Turkey's Presidential Takeover?

[jimmy olsen]

I'm shocked, shocked that Edrogan's arming Islamists!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/21/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-arms-idUSKBN0O61L220150521

Exclusive: Turkish intelligence helped ship arms to Syrian Islamist rebel areas

ADANA, Turkey  |  By Humeyra Pamuk and Nick Tattersall


Turkey's state intelligence agency helped deliver arms to parts of Syria under Islamist rebel control during late 2013 and early 2014, according to a prosecutor and court testimony from gendarmerie officers seen by Reuters.

The witness testimony contradicts Turkey's denials that it sent arms to Syrian rebels and, by extension, contributed to the rise of Islamic State, now a major concern for the NATO member.

Syria and some of Turkey's Western allies say Turkey, in its haste to see President Bashar al-Assad toppled, let fighters and arms over the border, some of whom went on to join the Islamic State militant group which has carved a self-declared caliphate out of parts of Syria and Iraq.

Ankara has denied arming Syria's rebels or assisting hardline Islamists. Diplomats and Turkish officials say it has in recent months imposed tighter controls on its borders.

Testimony from gendarmerie officers in court documents reviewed by Reuters allege that rocket parts, ammunition and semi-finished mortar shells were carried in trucks accompanied by state intelligence agency (MIT) officials more than a year ago to parts of Syria under Islamist control.

Four trucks were searched in the southern province of Adana in raids by police and gendarmerie, one in November 2013 and the three others in January 2014, on the orders of prosecutors acting on tip-offs that they were carrying weapons, according to testimony from the prosecutors, who now themselves face trial.

While the first truck was seized, the three others were allowed to continue their journey after MIT officials accompanying the cargo threatened police and physically resisted the search, according to the testimony and prosecutor's report.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the three trucks stopped on Jan. 19 belonged to MIT and were carrying aid.

"Our investigation has shown that some state officials have helped these people deliver the shipments," prosecutor Ozcan Sisman, who ordered the search of the first truck on Nov. 7 2013 after a tip-off that it was carrying weapons illegally, told Reuters in a interview on May 4 in Adana.

Both Sisman and Aziz Takci, another Adana prosecutor who ordered three trucks to be searched on Jan. 19 2014, have since been detained on the orders of state prosecutors and face provisional charges, pending a full indictment, of carrying out an illegal search.

The request for Sisman's arrest, issued by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and also seen by Reuters, accuses him of revealing state secrets and tarnishing the government by portraying it as aiding terrorist groups.

Sisman and Takci deny the charges.

"It is not possible to explain this process, which has become a total massacre of the law," Alp Deger Tanriverdi, a lawyer representing both Takci and Sisman, told Reuters.

"Something that is a crime cannot possibly be a state secret."

More than 30 gendarmerie officers involved in the Jan. 1 attempted search and the events of Jan. 19 also face charges such as military espionage and attempting to overthrow the government, according to an April 2015 Istanbul court document.

An official in Erdogan's office said Erdogan had made his position clear on the issue. Several government officials contacted by Reuters declined to comment further. MIT officials could not immediately be reached.

"I want to reiterate our official line here, which has been stated over and over again ever since this crisis started by our prime minister, president and foreign minister, that Turkey has never sent weapons to any group in Syria," Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Wednesday at an event in Washington.

Erdogan has said prosecutors had no authority to search MIT vehicles and were part of what he calls a "parallel state" run by his political enemies and bent on discrediting the government.

"Who were those who tried to stop MIT trucks in Adana while we were trying to send humanitarian aid to Turkmens?," Erdogan said in a television interview last August.

"Parallel judiciary and parallel security ... The prosecutor hops onto the truck and carries out a search. You can't search an MIT truck, you have no authority."


'TARNISHING THE GOVERNMENT'

One of the truck drivers, Murat Kislakci, was quoted as saying the cargo he carried on Jan. 19 was loaded from a foreign plane at Ankara airport and that he had carried similar shipments before. Reuters was unable to contact Kislakci.

Witness testimony seen by Reuters from a gendarme involved in a Jan. 1, 2014 attempt to search another truck said MIT officials had talked about weapons shipments to Syrian rebels from depots on the border. Reuters was unable to confirm this.

At the time of the searches, the Syrian side of the border in Hatay province, which neighbors Adana, was controlled by hardline Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham.

The Salafist group included commanders such as Abu Khaled al-Soury, also known as Abu Omair al-Shamy, who fought alongside al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and was close to its current chief Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Soury was killed in by a suicide attack in Syrian city of Aleppo in February 2014.

A court ruling calling for the arrest of three people in connection with the truck stopped in November 2013 said it was loaded with metal pipes manufactured in the Turkish city of Konya which were identified as semi-finished parts of mortars.

The document also cites truck driver Lutfi Karakaya as saying he had twice carried the same shipment and delivered it to a field around 200 meters beyond a military outpost in Reyhanli, a stone's throw from Syria.

The court order for Karakaya's arrest, seen by Reuters, cited a police investigation which said that the weapons parts seized that day were destined for "a camp used by the al Qaeda terrorist organization on the Syrian border".

Reuters was unable to interview Karakaya or to independently confirm the final intended destination of the cargo.

Sisman said it was a tip-off from the police that prompted him to order the thwarted search on Jan. 1, 2014.

"I did not want to prevent its passage if it belonged to MIT and carried aid but we had a tip off saying this truck was carrying weapons. We were obliged to investigate," he said.



(Additional reporting by Ercan Gurses in Ankara; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Anna Willard)

[Syt]

So, there's still no new government in Turkey. Erdogan has scheduled new elections for November 1st.

[mongers]

What are people's thoughts on Turkiye ?


NB Couldn't find the 'current' most used thread on Turkey as there are a lot produced from the search function.

[Tamas]

As a podcaster put it yesterday: there is nobody with a bigger permanent erection these days than Erdogan, thanks to he finds himself in the spotlight mediating the war in Ukraine.

[Valmy]

I read something else on this earlier. I guess it was quite a shocker to Erdogan's AKP party. IMO it's good as it puts a serious hold on his taking of even more power in the country.

Yes it will mean more vile and forceful populism backed by the whole state apparatus firmly controlled by Erdogan. I find the situation vaguely similar to when recently Orban lost his 2/3rd majority and their popularity plumetted in general. That's how they stopped the fall, and there are two practical differences between Orban and Erdogan: islamism, and Erdogan is less unhealthy for the economy.

  While his economics are vile, they are your sort of vile.  Liberalization and deregulation.

Cutting interest rates to zero because of Islamic Law isn't very liberal

[Crazy_Ivan80]

As a podcaster put it yesterday: there is nobody with a bigger permanent erection these days than Erdogan, thanks to he finds himself in the spotlight mediating the war in Ukraine.

jeez, everything in that country is suffering inflation...

[Tamas]

As a podcaster put it yesterday: there is nobody with a bigger permanent erection these days than Erdogan, thanks to he finds himself in the spotlight mediating the war in Ukraine.

jeez, everything in that country is suffering inflation...

Hi was commenting on Erdogan's supposed self-image, not reality.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

As a podcaster put it yesterday: there is nobody with a bigger permanent erection these days than Erdogan, thanks to he finds himself in the spotlight mediating the war in Ukraine.

jeez, everything in that country is suffering inflation...

Hi was commenting on Erdogan's supposed self-image, not reality.

so was I, so was I... heh.

[The Larch]

Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu sentenced to jail over 'fools' insult

Mayor expected to appeal against ruling that is seen as an effort to sideline an Erdoğan rival


A Turkish court has sentenced Istanbul's mayor to more than two years in prison and banned him from politics in a move that his supporters described as a politically motivated effort to sideline a high-profile rival of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Ekrem İmamoğlu was sentenced to two years, seven months and 15 days in prison for calling members of Turkey's supreme election council "fools" in a press release three years ago.

İmamoğlu did not attend any trial hearings or the sentencing, and is expected to appeal against the ruling. The appeal would allow him to stay in office in the meantime, but he would remain weighed down by court hearings for up to a year and a half as the country heads towards a general election.

The verdict represents the latest step in a crackdown on key figures from the Republican People's party (CHP), Erdoğan's main challenger in the vote, which is expected within six months. Earlier this year, Canan Kaftancıoğlu, the head of the CHP's Istanbul branch, was banned from politics and given a suspended five-year prison sentence on charges of insulting the Republic of Turkey and Erdoğan in tweets accusing him of theft.

In January a court is due to decide whether to ban the majority-Kurdish People's Democratic party (HDP) from politics.

"The will of 16 million Istanbulites is on trial," the mayor's office declared shortly before İmamoğlu's sentencing. "They are seeking to deprive the mayor of Istanbul of his political rights."

Afterwards, İmamoğlu addressed supporters who had gathered in front of the town hall building. "This decision is a disgrace for the Turkish judiciary," he said. "It's the firmest expression of the fact that the judiciary has been transformed into an instrument to punish dissidents. It's proof that the rulers of this country have no aim to bring justice and democracy to the country."

He added: "We will not bow down to this corruption. These kinds of games won't get in my way – I won't be dismayed or give up."

İmamoğlu's supporters chanted "one day the AKP [Erdoğan's Justice and Development party] will answer to the people" and "rights, law, justice" as they waved Turkish flags.

"I see it as stealing the votes that millions of people gave of their own free will," said Türkiye Simge Goorany, 27, an architect. "This does not end here. We will definitely take to the streets, and we'll make our voices heard online. This is nothing but a pre-election campaign for the AKP to lose power."

Şehriban Kaynak said: "We are living in a country where there is no law and justice."

İmamoğlu rode to power on a wave of support in 2019, winning twice, as the original result was annulled by the election council after AKP complaints. In a press release that year, İmamoğlu said: "When we consider what happened back then, the ones who cancelled the March 31 election are fools." This was the comment that prompted the lawsuit against him.

İmamoğlu's victory in 2019 gave the CHP control of Turkey's largest city, which makes up 40% of the country's GDP, in a symbolic blow to Erdoğan, who formerly held the same position before he was removed for office and jailed for four months for inciting religious hatred.

AKP officials stonewalled İmamoğlu's mayorship, opposing his efforts to make major changes and starting competing projects to undermine his programme. "All our decisions are being blocked," İmamoğlu told the Guardian in an interview last May.

The mayor's supporters gathered in front of the town hall hoped that his ban from politics might eventually prove counterproductive, aiding İmamoğlu's rise as it did Erdoğan's.

"This is an injustice – and we want justice," said Nurşen Çuhacı, 64, another İmamoğlu supporter. "I feel sorry for this decision, but I think it could give him a boost in politics."

[Syt]

Erdogan doing Erdogan things.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/19/istanbul-mayor-arrested-ekrem-imamoglu-days-before-likely-presidential-nomination-erdogan-ntwnfb

Istanbul mayor arrested days before likely presidential nomination

Key rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan detained a day after university invalidated his diploma, in move seen as politically motivated

Turkish police on Wednesday arrested Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, a key rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, state-run media reported, as part of an investigation into alleged corruption and terror links.

The state-run Anadolu Agency reported that prosecutors also issued warrants for 100 other people. Authorities closed several roads around Istanbul and banned demonstrations in the city for four days in an apparent effort to prevent protests following the arrest.

Imamoğlu posted a video on Wednesday morning apparently reacting to the move, with the caption "A blow to the will of the nation".

Imamoğlu, 53, "was detained and is now at police headquarters" a press aide told Agence France-Presse. The aide did not have permission to speak to the media so asked not to be named.

At the same time, Netblocks internet observatory said Turkey had restricted access to multiple social media platforms including X, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) is scheduled to hold a primary election on 23 March, at which Imamoğlu was expected to be chosen as its presidential candidate. The next presidential vote is scheduled for 2028, but early elections are likely.

"We are facing great tyranny, but I want you to know that I will not be discouraged," Imamoğlu said earlier on Wednesday in a video message posted on social media. He accused the government of "usurping the will" of the people.

CHP's chairman,Özgür Özel, denounced Imamoğlu's detention as a "coup".

"Currently, there is a power in place to prevent the nation from determining the next president," he said. "We are facing an attempted coup against our next president."

The arrest followed a search of Imamoğlu's home on Tuesday, which came a day after a university invalidated his diploma, in effect disqualifying the popular opposition figure from running in the next presidential race. Having a university degree is a prerequisite for running in elections under Turkish law.

Istanbul University nullified Imamoğlu's diploma, citing alleged irregularities in his 1990 transfer from a private university in northern Cyprus to its faculty of business administration. He called the university's decision "illegal", insisting it does not have the authority to cancel the diploma. The university's move has been widely perceived as politically motivated.

"The days when those who made this decision will be held accountable before history and justice are near. The march of our people, who are thirsty for justice, law, and democracy, cannot be stopped," he wrote on X.

He later also suggested the decision was made under pressure from Erdoğan's government and raised concerns about the judiciary's independence. He said that he planned to challenge the decision.

"What will I do next? I will keep running like a lion. There's no stepping back, I'll run even harder," Imamoğlu said.

Wolfango Piccoli, of the Teneo political risk advisory firm, said the diploma's annulment indicates that Erdoğan recognises he cannot secure an election victory.

"The decision to revoke Imamoğlu's diploma goes beyond merely undermining a fair electoral race by removing the strongest opponent," Piccoli wrote in an emailed note. "It reflects the boldness and power to dictate what is real and what is not by controlling the state apparatus."

Imamoğlu has faced a series of legal challenges. In 2022, he was convicted of insulting members of Turkey's Supreme Electoral Council in a case that could result in a political ban. He is appealing against his conviction.

He faces multiple other lawsuits, including allegations of trying to influence a judicial expert investigating opposition-led municipalities. The cases could result in prison sentences and a political ban.

He was elected mayor of Turkey's largest city in March 2019 in a historic blow to Erdoğan and the president's Justice and Development party, which had controlled Istanbul for a quarter-century. The party pushed to void the municipal election results in the city of 16 million, alleging irregularities.

The challenge resulted in a repeat of the election a few months later, which Imamoğlu also won. The mayor retained his seat following local elections last year, during which his party made significant gains against Erdoğan's governing party.

[Norgy]

Getting in Trump's good books? 


No, strike that, Trump doesn't have books.
Getting in Trump's good Truth Social rants?

[Sheilbh]

I mean very literally doing Erdogan things.

Erdogan was a relatively popular mayor of Istanbul who was jailed on trumped up, sham charges of inciting violence or religious or racial hatred over reading a poem that had actually been printed in documents and booked issued by the Turkish state. He was prosecuted, tried and jailed just before the 1999 elections.

He lost the mayoralty but it catapulted him into the national attention and he became a political star. I think he's subsequently gone back to that prison a few times and talks about it as the point where the AKP (founded in a split from the previous Islamist party a year or two after his release) project starts. Shortly after his release as a new political star he starts doing the background work to found the AKP and win at the next election in 2002.

[Norgy]

I know what you meant. I was trying, and failing, at making light of yet another good, old-fashioned return to authoritarianism. Although, not so much a return as a continuation of a decline into hard-handed rule.

A very brief side note:
We got a very handsome and polite fellow in as a sort of work-to-get-benefits person. He'd apparently been a video journalist in Turkey, and when we could communicate with him, which due to language barriers was in 4 to 10 tries (Chris Wood as a better average at shots on goal), he was good. Apparently, he'd been aligned, or his family had been aligned with the failed coup a decade ago.

He got asylum. And the last thing he told us was that Norway was "very different". 

[Sheilbh]

Oh for sure And I think Erdogan is exactly the kind of guy Trump loves.

Was slightly waiting for this, but found Selim Koru's newsletter interesting:

Turkey Resists
By arresting İmamoğlu, Erdoğan banks on public apathy. He's getting the opposite.
Selim Koru
Mar 22, 2025

Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu is by far the most viable viable opposition politician in Turkey. The Islamist elite that is running the country rightly sees him as a threat and has long sought to prevent him from running. They have now arrested him on criminal charges.

Most serious people don't think that the charges are worth discussing, but I think it's important to look at the narrative surrounding them.

So let's turn on the regime's own TV stations. What do we see?

We see well-heeled and well-rested talking heads, speaking to us very calmly and deliberately about a tragic set of events happening in our country. They say that they'd like the Turkish opposition to be a strong counterweight to the government, but alas, that is not the case. The main opposition CHP, they say, is a cesspool of corruption. Its most powerful figure, Istanbul mayor İmamoğlu, is a nihilistic opportunist who knows he can't win against President Erdoğan, but plays the opposition game to get rich. He inspires hope in millions of his voters, thinking that their support will grant him legal immunity as he plunders the city's coffers. The Erdoğan government, meanwhile, is desperately trying to wake people up to the scam. The president wishes — against his own political interest — that Turkey had a competent main opposition party, one that could compete with his party and push them to come up with better policies. Still, we are told, he is patient, and hopes that the CHP will reform itself in time.

However, the CHP's corruption reaches such extreme levels that Erdoğan (and the august statesmen surrounding him) decide that they can no longer watch the charade. They arrest İmamoğlu, take over Istanbul municipality, and possibly the entire CHP, in order to redesign it all from the ground up. Yes, it looks very "undemocratic" and all, but the opposition is deeply corrupt (probably due to their mindset of subservience to Western forms) and this is the least bad option.


From top to bottom: "The background to the great corruption at Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality," "İmamoğlu's terror connections have been deciphered," "ahaber.com.tr has reached details to the traffic in dirty money". Source: Ahaber

Turkey simply cannot afford all this dead weight, the commentators say. Under Erdoğan, the country has become a world power, and cannot afford its greatest cities to be run by charlatans. Turkey deserves better. And besides, once restructured, the new main opposition party will be released into the wild, and perform as a patriotic counter-force to the AK Party.

How's that? Are you convinced?

Maybe you nodded along on some parts. There is something seductive about it, isn't there? The CHP really is a mess! İmamoğlu is a bit full of himself. And Erdoğan really did make Turkey into a more powerful country. If you want to ride along the Erdoğan train, there's definitely something you can latch on to here.

Still, would you believe that narrative in moments nobody is watching? Probably not. You'd have to be a complete idiot to believe it.

And people aren't idiots.

The millions of people voting for Erdoğan who hear this story every day don't believe it. The people going on TV and regurgitating it over and over again don't believe it. The people in the presidential palace who come up with it don't believe it either.

They might "believe" it, with a wink and a smile. If pushed, they'll tell you not to be naive. At the end of the day, what matters is power, it's what you can get away with. And clearly, the regime can get away with this. They are indeed, immensely powerful.

Their actual message to the opposition is crystal clear: you can conduct opposition politics in the country, but you can't do it well. You can blow off steam, but you can't actually pose an electoral threat to Erdoğan. If you do, we will see you coming, we will arrest you and throw away the key. We are watching your every move.

It's remarkable that they threw everything at İmamoğlu at once: they cancelled his university diploma (tertiary education is a requirement for presidential candidates) as well as charges of corruption, terrorism, and treason. It might at first seem counterproductive for them to do this. Why not just cancel the guy's diploma and legally bar him from running? Because then İmamoğlu looks like a perfectly fine politician who was unfairly disqualified. They had to make him into a villain to give their claims force. They needed "muzzle velocity," to use Steven Bannon's expression.

The strategic rationale is evident at once. The presidential elections are scheduled for 2028, so the regime wanted toget rid of İmamoğlu before then, knock down the CHP while you're at it, then take a couple of years for things to calm down. To borrow a term from economics, this is countercyclical repression. Ahmet Hakan, the editor of the regime-held newspaper Hürriyet wrote:

We live in a country where the most hotly debated agenda is forgotten three days later.

    In such a country, the Ekrem İmamoğlu storm...

    - Can rage for a week.

    - Can rage for a month.

    - At most, it can rage on for a year.

    *

    And then what?

    Then, slowly, it starts to settle. Then boredom sets in.

    Then it is thrown into the garden of forgetting.

    *

    The election is exactly three years away.

    There is no way the storm can rage for three years.

This is intended as balm to the Islamist soul. He's saying "don't fear the backlash, these people are so stupid that they'll forget about it and squabble among themselves." The contempt in the statement, not just for the public, but also for the very notion of truth, is unmistakeable.

For the regime's elites who look for investigations to vindicate them will look in vain. I don't think there's going to be anything that hints at actual criminal conduct. Opposition municipalities are under a lot of pressure from the regime. They've been threatened for a long time, and there's constant inspections into their affairs. The "revelations" so far have been restricted to relatively modest amounts of personal saving.

Meanwhile, the AK Party is universally recognized as being amazingly corrupt, and not in the petty "let me pocket some public money" kind of way, but in the "let's create gigantic financial instruments that divert rivers of money into my own private fiefdom" kind of way. None of it could ever be investigated because of how intrinsic it is to their existence. Erdoğan hasn't even done a performative anti-corruption drive among his oligarchs, the way Xi Jinping and Putin have done. Everyone knows that his cohort has become amazingly wealthy, while the average person has become poorer and lives under more precarious conditions.

Still, in the early hours after İmamoğlu's arrest, most of us were distraught. I guess the defeats have been piling up. The CHP's reaction on the first day was timid. They did exactly what the regime probably hoped they would do, which is to express outrage, but warn people against coming out on the streets.

It was footage of a group at Istanbul University breaking through police barricades that breathed a bit of courage into the public. They're too young for the cynicism those in power have infused in us. Their reaction was instinctively self-affirming and hopeful, and the nation followed. That night, it seemed that the protests weren't against the regime, but against the CHP, for failing to lead in a moment of crisis.

CHP leader Özgür Özel has since upped the ante, calling on people to come out on to the streets, protest across the country, and most recently, threatened companies with boycotts if they side with the regime at this critical time. Erdoğan has called upon him to "listen to those around him of intelligence and conscience," instead of the populace, trying to get back to the old CHP. He has long tried to seize control of the party, but he has probably achieved the opposite. The CHP now represents the majority, and that can have a transformative effect. As the saying goes, "the head that is crowned grows wise." [taç giyen baş akıllanır.]

All this is probably beyond the worst-case scenario the planners at the presidential palace gamed out. There's no obvious way out for them. If they release İmamoğlu, he'll be more powerful than ever before, possibly forcing an early election. In the likelier case that they keep him hostage, the people will know that the electoral process — the last remaining check on state power — has been taken away from them indefinitely.

Will we succumb to the cynical plots of the party-state, or will we have the courage of our convictions and resist?

I leave you with footage of the moment the students at Istanbul University broke through the police barricades. I hope they'll be an inspiration to others, especially those in Europe and the United States, who face far-right nihilists of their own.

[Syt]

Images of a guy in dervish gear being tear gassed went around the world. Something weirdly dystopian or post-apocalyptic about the whole get up.