The credulity that the mainstream media display towards Turkey continues to astonish. One reads today in the New York Times of Turkey's "booming economy and a self-confidence expressed by the religiously conservative ruling elite," at a moment when a mass uprising betrays the weakness of the Turkish economy and the bumbling of the ruling elite. As I report in the essay below cross-posted from Asia Times Online, employment in Turkey's formal economy has shrunk by 5% in the past year (equivalent to the worst of the 2008 Great Recession in the US) and Turkish households are cutting spending under the weight of a crushing debt burden. Western reporters who turn up for a few days in Istanbul see a lot of construction activity, to be sure -- that's because Turkey's Islamists are spending like drunken sailors on Islamic vanity projects while the private sector is shrinking. Two things have gone terribly wrong for Tayyip Erdogan. The first is his commitment to the Syrian quagmire, and the second (and ultimately more important) is the collapse of his consumer credit bubble.
More than 1000 people have been injured in several days of protests in Istanbul and 11 other cities against Turkeys Islamist regime. The number of dead is not clear. There have been more than 90 demonstrations, making these the biggest anti-Islamist protests in a decade. Hundreds more were hurt in conflicts with police in Ankara, the capital. The demonstrations began as an environmental protest about the destruction of a famous Istanbul park but had spread to Ankara, too.
The movement began in Taksim Square, Istanbuls most famous. The police responded toughly using tear gas and pepper spray. Some compared this to the Arab Spring demonstrations elsewhere in the Middle East, though this idea seems exaggerated.
Gradually the Justice and Development Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been working to transform Turkey into something much closer to an Islamist state. Hundreds of political prisoners have been jailed on trumped-up charges of planned coups; the army has been forced to submit; a new constitution is being developed; and the independent judiciary is under assault by the government.
Much of the mass media has been bought up or intimidated. One must also take into account educational system changes, the declining status of women, and rising efforts to reduce the sale of alcohol. Turkey has more journalists in jail than any other country in the world.
#1
Well, Turkey decided it was time to enter the race to the bottom. 13th century here we come.
They figure to recreate and relive the Ottoman Dynasty circa 1299.
[Pak Daily Times] The use of anti-Ahmadi rhetoric by political parties raises a serious question: Is there anyone who will ever stand up for their rights?
"It's almost laughable. You first forcefully declare us a minority, then you promise to protect minority rights, and when you fail, you conveniently say sorry," an Ahmadi that I interviewed recently for my elections research laughed at the contradiction and hopelessness in Pakistain. Behind his laugh, I could sense the pain and fear that has engulfed the minorities, especially the Ahmadis, in Pakistain. While the cities and media is buzzing with the slogans of 'Roshan' (bright) and 'Naya' (new) Pakistain, Ahmadis have been ambushed by political parties in their struggle for electoral seats. Politicians have gone the distance to prove themselves good Musselmens, the criterion of which in Pakistain is to believe in One God and the Prophet (PTUI!), and to also consider Ahmadis as 'kafir' (infidel). Political compulsion it might be for most of them, but for Ahmadis it is a sad reality check of the diminishing space to breathe in society. "How will these politicians take a stand for anything when they can't take a principled stand for the weak in society," an Ahmadi showed his distaste for the recent fiasco between the Pakistain Tehrik-e-Insaaf (PTI) and Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) on the Ahmadi issue that got viral on the social media.
Ahmadis are scared that using their sect as a political tool for votes will lead the youth and the nation into hyper-radicalisation, and Ahmadis will become the natural target of frustration. "You know that the German Jews couldn't have predicted the coming of the Holocaust. It began with years of systematic social isolation, hatred, and conspiracies against them, and then Hitler came, and we saw what happened. I see Pakistain heading towards that for us." As unbelievable as this statement from one of the Ahmadis who participated in WWII on the side of the Allies appears, in the past few months, while the nation had been busy with elections, Ahmadis are being silently targeted, not only by religious Death Eaters, but by government itself in all the major cities, especially in Lahore under the interim setup of Chief Minister Najam Sethi. However, a hangover is the wrath of grapes... none of the atrocities are being reported as 'breaking news' on the mainstream media outlets.
"In the past two weeks our mosques have been raided by the police, our publication shops turned into a mess, and we have been barred and threatened by the police not to have any of our literature at our home, nor have any religious meetings in our centres." An Ahmadi in a position of authority who requested anonymity explained in frustration: "They have even told us that they have the list of all addresses of Ahmadis, and they will raid houses to confiscate any literature," which gave a glimpse of the Nazi-era style of discrimination against the Jews. "We are being systematically forced to leave this country, this land. More than Ahmadi, I'm a Punjabi and my family has lived on this land for centuries, and today I don't have an option but to leave." Tears rolled out of this old man, whose father was a wealthy businessman at the time of partition and sold all his possessions to give funds to the Pakistain Musselmen League. Today, he is being forced out of the land of his forefathers.
The discrimination does not stop here, as another tragic event took place a week before the elections in Gulshan-e-Ravi, Lahore, where the police raided an Ahmadi centre and tossed in the calaboose Drop the gat, Rocky, or you're a dead 'un! the people who were offering their prayers. On top of charging them under the Hudood law of 'imitating Musselmen practices', the men arrested were also accused of conspiring against the state and for terrorism. The arrested persons included an 83-year-old man, and a few minors. During the court proceedings, the High Court dismissed the case, calling it a politically motivated attempt by people in the area, but in a matter of hours, after severe pressure from right wingers, the judge refused to give bail to the detainees. According to the lawyer who is defending the Ahmadis, "No judge is willing to take a stand for Ahmadis against these right wing mullahs," who threaten the judges and get their way. One is forced to ask this simple question: on whose authority is all this being done, and why is the government so hopeless against these right wingers? Is it also equally involved?
I asked an Ahmadi for his opinion on this question to which he responded, "We are political suicide for any politician in Pakistain. Even a dictator like Musharraf who genuinely felt the pain for us, and during whose tenure, in spite of whatever was happening in Pakistain, minorities were protected and discriminated against less, could not reverse the constitutional discrimination against us. He had to bow down to the religious fanatics at last, the same way Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto gave in back in the 1970s."
When it comes to Ahmadis it is not just the illiterate class that hates and discriminates the community, even the educated and the affluent have little sympathy. While these elections might prove to be a positive tide for Pakistain, the use of anti-Ahmadi rhetoric by political parties raises a serious question, and a concern for millions of Ahmadis who live in Pakistain.
Is there anyone who will ever stand up for their rights?
Not in Pakistan, no. It's too much fun to treat them as non-Muslims, and too dangerous not to. Only in America are the Ahmadis seen as Muslim as anyone else.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/03/2013 00:00 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
