Turkey takes action against the shadowy far right

here is a lesson the future 'elected' government can learn from the turks - t

Haroon Siddiqui

Given the prevailing paranoiac obsession with Islam, the media have duly informed us that the "Islamist" government of Turkey is set to lift the "secular" ban on the hijab in universities.

Another view of this development would be that a democratic government is about to restore some basic human rights for women: freeing them from state strictures on what they should or should not wear.

Meanwhile, a more significant development in Turkey is going unnoticed in the West: the busting of a right-wing plot of murder and mayhem, designed to destabilize the country and trigger a coup against the elected government.

Number one on the plotters' hit list was Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

Thirty-three members of a clandestine cell are charged with "provoking armed rebellion."

They include: A retired army general who was earlier allegedly associated with bombings and extrajudicial killings – incidents that were blamed on "Islamists" and others; A leading prosecutor who had hauled Pamuk and other writers into court, on the infamous charge of "insulting Turkishness" – such as questioning the official denial of the 1915-17 Armenian genocide; Some former army officers with links to an anti-Semitic academic, who thinks that "Hitler was right about certain things," and that 9/11 was the work of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.