A new law Turkish law breaks a 90-year-old ban on Muslims wearing the veil at university or at government work offices and reflects the growing Islamic influence on the once secular government.

The secular Turkish republic in 1925 banned  civil servants from wearing overt symbols of religious affiliation, That presumably includes the kippa, for those Jews brave enough to wear it anywhere in public in Turkey.

The restriction kept many observant Muslim women out of the government civil service.

Critics of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have viewed the new law as evidence of a “secret Islamic agenda,” but he said it represents more “democracy” and also gives more freedom for Kurdish minorities.

Another radical change in policy is discontinuing the practice of school children reciting a vow of national allegiance each week.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest anti-Israel propaganda gimmick that the Zionists were behind the ouster of Mohammed Morsi qualifies him as the successor to Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels, Likud-Beiteinu Knesset Member Avigdor Lieberman said Wednesday morning.

Lieberman, who is suspended as foreign minister pending the outcome of criminal charges against him, told Army Radio that Erdogan “has continued Goebbels’ ways. Those who apologized before Turkey should do some soul-searching; so should those who attacked me and Yisrael Beiteinu for our criticism over Israel’s apology.”

He was referring to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s bowing to President Barack Obama’s request to express sorrow to Turkey for the IDF’s defensive counterterror action that killed nine terrorists aboard a flotilla ship headed to break the maritime embargo on Hamas-controlled Gaza in May 2010.

Erdogan stated Tuesday that he has “evidence” of Israel’s being involved in the military coup that ousted Morsi last month. His “evidence” was a statement  by French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Levy, at a meeting before the 2011 elections in Egypt, with Tzipi Livni, who at the time was leader of the Kadima party which headed the Opposition in the Knesset.

Levy told Livni, “If the Muslim Brotherhood arrives in Egypt, I will not say democracy wants it, so let democracy progress. Democracy is not only elections, it is also values.”

That was enough for Erdogan, who has excelled at being even better than U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for viewing the world through his own ego.

“What is said about Egypt? That democracy is not the ballot box. Who is behind this? Israel is.,” he triumphantly said. “We have the evidence in our hands. That’s exactly what happened.”

White House spokesman Josh Earnest called Erdogan’s accusation “offensive, unsubstantiated and wrong, while the Egyptian military government said his statement was “very bewildering,… baseless… [and] not accepted by any logic or rationale.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor stated, “This is a statement well worth not commenting on.”

This was not the first time that Erdogan and  his government have jumped on the “Blame Israel” bandwagon.

Following anti-Erdogan protests earlier this year, the increasingly paranoiac prime minister blamed the demonstrations on an international conspiracy.

In case there was any doubt as to who was behind it, his Deputy Prime Minister, Besir Atalay made it clear that it is the “Jewish diaspora,” but he later said he had been misunderstood.

Given Erdogan’s track record of failure, he will not reach the depths of Goebbels, Lieberman notwithstanding.

Erdogan’s brilliantly idiotic views on foreign policy continued to astound everyone except himself. He has a record of choosing the wrong friends .

Turkey was Israel’s closest Middle East ally and trading partner for years until the end of 2008, when the IDF launched a three-week Operation Cast Lead counterterrorist campaign to stop, at least temporarily, Hamas missile fire on southern Israel.

Erdogan saw the international outcry over Israel’s “disproportionate” action as an opportunity to hook up with the radical Islamic movement that aims for domination over the entire Muslim world.

He scorned Israel while warming up to the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran and to Syrian President Bassar al-Assad.

The flotilla clash put  Turkish-Israeli relations in the deep freeze, with Lieberman leading the Israeli criticism of Erdogan.

Turkish media and its movie industry then launched a series of vicious anti-Semitic programs that would have pleased Goebbels. Movies and television programs incited hatred against Israel and Israelis, who began staying away in droves from what once was their most popular foreign tourist spot.

Assad’s butchery made Erdogan realize that he made as big mistake, and the prime minister turned 180 degrees to condemn him. He also belatedly discovered that Ahmadinejad had succeeded in isolating itself from the entire world except for Assad, Russia and China, the latter two countries having a vested interest in Iran’s nuclear power development.

Erdogan then looked to Israel and promised, or threatened, several times to visit Gaza, each time being forced to postpone his plans.

Erdogan welcomed the Muslim Brotherhood government, seeing it as another ally in his new-found Islamist desires, and in his view, Israel is getting in the way.

Due to the very close relationship between Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan and ousted Egyptian President and Muslim Brotherhood member Mohamad Morsi, the Egyptian authorities have apparently canceled a long-planned visit to Gaza by the Turkish Prime Minister.

Erdogan announced he would be visiting the Gaza Strip shortly after President Barack Obama traveled to Israel and persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to apologize for the deaths of nine Turks who were aboard the Turkish ship the Mavi Marmara which attempted to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip on May 31, 2010.

When those aboard the Mavi Marmara refused to listen to Israeli warnings and turn back, Israelis boarded the Turkish ship armed only with paint guns.  The Turks attacked the Israeli soldiers with lead pipes and other weapons and in response Israeli soldiers eventually shot and killed the aggressors.

Last week the Egyptian Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs Hatem Seif Al-Nasr called on Turkish Ambassador Huseyin Avni Botsali to object to his country’s stance towards recent events in Egypt.

Since the most recent uprisings in Egypt and the ouster of Morsi, the Turkish government has been extremely critical of Egypt’s activities.  Erdogan gave a speech during an iftar dinner in Ankara expressing his discontent with recent events in Egypt and criticising Defence Minister Abdel Fatah Al-Sisi, blaming him for violence and political unrest.

And in a widely reported interview given on July 14, Erdogan said that Morsi was the only legitimate president of Egypt.

In addition to the current Egyptian leadership’s hostility towards Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister is also saddled with ongoing political unrest in his own country.

It had been one of the warmest relations between Middle Eastern leaders: Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi.  Last year, Turkey pledged $2 billion in aid to Egypt whose economy, so dependent on tourism, had been battered by increasing – and realistic – fears of violence and protests.

This past spring, news stories had been floated that Morsi was going to accompany Erdoğan on a trip the Turkish leader has planned to make to Gaza. And last September, Morsi attended Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) congress in Ankara.

And then the Egyptian people, many millions strong, rejected their president’s many, rapid moves towards the rigid Islamization of their country, and the military removed President Morsi from power in the Egyptian people’s July 3 Revolution.

And as a loyal good friend, Erdoğan is now sticking up for his fellow Middle Eastern leader.  Erdoğan and his ministers are calling for a “return to democracy,” by which they mean the reinstatement of Morsi as Egypt’s president.

On Thursday, July 4, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu criticized the military intervention in Egypt, saying “Turkey does not accept the removal and detention of elected leaders from power through ‘illegitimate means,’” according to the Turkish newspaper, Hurriyet Daily News.

Of course, part of the driving force behind the Turkish government’s outrage over the removal of Morsi by the Egyptian military may be the hot breath they feel on their own necks; the Turkish government itself has been the target of three attempted military coups in recent history.

There are other similarities between the two leaders – both Morsi and Erdoğan moved their respective countries towards increasing Islamization, albeit Erdoğan’s shift has been more of a slow but steady creep away from the secularism of Turkey’s historic leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who transformed the former Ottoman Empire into a modern, secular nation, while Morsi’s was more of a mad dash from what was only a fleeting position of potential secularism.

“Leaders who come to power with open and transparent elections reflecting the will of the people can only be removed by elections, that is, the will of the nation,” Dovutoğlu said to reporters in Istanbul, on July 4. Dovutoğlu also spoke on Thursday about the situation in Egypt with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The United States, like Turkey, seemed stunned by the rapidity of Morsi’s fall, and until even the day of Morsi’s removal were still urging the Egyptian people to retain the first elected president in Egypt’s history.

Turkey’s Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ said the July 3 military intervention did not reflect the people’s will and urged the country to “return to democracy.” Perhaps none of the reporters had the nerve to ask how to measure the will of the people when millions of Egyptians showed up to demand Morsi’s removal.

“The power change in Egypt was not a result of the will of the people. The change was not in compliance with democracy and law,” Bozdağ said in Ankara. “In all democratic countries, elections are the only way to come to power,” he said.

“Everyone … who believes in democracy should naturally oppose the way this power change happened because a situation that cannot be accepted by democratic people has emerged in Egypt,” said Bozdağ.

Prime Minister Erdoğan cut short his holiday and returned to Turkey on Thursday to discuss the situation in Egypt with his top ministers.

A statement was released by the Turkish Parliament’s Human Rights Commission, which was signed by parties across the Turkish political spectrum: the ruling Justice and Development Party, the main opposition Republican People’s Party, the opposition Nationalist Movement Party and the opposition Peace and Democracy Party.

The ruling power that was usurped by unauthorized powers should be given back to the [Egyptian] people. All democratic individuals and institutions across the world should stand against such moves, which have the potential for human rights violations.

Thus far the people of Turkey have not yet made clear their position about the ouster of the Egyptian president, so eyes will be back on Taksim Square to see whether the Turkish opposition is emboldened by the ability of the Egyptian street to topple their leader, and if so, to see how the Turkish government responds.

As The Jewish Press pointed out several weeks ago, it was perhaps inevitable that the blame for Turkey’s current woes was going to wind up being pinned on the Jews.

But where originally code words were being used – the “financial lobby” and one could still be accused of excessive paranoia for saying out loud that a modern day, non-Arab, largely-westernized state was going to point to the ultimate scapegoats as the source of their current woes, rather than at their own very bad decisions, we are currently in full-blown anti-Semitic, blame the Jews mode in the Republic of Turkey.

For those who find grim humor in watching those who, in spite of themselves, believe that one of history’s smallest peoples numerically, and least cohesive intellectually, politically and religiously, are capable of causing global turmoil, this latest creative effort to pin someone’s disaster on the utterly unrelated actions of a completely non-united “Jewish people,” is impressive.

The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington, D.C. think tank, is the current address at which intellectual Jews are metaphorically described as circling their spoons in a cauldron containing a venomous brew.  This time the Jews “caused” the Turkish stock market to plunge, the Turkish youth and intellectuals to turn against their benevolent leader, and the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to look an awful lot like the stock version of a Middle East tyrant.

AEI’s public policy blog describes the situation in an entry it labeled, “AEI vs. Erdoğan.”

AEI’s director of foreign policy, Danielle Pletka, addressed the claims making the rounds in parts of the Turkish press that the anti-government protests in Turkey were the result of a plot hatched at AEI, and that the plotters are, of course, Jews. The accounts mention Michael Rubin, William Kristol (not affiliated with AEI), Bernard Lewis (also not affiliated with AEI and now 97 years old, it is unlikely he is doing much hatching of global or other plots these days), John Bolton (he is affiliated with AEI but he is not Jewish), and others.  And, of course, the meeting was, according to the Turkish press reports, paid for by the American Israel Public Affairs Council.

Rubin, who has long been a serious student of Turkey, was particularly singled out as a prime mover of the alleged plot.  He also responded with tongue firmly in cheek in a posting he called, “A little bit of crazy from Turkey.”

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can’t even get Jewish conspiracies right: doesn’t he know that on Sundays, we control the banks. On Mondays, we control the newspapers. On Tuesdays, we think about how we can stage terrorist attacks and blame al Qaeda. On Wednesdays, we attend meetings with George Soros to discuss interest rates. On Thursdays, we plan atrocities and then order the international media to broadcast cooking shows so no one need see the violence. On Fridays, we hunt Christian children so we can use their blood to make matzoh. On Saturdays, exhausted, we rest.

There are Jews who work at AEI, Pletka being one of them, but the idea that there was some secret meeting at which the plot was hatched was so ludicrous that Pletka had to pull on her best try-not-to-laugh face and state: “I have to admit this didn’t happen. No meeting. No plot. No Jewish cabal.”

On the other hand, Pletka did take the opportunity to express her views about what Erdoğan has done to the modern Turkish state:

Reporters are in prison, the army has been emasculated, and secular freedoms are under siege. The Turkish people are standing up to Erdoğan because they see what has become of their once-proud nation, and they won’t stand for it. Kudos to them.

Rubin, echoing Pletka, suggested where Turkey’s leader should look if he wants to know who is responsible for Turkey’s unrest: “If Erdoğan wants to know who is causing these protests, all he needs to do is look in the mirror.”

Turkish police on Thursday fired tear gas and water cannons on protesters hiding behind barricades made from paving stones and roadside signs, in the capital Ankara.

Thousands of protesters gathered at Kugulu Park in Ankara, to support Gezi Park demonstrations in Istanbul, then hundreds of them marched from the park to the Kennedy Avenue near the  United States embassy, where they erected barricades to block the armored police trucks carrying water cannons.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday said a referendum might be held on the future of Gezi Park in Istanbul, ruling Justice and Development Party deputy Chairman Huseyin Celik told the press.

Celik said, following Erdogan’s five-hour meeting with representatives of the Gezi Park protesters in Ankara, that the referendum, if held, would only include the Gezi Park, not the nearby Ataturk Cultural Center, which may also be on the demolition list as part of a program to revamp Taksim Square.

“Those with bad intentions, seeking provocation and persisting in staying at the park will be facing the police,” he warned.

The government’s move came after more than two weeks of nationwide anti-government protests in solidarity of the demonstrators at Gezi Park, which witnessed fierce clashes between police and protesters.

The protests have left at least three people dead, nearly 5,000 injured and thousands detained.

In one of Turkey’s largest newspapers, Sabah, the blame for all the rioting and ensuing damage to the Turkish economy is finally being blamed on the same people who were blamed for the Bubonic Plague, the death of the leader of one of the world’s great religions and Mel Gibson’s fall from grace…the financial lobby – some would call that code for “Jews.”

On Friday, June 7, an article appears in Sabah that reveals Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spoke to “tens of thousands” of supporters who came out to greet him when he returned from a three day visit to North African countries.

Erdoğan’s trip abroad happened during the worst of the ongoing nationwide protests in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, which were sparked by plans to level a large park to be used instead for commercial purposes.

“We’ve gotten to this point despite the interest rates lobby, and this lobby right now thinks it’s threatening Turkey with speculation in the markets,” is how Bloomberg reported Erdoğan’s words from the event. “No power can stop Turkey’s rise except God,” while supporters chanted: “Open the way and we’ll crush Taksim.”

Erdogan has accused “extremist” groups, including terrorist from far-left organizations, and “unidentified foreign provocateurs” of having a role in the fiercest anti-government protests in years.

But Sabah, a fiercely pro-Erdoğan media outlet, merely quoted the Turkish Prime Minister of blaming a non-specific “financial lobby” or “interest lobby.”  Perhaps Walt or Mearsheimer are looking for reporting opportunities – they may be a good fit for Sabah.

In 2007, Erdoğan seized ownership of the Sabah newspaper.  He then sold it to the Turkuaz Media Group, owned by Çalık Holding. Ehmet Çalik is Erdoğan’s son-in-law.  He is also the 16th richest man in Turkey, with a net worth of $1.3 billion.

In an article on the economy published last year in Sabah, the headline of which appears on Google translate as “Appeared on big brother and the lobby,” there is quite a telling explanation of how the Rothschild family is behind the bad rap Turkey gets in the British media.  In the article it also “explains” how Turkey’s monetary policies cause great danger to the “Family,” which, presumably, is why the “Family” has been provoked into harming Turkey.

But the “Rothschild Family” is not only blamed for media manipulation that economically harms Turkey.  The Sabah article also explains how the Rothschilds made enormous profits from the concentration camps as the financiers of the gas used to kill the Jews, they also benefitted financially from the “Opium War” in the Far East, and from the U.S. war in Iraq and, indeed for both World War I and World War II.