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Aydogan Vatandas (born 1974) is an investigative journalist from the U.S., specializing in Political Science and International Relations. He is the author of 13 books, many of which have become bestsellers in Turkey. 'Reporting from the Bridge' and 'Hungry for Power: Erdogan's Witch Hunt and The Abuse of State Power' are the first two books published in English in the U.S.
He is the founder and the Editor-in-Chief of Politurco.com.
While still in Turkey, he hosted a weekly TV discussion program titled "Black Box".
Hagia Sophia, officially the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque, formerly a Christian church, is a mosque and a major cultural and historical site in Istanbul, Turkey. The building was erected three times by the Eastern Roman Empire. The present Hagia Sophia is the third, built in 537 AD. It was an Orthodox church until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453, then a mosque until 1935, then a museum and then from 2020 a mosque again, as well as being a Roman Catholic cathedral for some decades after the Fourth Crusade of 1204.
A witch-hunt, or a witch purge, is a search for people who have been labeled witches or a search for evidence of witchcraft. The classical period of witch-hunts in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America took place in the Early Modern period or about 1450 to 1750, spanning the upheavals of the Reformation and the Thirty Years' War, resulting in an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 executions. The last executions of people convicted as witches in Europe took place in the 18th century. In other regions, like Africa and Asia, contemporary witch-hunts have been reported from sub-Saharan Africa and Papua New Guinea, and official legislation against witchcraft is still found in Saudi Arabia and Cameroon today.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a Turkish politician serving as the 12th and current president of Turkey since 2014. He previously served as prime minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014 and as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998. He also co-founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001.
The Justice and Development Party, abbreviated officially as AK Party in English, is a political party in Turkey self-describing as conservative-democratic. Third-party sources often refer to the party as national conservative, social conservative and espousing neo-Ottomanism. The party is generally regarded as being right-wing on the political spectrum, although some sources have described it as far-right since 2021. It is one of the two major parties of contemporary Turkey along with the Republican People's Party (CHP).
Bill Dedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American investigative reporter and co-author of the biography of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune.
The Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions in Wenatchee, Washington, US, of 1994 and 1995, were the last "large scale Multi-Victim / Multi-Offender case" during the hysteria over child molestation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many poor and intellectually disabled suspects pled guilty, while those who hired private lawyers were acquitted. Eventually all those accused in these cases were released, and the authorities paid damages to some of those originally accused.
Muhammed Fethullah Gülen is a Turkish Islamic scholar, preacher, and a one-time opinion leader, as de facto leader of the Gülen movement. Gülen is designated an influential neo-Ottomanist, Anatolian panethnicist, Islamic poet, writer, social critic, and activist–dissident developing a Nursian theological perspective that embraces democratic modernity. Gülen was a local state imam from 1959 to 1981, and he was a citizen of Turkey until his 2017 denaturalization by the government. Over the years, Gülen became a centrist political figure in Turkey prior to his being there as a fugitive. Since 1999, Gülen has lived in self-exile in the United States near Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania.
Censorship in Turkey is regulated by domestic and international legislation, the latter taking precedence over domestic law, according to Article 90 of the Constitution of Turkey.
The San Diego Church ritual abuse case was a case of a developmentally disabled individual charged with child sexual abuse in 1991 as part of the satanic ritual abuse moral panic. After a 9-month trial, the accused was found not guilty by the jury.
Richard Webster was a British author. His five published books deal with subjects such as the controversy over Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988), Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis, and the investigation of sexual abuse in Britain. Born in Newington, Kent, Webster studied English literature at the University of East Anglia and lived in Oxford, England. He became interested in the problem of false allegations partly due to reading the work of historian Norman Cohn.
Halkbank is a Turkish bank, first incorporated in 1933 as a state-owned bank. After growing throughout much of the twentieth century, it began absorbing smaller-sized state banks around the turn of the millennium. Halkbank is now a publicly traded company, although the majority stakeholder remains the Turkish government. Halkbank is a bank that offers vehicle loans, housing loans, consumer loans and commercial loans. A number of scandals and controversies involving the bank emerged in the 2010s, some of which culminated in arrests of its executives.
The Gülen movement, or Hizmet movement, or Fethullah Gülen movement, referred to by its participants as Hizmet ("service") or Cemaat ("community") and since 2016 by the Government of Turkey as FETÖ, is an Islamist fraternal movement led by Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim preacher who has lived in the United States since 1999. The movement is designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey, Pakistan, Northern Cyprus, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. Owing to the outlawed status of the Gülen movement in Turkey, some observers refer to the movement's volunteers who are Turkish Muslims as effectively a sub-sect of Sunni Islam; these volunteers generally hold their religious tenets as generically Turkish Sunni Islam.
Aslı Erdoğan is a prize-winning Turkish writer, author, human rights activist, and columnist for Özgür Gündem and formerly for Radikal, ex political prisoner, particle physicist. Her second novel has been published in English, and eight books translated into twenty languages.
The “Turkish model” refers to the focus on Republic of Turkey as "an example of a modern, moderate Muslim state that works." Turkey has been seen as combining a secular state and constitution, with a government run by a political party or political parties with "roots in political Islam". The AKP, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has ruled Turkey with a large majority in parliament since 2002. During this time Turkey has had good relations with the West, but also cordial ties with the Islamic Republic of Iran and a more pro-Palestinian policy. It has had vigorously contested, "substantially free and fair" elections, a vibrant culture, and has undergone an economic boom, developing a "large and growing middle class." However, as of summer 2013 and the crushing of the Taksim Gezi Park protests, some commentators complained that the model has come "unstuck".
A wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Turkey began on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan. Subsequently, supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey, protesting against a wide range of concerns at the core of which were issues of freedom of the press, of expression and of assembly, as well as the AKP government's alleged erosion of Turkey's secularism. With no centralised leadership beyond the small assembly that organised the original environmental protest, the protests have been compared to the Occupy movement and the May 1968 events. Social media played a key part in the protests, not least because much of the Turkish media downplayed the protests, particularly in the early stages. Three and a half million people are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest. Twenty-two people were killed and more than 8,000 were injured, many critically.
TRT World is a Turkish public broadcaster which broadcasts in English 24 hours a day and is operated by the TRT and based in the Ulus area of Istanbul. It provides worldwide news and current affairs focusing on Turkey, Europe, Africa, and Western and Southern Asia. In addition to its Istanbul headquarters, TRT World has broadcasting centres and studios in Washington, D.C., and London. It is a member of the Association for International Broadcasting.
On 15 July 2016, a faction within the Turkish Armed Forces, organized as the Peace at Home Council, attempted a coup d'état against state institutions, including the government and president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They attempted to seize control of several places in Ankara, Istanbul, Marmaris and elsewhere, such as the Asian side entrance of the Bosphorus Bridge, but failed to do so after forces loyal to the state defeated them. The Council cited an erosion of secularism, elimination of democratic rule, disregard for human rights, and Turkey's loss of credibility in the international arena as reasons for the coup. The government said the coup leaders were linked to the Gülen movement, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the Republic of Turkey and led by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish businessman and a well-known Islamic scholar who lives in exile in Pennsylvania. The Turkish government alleged that Gülen was behind the coup and that the United States was harboring him. Events surrounding the coup attempt and the purges in its aftermath reflect a complex power struggle between Islamist elites in Turkey.
The 2016–present purges in Turkey are a series of purges by the Government of Turkey enabled by a state of emergency in reaction to the 15 July failed coup d'état. The purges began with the arrest of Turkish Armed Forces personnel reportedly linked to the coup attempt but arrests were expanded to include other elements of the Turkish military, as well as civil servants and private citizens. These later actions reflected a power struggle between secularist and Islamist political elites in Turkey, affected people who were not active in nor aware of the coup, but who the government claimed were connected with the Gülen movement, an opposition group which the government blamed for the coup. Possession of books authored by Gülen was considered valid evidence of such a connection and cause for arrest.
The People's Alliance, abbreviated as PEOPLE, is an electoral alliance in Turkey, established in February 2018 between the ruling Justice and Development Party and the formerly opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). The alliance was formed to contest the 2018 general election, and brings together the political parties supporting the re-election of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Its main rival was the Nation Alliance, which was originally created by four opposition parties in 2018 and dissolved in 2023.
The 2019 Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria, code-named Operation Peace Spring by Turkey, was a cross-border military operation conducted by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and the Syrian National Army (SNA) against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and later Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in northern Syria.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/aydoaean-vatanda
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