Turkish President Erdogan Is Arresting Doctors On Terrorism Charges For Exposing The Country's Actual COVID Stats
from the terrorizing-people-with-all-these-facts dept
Anyone who says anything critical of the Turkish government is a terrorist. That's been the operative theory of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has jailed more journalists than China and somehow managed to make a handful of governments around the world complicit in the punishment of his critics.
The hits just keep on coming. The latest roundup of "terrorists" in Turkey is COVID-related, linked to the government's attempt to bury its bad infection numbers.
Sebnem Korur Fincanci, a forensic physician, and many other doctors had long insisted there was something dodgy about Turkey’s covid-19 figures. Excess deaths across the country far surpassed officially reported deaths from the virus. Case numbers seemed suspiciously low. Vindication came at the end of November, when the government revealed it had stopped reporting asymptomatic infections months earlier. Once it resumed doing so, the case-count rocketed from about 7,000 to over 30,000 a day. (The numbers later dropped, after new lockdowns were imposed.) For her troubles Dr Fincanci, who turned 61 last year, was labelled a terrorist by none other than Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The head of the Nationalist Movement Party, the president’s coalition partner, called for the group she heads, the Turkish Medical Association, to be disbanded.
That's how the bearers of inconvenient facts are being handled in Turkey. And the government has a brand new weapon to deploy against anyone saying anything it doesn't like. A law passed late last year gives the government direct control of civil rights organizations in the country, including local branches of worldwide groups like Amnesty International. The law allows the government to remove members facing bogus terrorism charges and seize their assets. It also allows the government to handpick replacements for organization members it has jailed. If that isn't enough to silence these rights-protecting loudmouths, the government can ban the groups altogether.
All this is happening while Turkey continues to suffer from numerous violent attacks by actual terrorists. But the government has chosen to focus on multitudinous "terrorists" who do nothing more damaging than raise justifiable concerns or undercut the official narrative.
These latest arrests just add to the breathtaking number of people arrested and/or jailed by the Turkish government following a failed coup in 2016. Only a small percentage of those were participants or have engaged in actual terrorists acts. A majority of those arrested are opposition party leaders, teachers, journalists, members of civil rights groups, and dissidents. This may be making things simpler and easier for Erdogan and his acolytes. But it isn't making his country any safer. With Erdogan in charge, the population's threat matrix now includes a vengeful, thin-skinned leader.
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Filed Under: covid, free speech, recep tayyip erdogan, reporting, terrorism, turkey
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Thanks to his handling of covid, the internet, whistleblowers, journalists and the truth, the Florida GOP have already tapped him for a gubernatorial run once Ron DeSantis leaves office.
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I was going to make a Florida/DeSantis comment, but not sure how I can beat this one.
The whole Rebekah Jones saga does point to DeSantis having taken some tips from Erdogan and his ilk.
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How many Covid-19 deaths do you see, Winston?
And if the party says "three"?
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Must...resist...urge to comment about Gollum and bats.
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Resistance is futile.
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Trump isn't even cold yet and you've already moved on to other authoritarian regimes
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It sounds like something trump would be doing soon had he won the election.
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Something your buddy Cuomo is already been caught doing. Biden/Chinese regime wont do anything to punish or even call him out for it.
Stop letting CNN tell you how to think.
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and he's supposed to be good for the country? good for the people? please explain how lying to everyone is good for anyone except the one doing the lying? please explain how tying the country to a Hitler wannabe is good for anyone/anything? why is it that people fall for and go along with this crap? are they simply bullies, until found out then buckle, just like so many Nazis did? ruling by fear isn't ruling at all!
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Tell that to Trump supporters.
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Erratum
Erdoğan and not Erdogan
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That letter can be typed as COMPOSE C G—or just search Wikipedia and paste it.
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Not just linguistically the version with horns seems entirely more appropriate.
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I thought it was Turdogan.
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Erdogollum
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The same as Desantis in Florida.
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How is mentally ill Erdogan not taken out of office?
he expects people to worship him as an actual living deity, 2nd only to Allah and has people arrested that don't.
He's batshit insane.
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The difference between batshit insane and *megalomaniac' is that a megalomaniacs action may look insane until you look closer and see that it was just another way to cement their power over the people. And one of the surest ways to do that is to consistently remove the intelligentsia.
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