorist, they can tell us to give that person back. You won"t send the ones you have to us, but can ask us for yours. So you have a judiciary, but we don"t in Turkey?" he said.

In Berlin, a German government source rejected Erdogan"s latest remarks.

"Everything has really been said about this," said the source.  

"Repeating the same accusations over and over again does not make them any more true."

Perhaps it is this constant tirade by Erdogan that prompted Turks to import the most gold ever in July... as insurance against the idiocy of politicians...

As Bloomberg reports, Turkey purchased 62,848 kilograms of gold from abroad in July, according to the Borsa Istanbul precious metals exchange, a 13-fold increase compared to the same period last year. That’s equivalent to about $2.5 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations using the average gold price in July. Year-to-date gold imports rose to 237 tons, a seven-fold increase over last year.