AKP Watch

AKP Watch August 28th, 2007

 A devout Muslim with a background in political Islam won the Turkish presidency on Tuesday, in a major triumph for the Islamic-rooted government after months of confrontation with the secular establishment.

Turkey: Back to the Past 

“A person who has defied the (secular) republic, who has said he finds it to be wrong, is about to move to the top of the state. This is a contradiction,” said Deniz Baykal, leader of the secular opposition. His party boycotted the vote on Tuesday and has said it would not take part in some state occasions, including presidential ceremonies.

Islamist Takeover Completed 

Now Islamofascist AK Party (aka AKP) has completed the takeover of Turkey’s top posts, allowing it to move ahead with an Islamisation programme. AK Party already working on a more islamic constitution proposal which removes all references to founding principles of Turkish Republic set by Atatürk. On the hand, a new draft of education reform appeared in newspapers which removes headscarfe ban and Islamise curriculum in the schools.

Secular Turkey is under thread 

Meanwhile Army forces issued a warning in eve of Gül’s presidency: “Our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who can’t embrace Turkey’s unitary nature, and centers of evil that systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish republic,” General Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the military, said in a statement posted to the military’s Web site Monday.

Turkey’s First Islamofascist Führer

Recently, Bekir Coskun, a prominent secular-minded columnist, wrote that he would not feel comfortable calling Mr. Gul “my president.” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would not tolerate such criticism. “Some say that [Mr. Gul] cannot be their president,” he said. “If they can say such things, first, they need to have their Turkish citizenship revoked. They can go wherever they want, and elect whomever they want.” Soon, Mr. Coskun received death threats.

• AK Party , AKP , Erdogan , Gül , Islamofascism , Secularism , Turkey
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AKP Watch August 27th, 2007

Bassam Tibi, an influential Syrian-German scholar of Islam and modernity who coined Euro-Islam term, published second edition of his controversal book “Mit dem Kopftuch nach Europa? Die Türkei auf dem Weg in die Europäische Union” (”With the headscarf to Europe? Turkey on the way into the European Union”).

Tibi argues that the AKP is not to be trusted and that its strategy of democratization and Europeanization is only a subterfuge. AKP’s project of joining the European Union, are only diversionary tactical moves by “pseudo-democrat” Islamists to reach their real strategic goal of imposing an Islamist sharia state. The adaptation of Turkey’s constitutional and legal system to European standards, would serve the instrumental purpose of dismantling the secularist elements as guardians of the Kemalist order, which is the only thing that stands in the way of their conquest of absolute state power.

The hidden agenda which the Islamists adopted after the experience of the 1997 military coup, parallels with the Fascist democratic road to power in the 1930s, the communist strategies of the 1940s, or the Algerian FIS in the 1990s.

Tibi told to daily newspaper Cumhuriyet : “Today Turkey defined by political Islam, but only a secular Turkey belongs to Europe, not headscarfed Turkey.”

Tibi also mentioned that The importance of Kemalism and Secularism for Turkey is underestimated by Europe and European policies toward Turkey paved the way for Political Islam. Tibi said: “The headscarf is not a simple clothe, it’s a sharria law and Turkey is governed by a party which uses headscarf as a political symbol”

Tibi concludes that the AK Party’s “headscarf Islam” is not compatible with  universal values of European enlightment.

• AK Party , AKP , Bassam Tibi , European Union , Islamofascism , Secularism , Turkey
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AKP Watch August 27th, 2007

America’s prominent weekly Newsweek’s International Edition covered raising Islamisation in Turkey. The article “The End of Secularism” written by Soner Cagaptay, a leading scholar in Turkish Politics and a senior fellow in Washington Institute.

In his article, Dr. Cagaptay expressed a deeply concern about the future of secularism in Turkey and wrote on his article:

But given the direction in which Turkey’s headed, it [secularism] could well become a history

For after some 80 years, Turkish secularism is withering away.

According to Dr. Cagaptay, election of Islamist Gul as President, Islamisation shall accelerate:

Now the AKP, a party with an Islamist pedigree, seems set to elect its foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, as president. Once marginal, Turkey’s Islamists have become mainstream, and the consequences could prove enormous.

Dr. Capaptay concludes his article with a dim outlook :

The AKP is unlikely to end Turkish secularism overnight. Gradually, however, religion will assume a larger and larger place in the country’s politics and society. Turkey will become a more Islamic society in its foreign-policy outlook and culture. Anti-Western sentiments will grow. Headscarves, religious education and the rejection of alcohol will become more common. The Turkey of old will slowly disappear, leaving in its place a profoundly different—and potentially much more unstable—nation.

• AK Party , AKP , Gül , Islamisation , Secularism , Turkey
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