Let them into the EU! Note that Kart has drawn Erdogan's ire (that's right: he has irked the Turk) by noting the encroachment of Islam into public life in this secular state. From the LA Times, with thanks to Nicolei:
ANKARA, Turkey — This nation's best-known political cartoonists gathered in Istanbul on Wednesday to protest legal action taken by the prime minister against artists who criticized him through their work.Members of the Turkish Cartoonists Assn. accuse Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of trying to stifle free expression even as Turkey is preparing to launch talks to win membership in the European Union.
"We cartoonists have long faced pressure from politicians," Metin Peker, the association's president, said at a news conference."Just as we thought those dark days were over, we have been confronted with this."
Peker was referring to a defamation suit filed recently by Erdogan against Musa Kart, a cartoonist for the secular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet. Kart was fined $3,500 by an Ankara court last week on charges of assailing Erdogan's honor in a cartoon that depicted him as a cat enmeshed in a ball of wool.
The work was published by Cumhuriyet in May, when the Turkish leader proposed a legislation that would allow graduates of Islamic clerical training schools to enter secular universities. In the cartoon, Erdogan, who is entangled in yarn labeled for the Islamic religious schools, says: "Do not create tensions. We shall resolve this matter."
Turkish secularists accused the former Islamist leader of doing just what the cartoon figure warned against by trying to increase the role of Islam in public life. The bill was rejected by the country's secularist president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006299
The Sick Man of Europe--Again
Islamism and leftism add up to anti-American madness in Turkey.
On a brief visit to Ankara earlier this month with Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith, I found a poisonous atmosphere--one in which just about every politician and media outlet (secular and religious) preaches an extreme combination of America- and Jew-hatred that (like the Turkish artists) voluntarily goes far further than anything found in most of the Arab world's state-controlled press. If I hesitate to call it Nazi-like, that's only because Goebbels would probably have rejected much of it as too crude.
Never in an ostensibly friendly country have I had the impression of embassy staff so besieged. Mr. Erdogan's office recently forbade Turkish officials from attending a reception at the ambassador's residence in honor of the "Ecumenical" Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, who resides in Istanbul. Why? Because "ecumenical" means universal, which somehow makes it all part of a plot to carve up Turkey. Perhaps the most bizarre anti-American story au courant in the Turkish capital is the "eighth planet" theory, which holds not only that the U.S. knows of an impending asteroid strike, but that we know it's going to hit North America. Hence our desire to colonize the Middle East.
All of which makes Mr. Erdogan a prize hypocrite for protesting to Condoleezza Rice the unflattering portrayal of Turkey in an episode of the fictional TV show "The West Wing." The episode allegedly depicts Turkey as having been taking over by a retrograde populist government that threatens women's rights. (Sounds about right to me.)
Turkish leaders should understand that the "public opinion" they cite is still reversible. But after a few more years of riding the tiger, who knows? Much of Ataturk's legacy risks being lost, and there won't be any of the old Ottoman grandeur left, either. Turkey could easily become just another second-rate country: small-minded, paranoid, marginal and--how could it be otherwise?--friendless in America and unwelcome in Europe.
Last night Khaled Abou El Fadl, the man who poses as a "reformer" (google the articles about him by Daniel Pipes and Andrew Bostom), said on an NPR show ("On Point") that 1) the Shari'a was simply too vast and various for anyone -- i.e., anyone critical of its contents -- to speak out it, for it defied generalizations (Nonsense, but the moderator, Gail Harris, was not inclined to comment on this, perhaps because she had not bothered to study what the irreducible contents of the Shari'a are) and 2) that a desirable "model" for Iraq would be Erdogan's Turkey. But Erdogan's new Turkey shows that, from the viewpoint of Infidels, Islam keeps coming back, despite Ataturk's attempts to deprive it of a politicial and, to a lesser extent, social role in modern Turkey. El Fadl simply could not understand that Americans, having spent $300 billion, with nearly 10,000 wounded and 1500 dead, might actually want to attempt to fashion an outcome in Iraq that would have made it worthwhile -- and he seemed indignant at the mere suggestion that the American government might have a right to influence events, or to work toward a certain outcome. Why?
El Fadl presents himself as a "reformer" but he did not jump at the chance to explain just how the Shari'a limits human freedom. He lamely offered as his "test" of any Shari'a-based system whether or not it permitted women to go out without Burka or Chador or whatever. When a caller suggested that was setting the bar low and that the real test should be whether or not apostasy from Islam -- i.e., freedom of conscience -- is allowed, El Fadl was silent, though his voice trembled with palpable rage at the very suggestion that the Americans might have a stake not in de-islamizing Iraq (for that cannot be done from without), but in supporting a leader, such as Allawi, who might be able, over time, to mimic Ataturk in limiting the role and power of Islam. This upset El Fadl no end; he could hardly contain himself.
In just what, exactly, does Khaled Abou El Fadl's "moderation" and phony "reformism" consist? It is a mirage, helpful in getting onto committees, solidifying his position (perhaps it even helped to get him tenure in California, though at Yale they were not quite so naive and impressionable as he had expected they would be).