Tag: Turkey

Think cosmetic surgery (mostly) for men ain’t profitable?

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Watching proper football, this morning, I witnessed a sharp example of profit margins in action. The animated electric hoardings alongside any English Premier League match have got to be an expensive advertIsing buy. Limited, typically, to beer companies, sports betting, sport shoe manufacturers, etc…seeking a global market…and, today, this popped up during the match between Brighton-and-Hove Albion vs Everton.

Yup. Pick up and fly to Turkey for an appointment with Dr. Cinik…and get your hair island bridged to your do.

I have no idea what he charges; but, it obviously allows for the cost of advertising in one of the largest sports markets in the world.

Erdogan got a letter of advice from Trump — and threw it in the trash!

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❝ It is hard to imagine language like it in many letters between presidents.

Donald Trump’s mixture of threats and locker-room banter infuriated Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. His staff told the BBC that he threw the letter into the bin and launched the Syrian operation the same day. That could be proof there was no Trumpian green light. [or Trump uses it to cover his butt]…

❝ Presidents Erdogan and Trump discussed military action last December. Diplomatic sources here in Ankara suggest that Turkey’s broader strategic objective was to detach the Kurds and the Americans.

That, at any rate, has happened.

No need to say more than that. Just a fact, Jack!

First Minister of Scotland rips Johnson and Trump, Turkish invasion

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It is truly delightful to hear a nationalist leader strengthen her position as a vote-getter by condemning the populist politics of Brexiteers and Trumpublicans.

TWITTER bans bots pimping Saudi propaganda

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❝ Anyone who tweeted about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the past two weeks saw major pushback on Twitter from accounts in Saudi Arabia. But that could slow down in the coming days. Twitter has now reportedly banned an unspecified number of alleged bots that were pushing pro-Saudi propaganda.

The revelation comes from an NBC News report about the “hundreds of accounts that tweeted and retweeted the same pro-Saudi government tweets at the same time.” But Twitter doesn’t get all the credit for spotting the bot network. The accounts were first spotted by IT specialist Josh Russell, whose work was shared with the social media giant via spreadsheet.

❝ Khashoggi, a Saudi national and permanent resident of the U.S., became an exile from Saudi Arabia not for his criticism of the Saudi royal family but because he criticized President Trump shortly after he was elected president in November of 2016. Khashoggi had questioned Trump’s close relationship to Russia and what that would mean for America’s alliances in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia banned Khashoggi from writing and making TV appearances in the country in deference to the American president.

Just in case you haven’t noticed any of our fearless journalists explaining why Khashoggi was exiled and then murdered.

Jamal Khashoggi’s Apple Watch recorded his torture and murder

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Jamal Khashoggi and fiancee Hatice Cengiz

According to a Sabah Gazetesi report, Khashoggi recorded what is believed to be audio evidence of his death inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey more than a week ago. Sabah Washington correspondent Ragip Soylu posted a screenshot of the story to Twitter on Friday.

In its report, Sarah claims Khashoggi recorded questioning by a “hit squad.” A copy of the audio file was synced with Khashoggi’s iPhone, which was in the possession of fiancee Hatice Cengiz. Cengiz was waiting outside the consulate during the alleged exchange, assumedly within Bluetooth range of the Apple Watch in question…

While Saudis were able to wipe certain files from Khashoggi’s device or devices, they were less successful in deleting data from iCloud, the report says.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the truth to come out voluntarily from the criminal Saudi royals…or their pimp in the White House.

Turkey’s schools start to drop evolution — and add jihad

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❝ From September Turkey will have a new education curriculum and this 38-year-old mother is among many parents who are worried. The changes affect first, fifth- and ninth-grade students, and the main controversy surrounds the exclusion of the theory of evolution from secondary education.

“In classes, nine- and 10-year-old students have been memorising prayers from the Koran. I believe religious education should be given at home, not in schools,” said the woman, who did not want to be named, due to security concerns.

❝ Other controversial changes include shortening the time allocated to studying the life of Turkey’s secularist founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, an introduction to the concept of jihad and more classes on religion…

❝ The secular opposition in Turkey says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the governing AK party are trying to move the country away from its founding values, and make society more Islamic and conservative. Mr Erdogan has repeatedly expressed his ambition to raise pious generations…

RTFA. The changes are only a beginning. Enough to warm the cockles of any religious reactionary in other lands. The anti-science brigade doesn’t especially care which religion supersedes science in which country. The backwardness of the Dark Ages is a satisfying start – for them.

How does it feel to live in Turkey right now?

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Ozan Köse/AFP/Getty

❝ Turkey, once held up as an exemplar of secular democracy in the Muslim world, is now the world’s biggest prison for journalists. Since he came to power in 2014, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has slowly tightened his grip on freedom of expression, choking his critics.

❝ Editors of national newspapers now face life sentences for working “against the state”. People have been arrested for Facebook posts criticising the government and last week over 4,400 public servants were sacked in an act branded by critics as a witchhunt targeting the political opposition.

❝ Meanwhile Erdoğan has maintained cordial diplomatic relations with global leaders including Donald Trump, Theresa May and Vladimir Putin, and hopes to extend his constitutional powers with a referendum on 16 April.

This short GUARDIAN article ends with a question needing to be directed at a nation getting ready to decide on the transition from autocratic leadership to fascist control. The editors elicit comments from residents of Turkey about how life has been changing. And includes special methods to guarantee anonymity. Which I recommend to our readers in Turkey.

Something to think about, eh?

Erdoğan, Turkey’s ruling party lose votes to pro-Kurdish, progressive HDP

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HDP Co-Chairman Selahattin Demirtas voting

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has suffered his biggest setback in 13 years of amassing power as voters denied his ruling party a parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002 and gave the country’s large Kurdish minority its biggest voice ever in national politics.

The election result on Sunday, with almost all votes counted, appeared to wreck Erdoğan’s ambition of rewriting the constitution to establish himself as an all-powerful executive president. Erdoğan’s governing Justice and Development party, or AKP, won the election comfortably for the fourth time in a row, with around 41% of the vote, but that represented a steep fall in support from 49% in 2011, throwing the government of the country into great uncertainty.

The vote was the first time in four general elections that support for Erdoğan decreased. The fall coupled with an election triumph for a new pro-Kurdish party meant it was unlikely that the AKP would be able to form a majority government, forcing it to negotiate a coalition, probably with extreme nationalists, or to call a fresh election if no parliamentary majority can be secured within six weeks.

The new party, the HDP or Peoples’ Democratic party, largely representing the Kurds but also encompassing leftwing liberals, surpassed the steep 10% threshold for entering parliament to take more than 12% of the vote and around 80 seats in the 550-strong chamber.

The HDP victory denied Erdoğan’s party its majority.

RTFA for a long, detailed description and discussion of all the main factors in the election. Unlike, many journalists, many politicians outside of Turkey, I am not confident in continued democratic progress. I think there is a possibility of a power-hungry opportunist like Erdoğan forming a fascist alliance with the military and throwing out elections altogether.

I think he would count upon promises to wreck what’s left of the original secular constitution of Turkey, to install something he’d characterize as an Islamist state to pacify conservative rural voters. I think the United States would continue to treat him as their ace player in the Muslim Middle East.

I ain’t alone.