Free Republic

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Islamist president of Turkey, attained national office after first serving as mayor of Istanbul, the mega-city that contains roughly 20% of the population of Turkey and which accounts for a third of that nation's GDP.  Now the city that birthed his national career has rejected the his party's candidate for mayor in a stinging rebuke. Bloomberg reports: Turkish opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu won the redo of the Istanbul mayor's race by a landslide on Sunday, in a stinging indictment of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's economic policies and increasingly autocratic ways. According to state-run Anadolu news agency, Imamoglu...

Turkey’s main opposition claimed a decisive victory on Sunday in Istanbul’s re-run election, dealing one of the biggest blows to President Tayyip Erdogan during his 16 years in power and promising a new beginning in the country’s largest city.

Dokuz 8 News, an independent outlet that has been doing tremendously great work in relaying the ongoing elections to English speaking audiences, has demonstrated various instances of election fraud in Turkey. Here, we intend to pass this information to you. In the eastern provinces, election fraud complaints are at all-time high. In the eastern city of Van, several military helicopters brought the ballots with them. Ballots have been taken to several electoral regions in the city of Van via military helicopters. pic.twitter.com/CpGDrQ92z0— dokuz8 NEWS (@dokuz8_EN) June 24, 2018 Furthermore, according to Mezopotamya Agency, members of the HDP electoral commission were blocked...

As they used to say way back when in the long Ottoman twilight, the Turk is the sick man of Europe. Following this weekend's Caliph-for-Life referendum, the Turk is sicker than ever. But he's no longer of Europe, and instead is exiting for a destination dark and catastrophic for almost all his neighbors. Sultan ErdoÄŸan - who, a mere 15 years ago, was banned from holding political office - has now succeeded in dismantling almost every defining element of the Kemalist republic. What replaces it will be a crude strongman state in service of Islamic imperialism. I have read a...

Turkey, RIP: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have won a narrow victory in a referendum giving him sweeping, near-dictatorial powers and essentially ending his nation's 98-year democratic experiment, unique in the Mideast. Starting with Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk immediately following World War I, as the final remnants of the Ottoman Empire were dismantled, Turkey had hewed closely to a mostly democratic, religiously secular, pro-Western government model. It was a model that worked. Turkey forged close ties with governments in Western Europe, in particular Germany, and sent hundreds of thousands of its workers there. Meanwhile, with the Soviet Union...

Donald Trump has congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his victory in Sunday's referendum that gave him sweeping new powers. The US president's phone call contrasts with concern by European leaders who have pointed out how the result-51.4% in favor of the changes-has exposed deep splits in Turkish society. Mr. Erdogan has rejected criticism from international monitors who said he had been favored by an "unequal campaign". "Know your place," he told them. The narrow victory was ruled valid by Turkey's electoral body, despite claims to irregularities by the opposition..... The call from Donald Trump was pre-arranged and the...

Voters went to the polls April 16 to vote on a new draft constitution that would officially increase the powers of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.The opponents of the bill including the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the main opposition party in Turkey’s parliament, have been trying to fight it in an environment where deviation from the point of view of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is often labeled by the government and its media as “support of terrorism” or “treason.”However, the CHP party is not and has never been a beacon of democracy either. A few days ago,...

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is claiming victory in a referendum that gives him extraordinary new powers. The vote - much closer than many anticipated - makes Erdogan a virtual dictator. Turkey, previously a nominal parliamentary democracy, will now embrace a presidential system of government, granting the chief executive the power to issue decrees and exercise authority previously reserved for the legislature. ***SNIP***It's hard to overstate the incredible transformation of Turkey over the last decade under Erdogan's rule. The country has gone from a secular democracy to a full blown Islamist state. Erdogan has cleansed the bureaucracy, the army, cultural...

On Sunday, Turkish voters voted by 51% to 49% to abolish the office of the Prime Minister and to grant president Erdogan sweeping powers. The referendum included 18 constitutional changes and will go into effect by Turkey's next general election in 2019. Opponents of Erdogan have called the results fraudulent and have vowed to challenge the outcome in court. It is not the first time the Turkish government has been accused of committing fraud in national and regional elections.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t just win his constitutional referendum — he permanently closed a chapter of his country’s modern history... Whether they understood it or not, when Turks voted “Yes”, they were registering their opposition to the Teşkilât-ı Esasîye Kanunu and the version of modernity that Ataturk imagined and represented. Though the opposition is still disputing the final vote tallies, the Turkish public seems to have given Erdogan and the AKP license to reorganize the Turkish state and in the process raze the values on which it was built.

On Sunday, November 1, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) claimed that it had won a majority of seats in parliament. Voting registration and voter turnout numbers prove beyond any doubt that Erdogan cheated. ... AKP supporters were registered at multiple sites and so, in effect, voted two or more times. Turkey's High Election Council (Yuksek Secim Kurulu, YSK) handles all complaints. Once they issue a decision, by law it cannot be litigated. They are no longer independent, however, but under the thumb of Erdogan. Numbers do not lie. Erdogan stole this election, plain and simple.

(Title too long: Erdogan And His Army Of Islamic Supremacists Take Over Turkey, They Are Now Declaring Him The Caliphate Of The Islamic World And Will Now Be Using The Government Of Turkey To Form The Empire Of The Antichrist And Will Work To Invade Europe) ******************************************************* When roughly 60 percent of the country voted against the AKP party in June the analysts said that Erdogan was over with. We said otherwise and Sunday’s vote secured the power of Mr. Erdogan and the A.K.P. for many more years to come, and those that were hoping to see the beginning of...

When roughly 60 percent of the country voted against the AKP party in June the analysts said that Erdogan was over with. We said otherwise and Sunday’s vote secured the power of Mr. Erdogan and the A.K.P. for many more years to come, and those that were hoping to see the beginning of the end of an era were left stunned after an electoral comeback which the Islamist party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regained its majority in Parliament on Sunday, ensuring Mr. Erdogan’s continued dominance of Turkish politics. Now we can look at the skeptics with skepticism who in...

Two years ago a former supporter, the Lebanese editor Jihad al-Zein, wrote: “Erdogan’s behavior has seemed closer to that of an old-style Arab military ruler,” and who can disagree? The Turkish election results in June were a major setback for the ruling AK (Justice and Development) Party and even more so for President Erdogan, who had reckoned that his party would be returned with an overwhelming majority, which would make it possible to change the constitution and give him full executive power. Instead of 400 seats in Turkey’s 550-seat parliament, which Erdogan had called for, the AKP ended up with...

Turks went to the polls today in parliamentary elections, and the era of single-party Islamist rule appears to be over. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been counting on the continued rule of his AKP party to change the country’s constitution after these elections, consolidating his already increasingly authoritarian rule into something even more dastardly. But a 2/3 majority of AKP in parliament is needed to change the constitution. Today, the Islamist party walked away with only 41 percent of seats. That’s an eight percent drop from 2011. In a country where the Islamists have garnered the animosity of all manner...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was Tuesday to meet Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu for the first time since the ruling party's failure to hold its parliamentary majority left the country facing a coalition government or snap elections. According to custom, Davutoglu will submit his resignation and Erdogan will ask the premier to form a new government at the meeting at 1400 GMT inside Erdogan's vast new presidential palace in Ankara. But this will be no easy task after the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002,...

Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). For the first time, is running as a political party instead of independent candidates. The ruling Party (AKP), has won every single election—presidential, legislative, and municipal—without serious opposition since first coming to power in 2002, is looking to introduce an executive presidency. After serving three terms as prime minister, the AKP’s charismatic leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, became the country’s first directly elected president by winning 51.8 percent of the popular vote in August 2014.

Allies: With all the disconcerting things going on in the Mideast, you could be forgiven for missing an event critically important to America's long-term interests: Recep Erdogan's election as president of Turkey. Erdogan's 52% victory over the weekend in a stage-managed election, making him the nation's first directly elected president, heralds a new era of conflict in the Mideast and perhaps the end of NATO as we know it. Turkey has for decades been a key ally to the U.S. and NATO in the Mideast, an anchor in the Cold War against the USSR and friendly toward Israel as the...

As we predicted. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won the presidential election with 52 percent of the vote, according to early results. Thus, Erdogan has become the country’s first popularly-elected head of state. He appears triumphant with the crowds of millions carrying fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow flags. (Revelation 19:17)  With 98.75 percent of the ballots counted, Erdogan leads with 52 percent, the Hurriyet Daily reports. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, former Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, has received 38 percent of the votes. Selahattin Demirtas, head of the leftist pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, is in third place with just...

Turkey's defense minister on Saturday ruled out a Turkish military intervention against Islamic State fighters in Iraq, and said his country was not involved in U.S. airstrikes against the extremists near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil. Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz told reporters central Anatolian province of Sivas that his country had not provided "any support to the U.S. so far." He cited Turkey's responsibility toward 49 Turkish citizens taken hostage by the IS from the Turkish consulate in Mosul in June. The hostages include diplomatic staff, special forces police and children. Due to this, Yilmaz said, "it is impossible...