"Ironically, the far-right nationalists are now vehemently against the Islamists, and that's some good news. Because the Turks are fiercely nationalistic, there may be a way to resurrect nationalism and get rid of the Islamists once more."-- from a posting at Jihad Watch by a citizen of Turkey
Not sure why it should be "ironically" that the "far-right nationalists are now vehemently against the Islamists," because that was always the case, wasn't it? That has been true since the initial flourish of laws in the time of Ataturk himself -- to limit the power of Arabs, Arabic, and arabization by providing a Qur'an in Turkish and with a Turkish commentary, to make an end for Turkish of the Arabic script and adopting the Latin script, to give women the right to vote, and to create a ministry of religious affairs that would monitor or even write the sermons. In the armed forces those who gave signs of deep belief (such as frequent reading of the Qur'an) would be cashiered, and higher education was strictly secular. It was put in the hands of those who were leery of Islam. (Surely one of the first things that the new regime will attempt to do will be to take on again the universities and those who still control them. It will attempt to discharge those, especially certain brave Rectors, who have so far remained firm in keeping Erdogan and others of the islamist line from gaining control in the Wars of the Rectors.) And of course there were new laws regarding clothing -- the banning of the hijab in government offices or on official business (see the wife of Abdullah Gul, see the wife of Tayyip Erdogan), and the forcible imposition of Western dress on men, with such measures as the Hat Act. It is much harder to pray five times a day with a Western visored cap or hat than with a fez.
The steady and relentless pressure of such laws, and of the attitude of suspicion and hostility toward Islam -- recognized as the very thing that was holding Turkey down and out -- helped create the class of "Muslim-but-secular" Turks who are a much greater proportion of the Muslim population than in any member of the O.I.C. save, possibly, Kazakhstan. (Kazakhstan registers the best results among the five stans possibly because of its large non-Muslim population -- Russians, Jews, and many other "nationalities," including, even, Koreans.)
But those laws were not end of it. Dealing with the primitive masses, the Kemalist Turks in control developed an alternative narrative to the narrative of Islam. It went like this: the "best of people" were no longer the Arab Muslims (for the Turks, like the Iranians contemptuous of the "desert" Arabs, also dimly recognized that Islam was a vehicle for Arab supremacism), but the Turks themselves, the "Sun People." Inonu worked on this. It offered the myth of "the Turk," a category that both appeared to exclude non-Muslims (Christians and Jews could be citizens of Turkey, with theoretical legal equality, but they were not "Turks.") At the same time, it backdated the claim of the Turks, back through the Osmanlis and the Seljuk Turks, back through Byzantium, all the way to the Hittites, so that everything that happened in Anatolia seemed to be appropriated into the "history of the Turk."
But more important than this has been the cult of Ataturk: the books about him, the formerly omnipresent pictures of him, the warrior at Gallipoli, the wise lawgiver pondering his nation's course at Dolmabahce Palace, the all-knowing all-wise never-to-be-questioned leader who ended up -- unsurprisingly -- as a replacement for Muhamamd, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil.
In the end, the secular Turks didn't do enough. They lazily relied on the army to protect them, the army that would stage a coup and come to their rescue. But an army can stage a coup only when Islam is still in a state of weakness. Now the same infiltration that has gone on in many parts of Turkish society has also been going on, still at the lower levels, of the army. And given the way in which the Islamic forces have so cleverly used their time in office to appear, quite wrongly, as a "moderate" force, a "new kind of Islam" -- the kind of thing that the defeated secularists and Western governments all want desperately to believe because the truth is too unpleasant, too hard to take -- one wonders if the army can indeed stage another coup.
Why didn't those secularists, all these years, for the past half-century, work and work and work like madmen to change the minds of men, to continue the work of Ataturk, to substitute not a crude cult of "the Turk" and the "Sun People" and Ataturk as the Great Man, but to steadily create a class of Western men, encouraging skepticism and a spirit of criticism and self-criticism, that could exist with a reasonable patriotism? Why didn't they, long ago, begin to discuss, for example, the Armenian question? Instead of shunning the issue and trying to shut down all discussion inside and outside Turkey, they could have studied those mass murders as being prompted -- as indeed they were -- not by "the Turks" engaged in ethnic warfare, but by Muslim Turks (and Muslim Kurds too) against Armenians because they were Christians, as the detailed first-person memoirs, with the shouts of "giaour" and the fiendish glee with which the pregnant wives of priests were immolated, help to make clear. Why not, in other words, blame Islam-maddened Turks and Kurds, and not "Turks and Kurds"? That is, why not blame Islam for what happened, since it is clearly to blame?
And why did secular Turks not look closely at the example of Iran, where secular, leftist Iranians were snookered into helping overthrow the Shah by Khomeini and the True Believers, and then destroyed? (Yes, the Shah was corrupt and vainglorious, but compared to what followed, he and his court, those hoveydas and tabatabais, look better every day.) It will always be that way. The Muslims will use, as they are now using some among the secularists, to deplore the army, to deplore the laws that the threat of Islam makes necessary. And those secularists, not having studied carefully the example of Iran, fall for it. For god's sake, what happened to the elegant Bakhtiari? To Bani-Sadr? To Ghotbzahadeh? What happened to Iranian intellectuals? Who was jailed? Who went mad in jail? Who was murdered, who with his wife was decapitated, and their heads left on either side of the mantelpiece in their house? Haven't the past nearly thirty years of the Islamic Republic of Iran right next door taught the Turkish secularists, the ones who think that Turkey can be just as solicitous of civil rights as the United States, what they needed to know?
The Turkish secularists let the army be their final protection. They accepted Kemalism and the benefits it brought. It made their own existence possible. But they were not grateful enough. They did not continue to work to weaken the power of Islam over the minds of men. They were not sufficiently relentless and ruthless. They did not stress or even make the connection between all the failures of Turkish society and Islam. That includes its political and economic failures: Turkey’s current boom deflects attention from the high permanent unemployment rate, and may also be partly the consequence of the giant sums being expended in Iraq by the Americans, and dislocations in Iraq that redound to Turkish benefit. It also includes its social and intellectual failures: the bookstores of Istiqlal Caddesi are one thing, the Islamic bookstores quite another. Then there are its moral failures: the refusal to discuss the mass-murder of Armenians, or the treatment of the Jewish refugees on the Struma, or the massacres in Smyrna, not to mention the Varlik Vergesi (a special, confiscatory tax imposed during World War II on Jews, Armenians, and Greeks), and the attacks on the Greek community of Istanbul in 1955 (see “The Mechanism of Catastrophe” by Speros Vryonis). All that was part of the continued discrimination and persecution that has helped to reduce the non-Muslim proportion of Istanbul’s population from 50% in 1914 to 1% today.
Surely these things need to be written about, studied, discussed in Turkey -- and not only intermittently, and then by Orhan Pamuk of or someone of similar protecting fame, but continually, as part of the accepted daily fare, as openly as in Western countries their historic misdeeds are analyzed and discussed. For Turkey’s secularists should wish to imprint on the collective mind the importance of study, investigation, analysis. That includes what, in the history of such mistreatment of non-Muslims, is owed to the promptings of Islam and not to some “ethnic” conflict as, at times, one is lead to believe: that “the Turks” made war on “the Armenians” when in fact it was Muslims, Turks and Kurds who made war on Christian Armenians and for reasons having to do with their being Christians more than their being Armenians.
In the schools, beginning with higher education, secularists need to insist that this subject -- Islam and its influence on Turkish behavior -- be discussed. Along with this, why should there not begin to be open discussion of how a land completely un-Muslim became Islamized, and how, indeed, so many of those who proudly call themselves Turks would discover, if they could or would investigate, that they are in fact the descendants of forcibly converted, or seized, Christians and Jews? How many fiercely nationalist or Islamic Turks, for example, were Armenians two or three generations ago?
The problem of the Turkish secularists is that they represent, at most, perhaps 25% of the population. After 80 years of Kemalism. That isn't enough. It won't be enough to withstand a cunning, tireless, relentless enemy of secularism. The Islamic side knows how to wait, and work, steadily, for their ends. For one startling example of this, see Fethulleh Gulen's counsel of cunning and patience (recently translated by the scholarly Samaritans at www.MEMRI.org). Here is the most telling part:
"You must move in the arteries of the system, without anyone noticing your existence, until you reach all the power centers… until the conditions are ripe, they [the followers] must continue like this. If they do something prematurely, the world will crush our heads, and Muslims will suffer everywhere, like in the tragedies in Algeria, like in 1982 [in] Syria… like in the yearly disasters and tragedies in Egypt. The time is not yet right. You must wait for the time when you are complete, and conditions are ripe, until we can shoulder the entire world and carry it… You must wait until such time as you have gotten all the state power, until you have brought to your side all the power of the constitutional institutions in Turkey… Until that time, any step taken would be too early - like breaking an egg without waiting the full 40 days for it to hatch. It would be like killing the chick inside. The work to be done is [in] confronting the world. Now, I have expressed my feelings and thoughts to you all - in confidence… trusting your loyalty and sensitivity to secrecy. I know that when you leave here - [just] as you discard your empty juice boxes, you must discard the thoughts and feelings expressed here."
One thing the secular Turks can now do is make sure that all the Westerners they know, those long resident in Istanbul (of the Freely sort), those who come to study or trade, those whom they will continue to meet abroad, Western politicians, military men, academics, journalists, are made fully aware of their plight, and warned about the dangers of taking this "moderate Islamist" (as the BBC is now calling it) victory as anything other than a danger, a menace. The secularists should work away among the thinking portion of the Turkish population abroad -- for example, among the millions in Western Europe -- to enroll them in a campaign that can be billed as "upholding the legacy of Ataturk." (If the secularists ever manage to return to power, chastened, they must do much more than merely "uphold the legacy of Ataturk" but extend it, far beyond what they have done so far.) And those Turkish secularists who once looked to the army to rescue them in case of need, and now think that they can be rescued, or at least the problem shared with others by having Turkey admitted into the E.U., should instead realize that Turkey will not be, and should not be, admitted into the E.U., and that they will have to rely mostly on themselves, and that they cannot expect the menaced Infidels of Western Europe to share their danger in quite so immediate and menacing a way.
They should understand this rejection of Turkey's application -- understand it sympathetically. Would they, were they the citizens of Italy or France, want a Muslim country, with a population of 80 million, to become part of the E.U.? Would they want Muslims from Turkey, or other Muslims who could far more easily move into the E.U. from Turkey, moving freely about, visa-less, what would be one big Schengenland? (Think of the security problems as Arabs and Iranians -- hard for the Westerners to distinguish from Turks -- would try to enter the E.U. as "Turks.") Of course they wouldn't, and any resentment at the West for not wishing to share the problem of Islam more than it already does, is misplaced.
The Turkish secularists, like the Iranian secularists, did not realize that the primitive masses will always return to Islam -- or rather, that the hold of Islam is so great, that they will not have left it in the first place. And what happens in the capital (Istanbul,Teheran) is not what happens elsewhere. Never have the secularists, or "leftists" as they are often crudely and inaccurately called by the Western press, managed to outfox the upholders of Islam. It is always the other way round.
I saw a woman interviewed on TV who said she was voting AKP because she loved her husband and did not want to share him with someone else.
She thought the AKP would bring in laws against adultery, to be enforced by imprisonment not the death penalty.
Mmmmmmm, the Koran allows men to have four wives.
I think the Turks need to be aware of their subjugation to Arabs if they want more islam.
I happened to catch a program about the up-coming elections in Turkey. A reporter was doing a "person/family on the street" interview. The mother was not wearing a hijab -- obviously pro secularists. The reporter asked about the growing religiosity of Turkey and if that concerned the family...
What I thought disturbing was that the little boy suddenly began shouting. And shouting what? The boy shouted: "I'll cut off their heads! I'll cut off their heads!"
I don't know -- would any reporter doing a "family on the street" interview in the West (assuming the family is non-Muslim) expect to hear 10-year-olds advocating: "Cut off their heads!!" I really don't think so.
It's bizarre and speaks of a certain kind of "culture" -- and it's not about "peace, civility, or good governance." It's anyone with whom you disagree -- well, there's a "solution!" (yet, of course, we're letting such as these into Canada by the zillions.)
Wow, I feel a bit special that my comments have inspired this. Very good article.
Oppurtunist Western governments have supported the AKP from the beginning, as well as the petrodollar-rich Arabs. Combined with the failure of previous governments and fragmented coalitions, we now face the greatest threat that has ever been against the secular Republic.
However I don't want to blame anyone else for this failure. AKP got the majority of votes, and now the only thing that can stop the further Islamisation of Turkiye is the secular elite, especially the Army, which the Islamists crudely call an "oligarchy."
Again there is an irony in the fact that we need an undemocratic power like the Turkish Armed Forces in order to protect our democracy. And when I say democracy I mean precisely that, not the tyranny of the masses as AKP would understand.
Yes, secularists are the minority. I find it hard to digest this fact.
AKP will not try to uproot the secular system altogether, otherwise they would have to face the wrath of the Army. They will be working slyly as ever, furthering their Taqiyya, and while our secular values slowly erode, we will have to sit down and watch.
Our old, die-hard nationalism has been a replacement of Islam. The uncouth masses need their opium, and in the absence of nationalism, they will embrace Islam again, in all its vileness.
I sincerely hope that the West, the United States especially, gives up its support for the so-called moderate AKP. Moderate Islam is merely a transition phase into true Mohammedanism.
If you don't care about the Turks, try to be pragmatic for once. Would you like another Iran in so close a location to Europe and Israel?
If the answer is negative..
STOP FEEDING THE BEAST!
So THAT's where the term asshat came from...
Thanks, Hugh!
I've always wondered about that one!
(/sarc)
REMEMBER THE GENOCIDE AT Smyrna, Greece (in 1922) by the Turks!
Smyrna in 1922 was an important Greek port, but is now Turkish territory and called Izmir.
Hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna were brutally murdered (over a period of about 4 days!) by Kemal's armies in full view of crews on US, British, and French battleships stationed off Smyrna(and on which the genocide was filmed by news cameras, the footage of which can be viewed on the internet; I've seen some of it myself).
What occurred at Smyrna was a jihad.
As for the possible EU membership of Turkiye, it's absolutely undesirable, both for Turkish nationalists and the Europeans.
A military coup might serve the double purpose of aborting the EU membership talks and exterminating the Islamists, but under the current conditions it is rather difficult.
If the Islamists act prematurely, the Army will be more than happy to abort their evil plans.
The moment somebody shouts 'Far Right' its dead in the water.
The lemmings in our society are totally brainwashed and terrified of the term, just like 'racism'- Islam is not a race, but when Islamo-fascists further their agenda by calling YOU racist, will you fight or back off?
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/07/23/silence-in-the-western-media-violent-clashes-over-east-berlins-first-mosque/
By the way..
The capital city of Turkiye is not Istanbul. It's Ankara.
And what happened in Iran was indeed terrible, we never cease to use that as an example when an unwary secularist assumes that AKP is not dangerous at all.
"Are you one of those leftists who allied themselves with the Islamists during the Revolution in Iran?" is a critical question often aimed at the dhimmified leftists, as opposed to the leftist Republicans who are "aware of the danger."
Some of the comments above, and a few remarks in Hugh Fitzgerald's article, seem to assume that the Turkish army is a fairly unified, reliable ally of secularism. But one would expect that the army itself is just as complex and diverse as society and the state apparatus, and hence susceptible to at least some degree to Islamist infiltration and influence, or is this not the case? One would surely expect the Islamists to attempt to infiltrate the army with the same vigor as they do positions of political power. Does anyone have any facts to report on this question?
The True Believers are always trying to infiltrate, through the lower ranks, and now up into the officer corps, the army. There are reports, but who knows if they are reliable or not, that they have recently been more successful at such infiltration than in the past -- just a bit better at hiding things, or perhaps being protected by others who secretly agree with them, slightly higher up. Anyone who assumes that "the Army" will always be ready and able to easily crush the forces of organized Islam is whistling in the dark.
http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD166107
"What has become of Kemal Ataturk's Turkey? Go to Europe, and you will see. Most of the Turks here are drug dealers, outcasts. Moreover, the English here have a custom. On Christmas, they eat what they call 'turkey.' Imagine, they call it "turkey," and they serve it as food at the table. This shows the kind of hatred that is deeply rooted in the West - they serve the Turkish, Ottoman, Muslim man as food at the table, for entertainment and as a sign that they have slaughtered him."
So at Christmas or Thanksgiving anyone who enjoys a turkey dinner is serving the "Turkish, Ottoman, Muslim man as food at the table".
"Look at the people who give reason to hold the head of Islam high. In politics - they are the masters. In the battlefield - they are the masters. They are the ones who rub in the mud the nose of the occupation forces in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Palestine, and throughout the world. The perpetuality of the conflict makes them strong."
Forget peace, even in Turkey. The battle is all.
As for the Turkish army, it is unlikely that they have been massively infiltrated by the Islamists.
Let's keep this between us Infidels, but climbing up to the upper levels of Turkish military is like surviving the Inquisition.
The Turkish Army has its own special schools. In other words, any high ranking official should pass through 10+ years of Kemalist education, then live in a society surrounded by like-minded Kemalists for decades, and only after proving his absolute loyalty to the Kemalist ideology, he can ascend to the uppermost levels.
My greatest fear is the impact of Islamic propaganda amongst civilian Turks. I mean, how can we possibly resist the Jihadic onslaught if our people are brainwashed by absurd, Islamic conspiracy theories?
When I joined JW I was hoping that I would find voices raising the same concern as myself in front of the islamist vermin spreading its tentacles all over the world regardless of ethnic identity and religious conviction (except muslims).
Instead, I am very frustrated to find same empty headed people merely elevated an inch above muslims in their judgement and almost equal to them in terms of bigotry and backwardness.
Fellow Eurabians, fellow citizens of United States of Arabia, the issue is not so simple.
There is country which is sliding into islamic stone age thanks to open cooperation of your governments...
Starting with George "W.C" Bush administration because in their distorted and certainly retarded view of the Middle East politics, an islamic Turkey would be more prone to cooperate with them than a secular government.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and (once Iran) have been all US allies. Their governments have been fiercely anti-communist and have sided with the West during cold war.
But...they are equally fiercely anti-semitic as well..and they will always be..
If the anti-semitism is on the rise in Turkey, it can not be attributable to crap stories such as so-called roaring sales of "Mein Kampf" but simply to the rise of islamic fundamentalism. By the way, I would have been really happy if this Mein Kampf story had been true since it would have signalled some interest in book/fiction readership..If the average Turk would be at that level to enjoy and to understand Adolph's literature, Turkey today would have been much ahead out by a mile.
As for the Greeks and people of Greek descent who keep posting here all the time to remind the past atrocities commited against Christians (all are true I don't deny that) and who keep on saying there would no difference between a secular/nationalist system and an islamist one, I have but one question:
What makes you think that an increasingly islamist environment would be more receptive to Christians in a setting that has already become dangerous even for secular Turks?
Turkey will not be admitted to the EU for a very simple reason: It is a predominantly muslim country and whose past is filled with the horrors of atrocities committed against Christian minorities. The islamofascists government knows that, the EU knows that, the US knows that..So how about cutting the game of taquiyya all together?
Eurabians in the past have been fairly naive enough concerning their intake of muslim immigrants and an extra populous muslim country, they don't need it anymore (Non merci, ça suffit)
But it is this Christian world on the other hand, which seems keen on keeping Turkey in the islamic cage.
Now this is not understandable..
The USA the EU have the tools to keep the islamists away from the power, they don't need to turn to the Turkish army for that..
All it takes would be a sudden reversal of capital inflows (hot money), sudden withdrawals from the banks thus forcing the exchange rate up and letting the interest rates soar.
The already foreign-dependent and vulnerable economy would collapse sending the present AKP thugs thumbling down, down the drain..
As I say, all it takes is a bit of determination and goodwill and sincere commitment to fight the islamist vermin..
It´s a difficult situation, I don´t know how to say, the solution for Turkey is difficult, we want to live in a democracy? Islam has to be a great paper, and we want less islam, we need a dictatorship, the kurds, very muslim, themselves, vote to their parties and AKP that is pro-muslim, thing that unite more than the turkishness. And they are now 20 million.
And the secularists parties have two problems, they have been corrupt and have been bad in economy to difference from the AKP
In the cities, mamny non-islamist people vote AKP for the economy.
Icarus,
Yes, the Mein Kampf story is true. However the book was later removed from circulation, and today it is not available in bookstores.
"By the way, I would have been really happy if this Mein Kampf story had been true since it would have signalled some interest in book/fiction readership"
Book readership is not as low as you may think. It seems even though this website is called Jihad Watch, you are still unable to understand the true nature of your enemy.
Daniel Pipes had a wonderful article about that. That the Jihadis are poor, uneducated chaps is a great lie. Not all the Islamists are imbecile idiots like the Wahabis. Some of them are quite smart. I've seen wealthy, smart, well-educated Turks sliding to the Islamist camp myself.
Even though ignorance is an Islamic weapon of mass control, Islamists are also capable of producing intelligent, deadly specimens.
Apart from that..
Anti-Jewish, anti-American and anti-Western attitude is becoming prevalent here in Turkiye. Yes, that's because of the AKP, the very Islamist party supported by the United States!
Most of the secularists, feeling rejected by the Americans and the West, now espouse anti-American views as well.
But our hostility against America is for practical and nationalist reasons, not on an ideological basis. If the Americans choose to follow a more friendly policy towards Turkiye, the relationship between the two countries may yet be repaired.
Kind regards to all Americans, your beautiful country is doomed unless you change your nihilistic foreign policy.
Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and (once Iran) have been all US allies. Their governments have been fiercely anti-communist and have sided with the West during cold war.
Icarus,
What's your point? Conditions change. Alliances change to meet them. The cold war is over. We were allied with the Soviets during WWII. That changed soon after the war ended. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan sided with the West during the cold war but once the USSR fell there was no longer any need to cozy up to the US. Even during the cold war the Saudis were promoting jihad and supporting terrorist groups under the table. Only Saddam gave the Saudis pause. Once he was taken out, the jihad campaign began in earnest.
Iran was our ally while the shah was in power. Once our president decided the shah wasn't religious enough to be the friend of a devout Southern Baptist, he threw the shah overboard. Ayatollah Khomeini was a totalitarian and he made the US the enemy.
Those alliances are in the past. We live in the present.
Whoever believes most wins.
The Islamists are driven.
The non-religious Turks will have to fight to defend their liberties just as ferociously as the Koran-thumpers are battling to end them, -or the secularists will succumb to the jihadists.
Iran is their model, as Hugh estutely noted.
I hope they study it well.
We're well aware. Thanks for rubbing it in. This is unfortunately one of the only outposts of truth in the entire Anglosphere.
"What makes you think that an increasingly islamist environment would be more receptive to Christians in a setting that has already become dangerous even for secular Turks?"
posted by Icarus Project
Well as a Greek who posts here regularly I can say that I don't think for one second an Islamist Turkey will be better for Christians than a secular Turkey.
That is precisely the point I try to make here, Turkey has always been an aggressor nation and whatever reforms the Turks themselves enjoyed, they never translated to any progressive change in how they deal with others.
We Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians even Kurds have all suffered under the hand of Ataturk and his reforms.
I posted earlier on another article about Turkey and simply stated Turks have resembled the Borg of sci-fi more than anyone else on this planet. They attack as they did Constantinople for 800 years before she fell, and then they assimilated her. I personally am not aware of one city Turks ever built, they simply moved in and if they built they expanded on existing infrastructure. Alexander the Great built more cities in 10 years than the Turks built in 1000.
If anyone hasn't noticed Turkey still makes land claims in the Aegean and Greece, she is still threatening with Cyprus and now engages Kurds in Northern Iraq. This is something their culture can't help and it is these reasons we post here, never, ever let your guard down, they will swallow you whole.
Turkey was never a country to be trusted and never will be. Are there truly secular Turks out there who have a true disdain for Islam, no question that is yes. But that doesn't change the fact that a nationalistic Turkey has proven to be every bit as aggressive as an Islamic one, they still share the same life blood deep down inside, and that life blood is simply the Islam virus.