Turkish Spring ?

[Empire*Of*Media]

Turkey is led by Military !! at it was from 1921 ! and did too many massacres and forcible migrations to Kurds & Armenians & Assyrians.

i almost forgot: its weired interesting that a little revolt is broadcasting in media, but the 90 years of killings, or at least 22 years and still going-on, of killing the Kurdish civilians In streets and Jailing Kurdish Jurnalists & Activtists,(That now Turkey has the second place in the world of jailing Jurnalists) will not be shown in any media and news channel!! and the belgium government is ordered by Germany to attack & close a Kurdish Channel!! The Danish Too BANed another!! the Silence of EU about Terrors of Three Kurdish Peace Activitists in Paris !!
Does not this means a connection between Turkish government with EU & USA and Nato to censor the news and block some news to be broadcasted?!
ah, thanks EU & USA for your support of tyranny Dictatorship and Racism!
now that PKK has gone from turkey by the order of our Leader Abdulah Ujalan, to resolve the Kurdish issue and tell that they are not Terrorists, what can you do again ?!

[Husar]

Does not this means a connection between Turkish government with EU & USA and Nato to censor the news and block some news to be broadcasted?!

No. A lot of the real reasons you mention are why Turkey has not been allowed into the EU yet and some of them are mentioned by our politicians whenever the issue comes up. There's no need to make any conspiracies up. Please show me the censorship, I have quickly found some links that show there is none:
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/auslan...-a-903192.html
http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/...d_1003156.html
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/a...-12203940.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22739423

It's also on the radio today and that Turkey is the country with the most locked up journalists was also in one of LEN's various links.
Should be pretty obvious that there is no censoring going on.

And LEN, good luck with that. A sensibly democratic Turkey would be nice to see.

[The Stranger]

wait... did that guys posts get deleted by the admins? or did he do that himself?

[Rhyfelwyr]

wait... did that guys posts get deleted by the admins? or did he do that himself?

I was wondering that as well.

[rvg]

Turkish government needs a reminder that they are supposed to stick with Ataturk's principles. Deviation from those principles is bad for the republic.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Turkish government needs a reminder that they are supposed to stick with Ataturk's principles. Deviation from those principles is bad for the republic.

Uhm, I'm not too sure that would be a good idea. We're talking principles from an era in which a totalitarian (at least nominally) secular centre - right regime was considered a civilised and perfectly kosher approach to government.

That aside, the issue is deeper: as far as I am aware the Erdogan admin still has a significant support among Turkey simply for being the guys who made "religion" in politics more accepted and mainstream. So they can still count on a significant share of the conservative vote. That is not because Erdogan is necessarily a proper humble and honest Allah-fearing, law-abiding, 5-times-a-day worshiper of the faith; it is because religion has been repressed for years.

Turkey needs to find a more grown up way of dealing with the Turks that happen to hold different view points.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Uhm, I'm not too sure that would be a good idea. We're talking principles from an era in which a totalitarian (at least nominally) secular centre - right regime was considered a civilised and perfectly kosher approach to government.

That aside, the issue is deeper: as far as I am aware the Erdogan admin still has a significant support among Turkey simply for being the guys who made "religion" in politics more accepted and mainstream. So they can still count on a significant share of the conservative vote. That is not because Erdogan is necessarily a proper humble and honest Allah-fearing, law-abiding, 5-times-a-day worshiper of the faith; it is because religion has been repressed for years.

Turkey needs to find a more grown up way of dealing with the Turks that happen to hold different view points.

This seems to me to be the nub of it.

Ataturk essentially enforced secularism upon the collapsing Turkish Empire. He did it in a way that worked, and which has made Turkey into a functioning democracy with a thriving economy.

HOWEVER, Ataturk's reforms were never a long-term alternative to an Islamic State and until very recently no thought was given to disseminating the Elite's secular principles down to the general populace. So, in the end, you have the same problem as Iran had in the 1970's. Secularism has been enforced, and embraced by the middle class, but the working class and the rural poor are not really very secular.

The difference with Turkey is that, hopefully, the rural poor and working class recognise that the secular constitution is better than enforcement of Sharia.

I hear Erdogan has started restricting the sale of alcohol during the day - here's hoping that doesn't sit well with the majority brand of Turkish Islam.

[LeftEyeNine]

Protests have hit the peak while Erdogan still insists that "it is a malpractice of the main opposition party and that there are illegal organizations provocating the scene and THAT the mall would be built there no matter what".

Your typical dictator has spoken. This is the guy that called for Mobarak's, Gaddafi's and his latest nemesis Assad's downfall just because that "they do not listen to their nation's voices".

Al Jazeera has started to conduct interviews with the protestors and if you're looking for some truth, it is bound to be ugly.

The police was told to retreat at some certain point, after which the crowd filled in and that's when the police started salvos of tear gas and even agent orange (not confirmed yet) upon people. In what kind of democracy does the police plan to trap flagless, party-free, ideology-free, belief-free demonstration and drown them in chemical fumes ?

RTE may be an influential persona of the last decades however so were Hitler, Mussolini and Bush for their times.

The protests have spread to a lot of cities and in Ankara, it's getting worse by now.

[The Stranger]

ideology-free, belief-free

such people do not exist... it is a myth.

[LeftEyeNine]

such people do not exist... it is a myth.

Your statement does not still change the fact that people who:

are faithful Muslims who regularly pray for 5 times a day

are atheists to the bone

are fans of Galatasaray (champions)

are fans of Fenerbahçe (have a fan killed after the match against GS 2 weeks ago)

are liberals

are communists

are photographers only who were always apolitical

are die-hard Kemalists

travelled from hundreds of kilometres from other cities

have been fighting under a omnipotent cloud of pepper and orange gas for almost 2 days now. That's the spirit of it and that's all that matters.