Erdogan is transforming Turkey

into a totalitarian prison

Erdogan, president of Turkey, is punishing several journalists with years of jail
absourdly accusing them, saying that they were members of a terrorist organization
who they shared informations of it on twitter.

The causes of this heavy punishments could date back to the failed coup attempt in
2016 which caused a campaign of repression from Erdogan, against everyone that
could be seen as enemies. He arrested an incredible amount of people and even more
have been fired. Erdogan’s prime targets are the perceived followers of the opposition
cleric Fethullah Gulen, who now lives in Pennsylvania. He says that once him and
Erdogan were allies in politics, but then the coup happened and Gulen was charged of
being part of the terrorist organization

Turkey once had a strong, independent press, but Erdogan has waged a campaign
closing media outlets, forcing others into new ownership, and using friendly judges
and prosecutors. Some reporters and editors were convicted for what they said on
Twitter. A lawyer representing two journalists said: “In our opinion, the name of the
organization in which the defendants are accused of being members should be TTO:
Tweetist Terrorist Organization. There are no weapons or bombs in the case, only
news articles and tweets.” Ali Akkus, who was news editor of the dead company
Zaman daily, had said on Twitter, “No dictator can silence the press.” The use of the
word “dictator” was singled out by a prosecutor in the charges against him. Akkus
received a sentence of seven years and six months in prison.

Cuma Ulus, the editor of the daily Millet, got the same sentence and declared earlier
during the proceedings: “I have been a journalist for 21 years. I stood against
terrorism and violence, defended expression of freedom during all my life.” In the
indictment reports on twitter had shown people accusing him of stirring up against
the government.

Separately about twenty cartoonists and executives from the Cumhuriyet newspaper
are also on trial. Erdogan is reportedly planning an assault on Internet broadcasting
and free expression online, as well.
The show trials underscore how far Turkey has fallen from Western norms of
democracy, human rights and rule of law. Erdogan is happily marching alongside
Russia, China, Egypt, Cuba and others where legitimacy to rule rests on coercion and
thought control. Erdogan’s developing dictatorship must be called out for what it is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/erdogan-is-transforming-turkey-into-a-
totalitarian-prison/2018/03/11/19a4cde8-23c9-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?
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Will Egypt become a totalitarian state?
The Muslim Brotherhood wants to control all aspects of the state and personal life
after consolidating its power. The Muslim Brotherhood has made another giant step
forward in consolidating its rule in Egypt through the successful passage of the newly
drafted constitution by some 64 percent of those who voted. Next come the
parliamentary elections in two months from the first date through which the
Brotherhood will regain control of the legislative branch. In the meantime, it has
stacked the upper house of Parliament, called the Shura Council, with its own
members who will have the power to legislate until the new lower house is elected.

President Mohammed Morsi has already processed and made peace with the powerful
Egyptian military. The new constitution has given him the power to punish the
Supreme Constitutional Court by reducing its size to 11 members. The president of
the Lawyers’ Syndicate, Sameh Ashour, pointed out the goal admitting that those are
monopolistic plans and that the Brotherhood wants to control all the state.

Saul Bellow once stated that intelligence can be masked as ignorance when in need of
illusion. To maintain the illusion that the Muslim Brotherhood is intent on
transforming Egypt into a democracy requires the application of considerable
ignorance. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in reaction to Ataturk’s
abolition of the caliphate in 1924. Its ultimate aim is to restore the caliphate. Its
vehicle for doing so is a one-party system similar to that of the Soviet Union under
Stalin. A bottom-up strategy has been formed in which people would be Islamized at
the local level first. For this purpose, he created his party. After winning the masses,
the Muslim Brotherhood would take total control.

Total control is necessary , as the chief of the Muslim Brotherhood Sayyid Qutb said,
because Islam wants to unite earth and heaven in a single system. That means that the
separate realms of the divine and the human have collapsed into each other, and that
it will now be possible to abolish all injustice from the earth.

This is a vision similar to the Marxist ideology of creating a classless society based
on the abolition of scarcity. If perfect justice is to be achieved here, rather than before
God’s throne in the final judgment, multiple things will be required first. For example
they'll need the same ability God used to achieve perfect justice, also known as
omnipotence and omniscience. The omnipotence will be gained through the
establishment of a totalitarian regime. The omniscience will be obtained, as it always
has been in totalitarian regimes, through an extensive secret police apparatus.
The Muslim Brotherhood is a tough cadre party. It takes eight years of training to
become a full member. The Deputy Guide of the Brotherhood, Khairat al-Shater,
said: “The mission is clear: restoring Islam and its all-encompassing conception;
subjugating people to God; instituting the religion of God: the Islamization of life,
empowering of God’s religion; establishing the Nahda of the Ummah, a muslim
naton, on the basis of Islam.”

https://www.corrispondenzaromana.it/will-egypt-become-a-totalitarian-state/
A new form of totalitarianism takes root in China
When Xi Jinping became China’s president, there was reason to hope for the
Communist Party rule to slowly move toward pluralism. Some criticism of
government policies was permitted in the press and social media; scores of
independent lawyers advocated for justice in the courts. A report titled “China 2030,”
written by government experts in cooperation with the World Bank and issued
months before Xi took power, concluded that “the government will need to transform
itself into a lean, clean, transparent and highly efficient modern government that
operates under the rule of law.”

Xi has transformed his regime in the past five years, but in the opposite direction.
With the announcement that a limit of two presidential terms will be removed from
the constitution, the already old Xi basically became president for life, in a return to
personal dictatorship that China has not seen in a while. Xi is attempting to construct
a fresh kind of totalitarianism devote to the future offering it as an example to the rest
of the world. His challenge is to defend of democracy and human rights around the
world.

In his first period as president, Xi has destroyed the foundations of institutionalism

laid by Xiaoping. Also Xi started a campaign to punish powerful rivals, tighten
control over the military and police, and intimidate private businesses. The kind of
leadership that left a mark in the Chinese Communist Party for the past thirty years,
allowing for orderly and peaceful transfers of power every 10 years, has been
dismantled, and a cult of personality has been built around Xi.

Xi sees a new version driven by 21st-century technologies, such as artificial

intelligence, in which his regime is investing heavily. Every citizen will be given a
social credit score, with demerits for unapproved behavior detected by cyber-
monitoring or cameras with facial recognition. Through its “Belt and Road” initiative,
which foresees the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in countries across
Eurasia, the regime will build its global influence and promote its political model —
which, Xi said in a speech last October, “offers a new option for other countries.”
Xi is offering a fundamental challenge to the liberal model of human governance at a
time when its greatest defender, the United States, is hamstrung by a president who
appears not to believe in it. Asked about China this past Friday, President Trump
boasted about what he called a “quite extraordinary” personal relationship with Xi.
He had nothing to say about Xi’s ruthless consolidation of power. The many people
around the world who understand and fear the challenge this represents will have to
find ways to defend liberal democracy without assistance from the White House.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/a-new-form-of-
totalitarianism-takes-root-in-china/2018/02/26/afd7c5cc-1b1d-11e8-b2d9-
08e748f892c0_story.html?utm_term=.04979188951b