CHP agents in the State Department!

According to the State Department’s 2008 report on human rights in Turkey, this was the state of Mr. Erdoğan’s EU-candidate country:

* Journalists fear reprisals if they criticize the government.

* A media group (Doğan) is in a row over government graft allegations.

* Authorities ordered raids of newspaper offices, temporarily closed newspapers and issued fines or confiscated newspapers for violating speech codes.

* Several large holding companies that own news agencies were concerned that they would lose business opportunities if their journalists wrote articles critical of the government.

* Senior government officials, including Mr. Erdoğan, made statements strongly critical of the press and of media business figures, particularly following the publishing of reports on alleged corruption in Germany by entities connected to the ruling party.

The "CHP agents" in the State Department also reminded us that International PEN and other organizations called Mr. Erdoğan’s dismissal of six journalists Ğ whose press licenses were not renewed Ğ part of a pattern of intimidation of the press.

On a broader rights perspective, these agents shamelessly alleged that:

* Restrictions on free speech still exist despite amendments to Article 301 (which, in a libertarian spirit, was reworded from "insulting Turkishness" to "humiliating the Turkish nation.")

* There is evidence of curbs on the Internet.

* There was a rise in cases of torture, beatings and abuse by security forces.

* The denial of the existence of political prisoners is a fabrication by the Justice Ministry, which brands them as terrorists.

* Mr. Erdoğan’s government at times did not observe prohibitions on arbitrary arrest and detention.

* The judiciary is subject to outside influence and the government has on occasion launched formal investigations against judges who had spoken critically of the government.

This publishing group has long portrayed Turkey’s failings in just the same words as the Americans used in their report. In return, we are branded CHP partisans Ğ and not only that. Just recently, we received a gift package, reading, "With love from your prime minister," in which we found a nice little tax fine with too many zeroes.

Luckily, American diplomats are exempt from Turkish corporate tax. But my curiosity lies elsewhere. How, now, will the overt and covert Islamists who at every possibility preach to us on "American freedoms" assess that "very American" report on Turkish freedoms?

I can think of a few possible explanations:

a- As I wrote at the beginning, the report is the product of CHP agents in the U.S. State Department and therefore can be brushed aside as secularist propaganda.

b- The report is the biggest typo in American history Ğ a giant typo of a million letters.

c- The State Department is engaged in a plot to topple Turkey’s elected government.

d- The report is a plot by the Jewish lobby, which wanted revenge for Mr. Erdoğan’s heroic Davos tirade.

e- The American diplomats who penned the report are the cross-Atlantic leaders of the Ergenekon gang.

With the Davos memory is still fresh in our minds, I fearfully read Mr. Erdoğan’s remarks on the "CHP/State Department" report, in which he angrily said that he would ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for an explanation when she arrives in Ankara this weekend. I must warn Mrs. Clinton: Under no circumstances should she meet with the "hero of Davos" without the presence of her bodyguards.