![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/06\/ASoA.jpg\" "\\"ASoA\\"")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
ATATURK SOCIETIES OF USA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM STRONGLY OPPOSE<\/p>\n
THE TURKISH RULING PARTY\u2019S DECLARED INTENTION
\nTO CHANGE \u201cTURKEY\u2019S FOUNDING PRINCIPLES\u201d PROTECTED BY THE CURRENT CONSTITUTION<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, PUBLICLY STATED its intention to change the Turkish Constitution right after the General Elections, scheduled for June 12, 2011.\u00a0 Erdogan is asking\u00a0 voters to enable him to come back to the Turkish Parliament with at least 367 deputies so that he can CHANGE THE TURKISH CONSTITUTION UNILATERALLY.<\/p>\n
Erdogan is basing his arguments for a \u201cnew constitution\u201d on his party\u2019s desire to have a \u201cmore democratic and civil\u201d constitution.\u00a0 This is a disguise of his real intention to change \u201cTHE FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF TURKEY\u201d, explained in the PREAMBLE and enshrined in the FIRST FOUR articles of the CURRENT CONSTITUTION.<\/p>\n
The letter and the spirit of the \u201cpreamble\u201d and the \u201cirrevocable first four articles\u201d of the current Constitution reflect Ataturk\u2019s philosophy and vision of a \u201cPRO-WESTERN, MODERN, SECULAR, and DEMOCRATIC TURKEY, governed by the RULE OF LAW, EQUALITY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE, its NATIONAL UNITY AND INTERESTS DEFENDED.\u00a0 These founding principles have been protected throughout several amendments of the Constitution since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923.<\/p>\n
The AKP wants to Change Ataturk\u2019s Philosophy and Vision<\/strong><\/p>\n Since coming to power in 2002, the \u201cIslamist AKP\u201d has gradually but increasingly moved away from the Republic\u2019s founding principles and national identity.\u00a0 Numerous foreign observers as well as many Turks are convinced that the AKP is trying to transform Turkey into an Iranian-style Islamic state.\u00a0 Despite its occasional official denials, the AKP\u2019s actions and media statements demonstrate its clear intentions. Most recently, on May 10, 2011, a prominent AKP leader and a State Minister told the Turkish Press openly that \u201cthe only irrevocable article in the Turkish Constitution was Article 1, that Turkey was a \u2018Republic\u2019.<\/strong> All other articles, he said, could be (and will be !\u201d) changed\u201d once AKP has enough number of deputies in the Parliament. Today, even with less than 367 deputies, the AKP firmly controls the country\u2019s\u00a0 legislative and executive branches and already took control of the judiciary by appointing AKP-sympathetic prosecutors and judges.\u00a0 Security forces are transformed into an oppression machine against opponents and protesters.\u00a0 Academia is silenced by replacing university presidents.<\/p>\n TURKEY\u2019S PRO-WESTERN identity and image have already been tarnished. Initially, the AKP renounced its Islamic heritage and began working to secure European Union(EU)-membership, and turn Turkey into an even more liberal and pro-Western state.\u00a0 However, more than eight years later, the AKP seems anything but pro-Western, liberal and democratic !\u00a0 It has returned firmly to its Islamist roots.\u00a0 Erdogan has openly played the \u201cIslamist card\u201d in order to boost himself and his political party, and establish greater dominance in the \u201cIslamic world\u201d.\u00a0 Under the AKP rule, liberal political trends have quickly disappeared and EU accession talks have stalled. In foreign policy, relations with the West and Israel have deteriorated.\u00a0 President Gul and Erdogan spent more time visiting Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar, Syria and Egypt, and hosted a series of anti-Western leaders\u00a0 including Sudan\u2019s president Al-Bashir when the Hague International tribunal was accusing Al-Bashir committing atrocities in Darfur.\u00a0 Al-Bashir, who received a warm welcome from Erdogan, was defending the implementation of Sheria Law in resolving the Darfur conflict.\u00a0 Turkey\u2019s foreign policy has shifted decidedly towards the East and promoted solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes.<\/p>\n SECULARISM has been denied and ignored…\u00a0 Erdogan\u2019s famous quote \u201cone can not be a Moslem and secular at the same time\u201d<\/strong> best explains his political philosophy and intentions\u2026Under the AKP rule, religiosity in Turkey has increased markedly. The government began to hire top bureaucrats from an exclusive pool of religious candidates and the percentage of women in executive positions in government, dropped sharply. Religious observance has become a necessity for those seeking government appointments or lucrative state contracts.\u00a0 Bureaucrats in Ankara now feel compelled to attend Friday prayers lest they be by passed for promotions.\u00a0 Turkey today has over 85,000 active mosques, one for every 350 citizens, the highest per capita in the world, compared to one hospital for every 60,000 citizens, with 90,000 imams, more imams than doctors or teachers.\u00a0 It has opened up thousands of madrasa-like Imam-Hatip schools and about four thousand more official, state-run Qur\u2019an courses.\u00a0 Spending by the government\u2019s Directorate of Religious Affairs has grown five fold from 553 trillion Turkish liras in 2002 to 2.7 quadrillion Turkish liras (about US$325 million), during the first four years of the AKP government. The Directorate has a larger budget than 8 other ministries combined. The objective is to train people for every position in the public service in the country.\u00a0 The AKP has also fought very hard, though unsuccessfully, to lift the ban on \u201chead scarves\u201d in schools and government offices. DEMOCRACY and FREEDOMS have been severely restricted.\u00a0 The mysterious Ergenekon case has become the largest and most controversial judicial investigation in recent Turkish history.\u00a0 Hundreds of people, mostly opponents of AKP and Erdogan,\u00a0 including the high-ranking Army officers, famous journalists, writers, artists, university professors, and heads of modern, secular civil societies have been detained, mostly in multiple simultaneous dawn raids by members of the Counterterrorism Department of the Turkish National Police (TNP).\u00a0 They are tried under detention that has been going on for\u00a0 more than three years without any sign of conclusion.\u00a0 None of the detainees has been\u00a0 convicted, yet.<\/p>\n At the same time, severe restrictions have been put on \u201cfreedom of speech\u201d and \u201cfreedom of press\u201d. On April 2010, Turkey\u2019s Justice Minister said that police intelligence listens to the private conversations of 70,000 people; almost one in every 1,000 Turks live in police scrutiny today.\u00a0 Turkey also ranks at the bottom of the list in Western Europe with regard to the \u201cfreedom of press\u201d.\u00a0 The President of Turkish Journalists Union (TGS) complained that there are thousands of cases filed against journalists, more than hundred filed by Erdogan alone.\u00a0 Currently about 100 Turkish journalists are in jail.\u00a0 One of them was arrested even before the book was published, for authoring a book that investigates the grip on Turkish politics of a religious group.\u00a0 The police seized and burned the unpublished book, while imposing a ban on its internet accessibility. Working closely with the PM\u2019s office, the Turkish Telecom and Communication Ministry (TIB) put thousands of wire tabs on political rivals and\u00a0 introduced censorship on \u201cGoogle\u201d and\u00a0 \u201cYouTube\u201d many times.\u00a0 TIB recently announced its intention to impose, more restrictions on internet.\u00a0 The great majority of the independent media, critical of the government, were forced through unclear legal reasons to sell their businesses, daily newspapers and TV stations to AKP supporters.\u00a0 As a result, the share of Turkish media held by religious, pro-AKP groups rose from about 20 to over 65 percent, at present. In these sale transactions, large credits were granted to AKP supporters from state-owned banks. Furthermore, the Public Procurement Law was amended several times and thresholds for tenders reduced steadily to avoid competitive bidding and allow sales to AKP supporters.<\/p>\n We oppose to any change in Turkey\u2019s \u201cFounding Principles and Vision\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n We, the members of the Ataturk Societies of USA and the United Kingdom, STRONGLY OPPOSE\u00a0 AKP\u2019s plan to change the constitution and remove the \u201cfounding principles of Turkey\u201d from its text.\u00a0 Even with these principles in place in current Constitution, the AKP has moved ahead with its Islamist agenda and already tarnished Turkey\u2019s pro-Western, modern, secular and democratic identity and image.\u00a0 With the removal of Ataturk\u2019s philosophy and vision from the Constitution, it would be harder, if not impossible,\u00a0 to prevent Turkey\u2019s slide into an\u00a0 anti-Western, anti-Democratic, and anti-Secular Islamist\u00a0 state.*<\/p>\n References: ATATURK SOCIETIES OF USA AND THE UNITED KINGDOM STRONGLY OPPOSE THE TURKISH RULING PARTY\u2019S DECLARED INTENTION TO CHANGE \u201cTURKEY\u2019S FOUNDING PRINCIPLES\u201d PROTECTED BY THE CURRENT CONSTITUTION Turkey\u2019s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, PUBLICLY STATED its intention to change the Turkish Constitution right after the General Elections, scheduled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":35321,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[4259,1328],"class_list":["post-35320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-ataturk-features","tag-secularism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nErdogan\u2019s desire to change the Constitution unilaterally and his disrespect for secularism may lead to a turnaround in Turkey\u2019s founding principles, and put the country under governance by Islamic Sheria Law.<\/p>\n
\n1.\u00a0 Turkish Constitutional Court Documents. (Ankara ) May 27, 2011;
\n2.\u00a0 \u201cDegismez Maddeler Degisebilir !\u201d Bulent Arinc, Radikal (Istanbul) May 10, 2011
\n3.\u00a0 \u201cThe Islamists Show Their Hand\u201d and \u201cAbandoning Ataturk\u201d, Soner Cagaptay,
\nNewsweek, Feb.14, 2009 and Newsweek, Sept. 19, 2009
\n4.\u00a0 \u201cSayilarla Kendine Gelmek\u2026\u201d Can Dundar, Milliyet (Istanbul), June 22, 2007
\n5.\u00a0 \u201cTurkey\u2019s Turning Point\u201d, Michael Rubin, Apr. 14, 2008
\n6.\u00a0 \u201cErgenekon \u2013 Between Fact or Fantasy\u201d, Gareth H. Jenkins, Silk Road Papers, Aug.2009
\n7.\u00a0 \u201cCorruption in Public Procurement \u2013 Turkey \u201cGlobal Integrity Report, 2008<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"