Prime Minister Wiretapped — Vast Corruption Upending Turkey's Government 123
cold fjord writes with an update on the political upheaval happening in Turkey "From the article: 'Dawn raids last Tuesday nabbed almost 60 people and implicated three government ministries, the directors of state banks, and some of Turkey's most powerful businessmen in a massive corruption probe spread across three different cases. Three members of Turkey's cabinet resigned on Christmas Day, and one called on Erdogan to follow suit as accusations of kickbacks, smuggling, and abuse of office continue to mount. The scandal has even acquired an international dimension as suspicions that Iran has been using Turkey's banks to shirk sanctions were further bolstered by the arrest of Reza Sarraf, an Iranian businessmen who is accused of bribing the Economic Minister while coordinating transactions from Iran worth $120 billion. The AKP is scrambling to defend itself by claiming the arrests are a result of a dastardly foreign conspiracy ... while police officials have been removed and reshuffled and special prosecutors appointed to a degree that makes Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre look like exemplary justice. The Turkish press continues to eagerly publish the latest colorful details that emerge from the probe, including police reports of $500,000 bribes administered in boxes of chocolate and news that Erdoan himself was being wiretapped as part of the investigation.' Erdogan has been urged to resign, three days ago Turkey banned journalists from entering police stations, and police are using tear gas on protesters."
Indeed. (Score:1, Informative)
We've got story after story on Slashdot about intelligence agencies with people making claims that they must be doing it to politicians. Here is a case of a national leader being wiretapped, ...
Where in any of the links does this have anything to do with foreign (i.e. NSA) wiretapping? So what, local authorites are wiretapping.
The wiretapping was done by Turkish authorities to catch corruption in their own government.
It has nothing to do with the NSA other than a vague accusation of foreign conspiracy of some sorts in an attempt to deflect accusations.
So ANY wiretapping story is gonna be automatically considered an NSA story?
Clueless indeed.
Re:The truly bizarre aspect of this (Score:4, Informative)
Re:OK.. (Score:5, Informative)
There is no major news agency in Europe reporting about this outside of Turkey.
Apparently reading newspapers is becoming a lost art.
France [lemonde.fr]
Germany [spiegel.de]
Belgium [standaard.be]
The Netherlands [www.nrc.nl]
Great Britain [bbc.co.uk]
Re:OK.. (Score:2, Informative)
Turkey is more secular than the USA. In the courts in TR u don't take an oath on holy books. Prime ministers take oath on constitution. Not saying "God bless Turkey" . On Turkish money there are pictures of Ataturk and Turkish scientists. No "In God we trust" on our money either ;)
Re:The truly bizarre aspect of this (Score:5, Informative)
You're the first person I've ever heard call Erdogan a Muslim extremist. Authoritarian, sure, but generally he's considered a secularist.
You must not pay too much attention to what he's actually doing and said. If he's a secularist, then it should be very easy for you to explain why he's pushing for the destruction of churches, and blames everything "on da juice"(aka the Jews), and why he just went on a massive hunt, imprison, and disappearing act against the secular members of the military leadership. Going as far as imprisoning members who were responsible for installing a secular government the last time around and making those individuals actually disappear after a very quick show trial, then installing generals who are devoutly muslim.
Secular this guy is not.
Re:OK.. About the Gülen movement (Score:1, Informative)
Well, there is a point to "the islamists are taking over". It is a power struggle between Erdogan's party, which has a bit of an islamist agenda, and the Gülen movement, which is an islamist movement, whose goals are unclear. Turkey has always had a "deep state", mainly secular, Atatürk-oriented, which has done some ghastly things. And now either islamist movement is interfering there. It's not racism. It might be bigoted, but racism?
BTW, Turks are not brown people, although a few do have unpronounceable names.
Actually, you would be surprised to know that the Gülen movement encourages inter-religious dialogue and is one of the most progressive Islamic schools when it comes to women's rights and dialogue with the West. [wikipedia.org]
Well, at least I was surprised. Apparently, not all Islamic schools/movements are Islamist.