• As in 1908-1912, journalists are at the center of the government’s rage.”They [journalists from Turkey’s leading newspaper, Hurriyet] had never had a beating before. Our mistake was that we never beat them in the past. If we had beaten them…” — Abdurrahim Boynukalin, Member of Parliament from the governing AKP Party.

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• Last week, Ahmet Hakan, Hurriyet’s popular columnist, who has 3.6 million Twitter followers, was beaten by four men, three of whom happened to be AKP members. Hakan had to undergo surgery. Of the seven men involved in allegedly planning and carrying out the attack, six were immediately released.
• The mob confessed to the police that they had been commissioned to beat Hakan on orders from important men in the state establishment, including the intelligence agency and “the chief.”
• Hundreds of Turkish and Western politicians have publicly condemned the attack on Hakan. Except President Erdogan. Hardly surprising.

In 1908, the Ottoman Empire, under the new name of The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), transformed into an autocratic establishment openly threatening its critics, especially journalists. In 1910, three prominent journalists, Hasan Fehmi, Ahmet Samim and Zeki Bey, who were leading opponents of the regime, were murdered. Several other journalists were beaten by thugs commissioned by the CUP.

In the election three years later, when the party lost its parliamentary majority, its leaders declared that election null and void. Soon mobs, often holding batons in their hands, “guarded” ballot boxes. Miraculously, the CUP vote rose to 94 percent! Victory, however, did not bring good fortune to the party. Its leaders would eventually have to flee the country.

More than a century later, in 2015, Turkey’s new autocratic regime, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan practically declared the polls null and void, as in 1911, and called for renewed elections on Nov. 1. And just as in 1908-1912, journalists are at the center of the government’s rage.

On September 6 and 8, 2015, the offices and printing works of Turkey’s biggest daily, Hurriyet, were pelted with stones by hundreds of club-wielding fans of Erdogan. Video footage from the September 6 attack shows a Member of Parliament from the governing AKP Party, Abdurrahim Boynukalin, leading the mob. In a fierce speech in front of the newspaper’s building, Boynukalin vowed that the Dogan media company [which owns Hurriyet] will “get the hell out of Turkey” when Erdogan will have additional executive powers “whatever the electoral outcome on November 1 will be.”

Abdurrahim Boynukalin (center of left image), a Turkish Member of Parliament from the ruling AKP Party, leads a mob in front of the offices of Hurriyet newspaper, September 6, 2015. At right, the shattered windows of the building’s lobby, after the mob hurled stones.

Other video footage showed Boynukalin speaking to the same mob that attacked Hurriyet. Referring to Hurriyet columnist Ahmet Hakan [and to Hurriyet’s editor-in-chief, Sedat Ergin], Boynukalin says: “They had never had a beating before. Our mistake was that we never beat them in the past. If we had beaten them…”

Well, last week, Hakan was beaten by four men, three of whom happened to be AKP members. The popular columnist, who has 3.6 million followers on Twitter, had to undergo surgery for his broken nose and ribs. Members of the group confessed to the police that they had been commissioned by a former police officer to beat Hakan on orders from important men in the state establishment, including the intelligence agency and “the chief.” Of the seven men involved in plotting and carrying out the attack on Hakan, six were immediately released.

It remains a mystery who “the chief” is. It is highly unlikely that police will find any evidence that the attack was ordered by the AKP or by any of its senior members. Nor will any police or intelligence officer be indicted for ordering it.

Pro-Erdogan and pro-AKP vigilantism is increasingly popular among the party’s thuggish Islamist loyalists. Columnist Mustafa Akyol writes:

“[I]t is already worrying that the culture of political violence, which has dark precedents in Turkish history, is once again showing its ugly face … the campaign of hate that is going on in the pro-government media (and social media) inevitably calls for it. Deep down, the problem is that the AKP era, which began as a modest initiative for reform, has recently recast its mission as a historic ‘revolution.’ Just as in the French Revolution, it demonized the ‘ancien régime’ and the ‘reactionaries’ that supposedly hearken back to it. And now, just as in French Revolution, we see these ‘Jacobin’ ideas taking form in the streets in the hands of the vulgar ‘sans-culottes.'”

Since the beginning of the 20^th century, Turkey has seen a collapsed empire, the birth of a modern state, a one-party administration, multi-party electoral system, several elections, three military coups, civil strife along political and ethnic lines, oppression by one ideology or another and dozens of political leaders. But one feature of Turkey’s political culture persistently remains: Violence.

President Erdogan is probably not too unhappy. He may think that the deeper the political polarization, the stronger his loyalists will feel attached to him. Hundreds of Turkish and Western politicians have publicly condemned the attack on Hakan. Except Erdogan. Hardly surprising.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

• When it comes to diplomatic conflict between Turkey and Israel or Turkish anti-Semitism, there is always an unusual optimism in the official language chosen by Israeli officials or Jewish community leaders. Facts on the ground are a little bit different than the rosy picture.

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• If Turkish Jews are “safe and secure” in Turkey, why do they feel compelled to protect their schools and synagogues with heavy security? Why do most synagogues in Istanbul look almost like a U.S. embassy in Baghdad or Islamabad?
• Anti-Semitism in Turkey reached such intensity that even anti-Semitic Islamists were not immune to anti-Semitic smear campaigns.

• The law stated that the homes and workplaces of those non-Muslims who could not afford the tax would be sequestered.

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• Under the AKP rule, Turkey’s dwindling Jewish community, now at around a mere 17,000, as well as other non-Muslims, have come under systematic intimidation from government politicians and bureaucrats. These non-Muslim minorities are also often the targets of racist attacks.

It was 1942 when, one day, Hayim Alaton, a Jewish yarn importer in Istanbul, received two payment notices from the tax office: He was asked to pay 80,000 liras in total — a fortune at that time. He ran to the tax office to object, but was told to pay the whole amount within 15 days. It was the infamous Wealth Tax, passed on Nov. 11, 1942 and it remained in effect for a year and a half until it was repealed on March 14, 1944.

The Wealth Tax exclusively targeted Turkey’s non-Muslims at a time when 300,000 Orthodox Greeks and 100,000 Jews were living in Istanbul (where total population was one million). The law stated that the homes and workplaces of those non-Muslims who could not afford the tax would be sequestered. Alaton was able to pay no more than 11,000 liras. That was the start of “black years,” as Alaton’s son, 15 years old at that time, would later recall.

Before long, the Alaton’s home and store were sequestered. The merchandise in the store and the goods in stock were sold at auction. Every item in the Alaton home, including kitchen utensils, bed frames and lamps were seized and sold too. The family of six was left only with mattresses. In later days, Alaton was taken from his home and sent to a tent camp in Istanbul where he was kept for two months. There were no meals, so his children would bring him whatever food they could find. One day the 15-year-old Ishak went to the camp and saw his father’s tent empty. The Turkish authorities had put Alaton, along with many others, on a train bound for the town of Askale, in eastern Turkey, where the non-Muslims would be forced to perform physical labor, in this instance, cutting stones on a hill. Alaton would stay in the forced-labor camp for two hard winters and one summer.

The family would not hear from him for a year. During that time, the bodies of 20 laborers at Askale were sent home. Ishak recalls his father’s return: “One evening, there was a knock on our door and an aged, wretched beggar stepped in. We wondered who he was and looked at him with curiosity. When he started to speak, we knew from his voice that he was my father.”

By that time, the family business had gone bankrupt and Alaton, in the grip of a crippling depression, could not leave home. He died running a small store where he sold a small inventory of imported goods.

In a 2011 interview, Hayim Alaton’s son, Ishak, who, after turbulent years in his youth, would found one of Turkey’s most successful industrial conglomerates, would praise Turkey’s ruling Islamists, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) by saying “the AKP has taken many positive steps to improve the situation of non-Muslim minorities.”

Unfortunately, that was a premature conclusion, as the younger Alaton would learn four years later.

Under the AKP rule, Turkey’s dwindling Jewish community, now at around a mere 17,000, as well as other non-Muslims, have come under systematic intimidation from government politicians and bureaucrats. These non-Muslim minorities are also often the targets of racist attacks.

Now 90, Ishak Alaton, although widely respected as “a man of wisdom” by the Turks — Jews, Christians and Muslims alike — is under scrutiny on charges of supporting terror.

An Ankara prosecutor is inspecting claims that Alaton has provided financial and moral support to what the state bureaucracy calls “the parallel structure” — a movement led by an influential U.S.-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen. Gulen and his movement were staunch AKP allies until the end of 2013, when the two engaged in an all-out war. The Gulenists accuse Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the AKP of autocratic rule and corruption, and the Turkish government has declared the Gulenists a terror organization that aims to topple the government.

Ishak Alaton (left), a 90-year-old Turkish Jewish industrialist, is being investigated on charges of “supporting terror,” for providing financial and moral support to Fethullah Gulen (right), a U.S.-based Muslim cleric who is a political rival of Turkey’s president.

The charges against Alaton are based on his 2013 biography, “Unnecessary Man,” and were leveled after a former colleague of Alaton’s filed a criminal complaint against him. Some passages in the book refer to Alaton’s support for the Gulen movement schools outside Turkey, particularly one in Moscow. The probe has been ongoing for about a year.

This is the passage from the biography that the prosecutors may be thinking is an evidence of the 90-year-old man’s support for terror:

“This [Gulen] movement is a great educational movement. It educates people. It changes people’s outlook on life and makes them into better equipped, worldly people. The Gulen movement is involved in educational efforts. I’ve seen the outcome of such efforts with my own eyes. Once in Moscow we, as a company, participated in the establishment of such a school. We managed to acquire the land from the Moscow municipality and the school began there. The Russian officials asked us, ‘What are they trying to do? We don’t know them, what do you say?’ [My business partner] Uzeyir Garih and I vouched for them, we told them [the Russians], ‘Don’t worry, let them build the school.'”

When it comes to persecution Turkey’s state machinery never changes.

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

• In its latest attack in Turkey, ISIS used a child suicide bomber to attack a wedding ceremony. More than 50 victims were killed, of whom 26 were less than 18 years old.

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• This is premeditated, officially-tolerated murder. Evidence? Two opposition parties appealed to parliament five times asking for a parliamentary investigation into ISIS and its activities in Turkey. All five requests were rejected by the votes of the ruling AKP Party, Erdogan’s powerful political machine.
• The opposition claims SADAT International Defense Consultancy, which was established by soldiers dismissed from the military due to Islamist activities, offers ISIS operatives training in “intelligence, psychological warfare, sabotage, raiding, ambushing and assassination.” Erdogan this month appointed the owner of SADAT, retired Brigadier General Adnan Tanriverdi, as his chief presidential advisor.

• Normalization of relations with Israel could bolster efforts to balance Iran’s growing regional clout.

• “In the Middle East, everyone at some point realizes that there is a bigger enemy than the big enemy.” – Israeli official.

• But in the Middle East, reason does not always overcome holiness.

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Israel-bashing and the systematic fueling of anti-Semitic behavior have become a Turkish political pastime since Turkey downgraded its diplomatic ties with Israel in 2010. There has been, though, relative tranquility and reports of a potential thaw since June 7, when Turkey’s Islamist government lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it rose to power in 2002.

In August, a senior Hamas official, apparently hosted for some time by an all-too affectionate Turkish government, vanished into thin air. Saleh al-Arouri, a veteran Hamas official and one of the founders of its military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was forced to leave Israel in 2010, after serving more than 15 years in prison. After his release, he was believed to be living in Istanbul. In August 2014, at a meeting of the International Union of Islamic Scholars in Istanbul, al-Arouri said that Hamas was behind the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank, an incident that triggered a spiral of violence in Gaza and Israel that summer.

A year later, Turkish diplomatic sources said that “Arouri was not in Turkey” although they did not confirm or deny earlier reports that Turkey had deported him.

Earlier than the news about Arouri, top diplomats from the two countries had secretly met in Rome. Dore Gold is Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director-General, and his Turkish counterpart was Feridun Sinirlioglu, then the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s undersecretary. Sinirlioglu is a career diplomat, not an Islamist political appointee. Between 2002 and 2007, he served as Turkey’s ambassador to Israel.

On June 24, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu confirmed ongoing talks with Israel, aimed at reaching some form of rapprochement, while suggesting that undue emphasis should not be placed on the gatherings.

Fast-forward to August: Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu forms an interim cabinet to take the country to snap elections on Nov. 1, and Sinirlioglu becomes Turkey’s new Foreign Minister. One of the first to send his congratulations to Sinirlioglu was Dore Gold.

In early September, Gold, a long-time advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,said: “I have to say that many people in different capitals asked about the Rome meeting and … I heard the highest praise whether I was in a European capital or speaking to American officials about his diplomatic skills …Turkey is very lucky to have him [Sinirlioglu] as foreign minister. He is a first-class diplomat.”

The Israeli press reported in June that Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold (R) held a secret meeting in Rome with Feridun Sinirlioglu (L) Turkey’s then Foreign Ministry Undersecretary (today Foreign Minister).

Apparently, reason had gained a bit of the upper hand after Turkey’s parliamentary elections in June. It is, no doubt, in the best national (and rational, too) interests of both countries, which once were best regional allies — before the Islamists rose to power in Turkey in 2002. A normalization of relations with Israel could bolster efforts to balance Iran’s growing regional clout. It could as well help keep Gaza relatively peaceful, stable and economically more viable.

But in the Middle East, reason does not always overcome holiness. Israel, Jews, Hamas and “our Palestinian brothers” remain a few of the most popular themes in Islamist election rallies — the best ones to exploit a Muslim voter base.

Things between the two countries look relatively calm these days, but a fresh round of attacks from Turkey’s Islamist politicians during election rallies are not unlikely.

An Israeli official was right when he told this author recently: “In the Middle East, everyone at some point realizes that there is a bigger enemy than the big enemy.”

Turkey and its best regional (Sunni) ally, Qatar, may have come to understand that they are paying a price for unconditionally supporting Hamas, and sometimes abusing this support. Apparently, there are some signs of a potential change in the Turkish-Qatari solidarity with Hamas. But caution is required. No one is sure yet if those signs indicate a medium-term policy change.

Jerusalem is not unaware of the risks of reaching premature conclusions about any normalization with Turkey. Prime Minister Netanyahu has every reason not to trust Turkey’s dominant pro-Sunni, pro-Hamas and anti-Israel Islamist polity. He knows that any normalization may collapse in a matter of months if the Turkish Islamists decide to start a new fight with Israel. Both countries would look ridiculous if they have to withdraw their ambassadors once again two months, say, after they were appointed. Turkish behavior in the event of normalization would be unpredictable. But it would also depend very much on the election results on November 1.

If, as in June’s elections, PM Davutoglu’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) fails to win a parliamentary majority, it will be forced into a coalition government with one of the three opposition parties, with the social-democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) appearing as a likely prospective partner. The AKP will have to compromise on its Islamist policies, including foreign policy — particularly in the Middle East. The AKP would be reluctant to surrender foreign policy entirely to any coalition partner but may be lured into a compromise in which someone such as Sinirlioglu (the experienced diplomat and presently interim foreign minister) may be the solution satisfying everyone.

But the opposite is also true. In case of a landslide AKP victory on November 1 and a single-party government, all Middle East policy, including relations with Israel, could have to be reset to the Islamist factory settings.

Perhaps the headline in Zaytung, an online humor magazine and a Turkish response to The Onion, explains it all: “The Foreign Ministry, which has neglected its routine work due to civil strife in the country, gave signs of a return to normality when it condemned Israel.”

Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the Hürriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.