Now that Islamist AKP party is more firmly in power, it has become more aggressive in enforcing its views on the public.
By ARIEL BEN SOLOMONGözde Kansu 370(photo credit: Screenshot)
A Turkish TV presenter was fired after the ruling Justice and Development Party’s spokesman criticized her for wearing a revealing dress.AKP party spokesman Huseyin Celik criticized Gözde Kansu’s outfit, saying “We don’t intervene against anyone, but this is too much. It is unacceptable,” the Hurriyet Daily News reported on Tuesday.Since the Islamist AKP came to power in the general elections in 2002, it has been working to slowly Islamize Turkey. But now that the party is more firmly in power, it has become more aggressive in enforcing its views on the public.And since the outbreak of protests that erupted in Istanbul’s Gezi Park this past summer, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been taking increasingly autocratic actions. The protests were sparked by a plan to destroy the park in order to build a shopping mall and the reconstruction of an Ottoman era Taksim Military Barracks.A new law reportedly in the works would allow the police to detain for up to 24 hours – without the request of a prosecutor or judge – those suspected to be at “risk of conducting a protest,” the Turkish paper said on Sunday.Groups that “tend to hold protests” would be monitored and a judge would have the power to extend an arrest for an additional day. Penalties for resisting the police or damaging public property would be increased.The opposition criticized these plans.Last week, a prosecutor in Istanbul requested the imprisonment of writer Emrah Serbes for from 10 months to 12 years for insulting Erdogan.The writer made a joke on TV by changing Erdogan’s middle name from “Tayyip,” to “Tazyik,” which means “pressurized water in reference to the police’s excessive use of water cannons and tear gas against protesters,” according to the paper.Erdogan is a mix between Russian President Vladimir Putin and an Ottoman sultan, wrote Michael Rubin – a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official, who has been closely following the transformation in Turkey under the AKP – on the Commentary blog on Monday.
Reporters Without Borders criticized Turkey back in December 2012 for being the “world’s biggest prison” for journalists, claiming that it had jailed more journalists than China, Eritrea, Iran or Syria.
