This is how math­e­mat­ics work in the Turk­ish islamo-nation­al­ist state, con­fi­dent in the cow­ardice of the Euro­pean pow­ers who pre­tend not to see the train com­ing down the tracks.

The Ger­man-Turk­ish jour­nal­ist Deniz Yücel,  has been released on bail, after being detained for “ter­ror­ism” for over a year and whose free­dom was pub­licly request­ed  in a meet­ing between the Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter and Angela Merkel – tem­porar­i­ly back in the sad­dle. He had the chance of leav­ing Turkey and is now safe­ly back in Germany.

This was good news for his friends and sup­port­ers. We must remain aware of the fact that the terms for the exchange between the Turk­ish and Ger­man gov­ern­ments con­tain addi­tion­al con­ces­sions and reservations.

At the same time, Turk­ish injus­tice pro­nounced three sen­tences of manda­to­ry per­pe­tu­ity in the lengthy tri­al of pro­tag­o­nists of a so-called “attempt to over­turn the con­sti­tu­tion­al order”, as stat­ed in the medias at the boot of the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment.   There had to be some weight laid on the oth­er side of the scale of injustice.

Six life-time sentences

A mix­ture of sen­tences of known jour­nal­is­tic oppo­nents such as the broth­ers Ahmet and Mehmet Altan, or the 73 year old jour­nal­ist and writer, Nazlı Ilı­cak, along with ex-col­lab­o­ra­tors of the news­pa­per Zaman, allies yes­ter­day and ene­mies today, treat­ed as the “media arm” of the move­ment of preach­er Gülen (FETÖ) pro­vides the oppor­tu­ni­ty to seal a so-called anti-ter­ror­ist pact with six life-time sen­tences in Turk­ish pris­ons. Of course, the con­sid­er­a­tions by the pros­e­cu­tion are grotesque, speak­ing as they do of “sub­lim­i­nal mes­sages” deliv­ered in a tele­vi­sion stu­dio pri­or to the fake failed putsch in 2016.

This serves as a clear warn­ing to Euro­pean “human-right­ists” who still refuse to con­sid­er any sanc­tions against the AKP regime ‘a vital part­ner in the Mid­dle East’. These same gov­ern­ments keep silent while Afrin is attacked, and when the vil­lains’ agree­ment on refugees con­clud­ed with Erdoğan pro­duces its mur­der­ous effects in unwant­ed world mis­ery. Even those unan­swered laments are tram­pled. And this is when the Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Euro­pean Coun­cil, to which Turkey is a par­ty, insists on the respect of deci­sions of the con­sti­tu­tion­al Court, which had ordered the lib­er­a­tion of Mehmet Altan, a short time ago.

The con­sti­tu­tion­al order is Erdoğan’s, war­lord and clan boss, now plung­ing for­ward in a clear pat­tern of “all the com­mon graves the repub­lic spends its time in dig­ging and cov­er­ing over with the soil of for­get­ful­ness” to use Aslı Erdoğan’s fine expres­sion, she who is also threat­ened with a life sen­tence, and pro­tect­ed, luck­i­ly, by her semi-exile.

These sen­tences announce upcom­ing ones, as Euro­pean gov­ern­ments denounce their own agree­ments, retreat and fall into divi­sions, the first of these man­i­fest­ing today in the face of exac­tions by the Turk­ish State and free Syr­i­an islamists gath­ered against Afrin.

The need for the regime, and the polit­i­cal choice made by Erdoğan of tens­ing the domes­tic sit­u­a­tion once more in order to con­sol­i­date his pow­er, threat­ened by a num­ber of crises now becom­ing vis­i­ble, also rests on the firm appli­ca­tion of injustice.

Suc­ceed­ing purges and decrees have frag­ilized and divid­ed the pop­u­la­tions, installed a muf­fled ter­ror, invis­i­ble to tourists, yet omnipresent.

Recent­ly, a “con­tract” was put out against a Bel­gian jour­nal­ist, Bahar Kimy­ongür, and a price offi­cial­ly put on his head.   This did­n’t make more of stir out­side his bor­ders than would a Bel­gian joke. Today, the least we could expect from a South­ern  busi­ness woman, now France’s min­is­ter of cul­ture, would be some Act for con­demned writ­ers whose names appear on her catalog.

These judi­cia­ry pro­ceed­ing, all rest­ing on the sacro-sanct accu­sa­tion of ter­ror­ism can­not be deci­phered in sim­ple black and white. As with the immense major­i­ty of tri­als against jour­nal­ists and writ­ers, these inves­ti­ga­tions have roots in the set­tling of old accounts over the Turk­ish deep state, old affairs of the repub­lic, of access to pow­er and of the cor­rup­tion of the ones and of the oth­ers, on a back­ground of “repub­li­can democ­ra­cy” that has nev­er existed.

The Turk­ish nation-state is in cri­sis, as are all the nation-states in the Mid­dle-East; they will con­tin­ue so as long as ten­sions relat­ing to iden­ti­ty and reli­gion as well as the nation­al­ist vio­lence of its pow­er will pur­sue its mor­tal dialec­tics with old West­ern democ­ra­cies rav­aged by unbri­dled liberalism.

The ostrich is vul­ner­a­ble when it digs its head into the sand.


Yücel, Altan, je pose un, je retiens trois… Cliquez pour lire
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