Fitzgerald: Turkey has had a good run

Yes, there is a danger here, and you've made a good point on an important subject.

As I (like others) strive to understand every word, let me spend the time to find and relate details that are not in the language of the Web site.

"Scoperta del imperio ottomano" means "the discovery of the Ottoman empire"; and "della Turquia" means "of the Turks." I have no idea what the connotation was, what is being communicated by use of Italian. The article's French seems a straight reprise of the English phrase that precedes it; and "vade mecum" is a two-word (now English) phrase that means "A useful thing that one constantly carries about. A book, such as a guidebook, for ready reference."

I don't think there is anyone in the anti-Jihad movement I more enjoy reading, except for this.

Orwell on language:

http://www.assumption.edu/dept/history/His130/PoliticsAndLanguage.html

"...Turkey has been critical of the invasion of Iraq for all the wrong reasons. An important Turkish official described the behavior of American soldiers as "worse than Nazis."

Turkey was very chummy with the Nazis. Turkey loves Nazis and loves "Mein Kampf..."

During my frequent travel through Turkey in the late sixties just about every Turk I met told me that "Germany good, Hitler good..." and when I asked "why?" I was told "because he killed the Jews..."

I am quite sure that nothing has changed... my recent encounter with Turks revealed pretty much the same mindset...

Hugh:

Unfortunately you do not touch on Cyprus in your above article. It is, and should be, a bone of contention and never omitted whenever Turkey is discussed. The fact that half of Greek Cyprus has been overrun by Mohammedan Turks during peacetime less than 30 years ago should not be forgotten and their atrocities rubbed in the face of every polit-prop who so eagerly wishes to ignore it!

If Americans are worse then Nazis then the Ottomans are worse then Americans. They have no room to talk. Considering the fact that they are the whitest skin colored Muslim group outside of Europe proves they enjoyed raping eastern European children for the last 500 years.

I'm sure I talk about this in my sleep. The U.S. has to wake up and sever all ties with Turkey and its Islamic cousins.

Turkey should be the very 1st on the list as it poses the greatest danger to the U.S. and ultimately the world.

How is Turkey a danger to the U.S. one might ask?
Simple if you look at the reality of a mass migration and take over of Europe, then you have to see who would be next on the chopping block. Africa has, and is being Islamicized at an alarming rate, and that won't change when they get their hands on European technology and weaponry.

Turkey with the looming threat of entry into the EU and its reliance on U.S. aid will continue to be a huge threat. Wake up and smell the falafel U.S., dump all your aid and stop support to this criminal state for entry into the EU, and try supporting the Christians states living on Turkey's border for a change.

Niv

TURKEY: THE ECONOMIC BASKETCASE

OT, but of some interest is Turkey's economy. Despite their control of the bosphorus, Turkey's not having endured 50 years of (in stark contrast to the nations listed below) communism, and having so many historical places to visit, its economy is worst than even soon-to-join-the-EU nations Romania or Bulgaria's. Just what is wrong with Turkey?

EU average = 100
(selected nations with which to compare Turkey)
France: 109
Greece: 82
Poland: 50
Romania: 35
Bulgaria: 32
...........
Turkey: 31

Source:
GDP per inhabitant in 2005 varied by one to five across the EU25 Member States; Ireland 40% above average
http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article_10006230.shtml

Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement seeks separation from China on grounds of Islamic identity

Ummah News Links

StillBreathiing --

You have a point. Now Comes the Defendant and for his answer pleads: self-indulgence and affectation, Your Honor. If at the time I am typing, a word occurs to me that is unusual or perhaps not even English, and it is easier to simply let it out than not, and it does not seem impossibly difficult to figure out, then I often let it go. Sometimes it also is useful, if you are semaphoring a particular recipient across the wide-open ether, and still trying for a little privacy.

Why that "scoperta del impero ottomano" followed zeugmatically by "della Turquia"? Well, in the first place, the part of Europe that the word "Ottoman" evokes is Italy, or more specifically, Venice, because of proximity and historical associations, including those Venetian trading posts, and those wars (at Lepanto it was the Venetians and the Spanish), and after Venice Genoa (Galata, those trading posts around the Black Sea). And how often did the Ottomans raid or otherwise threaten various parts of Italy? A mock-scare phrase still in use in Italy is "Mamma, li Turchi!" ("Momma, the Turks are coming.")

But the real reason that I used the word "scoperta" and then had to follow it with a noun has to do with my preferring "scoperta" to "discovery," especially when it comes to a place on this giddy globe and not a law of nature (as in, the "disovery of the law of gravity"). "Why?" you ask. Well, I'm glad you asked. I was waiting for you to ask. The word "scoperta" opens thrice -- at the o, at the e, and then, widest, at the a. The word "discovery" per contra, has has many vowels but they are severe and primly purse-lipped in effect, and I just wanted to use "scoperta." [There is a mock-narrative in verse about the European explorers and the "selvaggi" they found in the New World, called "La scoperta dell'America.} Belli? Trilussa? Somebody.]

As to "vademecum": I prefer to spell it as one four-syllable word no matter what the AP style-sheet insists, or some computer program presumes to dictate. If the Romans can have "cum" as an enclitic or postclitic [please note the self-restraint], which yields "mecum," then why not carry it a step further and attach the entire "mecum" as an enclitic to "vade" in order to produce "vademecum"? And that is exactly what is done in Italian and in French, though apparently not in English (though in the past, I think, it was). Does none of this nothing extenuate?

I'll try to keep this stuff to a minimum. Well, at least I'll promise to pretend that I'll try, sort of. Surely that's worth the non-piece of paper it's printed on?

Thank you, in any case, for your kind words. I hope you will continue to put up with what you don't like for the sake of what you do.

Today, I read the minutes of a recent presentation given by Bernard Lewis in Wash DC. Some big-name reporters were there to ask some poignant questions, including Charles Krauthammer and Bill Gertz.

What was notable to me was that Lewis TWICE made the disgusting and myopic analogy that Wahhabism is to Islam what the KKK is to Christianity. How "the Western world's foremost expert on Islam" could be so blind, I don't know. But it was disheartening to say the least.

If "Wahhabism is to Islam" as "the KKK is to Christianity" then what are Khomeini and the mnay Shi'a who despised Wahhabi Islam (and was despised in turn) but whose views of the Infidels were not a whit less menacing?

If "Wahhabism is to Islam" as "the KKK is to Christianity" then what would Lewis offer as an analogy to all those pre-Wahhabi Muslims who carried out Jihad--conquests and the subjugatio of non-Muslims for a thousand years before Muhammad ibn Abdel Wahhab (1702-1791) appeared in the Nejd, and therefore without any "Wahhabist" inspiration or prompting?

I wonder if Lewis also discussed Iraq. If he dared to, I'm sure he said something like "It might have worked. It could have worked. But we'll never know. So many mistakes were made in the execution of the policy." In other words, I think his public line is that there was nothing inevitable, after the removal of Saddam Hussein, in the behavior of the Sunnis, in refusing to acquiesce in their loss of power, and nothing inevitable in the insistence of the Shi'a to refuse to yield it, and nothing inevitable in the movement of the Kurds toward independence.

Lewis would prefer not to admit he was wrong, or to figure out why he was wrong (as he was in his enthusaism for the Oslo Accords). He can't do what Goitein and Rodinson did. He can't admit that Bat Ye'or has a very great point. It would call into question too much, including his assumption that "modern Turkey" was on a permanent path of ever-greater secularism.

Nor could Lewis ever suggest, ever hint even, that the Americans and other Infidels can have a "victory" in Iraq only by halting their efforts to prevent the sectarian and ethnic fissures formerly held in check by Saddam Hussein from bubbling over.

Let them bubble. Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble -- for Sunnis and Shi'a inside and outside Iraq, but not for us.

Hugh-

A minor note. Not "a fourth division" but "The U.S 4th Infantry Division".

An Army contingent prevented from entering Kurdish Zone by our "glorious NATO ally" (who were probably to busy reading "Mein Kampf" in Turkish to be bothered aiding the U.S. and coalition effort.)

"Lewis would prefer not to admit he was wrong"

That might have less to do with anything ideological or political explanations than with a psychological tendency among brilliant minds. Hmmmm.. who else comes to mind here? ...

Lewis is impressive to listen too. I've watched him on C-Span a few years back and marveled at his intellect, but what rankles me is his alleged 'softening' of the Armenian genocide. He has not been consistent on this point either from what I understand. He's too smart not to see the error of his ways, but I doubt he will ever make a public comment on it at his age. Obviously, his encounter with the moderate, secular crowd in Turkey and elsewhere influenced his thinking vis-a-vis the Turks. His support of Oslo and democratization of the middle east are part and parcel of this fuzzy thinking. I've read his 'What Went Wrong.' This is a short book, but he shows some understanding of the cultural rot within Islam, but perhaps he puts the blame(and cure)of this malaise in the wrong direction.

Not "a fourth division" but "The U.S 4th Infantry Division...
-- from a posting above

But I meant that. I meant that three divisions did invade from the south, and a fourth division was expected to come from the north. Or am I wrong, or were you merely wishing me to specify the name of that intended division, serendipitously named "the Fourth Infantry Division"? In any case, our staunch ally and fellow member of NATO (why, at this point?) Turkey did not permit its staunch ally and fellow member of NATO the United States use its bases on the territory of Turkey effectively during the invasion of Iraq. And that is unforgivable. But not as unforgivable as the grotesque statements made since about the American soldiers, not as telling and unforgivable as a certain best-seller in Turkey, a certain box-office smash in Turkey.

If the government of Turkey thinks that any of this is escaping widespread notice in this country, it is wrong.

An article cut-and-pasted from the excellent website, intended mainly for questining and former Muslims, www.faithfreedom.org is offered below because the last paragraph reinforces the point made above about Bernard Lewis's misleading insistence on blaming "Wahhabi" Muslims alone for the menace of Islam:

My sweet Grandmother and the concept of “Najass”
Keyvan Shirazi
2006/04/27

I am an American son of Iranian immigrants. My parents came to the United States in the 1950’s, and I was born and grew up in the Midwest. Today I consider myself simply an American, and not an Iranian-American, for I cannot respect the crude, separatist thinking of those who hyphenate their identities in this way. Though my family was originally Muslim, probably as far back as the early Middle Ages, I am not now a practicing Muslim, nor have I ever been one in the past. More to the point though, recent events in the world, and my own interpretation of their significance, have lately compelled me to conclude that there is virtually no chance I would ever become a Muslim in the future. The reason I feel this way is because I have come to believe that to devote oneself to Islam is to risk seriously the loss of one’s humanity and the right to be called a civilized human being.

Like many people around the world since 9/11, I too have wondered what it is that inspires Muslims to become such utterly bloodthirsty terrorists. At first, I would insist that the problem lay with Islamic extremists, the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia in particular. When people challenged me on this, arguing that the problem was the moral backwardness inherent in Islam itself, I would dismiss their accusations on the grounds that I personally knew practicing Muslims who were as peaceful and inoffensive as any people on the planet. That latter bit I still know to be true, but the former part of my reasoning – namely, that the decency of some Muslims exonerated Islam itself – is not an opinion that I have the energy or the inclination to defend anymore. I just don’t feel in my heart that this statement is true. Every ounce of my common sense demands that I stop kidding myself.

And yet it was not the relentless string of terrorist acts committed by Muslims in Iraq and almost everyplace else that caused me to abandon the defense of Islam. It was something that happened over 30 years ago, something I never really thought much about until quite recently when I realized that the significance of that event was that it contained at least one of the clues to explaining why global terrorism is an almost exclusively Islamic phenomenon.

In 1974, when I was in my late teens I flew to Iran to spend a few weeks with my extended family members. Many of these people have since fled the country to live in Europe and North America. Back in the 1970’s, however, when the Shah was in power, Iran was a nation whose authoritarian government was sufficiently hands-off in the way it treated the population that if you did not overtly antagonize the ruler you could lead a reasonably normal, prosperous life. Iran was no picnic under the Shah, but nothing like the nightmare it has become under the turban-headed Islamofascists of today. There were many places much worse than Iran back then. There are not many such places now.

That same year my sister came to visit Iran with her first husband, a blond-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian farm boy from northern Iowa. He was a bit of a hippy, though not egregiously so, and he exhibited a great deal of friendly curiosity to learn about exotic places like Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan, all of which the two of them explored that year in an old Volkswagen van.

Most of the time there we spent with my maternal relatives, but for a couple of days we went to visit my father’s older brother at his flat in Tehran. My uncle’s flat was somewhat crowded, for he shared it with his wife and a number of other relatives, including my grandmother. My grandmother has been dead since 1992, but I think of her often and truly miss her sweet face and high pitched, chirpy voice. She was a devout Muslim who, though illiterate in Farsi, had managed to teach herself to read the Koran in the original Arabic. To this day she remains probably the closest thing to a saintly person I have ever known. But as kind and gentle as she was to the end of her life, she was not quite a saint, and I believe it was her Islamic faith that kept her from reaching that plateau.

My grandmother was delighted to see me when I rang my uncle’s door bell. My sister and my brother-in-law were with me on that occasion, and there was a lot of good cheer to go around. As my grandmother became increasingly acquainted with my brother-in-law she clearly liked him. I remember that unmistakably. He was definitely welcome in her home. And yet, she would not physically touch him, either to embrace him as a family member, or even to shake his hand. The reason for this was simple: He was not a Muslim, therefore, he was najass. The word means “dirty” – not dirty in the sense of physically grimy – but rather spiritually tainted, filthy in a deeper sense, something akin to an “Untouchable” in Hindu society. People who submit to the teachings of Islam are taught that non-Muslims can no more be touched than pork or alcohol. My grandmother truly bore him no ill will, but because she had submitted to Islam, she felt she had to accept its dictates with respect to the treatment of non-Muslims. It was less an act of hostility to my brother-in-law than an act of surrender to her religion. This is what strikes me so forcefully today. As kindly and gentle a person as she was, her kindness had nothing to do with her being Muslim, as I had previously thought. She was kind and decent in spite of being a Muslim, for the only thing she learned from Islam was an arrogant disdain for different faiths and those who practice them.

You might be asking how she managed this self-evident contradiction. How could she have liked him and welcomed him into her home if Islam had taught her that non-Muslims are dirty? The answer, in my view, is because Muslims who maintain their humanity and decency do so by compromising with their faith, by deviating from it in some way. As the Koranic scriptures and the Hadiths reveal, being a strict and pure Muslim requires that a person fill his heart with so much concentrated hatred for the “unbeliever” that most people simply don’t have the strength to keep up the daily routine of being an intolerant barbarian. So they quietly tell themselves that they will be good Muslims, but only up to a point. They will honor and revere the Koran, but they will not necessarily take it too literally. Much of what the Koran tells them to do they will silently ignore.

My late grandmother maintained her kind-hearted, cheerful disposition because there was something in her soul besides Islam, something that – call it what you will - fought with Islam and held it at bay, enabling her to rise far above the level of the sort of fascist thug that Islamic doctrine is tailored to produce. She submitted to Islam, but for all her outwardly evident devotion, she submitted to it only partly.

Now contrast my grandmother with somebody like Umm Nidal, a member of the Hamas-led parliament in Gaza. Even by the Palestinians’ abysmal moral standards this woman is a hideous witch, the Shelob to Hamas’ orcs, who glories in the fact that her sons blew themselves to bits simply for the pleasure and “honor” of killing some Jews. Umm Nidal is also a devout Muslim, and yet not only is she no saint, she barely qualifies as a human being at all for she is so indescribably vile that even her rapist would occupy a higher moral plane than she does – assuming any man would be stupid enough to touch such a loathsome creature.

What makes Umm Nidal different from my grandmother? I think the difference is that if you could peer into the Palestinian witch’s soul you would find nothing there but Islam, a total submission to this ugly ideology.

I can no longer argue that the problem in the world stems merely from Islamic extremists like the Wahhabis. Yes, they are arguably the worst of the lot, the scum-de-la-scum, so to speak, of the Islamic world. But the Wahhabis are not the root of the problem; Islam itself is. And that is why I could never attempt to be any kind of Muslim at all, much less a “good” Muslim. The thought of sinking that low is simply too shameful. And that my sweet grandmother managed to avoid the fate of the Palestinian witch is a miracle for which I am genuinely grateful."

Final note: Kanan Makiya, a self-described freethinker -- i.e., he is no longer a Muslim -- when he sensed an attack on Islam, quickly started to talk about his own pious grandmother, also a Shi'a like the one described above who could not permit herself to touch the "unclean" Infidel.

can have "cum" as an enclitic or postclitic [please note the self-restraint], which yields "mecum," then why not carry it a step further and attach the entire "mecum" as an enclitic to "vade" in order to produce "vademecum"

--Hugh

============

This is the only part of your post which I can comprehend, and I have a slight correction. Namely, "postclitic" yields "hercum" not "mecum".

Otherwise, I agree completely.

yes , but do you know which country go on stressing European Commission to support Turkey joining the European Community , when most European citizens reject that prospect ? USA !!

Turkey indeed has had a good run. Now it is time for them to get out of NATO and forget the EU. In fact the Europeans should forget the EU.

The USA should withdraw all support for Turkish entry into the EU, and should champion anti-EU forces in Europe. But that will not happen.

Bush, Rice, and State clearly do not understand the situation in Europe - like many of the Euro-elites, their heads are stuck in the sands of globalization and multiculturalism. They simply do not see the Islamic elephant in the room or understand what it means to the USA.

We will pay dearly for the fall of Europe, which seems inevitable.

Hugh:

We the jury find you guilty of the crimes described earlier and sentence you to several days of removing them as you complete the book to come, the vada mecum.

vade mecum. damn.

I object to pointing to Turkey alone as responsible for the Armenian genocide. After all, the basic motivation was Islam, the Muslim principle that rebellious dhimmis [as the Armenians were considered] can be wiped out. The genocide was based on Islam even if the Ottoman govt at the time was made up of members of the Committee of Union and Progress. Indeed, they were progressives too, they said so themselves. They were those Muslim reformers who gave the world so much hope and still do when they turn up, for instance, in the form of a good guy like Abu Mazen. He wants peace --so our cretinous prime minister Smolmert says, although abu mazen is arafat in a suit with less charisma.
Now, Ataturk too was very Islamic in some ways and continued the persecution and massacre of Armenians. For instance, in the early 1920s, while fighting Armenians and Greeks, Ataturk called himself a Ghazi. Islam was a common platform that ataturk used to get Kurdish support in the early 20s while fighting the Greeks and Armenians. After defeating the Greeks, he came out with his secularism [see Avakian, in La revue de l'histoire de la 2eme guerre mondiale et conflits contemporains]. The defeat of the Greeks was aided by Western treachery, the order of the Supreme Allied War council [exact title?] to the Greek army to stop advancing in Anatolia when they had the upper hand over the Turks, about 1920. Thus, the Greeks having lost momentum and stopped on a line hard to defend, the Turkish "nationalist" counterattack under ataturk found it much easier to defeat the Greeks in 1922. Why did the Supreme Allied council tell the Greeks to stop?[on this see Lord Kinross' biog of ataturk]
Back to the Armenian genocide, not only Turks, but Kurds and Arabs took part. Germans and Austrians helped. This genocide prompted formation of the NILI underground group of Jews in Israel who saw the Armenian genocide as a warning to Jews. In fact, members of this group [Sarah Aaronsohn, etc.] were eyewitnesses to aspects of it. Bat Yeor quotes one member of NILI who saw how Arabs in Israel were buying Armenian survivors as slaves.
It was NILI's knowledge of the Armenian massacres that led them to volunteer to help the British.

By the way, the progressives of the Committee of Union and Progress were planning to massacre the Jews in Israel, also seen as uppity dhimmis like the Armenians. This was averted by Jewish intervention in capitals of the Central powers, in Berlin, Vienna, and Budapest. Prof. A S Yahuda worked on opposition to these plans. Jabotinsky discusses the threat in his famous article "Activism" published in Yiddish in Copenhagen in 1915. As it was, the Ottoman govt expelled about 1/3 of the Jewish population from Israel on the grounds that they were enemy subjects [mainly from Russia], but Russian Jews were not enthusiastic about fighting for Russia to say the least. This expulsion is why there were more Jews in Israel before WW One than after it.

Hugh what do you mean turkey has had a good run ? Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and killed the Armenians in 1915 -1920 and as for ataturk he killed thousands of Greeks in symra as a Greek Cypriot I find your statement ignorant and selfish. you only are against Turkey now becasue they did not allow you airbases to invade Iraq

Greek Girl, I don't think Hugh really meant what you infer from his words. He seems to have just been generalizing.

Now back to where I left off. Anwar Sadat was named after Enver Pasha, one of the leading progressives of the Committee of Unity and Progress [also called "Young Turks"]. [Enver is the Turkish form of Anwar]. Sadat was another fascist/Nazi, comme vous le savez. I'd call him a Nazi rather than a fascist, but take your choice.

As to Islam and Ataturk and his vaunted "secularism." He was most certainly a jihadist when he started his movement. The First Grand Assembly of his movement in April 1920 included Muslim clerics, also on the executive council. Holy War in Anatolia was preached [Avakian, p 88]. His movement called for Islamic solidarity and his victories were considered victories of all Islam [Avakian, p 90]. Mustafa Kemal [= ataturk] became "the popular hero throughout Islam" and "received congratulations from throughout all the regions of the Muslim world."[avakian, p 91]
Albert Avakian, "Pouvoir et Islam en Turquie...," La Revue d'histoire de la 2eme guerre mondiale et des conflits contemporains, no. 137 [janvier 1985]

URGENT – TO ALL AUSTRALIANS!

Murdoch has made comments about the Islamic threat in the past http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1127918/posts and he has now repeated this at a Sydney function naming him the most influential Australian of all time.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19597136-2,00.html
About an hour ago, influential Australian television program “A Current Affair” (ABC) has asked viewers to phone in and vote on the question: “Can Muslims be patriotic Australians” – or words to that effect, a resounding NO vote would send a clear message to politicians about the nature of public unease regarding Muslim immigration. So please vote ‘NO” – Phone: 1902 552 202

Eliyahu ataturk was a finatical muslim he was not secular AtatrashTurk had thousands of Greeks and armenians beheaded because they where christians the koran says to behead infidels and ataturk was following the koran when he beheaded thousands of christians ataturk was responsble for wiping out Greeks in symra turkey is 99% muslim country now thanks to ataturk

back to the post-impero ottomano.

Avakian also reports that the new progressive Soviet Union, the workers' state, the enemy of capitalism and imperialism, obscurantism and feudalism, clericalism and reaction [except, naturally, when they are Islamic], sent weapons to Kemal Ataturk's forces to fight the infidel. Now, the Western powers and imperial Japan were also more or less helpful to Ataturk, as at Smyrna in 1922 when British, French, American, and Italian naval forces allowed the massacre of Armenians to proceed [see George Horton, the Blight of Asia; and Marjorie Housepian, Smyrna Affair]. And some Western powers also sent weapons to Ataturk's forces. Wasn't this a heartwarming and splendid instance of imperialist-Communist collaboration for the sake of barbarism? How do the many Communists in Greece and Cyprus deal with this wondrous and marvelous cooperation between human beings to advance the cause of barbarism?

Can somebody explain why the Supreme Allied war council stopped the Greek advance in Anatolia in 1920?

Greek girl, Kalimera, Ti Kannis?

I think dear that we really agree about ataturk. Please read over what I wrote based on the writings of Albert Avakian, George Horton and Marjorie Housepian.

Please don't give up on Europe - just because our elected leaders are full of dhimmitude doesn't mean we all want to be dhimmis in an Islamic world.

I am still astonished by the "silence of the left" who would normally oppose anything like the type of Islamo-Fascism imposed under Sharia "law".

How can these groups ignore the abuse of women's rights, the lack of free speech, the persecution of other religions and the absolute intolerance of "homosexuals"?

Oh - I forgot - its becuase they hate western civilisation, and especially the USA, so much they are prepared to bury their principles and forge an "unholy alliance" with the Islamo-Fascists.

So much for the "progressive left" - they made their promises in the sixties and then have betrayed all of us.

Lets hope that people start waking up real soon now.

For more on Soviet pro-Islamism, see link below for the Bolsheviks' pro-Islamic Appeal to the Muslim Toilers of Russia and the East.

http://ziontruth.blogspot.com/2005/10/bolsheviks-for-jihad-genocide-stalins.html

Just bear in mind that Soviet policy was not so different from Western Imperialist policy in the period from 1917 to 1925, in regard to ataturk's Turkey and Muslim power generally.

HUGH ON WHAT LEWIS MIGHT HAVE SAID ABOUT IRAQ:

"It might have worked. It could have worked. But we'll never know. So many mistakes were made in the execution of the policy."

Pretty damn close.

The actual quote was: "I underestimated the Coalition's ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

drk, ask yourself who and what the "Left" is anyway. Where do they get their funding? Which media outlets support them? Who owns or controls these outlets? For example, the BBC. Who owns it and/or controls it?

Is there a rational reason to continue to see the "Left" as different from the "right" or the "center" or liberals from fascists, for that matter? Look at what "leftists" say today about Jews and Israel and you can see that the Nazis and various breeds of fascists said about Jews many of the same or similar things before the Holocaust.

Eliyahu emei kala haristo

i never knew that the western powers had given ataturk weapons to kill greeks or amrenians i just thought the west knew what was happening to armenians and greeks but did nothing to help but it looks like they where also assiting ataturk by giving him weapons also i did not know that the Supreme Allied war council stopped the Greek advance in Anatolia in 1920 but i bet know why they did its becasue they hate orthodox christians

The phrase "has had a good run" is apparently misunderstood by a mispeller and misreader of English, of my English, employed and deployed in many articles and postings on the subject of Turkey, that she might easily find at this website -- if she bothered to look.

"the vada mecum."
-- from a posting by StillBreathing above

"vade mecum, damn."
-- from a correction in a posting by the same poster

The first appears to be an innocent error. But as you typed you were probably thinking "vada retro, Satana!"

The author of "La scoperta dell'America" is not Belli, not Trilussa, not Somebody. It is Pascarella.

according to this article i read Turkey is planning on building 3 nuclear power plants by 2015 http://ummahnewslinks.com/2006/06/20/turkey-plans-three-nuclear-power-plants-by-2015.aspx

Eliyahu, my grandfather fought in the 1922 war against Turkey. He was a man who had immigrated to the United States and was living well compared to the life available in Greece at that time. He returned to Greece to enlist and defend his people against the Turks.

My father has told me many times of the horrors my grandfather witnessed as the French and British intervened and caused many Greek losses, changing the course of a war Greece was clearly winning. I have asked myself many times, why does no one know about this, and does anyone know why this happened?

You don't have to look far to see evidence of foreign powers interfering with Greece. The war of 1897? Greece was beaten back by the Turks with assistance from Germany.

Why is it that for the last 200 years at least does it always seem there is a foreign EUROPEAN power there to assist Turkey over Greece? If anyone can add anything to this I'd like to know.

Niv

"My father has told me many times of the horrors my grandfather witnessed as the French.."
-- from a posting above

The French, bobbing on ships in the offing, looked on from a distance as Armenians, and Greeks, were massacred. See Speros Vryonis, see Vahakn Dadrian.

The first appears to be an innocent error. But as you typed you were probably thinking "vada retro, Satana!"

The Vulgate I've read puts it in an even pithier way: "Retro Satanas!"

niv
Why is it that for the last 200 years at least does it always seem there is a foreign EUROPEAN power there to assist Turkey over Greece? If anyone can add anything to this I'd like to know.

i can answer that niv i guess they hate orthodox christians more then they hate muslims Turks its sad the west has to use turk muslims to murder orthodox christians just becasue we are not protestants or catholics

Greek Gurl, I have to say I can't agree with you on why we are left to hang all the time. I believe that politics plays a bigger role in this issue than religion.

As much as I know many Catholics hate the Orthodox, I can't accept that that is the sole or even main reason we are left to defend ourselves.

I believe that we are victims of geography. Orthodox Christians are the unfortunate ones to have lived besides these barbarians and dealt with them longer than anyone else has. Long after the crusades ended, western Europe was able to thrive without this menace next door. This is the single biggest reason Greece is still climbing and clawing to become modern, as a country its just over 100 years old. We have had these animals with their ass backwards ways on our backs for centuries, and the occupation still continues in Constantinople, Smyrna and Cyprus.

We also do ourselves no favours, I have to say every time I saw the Patriarch of Palestine standing behind Arafat I used to have fits. How in the hell can anyone of our people even pretend to support these bastards after all of the atrocities their brothers have committed against ours. How can we expect to be taken serious while taking these ridiculous postures?

Furthermore, the problem with Greece's geography also means she will always be a center piece for aggression as different powers always play in this neighborhood for their own purposes. Let us not forget that even Orthodox Christians are trying to steal from us. I am talking about the Macedonia issue with some of our own Orthodox brothers attempting to re-write history and claim Macedonia was not Greek and Alexander the Great was not Greek, how can they even look in the mirror while saying something so ridiculous.

Our problems in Greece are not easy or straight forward unfortunately, the Soviets once backed Turkey against us, now the US backs Turkey. Who knows who'll back Turkey next? Greece will always be in the thick of things till the end of time.

I hate to admit it, but there was a time, twenty years ago or so, when I thought it was great that Turkey was a member of NATO. If someone had told me about the EU and Turkey's possible membership, I would have applauded it. I thought that such ties would bring the muslim world closer to Europe and the West--which is true, of course, but hardly in the way I thought back then.

The Armenian massacres are just one of the most egregious examples. They went on for years, with some periods where things slackened off a bit. Lasting from about 1890 to 1925, the transistion from the Ottoman Empire to "secular" Turkey under Attaturk hardly slowed things down. Of course, it was not only Armenians who were the victims--Greeks, Jews and other religious or ethnic minorities were purged. Oddly, Kurds seemed to exist both as victims and victimizers during this period--often some of the most vicious attackers of Armenian towns while often persecuted by the government themselves.

There is an excellent book, "The Burning Tigris", for anyone interested in this subject. This also presents a great cautionary tale: moral outrage without any sort of practical backup is pretty much useless. Although largely forgotten by many people today. the west was well aware of the massacres at the time.

Many well-meaning people in the US, Britain and others places decried the presecution and violence and sent food and blankets to the starving Armenians. For various political reasons--inertia, conflict with Russia, disbelief that things could be so bad when the Turkish government denied it all--very little of substance was done to aid them. Today Turkey is almost entirely "free" of Armenians, Greeks and Jews.

Niv, thanks for your addition. That period from 1917 to 1923 in the Aegean Sea region should be more closely studied. What terrifies me is that the 1922 Smyrna Affair could be a paradigm for how the West treats us in Israel. Anyway, I only read about this order to Greece from the Supreme Allied Council [or Supreme allied war council] to stop fighting when the Greeks were winning in 1920 in one source, Lord Kinross' book on ataturk. The Smyrna Affair itself has been written up by Horton and Housepian in books mentioned above, in Avakian's article in French. By the way, the famous Ernest Hemingway wrote a little about those places and times.

Eliyahu, thanks I'll look up some of those articles.

Niv

Interestingly, the 19th century quasi-philosopher Saint-Yves d'Alveydre was calling for a European Union of sorts "which was aimed at the inclusion of Israel, but with the exclusion of Islam".

The jury in my mind is still out on whether or not Alveydre was a flake or not; a good sign in his favor is the apparent fact that LaRouche and his followers seem to denigrate him.

"The jury in my mind is still out on whether Alveydre was a flake or not..."
-- from a posting above

He, Encausse, Carrere, the whole lot, not quite as nutty as Lyndon Larouche, but close. Only question worth asking: is the famous French student of Soviet Russia, Helene Carrere d'Encausse, related to the two semi-lunatics mentioned, and if so, how did she manage to come out so sane?

Children everywhere want to know.

There isn't even a question that Ataturk was secular in that he believed in the seperation of religion and state. That didn't make him benign anymore than Assads who belong to the modernist Allawite sect yet support the likes of Khaled Mashal and Imad Mughniyeh, or the Paki Generals who resist full Sharia in their own country but supported the Taliban, and still train and fund jihadis agaist India.

The problem with the Western politicians and the media is that they tend to trust and support people who dress like them and speak in the same idiom even though these persons may harbor the similar sentiments as a skull cap wearing bearded fanatic.

You don't need to go all the way back to 1920's to see that West has supported Turkic muslims against Slavs and Orthodox Chrisitans. We saw it right before our eyes in Bosnia and Kosova where western countries were not only in bed with the Turks but also with Hizbollah/Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the friends of Izetbegovic.

Western elite think that the Turkish elite represent mainstream Turkey, and that somehow accepting a muslim nation in their midst would send a message to the Ummah that they are being treated as equals (appease in our time). Maybe we shouldn't be surprised if US leaders push to admit Turkey in the EU.

kafir citizen,
Avakian makes clear that Ataturk was very much a jihadist during his first several years as a political leader; he was even called a Ghazi.
After he had defeated his non-Muslim enemies --with the help of both Communists and the West-- then he imposed a certain secularism on Turkey. Obviously, this secularization did not go very deep or did not at all penetrate much or most of the country. The purpose of secularizing --in his view [I believe]-- was to enable Turkey to become a militarily powerful state in the modern Western sense. Germany/Prussia was probably his model. Now, this goal is very much a traditional Muslim goal. In order to accomplish this traditional Islamic goal, ironically, he had to suppress Islam to a certain extent.

I'm glad you agree that Assad [padre e figlio] was/is not benign. But I don't recall hearing before that the Alawites were modernists. Maybe they are, but if you know about the famous/notorious article published in a Syrian military magazine in 1967 which called for a New Arab Man much divested of Islam, then you know that in that case too [as with ataturk], the purpose was to produce a militarily powerful, hegemonic state.

Possible Correction:
that article published in Syria in 1967 may have called for a New Socialist Arab Man, nor merely a New Arab Man. Nevertheless, the goal was the same, a powerful state.

... NOT merely a New Arab Man...

Eliyahu,

Ataturk and Assad were secular in state policy, i.e non-imposition of Sharia. I have never claimed that they weren't personally islamic, infact quite the opposite when I stated:

The problem with the Western politicians and the media is that they tend to trust and support people who dress like them and speak in the same idiom even though these persons may harbor the similar sentiments as a skull cap wearing bearded fanatic.

Ofcourse, Ataturk wanted a strong Turkey but that in itself cannot be classified as a strictly islamic goal. Also, the Turkish state and society have a racialist mindset, therefore killing Armenians, Greeks, and later Kurds (sunni muslims) wasn't just an islamic affair. Now you can make a case that Ataturk's ultimate goal was same as islamics and that all this secularization was just a tactic just like Sadat's peace treaty with Israel, but the point that he was secular (opportunist?) is still valid.

As far as Assad/Alawis are concerned, they had to be secular because they had no choice. The Allawi minority weren't considered muslims by the mainstream Sunni and Shiite sects. The only way out of discrimination and ostracism was through secular/Baathist ideology which would create a new inclusive identity. That was the background of thier rhetoric of a "New Socialist Arab Man". Hafez Assad did plan to undertake educational and social reforms but gave up after Hama.

Syrians do allow women to work and get an education, drive a car, walk around freely without a head to toe tent. Their madrassahs(schools) don't require the children to memorize the Quran and Hadith to the exclusion of other subjects. The party and the military do not allow mullahs to dicatate policy. Above all, they won't let Muslim Brotherhood (sunnis) take over Syria because they don't want to be driven back to the mountains. Shouldn't they be considered relatively modernists?

kc, I appreciate your comments. But this whole thing about "muslim modernists," "muslim reformers," etc., leaves me with a bad taste. First, look at the Committee for Union and Progress [progressives, weren't they?] who continued Abdul-Hamid's slaughter of Armenians and in fact went farther. Then ataturk, then Sadat who, as I said, was named after Enver Pasha of the CUP. Yes, I understand the dilemma of the Alawites. I also know what Syria has been doing in Lebanon for the last 30 years and against Israel for a longer time than that. So, all these terms need to be very well sorted out and classified with all sorts of reservations and nuances and qualifications.