I was talking to a friend of mine, who was born in Turkey, and she thought this was a good overview. It's a bit light on the Islamic pressures, IMO, but a good quick overview if you haven't followed:
http://cloudpage.co/gezi
Damn, I feel like I know someone like this....Without a credible opposition Erdoğan became authoritarian. He stopped seeking public opinion on important issues and started pushing his agenda almost singlehandedly.
Fairness leads to extinction much faster than harsh parameters.
Thanks for sharing that. Improved my understanding a great deal.
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." - Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
Erdogan is an Islamist, and he's not very popular with secular elements in Turkey. This bears watching, as Turkey is a member of NATO, and our bridge between East and West in that region.
Get back to work and stop educating us
Awww crap....this is your job
Fairness leads to extinction much faster than harsh parameters.
From Stratfor - Link at the end
Analysis
April 18, 2013 | 0904 P
In Turkey, Erdogan Finds Obstacles in His Push for Reform
Summary
Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party is trying to forge ahead with an ambitious plan to neutralize the country's Kurdish insurgency and revamp the Turkish political system simultaneously. These issues cannot be addressed, however, without compromising the founding principles of the Republic of Turkey as envisioned by the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Not surprisingly, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan already is running into obstacles.
Analysis
Erdogan is trying to move forward a comprehensive, multistep peace plan with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, known more commonly as the PKK, that would lead to the withdrawal, selective amnesty and eventual disarmament of Kurdish rebels in Turkey. The prime minister meanwhile is trying to build up enough Kurdish support from this peace process to give him enough votes for a constitutional referendum, which would transform Turkey from a parliamentary system to a presidential system and thus enable Erdogan, whose term as prime minister expires in 2015, to continue leading Turkey as president beyond 2014 when presidential elections are scheduled.
But complications to this plan are quickly developing. Turkey's main opposition parties, the Republican People's Party and the Nationalist Movement Party, have boycotted the parliamentary commission to oversee the PKK peace process, leaving the ruling Justice and Development Party to align with the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party. Without enough political pluralism to see this negotiation through, the Justice and Development Party could take a hard political hit if and when the peace process is derailed.
While PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan has been meeting regularly with intermediaries from the Peace and Democracy Party to further the talks with Ankara, the PKK has clearly articulated that while it will "silence its guns," disarmament is unlikely. PKK members in northern Iraq seeking amnesty and a return to Turkey are also skeptical that the Turkish leadership will have the parliamentary heft to see through the necessary judicial reforms to legally permit them into the country. Should they become more skeptical, more radical strands within the movement could see an opening to try to derail the negotiation through attacks, possibly with prompting from Iran and Syria.
The Constitutional reform process is not faring much better. Roughly half the country reportedly opposes the proposal for a presidential system, and the constitutional committee's current debate is snagged just on the preamble. The Justice and Development Party has maintained that the country should be referred to as "the Turkish nation (millet)," but the Peace and Democracy Party wants it changed to "the people of Turkey." The Republican People's Party suggested, and then retracted, its suggestion -- the "Inhabitants of the Republic of Turkey."
While this debate may appear largely semantic to outsiders, the particular phrasing is emotionally significant within Turkey. Through this constitutional process and peace negotiation with the Kurds, the very foundation of the Turkish state is coming into question. In founding the republic in the early 1920s, Ataturk articulated a pure and uncompromising Turkish identity as the way to secure Turkey's territorial integrity and avoid the ills that beset the multiethnic Ottoman Empire. This meant that ethnic identities, including the Kurds, would be wholly denied, however artificially, within the bounds of the Turkish Republic.
Ninety years later, whether he admits it or not, Erdogan is redefining a core Ataturkian principle for the sake of resolving the decadeslong insurgency. PKK leaders have openly talked of a "federalist" model that would give autonomy to a Kurdish region in Turkey as an eventual outcome of this process. Erdogan himself has even referenced a historical Kurdistan province in the Ottoman vilayet system, which delighted many Kurds and horrified many Turkish nationalists.
As Erdogan tries to maintain his political momentum and see this complex set of negotiations through, he will not be able to avoid a highly sensitive political debate on the evolution of the Turkish state. And though these are ideas that have risen and fallen over the past decades, a debate carrying this much weight will naturally take time to play out -- and not necessarily in accordance with Erdogan's election timetable.
Read more: In Turkey, Erdogan Finds Obstacles in His Push for Reform | Stratfor
Stratfor
Analysis
June 2, 2013 | 1244
Turkish protesters gather in Taksim Square in Istanbul on June 1. (BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images)
Summary
The rapid escalation of anti-government protests in Turkey in recent days has exposed a number of long-dormant fault lines in the country's complex political landscape. But even as the appeal of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (also known by its Turkish acronym, AKP) is beginning to erode, it will remain a powerful force in Turkish politics for some time to come, with its still-significant base of support throughout the country and the lack of a credible political alternative in the next elections.
Analysis
The foundation for the current unrest was laid May 28, when a small group of mostly young environmentalists gathered in Istanbul's Taksim Square for a sit-in to protest a planned demolition of walls, uprooting of trees and the perceived desecration of historical sites in the square's Gezi Park. The initially peaceful demonstration turned violent the night of May 30, when police tried to break up what had grown to more than 100 protesters.
The environmental protesters were joined the next day by high-level representatives of the Justice and Development Party's main opposition, the secular Republican People's Party (known as CHP). The message of the protests soon evolved from saving Gezi Park's trees to condemning Erdogan and his party for a litany of complaints. Anti-government chants included "Down with the dictator," "Tayyip, resign," and "Unite against fascism."
The rest of the article is here:
Read more: Turkey's Violent Protests in Context | Stratfor
Light Analysis.
Turkey was chosen to be the battering ram against Syria and initially he did well and Israel formally apologized for killing several Turks aboard a ship in the Med. All was according to plan until Putin stopped by and had a word with Erdogan - Dec of 2012. All over aggression stopped. The Israeli press has vilified Erdogan so now it's "color revolution time". NATO, et als, are non plussed - desperate, actually.
The public's concerns ate probably real but since when did we stop supporting dictators?
Realpolitik in front of your very eyes.
"One man with courage makes a majority."
Here is a recent 4 minute video from Stratfor highlighting the many players involved in Turkey's changing politics.
turkeys-protests-and-kurdish-peace-process
The page can be found here:
Turkey's Protests and the Kurdish Peace Process is republished with permission of Stratfor.
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