“Hvem var det, der vandt i dag, det var dem fra IS af!” skrev en god ven på Facebook. Erdogan tænkte måske det samme, i hvert fald udtalte han at det sørgelig forsøg på et kup var “en gave fra Allah”. Nogen konspirationsspekulerer i at det var en gave fra ham selv, som han har fået det til at handle om mere end nogle utilfredse officerer, der stod til at blive udrenset, med fyringen af 2700 dommere. Uanset hvad, skal nogle nok betale prisen, måske i form af likvideringer. Andre spekulerer i at Erdogans regime er blevet svækket grundet det ydmygende i hele miseren.

David P Goldman tegner i Asia Times et andet og mere dystert billede af Tyrkiets situation end den

Turkey faces a perfect storm of economic, political and foreign policy problems.

First, Turkey’s much-heralded economic growth spurt of the 2000’s has come to a grinding stop. The Erdogan boom, which inspired predictions that Turkey might emerge as another China, resembled the Asian experience less than it did the Latin American credidt bubbles of the 1980s or the American subprime bubble of the 2000s.

(…)

Secondly, Turkey’s internal cohesion is at risk due to the rapid increase of its Kurdish-speaking minority and the relative decline of the ethnic Turkish population.

The Kurdish demographic problem has led Erdogan into a political swamp from which he may not emerge. He won last year’s presidential election by stirring up national ardor against the Kurdish minority, and has kept the Kurdish southeast of the country in a low-level civil war since then. The leader of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party warned last March that Erdogan had brought Turkey to the brink of an ethnic war.

To prevent the Syrian Kurds from controlling the northern border of their country and linking up with their Iraqi compatriots, Erdogan covertly supported Sunni terrorists, including ISIS, as Michael Rubin explained last March in Newsweek. Erdogan’s back channel to ISIS blew up in Turkey’s face–literally–when ISIS suicide bombers killed 42 people and injured hundreds at the Istanbul Airport June 29.

Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the foundation of the modern state, Turkey’s army acted as the guarantor of the country’s secular state. The Islamist Erdogan attempted to reverse that, jailing hundreds of military officers on a spurious charge of plotting  a coup in 2012. Most were released in 2014. Erdogan could not do without the military, however; his failed foreign policy made him dependent on the Turkish army, which reasserted its influence this year. Erdogan proudly called himself a “black Turk,” that is, a devout Muslim from the Anatolian hinterland, in contrast to the “White Turks,” the Europeanized secular party who came to power under Kemal Ataturk and ruled the country until the 2000s.

Jeg har ingen forhåbninger til Tyrkiet som den sekulære løgn Atatürk på imponerende kreerede. Det er bedre at se sine fjender, som det de er.

En muslim med dansk statsborgerskab iscenesætter sig selv om offer for diskriminatiopn for et villigt TV2, der ikke formår at stille et eneste relevant spørgsmål. “Folk tror at det her det er virkelig…badetøjet det handler om. For mig handler det mest om, at min søn ikke fik lov til at være sammen med sin mor i en fridag” siger stakkels Ulfat Al-Sitt og ikke et øje er tørt. Men ingen nægtede sharia-aktivisten samvær med sønnen da det var Ulfat selv, der insisterede selv på religiøst badetøj.

Mesterinstruktøren Steven Spielberg advarede i en tale til nogle graduenter mod den stigende antisemitisme. Den var reel, fortalte han, selv om han selv var opvokset med en ide om at den var for aftagende efter destruktionen af Nazityskland. Også hadet mod homosexuelle var en stigende trussel. Spielberg er fantastisk bag et kameral, men han er også en centrum-venstrefløjser og i næste åndedræt advarede han imod den stigende islamofobi.

En dansk ægtefælle til en jøde funderer i Information over det sørgelige i at holde vagt i skudsikker vest foran sine børns skole.

Min datter på syv år peger stolt på mig.

»Se, min far er vagt i dag,« siger hun til sin veninde fra 1. klasse og banker på skjoldet i min skudsikre vest.

»Hvorfor har du egentlig den på?« spørger hun og kigger op på mig.

Spørgsmålet er stillet nysgerrigt, neutralt – ikke med angst eller frygt. Hun er jo kun syv år.

Hvad skal jeg svare hende? Jeg vælger den praktiske vinkel og forklarer hende, at en skudsikker vest gør, at jeg ikke dør, hvis jeg bliver skudt.

»Men hvem skulle da skyde dig?«

Jeg når at konstatere antydningen af frygt i hendes øjne, inden jeg svarer hende, at hvis der nu skulle komme en bandit med en skyder, så er det jo meget rart at vide, at jeg ikke kommer til skade. Hun lader til at være tilfreds med den forklaring, eller også er det bare venindens insisteren på at lege, der lader mig slippe for at komme med yderligere forklaring.

(…)

Vi ved ikke, hvornår angrebet kommer, og vi ved heller ikke, hvilken slags angreb det vil være – varme eller kolde våben, som det hedder. Vi ved det ikke, men vi har forberedt os på det meste. Vi har fået undervisning og uddannelse og øvelser gennemført af professionelle sikkerhedsfolk.

Man kan ikke sætte ord på. Det er bare en bandit, som vi ikke ved hvor kommer fra og i hvilke mængder. Nærmere beskrivelse er svær, hvis ikke man vil geråde sig ud i islamofobi. Så hans afsluttende retoriske spørgsmål “Hvem bliver de næste, der skal leve i frygt? De homoseksuelle?” fortjener ikke den forlorne undren. Vi ved, hvem der bliver de næsten, alle der kan krybe og gå, også de homosexuelle, som blev udsat for en mindre massakre i den amerikanske by Orlando.

50 mennesker er indtil videre tallet af dræbte med over hundrede sårede. Gerningsmanden er “amerikaner med afghansk baggrund” dristede DR tekst-TV sig til at sige og så vidste man jo, hvad klokken var slået og straks blev der fra officielt hold i Florida rakt ud til det muslimske samfund, som jo altid er de sande ofre når ikke-muslimer slagtes, og Facebook lukkede Pamela Gellers FB-side ned for at knytte islams lære til islams praksis med tilfældet bøssemassakren i Orlando. Alligevel taler amerikaneren med muslimsk baggrund Barak Husein Obama ikke om islam; “no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer (…) ‘What is clear is that he was a person filled with hate”

‘The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live,’ Obama noted.

‘The place where they were attacked was more than a nightclub, it was a place of solidarity, of empowerment, where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds and to advocate for their civil rights,’ he continued.

Og så konstaterede han aT “The shooter was apparently armed with a handgun and a powerful assault rifle“, hvorfor det var et spørgsmål om øget våbenkontrol. At der netop døde så mange bøsser fordi ingen af dem var bevæbnet med bøsser så de kunne forsvare sig selv og hinanden i ægte ‘empoweret’ solidaritet, i stedet for blot at blive slagtet i hinandens arme.

Obama mødes dog gerne med homofober, så længe de er muslimer, skriver Breitbart

President Barack Obama choose to publicly meet with an Islamic preacher in February who said the Koran declares gay sex “a despised act, it is haram, it is forbidden in Islam, completely, absolutely.”

The meeting in Baltimore came shortly after Breitbart publicized the Islamic cleric’s orthodox denigration of gays, which was posted on YouTube. It also came after Breitbart asked Obama’s gay political allies to comment on the Islamic cleric’s statements.

“You are a transgressing people,” said the cleric Imam Yaseen Shaikh, who sat on Obama’s left at the meeting. He is the man at the right hand side of the photo above, wearing a white hat. He is a senior leader of the Islamic Society of Baltimore, which Obama choose for the first presidential visit to a mosque in February 2016.

En bøsse-aktivist på Sky News, der som Obama beskrev bøsseklubber, som “places of solidarity”, kunne se at det var et “deliberate attack on LGBT people“, men nægtede at forholde sig til, hvilken åndelighed, der lå bag denne bandit, eller med hans ord, “dreg of humanity”. “Scum” kaldte han ham “That’s all he is!”. “Any Dreg of humanity can pick up a gun a murder people”,men forsigtigt forholdt simple realiteter om bandittens muslimske tanke og tale (selv bandittens arbejdskollegaer kunne se han var en tikkende bombe, men frygten for islamofobi-beskyldninger afholdt dem fra at reagere korrekt), blev den selvretfærdige prædiken utilstrækkelig og han stormede ud af studiet

For en god ordens skyld, så slog en Orlando imam ellers fast at døden kun er hvad bøsser fortjener.

I hvilken som helst by med eller uden en massakre kan man finde en imam der roligt har forklaret logikken bagved. Denne forklarer hvori islamisk barmhjertighed består, nemlig som en nedjustering af opskruede grusomheder. Daily Mail fortæller at en tyrkisk avis kalder ofrene ‘perverse’. Daily Mail anstrenger sig samtidig for at kalde den tyrkiske avis ”right wing” uden helt at fortælle om den er fortaler for minimalstat eller bare alment islamofobisk.

Newt Gingrich taler dog sober om sammenhængen mellem islam og vold mod først og fremmest minoriteter.

Selv som teenager købte jeg ikke postulatet om EF, siden EU, som fredens garant i Europa. Jeg forstod, selv med mit ringe kendskab til den store verden, at politikerne optrådte som kvaksalere, betlende slangeolie mod alle dårligdomme. Både Den Kolde Krig og den stille observation at demokratier ikke havde præcedens for at gå i flæsket på hinanden var indlysende argumenter for mit unge sind, som blæste ideen om en unions fortræffeligheder og et par handelsaftalers mirakelvirkning væk. Jeg har aldrig fået en EF/EU tilhænger til at forklare præcis hvad det er for en krig, som EU har forhindret. Kul- og Stål unionen skulle hindre endnu en tysk-fransk konflikt og da den var en fransk opfindelse måtte man mene at det var tyskerne man burde stoppe. Så hvem var den næste Hitler? Adenauer? Erhard? Kiesinger? Brandt? Smith? Kohl? Hvilke af disse gale hunde blev holdt i skak af Unionen?

Så indlysende var den indsigt for mig at den er blevet siddende så fast i alle årene at jeg end ikke gad overveje at læse Kasper Støvrings sikkert glimrende bog Fortællingen om Fredens Europa - Georg Metz kunne ikke lide den, så den må være ret god - fordi det er anstrengende at blive bekræftet i egne forestillinger. Og påstanden om EUs fredskabende egenskaber er da også på retræte, måske især efter EU hovent paraderede sin impotens overfor Rusland, mens det æggede Ukraine. Og så var der jo Jugoslavien i 90′erne. Men herhjemme er ikke i England, der står overfor at skulle bestemme sig om de overhovedet vil være medlem af, hvad der i stigende grad ligner en taberklub. Og med en mistillidserklæring fra vælgerne truende i horisonten, bliver systemets mænd endnu mere stålsatte på at benytte de metoder der ikke virker, blot mere intenst. I dette tilfælde argumentet om EU som fredens projekt, hvor premierminister David Cameron direkte advarede om at et Brexit ville kaste Europa ud i krig.

I Guardian kaldte Simon Jenkins Camerons historieskrivning for “rubbish” og “Project Fear gone mad” og mindede om Camerons forgænger Salisbury, der navngav sin politik “splendid isolation”

The best thing that happened to medieval England was its defeat in the hundred years war and the end of English ambitions on the continent of Europe. The best thing to happen in the 16th century was Henry VIII’s rejection of the pan-European papacy. The wisest policy of his daughter, Elizabeth I, was an isolationism so rigid that she rejected one continental suitor after another. Britain fought off all attempts by France and Spain to restore European Catholicism, and accepted a Dutch and a German monarch strictly on the basis of British parliamentary sovereignty.

Cameron’s 18th-century predecessor was Robert Walpole, author of Walpole’s Peace. Its meticulous isolation from Europe’s conflicts brought Britain a golden age of enlightenment and industrial revolution. In 1734, Walpole could proudly tell the Queen: “Madam there are 50,000 men slain this year in Europe, and not one an Englishman.”

Even William Pitt’s creation of a British empire was based on staying explicitly aloof from the seven years’ war on the continent of Europe. Later, while Horatio Nelson’s victories were essential to British interests, the Waterloo campaign could hardly, on David Cameron’s terms, have been avoided by earlier intervention. Nor did Napoleon Bonaparte pose a serious threat to Britain.

I Telegraph mindede Nigel Jones ligeledes om en af Camerons konservative forgængere, nemlig Pitt the Younger, der som argument for at stå imod Napoleons tyranni sagde at det var englands rolle at “Save Europe by her example”. Og et Brexit kunne meget vel være et eksempel med en domino-effekt indikerer meningsmålinger. Som kontrast beskrev han Camerons horistont med Goebbels diktum om at folk vil tro en løgn, blot den er stor nok. For mens EUs grundlæggere “distrusted democracy, which they believed had brought dictators and demagogues to power, and determined that their project would create a post-democratic new order, imposed by stealth step by step on their blissfully ignorant populations” peger Jones på at unioner ser ud til at kollapse, nogengange endda i et kaos af krig.

The history of EU-style multinational federations imposed by an elite from above in Europe is not a happy one. From the frayed patchworks of the  Holy Roman and Hapsburg Austrian Empires, down to the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, they have invariably ended in bloody chaos, and then the peace and quiet of the graveyard.

Not for nothing did a bemused Mikhail Gorbachev – and as the man who presided over the dissolution of Russia’s “evil empire” he should surely know – say that the most puzzling development in Europe over the past decade was the determination of the EU’s leaders to reconstruct the Soviet Union, a failed state if there ever was one, on the soil of western Europe.

Gorbachev was speaking before the long arm of EU meddling reached as far as Ukraine, causing that vast country to split in two and threaten  war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia – a slow-burn crisis that may yet erupt once more into open conflict.

Back in the 1990s, the total failure of EU diplomacy helped speed former Yugoslavia into a brutal ethnic civil war. A fragile peace was finally imposed on those troubled lands not by the EU, but by Nato bombs and arm twisting backed by the Atlantic alliance’s  military muscle.

Og Oberst Richard Kemp var Telegraph endnu mere konkret i hvorledes EU ville underminere freden

A German defence white paper, leaked last week but supposed to be kept under wraps until after the referendum, leaves no doubt of Germany’s intention to drive through the merger of Europe’s armed forces “and embark on permanent cooperation under common structures”. Germany has begun to combine substantial elements of the Dutch forces with their own.

A centralised army is an indispensable component of the superstate to which the EU is openly committed. It would also provide an excuse for struggling economies to slash defence budgets. Few nations take defence seriously enough to spend even the 2 per cent of GDP required by Nato, a shortcoming criticised by President Obama in Germany last month. An EU army will see these nations cut back even further, cynically pretending that defences are strengthened even as forces and capabilities are merged and downsized.

(…)

As well as depleted strength and capability, the aggregated European forces will beemasculated by a lack of political will. After Iraq and Afghanistan the West is paralysed, with governments terrified of committing ground forces to any conflict. An EU command structure, fraught with divergent and opposing policy agendas, will turn paralysis into rigor mortis. Look at the EU’s long track record of vacillation, timidity and inaction on the Balkans, Ukraine, Syria, Libya, the immigration crisis and the Islamic State.

None of our enemies is going to take an EU army seriously. Its creation would undermine one of the most critical virtues of a strong and credible defence: deterring an aggressor from action they might be forced to regret.

Og i Breitbart perspektiverede samme Kemp

The EU failed to prevent the migration crisis that threatens to overwhelm many European cities and the housing, welfare, health, and education services paid for by the hard work of citizens who have been allowed no say.

The EU failed to deploy effective naval forces along the North African coast to prevent illegal immigration across the Mediterranean. Such action, used to great effect by Australia, would not only have prevented the landing of countless unregulated immigrants on our shores but would also have saved thousands of lives and sent a firm message to both immigrants and traffickers.

It was self-doubt and a desire to expunge the sins of the past rather than strong and principled leadership that led Europe’s most powerful politician unilaterally to invite in migrants from the corners of the earth, to transform German cities and to assault and rape German girls. A policy that opened the doors of Europe to hundreds of thousands of economic migrants, including many young men of fighting age who abandoned their families and their countries; and closed the doors to genuine refugees.

Timorous EU countries failed to take military action against Assad’s regime in Syria when he crossed the chemical weapons ‘red line’. Action that could have ended his reign of terror and prevented the intervention of Russia and Iran that has solidified his position and exacerbated the migrant crisis.

Fearful EU members failed even to contemplate setting up protected safe havens in Syria, where millions of beleaguered people could have taken refuge without the need to move to other countries. This would have required boots on the ground but, terrified by experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, few if any EU states are prepared to countenance that. Physical danger was not their only fear; they were also afraid to act without United Nations authorization, which would have been vetoed by Russia.

Now, bullied and blackmailed by President Erdogan, the EU is now allowing visa free access to Europe for 70 million Turks and is well on the way to admitting Turkey to full EU membership. Not only will this push back the borders of the EU to Iran, Iraq and Syria, but it will also lead to yet another massive population shift in Europe, without consultation further transforming the way of life of its citizens.

This is the peace and security provided by the EU today.

EU som fredens projekt er en løgn ingen længere gider høre. Kun de mest desperate gider fortsat fortælle den. England forlader EU, EU falder fra hinanden - med lidt held.

“The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions.” skriver Seumas Milne for Guardian og konkluderer at stormagterne ikke kan nedkæmpe “Isis and its monstrosities” fordi det er “the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since”. Og han leverer et glimrende eksempel på de vestlige lederes fortvivlede ragen rundt i det muslimske ælte

On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition. That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much.

At sende de små fisk i fængsel for den linje politikerne selv har lagt kender vi godt herhjemme. Men Milnes observationer er glimrende, de vestlige ledere ved ikke hvem, der er ven eller fjende og jo mere de engagerer os i de muslimske morrads jo mere selvmodsigende og kontraproduktivt bliver det. Men jeg citerer ikke fra Guardians selvretfærdige klummeisters paranoia uden at komme med en bemærkning. Halvdelen af de 14 års krig mod terror, som Bush startede er blevet ført af Barak Hussein Obama, men han nævnes ikke med et ord. I stedet bruges variationer af ‘amerikanerne’. Og det til trods for at hvor Bush måske kunne være naiv i hvad USA kunne opnå af mirakler i barberernes verden, så agerer Obama på baggrund af allerede opnåede erfaringer. Det er ikke blot denne “rat line” af våben fra Libyen til Syrien, der er sket på Obamas vagt

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”. Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria. That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

Jack Kerwick konstaterer på Frontpage Magazine at på “Barack Hussein Obama’s watch, Islamic militancy has only increased in scope and intensity”. Daily Mail skriver at Tyrkiet er på randen af en borgerkrig efter voldsomme gadekampe er brudt ud mellem politi, PKK-aktivister og venstrefløjsgrupper. Men ikke nok med det, så er NATO-landet og EU-aspiranten også på vej ind i en direkte krig imod ISIS. Uzay Bulut skriver på Gatestone Institute

Turkey is evidently unsettled by the rapprochement the PKK seems to be establishing with the U.S. and Europe. Possibly alarmed by the PKK’s victories against ISIS, as well as its strengthening international standing, Ankara, in addition to targeting ISIS positions in Syria, has been bombing the PKK positions in the Qandil mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, where the PKK headquarters are located. As expected, many Turkish media outlets were more enthusiastic about the Turkish air force’s bombing the Kurdish militia than about bombing ISIS. “The camps of the PKK,” they excitedly reported, “have been covered with fire.” It appears as if Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is using ISIS as a pretext to attack the PKK. Ankara just announced that its air base at Incirlik will soon be open to coalition forces, presumably to fight ISIS, but the moment Turkey started bombing, it targeted Kurdish positions. Those attacks not only open a new era of death and destruction, but also bring an end to all possibilities of resolving Turkey’s Kurdish issue non-violently. (…) Sadly, Turkey has preferred not to form a “Turkish-Kurdish alliance” to destroy ISIS. First, Turkey has opened its borders to ISIS, enabling the growth of the terrorist group. And now, at the first opportunity, it is bombing the Kurds again. According to this strategy, “peace” will be possible only when Kurds submit to Turkish supremacism and abandon their goal of being an equal nation. In the meantime, Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkish minister of foreign affairs, said that the Incirlik air base in Turkey has not yet been opened for use by the U.S. and other coalition forces, but that it will be opened in the upcoming period.

Så Bush udløste kaoset, Obama enablede ISIS, mens folk som Uffe Ellemann Jensen presser på for at få Tyrkiet med i EU. Man siges at have de ledere man har fortjent. Hvad har vi dog gjort?

Den svenske udenrigsminister kom til at fornærme muslimerne, da hun kritiserede Saudiarabiens barbariske skikke. Som et forsøg på at forklare sig sondrede hun bizart mellem sharia og islam. Sverige undskyldte til sidst deres forsvar for banale menneskerettigheder.

Venstrefløjens forståelse af frigjorthed og almenmenneskelige værdier strider imod islam. Det vil de ikke indrømme og har flittigt brugt islam og muslimer som rambuk i deres forbitrede hævntogt på kristne og konservative nationale dyder og vædier, der er stedfortræder for de forældre der gav dem ikke blot alt, men måske mere end de kunne bære. Og så langt de er lykkedes med deres ødelæggelse af deres ophav så langt sidder de nu mere og mere alene tilbage med islam og muslimerne. Efterhånden har de ikke den gamle nation som mellemlæg at skyde på, men står nu selv overfor islam og muslimerne. Nu mærker de efterhånden omend ufrivilligt de kulturelle brudzoner.

I “Foråret 2013 kørte Center for Voldtægtsofre” kampagnen “At klæde sig sexet er ikke kriminelt“. Nu vil Københavns Kommune også markere sig ifølge Jyllands-Posten

Sæsonen for sol og masser af bar hud er åbnet, og det falder sammen med Københavns Kommunes anti-voldtægtskampagne.

Som blikfang i bybilledet på busser og plakater er netop en nedringet pige, der ledsages af teksten: »At klæde sig sexet er ikke kriminelt – voldtægt er!«

»Det er desværre en nødvendig kampagne, for der er stadig behov for at fastslå, at man har ret til at sige nej til sex uanset hvad. Selv om man optræder i en nedringet bluse eller kommer til at drikke sig lidt for fuld, er det ikke ensbetydende med, at man på forhånd har sagt ja til sex,« siger sundhedsborgmester Ninna Thomsen (SF) om baggrunden for kampagnen.

Skønt det er kampagner, der kun skal stive de kampagnerendes skinhellige selvforståelse af, er det en kampagne, der retter sig direkte imod islam (og vel også mod Uffe Ellemanns tilsvarende  bebrejd-offeret logik). For et par år siden kunne man som nogen nok husker høre hvorledes muslimske piger i Vollsmose følte sig sikret imod chikane, fordi de “bar uniformen“. Ingen kan være i tvivl om, hvad tørklædet og den videre formummelse betyder selv om venstrefløjen benægter hårdnakket, også for sig sig selv.

Tyrkiets præsident Recep Tayyib Erdogan har udover at advare Paven mod at tale for meget om det armenske folkemord, raset imod Københavns beslutning om til maj i nogle dage at opstille denne skulptur til minde om osmannernes folkemord (i medierne omtalt folkedrab) på armenierne

“Ingen husker armenierne” skal Hitler have sagt, som et carte Blanche for at løse ‘jødeproblemet’ med industrielt massemord. Det gør flere og flere folk dog idag, selv om man stadig er i tvivl på TV2. Men ikke mange husker dog at også grækere var ofre for de osmanniske muslimers folkemord. Direkte løftet fra Neos Kosmos

Pontian and Anatolian Greeks were victims of a broader Turkish genocidal project aimed at all Christian minorities in the Ottoman Empire. A total of more than 3.5 million Greeks, Armenians, and Assyrians were killed under the successive regimes of the Young Turks and of Mustafa Kemal from roughly 1914 to 1923. Of this, as many as 1.5 million Greeks may have died. The end of the genocide marked a profound rupture in the long Greek historical presence on the Asia Minor.

Greek communities began inhabiting Anatolia (Greek for “east”), otherwise referred to as the Asia Minor, since the 12th century BCE. They centered mostly along the Aegean littoral, although some Greeks, known as Pontians, went further east and colonized the southern shores of the Black Sea. Turkic peoples migrated into Anatolia over the first millennium CE and by the 14th century had established the Ottoman Empire. Over the next six hundred years, the Empire organized its ethnically diverse population into the millet system, thereby ensuring cultural and religious pluralism.

Under this system, the Ottoman Greeks, like other Christian communities in the Empire, were provided with a degree of autonomy. The geographic extent and political power of the Ottoman Empire began to decline over the 19th century as subjected peoples, especially the Greeks, began exerting their own nationalist aspirations. With the support of the Great Powers, the Greeks successfully overthrew Ottoman rule during their War of Independence from 1821 to 1830, thereby establishing the modern Greek state as it is currently situated at the tip of the Balkan Peninsula. However, the over two and a half million ethnic Greeks still living in Anatolia, separated from their Balkan compatriots, suffered the scorn of an increasingly vitriolic Turkish nationalism tainted by a bitter sense of humiliation.

The Young Turk movement emerged from this context, eventually aiming to turn the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire into a homogenous Turkish nation state. Under the banner of the Committee for the Union of Progress (CUP), this ethnic nationalist movement assumed power after a coup d’etat in 1913.

This political revolution occurred in the midst of the Balkan Wars from October 1912 to July 1913, which ultimately ended five centuries of Ottoman rule in the Balkans. Afterwards, there was a brief diplomatic effort between the Greeks and the CUP to arrange a population exchange.

However, the outbreak of World War I stunted this effort, and instead the CUP took its own radical initiatives. They began singling out all able-bodied Greek men, forcibly conscripting them into labor battalions which performed slave labor for the Turkish war effort. Greek children were stolen and forcibly assimilated into Turkish society. Greek villages were brutally plundered and terrorized under the pretext of internal security. Indeed, as with the Armenians, the Greeks were generally accused as a disloyal and traitorous “fifth-column,” and eventually most of the population was rounded up and forcibly deported to the interior.

This modus operandi was more or less the same for all three Christian victim groups. Again with support of the Great Powers, Greece invaded part of Anatolia immediately after the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I. Centered around the Aegean port city of Smyrna (now known by its Turkish name, Izmir), Greek occupation forces brutally subjected local Turks, thereby further stoking interethnic conflagrations.

At the same time, Mustafa Kemal Pasha was leading a Turkish resurgence, eventually dispelling the Greek military from Anatolia. Turkish forces retook Smyrna in September 1922, instigating a massive anti-Greek pogrom. On September 13, a fire broke out amidst the chaos, spreading uncontrollably over the next two weeks. The Smyrna catastrophe took the lives of somewhere between 10,000 to 15,000 Greeks.

Two months later, diplomatic negotiations between the Kemalist regime and the Great Powers began in Switzerland, leading to the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in February 1923. The sovereign status of a Turkish nation state was thereby affirmed, and the Great Powers essentially condoned the Turkish genocidal project.

The demographic consequences of the Greek genocide are not objectively certain. The prewar population of Greeks was at least 2.5 million. Over the course of 1914 to 1923, about one million had migrated, some voluntarily but most under coercion. As many as 1.5 million Greeks died, either from massacre or exposure, although this figure is not positive. Presently, a miniscule Greek population remains in Turkey. Greek communities annually commemorate the genocide on September 14 in recognition of the Smyrna catastrophe.

Source: Centre for the study of Genocide, Conflict Resolution, and Human Rights, Rutgers University

Osmannernes folkemord på armenierne og grækerne var muslimers folkemord kristne.

Jyllands-Posten skriver at den tyrkiske udenrigsminister Mevlüt Cavusoglu rejste hjem fra den internationale sikkerhedskonference i München i protest over tilstedeværelsen af en israelsk delegation. Forklaringen på denne besynderlige opførsel begrundes i…

…en diplomatisk konflikt i 2010, da israelske soldater dræbte ni tyrkere, som var med på en tyrkiskledet humanitær hjælpemission til Gazastriben.

Denne “humanitære hjælpemission” var arrangeret af organisationen IHH, der sidste år blev genstand for en razzia af det tyrkiske politi, mistænkt for forbindelser til al-Qaeda. IHH er erklæret en terrororganisation i Tyskland og Holland. 87 amerikanske senatorer fra begge partier har opfordret Obama til at gøre det samme. IHH er medlem af Union of Good, der er skabt af Hamas med henblik på at generere indtægter. Det amerikanske skatteministerium betegner Union of Good som en terrorbevægelse.

Videooptagelser fra opbringningen af Mavi Marmara, det JP betegner som “en tyrkiskledet humanitær hjælpemission til Gazastriben”, kan ses her. Bemærk knivstikkene og jernstængerne, og hør jeres humanitære hjælpearbejdere sige “go back to Auschwitz” til de israelske flådefolk:

Så inde, bag kampesten, hegn, sikkerhedssluse og PET-beskyttelse i millionklassen sidder Jyllands-Postens journalister bevidstløst og blåstempler folk der med største glæde ville file deres hoveder af med en sløv kartoffelkniv som “humanitære” hjælpearbejdere.

Hanson skrev forleden i National Review at den amerikanske vensfløj (liberalism) lå i ideologiske ruiner. “Barack Obama has accomplished, in the fashion of British prime minister Stanley Baldwin in the Twenties and Thirties, will be to avoid minor confrontations on his watch — if he is lucky — while ensuring catastrophic ones for his successors.” konkluderede han og pegede på de 11 mio. illegale indvandrere, som, hvis det står til Obama, skal have amerikansk pas. Hanson minder ikke blot om at prisen først og fremmest betales af den amerikanske middelklasse og de nye jobsøgende, men at de iblandt de illegale, hvis tilstedeværelse i USA i første omgang er gjort mulig at de har brudt amerikansk lov findes en stor minoritet, der ikke deltager aktivt eller lovlydigt i det amerikanske samfund.

Henover den sekulære dyrkelse af klimaet “that filled a deep psychological longing for some sort of transcendent meaning” til Obamas opdyrkelse af racestridigheder fra Trayvon Martin til Michael Brown, godt assisteret af mediernes memer

After the disastrous Obama tenure, the U.S. will either return to the melting pot and the idea that race and tribe are incidental, not essential, to our characters, or it will eventually go the way of all dysfunctional societies for which that was not true — Austria-Hungary, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq.

Og Hanson ender med følgende skudsmål

Obama will go down in history as presiding over the most corrupt administration of the last half-century, when historians finally collate the IRS, VA, GSA, and Secret Service scandals; the erosion of constitutional jurisprudence; the serial untruths about Benghazi, amnesty, and Obamacare; the harassment of journalists; the record shakedown of Wall Street lucre in 2008 and 2012; and the flood of lobbyists into and out of the Obama administration. Eric Holder – with his jet-setting to sporting events on the public dime, spouting inflammatory racialist rhetoric, politicizing the Justice Department, selectively enforcing settled law, and being held in contempt of Congress for withholding subpoenaed documents — managed what one might have thought impossible: He has made Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell seem a minor rogue in comparison.

Men det er udenrigspolitikken der har lidt værst, midt i en periode med stigende udfordringer. Hanson skriv i går ligeledes i National Review at der er paralleller

We are entering a similarly dangerous interlude. Collapsing oil prices — a good thing for most of the world — will make troublemakers like oil-exporting Iran and Russia take even more risks.

Terrorist groups such as the Islamic State feel that conventional military power has no effect on their agendas. The West is seen as a tired culture of Black Friday shoppers and maxed-out credit-card holders.

NATO is underfunded and without strong American leadership. It can only hope that Vladimir Putin does not invade a NATO country such as Estonia, rather than prepare for the likelihood that he will, and soon.

The United States has slashed its defense budget to historic lows. It sends the message abroad that friendship with America brings few rewards while hostility toward the U.S. has even fewer consequences.

The bedrock American relationships with staunch allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and Israel are fading. Instead, we court new belligerents that don’t like the United States, such as Turkey and Iran.

Og

Under such conditions, history’s wars usually start when some opportunistic — but often relatively weaker — power does something unwise on the gamble that the perceived benefits outweigh the risks. That belligerence is only prevented when more powerful countries collectively make it clear to the aggressor that it would be suicidal to start a war that would end in the aggressor’s sure defeat.

What is scary in these unstable times is that a powerful United States either thinks that it is weak or believes that its past oversight of the postwar order was either wrong or too costly — or that after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, America is no longer a force for positive change.

A large war is looming, one that will be far more costly than the preventive vigilance that might have stopped it.

“Vi vælger at rejse til Månen” proklamerede Kennedy på Rice University i 1962, “Ikke fordi det er let, men fordi det er svært!”.

[B]ecause that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win

For Kennedy æraen handlede det om at presse sig selv mod nye mål. “Yes we can” derimod sigter til det vi allerede kan. Det fornægter på sin vis ‘american exeptionalism’ i stedet for den teoretiske akademikers drøm om at kunne omdefinere verden væk fra dens iboende problemer. “Yes we can” siger ikke meget andet end at man vil gøre, hvad der er let, frem for, hvad der er rigtigt.

Man ser døde børn på TV og masser af kaos på hospitalerne, der er fyldt med ophidsede mænd uden nogen funktion andet end at gå i vejen og stresse de ansatte. Men man ser aldrig Hamas krigere.

Og i National Review skriver Jonah Goldberg at Hamas truer journalister til ikke at skrive når de observerer skoler og sygehuse blive brugt som affyringsramper.

Now, I understand why Gaza doesn’t want journalists reporting the truth — that Hamas is using innocent Palestinians as human shields and bloody props. But the fabrication charge is something different. If it’s not true, then the reporters are helping Hamas by giving the IDF bad intel. In a normal war, it’s helpful when the enemy thinks you are firing from someplace you’re not. Of course, this isn’t a normal war. It’s mass terror-theater and millions of useful idiots are falling for it.

Israel has reportedly discovered at least 30 tunnels, and has destroyed several of them by employing bulldozers. IDF excavation of the tunnels has resulted in the seizure of tons of Hamas supplies, as well as the discovery of plans for future operations. Clearly, the network of tunnels — using hundreds of tons of concrete that might otherwise have been used by the Palestinians for building homes, shopping malls, parks, schools, hospitals and libraries — indicates that Hamas had been preparing for an ongoing conflict for at least a year. According to the reports, each tunnel has arteries, veins, offshoots, and offshoots of the offshoots in intricate and complex arrangements. As one Israeli spokesman said, “There are two Gazas, one above ground and one below ground: an underground terrorist city.”

Og så lægges der ikke så meget vægt på andre nyheder. Jeg tænker ikke så meget på det surrelle kalifat, som vel er årets nyskabelse, eller Assads tøndebombninger af civile, Ebola og Boka Haram epidemierne og den slags. Jeg tænker på nyheder om Gaza konflikten der ikke indeholder jøder, som at den ægyptiske hær også smadrer palæstinensiske tunneller, som Daily Star skriver

Egypt’s army said Sunday that it had destroyed 13 more tunnels connecting the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip, taking to 1,639 the overall number it has laid waste to.

Cairo has poured troops into the peninsula to counter a rising insurgency since the ouster of President Mohammad Morsi last year, and its security operation involves the destruction of these tunnels.

Hamas, which is the main power in Gaza, reportedly uses the tunnels to smuggle arms, food and money into the blockaded coastal enclave.

Israel has been waging a military offensive on Gaza since July 8 to halt rocket fire, and it launched a ground assault on July 17 aimed at destroying the network of tunnels.

Ved at have for mange nyheder om Ægyptens ageren overfor deres arabiske brødre fjerner man nemlig fokus på jødestaten Israel, som man også minder om at Gaza ikke er omgivet af Israel alene. Og man taler heller så meget om det kontroversielle i at NATO landet og EU aspiranten er en del af Hamas modus operandi ved at fabrikere flere civile ofre som The Global Muslim Brotherhood Watch skriver

CNN Turkey is reporting in Turkish that the Istanbul-based Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) is recruiting “human shields” to serve in the  Gaza conflict and that 73 people including 38 women have already registered.

A report report authored by the GMBDW editor looked at the role of IHH as the lead organization for the June 2010 Gaza Flotilla that was involved in a violent altercation with Israeli naval forces.

Forleden skrev jeg om at Hamas mistede venner i den arabiske verden og henviste til Memri artikler, hvor saudiske og ægyptiske kommentarorer og ægyptiske politikere og TV værter tager afstand fra Hamas og ønsker det hen hvor peberet gror. Igår henviste jeg til tyrkiske trusler mod jøder fra Erdogan, medier og en NGO  elsket af vestens venstrefløj. Clarion Project skriver at Hamas sponsoreres af Tyrkiet

Turkey, despite officially being a U.S. ally and member of NATO, deserves blame for the latest missile attacks and kidnappings carried by Hamas.  The Erdogan government is sponsoring Hamas, inciting extremist fervor and is even harboring the terrorist leader that oversees kidnappings in the West Bank.

The latest missile attacks by Hamas were preceded by the kidnapping and execution of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank by Hamas operatives. The Hamas leader urging kidnappings of Israelis in the West Bank is named Saleh al-Arouri, and he operates from Turkey.

The kidnappings were preceded by a concerted effort by al-Arouri to fund and plan such operations. He may or may not have masterminded this specific attack, but it was the fruition of his orders. Hamas officially denies involvement, but Israel has identified the kidnappers as Hamas terrorists that were previously arrested and released.

Israeli intelligence has reportedly concluded that Turkey has been the top financial sponsor of Hamas since 2012, with Erdogan arranging for the transfer of $250 million to the terrorist group annually. Another report puts the figure at $300 million. The funding comes from private sources he is close to and not from the official budget. Turkey is also said to have trained Hamas security forces in Gaza through non-governmental groups.

The report said that Turkey coordinates the fundraising with Qatar, another supposed U.S. ally. Members of Congress have asked Qatar to stop financing Hamas. Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, lives in Qatar and even gave an extremist sermon at its Grand Mosque. The U.S. blocked a $400 million aid package from Qatar to pay 44,000 employees of the Hamas government in Gaza.

Avi Issacharoff skriver for Times of Israel at Israel er fanget i en proxy krig i en sunnimuslimsk brudzone

Make no mistake, Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel. But Hamas is firing rockets at Tel Aviv and sending terrorists through tunnels into southern Israel while aiming, in essence, at Cairo. It is backed in this by Doha and Ankara.

What arises from this state of affairs, and from Hamas’s baseless demands as they appear in the Qatari ceasefire proposal, is that this crisis is far from over.

Hamas is confident, even euphoric. In recent days, people who came in contact with the Palestinian terror organization’s leaders report that the sense they are broadcasting is that Hamas is besieging Tel Aviv, and that it will be starting its invasion of Israel shortly, not that the IDF is striking hard at Gaza, has its ground troops hitting Hamas in the Palestinian enclave, and is setting back the Hamas terrorist infrastructure by years, as IDF Chief Benny Gantz put it on Friday night.

In a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Cairo on Wednesday, Moussa Abu Marzouk, the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau, dismissed Abbas’s pleas regarding a ceasefire, explaining that “what are 200 martyrs compared with lifting the siege [on the Gaza Strip?]” Abu Marzouk later tweeted that there will be no truce that does not acknowledge the demands of the “resistance,” and that it is “better that Israel occupy the Gaza Strip than for the siege to continue.” Abu Marzouk, needless to say, resides in Cairo, far from the threat of Israeli air strikes.

(…)

Hamas has been operating under the basic assumption that Israel will ultimately work to preserve its hold on the Strip. Hence Hamas’s current confidence, even euphoria. Hamas believes Israel does not want to bring it down or to assassinate its leaders.

In order to force Hamas’s leaders to reconsider their stance, therefore, Israel had better change its tone, and fast. Hamas needs to understand that the rules of the game have now changed, and that Israel is willing to destroy it and its regime, including by seizing the entire Gaza Strip, if necessary. Tzipi Livni took a first step in that direction, to the surprise of her interviewers, when telling Channel 2 on Friday night that she did not rule out bringing down Hamas if that’s what it takes to restore sustained quiet.

(…)

The Americans’ handling of this issue, however, was typically hesitant and unclear. Washington flirted with both Doha and Cairo. Only after Israel demanded that Qatar be removed from the picture did the US announce its support for the Egyptian initiative, with its clauses that largely ignore Hamas’s demands, and which Israel, the Arab League, the US and others quickly backed.

Qatar’s firm, ongoing support of Hamas explains its flat dismissal of the Egyptian proposal. Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri understood this and directly accused Doha and Ankara of attempting to deliberately undermine its ceasefire efforts. Turkey responded fiercely, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi a dictator.

And so the Sunni war rages and the possibility of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel becomes more remote. Abbas is still trying to bridge the gap between the parties — between Qatar, Turkey and Egypt, that is; not between Hamas and Israel. But it’s doubtful he will be the man to reunite the bitterly divided Sunni world.

Ikke at det stopper jødehadet i den arabiske verden eller den vestlige venstrefløjs antisemitiske fortælling.

Tidligere udenrigsminister Uffe Ellemann Jensen skrev i en kommentar i Berlingske Tidende i sommer

Protesterne i Tyrkiet ryster landets status som rollemodel i en grad, som skaber ekstra bump på vejen mod EU-medlemskab. Men situationen, som har mere til fælles med ungdomsoprøret i 1968 end »Det Arabiske Forår«, kan også ende med at styrke det højt besungne tyrkiske demokrati.

Og sådan fortsatte kommentaren, der trods bekymrede forbehold oste af Ellemann velkendte optimisme for Tyrkiet som et civiliseret land. Ellemann skriver i en grundlæggende dobbelttydig stil som at Erdogan selv har “bidraget til det indtryk af magtfuldkommenhed“, at “Erdogan har ikke formået at skabe tillid” og at hans “stil er blevet mere og mere autokratisk” og det har “skabt mulighed for, at det førende oppositionsparti (CHP) kunne puste til ilden, da de første demonstrationer begyndte“. Men meningen er klar og falder i hak med Ellemanns mangeårige advokeren for at Tyrkiet skal være en del af de hensygnende men stadigt rimeligt civiliserede lande i EU.

Premierminister Erdogan og hans regerende AK-parti har et solidt folkeligt mandat, som er blevet bekræftet ved flere valg, siden de kom til magten i 2002. Samtidig har Erdogan stået i spidsen for en formidabel økonomisk succes og tillige en række politiske og sociale reformer, som er de mest vidtgående, siden Atatürk skabte det moderne Tyrkiet.

(…)

Tyrkiet har hidtil været en rollemodel, og er blevet fremhævet som et eksempel på, at et islamisk land kan have et rimeligt velfungerende demokrati. Og en sådan rollemodel er der hårdt brug for, nu hvor befolkningerne i mange af regionens lande søger at finde ud af, hvilken vej de vil gå.

(…)

Rollemodellen er rystet. Så meget, at det også kan bremse Tyrkiets videre vej ind i EU, som i forvejen rummer mange forhindringer. Håbet er, at der ud af rystelserne kommer et endnu stærkere tyrkisk demokrati. Det vil være i alles interesse.

Kedelige kræfter konspirerer mod noget grundlæggende sundt. David P Goldman var i december stadigt ikke imponeret over den formidable økonomiske succes som Ellemanns rollemodel tilskrives

Turkey is a mediocre economy at best with a poorly educated workforce, no high-tech capacity, and shrinking markets in depressed Europe and the unstable Arab world. Its future might well be as an economic tributary of China, as the “New Silk Road” extends high-speed rail lines to the Bosporus.

For the past ten years we have heard ad nauseum about the “Turkish model” of “Muslim democracy.” The George W. Bush administration courted Erdogan even before he became prime minister, and Obama went out of his way to make Erdogan his principal pal in foreign policy. I have been ridiculing this notion for years, for example in this 2010 essay for Tablet.

The whole notion was flawed from top to bottom. Turkey was not in line to become an economic power of any kind: it lacked the people and skills to do anything better than medium-tech manufacturing. Its Islamists never were democrats. Worst of all, its demographics are as bad as Europe’s. Ethnic Turks have a fertility rate close to 1.5 children per family, while the Kurdish minority is having 4 children per family. Within a generation half of Turkey’s young men will come from families where Kurdish is the first language.

(…)

Now the hashish smoke has cleared, Erdogan’s Cave of Wonders has turned back into a sandpit, and the foreign policy establishment has nothing to show for years of propitiation of this Anatolian wannabe except a headache.

Now that Turkey is coming unstuck, along with Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, we should conclude that the entire project of bringing stability to the Muslim world was a hookah-dream to begin with. Except for the state of Israel and a couple of Sunni monarchies that survive by dint of their oil wealth, we are witnessing the unraveling of the Middle East. The best we can do is to insulate ourselves from the spillover effect.

Og EU viser også tegn på stigende bekymring, skriver Wall Street Journal

Turkey’s parliament passed a bill that would allow authorities to shut websites without a court ruling, in a move critics slammed as an effort by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to silence dissent and expand his media control.

Lawmakers led by the premier’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, approved the measure late Wednesday, despite charges that it would significantly curtail free speech and intrude on personal freedoms.

The law, which must be approved by President Abdullah Gül to take effect, would allow the agency charged with monitoring telecommunications to block access to Internet sites within four hours of receiving complaints about privacy violations. Turkey’s web hosts would also have to store all traffic information for up to two years, according to the measure.

(…)

“The Turkish public deserves more information and more transparency, not more restrictions,” said Peter Stano, spokesman for the European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Füle. “The law needs to be revised in line with European standards.”

Turkey’s leading industry and business association, TUSIAD, has warned the legislation will lead to wider censorship, while the Committee to Protect Journalists described the law as radical.

(…)

Mr. Erdogan’s move to put curbs on the Internet follows a corruption investigation that started mid-December and has ensnared some of the premier’s political and business allies. More than 20 suspects have been jailed, all of whom deny the charges. The prime minister has cast the graft probe as a foreign-backed plot to topple his government and derail Turkey’s economic progress.

Images, videos and sound clips allegedly pertaining to the bribery case went viral online, prompting the government to claim the investigation is politically motivated and resulting in the removal of a lead prosecutor for allegedly breaching confidentiality rules.

The draft law to broaden the telecommunications monitor’s powers comes just weeks after the government moved to tighten its grip on the judiciary, removing thousands of police officers, prosecutors and judges from their posts.

Og dette er blot seneste skridt i en udvikling, der har været igang væk fra “et endnu stærkere tyrkisk demokrati” lige siden Erdogan satte sig som premierminister, skriver Ryan Mauro for Clarion Project, der også minder om at Erdogans terrorforbindelser

The Turkish government continues to cleanse the judiciary and security services of opponents as new questions about its links to terrorists arise.

The Islamist government of Turkey has been embroiled in a major political crisis since December 17 when dozens of allies of Prime Minister Erdogan were arrested on corruption charges. Erdogan responded by canning the prosecutors and police chiefs responsible. He blamed foreign governments and  a U.S.-based Turkish cleric named Fethullah Gulen.

In January, the Turkish government fired 96 judges and prosecutors and fired or reassigned 2,000 police officers and prosecutors, including 470 in the capital city of Ankara. Erdogan said that the actions were taken to stop a “coup” and “the judiciary should not go beyond its mission and mandate.”

New attention is also being given to Erdogan’s links to Islamist terrorists.

Erdogan is particularly close to the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH) that was involved in the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010 where its operatives attacked Israeli soldiers boarding a vessel that tried to violate the blockade on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. The blockade’s purpose is to stop Hamas from arming, but Erdogan does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist group. The U.S. State department does list Hamas as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

The IHH is labeled a terrorist organization by Germany, the Netherlands and Israel. There is bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress for doing the same because of its extensive links to Hamas and Al-Qaeda.

On January 1, the Turkish police intercepted a truck allegedly owned by IHH that was shipping weapons to Syria. The involved police and counter-terrorism officers were reassigned and the prosecutoraccused the Turkish government of obstruction for stopping a search of the truck.

On January 14, the Turkish security services arrested 23 suspected terrorists in raids on the IHH. A senior Al-Qaeda operative was among those detained. The Deputy Prime Minister immediatelycondemned the raids and sided with IHH over his own country’s authorities. Again, two police officers were fired, as were bodyguards for eight involved prosecutors.

Erdogan’s links to a Saudi terrorism-financier named Yasir al-Qadi are getting scrutinized by some Turkish commentators. The U.N. required that member states freeze his assets in 2001 because it was convinced of the evidence against him. As with the IHH, the Erdogan government says its friend is innocent.

The Turkish government also has an abysmal record on press freedom. The Committee to Protect Journalists says that more journalists were imprisoned in Turkey than in any other country in the last two years. In addition, over 70 reporters lost their jobs after reporting on anti-government protests that erupted last summer.

“We need to underline that the Turkish press is no longer doing investigative reporting,” says Ertugrul Ozkok, who held the position of editor-in-chief of the Hurriyet newspaper for 20 years.

Måske kan man argumentere at Erdogans vej væk fra demokratiet fremmer et opgør med ham der fører til demokrati. I så fald kan intet gå galt. Men indtil videre ser de internationale komplikationer som EU nok kunne være foruden

President Obama praised the partnership between the U.S. and Turkey in May when the Turkish prime minister visited the White House. The two men have spoken frequently about the unstable situations in Egypt, Syria, and other nations. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Turkey and the U.S. cooperated effectively against terrorism.

But the relationships with people connected to Hamas and al-Qaida is such a problem, argues Schanzer, that it might even qualify Turkey as a state sponsor of terrorism. Now, there are only four countries currently on that list: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria. All four nations provide support for acts of terrorism, both domestically and internationally. For example, Iran has previously sent people to Argentina to blow up synagogues in Jewish community centers, among other instances.

Such a designation from the U.S. government would be quite drastic and is highly unlikely to happen, considering that it threatens an alliance that has, according to U.S. officials, helped many American efforts in the region. Turkey is critical in overthrowing the Assad regime in Syria and containing Iran. A terror designation, which hasn’t been given since 1993, would mean sanctions and political isolation.

However, that is not saying American officials have not directly gone to Turkish officials and expressed their concern in this area. They have done so to “the highest levels,” according to former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey James Jeffrey, who served from 2008 to 2010.

Men det kommer selvfølgelig an på, hvad man vil med EU. Personligt vil jeg bare ikke være i selskab med endnu flere tyrkere.