Turkey – Page 11 – CSS Blog Network

Turkey’s Deep State Re-Visited: “The Case of the Century”

This January, Gareth Jenkins shared his observations on the Turkish “Deep State” in a prolific ISN Security Watch article. Not only did he shed light on the history of “Ergenokon,” a clandestine ultra-Kemalist guerilla organization with obscure links to NATO’s covert stay-behind network “Gladio,” but also raised a momentous question: Is the Turkish military, hitherto the staunch and “ultimate guardian of the traditional interpretation of secularism in Turkey,” discrediting itself with its more than likely involvement in planning a coup d’état, thus losing ground to Erdoğan’s Islamist AKP in the struggle over the future of Turkish secularism?

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's mausoleum / Photo: carolinebeatriz/flickr — Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s mausoleum / Photo: carolinebeatriz/flickr

Turkish internet café - for men and women, photo: Marko Anastasov/flickr

There are 2.6 million registered personal computers linked to the internet in Turkey today. For a country with 70 million inhabitants this does not appear to be an impressive figure. But in fact, internet use is more widely spread than it seems. Most of Turkey’s users access computers in their working places, internet cafés and in schools.

But who is active in the Turkish Civil Society 2.0?

Here are some insights from a GMF workshop held on June 5th.

Ertuğrul Kürkçü, journalist and coordinator of the BIANET project explains that the public use of the internet plays a very important role in the lives of Turkey’s young and old. Kürkçü’s website is based on this premise. It represents a unique project that approaches Turkish issues from the point of view of human rights, encompassing children’s rights, gender issues and minority issues. BIANET is not only available in Turkish: it also translates news from local media into English.