Turkey: President Gül signals candidacy for Turkish presidency

Turkish President Abdullah Gül has hinted he is prepared to challenge Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in presidential elections next summer, according to the Guardian.

Asked during an exclusive weekend interview with the Guardian whether he would seek a second term, Gül said it was too early to make a decision. When pressed, he declined to rule out his candidacy, saying he was keeping "all options open."

After the article was published, Presidency Press Consultant Ahmet Sever said Gül had said nothing different from his previous statements about his candidacy for the 2014 presidency elections. Sever said the article's headline hinting at a battle for presidency between Gül and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was the writer's own observation.

Gül insisted Erdoğan was a friend, not a rival, and dismissed talk of policy rifts over his more inclusive stance on issues such as alcohol use and when Muslim women may wear the headscarf.

Read more: POLITICS - President Gül signals candidacy for Turkish presidency

Turkish president kicks off three-day visit to the Netherlands

Turkey's president Abdullah Gül and his wife Hayrunissa arrived in the Netherlands on Monday for a three-day state visit to commemorate 400 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

On Tuesday morning the couple will meet queen Beatrix at the palace on Amsterdam's Dam square before laying a wreath at the war memorial in the presence of prime minister Mark Rutte, the Telegraaf said.

Amsterdam's mayor Eberhard van der Laan has evoked his emergency powers for the duration of the visit because of the risk of trouble between Dutch Turks and Kurds in the capital. There were several minor clashes between the two groups last year.

The visit has also been the subject of much media speculation, with the Volkskrant and AD saying Rutte has a difficult job in the coming week: not only is he involved in negotiations to cut government spending, but he must also hope Geert Wilders does not step out of line. ‘Treating a certain race or religion as the enemy and xenophobia are illnesses which can have very serious consquences,’ Gül told the paper. ‘Look what happened in Europe during World War II.’

For more: DutchNews.nl - Turkish president kicks off three-day visit to the Netherlands

The Netherlands: Turkish President calls Wilders islamophobe

Turkish President Abdullah Gül has called Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders an islamophobe. In an interview with Dutch mass-circulation daily De Telegraaf, President Gül said Mr Wilders represents an extreme voice, which feeds radicals."

He continued, saying because of Wilders “a negative us-against-them climate is developing in the whole of Europe, which is laying the foundation for ethnic religious discrimination.” Nevertheless, the president said he would shake the hand of the leader of the anti-Islam party if he met him.

President Gül is in the Netherlands on a three-day trip in the coming week to mark 400 years of relations between Turkey and the Netherlands at the invitation of the Dutch government.

For more: Turkish President calls Wilders islamophobe < Dutch news | Expatica The Netherlands

Is Turkey Really a ‘Vibrant Democracy’? - by by Okan Altiparmak

It’s easy and tempting to think that a 99% Muslim country is going to turn toward Islamism. Yet this may be happening in Turkey despite the fact that less than 10% of Turks describe themselves as “fully devout” (KONDA’s “Religion, Secularism and the Veil in Daily Life” Survey). For tens of millions of Turks, religiosity is a private matter, an attitude parallel to that in the United States.

The problem is that there is a minority of pro-Islamists who have been allowed to take control of Turkey’s ruling party, the AKP, although at the ballot box, the party represents nearly half of the Turkish people due to a combination of the ineptitude of the opposition, the AKP’s far superior organization, and its exploitation of state power.

Despite its claims to be a moderate centrist party “on the pattern of Europe’s Christian Democrats” and a good manager of the economy and foreign relations, there is much evidence that the AKP has increasingly been fundamentally transforming Turkey while tolerating rampant cronyism, which has effectively lead to a redistribution of wealth and power. Consequently, a small percentage of Turkey’s population — also only a segment of the AKP voters — have been politically and financially empowered at the expense of the rest of the Turkish people.

As a result of a highly centralized, top-down system, the party leader, in this case Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan, practically chooses every parliamentary candidate. The parliamentary system allows him as prime minister to control both the executive and the legislative branches of the government. The current regime has advanced steadily to add control over the courts and media, and now even the military is under severe pressure.

In Turkey, the president is supposed to be above political parties once elected and has traditionally played such a role. However, that tradition appears to have ended with the 2007 election of Erdoğan sidekick Abdullah Gül by the Turkish parliament.

Note EU-Digest: In the meantime, the US, ignorant or not,  is still harboring Fetullah Gulen,  the leader of a shadowy Islamist sect led by the mysterious hocaefendi (master lord) Fethullah Gülen; the sect often bills itself as a proponent of tolerance and dialogue but works toward purposes quite the opposite. Today, Gülen and his backers (Fethullahcılar, Fethullahists) not only influence the government of Erdogan but de-facto also are aiming to one day becoming  the government of Turkey.

The other undeniable fact is that despite the rhetoric of European Union accession, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has turned Turkey away from Europe and towards Iran and reoriented Turkish policy in the Middle East from earlier sympathy towards Israel, more towards friendship with Hamas, and Hezbollah. There is no doubt that as a result Anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic sentiments have increased.

For more:L Pajamas Media » Is Turkey Really a ‘Vibrant Democracy’?

Spiegel Online: Turkey - The Secularists' Ghoul

For the complete report from SPIEGEL ONLINE click on this link

Turkey - The Secularists' Ghoul

Turkey's Abdullah Gül is making a second run for president in Ankara. German commentators look favorably at the foreign minister's achievements and some say his election could bode well for Turkey's path to the European Union. That is, of course, if the military doesn't stage a coup.

Gül, however, is quite a divisive fellow in Ankara. His wife Hayrunisa wears a headscarf and even sued for the right to adorn one at a Turkish university in a case before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Members of Turkey's powerful military, who see themselves as the guardians of the secularist state created by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, fear that working together with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he would seek to erode the Muslim majority country's strict separation of church and state thus paving the way for the country's creeping Islamization.