As it gets harder and harder for any journalist to work in Turkey, there are more and more indications, showing that the current government only means that the boot is on the other foot: The freedom of expression of an ordinary Turk is still under pressure.
The military-oriented, secular and neo-liberal system which was established by the 1982 coup d'etat is going for good. However, it is being replaced by another neo-liberal, but equally repressive political dominator, which is the civilian-oriented Islamist system.
Just one fresh example:
Until now, the Islamist (not Islamic IMHO) headscarf, which is called "turban" in Turkey, was banned in public universities. I wrote in the past that even political symbols should be allowed in universities as long as they don't belong to violent organizations.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan admitted that this kind of headscarf was a political symbol and it is being abused.
The AKP government has abolished the ban recently, guaranteeing that the students who don't wear headscarves will not be pressurized. However, some students in Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul organized a peaceful protest against the government last week and now 26 of them are banned to enter the campus until the investigation is over. It means that they will fail in their class because of compulsory attendance.
One of the students was beaten by the police after he unfurled an anti-government banner during President Abdullah Gul's visit to open the university earlier this semester. The head of the university was just appointed by Gul, although he got only half of the votes that his predecessor scored in the latest elections. He also didn't have any experience in university administration.
And today, Erdogan criticized the women who don't wear headscarf, saying that they don't defend their fellows who wear it...
Is it a democratizing trend in Turkey, which several people still defends, or is it a revanchist one?
