Free Republic

For years, explaining Turkey’s democratic travails seemed an easy task. There was the persistence of an authoritarian tradition, whose source was identified as Kemalism—the secularist-nationalist founding ideology of the Turkish republic—and which the military embodied. According to the conventional narrative on Turkey, with which anyone who has only casually followed international politics during the last decades will be familiar, the Turkish military had a mission—to “protect secularism”—which explained, so we were taught, its habit of overthrowing governments. All that was needed for Turkish democracy to flourish was the emergence of a force strong enough to end the tutelage of the...

KOIN 6 Reports: A lawsuit filed by a Democratic senator from Oregon aiming to compel the Trump administration to release 100,000 pages of documents on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is inching forward in federal court, with an Obama nominee assigned to hear it.Sen. Jeff Merkley’s lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in the nation’s capital, has been overshadowed by sexual harassment accusations against the nominee, but the case remains alive, with summonses prepared for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others, court documents show.Now Merkley is asking the federal court to order the Trump administration, which has claimed executive...

Just like their other tactics throughout this confirmation process, Senate Democrats’ demands for an FBI investigation have never been about getting the facts or finding the truth. If they were, they would have alerted law enforcement months ago, as soon as they learned of the claims. Instead, they waited until the last minute to leak them in order to delay the vote. That is why any FBI investigation of the allegations against Judge Brett Kavanaugh should include potential coordination between the Democrat operatives and lawyers that assisted in bringing them forth. What Senate Democrats really want is more time to...

The elephant in the room when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Friday was the fundmantal disagreement between their countries on human rights. Germany has been very critical of Ankara on this score, while Erdogan has insisted that Berlin do more on German soil to go after detractors he claims are terrorists.At their post-meeting press conference, Merkel argued that the important thing was that the two sides were talking.“I consider the visit very important because when there are differences, a personal meeting is vital to resolve them,” Merkel said. Ties with Germany deteriorated following a failed...

Two men have come forward to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to claim that they are the ones who actually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford during a house party in 1982 — and not Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.Republicans on the committee released a timeline of events late Wednesday, which included details about their interactions with the two men who admitted to the attacks.On Monday, the timeline recounts GOP staff members interviewing “a man who believes he, not Judge Kavanaugh, had the encounter with Dr. Ford in 1982.”The “encounter” refers to an episode in which Ford claims that Kavanaugh sexually...

A New York Times article scrutinizing inside jokes in the 1983 yearbook of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s Georgetown Preparatory School hid multiple problems with its claims, including that it was sourced to a rabidly anti-Trump politician in Maryland and his associate.The article reveals inside jokes about a friend of Kavanaugh and his classmates named Renate Schroeder Dolphin. The classmates are featured in a picture with a caption “Renate Alumnius,” which the Times’ named and anonymous sources argue is bragging about sex. The classmates strenuously insist that the reference was nothing of the kind and that none of the men...

Democrats failed in their desperate attempt to use Deborah Ramirez’s lawyer-induced “memory” of claimed sexual misconduct from Brett Kavanaugh to force Republicans to scuttle Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, at which accuser Christine Blasey Ford is scheduled to testify. But since Monday, Ford’s attorneys have been complaining about the agreed-upon process, making it look more and more likely that Kavanaugh’s accuser will be a no-show when the 10 a.m. hearing begins.Just yesterday, ranking Senate committee member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said she had no way of knowing whether Ford would appear if a sex-crimes prosecutor led questioning, as Committee...

Christine Blasey Ford’s lawyers have asked senators to limit the press who will be allowed in the room to cover Thursday’s hearing with her and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and sought to dictate at least some of the outlets.Coverage is one of a number of issues Ms. Blasey Ford’s lawyers are negotiating with Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee.Michael Bromwich said in emails sent Tuesday afternoon that he was requesting access for three “robocams,” three specific wire services, photographers from the Associated Press, Reuters and one unspecified service, and a pool reporter for newspapers and magazines. In a follow-up...

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi authorities have deprived Turkish soldiers, deployed in northern Iraq to combat Kurdish militias, from visas to return to their bases as means to cut down the number of troops which Baghdad had repeatedly demanded to pull out. Watheq al-Hashemi, director of al-Nahrain Center for Strategic Studies, an Iraqi government-affiliated think tank, told Almaalomah website that the Iraqi government has unilaterally decided not to grant Turkish soldiers on leave at their homeland visas to return to the Turkish military base in Bashiqa region, north of Iraq. According to Hashemi, the measure, adopted over the past months, has helped...

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – A Saudi-owned newspaper has claimed that Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has moved to Afghanistan via Iranian territories. Quoting Pakistani security and other extremist group sources, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that Baghdadi arrived in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan after crossing Iranian territories via the eastern city of Zahedan. According to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, IS manages a location to host its fighters in Zahedan in cooperation with the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Al-Baghdadi has been reported killed or wounded on a number of occasions. Last month, Baghdadi was reported to be...

Currencies should not be used as instruments to attack other countries' economies, says Mevlut Cavusoglu, referring to US ANKARA / CARACAS, Venezuela Turkey is eager to use local currencies in bilateral trade deals to counter attacks by the U.S., Turkey’s foreign minister said late Friday. "We are so keen actually to use local currencies in our bilateral trade, not only between Turkey and Venezuela, but also between Turkey and other countries," Mevlut Cavusoglu told a joint press conference in Caracas with his Venezuelan counterpart Jorge Arreaza. Cavusoglu said since Washington has been using the dollar as a tool to attack other countries’ economies,...

Relatives of the disappeared protested the arbitrary practice and started marching towards the Galatasaray Square, upon which they were attacked by the police. The Saturday Mothers, who have been fighting for 23 years to have the fate of their relatives disappeared in custody brought to light and perpetrators punished, have been attacked by the police once again. Relatives of the disappeared including HDP MPs have been battered. The Saturday Mothers, whose demonstrations have been banned by the Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu since the demonstration of the 700th week, were subjected to another police attack on the 704th week’s demonstration. The...

The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Friday issued detention warrants for 110 members of the Turkish Air Forces including six pilots over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. According to the report, 100 of the 110 officers who were accused of communicating with people from the Gülen movement have been detained in operations in 16 provinces. The Turkish government has dismissed over 40,000 military personnel including gendarmerie and military cadets over alleged links to the movement since a failed coup attempt in July 2016, the tr724 new website reported on Aug. 4....

The media’s lies have a price.Politico, the media outlet of choice for flacks and hacks, has declared that Ron DeSantis, the conservative Republican running for Governor of Florida, against the media’s favorite new socialist, suffered his “fifth race-related” controversy.  That fifth “controversy” is about something that somebody who isn’t DeSantis tweeted. The fourth controversy also involved a DeSantis donor. The third controversy falsely smeared the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend attended by DeSantis (and Medal of Honor winner Clinton Romesha). The second involved a GOP official who also isn’t DeSantis. And the first was that DeSantis had been added...

Turkey has submitted close to a thousand requests to Germany for search and arrest warrants. Andrej Hunko from Die Linke said Turkey is abusing the Interpol. Germany’s Ministry of Justice responded to a written inquiry by Die Linke (The Left) and said since the coup attempt in 2016, Turkey has submitted large numbers of requests to the German Police for search and arrest warrants. Turkey has submitted a total of 848 requests for search and arrest warrants through the Interpol. QUESTION NOT RESPONDED TO Germany’s Ministry of Justice didn’t provide information on what percentage of Turkish requests had been met,...

The Israeli army has stated that all intelligence on the Russian aircraft downed in Latakia on Monday will be shared with Moscow. The Israeli army statement said when the Syrian air defense systems fired the missiles that downed the Russian aircraft, Israeli Air Force had already returned to Israeli air field. The Israeli army argued that the incident had been caused by the Syrian air defense systems’ “extensive and inaccurate” fire. The statement said, “The Syrian anti-air batteries fired indiscriminately and from what we understand, did not bother to ensure that no Russian planes were in the air.” The Israeli...

Turkey has become the primary threat to U.S. interests in the eastern Mediterranean, not Russia, Syria or Iran, said Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official. Turkey’s military build-up on and around the island of Cyprus should not be tolerated by Washington, and nor should its attempted pillaging of Cypriot natural gas resources to prop up its ailing economy, Rubin said in an opinion piece for the Washington Examiner. Rubin cited Turkish plans to build a permanent military base in Northern Cyprus, which it has occupied since the 1970’s, as stark proof of...

The woman who accused Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault back when they were in high school wants a law enforcement investigation of the incident before testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to her lawyer who appeared on CNN Tuesday night.Kavanaugh is expected to testify Monday. “Any talk of a hearing on Monday frankly is premature because she just came forward with these allegations 48 hours ago. And since that time, she has been dealing with hate mail, harassment, death threats. So she’s been spending her time trying to figure out how to put her life...

ISTANBUL (REUTERS) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defended his decision to accept a luxury plane from Qatar at a time of economic hardship, saying it was a gift, not a purchase, and that it had been donated to the Turkish state, not to him personally. State broadcaster TRT Haber said last week the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani had given Mr Erdogan the aircraft, which Turkish media said was a Boeing 747, sparking criticism from Turkey's opposition. A lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Mr Sezgin Tanrikulu, had expressed concern that the aircraft...

Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is expected to be confirmed by October 1 when the court begins its next term Top Judiciary Committee Democrat has mysterious letter alleging Kavanaugh of something in high school but she won't show it to other senators Top D.C. #MeToo attorney is believed to be representing the woman at the center of whatever allegations the letter might contain Letter came from someone the woman knows and was sent to a California congresswoman, who shared it with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein Sen. Dianne Feinstein got it over the summer but chose this week to...