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No freedom of speech in Turkey

Canan Kaftancioglu is a Turkish politician and member of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). Like most modern politicians, she tweets, and uses the platform to criticise the Turkish government. She has criticised them over the death of a 14-year-old boy who was hit by a tear gas grenade during a protest, and over their nakedly oppressive response to the 2016 coup attempt. And as a result, she now faces almost ten years imprisonment after being convicted of insulting the government and "spreading terrorist propaganda":

A leading secular politician in Turkey has been sentenced to nearly 10 years in jail for "terror propaganda and insults" against the Turkish state.

Canan Kaftancioglu, 47, was convicted mainly over tweets which date back several years.

She has said the charges were politically motivated and remains free pending an appeal.

Just another example of how Turkey is not a free democracy, but an oppressive, authoritarian state.

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Democracy wins in Turkey

Three months ago, Turkey's increasingly authoritarian government suffered a shock loss in local elections, losing the mayoralty of Istanbul to an opposition candidate. So the Turkish government made them vote again so they'd get it "right". But it didn't work out the way they'd planned:

Turkey’s opposition has won a high-stakes rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election, a landmark victory in a country where many feared democracy was failing and a serious blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Shortly after initial results pointing to a landslide win for opposition coalition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu emerged on Sunday evening, the candidate of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Binali Yıldırım, conceded and congratulated his rival.

The repeat election, designed to undo İmamoğlu’s narrow surprise win in the 31 March contest, was an unprecedented test for both Turkey’s fragile democratic institutions and Erdoğan’s political future.

Yıldırım’s swift concession saved the AKP the embarrassment of watching the vote count add up to a second defeat, but the loss is likely to lead to intense new power struggles inside the coalition government. Opposition parties were jubilant.

This looks like a strong backlash against Erdoğan's anti-democratic behaviour, which is good for Turkey's democracy. And it also suggest that Erdoğan is going to respect the vote, rather than trying to overturn it again. Which means that his time in charge is hopefully coming to an end.

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If this is "terrorism", we should all be "terrorists"

Turkey has arrested six human rights activists for "terrorism":

Amnesty International urged the British government to end its silence over Turkey’s slide into authoritarian rule on Tuesday after its local director and five other activists were remanded in custody on accusations of belonging to a terrorist organisation. It is possible the six will now be held in jail for as long as two years before their full trial comes to court.

Idil Eser, local director of the London-based organisation, was one of a group of activists including a German and a Swedish national detained on 5 July while attending a routine workshop on digital security and information management near Istanbul.

Turkey’s state prosecutor had asked the court on Monday to remand all 10 in custody pending trial on charges of membership of a terrorist organisation. Six were retained in jail to give the prosecution time to assemble full charges. Four others were released.

If promoting human rights is "terrorism", we should all be "terrorists". And governments which adopt that definition deserve to be overthrown by their people.

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Fethullah Gulen is facing extradition to Turkey by Donald Trump – so he should read up about his country

This is what happens when you invite dictators to your country

Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is currently visiting the USA. This being the USA, Land Of Free Speech, naturally there are protests. Which get suppressed brutally by Erdoğan's security detail:

The United States has said it was voicing its “strongest possible” concern to Turkey over a street brawl that erupted between protesters and Turkish security personnel during Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to Washington.

Police said the fighting outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence on Tuesday injured 11 people, including a Washington police officer, and led to two arrests for assault. At least one of those arrested was a protester.

“We are communicating our concern to the Turkish government in the strongest possible terms,” state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in a statement.

Video of the incident showed men in dark suits chasing anti-government protesters and punching and kicking them as police intervened. Two men were bloodied from head wounds as bystanders assisted dazed protesters.

[...]

Turkey’s official Anadolu state news agency reported that protesters were chanting anti-Erdoğan slogans as the president entered the residence after meeting Donald Trump to discuss the fight against Islamic State militants.

“Police did not heed Turkish demands to intervene,” the news agency said, and Erdoğan’s security team and Turkish citizens moved in and “dispersed them”.

Which is exactly what would happen in Turkey (or some shitty post-Soviet kleptocracy). But the US isn't Turkey, and people there still (in theory) have rights. Erdoğan's thugs appear to have committed a number of crimes, and they need to be arrested and prosecuted for them. If they have diplomatic immunity, they need to be deported immediately. Either way, the USA needs to send a clear message that visiting dictators can't behave like they do at home.

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It is President Erdogan's Turkey, not humane Germany, that is guilty of 'Nazi practices'

UK Tories are soft on the death penalty

Opposition to the death penalty has been a longstanding plank of UK foreign policy. But under the Conservative government, they seem to be going soft on it. First, they told the Foreign Office to stop talking about it. Now, they're openly advocating letting Turkey walk away from its international commitments not to murder people:

Boris Johnson stunned his EU foreign minister counterparts this afternoon by calling on the bloc to tone down its opposition to Turkey reintroducing the death penalty, it has been reported.

Diplomats present at the foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels said that Mr Johnson had warned against pushing Turkey “into a corner” over the issue.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan backed the return of the death penalty this summer after he purged over 100,000 potential political opponents from the country’s civil service and arrested opposition political parties.

The problem is that practicising state murder is now a fundamental barrier to EU membership - so if Turkey reinstates executions (and abrogates its commitments under both the ECHR and the second optional protocol to the ICCPR in the process), it can never join. Which might get in the way of arms sales or something. And OTOH, why the hell is the UK trying to dictate EU membership decisions anyway? After all, they're leaving; they shouldn't be allowed to fuck things up for everybody on the way out.

Meanwhile, you really have to wonder: if the UK is soft on executions internationally, do they want to reintroduce them at home? Again, its banned by their participation in the EU and ECHR - but Teresa May wants to get rid of both of those things in the name of "Britishness" (because human rights apparently aren't British - the Magna Carta and Thomas Paine aside). So, does Brexit mean British executions?

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A beautiful mosque and the dark period of the Armenian genocide

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A quarter century after I was arrested by Turkish police, things have only got worse for Kurdistan

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This is what it feels like to be an ordinary Kurd caught in the tragedy of Turkey’s turmoil

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Why did President Erdogan restart the battle with the Kurdish PKK? The answer lies in the tale of the failed coup

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Destruction in Kurdish capital of south-east Turkey is dark mirror to Syria