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Ed Webb

Egyptian intelligence services extend control over media | RSF - 0 views

  • Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is worried about the way Egyptian media outlets are being taken over by businessmen linked to the government and intelligence services. The regime’s domination of the media continues to grow and is even affecting pro-government media.
  • Al Hayat was quietly taken over at the end of August. The new owner’s identity has not yet been officially announced but several Egyptian media outlets have reported that it was acquired by Falcon, a successful Egyptian security company whose CEO is a former senior military intelligence officer and a former head of the radio and TV regulatory agency.
  • the financial pressure came shortly after Al Wafd’s representatives in parliament expressed their opposition to the government’s controversial plan to hand over two strategic islands, Tiran and Sanafir, to Saudi Arabia
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  • A former military intelligence officer, who was also an armed forces spokesman, took charge of Al Asema TV in January.
  • ONTV, a popular TV channel that supported the government while occasionally broadcasting critical comments, was taken over in May 2016 by Ahmed Abu Hashima, a powerful multi-millionaire steel magnate said to be close to military intelligence and to President Abdel- Fattah al-Sisi. A month after the acquisition, the authorities expelled Liliane Daoud, a well-known ONTV programme presenter with a reputation for journalistic integrity. She was deportable because she has British and Lebanese dual nationality.
  • Hashima bought two other TV channels, Al Nahar and CBC, and four newspapers, Sout Al Omma, Ain, Dot Masr and Al Youm al Sabea, in 2016.
  • the editor had told that that “President Sisi is the newspaper’s new owner” and that it could therefore not continue to employ critical journalists
  • the government’s influence over the broadcast media landscape was also significantly enhanced in 2016 by the creation of a DMC, a major new TV network with a range of news, sports and entertainment channels. Dubbed “the mouthpiece of the intelligence services” by some journalists and launched with a patriotic anthem and Koranic chants, DMC gets permission to film where other privately-owned TV channels are denied access. It is also known to broadcast interviews that are presented as exclusives but just reiterate the regime’s pro-security, anti-Muslim Brotherhood dogma
Ed Webb

Iraq clamps down on media and broadcast networks covering protests - 0 views

  • the Iraqi National Communications and Media Commission shut down or gave warnings to 17 media institutions for covering the protests in Iraq. The offices of Al-Arabiya, Al-Hadath, Dijlah TV, Al-Rasheed TV, NRT, Al-Sharqiya TV, Al-Fallujah TV, Houna Baghdad and Al-Hurra were closed, while Al-Sumariya, Asia Network Television, Rudaw Media Network, Sky News Arabia and Ur Television were warned to change how they cover the demonstrations.
  • On Nov. 17, a mortar shell hit Iraq Art Co. in Karrada in the center of Baghdad.
  • Iraq Art Co. is a local production business that offers television services to several satellite channels such as the BBC, Al-Araby TV (owned by the Palestinian politician Azmi Bechara) and other channels. Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, which is affiliated with Al-Araby TV, said, “The missile was targeting the Al-Araby TV office in Baghdad.”
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  • On Nov. 8 and 15, two episodes of the news satire Al-Basheer Show were jammed, as soon as the broadcast began on the German DW channel. Jamming would start at 9 p.m. while the episodes were being shown, and would end an hour later at 10 p.m., when the show was over.
  • The government clampdown on the media and journalists has taken several forms, ranging from obscure threats to the shutdown of media institutions to jamming channels or not offering security protection. There were also insinuations that media channels have been inciting people to protest.
  • “I received a text message on my personal phone threatening to kill me and attack my family if I continue to use my phone to contact the channel where I work.”
  • The Iraqi Media House, a civil society organization in Iraq, reported that “as a result of the internet ban, 90% of Iraqi media coverage was cut off, and 70% of social media coverage was dead. Fears of targeting media channels and journalists also reduced coverage.”
  • The Press Freedom Advocacy Association in Iraq reported that there had been “89 violations against journalists," 33 death threats and the shutdown of or warnings to 17 offices and headquarters of media institutions.
Ed Webb

IRGC media producers open new front against Rouhani - 0 views

  • The Avant TV video, released on social media five days after protests erupted in Iran, which have thus far spread to dozens of cities and almost every province, carefully stitches together an emotional array of interviews of people unhappy with the economic situation and President Hassan Rouhani’s policies. With scarce public information available about Avant TV, and with the great pains its producers have taken to present it as an independent station, the video is intended to appear to be transparent, a true representation of the will of the Iranian people. Glaringly absent from the video are any criticism of the political establishment as a whole, which has been one of the main themes of the current demonstrations. Avant TV is in fact not independent at all. Al-Monitor has not been able to contact it, but two pro-regime media producers confirmed that it is only the latest example of a new media outlet backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) seeking to reinforce the narrative of the supreme leader above the politics of Iran.
  • Avant TV stems from the media wars at the heart of political factionalism both inside and outside Iran
  • The tactic that producers developed was to move away from content solely made for state television — which potential audiences almost automatically consider regime propaganda — to creating small production studios that develop content not easily identifiable as pro-regime. These ad hoc production studios receive funding from the IRGC and the government's cultural budget, but they remain small and unidentifiable on purpose.
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  • In revealing new details of his budget bill, Rouhani named, for the first time, the variety of state institutions, including cultural centers, that have received enormous funds and unconditional support from the regime. He attributed the move to a desire for transparency and an attempt to curtail corrupt use of state funds. The reaction on Iranian social media and in the local press was quick and harsh. People began attacking conservative and hard-line centers and clerics for taking so much from government coffers. “We couldn’t allow him to cut off our lifeline,” a producer at the regime production studios said after Rouhani revealed his new budget. “He and his supporters want to silence us by taking away our funding. But we will not be silenced. We will show him that people don’t agree with him.”
  • The protests that began on Dec. 28 in Mashhad were a response to Rouhani from hard-liners for his remarks on the budget as well as his other attempts to curtail hard-line forces. Much of the analysis on the reasons behind the sudden outpouring of protests points to its origin in hard-liners' attempts to organize anti-Rouhani rallies in the lead-up to the annual pro-regime 9 Dey rally, established by the supreme leader in 2009 to celebrate the suppression of the Green Movement. Indeed, Mashhad is notably home to two of Rouhani’s main rivals in the 2017 presidential elections, Ebrahim Raisi and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf. The intent was for the protests to culminate in a large 9 Dey rally, but despite the hard-liners’ intentions, once people went into the streets, they eventually began to chant slogans against the supreme leader and the regime as a whole.
  • Regime production studios have thus begun to create videos that highlight economic anxieties and attack Rouhani’s handling of the government. These slick new productions are meant to look critical, but in the end, they reinforce a belief in the virtues and the leadership of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Avant TV is only the latest example of the ways in which factionalism within the Islamic Republic and opposition to the regime play out in the media landscape.
Ed Webb

Egypt media gains reversed by military rulers - Yahoo! News - 0 views

  • the generals ruling Egypt since President Hosni Mubarak's overthrow were annoyed at his outspoken criticism of how they manage the media.
  • Egypt's January revolution has smashed the fear barrier that once forced journalists to temper their coverage of state affairs and avoid criticism of the head of state. The most outspoken were ostracized, fired and occasionally imprisoned.
  • The army has sent instructions to editors telling them to "refrain from publishing any items -- stories, news, announcements, complaints, advertisements, pictures -- pertaining to the Armed Forces or to commanders of the armed forces without first referring to the Morale Affairs Department and the Department of Military Intelligence and Information Gathering."
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  • In June, two journalists from Al Wafd Party newspaper were questioned by the military prosecutor's office over a reference in a May 26 story to a possible deal between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood, the most organized political grouping in Egypt, over elections.
  • 26-year-old Nabil, an activist in the anti-Mubarak protests, was given a three-year prison sentence. "That was a catastrophic ruling," said the executive director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information, Gamal Eid. "Repeated summoning of journalists spreads an atmosphere of fear among journalists to exercise self censorship."
  • gains are under threat from a military establishment traditionally hostile to the idea of dissent in the ranks
  • Yosri Fouda was forced to cancel an episode of his talk show, Akher Kalam (The Last Word) on privately-owned channel ONTV, where he was due to interview an army general. The Morale Affairs Department had asked for an advance copy of the questions.
  • Editors of state newspapers seen as complicit with Mubarak's regime have been replaced. The head of the journalists' syndicate, seen as a supporter of Mubarak's government, was forced to step down. Outspoken journalists forced to live in exile have returned home. More than half a dozen new private newspapers have appeared, and a new private TV station is established each month. Among the most prominent newcomers are Al-Tahrir, CBC and Masr 25.
  • last November's discredited parliamentary vote, when the government shut down more than a dozen private TV stations and state media helped cement the dominance of Mubarak's party.
  • "Egypt has definitely entered a new era of transparency, clarity and freedom after the revolution," she told Reuters TV. A return to the systematic curbs on freedom of information under Mubarak seem unthinkable for now, but journalists say there is urgent need for legislation to entrench media freedom. "It may seem as though there is a bigger margin of freedom, but even this is an acquired margin and is not protected by regulations or laws," said Yehia Kalash, former secretary of the Egyptian journalists' syndicate.
Ed Webb

From journalists to generals, Algeria cracks down on dissent | Middle East Eye - 0 views

  • While the economic crisis related to the fall of oil revenues has caused political and social tensions, the Algerian authorities are showing increasing intolerance towards criticism, already under attack since the start of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s fourth term in April 2014.
  • Hassina Oussedik, director of Amnesty International’s chapter in Algeria, says the attacks on freedom of expression have been "constant". "In 2015, not a month has passed without witnessing cases of people being oppressed as they try to express themselves peacefully. The authorities rely on poorly formulated or ambiguous laws to arrest people," she told Middle East Eye. "They use provisions of the penal code that criminalise 'contempt', 'insult' or 'defamation' aimed against representatives of the state and other institutions in order to restrict freedom of expression, including humour, expression on the internet and on the street."
  • But an Algerian police officer, in charge of monitoring public demonstrations, said claims of repression were excessive and defended his activities."Repression? Dictatorship? Censorship? All of this is much exaggerated and is far from the truth," he told MEE. "If we did not do our job of monitoring and surveillance, Islamists and terrorists would feel omnipotent. In the 90s, this led us to chaos! Is it normal to insult the state, the president, the police or the army with impunity?"
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  • A former minister also defends the state’s repressive policy: "Newspapers, with their criticisms and caricatures that spare no one, even the president and the army chief, aren’t they free? But the law will remain strict against those who attack the institutions and the nation; we are not a gang of criminals who must be denounced all the time. We are servants of the state and those who criticise the government are attacking Algeria."
  • In the former minister's view, the majority of social opposition movements, jobless in the south, anti-shale gas activists, subversive artists and independent publishers, are simply “naive people manipulated by forces hostile to Algeria and its government’s patriotic choices".
  • Minister of Communications Hamid Grine, described by the Workers Party leader Louisa Hanoune as the “propaganda minister”.Regularly, the minister threatens journalists, independent media, foreign press correspondents and activists on social media in the name of "ethics". He imposed the closure of two private TV channels, Atlas TV and El Watan El Djazairia TV, and publicly refused to grant accreditation to foreign press correspondents, including a journalist from the London-based daily Asharq Al Awsat, demanding that they "toe the line".
Ed Webb

Security forces detain TV crews and shut down broadcaster's office in Iraqi Kurdistan -... - 0 views

  • the closure by Kurdish security forces of the Iraqi independent broadcaster NRT's office in Dohuk, Iraqi Kurdistan
  • security forces known as Asayish, which are aligned with the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party, detained NRT television journalists, cameramen, and drivers and confiscated their broadcasting equipment, and on the following day barred entry to NRT's offices
  • "Shutting down a broadcaster and detaining TV crews for delivering the news clearly contradicts the authorities' claim that Iraqi Kurdistan is a regional hub for democracy and press freedom," said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour from Washington, D.C.
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  • The detentions and office raid came as a response to NRT's January 26 coverage of a protest at a Turkish military facility in Silazdeh and of the arrival of injured protesters at the Dohuk Emergency Hospital, according to the broadcaster.
  • At least two civilians were killed by a Turkish airstrike in Duhok governorate on January 24, according to news reports. The casualties sparked a protest at the facility in Silazdeh on January 26, which resulted in one protester being killed and several being injured, news reports said.
Ed Webb

Upcoming elections could make or break Tunisia's fledgling free press - Committee to Pr... - 0 views

  • Tunisia has secured greater press freedom than many of the Arab Spring countries, but local journalists told CPJ that with elections slated for this year, challenges including funding, transparency, and government pressure remain
  • Despite a ban on foreign funding, many of the independent journalists who spoke with CPJ said they believe Gulf money is secretly pouring in to campaigns, although they often lack the means to expose it. Businessmen and politicians are also using privately owned media companies and the government is harnessing public broadcasters to further their political agendas.
  • Journalists speak privately of money from the United Arab Emirates flowing to establishment politicians and funds from Qatar to Islamists but there is little published evidence of this.
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  • Broadcast regulator HAICA (the Independent High Authority of Audiovisual Communication) pulled the license of privately owned TV channel Nesma in July 2018, for pushing the political agenda of its owner Nabil Karoui, who planned to run for president. Police raided the station in April, but the channel is still on the air, only without a license
  • Money still talks loudly in Tunisia where unemployment is officially above 15 percent and many journalists are paid badly.
  • Reporters are hampered in their watchdog role by the government too, especially if they cover national security or police beats. In January last year, Interior Minister Lotfi Brahem admitted during a parliamentary hearing that Tunisian journalists were monitored and that he had even authorized the wiretapping of a French journalist covering unrest.
  • Tunisia has a world class right to information law on the books but Mekki said her attempts to get the Interior Ministry to disclose details of travel bans imposed on hundreds of young Tunisians have been stonewalled
  • a lack of transparency around media ownership, undisclosed campaign contributions to candidates and the use of public resources and public media by the current government to promote partisan agendas are challenges to independent media coverage.
  • "In Tunisia we have a unique situation where we have a weak government, weak political parties but strong civil society, which can work to guarantee the democratic transition overall and with that, press freedom gains,"
Ed Webb

After the Shooting In Cairo : The New Yorker - 0 views

  • Over the past two and a half years in Egypt—melee and propaganda and obfuscation—it has always been nearly impossible to separate fact from conspiracy theory and actual conspiracy.
  • Through the din and confusion of Monday morning, he could hear both soldiers and protesters calling for calm. “But the atmosphere has been charged between the two sides for several days.”
  • “I told the soldiers to behave nicely, and with some people they were nice, but some protesters were calling them infidels and traitors. One of the soldiers responded angrily, ‘Did they really tell you that we are infidels? I don’t care who Morsi is, but right now you’re telling me I am an atheist and a traitor!”
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  • Rumors, accusations, and mobile-phone footage flooded the airwaves and TV channels. The private cable stations have supported Morsi’s ouster, and the national-TV channels virtually ignored the footage of gunshot wounds and dead bodies laid out in a makeshift field hospital under sleeping bags and an Egyptian flag. All day, they have played a pro-Army montage on a continuous loop: a wounded soldier being carried to safety, a man in a black balaclava carrying a shotgun amid an otherwise unarmed knot of protesters, a pistol flash from behind a brick corner, bottles of whiskey allegedly found in “devout” protestor’s tents.
  • I have been in Rabaa for several days, and most of the Islamists I spoke to were at pains to avoid criticizing the Army. Ranks of Brotherhood even lined up to protect the gates of a military-administration building. Plenty were carrying big bamboo sticks, but I saw no guns or knives, and the atmosphere was friendly and peaceful. On Monday morning, they were building low walls, using dug-up paving stones as bricks and as barricades. Some with bloodstained T-shirts, some with bandaged foreheads from bird shot, they gathered around any foreign journalist, holding up spent bullet casings with the initials of the Egyptian Armed inscribed on them, desperate to have their story told. People I spoke to in a smallish crowd at a corrugated iron barricade, behind the barbed-wire front line, claimed that the Army had massacred people as they prayed. “Is this the democracy the Americans called for?” “A bullet grazed the forehead of the man standing next to me!” “There were Army snipers on the roofs!” “They shot tear gas!” “This is just another military coup!” As I listened to them, I was startled by a cracking noise that might have been a double gunshot, or might have been part of the adjacent building, which was still on fire, collapsing. Minutes later, some tear gas wafted over and a man, almost unconscious and gasping for air, was sped away on a motorcycle for treatment. Funerals for the dead went on throughout the afternoon.
Ed Webb

Egypt: Christians And Police Clash In Cairo For Second Day - 0 views

  • Sunday's violence will likely prompt the military to further tighten its grip on power.
  • "The army incites sedition to remain in power," said Mariam Ayoub, a relative of a slain Christian protester, Michael Mosaad, as she stood outside the Coptic hospital. "They tell all of us that this is what happens without emergency laws."
  • State TV, which has been growing increasingly loyal to the military, appealed on "honorable" Egyptians to protect the army against attacks as news spread of clashes between the Christian protesters and the troops outside the TV building. Soon afterward, bands of young men armed with sticks, rocks, swords and firebombs began to roam central Cairo, attacking Christians. Troops and riot police did not intervene to stop the attacks on Christians.
Ed Webb

Why it's Time to Retire the Term 'Arab Spring' | Al Bawaba - 0 views

  • cross-regional protests are again breaking out in 2019 in Algeria, Sudan, Syria, Jordan and Palestine among other, which has prompted many commentators to herald these movements to be yet another Arab Spring.As this label is used each time, and will likely be used ad nauseum to describe popular movements in the Middle East, it’s worth pausing and questioning its utility.
  • The grievances around which these protests are organized—austerity, corruption, rising cost of basic food and utilities, have been served as a rally cry for movements in the region for the past half-century. Calling each an “Arab Spring” belies the cyclical, repetitive nature of these problems and simplifies the demands of the protesters.
  • Smaller protests have broken out as well. In March 2019, hundreds marched through Deraa, Syria, the first city that protested against the Syrian regime in 2011, to protest the re-erection of a statue memorializing Hafez al-Assad, the former ruler of the country.A subtler protest too has caused controversy in Egypt: Moataz Matar a popular TV host, accused the state of kidnapping two of his brothers and their families. Dissidents then wrote, “You are not alone Moataz, I swear to god. More than 50 million Egyptians are with you. Don’t be scared,” on Egyptian banknotes.
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  • The temptation to draw the comparison has some substance. In 2011, demonstrators explicitly demanded the end of regimes ruling over their respective countries, and the same is happening today.Moreover, both in 2011 and 2018-19, the protesters seem to be emboldened by the ongoing movements in other countries. Stephen McInerney, the executive director for the Project of Middle East Democracy (POMED), explained that “certainly what happens in one Arab country is seen elsewhere, and there are common frustrations shared across the region.”
  • It’s natural that boiling tensions inside countries and ongoing protests are giving way to the overarching claim that a new Arab Spring is underway. But that simplistic framing misunderstands the nature of political grievances and upheavals in the region. After all, they are similar to the protests in 2011, just as the 2011 protests are similar to those that happened in the decades before, and will be similar to those that happen in the future.
  • A ‘Spring’ implies in its history and usage, the new flowering of a spontaneous, overwhelming grassroots revolution that permanently changes the sociopolitical landscape of the countries and even the region. It paints a picture of a people awakened to the oppression they face and marching through the streets to demand justice.
  • But Arabs have been ‘awake’ to the corruption, misuse and abuse regimes have enacted upon them for decades, and have organized against it accordingly.
  • the same protests and chants that can be heard in Jordan and Sudan were yelled in the beginning of 2018. At both times and in both countries, the government cut bread and fuel subsidies in order to comply with loan conditions set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).Egypt in 2017 also saw thousands take to Twitter and the streets to protest against similarly price hikes in bread following a government removal of subsidies, though the IMF continually insists it did not recommend these governments cut subsidies servicing poor and working class families.
  • To look at these continual mobilizations and isolate the movements happening now as an “Arab Spring 2.0” ignores the continual, inter-generational struggle for economic and political rights that has pushed continuously at the doors of old regimes. In their place, an alternate history is given whereby Arabs were resting, and were woken up.
  • “In Algeria, Jordan, and Sudan the regimes managed to dodge the original 2011 wave. The confrontation was avoided but popular discontent was not crushed, and the reasons for it not addressed. So this will continue to come back, until either a showdown happens or things change.”
  • It is less an ‘Arab Spring 2.0’ than a continuation of 2011’s protests, which were in themselves continuations of protests that occurred in the years before.
  • Ending practices of corruption and cronyism requires movements that aren’t framed as spontaneous ‘Springs’ of youth but as constituent parts of a broad-based, durable intergenerational call for justice from below. 
  •  
    Indeed. Let's dump it.
Ed Webb

Khamenei names new chief for Iran's Revolutionary Guards - Reuters - 0 views

  • Iran’s top authority Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has replaced the head of the influential Revolutionary Guards Corps, state TV reported on Sunday, days after the United States designated the elite group a foreign terrorist organization.
  • On April 13, Salami was quoted by Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency as saying that he and the IRGC were proud of being designated a terrorist group by Washington.
  • Comprising an estimated 125,000-strong military with army, navy and air units, the Guards also command the Basij, a religious volunteer paramilitary force, and control Iran’s missile programs. The Guards’ overseas Quds forces have fought Iran’s proxy wars in the region.
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  • Salami, born in 1960, said in January that Iran’s strategy was to wipe “the Zionist regime” (Israel) off the political map, Iran’s state TV reported.
Ed Webb

Spoiler alert: Saudi television network bans Turkish soap operas | Middle East Eye - 0 views

  • A Saudi-owned television network has announced it will pull hugely popular Turkish dramas from its schedules, in what experts inside Turkey say is an attempt by Saudi Arabia's crown prince to pacify clerics already outraged by his push to modernise the kingdom.
  • the Arab world’s largest private broadcaster, MBC, was ordered to stop broadcasting often racy Turkish television shows. The MBC Group is Dubai-based and controlled by Saudi investors
  • growing tensions between Turkey and the Saudi Arabia-United Arab Emirates axis in the row over Qatar's support for, among other things, the Muslim Brotherhood
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  • there has been pressure for a long time now to block Turkish programmes that often take up prime time slots from both Lebanese and Egyptian producers and filmmakers
  • Before the recent - and most likely politically motivated if not sponsored - spate of Turkish Ottoman history-based dramas, Turkish television programming was still a major hit in the Arab world
  • To many Middle Eastern viewers, drawn-out Turkish soap operas combining love affairs, drama and mystery more than just being quality television productions represented hope that it was possible to harmoniously merge east and west without sacrificing local identity
  • depiction of a lifestyle choice that is not an option in the Gulf
  • “Producers and TV/film firms have their costs covered before they commence filming via the deals they make with domestic broadcasters,” he said.“Other than that Turkish television has never been more popular. It has a market in eastern Europe, Africa and even Latin America.”
  • “There are so many dimensions to this ban. Another one is that Bin Salman has also launched a big drive on restoring historical places in the kingdom. But with their own Saudi interpretation," Hayek said."And then you have these Turkish historical-based programmes being beamed into peoples’ homes who are very keen to learn about their past and heritage. They can’t be happy about that”.
Ed Webb

Erdoğan's Turkey and the Problem of the 30 Million - War on the Rocks - 0 views

  • Erdoğan’s brand is waning in the cities, the coasts, and among young people. Neither the new Erdoğan-shaped presidential system, nor his expansionist foreign policy are popular in these parts. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, chronic unemployment and inflation extinguished any hope of him bouncing back in the polls. Despite his total control over the state, mainstream media, and major capital groups, the president is unlikely to ever get much more than half of the popular vote.
  • The Erdoğan government now faced a question that all successful populist regimes must solve: What to do with the minority? They certainly can’t be granted free and fair elections, lest they attain the means to exact revenge. Nor can they be deprived of all their rights of representation, lest they be driven to revolt or treason. So how does a very slim majority of a country suppress the other half indefinitely? How does it rest easy, knowing that its hegemony is locked in?
  • The Erdoğan government surely knows that an attempt to “nationalize” all of the 30 million would be unrealistic. Rather, it seeks to separate the leftists and Kurds among them and brand them as terrorists, then turn around and securely pull the center opposition into the nationalist opposition.
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  • the government first needs to contain the spread of the left
  • the People’s Republican Party (CHP), Turkey’s founding and currently main opposition party, has tried to contain this “patriot-terrorist” polarity. Its umbrella candidates for the presidency, ranging from the soporific Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu in 2014, to the firebrand Muharrem Ince in 2018, have failed. In the 2019 municipal elections, however, the CHP’s mayoral candidates did well, uniting the Kemalist-nationalist camp, Islamists, liberal cosmopolitans, as well as leftists and even some sympathizers of the Kurdish movement. These candidates won against Erdoğan’s men in all major cities, including Ankara and (in a repeat election) Istanbul. This was the first, and so far only, time Erdoğan’s containment of the left had been breached.
  • Many in the urban middle class, who are fairly indifferent about Kurdish rights, wanted to see Demirtas grow the HDP into a Turkish-Kurdish version of the European Greens. The idea at the time was to also expand into a grand center-left coalition that would prevent Erdoğan from establishing his hyper-centralized presidential system. Their momentum was cut short when months after the coup attempt, in December 2016, the government detained Demirtas on charges of terrorism and began a ruthless crackdown on the HDP’s activities that has since only gained in intensity.
  • The second part of the government’s strategy is to keep the left — crippled and branded as terrorists — within the political system. While Turkey’s politics is polarized between the government and the opposition, this creates a second polarization, this time within the opposition camp. It is this second polarity where the vast majority of political discourse takes place. From the perspective of a nationalistic system of valuation, in which being “local and national” reigns supreme, this is a fatal flaw. On the one hand, the various factions of the opposition can’t win a national vote unless they partner with the HDP to form a 50 percent bloc against Erdoğan. On the other, the nationalists within the opposition cannot be seen working with the “terrorists” of the pro-Kurdish left.
  • The left, however, puts up genuine systemic resistance: They reject the idea that the Turkish nation is pure and infallible. Like leftists elsewhere, they deconstruct official history, focusing on massacres of minorities and exploitation of the working classes. There is also an inextricable tie to the Kurdish movement, which in turn is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — an insurgency that has been waging war on the Turkish state for over four decades. The connection between the non-Kurdish left and the Kurdish movement is complicated and has gone through various stages in the recent past. For the Turkish right, there is little difference between leftist subversion and Kurdish insurrection. “I joined the police to beat up Communists” a crescent-mustached officer once told me, and he was talking about arresting Kurdish protesters.
  • the Erdoğan government finally seeks to pull the entire bloc to the right. This means focusing on liberal-minded urbanites whose nationalism has lapsed, and rekindling their faith in the national mythos. This is the most challenging aspect of its effort, and where it has done most poorly.
  • restructuring of the media. For the past few years, the government has been taking over media channels that centrist voters traditionally follow, then gradually shifting their tone to favor the government. The Dogan Media Group, owner of Hurriyet (Turkey’s former newspaper of record) and CNN Turk (a 24-hour TV news channel) used to cater to a secular, urban, and increasingly progressive audience. The group’s main audience overlapped with the centrist-opposition CHP’s voter base, whose older members are secularist-nationalists and younger members (often their children) are leftist-progressives. In March 2018, the media group was sold to an Erdoğan-friendly conglomerate, which fired many of its veteran journalists and changed editorial guidelines. The result has been a desensitized, less colorful version of the jingoist carnival running across Erdoğan’s formal channels. CNN Turk, especially, became a tool for the government to enter the living rooms of CHP voters and tell them that they were voting for terrorist collaborators. So insidious were these attacks that the CHP had to ban its members from getting on the channel, and call upon its electorate to boycott it.
  •  Erdoğan said “We have 18 martyrs and close to 200 wounded. In our country, we have the terror group’s so-called political organism. Aside from that, our nation is now in a state of Yekvücut.” The term is a favorite of the president. It is a combination of the Farsi term “Yek” meaning “single” and the Arabic word “vücut” meaning “existence,” or in the Turkish use, “body.” Erdoğan was thinking of the nation as a single biological organism, with the leftists and the Kurdish movement as foreign bodies
  • The opposition media — largely relegated to the internet — was reporting on the plight of the working class and the brewing economic crisis. Like free media across the West, they also questioned the quality and veracity of their government’s COVID-19 data. In a speech delivered in May, Erdoğan was unusually angry. He had clearly expected a Yekvücut moment and was struggling to understand why it hadn’t come about. His strategy to create a “local and national” opposition wasn’t working, and the frustration of it seemed to hit him head on. “I want to warn once again the media and other representatives who are in league with the CHP’s leaders,” he said, before launching into what was — even for him — an unusually vituperative attack: “You are not national, and your localness is in question,” he said, “you have always sided with whoever was treacherous [bozguncu], whoever was perverted, whoever was depraved” adding, “you are like the creatures in mythology that only feed on enmity, hate, fear, confusion and pain.”
  • The absurd accusations of fraud and coup-abetting aside, there is something to the idea that the opposition wants things to get worse. The Erdoğan government’s consolidation over the past decade has been so suffocating for opposition voters that many do look for deliverance in economic or natural disaster.
  • The Erdoğan government may have cut short the HDP’s rise, but it hasn’t been able to prevent leftist ideas from spreading. The CHP’s youth wings today are highly class-conscious and hostile to militant nationalism. Figures like the CHP’s Istanbul provincial head Canan Kaftancıoğlu , who campaign on a mix of feminism, workers’ rights, and anti-fascist slogans, are gaining a national following. The polarization within the opposition is likely deepening, with part of the 30 million become more “national,” while another part is becoming more leftist. This means that the great mass of right-wing sentiment is growing, but so is the left-wing minority. The “problem,” in the government’s view, may no longer be 30 million strong, but it is more acute, and perhaps more vexing, than before.
  • (gun ownership has soared since the 2016 coup attempt)
  • To Turkey’s governing class, the military coup of their imagination is not a matter of defending against an armed force trying to take over the government. Rather, it is a night of free-for-all, in which politics is stripped down to its violent core, and a majority at the height of its powers can finally put down the enemy within: the haters, the doubters, the creatures of mythology.
  • “Turkey will not only reach its 2023 goals [the centennial of the Republic], it will also be rid of the representatives of this diseased politics,” he said in May, hinting that he might cut the left out of the political system entirely. If this should happen, politics would be an uneven contest between Islamist, pan-Turkic, and secularist hues of Turkish nationalism. Far off, in the back streets of the big cities and in the Kurdish provinces, in second-hand bookshops and hidden corners of the internet, there would be a progressive left, weathering out what is surely going to be a violent storm.
Ed Webb

Tunisia arrests lawmaker and TV presenter who called president a traitor | Reuters - 0 views

  • Tunisian police on Sunday arrested a member of parliament and a television presenter who have been prominent critics of President Kais Saied since his seizure of power in July
  • the military judiciary had ordered the arrests, accusing the pair of "conspiring against state security and insulting the army"
  • Most of Tunisia's political elite have urged him to say how and when he will get out of the crisis and two protests have taken place against his actions over the past two weekends.
Ed Webb

Shura Council discusses laws 'to control protests and confront thuggery' - Politics - E... - 0 views

  • The government of Prime Minister Hisham Qandil is currently in the process of drafting two new laws aimed at regulating the right of street protest and combating the proliferation of thuggery
  • the Committee on National Defence launched scathing attack against private TV satellite television channels, taking them to task for alledgely inciting protesters to launch violent attacks on several state buildings in recent days, notably Al-Ittihadiya presidential palace in Cairo's district of Heliopolis on 1 February
  • The 26-article law also makes it obligatory that the interior ministry be notified of any given protest or demonstration's date, objective and site. The notification request must be submitted to the ministry five days in advance of the date of the demonstration. The interior ministry reserves the right to forbid "demonstrations" or "public gatherings and meetings" if they risk "disrupting public peace and security."
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  • the draft law prohibits protesters and demonstrators from chanting slogans that "might sow the seeds of sedition," or wearing black face coverings
  • Responding to a question about the negative impact of repressive laws on the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, Saleh insisted that "the popularity of Islamist President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have skyrocketed in recent days." "We were not defeated as the opposition claims, and President Morsi will continue fighting violence and corruption," he added.
Ed Webb

The European Council on Foreign Relations | ECFR's blog. An Assassination in Tunisia - 1 views

  • Belaid’s killing is merely the culmination of disturbing trends that have been present in Tunisian public life for some time. Above all it makes clear that the rise of political violence is far and away the biggest threat to Tunisia’s transition to democracy
  • Ennahda is already on the defensive. Its coalition is crumbling beneath it as MPs have resigned in droves from its junior partners in protest at what they allege is Ennahda’s lack of consultation and its apparent determination to put its members in key positions across the state. Public opinion appears to be turning against Ennahda because of its failure to make any headway in dealing with Tunisia’s pressing economic and social problems. And the Islamists also face a political threat from the secular centre-right, in the shape of the recently-established Nida Tounes (“Call of Tunisia”) party under the leadership of the former interim prime minister (and former official under the country’s post-independence president, Habib Bourguiba) Beji Caid Essebsi
  • Ennahda has vilified the leading opposition group Nida Tounes as counter-revolutionary because it incorporates some former members of deposed President Ben Ali’s RCD party
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  • there has been a sharp increase in polarization between the Islamists and secular groups. Many secularists are convinced that Ennahda is working to undermine the country’s tradition of tolerance, especially through the apparently permissive stance it has taken to acts of violence by Tunisian Salafists, who are at once a smaller and more radical group than their Egyptian counterparts
  • the Leagues to Protect the Revolution. The Leagues are effectively a kind of militia, clearly now peopled by adherents of Ennahda even if not under the movement’s formal control, and they have been involved in a string of violent incidents. The most notorious of these was an attack on a regional branch of Nida Tounes last October in which the local party coordinator was killed. Chokri Belaid was among those who saw Ennahda as having created a climate of tolerance toward these attacks. In a TV interview recorded shortly before his killing, he charged Ennahda with having given a “green light” to political violence, and said that “Ennahda mercenaries and Salafists” had tried to break up a meeting of his supporters last weekend
  • The importance of restraining political violence between now and the next elections cannot be overstated. What happens next in Tunisia could have repercussions across the Middle East and North Africa. The European Union and other outside groups with a stake in Tunisia’s transition should send a clear and unambiguous message that turning a blind eye to political violence is incompatible with democratic principles
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