Free Republic

Our “ally” in Turkey continues to blaze a trail toward a future for his country that looks less and less democratic by the day. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s PK party didn’t fare all that well in the country’s recent round of parliamentary elections. They didn’t lose power, but there was definitely a shift in the electorate and opposition parties fared better than in previous years. One place where Erdogan’s candidates did especially poorly was in the major city of Istanbul. Erdogan’s party’s candidate for mayor was defeated there by Ekrem Imamoglu of the CHP party. That apparently didn’t sit well...

Turkey has been a mess for years under the increasingly despotic and incompetent leadership of Turkish President Erdogan. The economy has been declining and suffering major problems with inflation and a decline in the value of the local currency, the lira, and Erdogan has launched increasingly vicious crackdowns on the opposition while breaking ties with former allies like the United States. The Turkish people have finally gotten sick of this, and Erdogan’s party suffered a major electoral defeat last week in several major Turkish cities. Erdogan responded to his defeats about as well as you’d expect, and throwing around hysterical...

A day after local elections, a mayor-elect from the opposition Felicity Party (SP) was physically assaulted by the former mayor of Diyarbakır’s Çüngüş district, a ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) politician, the T24 news website reported. SP mayor-elect Ali Suat Akmeşe was injured along with another party member and a policeman. They were airlifted to a hospital in Diyarbakır. According to a local SP official, the injured party member is in critical condition. “The AKP chairman [Recep Tayyip Erdoğan], ministers and [AKP ally] Devlet Bahçeli terrorized the society with their political messages and sowed the seeds of anger,” he...

ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party said Tuesday that it had submitted challenges to election results that showed its candidates had been defeated in Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey’s largest cities, in local elections two days earlier that dealt a rare setback to Erdogan at the ballot box. The Justice and Development Party, or AKP, has repeatedly prevailed in elections since 2002 and was the leading vote-getter on Sunday. But its losses in major cities — including Istanbul, Turkey’s financial capital — were a significant symbolic defeat for Erdogan and threatened to weaken his powerful party machine, analysts said.

Turkey's top electoral body on Monday annulled the results of the March 31 vote in Istanbul, which opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu narrowly won, and scheduled a re-run for June 23. The loss of Istanbul — and the capital of Ankara — in Turkey's local elections were sharp blows to Erdogan and his conservative, Islamic-based Justice and Development Party, or AKP... The controversial decision has increased concerns over democracy and the rule of law in Turkey

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - The Istanbul election board has rejected a bid by Turkey’s ruling AK Party to annul the local election in the city’s Buyukcekmece district, an AKP official told Reuters on Friday, after the opposition narrowly won the vote in the city.

The editor of the Washington Post said that Erdogan who failed in the local elections has now refused to make concessions on Russian missiles or Syrian Kurds. Trump's administration will have no choice but to treat him as a rival. The editor wonders how Erdogan will react to the people's rebuke to him,The editor of the Washington Post talks about the results of local elections in Turkey, which he sees as a referendum on Erdogan's increasing authoritarian leadership.The editor notes that Erdogan used all his cheap tools that would have led the country to explosion in an attempt to rally...

ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party on Sunday was facing defeat in local elections in the Turkish capital, Ankara, and possibly even Istanbul, its largest city, a result that shook the nation as Mr. Erdogan suffered the first major electoral setback of his decade and a half in power.The municipal balloting around the country came nine months after national elections that extended Mr. Erdogan’s hold on power. It was closely watched as a barometer of his standing with voters after Turkey’s economy fell into recession and he assumed sweeping new executive powers.Mr. Erdogan claimed victory over all in the...

ISTANBUL — Voters headed to the polls across Turkey on Sunday in local elections that are seen as a critical test of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s nationwide popularity, especially in large cities, at a moment when Turks are expressing growing anxiety because of an economic downturn. A crackdown on the government’s opponents that intensified after a failed coup in 2016 has added to the domestic unease and has also troubled Turkey’s relationships with western allies, causing sharp fluctuations in the Turkish lira and putting investors on edge. Erdogan’s own position is secure. But the economic crisis and polls that suggest...

Hagia Sophia to Be Turned Into Mosque in Response to US Shift on Golan - Erdogan ANKARA (Sputnik) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday he planned to turn landmark Hagia Sophia, a former Greek Orthodox cathedral in Istanbul, into a mosque after this month’s elections in response to the US policy shift on the Golan Heights. "After municipal elections, it [temple] will be converted back into a mosque from a museum. As US president Trump declares Jerusalem the capital of Israel and the Golan Heights an Israeli territory, Turkey will give an adequate response as the rotating chair...

Agia Sophia, the ancient Christian cathedral in Istanbul, will never become a church again, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said recently in an angry commentary on the deadly New Zealand mosque shootings, reports Romfea. The shooter’s manifesto targets Turks and Erdoğan specifically, reports Egypt Today. “We are coming for Constantinople and we will destroy every mosque and minaret in the city. The Hagia Sophia will be free of minarets and Constantinople will be rightfully christian [sic] owned once more,” the text reads. The Turkish President reacted to this statement, calling the murder a “scumbag, who dared to call the city...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enjoys talking about gigantic construction works, aiming to make Western powers and domestic enemies envious. Often referred to as mega infrastructure projects, the third Bosporus Bridge, Istanbul Canal and the third international airport are his signature enterprises. Erdogan inaugurated the new airport at a soft opening Oct. 29, the 95th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. Named Istanbul New Airport (ISL), it aims to be the biggest hub in the world once it is fully operational. Yet, when that day might actually come remains a mystery. The opening had been set for December....

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

ISTANBUL- A crackdown on political dissent in Turkey is widening to participants in a major civic unrest 5-years ago. Prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for a prominent actor, a leading journalist/civil society activists.The arrests are in connection with the 2013 protests known as Gezi. The unrest began over plans to turn Gezi Park in central Istanbul into a shopping mall. The protests quickly transformed into broader demonstrations opposing the government and, in particular, then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. At its peak, the unrest saw millions of people take to the streets across the country.For Erdogan, who is now president, the...

Further evidence was revealed in Turkey earlier this month accentuating the long-held ambitions of the corrupt President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan to steer the Muslim world, or Ummah as it is called in religious discourse, into sort of a caliph-like leadership position. Away from the spotlight, his close advisors convened a gathering in Istanbul of Islamists from various countries to cultivate and promote the idea of an Islamic union to be spearheaded by the Turkish president as early as 2023. Not surprisingly the Muslim BrotherhoodÂ’s international network has been tapped as the main conveyer for fulfilling the Turkish leaderÂ’s dreams of...

TEV-DEM Diplomacy Committee Member Salih Muslim said the Turkish state protects ISIS and targets Kurdish gains, adding: “We will insist on the resistance to defend our gains.” Democratic Society Movement (TEV-DEM) Diplomacy Committee Member Salih Muslim spoke to ANHA about the invading Turkish state’s attacks against Kobanê and Girê Spî. “THE COALITION IS ALSO THREATENED” Muslim stressed that the Turkish state attacks against Kobanê and Girê Spî are connected to the quadruple summit in Istanbul and said: “The Turkish state is attacking Rojava to make sure their demands in the quadruple summit are met. They aim to destroy the Kurdish people...

The leaders of Turkey, Russia, France, and Germany have reiterated calls for a UN-backed political process to end the war in Syria that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after a summit in Istanbul on October 27 that "the meeting demonstrated there is common determination to solve the problem."A joint solution can be achieved, not through military means, but only through political effort under the UN aegis," she added.Along with Merkel, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and French President Emmanuel Macron gathered for the talks in search of an end to...

Turkish authorities suspect that missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who disappeared on Tuesday after entering Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul, was killed inside the consulate, Turkish sources told Middle East Eye and news agencies on Saturday. A senior Turkish police source told MEE that police believed that Khashoggi, a prominent critic of the Saudi government, was "brutally tortured, killed and cut into pieces" inside the consulate after visiting the building on 2 October. "Everything was videotaped to prove the mission had been accomplished and the tape was taken out of the country," the source said.

ISTANBUL — Turkey has concluded that Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent journalist from Saudi Arabia, was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul earlier this week by a Saudi team sent “specifically for the murder,” two people with knowledge of the probe said Saturday. Turkish investigators believe a 15-member team “came from Saudi Arabia. It was a preplanned murder,” said one of the people. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation. They offered no specific evidence to back up the account. Earlier Saturday, however, Turkey’s Anadolu news agency said the Istanbul public prosecutor’s office had opened...

While Turkey's latest mosque is being inaugurated in Germany, the greatest Christian Orthodox theological school has remained closed for almost 50 years by the order of the Turkish government. Moreover, less than a kilometer away from the shuttered Christian seminary, a major new center of Islamic studies spanning a total area of 200 acres is scheduled to be built. The Greeks of Turkey -- the remnants of the once great Byzantine Empire -- are a severely persecuted and even almost completely exterminated people. They have been exposed, among other crimes against humanity, to a genocide, pogroms and forced deportations at...