Erdoğan and Taking Advantage of Europe’s “Pathological Altruism”: Henry George, Marion West, Mar. 19, 2020
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Turkey and Coronavirus: Devout Muslims Will Defeat the “Jewish Plot”
Burak Bekdil
BESA, Mar. 24, 2020Turkey’s fight against coronavirus (COVID-19) is generally accepted to be rational, well-timed, not too badly planned, and fairly effective. At the time when the German case toll was 7,000 (and the Dutch and UK case tolls were at around 2,000 each), Turkey’s was just 98. And when, on March 19, the Italian death toll surpassed China’s at 4,400, the Turkish mortality figure was just three. The government sealed borders—most significantly with Iran—just in time; cancelled all public gatherings and events, including football games; ordered most businesses to be shuttered; and launched an effective awareness campaign to keep Turks at home. About 3,000 Turkish pilgrims on their way home from Mecca were quarantined. The Turkish awareness rate of coronavirus was 100% by mid-March, according to one poll.
But several questions remain unanswered. Why did the Turkish religious authorities allow 21,500 people to travel to Mecca in the first place? Would it not have been safer for them to wait to fulfill their pilgrimage until after the world goes back to normal? And why were only 3,000 pilgrims quarantined? The other 18,500 returnees from Mecca are walking free in Turkey.
The question also arises: was the number of Turkish cases low because of government censorship? No, the “Turkish success” can be much more easily explained. The number of reported Turkish cases was low because the number of tests Turkey conducted was low. As of March 16, Turkey had performed just 2,800 tests (two tested positive out of a population of 83 million). Compare that to South Korea, which has performed 250,000 tests (8,100 tested positive out of a population of 51 million). It’s simple: if you don’t test people, you don’t put cases on the books.
Coronavirus in Turkey, like most things in that country, highlights the black humor in tragedy. As ever, Turkey is fun unless you have to live there.
Professor Ali Erbaş, president of Diyanet, Turkey’s highest religious authority, gave a Friday sermon in which he warned Muslims not to attend crowded events. He delivered this sermon at a mosque containing 5,000 people. A few days later, Diyanet issued a fatwa indefinitely suspending Friday prayers.
Turks are a brave people, and pious Turks are apparently the bravest of all. Large groups of Muslims protested Diyanet for the suspension of Friday prayers on the logic that prayers would surely protect the pious from any evil, up to and including a silly little virus. Reading the news of the protests, a friend of the author said, “It’s a view we should respect. It’s also a theory worth testing. How about injecting the coronavirus into all these pious folks?”
But the way “better-educated” Turks, including journalists and columnists, interpret the coronavirus crisis is even more entertaining. One Islamist writer suggested that “now that all bars and alcohol-licensed enterprises are (temporarily) shut maybe we should consider keeping them shut forever due to the risk of coronavirus.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Coronavirus Pandemic Fuels Hate Speech in Turkey
Nordic Monitor, Mar. 24, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has fueled hate and xenophobic speech in the predominantly pro-government Turkish media, which accuses the usually targeted groups and countries including Jews, the Gülen movement and the West of being the source of COVID-19 and spreading the virus among Turkish society.
The pandemic is portrayed by the country’s pro-government “experts” as a tool of biological warfare, a selective or smart virus developed by Zionists, Westerners/dominant powers, people affiliated with the Gülen movement or the Rockefeller family in order to “subjugate intransigent countries to their will,” “redesign the world,” “launch chaos in the country,” “create ‘Lego’ religions” or “occupy minds”.
COVID-19 has become an opportunity to dehumanize minorities and vulnerable social groups for some loyalists of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. According to Nedim Şener, a government propagandist: “The coronavirus is a disease that can someday be cured. But FETÖ is incurable. It cannot be gotten rid of unless someone dies. FETÖ is an illness and immorality that is worse than the coronavirus. There is no cure for it at all. This society hosts hundreds of thousands of those who have contracted the FETÖ virus.”
FETÖ is a derogatory term coined by the Turkish government to refer to the faith-based Gülen movement, a civic group that has been active in education, interfaith and intercultural dialogue and charity work in many countries. The movement is led by US-based Turkish Muslim scholar Fethullah Gülen, a vocal critic of Erdoğan on corruption and the Turkish government’s aiding and abetting of armed jihadist groups in Syria and other countries. President Erdoğan turned against the movement after major corruption investigations in December 2013 that implicated Erdoğan, his family members and his business and political associates.
“What is the purpose? Whose plot is it [COVID-19]?” an anchorman at A Haber, a widely watched news channel owned by President Erdogan’s family, asked his guest, Coşkun Başbuğ, who was presented as an expert on security and terrorism. “It is the plot of the Zionist terror organization. Zionism is a structure accustomed to ruling the world through economy. It benefits from drops in stock markets. You are going to see in a matter of weeks that they will find a vaccination for this virus,” Başbuğ replied.
Then Başbuğ stated that “Italy is one of the targets because it rejected a proposal from ‘the hitman of the Zionists,’ US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to set up an Operation Provide Comfort-like military force in Syria [a reference to military operations initiated by the US-led coalition to defend northern Iraqi Kurds against Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the Gulf War]. China and Iran have for some time been the targets of the smart virus or biological war.”
Another time the same expert was more precise, saying: “Nobody should doubt that those who created this virus will find a vaccine for it. Irael has already announced that it found one,” adding that “Jews, Zionists have engineered the coronavirus as a biological weapon just like the bird flu and the Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever [CCHF]. They are an organized network targeting Russia through oil and market fluctuations and China through the coronavirus. They have inflicted a scourge called the coronavirus on humanity. They keep generating those kinds of viruses to design the world, to force people to buy their medications, to subjugate countries and to neuter the world’s population.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Turkey’s Pelican Group – Erdoganʹs State Within a State?
Hulya Schenk and Daniel Derya Bellut
Quantara. de, Mar. 23, 2020
It was one of those moments that once again showed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s seemingly limitless power. Two weeks ago, he was on a return flight from a state visit to Azerbaijan, accompanied representatives of the pro-government press, who asked him sympathetic questions.
One journalist criticised that OdaTV had not yet been charged, saying the media portal was after all one of the key initiators of the “coup attempt”. What was meant were the Gezi protests in 2013, in which large parts of civil society demonstrated against the government. OdaTV is said to have described the actions of the state and the police relating to the unrest as “murderous”.
Erdogan thanked the journalist for his assessment and said he would take care of it. “The ball is now in the court of justice,” he said. A week later, the Turkish judiciary initiated investigations into OdaTV employees. Police arrested Editor-in-Chief Baris Pehlivan, news chief Baris Terkoglu and editor Hulya Kilinc. Access to the website was blocked.
The media outlet was charged with having reported about a Turkish intelligence officer who died in the war in Libya, and of having “revealed information and documents related to intelligence activities”. This information, however, had previously been released by a member of the opposition Iyi party at a press conference in parliament. The Constitutional Court had ruled in a landmark decision in 2016 that information is not subject to secrecy if it was previously known to the public.
Pelican – ongoing suspicions for years
Denounced by pro-system media: one journalist criticised that OdaTV had not yet been charged, saying the media portal was after all one of the key initiators of the “coup attempt”. What was meant were the Gezi protests in 2013, in which large parts of civil society demonstrated against the government
For many observers and social media users, this speedy move was further proof that a secret group close to Erdogan has infiltrated the judiciary. Suspicions have been growing for years that a faction known as the Pelican group is gaining increasing influence in Turkey and effectively operating as a state within the state. The name refers to “The Pelican Brief”, a 1992 legal thriller novel by John Grisham that was later turned into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts.
Alican Uludag, a journalist with Turkey’s opposition Cumhuriyet daily, has no doubt that the group exists. His research has shown that the Pelican group pulled the strings during the arrests and censorship surrounding OdaTV, he said. “Journalists working for Pelican have publicly welcomed and supported the arrests, and OdaTV has for years been reporting on the re-structuring of the Turkish justice system initiated by Pelican.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Erdoğan and Taking Advantage of Europe’s “Pathological Altruism”
Henry George
Marion West, Mar. 19, 2020
Greece is again facing a surge of migrants attempting to get into Europe through Turkey’s western border. The numbers are nowhere near those Europe saw in the summer of 2015. Even so, the fact that this is happening demonstrates the situation has only been frozen since 2015. The migrant crisis, like the conflict in Syria, is nowhere near solved. It never ended, only abated, and it is once again playing a part in shaping the politics of the European continent.
We start in Syria. On Thursday, 27 February 2020, 33 Turkish troops were killed in Idlib by government forces. Turkey intervened in the Kurdish region of Afrin in January 2018 and in Syria’s Kurdish dominated north-east in October 2019. This latest clash comes as part of the final push by the Syrian regime to end the civil war. Thanks to the help of Russia and Iranian proxies, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is on the verge of reclaiming what remains of his shattered country.
As a result of the civil war, Turkey has 3.7 million Syrians within its borders. Following the crisis of 2015, Turkey’s Islamist dictator and aspirant Sultan, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan agreed to curtail the numbers of migrants from making the journey to Greece following an agreement with the European Union (EU) in March of 2016. This deal boiled down to Erdoğan agreeing to block further mass movements of people into Europe through Turkey if the EU agreed to a liberalization of visas, reopening Turkey’s route to joining the EU, and to pay his regime a Danegeld of €6bn to help deal with the migrants in Turkey.
This deal was always in Erdoğan’s favor, giving him the power of blackmail over the EU. The threat to open the borders into Europe has been made before. This has been joined by Erdoğan’s repeated calls, most recently in 2018, to Turks in Europe to remain loyal to the motherland by voting and acting in European legislatures in Turkey’s interests. This is subversion and serves as another example of how Erdoğan’s actions are seen as increasingly hostile to European interests by European leaders.
Even so, the migrants have themselves resorted to violence and aggression against the Greek border guards, leaving their image as poor helpless refugees somewhat stained, despite the best efforts of a sympathetic Western media.
This is the background to the most recent instantiation of the long-running crisis. It is unclear as to what exactly Erdoğan is after, but the lie that the borders between Turkey and Greece were open at the end of February is most likely Erdoğan’s way of venting his fury at the attack on his troops in Syria—and at Europe’s perceived lack of support to Turkey over its refugee population. As Erdoğan has said: “What did we do yesterday? We opened the doors…We will not close those doors…Why? Because the European Union should keep its promises.” In fact, many of the migrants in the current wave are not from Idlib province as the news channel TRT claims, nor are they even from Syria. Rather, they hail from places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and North Africa. This is a game of geopolitics with migrants as the pieces, and Erdoğan is the one pushing them forward. Even so, the migrants have themselves resorted to violence and aggression against the Greek border guards, leaving their image as poor helpless refugees somewhat stained, despite the best efforts of a sympathetic Western media.
Erdoğan is angry that Europe has not effectively given him a blank check of money and material to continue his faltering campaign in Syria. Despite assertions to the contrary, he bears a large measure of the responsibility for the current scene at the Greek border. His slur that “There is no difference between what the Nazis did and those images from the Greek border” is bold given the murderous actions of his forces in Syria. As Aris Roussinos writes for Unherd, “Erdogan’s Turkey is the greatest destabilising factor in our near abroad.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
In light of the corona crisis, the Daily Briefing will be dedicating some of its links to virus information and opinion.
How is Turkey Dealing with the Corona Crisis?: Quantara.de, Mar. 20, 2020 –– Turkey is an international hub, not only due to its geographical position, but because of the huge network of refugees that centres there. It is therefore hard to believe that so far, only a few people in Turkey have come into contact with the new coronavirus. In neighbouring Iran, meanwhile, a catastrophe is in progress – partly because the government there played the situation down for so long. After some initial hesitation, the Turkish government is now taking decisive action, and is also keen to help its neighbour.
Rex Murphy: The Financial Impact of COVID-19 Is Enough to Make Canadians Sick with Worry: Rex Murphy, National Post, Mar. 27, 2020 — Canada is going through a singular period, the greatest crisis in the lifetime of the very oldest of us. A pandemic illness, the virulence of which we still do not have a proper measure, has jolted the entire nation. It has had an impact, literally, on every single Canadian.
Sweden Bucks Global Trend With Experimental Virus Strategy: Richard Milne, Financial Times, Mar. 25, 2020– Sweden has become an international outlier in its response to the deadly coronavirus outbreak by keeping schools open and adopting few other restrictions, as the Scandinavian nation embarks on what one health expert.
We Thought We Were in Control of Our Lives. The Virus Shattered That: Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, Mar. 19, 2020 –– On Tuesday, the little airport in Palm Springs was unusually crowded. It was packed with snowbirds eager to get home. There were parents with their kids and wagonloads of luggage. There were sprightly older people in running shoes and tracksuits.
