Month: March 2018

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian government has deemed members of religious minorities, such as Christians and Jews, “enemies of the state,” an analyst tells Breitbart News, echoing the U.S. State Department.

“The religious minorities in Turkey, like the Christians, Jews, and a few others, suffer from unequal treatment. … The religious minorities are believed to be enemies of the state,” Dr. Y. Alp Aslandogan, the executive director of the Alliance for Shared Values, a non-profit group that promotes bringing people from different backgrounds together, told Breitbart News. “So the association with them becomes a crime. So those religious minorities, those citizens themselves, are pushed into enemy status.”

“That’s what all religious minorities suffer from — the Armenians, the Christian Orthodox, and the Jews, among others — they suffer from this kind of stigma,” he added.

In the latest U.S. State Department International Religious Freedom Report, the American government acknowledged that discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities intensified in Turkey following the failed coup attempt of July 2016.

State reports that following the rebellion seeking to depose Erdogan, the president of Muslim-majority Turkey:

Some foreign citizens, including several individuals with ties to Christian groups, faced detention, residency-permission problems, or denial of entry to the country under the state of emergency powers following the attempted coup. The government continued to prosecute individuals for ‘openly disrespecting the religious belief of a group.

…

Several foreign Christian missionaries were subjected to deportation, and cancellation of valid residency permits without notice. The government provided limited explanation or justification for such actions. The government denied any anti-Christian motivation underlying these actions.

Breitbart News also spoke with Emre Celik, the president of the Rumi Forum, an organization dedicated to intercultural and interfaith dialogue, about the persecution of Christians and other religious minorities in Turkey under the Erdogan administration.

“Erdogan’s bigotry against Christians goes against the very fabric of Islam’s respect towards the ‘People of the book’ – a Quranic term for Jews and Christians – and does not comply with the very fundamental principle of democracy that people of different faith backgrounds need to be treated justly and with respect,” Celik told Breitbart News.

“It’s unfortunate that prejudicial and polarizing language is being used for political gain and has become commonplace in Erdogan’s Turkey – against Christians and numerous other minorities,” he continued.

Consistent with Celik’s remarks, Dr. Aslandogan told Breitbart News that Erdogan and his allies use association with religious minorities as a form of attack against their political opponents.

“There has been hate speech and defamation against religious minorities from the ruling party. When they want to attack their enemies, they openly associate them with religious minorities,” explained Aslandogan. “They accuse religious minorities as trying to undermine progress.”

“Erdogan, for instance, attacks his enemies by referring to them as the pawn of Israel or the pawn of the Jews or the pawn of the Catholics,” he also said.

Echoing the State Department, the executive director for the Alliance for Shared Values also noted that the lack of legal standing for religious minorities in Turkey prevents them from owning territory, rendering them a landless group.

“They don’t have a legal standing, so they cannot officially function as a legal entity. They can only exist as community foundations, so that creates difficulties for them because they cannot exist as legal entities. Therefore, they cannot own property either,” he told Breitbart News.

“During the formation of the Turkish Republic, many of the lands of the religious minorities were confiscated, and although Erdogan took some steps to restore those lands to the religious minorities, he later made a U-turn,” he added.

Breitbart News spoke to Aslandogan and Celik after they participated in a panel discussion hosted by the Newseum in Washington, DC, on March 5.

In remarks prepared for the event, Aslandogan pointed out that President Erdogan is seeking to become the “caliph” of the Muslim world.

Currently, “non-Muslim minorities” in Turkey “suffer various forms of discrimination,” he stressed during the March 5 discussion.

Open Doors, which tracks the mistreatment of Christians across the world, records that out of 50 countries, Turkey is the 37th-worst nation for persecution against followers of Jesus Christ. It notes:

Religious nationalism has grown to new heights. President Erdogan has strengthened his position, trying to transform Turkey from a secular state into a Sunni Muslim one. Leaving Islam for Christianity is considered a betrayal of the Turkish identity, Islam, and the family.

Christians have no access to state jobs and experience discrimination in private employment, especially where employers have ties to the government.

According to Open Doors, 187,000 Christians are in Turkey.

The State Department, which places the estimated number of Christians at nearly 300,000, notes that the Christians belong to a plethora of denominations, including Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, Syrian Orthodox Christians, Russian Orthodox Christians, Jehovah’s Witnesses, various Protestant denominations, Chaldean Christians, and Greek Orthodox Christians, among others.

“Keep America Great!” That’s the 2020 campaign slogan Donald Trump unveiled during a rally in Pennsylvania this weekend.

It’s catchy. It conveys the message Trump wants to get across to voters — namely, that he’s turning the country around, both culturally and economically. It’s pithy. It beats “Make America Great Again, Again.” It fits well on a hat.

And, according to the folks at Twitter, it’s “sensitive material” and you shouldn’t be seeing it.

In yet another case of the most censorious social media platform in all of the Democratic People’s Republic of Silicon Valley deciding they’re the only ones who decide what political speech you can see, multiple reports on the social media site claim the slogan was blocked as “sensitive material” when conservative media icon Matt Drudge tried to tweet it out.

Here was the photographic (well, screenshotographic) evidence from Breitbart Deputy Political editor Amanda Lee House.

.@Twitter censors @realDonaldTrump’s 2020 campaign slogan as “sensitive material” ? @DRUDGE_REPORT @dcexaminer pic.twitter.com/suK0lgBeIb

— Amanda House (@AmandaLeeHouse) March 11, 2018

And, other images seemed to indicated that this wasn’t just limited to a single tweet.

In fact, as Breitbart pointed out, this was part of a larger pattern involving censoring any tweets that linked back to Drudge or his website.

“Breitbart News recently reported on Twitter filtering tweets from President Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr. The filter appears to be triggered whenever anyone (including the President of the United States) retweets the Drudge Report,” Breitbart noted.

“Users navigating to the official account of the Drudge Report, will find that all tweets from the account that contain URLs are hidden behind the same “sensitive content” warning message. When the President — or anyone else –retweets the account, their tweets are hidden too.”

Now, keep in mind that this only happens when you have your sensitive filter on. However, there are plenty of institutions — schools and libraries come to mind — that have sensitive filters on their browsers.

And, rest assured, these filters aren’t exactly going after ThinkProgress.

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It’s become increasingly clear that conservatives need to fight a battle against social media, which has so clearly allied themselves against a) free speech and b) conservatism. In the battle for the hearts and minds of America, it’s imperative that we make sure our voices are heard by these behemoths.

If not, our ideas will be socially engineered out of existence — no matter whether they work or not.

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Two world wars and a protracted conflict in Vietnam and the American Civil War still remains the bloodiest war in our country’s history. An estimated 620,000 men lost their lives in places with names like Antietam, Gettysburg, Shiloh and Vicksburg — all in the name of ending the great evil that was slavery.

Back then, of course, the Democrats treated Dixie as if it were their fiefdom. When they lost control of the White House in 1860, they were livid. This time, they hadn’t lost it to the tepid, elitist Whig Party but the upstart Republicans, who had agitated for an end to slavery. By the time Abraham Lincoln took office in March of 1861, seven Southern states had seceded, and four more would eventually join the Confederate States of America.

Four years later, the South laid in tatters, slavery as an institution had been destroyed, and the secession had been a failure. Lesson learned, right?

Well, it may be a century and a half later, but the Democrats haven’t learned their lesson well enough. In fact, after Trump’s election, there were plenty of liberals talking about a civil war.

Sure, slavery may not be involved, but there’s a different kind of culture war being perpetrated — and Townhall.com contributor and retired Col. Kurt Schlichter thinks the Democrats would suffer the same ignominious fate they did a hundred and fifty years ago.

“It’s obvious that the central tenet of the Democrat Party platform is now hatred and contempt for Normal Americans. Taking their cue from the elites in Europe and Canada who are stripping dissenters of their free speech rights and religious freedoms, the leftist elite is moving to solidify its hold on power here with the eager assistance of tech companies and the moral support of the Fredocons who yearn to return to pseudo-relevance as the ruling class’s slobberingly loyal opposition,” Schlichter wrote, referring to social media companies cracking down on conservative publishers and personalities.

“In California, the leftist government is practically firing on Fort Sumter. And nationally, these aspiring fascists are especially eager to disarm Normal Americans – doing so would be an object lesson in who’s the boss, as well as solving that frustrating problem of the Normals having the ability to resist.”

“Do I think there will be a civil war? No, but there could be,” Schlichter wrote.”Civil war is unlikely, but never underestimate Democrat stupidity and hatred. The Schlichter family learned that lesson a century and half ago, the last time the Democrats decided to try to impose their hatred of basic human rights on the rest of the country, when an army of Democrats burned our family hometown.

“Oh, they paid for it. And they would pay again. Democrats are 0-1 in insurrections, and if they went for another round, they would be 0-2. It’s a matter of terrain, numbers, and morale.”

Schlichter said that those “who think history began when Obama was elected, don’t understand the dangerous game they are playing when they talk about how they want to impose their brown shirt vision upon red America.”

If they want to go to war over guns, or over rights, or over any other issues, Schlichter notes that in terms of territory, the Democrats actually control very little of it.

“Let’s talk terrain and numbers. Remember the famous red v. blue voting map? There is a lot of red, and in the interior the few blue splotches are all cities like Las Vegas or Denver,” Schlichter says.

“That is a lot of territory for a counter-insurgent force to control, and this is critical. The red is where the food is grown, the oil pumped, and through which everything is transported. And that red space is filled with millions of American citizens with small arms, a fairly large percentage of whom have military training.”

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Now, the likelihood of this is almost nonexistent. However, with Democrats talking Calexit or attempts at imposing a popular vote in the stead of the Electoral College, things could get awfully hairy. But there’s one last issue Schlichter notes: that of commitment.

“The Democrat threat to peace is based on its policies designed to deprive Normal Americans of their right to speak freely, to worship freely, and to defend themselves and their rights with firearms. Make no mistake – millions of Normal Americans are willing to risk death to defend those rights,” he writes.

“In fact, many swore to do so when they entered our military and law enforcement. But who is the leftist big talker willing to die to impose the fascist dream of censorship, religious oppression, and disarmament on Normal American citizens? Is the screeching SJW at Yale going to suit up in Kevlar? Is the Vox columnist going to grab a M4? Is the Hollywood poser going to switch her gyno-beanie for a helmet?”

Well, no, probably not. Then again, Civil War II: Electric Boogaloo also isn’t likely to happen at all. But the next time a Democrat starts talking tough about conflict, show him Col. Schlichter’s brutal article. And then give him a change of underwear.

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