Turkish Persecution of Christians Becoming More Brazen

Benedict XVI was right when said that Turkey isn´t good for Europe. They have to respect the freedom of religion. It´s a pity that is supported by US.

That's what takes place in World's most secularized Muslim nation. Imagine what happens in the rest of them, the more so that we only hear about a tiny proportion of anti-Christian crimes from the politically correct MSM.

Oh, tolerance...

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dolphin, CAGE co-founder.
http://www.acage.org

Everything I ever believed about Islam is once and for all proven false. Vive la vérité! Here are the idols for destruction. Have fun, but don't wreck the house, kids:

1. Islam is a religion of peace.
2. Israel is occupying Palestinian territory.
3. Terrorism is caused by poverty and American foreign policy.
4 Mohammed Dura was shot by the IDF on purpose.
5 The BBC is a trustworthy source for news.
6 Misogyny is endemic to the Middle East and not specifically codified in Islamic law.
7 Islam at one time had a golden age much like a Renaissance movement with scientific, educational, artistic and literary advancement, with tolerance of all faiths its crowning achievement, while Europe was wallowing in a rat-infested Dark Ages.

Thanks for destroying my happy-fun tellytubby worldview, Darth Frickin' Batman!

so turkey begins talks with the eu on october third

as far as im concerned major changes will have to be made double quick in that country. irreversible reform will have to take place before they can think about eu entry

secularism will have to be enforced

the cyprus issue will have to be resolved

all forms of persecution of christians will have to be stopped

women will have to be given equality in all areas

there will have to be total admission of guilt (with no pathetic excuses) re the genocide of armenians

people will have to be given the right to express opinion, the right to demonstrate and right of assembly

turkey will also have to be prepared to deal with mad mullahs in mosques as has happened in eu

and thats just for starters

I've come to the sad conclusion that Turkey is destined to remain outside Europe, probably for the good. My thinking has changed over the last several years and, regretfully, I can't see any good that can come of it, at least not enough to offset the very real threats.
An official "wedge" of that size, into so large a governmental body, handed to a tenuously secular government in a muslim country is a fatally unrecoverable mistake.

Imagine that happening in France, or England.

That will be the future if Turkey joins the EU.

Turkey has had a good run. That run is over.

It had a good run becasue for its own reasons it was willing to collaborate against Soviet Communism. Not so much because of the "Communism" part but because of the fact that Russia has always been Turkey's historic enemy, and indeed there was a time, a century ago, when one could have imagined the Russians seizing, and keeping, what they called Tsargrad -- Constantinople. It is not at all clear that from the Western point of view this would have been a bad thing.

Turkish troops fought bravely in the Korean War. The Americans, in turn, supplied every kind of military aid and diplomatic support. Whenever the subject of the Armenian massacres came up, the American government -- with the same mindset that caused it to overlook the Nazi past of Gehlen, and of so many others who continued to keep their high posts in West Germany, and to be protected by Western -- especially American -- connivance, because they were believed, quite wrongly as it turned out, to be useful against the Soviet Union.

And when there was the attack in the fall of 1955 on members of the Greek community, on their shops and churches and homes, all over Istanbul, the whole event was nothiing at all. Hardly anyone in the American government even seemed to notice. (See Speros Vryonis, The Mechanism of Catastrophe)

Turkey was our "ally." Turkey was our "staunch ally." Turkey could be forgiven much, because we needed Turkey (or did Turkey need us, against a Soviet power that managed after World War II to seize the Azeri portions of northern Iran?).

And besides, Turkey was "secular" and "Kemalist" and therefore forward-looking, pro-Western. It had had decades and decades to become so. It was iinconceivable that this process of Kemalization, with its own myths -- and it was Bernard Lewis himself who in a 1953 essay, describing the new mythology of a Turkish past, in which the entire history of Anatolia was claimed for a mythical Turkish race that had always been there, was approvingly described as a "necessary" substitute for -- well, for what was not quite stated, which is to say -- for Islam. And Ataturk, the cult of Ataturk, of course replaced or was believed capable of replacing, the cult of Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil.

Everyone, simply everyone believed it. Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, among others, became agents for Turkey. Everyone knew, or everyone thought they knew, what "Turkey" was like, what "Turkey" would do. After all, didn't those American generals meet with their forward-looking secular ("Of course I'll have a beer. Who told you I couldn't?") counterparts, in forward-looking Kemalist Ankara, full of forward-looking secularits looking forward to joining the European Community. And meanwhile, the Islamic parties were organizing, organizing, organizing, and the Turkey of the Turkish peasants and villagers, and a good many of the urban lower classes and even of the middle and upper classes among the disaffected, among those who felt keenly the sting of Western arrogance or were determined to turn their backs on Western decadence, chose Islam over Kemalism.

And here we are today. Turkey will not be admitted into the E.U. There is no chance. They have only their fellow Muslims to blame -- the Muslims, above all the Arabs and Pakistanis, who have behaved the way they have behaved in France, England, Spain, Belgium. They can blame the Turks, in Germany, too, and the Turks in Turkey, whose behavior has not always inspired confidence. They can blame their press and other media, which has shocked not only those who formerly had thought of Turkey differently (begining with the former American Ambassador to Turkey, who has taken Feith's place at the Pentagon), as it becomes clear that Kemalism is temporary, and needs constant shoring-up, while Islam -- with all that that implies -- is permanent.

But the most important shock to the American system was the refusal of the Turkish government to allow a fourth division to enter Iraq from the north. It might have made a difference, not in the conquest of Iraq, but in how much power could have been applied, early on, in Anbar Province, in that isosceles and thoroughly unpleasat triangle. That was seen as a betrayal; it was certainly a surprise. It was not a betrayal; it should not have come as a surprise. Islam remains Islam, and the only time that a Muslim state will allow cooperation with Infidels against another Muslim state is when that second Muslim state is regarded as a direct threat to the first. Thus Saudi Arabia was willing to cooperate in the first Gulf War, becuase Saddam Hussein threatened it. And thus, with less enthusiasm, there was cooperation from the small sheikdoms -- Qatar, Kuwait -- again, but only because they too have to worry about Iraq, and at the same time, about Iran and Saudi Arabia, and they need American good will, and know it. Not because they like the Americans, but because they think they need the Americans. That is a differnt thing, and should be recognized as such in Washington.

Now Turkey stands as an obstacle to a free Kurdistan. The Administration is petrified of even thinking about why a free Kurdistan would be very much in America's interest, and in the interests of all Infidels. Those who make policy do not want, it appears, to encourage non-Arab Muslims to seek autonomy or independence, even though this would help to divide and demoralize Islam. A free Kurdistan could inspire the Berbers, who have long agitated (riots in Tizi-Ouzo, finally a begrudging recognition by the Algerian government that the Berbers should be allowed to speak their own language). The resentment of non-Arab Muslims can also be seen in Iran, where those fed up with the Islamic Republic sometimes find it useful to couch their lack of enthusiasm as one of a superior Persian civilization brought low by the Arab "gift" or imposition of Islam, and the attendant attempt at arabization -- tales of linguistic nationalism, as expressed in Firdowsi's Shahnameh, and other examples of resistance to the imposition of Arabic, are at hand, ready to be exploited.

The Kurds, of whom there are some 20 million, have been the only sure allies of the American military. When soldiers wish for a little rest and recreation, and it is too dangerous to fly them out to Kuwait or elsewhere, they go to certain spots in Irbil. As Christians, the same Christians who used to serve Saddam Hussein as cooks, tasters, manservants, and so on, were taken over by the American staff in the Green Zone, elsewhee it has been the Kurds who have been most trusted -- for example, tending the gardens in Saddam Hussein's former palace in Tikrit. And this makes sense. Indeed, American soldiers came to refer to the "Kurds and the Iraqis," so different were the two groups -- the Kurds and Arabs -- in their behavior.

To turn away from this, to ignore the Kurdish desire for indepdnence (98% of Kurds in the January referendum voted for such independence), to forget the promise made after World War I for a "Jewish" state (check), for "an Arab state" (check, not once but more than 20 times), an "Armenian state" (which only in the past feww years has come into being -- the Soviet "republic" called Armenia does not count), and a Kurdish state (which because of the desire to placate Turkey, already deprived of its empire, never came into being, and what is worse, the British forced the Kurds in what was the vilayet of Mosul, who had been left largely alone under the Ottoman dispensaion, to become part of "Arab-run, Arab-ruled, Arab-dominated Iraq" -- with the hideous results, including mass murder, that we all have seen.

But why then does the Administration refuse to consider how much good for Infidels, and how much potential harm to those pursuing the Jihad everywhere, a Kurdish state could offer? It is because of Turkey. Rice and others in the State Department simply do not recognize that Turkey is no longer needed as it once was, will no longer offer the support it once did, and in any case has a much diminished power over the Untied States, which it now needs, for Turkey has nowhere else to turn. Unless, of course, it wishes to descend fully into the madness of its Arab Muslim neighbors, which even the most Muslim Turks probably do not wish to do.

Turkey can be managed. If the American government makes clear that it not only will no longer discourage the Kurds, but look favorably upon their efforts (and there are a thousand ways to demonstrate that, including air drops of supplies and military equipment), and if furthermore the Turkish army is informed that the last American troops left in the neighborhood will be stationed in the north, on the border between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey, ostensibly to "guard the Christian enclave" that may have to be created there, and that furthermore the American government will be the guarantor that a free Kurdistan may in the future make territorial demands on Iran, and on Syria -- but will not do so on Turkey. And in turn, the Kurds will be asked to offer up something to their American protectors -- by promising not to make such demands on Turkey, to break with the Arabs on Israel, and to ensure that any Iraqi Christians fleeing the Sunni-Shi'a violence will find safe haven in the north, possibly not permanently -- or possibly permanently.

This could offer so many advantages as a kind of demonstration project of how non-Arabs can finally throw off the yoke of Arab dominance, persecution, and murder,m that one can hardly stand watching Rice when she presumes to read the riot act to the Kurds, as she did a month or so ago. Since she continues to show, by her every phrase, that she does not understand Islam, and when she parrots the party line it is not because she is a dutiful parroter but because she knows no better, one becomes infuriated.

The Kurds deserve better -- and this is one case where the demand for self-determination is not phony, not merely a weapon of Jihad (as in the case of the recently-invented "Palestinian" people.

And while the oil under the Kurdish lands has been stolen by the Sunni Arab government in Baghdad, more remains to be produced and exploited in the lands that the Kurds have every right to, including of course Kirkuk, and possibly even Mosul. That depends, of course, on who has the better guns, tanks, bombs, and training. It would not be hard for the Americans to make sure it is not the Arabs, but the Kurds.

Turkey is no longer what successive American governments and officials took it to immutably be. The writer Orhan Pamuk has just denounced the million Armenian victims of Turkish genocide. In so doing, he notes that he is virtually alone among those Turks in Turkey (there are some outside -- see the letter, for example, demolishing the cirtical review of Peter Balakian's "The Burning Tigris" in the TLS, a review signed by one Murat Acemoglu (TLS, Nov. 29, 2004, p. 17).
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The Kurds are not above criticism. As Muslims, Kurds took part in both massacres (1894-96 and 1915-1920) of Armenians, and later in that of the Assyrians in northern Iraq. If you go to the websites of Christian Iraqis, you can find hair-raising tales about what this or that Kurdish master did to his Chaldean female servant. And these are not made-up stories. But there are geopolitical reason for America to support Kurdish indepedence.

Long of mistreatmentexperience at the hands of the Arabs has helped some Kurds to distance themselves, just a bit, from Islam, which is so identified with the Arabs. Eventually all those who suffer becaue they are not considered full-fledged Muslims, either because their brand of Islam is not regarded as the real thing (as with the Ahmadiyyas in Pakistan, or the Alawites in Syria), or becuase, as non-Arabs, they cannot ever match the wonderfulness of Arab Muslims, who have apparently a solid copyright on Islam (Kurds, Berbers, black African Muslims in Darfur, Afghani Muslims treated with contempt by the "Arabs" in Al Qaeda who exploited them, and many others).

But Turkey makes too many timid -- without reason.

Modern day Turkey is the seat of the Orthodox Church, although it has been reduced to almost nothing. The decline has continued even in these past 80 years of "modern Turkey." Evangelical Christians have long been harrassed, denied meeting places and jailed for minor offenses such as possessing offensive literature. Still, Turkey has long professed to be secular and tolerant. The esteemed author, Bat Ye'or, is very much against Turkey ever belonging to the EU. She believes that Turks will swamp Europe and then the Turkish government will allow fellow Muslims from other countries to pass thru Turkey with false papers supplied by the Turks.

A strong 'Kurdistan' ( save me from one more 'stan'; let's find another name for the place ), with territory from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, and with the support of U.S. troops for some years, would certainly be a major change in what is obviously a disfunctional neighbourhood.
The Kurds certainly deserve their own country, and want one.
To be honest, i would be bloody delighted to see the turks, syrian and iranians lose territory. Their weakness would be obvious - and we would have an end the bs and braggadocio that we hear from them, the latter two particularly.

Kurdistan would remain our friend until they no longer need us, and then, as it has been with every muslim state, we will once again be the great satan. The christian church, driven out, must go storming back in, not with swords and shields, but with the truth and conviction. I can't believe how deferrential christians are toward muslims. How is it that the christians could stand against the evils of Nero and ultimately prevail, and then LOSE all of the middle east and northern Africa? What went wrong with christianity when it became a worldly christendom?

"Kurdistan would remain our friend until they no longer need us, and then, as it has been with every muslim state, we will once again be the great satan..."
-- from a posting above

Given Arab supremacist ideology, it is not likely that Kurdistan would any time soon "no longer need us" to support them diplomatically. And for just as long, we would have an interest in a free non-Arab Muslim state, by way of promoting the same aspirations among other non-Arab Muslims, and in keeping in front of the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Arab the thing that sticks in the craw of some, and possibly growing numbers of them -- the way in which Islam serves as a vehicle for arabization, cultural and linguistic. One takes an Arab name, and even a false Arab lineage, as with every third Pakistani apparently being a "Sayeed." One must read and memorize the Qur'an in Arabic, the Arabic of the 7th, 8th, or 9th centuries (depending on whose version of the origin of Islam you believe), so that little non-Arabic-speaking children, in madrasas in Pakistan and elsewhere, waste their early years memorizing a text in a language they do not understand. One looks to Mohammad as the source not merely of right living, not merely as examples, but as the exact models for here and now. When Khomeini, as virtually his first act, lowered the marriageable age of girls in Iran to 9, he did it for one reason only: Muhammad had married little Aisha when she was nine. When Muslims insist that there can be no permanent peace treaty with Infidels, they do so because the model for all such agreeements is the Treaty of Al-Hudaibiyya that Muhammad made with the Meccans in 628 A.D., which was supposed to last for 10 years, and which he broke within 18 months, as soon as he felt strong enough to attack and a pretext presented itself. In other words, a 7th-century Arab, with seventh-century Arab ways, becomes the model for all Muslims, for all time, through all space. This has stuck in more than a few non-Arab Muslim craws.

And the treatment of non-Arab Muslims by Arabs has not exactly won friends. Think of how the "Arabs" ordered around their "Afghan" allies; it is still a subject of discussion in Afghanistan. Think of how rich Arabs, bustard-hunting in Pakistan, treat the locals. Think of the treatment of non-Arab Muslims in the Gulf sheikdoms and in Saudi Arabia, where they are clearly treated as inferior, second-class Muslims, for all the talk about Islam as a "universalist" religion.

The relative secularism of both Kurds and Berbers no doubt owes much to the fact of their being non-Arabs, and resentful of Arab treatment. What better way for some Muslims, those who are not Arabs, to begin to be slightly less enthusiastic about Islam itself, in the way that Iranians turning against Islam have explaiend their opposition in ethnic terms -- Islam as an "Arab" imposition, on the superior civilization of Iran.

To worry about Kurdistan turning, at some future unspecified date, against the United States, when there are clear gains to be had from an independent Kurdistan, is to worry about a hypothetical situation. But right now, and for a long time to come, the Jihad that never went away, but simply sank into desuetude for lack of wherewithal, is back, and so are the $30 trillion dollars that the OPEC Muslim states are likely to take in over the next 20 years, while within the Lands of the Infidels, the Muslim populations breed and multiply, and conduct Da'wa among the permanent population of the disaffected, the economically and of course the psychically marginal.

Given all that, any and all means to appeal to divisions within Islam, including encouraging the assertion of an ethnic identity that will run counter to Islam -- and all resentments of the imposition of Arab ways, Arab names, Arabic language, can contribute to creating an atmosphere that is less linked to, and may work against, Islam.

From our point of view, all very desirable. And from the viewpoint of Kurds, and Berbers and others -- also desirable.

Every occassion should be seized to emphasize the Arab supremacism within Islam. The realization that Islam was a form of "Arab imperialism" has certainly had an effect on such ex-Muslims as Anwar Shaikh. And Anwar Shaikh is not the only non-Arab Muslim to have come to that conclusion -- which, after all, happens to be true.

This story is proof, if proof were needed, that there should be absolutely no place for Turkey in Europe. Even to entertain such an idea is ludicrous. Our European leaders are playing with fire, playing with something they do not understand. And even if they do, they are not showing it. The ultimate price, of course, will have to be paid by the people. Not them! They will have been retired off on fat pensions to different pastures. Then there are the woes of future generations to think of, too.

Islam and Christianity are competing faiths in every way. There is no place for both faiths in one country. The objectives of each faith are so very different that it makes them immiscible.

We can only hope that the talks these days in Newport, Wales, will fail, and fail miserably. This is the European's only hope. But I, for one, am not too hopeful that this will happen. Princess Blair and his henchmen are doing their level best for Turkey to be admitted into the fold.

The Turks are a difficult people to deal with simply because they have the face of Janus: two faces pointing in two different directions. In many ways, this makes them more difficult to deal with even than the Muslim Arab. At least we know what they stand for and believe in.

It´s important using the kurd, bereber, and in general non-arabic nationalism for trying that they separate from islam, in France, it was a bereber congress, who arrived to the conclusion to separate completing of the arabism is necessary making christians, their old religion. And the secret services of Algeria and Morocco are worried, in addition a kurdish state with a born christianism for exploiting the difference it would be very interesting.
Like someone said, carry the war to them.

my country, sad to say, is entirely responsible for the current mess in iraq

after all, we created it - khurds, sunnis and shias together - what a lethal concoction!

i suppose thats why were there now, very lamely trying to make amends

incidentally have you noticed how bliar has gone so so so very silent on the subject of iraq?

my country, sad to say, is entirely responsible for the current mess in iraq

after all, we created it - khurds, sunnis and shias together - what a lethal concoction!

i suppose thats why were there now, very lamely trying to make amends

incidentally have you noticed how bliar has gone so so so very silent on the subject of iraq?

Maryrose - the missionary prayer magazine that i have, right, the missionaries in turkey cant even put in print that they are operating in turkey, they are designated "in other places"

i mean they cant even put in print (in the uk!) that they operate in that country! cos theyd be out quick as!

i mean even the missionaries in pakistan can announce the fact that they operate there, and those working in iran

How can Turkish membership in the EU even be considered when Turkey has not acknowledged its egregious violations of human rights throughout its history? Here are some ways for the Turkish government to demontrate its sincerity, for starters

1) redouble efforts to protect religious and ethnic minorities
2) support religious tolerance throughout the world ... and that includes Saudi Arabia
3) compensate victims of religious intolerance and ethnic cleansing at the hands of Turks

So far as item 3 is concerned, taken to its logical conclusion, Constantinople, all of European Turkey, Cyprus and most of Anatolia would revert to the Greeks. Membership in the EU for Turkey would then be a moot point, as its borders would be somewhere in central Asia.

Chatillon-

Why should Turkey give up land it won in 1452 when it was a different government. Surely you are not so ignorant as to believe that Turkish Republic is responsible for the crimes of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish Republic is defined by the Turkish War of National Liberation in which Ataturk fended off the scheming western powers who wanted to carve Turkey up.

I went to school as an exchange student in Turkey and there is no culture clash for the large young middle class in the country. It's cultural values are fully westernized and this trend is only increasing. Now that human rights reforms are being addressed, and the role of the military put in check, Turkey can finally claim its place at the European table. The anti-Christian sentiment is worrying, but I am confident it can be dealt with. Turkey unlike chrisitian Greece has not taken its supper with the Jihadists state of the Arab world.

I don't know why anyone would support giving and untrustworthy and unreliable pro-Arab state like Greece more land. Also when speaking of human rights please note Turkey treats its Jews better than any Muslim country. Hell, they let them in when the Europeans Christians wouldn't. Turkey's westernization has come without Christianity and that's perfectly fine by me.

I'd like to see more religious pluralism and more state tolerance of Muslims who wish to practice their faith more openly. But Tayyip Erdogan has reached out to religious minorities, as is shown by his building a mosque/synagogue/church complex in Sanliurfa, birthplace of Prophet Abraham. May more of this continue. And may strong US/Israeli/Turkish ties remain.