This is a cross-post from As Turkey Sleeps. As Italian prosecutor Manuela Cavallo’s launching an investigation into money laundering claims about Bilal Erdogan, who recently moved to the Italian city of Bologna with his family, made it into news reports, another initiative, the Russian Federation kicked off at the United Nations, has raised the possibility of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak’s being tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague on charges of aiding and abetting the terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In a letter it sent to the UN Secretary General and the UN Security Council Member States on…
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Is the ‘Deep State’ using Erdogan to take revenge against its enemies?
This is a cross-post from As Turkey Sleeps. The deep state (or state within a state) is believed to be a secret network of military officers and their civilian allies who for decades suppressed and even murdered perceived opponents of Turkey’s secular order. It allegedly functioned as a kind of shadow government, spreading false propaganda to whip up public fear and destabilising civilian governments through bombing campaigns and even assassinations (events which have again become common place in Turkey today). Amongst other nefarious activities, the deep state is believed to have orchestrated the death of Prime Minister Adnan Mendres in 1960 and brought down the government of Necmettin Erbakan in the…
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Turkish democracy erodes further after last week’s twin bomb blasts
By Abi Adnan Oktar Turkey was shaken last weekend as two bombs exploded during a peace rally in Ankara, killing 128 people and injuring another 500. The rally was organised by several groups, including the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), to call for an end to the escalating violence between the Turkish government and the PKK. Footage of police descending on the scene immediately after the explosions shows them blocking ambulances and beating bewildered protesters who were frantically calling for help for the injured. Turkish security sources have since suggested that ISIS may have been behind the attacks but opposition figures have blamed the government itself (the bomb blasts were suspiciously…
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My MP
After the indy referendum in September 2014 we No voters – who were startled to find we’d been given a new identity, Unionists or Nawbags – thought we could forget about that interruption and get back to normality. Wrong. The SNP rode high, grabbed 56/59 (95%) of the Westminster seats in the general election and are likely to take as many in next year’s Holyrood election. Their opposition is fragmented into the old parties of Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative, Labour has been broken and the only party that has gained are the Conservatives as the full-out Unionist party under the gutsy Ruth Davidson. So it’s been a gloomy time…
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Sabin Khan: the Islamist ally in the Home Office
This is a guest post by Hafeez Gupta Some of our readers may recall Sabin Khan (formerly Sabin Malik) from back in 2010 when it was widely reported she had conspired behind the Home Secretary’s back to get the hate preacher Zakir Naik into the country (a sackable offence for a civil servant). This incident led to calls for her resignation but Khan somehow survived; the Home Office (OSCT) having already side-lined one senior Islamist civil servant didn’t want to appear to be on an anti-Muslim crusade. More bizarrely, Khan was then promoted for her act of defiance. Despite only having a background in community cohesion (and some bogus credentials…
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Two whistle-blowers
Guest post by Sackcloth and Ashes Edward Snowden is an American, and a former employee of the CIA and a contractor for the USA’s signals intelligence service, the National Security Agency (NSA). In late May 2013 he leaked to The Guardian and The Washington Post evidence of what was subsequently described as a global surveillance programme conducted by the NSA and other allied agencies which posed a direct threat to the civil liberties of US citizens. After a brief stay in Hong Kong, Snowden made his way to Russia, and on 12th July he requested temporary asylum from Vladimir Putin’s government. Sergei Magnitsky was a Russian, a lawyer and an…