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In this mailing:
by Soeren Kern
• February 15, 2015 at 5:00 am
"Wherever
it goes now, in many respects PEGIDA has already served part of its
purpose, in starting a debate on immigration, citizenship, and
integration that has been silent for decades.... Perhaps it could even
kick-start a new era of openness and discussion in Britain too." —
Oliver Lane, British commentator.
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Approximately 17,000 people attended the PEGIDA
rally held on January 25, 2015. (Image source: Kalispera
Dell/Panoramio)
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The future of the German grassroots anti-Islamization movement known
as PEGIDA has been thrown into doubt after a leadership split resulted in
key members leaving the group.
Only 2,000 people attended a weekly rally held in the eastern German
city of Dresden on February 9, a sharp decrease from the 17,000 who
assembled at the previous rally held on January 25.
PEGIDA — named after the German abbreviation for "Patriotic
Europeans Against the Islamization of the West" — has been
organizing "evening strolls" (Abendspaziergang) through
downtown Dresden on Monday evenings since October to protest against
runaway immigration and the Islamization of Germany.
PEGIDA was launched by Lutz Bachmann, a 41-year-old Dresden
publicity agent with no background in politics, after government
officials in the eastern German state of Saxony announced that they would
be opening more than a dozen new shelters to house some 2,000
asylum-seekers.
by Burak Bekdil
• February 15, 2015 at 4:00 am
According
to the AKP's official narrative, more than half of Turks are enemies of
their own country.
One
of these enemies is the psychiatrist Ahmet Koyuncu, a renowned scientist
with several published articles in international journals, six academic
books and one novel. Koyuncu is now facing up to two years in prison for
insulting President Erdogan on Facebook. Koyuncu says he never insulted
Erdogan, but that the indictment is putting his academic article and
science on trial. The first hearing is set for March 18.
"When
we used to go out on in the streets, our supporters would love us very
much and our opponents would respect us. Now I detect looks filled with
hate." — Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc.
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Turkey's Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc says he
detects "looks filled with hate" on the street, directed at
members of the ruling AKP party. (Image source: CNN Turk)
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In a recent speech, the deputy chairman of the party that rules
Turkey claimed that the opponents of the Justice and Development Party
(AKP) were "enemies of Turkey."
This statistic means there are over 40 million Turkish enemies of
Turkey living in Turkey.
In a more recent speech, the AKP's parliamentary group chairman,
Mustafa Elitas, claimed that those Turks who opposed the government's new
security bill, which observers fear would further curb civil liberties,
were "terrorists and traitors."
That claim found a response in the media. If accusing millions of
people of being terrorists and traitors is a right, Hurriyet
columnist Mehmet Yilmaz reasoned, "Then, Mr. Elitas, I return your
words to you. He who defends this bill is a terrorist and a
traitor!"
Once again, according to the AKP's official narrative, more than
half of Turks are enemies of their own country, terrorists and traitors.
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