“So what if The U.S Government placed an embargo on Iran, did Iran go bankrupt?” Tayyip Erdogan, who reacted as such after USA’s sanction decisions against Turkey, had stated the following four years ago, back in January 2014 during his visit to Tehran: “We feel like we are in our second home in Iran.”
Erdogan did not disregard mentioning the “marja” (guide) title of Ali Khamenei in Iran’s religious hierarchy whenever he spoke about him. These actions demonstrate how he envisions Iran in his subconscious.
The things Andrew Brunson went through, who has been living in Turkey for 23 years together with his wife and three children, showed the world a very clear picture of the despotic regime constituted by Erdogan in Turkey.
Pastor Andrew Brunson was accused of taking part in the doubtful coup attempt took place in 15 July 2016, espionage, and evangelize the Kurdish people, and he was arrested. According to the prosecutors of the Erdogan regime, Brunson was both trying to make the Kurds believe “they are the lost 13th tribe of the Jews”, and carrying out evangelization propaganda towards them at the same time. For this purpose, Pastor Branson had traveled from Izmir, located in the west end, to Urfa, located in east end, for a total of 1.360 times. The distance between these two cities is 780 miles, and even if the Pastor would have traveled every single day, he only would have managed to complete 1095 journeys.
However, the prosecutors of the Erdogan regime are capable of accusing a religious official with such nonsense allegations. Because they believe that they are fulfilling a religious duty while doing that. A judge in Ankara, who issues arrest warrants the most, praises his work by writing “We are on duty on the archers’ hill” from his Twitter account. The archers’ hill is the place where The Prophet (PBUH) fought against the polytheists of Mecca in Uhud in Islamic history. For this judge, arresting the opponents of Erdogan means the same as the army of Islam killing the polytheists of Mecca in the Battle of Uhud.
These judges and prosecutors, who think they are fighting a battle together with Erdogan, do not abstain from accusing people however they wish. Because, a professor of theology, Hayrettin Karaman, had given them a fatwa stating that cheating in battle is permissible. The chief prosecutor of Ankara takes a selfie with Erdogan and shares it in his Twitter account. The officials of high court published support messages for Erdogan before the elections.
This was exactly the same action of the judges, who was appointed by Ruhollah Khomeini, while they were arresting the opponents of the regime years ago… For them, everybody who opposed to the Khomeini regime was a polytheists or infidel, and it was fair for them to torture such individuals in prisons the worst way possible. Despite the fact that they had only received religious education, many individuals were appointed as judges during the Khomeini regime, and gave the cruelest verdicts in the revolutionary courts. This is the reason why Erdogan removed the condition of receiving law education to be a judge or a prosecutor right after he was elected president back in June… Today, some courts, some of which are established personally by Erdogan, are working like Khomeini’s revolutionary courts with the judges and prosecutors who have jihadist mentalities.
The caliphate project of Tayyip Erdogan is just like a copy of Khomeini’s state ideology. Khomeini said “turbaned frauds” about the Shiite religious officials, who opposed the regime built by Khomeini, and stated: “Destroying these Mullahs will be my final duty…” Special courts were established for these religious officials, thus hundreds of elite religious officials were arrested in Iran, and their titles were revoked. Khomeini’s new ideology brought to religion was added to the new constitution of Iran as the official ideology of the state. Khomeini, who implemented a cultural revolution in Iran, just like Mao did in China, suspended all of the universities and changed their curriculums completely. Khomeini, who dismissed all of the left-wingers of Iran from the state, and told them to go to USA or Europe, used the same tactic while he rebuilt the Revolutionary Guard after completely disbanding it: The Army of Iran was the army of the overthrown shah, and the shah was a spy of USA.
Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari was amongst the first to oppose Khomeini after he constituted a one-man regime. Khomeini had Shariatmadari arrested and the torture of this old religious official started right away. He was forced to make a public statement that he no longer opposes the regime. After this statement, he was diagnosed with cancer. But a treatment in a hospital was never carried out. His corpse was buried somewhere close to the toilet in the hospital. In fact, Shariatmadari was amongst the one who had saved Khomeini by objecting to Shah of Iran, after the Shah decided to have Khomeini arrested.
Another religious official who had opposed to Khomeini was Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri. Thousands of Iranian people were killed in the revolution and to crown it all, Khomeini decided to execute 3 thousand political prisoners, which was the final straw for Montazeri, who finally raised his voice. As a matter of fact, he was the successor of Khomeini, and would be the religious leader of Iran after Khomeini. When the people told him to keep silent until Khomeini dies, Montazeri replies: “I cannot sleep at night knowing all those people will die…” Montazeri objects the state ideology of Khomeini with the following lines: “I believe religion complies with democracy, because Islam supports freedom. The practice today is not Islam, and I refuse this.” Khomeini dismissed Montazeri from being his successor and discharged him. Therefore, the way for Khamenei, the current religious leader, was cleared. During this process, Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, the leader of the Lebanon Shiites, objects the regime of Khomeini, who monopolized the religion. Ayatollah Sistani, the leader of the Iraqi Shiites, also did not approve this kind of state ideology.
Tayyip Erdogan has been practicing Khomeini’s tactics to constitute his despotic regime for the last five years. He started a war against Fethullah Gulen, whom he saw as an obstacle towards his caliphate dream, with the same arguments. While all of the education institutions and universities inspired by Gulen has been closed, he radically changed the curriculums of the schools. He turned all the schools of Gulen he seized into religious schools.
While Erdogan has been establishing an army similar to Khomeini’s Revolutionary Guards, he stigmatized thousands of army officers as “Gulenist” and discharged them from the army. Together with closing down military schools and academy staff, he discharged 40 thousand individuals from the army. Including the discharges from the gendarmerie and coastal guard organizations, the number reaches up to 50 thousand individuals. A similar discharge operation was carried out by Erdogan for the law enforcement agency as well, where there are a total of 280 thousand employees. He nearly discharged half of these employees.
Khomeini, who had spent the last period of his exile in Paris, and took the control of the country when he landed in Tehran after boarding a plane in Paris, told the left-wingers of Iran: “Go to Europe or USA.” Erdogan, who sent his son and daughter to USA for education, also calls everybody who opposes him “the spies of USA and the West.”
Erdogan has been keeping and practicing the agenda step by step towards making Turkey a second Iran for the last five years. There is no doubt about it. He had stated back in 1996, “Democracy is a tramway, it goes as long as we could, and then we will get off there.” He did what he said, and he got off the train of democracy.
The real question is: “While the world of Islam is going through the most depressed period of its history, would the world tolerate a second Iran in the Middle-East?
Faruk Mercan is a leading investigative journalist from Turkey in exile and author of the book ‘No Return from Democracy’.
