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U.S. ready to consider new $140 Million STEAM grant for Armenia schools

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Newly sworn-in Secretary of State Michael Pompeo has said that the United States is ready to assist Armenia with the MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation) process after the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) called for a new $140 million Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) grant for Armenia’s public schools.

Pompeo – in a letter to ANCA Chairman Raffi Hamparian – voiced “enthusiasm” for Armenia’s peaceful, constitutional political transition, affirmed America’s friendship with the Armenian people, pledged to work with the Armenia’s new government to advance shared interests.

“We welcome Secretary Pompeo’s enthusiasm for Armenia’s peaceful, constitutional political transition and look forward to working with him and his team to take our bilateral cooperation to a new level,” said Hamparian. “We are confident that – with our continued advocacy and sufficient will on both sides of the U.S.-Armenia relationship – that we will see progress toward a major Millennium Challenge Corporation compact educating and empowering the next generation of Armenian youth.”

The May 17, 2018, letter from Secretary Pompeo came in response to the ANCA’s call upon the Secretary – in his capacity as Chairman of the Board of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) – to support expedited consideration of a new $140 million Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) grant for Armenia’s public schools.

“We appreciate your idea of a new MCC compact focused on STEAM education for Armenia,” noted Secretary Pompeo, who went on to voice willingness to assist Armenia with the MCC process, while noting that the Corporation does not have a formal process in place for accelerated consideration of compacts. “We hope to see the Armenian government make progress on MCC’s eligibility criteria (‘scorecard’) this year so that the MCC Board of Directors may consider Armenia for a compact during the annual selection process,” noted Secretary Pompeo.

The ANCA recently held a series of meetings with White House and State Department officials and leading Members of Congress advocating for a STEAM MCC compact for Armenia that would, similar to one being implemented in neighboring Georgia, deliver over $75 million for school infrastructure improvements; $30 million for STEAM education projects; and, over $15 million for vocational educational programs to meet the growing demand for information technology professionals. The MCC grant would likely be apportioned over a 5-year period and would be subject to strict oversight by the MCC to ensure the program is benefiting students across Armenia.

The MCC is an innovative and independent U.S. foreign aid agency that is helping lead the fight against global poverty. Created by the U.S. Congress in January 2004 with strong bipartisan support, MCC has changed the conversation on how best to deliver smart U.S. foreign assistance by focusing on good policies, country ownership, and results. MCC provides time-limited grants promoting economic growth, reducing poverty, and strengthening institutions. These investments not only support stability and prosperity in partner countries but also enhance American interests. With cost-effective projects, a lean staff, and an evidence-based approach, MCC is a good investment for the American people.

71 schools lack water supply in Armenia, opposition MP says

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Yelk opposition faction MP Mane Tandilyan voiced her concerns over the current and ever-growing problems faced by Armenia at today’s special sitting of the National Assembly, which is set to vote on Serzh Sargsyan’s candidacy for prime minister.

The MP noted that the citizens that left Armenia are trying to find a job abroad, while the majority of migrants are from the country’s regions, adding the border villages are mainly populated by pensioners.

MP Tandilyan stressed many people lack access to healthcare in the country due to the high costs of medical services. She also added that Armenia is lagging behind its EAEU partners in the Doing Business rankings.

The opposition MP also raised the issue of pensions, adding they failed to increase despite the expectations.

“In parallel to the poverty threshold of AMD 42,000, the pension is three times lower, standing at AMD 16,000. We have ensured a really ‘dignified life’ for pensioners living with AMD 500 on a daily basis,” she stressed.

Mane Tandilyan also added some 71 schools across Armenia lack water supply, 141 schools have no sewers, while 292 schools have no telephone connection.

Assyrians struggling for a primary school in Istanbul Turkey

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The new school year has started this month in Turkey, but Assyrian Christians, otherwise known as Syriacs or Chaldeans, still do not have a single primary school in the country where they could learn their native language and culture.

The Istanbul-based newspaper Agos reported that the activists of the Syriac community applied to the Ministry of National Education in 2012 to get its permission and support to open a Syriac kindergarten in Istanbul. When their application was rejected, they took on a legal struggle and were finally able to open the Mor Efrem kindergarten without any economic support from the government.

The Mor Efrem kindergarten currently has 50 students and will be open for the fourth semester this year, but unfortunately, there is not a Syriac elementary school in Istanbul where its graduates would be able to enroll.

The Virgin Mary Ancient Syriac Church Foundation in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul is still struggling to open a Syriac elementary school in the city. The officials of the foundation stated that it is impossible for them to open an elementary school without governmental support.

Sait Susin, the head of the foundation, said: “We started our preparations for the school but we are faced with a huge financial burden. It is impossible for us to overcome it, not even with donations. We do need economic support.”

Susin added that their most important need is a building and if the government provides it for them, they will be able to afford other costs. “We have applied to the ministry for that, but we still haven’t received a result,” said Susin.

Assyrians are a Christian people indigenous to the Middle East. Istanbul has an Assyrian community, estimated in around 15,000, but the number is only an approximation. The Turkish government does not officially recognize Assyrians as a distinct ethnic community, so it does not conduct a census on them.

However, in the Ottoman Empire in 1913-1914, there were 2,580 schools belonging to non-Muslims, 29 were Assyrian schools. The last Assyrian school in Turkey, which was located in the city of Mardin, was closed down in 1928 and afterwards, Assyrians were not allowed by Turkish governments to open a primary school where they would be educated in their native language for the next 90 years.

The Assyrian people have inhabited the region since the beginning of recorded history and for 300 years, Assyrian kings ruled the then largest empire of the world. A stateless people today, Assyrians have been continuously brutalized by Muslims in the territory – Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Persians. The greatest systematic violence against Assyrians and their civilization took place before, during, and at the aftermath of WWI at the hands of the Turkish regimes in what is now Turkey.

According to a report by the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR) of the Rutgers University–Newark,
“The Assyrian people have been repeatedly victimized by genocidal assaults over the past century. They first suffered, along Ottoman Greeks and Armenians, from Turkey’s simultaneous genocides during and immediately after World War I… Massacres, rapes, plundering, cultural desecrations, and forced deportations were all endemic. Around 750,000 Assyrians died during the genocide, amounting to nearly three quarters of its prewar population. The rest were dispersed elsewhere, mostly in the Middle East.”

After the 1914-1923 genocide, Assyrian Christians were left out of the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which set the boundaries of republican Turkey and became the defining document for the rights and freedoms to be provided for the non-Muslim minorities.

However, the rights of Assyrians were not even mentioned in the treaty. And ever since, not a single Turkish government has carried out democratic reforms to change this situation and finally grant Assyrians their rights. As a result, Assyrians still do not have schools or other government-funded institutions in the country.

The persecution of Assyrians such as the plundering or expropriation of their properties continued after the Turkish republic was established in 1923 and is still going on.

In late June, for example, the Turkish government seized dozens of properties belonging to Assyrian Christians − such as churches, monasteries and cemeteries − and transferred them to public institutions.

On July 15, the Syriac monthly paper, Sabro, reported that,
“In the Sur district of Diyarbakir, a historic church belonging to Syriacs-Chaldeans as well as 12 shops and 2 homes belonging to the church foundation have been expropriated with a cabinet decree.”

In the meanwhile, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported on September 13:

“In the 15 years since St Hurmizd was founded, the Assyrian primary school in Western Sydney has grown from a cohort of 85 students, to more than 700. All of the students come from non-English speaking, Assyrian backgrounds, and nearly 200 are new refugee arrivals. Many were welcomed to Australia as part of the Government’s intake of 12,000 Iraqis and Syrians earlier this year.”

If the Australian government can provide Assyrian refugee children with a primary school, why does the Turkish government, a member of NATO and perpetual candidate for EU membership, not do the same for the indigenous Assyrian children in Turkey?

It seems that Turkey’s Assyrian community is going through the latest stage of genocide. US officials should immediately urge the Turkish government to respect the Assyrian right to education as well as their religious liberty. For the Assyrian civilization to survive, the religious and cultural values of Assyrians – and particularly their native language – should be freely used, learnt, and preserved by the community.

But it would not be very realistic to assume that the Turkish government, which is busy with seizing Assyrian properties, would soon provide Assyrians with basic human rights. Hence, it appears to be the ethical and urgent responsibility of Christian leaders in the US and across the world to support the dwindling Assyrian community in Turkey economically as well as psychologically. For if they do not do that, nobody else will. And if the current community plundering and a lack of cultural rights continue, yet another native Christian community in Turkey will eventually be extinct.

Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist and political analyst formerly based in Ankara.

Source: https://philosproject.org/assyrians-primary-school-istanbul/

Number of Armenian schools in Turkey dwindles

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Armenian schools in Turkey are struggling to survive as the population of the Armenian community continues to dwindle, Hurriyet Daily News reports.

Out of the 138 schools that operated in the 1920s, only 24 have remained today.

For Turkey’s Armenian community, the meager number of schools for their children is a problem. With a population of 60,000 across the country, only 3,000 students receive education in Armenian schools.

“There were around 9,000 students in 25 schools at the end of the 1950s. Now, there are 3,000 students,” Istanbul Dadyan Armenian School’s founder Arsen Arşık said.

“When the education system in Turkey changes, it affects our schools too. Because high school and university entrance exams are conducted by a centralized education system, parents want classes like physics and mathematics to be taught in Turkish, which we have the right to offer in Armenian.”

Related links:

Hurriyet. Bir okulda üç öğrenci

Ethiopia schools linked to Turkish cleric Gulen are sold

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Ethiopia-gulen-schoolsA network of schools in Ethiopia linked to Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, accused by Turkey of masterminding a failed coup attempt last year, is changing ownership, The Associated Press says.

The sale of the Nejashi Ethio-Turkish International Schools follows pressure from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is urging countries that host institutions inspired by Gulen to close or take them over.

Cecil Aydin, a coordinator at the schools in Ethiopia, this week described the sale of the school network to a group of German educators as a “business decision.”

Aydin did not identify the new owners. The German embassy has not commented.

Ethiopia previously said the schools would be handed over to a foundation backed by the Turkish government.

Related links:

AP. Ethiopian schools linked to Turkish cleric are sold

USA: Scores of state lawmakers took trips subsidized by controversial Turkish opposition movement

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Gulen-schools

Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen speaks to members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pa., in 2016. His Hizmet movement helped send at least 151 U.S. state legislators to Turkey, even though the Turkish government now calls him a terrorist.
Chris Post/AP

Gulen groups are connected to U.S. charter school network overseen by legislators

By Liz Essley Whyte

Just why exactly would 151 state legislators from places like Idaho and Texas accept subsidized junkets from a Turkish opposition group now blamed by that country’s government for an attempted coup last summer?

It’s puzzling that state legislators who rarely get involved in foreign policy matters have been courted with international trips.

It’s especially surprising for the invitations to come from a powerful religious movement that until recently ran media outlets and a bank before falling out with the government in Turkey, a pivotal U.S. ally that serves as the gateway to the Middle East. Though followers of the movement deny having supported the failed coup, Turkey has asked the United States to extradite its leader, Fethullah Gulen, a reclusive Islamic cleric who lives in a compound not in Ankara or Istanbul but in the woods of Pennsylvania.

The Center for Public Integrity documented the extent of the trips and found that some state lawmakers who attended them later introduced resolutions supporting Gulen’s controversial Hizmet movement. And some have even supported charter schools that are part of a network from Washington, D.C., to California of roughly 160 taxpayer-funded schools run by friends of the movement.

While some familiar with the lawmakers’ trips frame them as innocuous learning experiences, the trips are meant to transform American community leaders into Gulen sympathizers, according to Joshua Hendrick, a sociologist at Loyola University and a leading expert on the movement.

“It most certainly has the impact of cultivating influence,” Hendrick said. “It is a political effort but it is framed as a grassroots mobilization of dialogue.”

‘Sympathetic to the cause’

The long parade of state legislators who have accepted the heavily subsidized trips from the Gulen movement includes some influential figures. The man known as Illinois’ most powerful state politician, Democratic Speaker of the House Mike Madigan, traveled four times to Turkey on trips sponsored by nonprofit groups associated with Gulen’s Hizmet — or “service” — movement.

In 2011, at least a tenth of Idaho’s state legislators toured the land of the Ottomans on the movement’s dime.

At least four Texas lawmakers who have served on legislative education committees went on the sponsored trips. The Lone Star state is home to the most Gulen-linked charter schools.

California has about a dozen of the schools, as do Florida and Ohio. Arizona, Illinois and Missouri are among the states that have them, as well.

The Center for Public Integrity used lawmakers’ annual disclosures and news reports to identify 151 state legislators from 29 states who toured Turkey between 2006 and 2015 thanks to more than two dozen nonprofits associated with the Gulen movement.

Among those who went on the trips were lawmakers who had rarely traveled overseas. Many had little knowledge of Gulen or Turkish politics. Few of their states have trade connections to Turkey.

But state legislators represent the political farm team of leaders who may someday play in the big leagues of Congress or beyond. Thom Tillis, for one, was first elected to the North Carolina statehouse in 2006 and went on a trip to Turkey with a Gulen movement group in 2011. Fast forward: The Republican is now a U.S. senator serving on the powerful Armed Services Committee, which oversees members of the U.S. military stationed in Turkey.

State lawmakers also shape education policy and hold the purse strings on state budgets, which fund charter schools.

“It’s effective public relations,” said William Martin, a Rice University sociologist who went on two sponsored trips. “That can affect their schools, it can affect the things they would like to do.”

The schools have denied connections to Gulen, but experts and even some friends of the movement call the links obvious. The charter schools are often founded and run by individuals with long ties to the Gulen movement, and they frequently hire Turkish teachers, sponsor their visas and move them between schools.  Many were set up with the help of nonprofits tied to the movement.

Gulen supporters say the trips for lawmakers promoted intercultural dialogue, a key component of Gulen’s teaching. The former imam preaches a unique brand of Islamic mysticism paired with Turkish nationalism and respect for modern science.

“We wanted to act as a kind of a bridge” between Americans and Turks, said Atilla Kahveci, vice president of the California-based Pacifica Institute, a Gulen-movement group that has organized lawmaker trips. “We didn’t have any kind of, from our point of view, ulterior agenda, no matter how it seems from outside.”

But other experts think the trips have political motivations.

“It’s like any other lobbying or political operation,” said James Jeffrey, who served as ambassador to Turkey under President George W. Bush and is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. “They’re doing this to advance their cause.”

American sympathizers have stuck up for Gulen and his followers. Since 2011, state lawmakers in 23 states have introduced at least 54 resolutions honoring Turkey or Turkish Americans, some of which specifically praised Gulen or Gulen-movement organizations, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from Quorum, a legislative tracking service.

For example, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a resolution in 2011 recognizing Gulen for his “inspirational contributions to the promotion of global peace and understanding.” A Gulen-movement group sponsored at least 32 trips to Turkey for Illinois state lawmakers between 2008 and 2012, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

In Kansas, former state Rep. Tom Moxley, a Republican who went on a subsidized trip to Turkey in 2011, sponsored a resolution the following year that praised Turkey’s diversity and called for the creation of a Kansan-Turkish Friendship Network.

“I’m more sympathetic to the cause, the belief system of this group of Muslims, versus the ones that are in power in Turkey today,” he said. “We’re watching a dictator take over at a time when the American government can least afford to lose them as a friend.”

Source: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2017/02/09/20657/scores-state-lawmakers-took-trips-subsidized-controversial-turkish-opposition?utm_campaign=key-findings&utm_source=publici_website&utm_medium=twitter

 

Will Trump Administration Close Turkish Imam #Gulen 250 Charter Schools in U.S.? @realDonaldTrump

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It is an irony that the Gülen network with their schools, charity and trade organizations was able to settle not only in Turkey  but in many other countries in Africa and around the world with the help of the same Justice and Development Party (AK Parti) government when Erdoğan-led governments and the Gülen network were in a symbiotic relationship from 2002 to 2013. The relations broke down after the launch of a major graft probe in December 2013 in which Erdoğan’s ministers, officials and even family members were alleged to be involved; Erdoğan immediately denounced it as a coup attempt against him by the Gülenists.

Gülenists had poured in donations and established close relations with the Democratic administration over the years anyway. They have nearly 250 schools in the U.S., even universities; North American University in Texas, for example, recently appointed a well-known Gülenist, Ali Şerif Tekalan, as its rector. Tekalan is a former rector at Turkey’s Fatih University but is currently the subject of an arrest warrant.

The good news for Erdoğan is that the Trump administration might indeed take some steps to curb the Gülen network, at least its operations from the U.S. But it may not be in the form Turkey wants; he might take legal action against the Gülen network like other Islamist networks operating in and from the U.S.

And then comes the possible bad news. Trump and his camp might take legal action against Gülen not because the Gülen network attempted a bloody coup in Turkey but because he is running an Islamist network and because many heavyweights in Trump’s team are openly anti-Muslims terrorism,

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn thinks Islamophobia is rational. CIA Director Michael Pompeo thinks the Iranian government is “about as democratic as that of Erdoğan — both are totalitarian Islamist dictatorships.” Frank Gaffrey, who was a key person in Trump’s transition team, is the one who has been labeling Obama as a “stealth Muslim,” and he is not against “radical Islam” – he is considered anti-Islam in American politics.

 

Iraq: Schools reopen in liberated Mosul areas

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A file photo of Iraqi children at a classroom

Scores of schools have resumed their activities in the recently-liberated areas of Mosul amid an ongoing military offensive to cleanse the entire northern city of  Daesh terrorists.

On Sunday, Iraq’s Shafaq News website quoted Iraq’s Education Ministry as saying that some 70 schools have officially reopened in Mosul.

Hessam al-Din Abar, a representative at Provincial Council in Nineveh, where Mosul is the capital, said Daesh’s presence had prevented the schools from running for two years and a half.

Only a handful of schools would operate under Daesh militants, according to reports.

The education centers had, instead, turned into places for the terrorists to barricade civilians in or train their new recruits and inculcate extremism in them.

Some families would preclude their young ones from attending schools while the terrorists were controlling such premises.

The outfit seized the city in 2014 after unleashing its terror campaign against the Arab country.

The terrorists have come under a concerted push by government and volunteer forces in the city, their last stronghold in Iraq, since last year.

The operation has liberated a good part of eastern Mosul, leaving the group largely in control of its west.

Speaking on January 9, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the counter-terrorism push against Daesh in Nineveh is in its final phase.

Daesh has named Mosul and the city of Raqqah in neighboring Syria as its so-called headquarters.

Their potential liberation would mean the ultimate blow to the terror group’s campaign of bloodletting and destruction in the Middle East

Armenian genocide has long been largely hidden: Now, California schools might change that

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armenia-genocide-simbBy ,

“New history lessons adopted by the California Board of Education this year may especially resonate with Fresno students and families,” Mackenzie Mays writes in an article published by The Fresno Bee.

Schools are now required to teach about the Armenian genocide – an important history in the Fresno area, which has a large Armenian American community. Teachers also are to provide information on the “unprecedented American humanitarian response” to the genocide: relief efforts raised more than $117 million in the aftermath, saving more than 1 million refugees.

The new content, which is more inclusive and aims to teach students to think critically about historical events, is expected to show up in textbooks by 2018.

“Turkish authorities first arrested hundreds of Armenian intellectuals who eventually were killed. The remaining Armenians were ordered onto death marches into the Syrian desert, during which they were subjected to rape, torture, mutilation, starvation, holocausts in desert caves, kidnapping and forced Turkification and Islamization,” reads the curriculum framework for California’s 10th-graders.

“The Armenian genocide has been ignored in history textbooks,” said Barlow Der Mugrdechian, director of Fresno State’s Center for Armenian Studies. “I know several local teachers who have already been providing materials on it, but it’s absolutely essential for all teachers. It brings to light an example of how government can choose to go down a path toward genocide and what conditions allow that to happen.”

Der Mugrdechian pointed to Adolf Hitler’s quote before invading Poland, in which he asked who remembered the annihilation of the Armenians – leading many to believe that it encouraged him to proceed with plans to kill millions of Jews.

That alone “is a clear statement about the necessity to remember history,” Mugrdechian said.

Fresno Unified school board member Brooke Ashjian’s great-grandmother survived the Armenian genocide. He says contributions made by Armenian Americans have shaped the city and beyond, pointing to famous writer and Fresno native William Saroyan.

“It’s a valuable lesson because it’s something you don’t want to repeat,” Ashjian said of the Armenian genocide. “Armenian people are resilient.”

Pakistan submits to Turkey’s ‘authoritarian demands’ on Turkish cleric Gulen Schools

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the-two-evilsAuthorities have ordered teachers with alleged links to Turkish cleric Gulen to leave the country as Turkey’s President Erdogan visits Pakistan. Experts say the move is aimed at appeasing Ankara.

Turkish teachers and their families in Pakistan were given a three-day notice by authorities to leave the country, PakTurk International Schools and Colleges said in a statement on Tuesday.

“PakTurk International Schools and Colleges are deeply concerned over the abrupt decision of the government requiring the Turkish teachers, management and their family members…to leave the country within three days,” the school said.

It added that the staff were asked to leave because of “non-approval of their requests for extension of visa.”

The PakTurk Foundation said the schools would continue operating across Pakistan despite the expulsion of Turkish teachers.

In July, Turkey asked Pakistan to crack down on institutions run by US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara believes was behind the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Sadik Babur Girgin, Turkey’s ambassador to Islamabad, had explicitly asked Pakistani officials to shut down such organizations in their country.

There are 28 institutions in Pakistan administered by Gulen’s PakTurk Foundation, which is also planning to open a university in the country. Operating there for decades, the Gulen movement’s supporters also have business stakes in Pakistan.

“We have called on all friendly countries to prevent activities of this (Gulen’s) group,” Girgin said at a media briefing on July 23 in the Pakistani capital Islamabad. He noted that Turkey was in close contact with Pakistani authorities, adding, “We have had good cooperation with Pakistan in every field.”

Pakistan’s English-language Dawn newspaper, citing sources, said Ankara wants Islamabad to transfer the schools’ management to an international non-governmental organization with links to Erdogan’s administration. This claim has not been verified.

Opposition to Erdogan’s visit

Erdogan is due to arrive in Pakistan later on Wednesday, November 16, and will address the Islamic country’s parliament on Thursday.

Before his departure from Ankara, Erdogan praised Pakistan’s actions against Gulen-linked organizations.

“Pakistan’s decision to have people linked to FETO leave the country by November 20 is very pleasing,” Erdogan said, referring to what his government calls the Gulenist Terror Organization (FETO).

“Just like Turkey, Pakistan is carrying out a relentless fight against terror. Turkey supports Pakistan’s battle until the end,” the Turkish president added.

Sattar Khan, DW’s Islamabad correspondent, says the students of the PakTurk school network and the staff of the institutions administered by the organization have vowed to protest the government’s move against them.

“There are many Turkish people living in Pakistan. Are they all Gulen followers?” an official of the PakTurk school network told DW on condition of anonymity. “We have a staff of around 1,500 people in Pakistan, and more than 8,000 students are studying in our 22 campuses across the country.”

Cricketer-turned-parliamentarian Imran Khan also indicated that his opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) party would oppose the closure of PakTurk schools. Sources claim that Khan has stakes in the PakTurk foundation. Earlier he said his party’s lawmakers would boycott Erdogan’s speech in parliament, but on Tuesday media reports suggested that Khan was ready to revise his decision on request from the Turkish ambassador in Pakistan.

Some analysts also say that Khan is opposed to the Turkish government because of Erdogan’s close ties with Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. At a time when Sharif is under immense pressure due to his alleged links with offshore companies, Khan considers Erdogan’s Islamabad visit as an endorsement of PM Sharif’s government.

Pakistan’s proponents of secularism are angry about Ankara’s demands to crack down on Gulen institutions. They are also opposed to PM Sharif’s close ties with President Erdogan, whom they consider an “authoritarian ruler.”

The Islamic country’s activists believe Erdogan is using the failed coup to impose his totalitarian rule in Turkey. They say Ankara is cracking down on dissidents, secular and Kurdish activists and journalists, and has introduced controversial terror laws – something, they say, is a bad example for Turkey’s ally Pakistan.