Turkey's dark descent continues
In Turkey's latest "election", a would-be referendum, the horrible Tayyip Erdogan has been given more power:
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan scored a major political victory in Sunday's closely watched constitutional referendum when voters approved a package of amendments in a landslide, handing his Islamic-rooted party a boost ahead the country's 2011 elections.But that's just the problem: with this, Islamism has only gained another foothold in Turkey. And what if the elections were rigged? And note the comparisons made to Chavez's regime in Venezuela. That's why Erdogan's increasing power is only reason to worry.
[...]
The judicial reforms will increase the number of justices on the nation's historically secular Constitutional Court from 11 to 17 while giving AKP-dominated institutions such as the parliament more power in appointing them.
"The judicial branch — the last secular fortress, as many call it — will be neutralized by the new appointees," predicted Ilhan Tanir, a columnist for Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News. "Turkey now can be identified as Erdogan's country, much like [President Hugo] Chavez's Venezuela. His winning streak continues, and he's once more proven that he has an instinct for picking the right fights and avoiding the others."
Mr. Erdogan's successful moves on the judiciary follow years of AKP's steady effort to chip away at the influence of the country's politically powerful military, which had served as a bulwark against encroaching religious influence since the establishment of modern Turkey, at times overthrowing governments — as recently as 1997 — when the military leaders thought it drifted too far from the secularist vision of the republic's founder, Kemal Ataturk.
The referendum results, while not having much bearing on the military, are widely seen as a rebuke to the country's secular establishment.
