Turkey's Orwellian "democracy"

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jun 13, 2010 at 02:04

Edward Halper wrote :

>Turkish democracy was hardly perfect, but there were elections and basic civil rights and freedoms.<

Excluding one little freedom though which turns out to be the foundation of all freedom , i.e. freedom of speech and thought . In Turkey you don't even have a right to say in public "I don't like Ataturk" without immediately facing criminal investigation and a jail sentence . But having terrorized into love and admiration of Ataturk those Turks who don't find him as holy and infallible as the Turkish hagiography insists hasn't been enough for them . They realize there are still foreigners like me and others who don't love Saint Ataturk and dare say that on the net . So the Turkish Thought Police had a brilliant idea of globalizing their witch-hunting against denigrators of "Ataturk, Turkey and the country's flag" abroad . And remarkably enough they have chosen America as their best ally in the Turkish war on freedom of speech ! As "Hurrieyt" disclosed on 8.12.2008 : "Ankara public prosecutor Kursat Kayral has requested the identities of YouTube users, who insult Ataturk, Turkey and the country's flag from the United States Justice Ministry in order to launch an investigation into these users .Those YouTube users determined to be living outside Turkey will be detained upon entering the country, pending the outcome of an inquest." Interesting news , isn't it , especially if one bears in mind that - to the best of my knolwedge - no negative reaction from the official US side or an American outcry followed ?

"I do not think that Turkey is and will always be a police state."

If the two above examples don't convince you that we are dealing here with a fully-fledged Orwellian-type police state ( with Big Brother , Thought Police , memory holes etc. ) , then what would you call a police state in the first place ?

By the way, as far as I remember such a police state as Nazi Germany never asked US to disclose identities of foreign "denigrators" of Hitler , Germany or the Nazi flag from the US to with intent to arrest them as soon as they unsuspectingly cross the German border .

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