Article Scan – January 12th: Turkey’s Leaders May Be Losing Their Tight Grip on Media
In Scandal, Turkey’s Leaders May Be Losing Their Tight Grip on News Media
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, whose government is being investigated amid allegations of corruption.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has labeled an investigative reporter who has published a number of leaked documents related to a widening corruption scandal a traitor. Mr. Erdogan’s lawyers have also filed suit against a newspaper columnist, once a reliable supporter of the prime minister, for his critical Twitter messages.
As the government has sought to purge the police force of officers involved in the corruption investigation, it has also gone after the news media, barring reporters from police departments and some critical journalists from traveling overseas with Mr. Erdogan. Yet none of these heavy-handed tactics has stanched the flow of leaks, including the publication, in some newspapers and on Twitter, of a document that was said to be a summons for Mr. Erdogan’s son to appear for questioning, and reports on the discovery of $4.5 million in cash stuffed in shoe boxes at the home of a director of a state bank.
Erdoğan’s system signals implosion (by Murat Yetkin)
On Jan. 10, when Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) government submitted a draft to Parliament to take more control over the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), the acting chairman of the board, Ahmet Hamsici, issued a very strong, 66 page-long statement against the move. In the statement, Hamsici said the draft aimed to politicize the board and turn it into a department of the executive branch.
There were a few interesting points about this almost rebellious act.
Firstly, the chairman of the board is Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ.
Secondly, Bozdağ had banned the HSYK from issuing statements, after the one made on Dec. 24 in which the board criticized a government decree for being “unconstitutional.” The Dec. 21 decree had stated that prosecutors should inform the administration before starting a probe.
Don’t forget! The real agenda is corruption, theft
This is how things happen in Turkey all the time. Whenever a huge scandal that would remain on the agenda for many years erupts, attempts are made to divert attention from that scandal or to cover it up with something else that is presented as if it is a huge issue.
Unusual methods are being used in an attempt to see that serious crimes like corruption, tender rigging, bribery and graft are forgotten and some interesting lies and arguments are being used to change perceptions. What needs to be done to avoid all the disinformation attempts of Oriental cunning and all sorts of religious or secular lies and hoaxes and slander is clear: Take a deep breath and recall what we have really been discussing since the beginning.
So, let us recall: The core matter is neither a power struggle between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and the Hizmet movement or a so-called imaginary “parallel state,” claim propagated in reference to the natural presence of sympathizers of the Hizmet movement in the public sector. Despite all attempts at diversion and distraction, what we should always keep in mind in our discussions is the charges of corruption, graft and unfair revenues. What we should also keep in mind is the government’s attempts to block or undermine the investigations initiated to examine such grave accusations..
Turkey’s economic success threatened by political instability (by Constanze Letsch)
Turkey’s strong economic growth over the past decade, bringing relative prosperity to previously neglected parts of the country, has underpinned the popularity of the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his mildly Islamist Justice and Development party (AKP).
But the danger of a worsening economy is compounding the instability, essentially political, that has seized the country in the past year, generating the biggest crisis of Erdoğan’s 11 years in power – just before local and national elections this year and next.
The crisis threatens the economic gains made by the Erdoğan government: since his AK party came to power in 2002 Turkey’s staggering annual inflation rate of up to 100% has been brought down to single digits, while GDP has risen by more than 45% in real terms.
The tamed inflation and the accompanying economic stability brought the long neglected country to the attention of international investors and global finance, winning Turkey its first investment-grade credit ratings in two decades.
Backed by conservative and highly entrepreneurial businessmen sometimes called the “Anatolian Tigers”, the AKP won three elections on a ticket of continuous growth and a promise of increasing prosperity for Turks, as well as an appetite for an open market economy and globalised business, leading to a decade of growth with annual rates of more than 4%.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/turkey-instability-threatens-economic-success-erdogan
