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Turkish degree

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Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan, left, holds his honorary doctorate presented to him by Waseda University President Kaoru Kamata during an honorary doctorate conferral ceremony at Waseda University in Tokyo on Thursday.

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Turkish Delight: a PhD in Authoritarianism with particular merit for corruption, media censorship and electoral fraud?

Or was it for his great support during the siege of Kobane?

12 ( +12 / -0 )

Authoritarianism with particular merit for corruption, media censorship and electoral fraud?

As opposed to Abe? Bush? Putin? Ping? My friend, can you find me a politician not guilty of the above?

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Turkish leaders could do with history degrees along with certain politicians here.

6 ( +8 / -2 )

he is honored for denying the turkish killing of millions of armenians and for taking advantage of the syrian war to kill all kurds

1 ( +1 / -0 )

What a complete farce. Does Waseda even have any remote connection to him or is this just a poor waste of time?

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Shame on Waseda.

6 ( +6 / -0 )

With so many people doing good deeds for humanity, why dishonor the university community by awarding a degree to a highly controversial person such as Erdogan?

6 ( +6 / -0 )

Quite right warispeace. Turkey under Erdogan has earned the the dubious distinction of 'World's biggest prison' for the media in the words of Al Jazeera, English. You can also check Wikipedia' list of jailed journalists in Turkey. Erdogan is also a denier of the Armenian Holocaust. This for starters. Erdogan as honorary doctor is an insult to not only academia but anything decent that freedom of thought represents.

Erdogan is a totalitarian swine. And Waseda has proved its to be an eleventh rate university.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

very well deserved: for historical truth gathering with respect to the armenian genocide, and for so much effort in giving back the land to the kurds

0 ( +1 / -1 )

You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Anagram for Recep Tayyip Erdogan:

A Cad Eyeing Property

0 ( +1 / -1 )

"World's biggest prison." ı just laughed hard to this.

"Armenian Holocaust." Strange, when two sides battle against each other for a certain piece of land, i think it is called as "War." Not Holocaust. Interestingly, no one cares about Turkish deaths,this even puts down the masks of fake social justice warriors. Millions of people in Turkey denies this so called "Holocaust." along with Turkish and Azerbaijan historians. You may call those people as "biased." but speaking without even taking a look to their claims makes you an utter one-sided and narrow-minded person.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an Authoritarian leader.But a Totalitarian Dictator ? Of course not...... ... It sounds really ridicilious.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

@faramith Your historian vs. mine. I believe the many historians who've found it was a genocide, intentional attempts to rid areas of Armenian Christians. I'll add Greeks with the Armenians.

Too bad some people in some cultures can't accept their culture can be just as nasty as the rest.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Leading academics, journalists, legal experts and scientists have signed off on a letter prepared by the University Faculty Association (Ünivder) in protest of the awarding of an honorary law doctorate to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, arguing that the award would be meaningless in light of Erdoğan’s frequent trampling on the rule of law.

The letter suggested that Waseda University “might not be aware” of Turkey’s routine human rights violations, restrictions on basic human rights and freedoms and open suppression of the media. It added that giving Erdoğan a law doctorate in an era when judicial independence and the rule of law were regularly being dismantled amounted to “support for the authoritarian regime of Turkey.”

The letter also noted that the bad direction in which Turkey was heading with regards to law and freedoms has been clearly outlined by several institutions, such as the Human Rights Monitoring Committee, Amnesty International, Freedom House, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the European Union and the Council of Europe.

The full text of the letter reads:

“Dear fellow academics at Waseda University,

We scholars, lawyers, journalists and academics in Turkey are writing this letter to express our deepest concern at your university's decision to award President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan an honorary doctorate in law.

Since the end of 2010, the rule of law in Turkey has been damaged by the actions of Erdoğan's regime in two key pillars of democracy:

Interference in the impartiality and independence of the Judiciary; and The imposition of draconian laws that curb fundamental rights and freedoms.

These freedoms are enshrined in Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Prominent human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and international institutions that focus on democracy and rule of law such as Freedom House have all criticized the political repression faced by the judiciary in Turkey.

Through reports and declarations, Turkish allies such as the United States and European countries and international institutions of which Turkey is a partner such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the European Union and the institutions of the European Commission have all drawn attention to violations of the rule of law in Turkey.

Among these, to cite only the declaration issued by the Venice Commission on June 20, 2015: ‘[There is] a pattern of interference with the independence of the judiciary in clear violation of European and universal standards:

Judicial decisions and requests from prosecutors were not executed, in violation of the law; Prosecutors were suddenly removed from cases prepared by them over a long period; Judges and prosecutors allegedly were arbitrarily transferred to other courts; Judges were dismissed for decisions taken by them; Alarmingly, judges and prosecutors were even arrested for decisions taken by them.'

As former Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan said in May: ‘If the weak picture [with regard to the rule of law] continues, we will end up in a place where we long for the situation that we currently have, both in the areas of democracy and the economy. The rule of law is a fundamental necessity for prosperity and democracy, just as food and water.’

With two key pillars of democracy – the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law – under attack, we believe that awarding [an honorary doctorate to] President Erdoğan would amount to supporting an authoritarian regime and hence would aggravate the current human rights crisis in Turkey. True friendship and academic integrity would entail constructive criticism concerning violations of the rule of law, rather than a decision to award [Erdoğan] an honorary doctorate in law.

We academics in Turkey think that our fellow academics at Waseda are not aware of the fact that in addition to judicial problems, there have also been other serious violations of rights and freedoms in Turkey, including repression of the media and the disproportionate use of force by the security forces, which are becoming increasingly common. Moreover, mounting civilian casualties, including minors, due to excessive use of force by the state's security forces is particularly worrisome.

Recently, terrifying graphic images have emerged: A video of a young Kurdish man being dragged along while tied to a police vehicle after being killed and a video of specialist police units pointing guns at journalists’ heads to prevent them from taking pictures. The authenticity of the images has been confirmed by a declaration by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who said, ‘The Interior Ministry… will conduct a comprehensive investigation, not into the incident itself, but into the way in which this incident was presented to the world.’

We urge our fellow academics at Waseda University to not run the risk of violating their own ethical codes of scholarly responsibility and not contributing to the ongoing human rights violations in Turkey.”

Oct 7, 2015 | BGNNews.com | Istanbul

3 ( +3 / -0 )

And after that letter Waseda still gave that monster an honorary doctorate. Even more shame on Waseda.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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