The President was in Istanbul (that is, Constantinople before a long-ago and long-forgotten jihad*), where he said:
The Turkish people have grieved, but your nation is also showing how terrorist violence will be overcome - with courage, and with a firm resolve to defend your just and tolerant society. This land has always been important for its geography - here at the meeting place of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Now Turkey has assumed even greater historical importance, because of your character as a nation. Turkey is a strong, secular democracy, a majority Muslim society, and a close ally of free nations. Your country, with 150 years of democratic and social reform, stands as a model to others, and as Europes bridge to the wider world. Your success is vital to a future of progress and peace in Europe and in the broader Middle East - and the Republic of Turkey can depend on the support and friendship of the United States.
Just and tolerant society? 150 years of democratic and social reform? I respect Turkey's position as the only secular democracy in the Islamic world, but let's not go overboard here. If I thought he would actually receive them, I would send the President a set of Bat Ye'or's books. In them, he would find numerous primary texts establishing large-scale oppression of the dhimmis practiced far more recently than 150 years ago. And the dhimmi system was abolished not by internal forces, but as a result of external pressure exerted by the British upon the decaying Ottoman leadership.
And, once Ottoman rule had crumbled entirely, Ataturk and his merry young Turks proceeded to adopt a nationalist model which, combined with cultural hangovers of dhimmitude, resulted in the genocide of millions of Armenians and the exile of millions of Greeks. Since then, this marvelous secular state has maintained its character only by simultaneously making concessions to radical Muslims and keeping them at bay through military force. Meanwhile, the remaining (and resurgent) Christians there still face discrimination and persecution, as I have documented here on several occasions.
Pardon me, Mr. President, but if that is "150 years of democratic and social reform," and if that is what you envision for the next 150 years in Iraq, the Iraqis (particularly Christians) better prepare themselves for tough times ahead.
*Yes, the name change came much later, but the transformation was actually accomplished after the jihad which achieved success on May 29, 1453.
Robert, you have mentioned the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Perhaps, for those who like to consider or reconsider history, they may ask themselves why it was that Byzantium was subject, over a long period, to the slow assault of first Seljukid and then Ottoman Turks while the Christian West seemed utterly indifferent, and did nothing to aid the Byzantines. Why was it that Constantinople, the first city of the West for nearly a thousand years and a great center of art (see John Beckwith, The Art of Constantinople, or the catalogue of the just-closing show at the Metropolitan) was allowed to fall without any attempt to aid it?
Is it not of note that by the time Constaninople finally did fall, the city walls -- now emptied of all but 50,000 of its inhabitants -- succumbed to cannons built not by the Turks themselves, but by a Hungarian (presumably Christian) in their employ?
Those who like historic parallels can consider how, over the past 30 years, non-Muslims -- beginning with a list of ex-diplomats and ex-CIA agents and PR firms, have been similarly in the employ of Saudi Arabia (should Bush wish to undercut Michael Moore's charges about the Saudi-Bush-family-and-friends connection, he would do well to announce that there will be new, and steadily-rising, taxes on gasoline and oil, and that his administration will do everything it can to internalize the real cost of OPEC oil revenues to Americans, because so much of that money goes to support mosques, madrasas, buy weaponry, instruments of the world-wide Jihad in both its aspects -- qital and da'wa, Combat and Call to Islam).
Like that Hungarian cannon-maker, Western arms merchants have "recycled oil money" by selling vast amounts of weaponry to the Arab and Muslim oil states who do not wish Infidels well. It is not only WMD, but other arms, such as Stinger missiles, that are now a threat to us and to all Infidels.
May 29, 1453 is a date to remember.
See Hugh's posts on Turkey at www.nojihad.com (I know it seems self-serving, but you have no idea how time consuming a site is unless you have run one:
1) We at NoJihad
have collected ALL of Hugh's past postings and are putting them up on the site (with Hugh's
blessings) along with a continually refined word index, to create an 'Internet Book' of the 'Writings Of Hugh'.
Go to Hugh's JihadWatch Posts We are about 20% done, and falling behind all the time. Click here for Islam For The Perplexed, that excellent primer that should printed and given out on street corners. Feedback welcome at wwwnojihad@yahoo.com
2) We are issuing an open invitation to anyone who wants to contribute to our site by writing cogent essays or doing a bloggish thing (like I do). No need to be a scholar (after all there is only one Hugh), just well-read. Email me at questioningIslam@yahoo.com.
3) We are trying to put together a letter to be sent ON A SPECIFIC DAY, say, after the election, AND MONTHLY THEREAFTER, to the President and Vice President, along with the appropriate local congress-people stating the facts about Islam, our concerns about current policy and specific actions that we would like to be taken. IF 10,000 OR 100,000 OR 1,000,000 PEOPLE SENT EMAILS, our concerns cannot be ignored. If there is supposed to be 6-8 million Muslims in America and our federal government gets 10 MILLION emails PER MONTH, maybe someone will notice (and at least CAIR will go berserk!)It is one thing to preach to the converted, quite another to convert others to action. We should keep doing this until the government responds. We will be putting up a first cut of the letter soon, and any suggestions for the content of the letter can be
sent to the above email address.
Ethelred Smith
Thanks Robert and Hugh for this commentary, historical, political and otherwise. These things must be heard, I believe.
If I could make a basketball analogy to make sense of Bush's apparent 'democratization of Islam' strategy and policy...
He seems to view Turkey as his 'pivot foot'. His point of security. An example, a point of leverage, a point from which the US and the West can manouvre to win the game in bringing democracy to Muslim countries.
So, Turkey gets into the EU and Muslims en masse over time 'adapt' to democratic ways, free speech, Western conceptions of human rights et alia...following the example of Turkey. Iraq seems to be a touch point in this 'pivot', a move in a long term strategy, trying to score over the horrible, evil defender...Islamic radicalism.
But in basketball if one cannot establish a pivot foot, one cannot post up under the basket. One is forced to the outside where the defense can organize and it is harder to score.
Bush actually thinks he has an inside game and the means to get the ball in the hole over the defender. I think he is mistaken on both counts and should be made aware of it. If we move to the outside it looks to me like all we have got is a long jumper and we will need much more than luck to sink one shot nevertheless win the game.
We need to rethink the whole game...it may not even be a game worth playing...
Your cogent, sobering comments should make our leader and his advisors tread and think carefully about what they are doing.
Thank you again.
Because Hugh, division of church played a role. Plus the Muhammadans were attacking, and the kings were doing likewize, although unwarranted.
A huge mistake. Divided, we fall. That was an era where rose petels lined the streets, and in the aftnoon they were soaked with blood. Hardly what revisionists could call a papal decree. Greed of kings is more accurate.
Imam Nathan:
I regard the division of Christendom as a tragedy, too. But God nonetheless sent the Hebrews into Mesopotamian captivity because they had opted for idolatry, when their forefathers at Sinai had heard God's own voice on the matter. Could God do anything else when the Seventh Oecumenical Council (in the 7th century) declared that all who refused to worship pictures denied the incarnation of God's Word in Christ?
Can God in His infinite holiness bless a Christian "unity" that may be based on falsehood and a deliberate slighting of His Word?
Maybe where we Christians need to begin is honest repentence on the individual and family level; then to the congregational level, then to sustained prayer for city, nation, and world.
In Istanbul, in the wake of the NATO Meeting, President Bush recommended that Iran and Syria urgently take a page from the advancing democratization in Iraq (agonizing which it undoubtedly is). He pointed his finger at Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other authoritarian régimes in the Mideast, proposing that they should promptly commence serious, progressive reforms as well.
There’s ongoing debate about whether it’s indeed POSSIBLE for democracy ever take root in Arab and Moslem countries. Mr Bush backs the Affirmative and is investing prime American resources in bringing freedom to the Arab world, thereby, at its core, neutralizing the appeal of global Jihadi terrorism to millions of totally indoctrinated youths throughout the dar el-Islam.
Many find this excessively idealistic. Not essentially denying the inherent UNIVERSALITY of democracy, they caution that, though it’s finally applicable for any human community on Earth, there could be some societies and cultures which, at this stage, are NOT READY for democracy - and some of these could even be basically resistant to getting ready.
Evidence for the concrete existence of such recalcitrant elements is obvious, looking at much of the negative convictions and behaviour of people across the Arab and Moslem sphere and the psychotic idolization by burgeoning millions there of Osama bin-Laden and his ilk. While the Umma persists in its contemporary, benighted nihilism (apart from all the mindless death, suffering and destruction it causes, internally and externally), it serves daily as a severe brake on everybody else’s development and the construction of a liberal, planetary civilization.
Mr Bush’s thrust makes sense either way: bring the dar el-Islam up to speed - with Iraq as the matrix, demonstrating that democracy and Islam are not incongruous - and the problems of international terrorism, logically, ought then to recede, fast. As the dead weight of superstition and reaction are lifted from them, a liberated people will most definitely have better, lots more constructive things to do than consume themselves with the maniacal Jihad mentality.
And if it proves that they’re NOT compatible, there remain the instruments of repression, which reluctantly, the USA will have no choice but to wield - or ultimately, it’ll be lost itself. Hesitancy and inaction (or half-measures), when Machtspolitikal exigencies call for the opposite, will be immediately interpreted as weakness by its enemies, encouraging them to step up their terrorism.
Already they’re fully confident that the West is terminally decadent, soft (as against their own toughness) - to witness Washington and London in ignominious retreat from Iraq can do nothing but embolden these mortal, malignant antagonists. The militant Arabs and Moslems claim to’ve always had the upper hand, on the moral plane, from the kick-off to their Jihad, early in the 20th Century; so any Coalition bug-out now from Iraq MUST work to further energize them, serving as their “vindication”, hotly spurring them on to greater feats of atrocity.
Ordinary Iraqis’ve got a good chance to work for the establishment of freedom there, though the odds are stacked on the side of bloody chaos ensuing in their country, prior to the inaugural democratic national elections next January. It could even break down before then, over the next four months, running up to the US polls. If it’s positive and prospers, that’s excellent. However, if not, it’s better be to prepared, with a geo-strategic contingency-plan up the sleeve.
The crumbling of the US vision for Iraq and environs, as sketched in Bush’s recent “Greater Middle East Initiative”, would, soberly, usher in a BIGGER, not a lesser, conflict, not contained to the major, current cockpits of confrontation, Iraq and Afghanistan, alone. It could easily spill into Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates of the Persian Gulf, Yemen, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, at the least. Accompanying, there’s bound to be intensification of the present “Holy Wars” in Chechnia, Kashmir, Sudan, “Palestine”, Nigeria, Mindanao and so forth. This gruesome toll doesn’t cover the additional turmoil which is liable to be stirred up by Iran - at the moment, the wildest card in this pack. All told, the risks are enormous.
Say that democracy - for whatever reason(s) - doesn’t take root in Iraq in time. The alternative, heavily-armed anarchy, will probably lead in months or weeks to large-scale war. For the USA, the West and their associates to be in adequate shape to properly cope with the morally, mentally and materially demanding, daunting challenges - brought by their being ineluctably, historically required to decide harsh, existential choices, forced upon them by a hostile dar el-Islam - they’d be wise to retain the option of not excluding any tactic or weapon from their armoury. (This includes the lowest of psy-war Dirty Tricks and, vitally, nuclear weapons….)
From tonight’s perspective, debate over the compatibility of democracy and Islam looks like being resolved, in practice, in the near future, alas, not by dissertation and discourse, but far more by violent events on the ground in Iraq, in the region and beyond. How will Iran pan out? Will the new Interim Government in Bagdad survive to put on the mooted democratic national elections in January? If so, how will they turn out? Or will there be War, again, so soon?
That's Bush the jenius. He's never heard of the Armenian Genocide. He's never heard of Attaturk. He's never heard of the Ottoman Empire.
Young Turks and Ataturk are different. The armenian genocide was the work of the former, but not the latter.
I'd have to agree that Turkey is much more a moderate muslim land than the rest, the Turks are a lot less intense about islam and the q'ran in general. But they are far from the peaceful and respectable nation that this article would have us believe. For example I have met many turks and the distaste for westeners is plain to see on their faces, if they can avoid talking to us they will with as minimal eye contact as possible. Western women on the other hand are a different matter, they drool over them , stalk them sweet and smooth talking all the way. I know this from personal experience when we were in Turkey on holiday every where my sister went she had Turkish blokes sliming all over her.She was only 15 she ,didn't look it,but they probably wouldn't have cared anyway, as I've heard many times from many people Turkish men have a bad reputation for molesting foreign girls of all ages(and I mean ALL AGES).This is an interesting difference to other islamic countries as it is strictly forbidden for muslim men to have any kind of relationship with a white(or indeed non-muslim)woman.
I've also been to Cyprus on holiday which is split in 2, the southern half being Greek the other Turkish (the capital city is split in the same way) they hate each other, most of the hatred coming from the turks.Cyprus' population was originally a greek majority, until the turks invaded, and even now they are not satisfied and the borderline is constantly being forced back.The town I stayed at ,called Protarus was almost smack on the border and about 3 miles down the coast over the Turkish side is a town called Famagusta, which used to be a vibrant town with a greek-Cypriot population.Now it is a ghost town, eerily still and silent, the only signs of life the tanks occasionally spotted moving around (bare in mind I saw this through binoculars from a nearby hilltop as no non turkish cypriots are allowed anywhere on their side).I had a great conversation one night with the hotel receptionist who told me all about the Greek/Turkish Cypriot conflict and what I was told has made me resentful towards the Turks ever since.The turkish side of the island is practically no-mans-land whereas the greek side is a popular holiday resort where Europeans of all nationalities are made to feel welcome, what does this tell us about the idea of Turkey joining the EU. It tells me that it's a ludicrous idea , a very dangerous one that could spell the begining of the end; in that it is a massive gateway to Europe for all our middle eastern enemies, in that we would be letting an Islamic (therefore a rival) country in on our political proceeds. Let Turkey continue the good work as a world power but let them do it as part of Asia rather than Europe.