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Advanced Democracy 451: Turkish Police Hunt Book
Whoa! If democracy gets any more advanced in Turkey, scientists will need to start modeling it with partial differential equations. What’s so advanced and innovative about the way they’re hunting down every copy of this book, democratically speaking, is that the book–I mean, the obstacle to democratic advancement–hasn’t even been published yet. They’re hunting down every draft of this obstacle to democratic advancement:
Police searches for possible drafts of what was said to be an unpublished book by journalist Ahmet Şık extended to the offices of daily Radikal on Thursday. Officers who went to the Hürriyet Medya Towers building asked for copies of the ‘The Imam’s Army’ draft from journalist Ertuğrul Mavioğlu based on a court decision that called it an ‘illegal organizational document.’
Police operations against copies of a “draft book” spread to the offices of a mainstream newspaper for the first time Thursday, as officers raided the headquarters of Radikal, a sister newspaper of the Hürriyet Daily News.
They’ve also raided the printing house. “The next stage is to perform a lobotomy on Ahmet Şık’s brain,” said Şık’s lawyer.
Published in General
If I were Sik I would not be happy that my lawyer might have given them ideas. The unbridled power of the State is something Americans are blissfully ignorant of most of the time. They should all be bridled with extra martingale if possible.
Surely, you can give us an idea of what it’s about, this book?
It’s hard to get my footing in Turkey right now. Just to give me a clue, in this case does Radikal mean radical as in radical Islam or radical as in anti-government?
Radikal–left-leaning. Old fashioned radikals. The book supposedly blows the lid on Fethullah Gülen or supposedly is the organizational blueprint for overthrowing Turkey’s democratically-elected government. I stress supposedly–if I hear even one more person spin a conspiracy theory about Turkey today or jump to any conclusion not supported by any evidence that I can see with my own eyes about that book, I may actually be at risk of overdosing from the crazy, and no one would want that, so please take extreme care.
Thanks very much.
I just spent some time reading and thinking about sedition and have come away a little perplexed about exactly how to formulate a reasonable compromise of the competing life or death issues.
Turkey is actually unique in history and it is the one good thing that came out of WWI. It had such a complex history before that, too. You have a ringside seat for our present era.
My sister and her Turkish husband are in Turkey right now and much appreciated the recommendation for the restaurants in Istanbul — I sent her your links.
My sister and her Turkish husband are in Turkey right now and much appreciated the recommendation for the restaurants in Istanbul — I sent her your links. ·Mar 26 at 7:59am
Her husband is Turkish? Where’s he from? This is important, because my credibility could come into question: I caution you that no matter where they eat, he’ll say his mother’s cooking is better.
He’s from a Tatar family in Istanbul. He works in Ankara and in the eastern part of Turkey. My sister lives here mostly and visits him when he has time between jobs. Tough relationship but they seem to manage.
You are right about his mother: she lives here and is a fantastic cook. My kids know her as “Babani” because of influence from their cousins.
The Byzantines tried the same thing with the Necronomicon of Abdul Alhazred. You can never track down all the copies.