No kidding. "Turkey military: Secularism under attack," by Christopher Torchia for the Associated Press:
ISTANBUL, Turkey - Turkey's military issued a stern warning on Monday about the threat to secularism on the eve of an expected triumph of the Islamic-oriented government: the election of a loyal — and devout — president.
There were no signs that the military planned to disrupt Parliament's vote on Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, but the statement describing "the centers of evil" arrayed against secular Turkey was a reminder of its past interventions to enforce the separation of mosque and state. This time, the military is dealing with a government that renewed its mandate in a resounding election victory in July and an emboldened prime minister who has urged the generals to stay out of politics.
Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, chief of the military, said in a note on the military's Web site: "Our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who can't embrace Turkey's unitary nature and centers of evil that systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic."
The military often condemns separatist rebels who have been fighting for decades in the predominantly Kurdish region of southeast Turkey. But the potent reference to "centers of evil" and the timing of the announcement just before the presidential election suggested the conflict over the role of Islam in politics was its immediate concern.
The military, which has ousted four civilian governments since 1960, said its statement was issued to mark the 85th anniversary on Aug. 30 of a military victory that was crucial for the establishment of modern Turkey.
Gul, whose earlier bid to win election as president was blocked by the secular establishment because of concerns about his background in political Islam, was expected to win the post on Tuesday. He has pledged to uphold secular principles enshrined in the constitution, and to use his contacts in foreign capitals to promote Turkey's role on the international stage.
The military-backed secular establishment, however, fears Gul is so loyal to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he would not use the presidency's veto powers as a traditional check on the government. The secular incumbent, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, vigorously used his authority to block the promotion of officials deemed to have Islamic leanings.
"Nefarious plans to ruin Turkey's secular and democratic nature emerge in different forms everyday," Buyukanit said in his statement. "The military will, just as it has so far, keep its determination to guard social, democratic and secular Turkey."
A shame Europe doesnt have this built in protection
Europe certainly needs PROTECTION from any more Muslims which includes 70 Million pious Turks-exactly what percentage are SECULAR is disputed but if an Army is needed to enforce SECULARISM-sounds more like a Police State...
Added to attacks upon few remaining Christians in
Turkey the outlook is grimly ISLAMIC & no politician in their right mind should endorse Turkey's application to join E.U and destroy what
remains of once great Western Civilization.
One can only hope that the right people in the military have the resolve and the support to overthrow the Islamic government and make tabula rasa with the Erdogan's and the Gul's...
And then strictly, I mean seriously STRICTLY enforce secular laws, dresscodes and make sure secular education starts at the grassroots countrywide. But it might be too late for that, the opposite is already happening, has already gone on for too long and can't be reversed anymore...
This is no idle threat from General Buyukanit. He is the Turkish equivalent of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Turkish military has undertaken four different military coups in the post WWII era.
http://operationaltair.blogspot.com/2007/08/turkish-military-issues-stern-warning.html
They did it in 1960, 1971, 1980 and again in 1997.
In the '97 coup, just having tanks in the streets of Anatolia was enough to cause the government to step down. I wonder how the Islamists would react.
If only western Europe had that kind of resolve.
Does anybody know the opinion amongst the Turkish army rank and file of Pakistan?
NO to turkey in the EU. I don't care how "secular" their military is.. NOONE wants turkey.. Many are speaking up and millions more are afraid to!!
The VAST majority of Europeans HATES turkey. And it isn't because we are 'racist' but based on both historical and all-too often personal experience!
One can only hope that the right people in the military have the resolve and the support to overthrow the Islamic government and make tabula rasa with the Erdogan's and the Gul's...
And then strictly, I mean seriously STRICTLY enforce secular laws, dresscodes and make sure secular education starts at the grassroots countrywide. But it might be too late for that, the opposite is already happening, has already gone on for too long and can't be reversed anymore...
Posted by: sheik yer'mami
Sheik, if you want to de-islamify turkey you have to THROW OUT all the turks! Mahometanism is liek the BITE of the VAMPIRE.. you may even seem cured of it at times.. only to see your offspring succumbing to it in even more virulent form.
I really wish that serious scientists f all stripes would for a Mahometan project to determine how this curse/virus can be effectively cured.
It has something of mass hypnosis about it... Mass psychosis too of course.. LOL we know all about that. It also seems to attract the least intelligent the worst... as we have seen by the example of Westerners they've been able to recruit into their dank cult.
Apropos the albatros turkey:
I heard something on National Traitor Radio [npr] about Sarkozy backtracking on barring talks with turkey on EU.
The female announcer seemed quite excited about this [from her perspective good news] that sarkozi ad merely fed into European "racism" to get elected but now he seems to be back on board.. You know.. a regular politician..
Is any of this true?!
I am still shocked. The [no doubt BBC] bitch was so ecstatic sounding that Sarkozy had effectively subverted the will of the "racist" voters in Europe.
I do NOT want to believe this. If it is true then they WILL vote Le pen next time. Because there won't be anything left [no pun] for Europeans to do unless we hit the streets EN MASSE!!
I worked with a guy who had his ear split in two by a Turkish gang in Frankfurt. On the other hand I got to know a beautiful Turkish girl with dark skin and piercing blue eyes who loved to shop with her girl friends.
But you're right,I have seen young US soldiers battling with Turks outside a bar.
I had a drinking comp with a Ranger who went on for hours about the Turks, but never once mentioned Iraqis, and he was deploying that month.
That said I came up against a Neo Nazi on Christmas Eve 2003 and that bastard and his friends were planning to kill me. I was given protection by two septuagenarians sat in a corner booth, they served in the Wermacht.
After they saved me on Christmas Eve I could walk in and out of that cesspit of fascism with impunity and the worst the younger drinkers could do was swear at me in German.
I loved it after that and even took a work mate in so he could see the hatred for himself.
The Turks are just one more level of hatred and segregation on a continent that has invented modern warfare. We invented being a bastard and history will ultimately record how the West chewed Islam into bits. We do nasty.
No bridges, walls.
No Turkey in the EU.
(There are too many already.)
Mike Skinner said it well:
Two great European narcotics: Alcohol and Christianity. He knows which he prefers.
Islam is a sideshow made large by mouthy idiots and left wing media. To assume they will win is to assume that Europe is incapable of defending itself.
There will never be another Turkish Caliphate.
The military swears an oath to secularism and enjoys a special status under their Constitution. Religious fanaticism is as taboo to them as communism and fascism.
Having such an institution in that country is a good thing, not a bad thing.
This article is a fairy tale. Obviously, any democracy in the Moslem world will have a Moslem flavor--everyone is Moslem! Just like Mr. Musharraf in Pakistan, the Turkish army is exploiting YOUR inability to distinguish ordinary Moslems from Jihadis. It is because of YOUR infatuation with secularism that "secular" dictators retain power despite being reviled by their own people. The dictators happily crack down on peaceful protests, knowing they have YOUR support. At that point, Moslems more and more turn to violent measures...
The poster just above ("Shlomo_Michael") appears to believe that "democracy" is always and everywhere to be supported and that it is illegitimate to wish the Turkish Army to take whatever measures it deems necessary -- including going against the results of an election if necessary -- in order to preserve the possibility of human freedom -- that trumps mere head-counting at the polls -- that Kemalist constraints on Islam offer, for those capable of taking advantage of them. Whatever semi-decency or progress has been accomplsihed in the Muslim world has been the result not of "democracy" but of enlightened despots: Ataturk, Shah Reza Pahlevi, Mohammad V of Morocco, and Bourguiba of Tunisia. Each in a different way, under different circumstances, tried to limit the retrograde influence of Islam. Ataturk left Kemalism and the substitute(for Islam) cult of "the Turk" and of Ataturk himself, a cult of personality that has its uses. Mohammad V, claiming Sherifian descent, was largely untouchable on strictly Muslim grounds, and could afford, for example, to protect -- as dhimmis, not as equals -- Morocco's Jews from the vulgus, always ready to do their worst. Bourguiba left a legacy, through the series of one-man one-party (the Destour Party) that followed, that allowed Tunisia, more or less, to become the freest from Islam as a social and political force, of all the Maghrebin states. The Shah was managed to greatly improve the treatment of non-Muslims, which is one of the reasons that Khomeini so hated him. But his decency, much greater than that of any other Muslim ruler, was combined with a vainglorious nature; he thought Iran would soon become, in the late 1970s, "the second industrial power of Asia." He was not only vainglorious but stupid, and not too, but rather insufficiently, ruthless. Compared to what followed, he was Winston Churchill.
Enlightened despots who recognize what Islam as a social and political force can do, are the only hope, at the moment. Let's not make a fetish, Bush-style, about "democracy" -- especialy since all modern mass democracies are crude and degraded versions of what they should be, and of what, in the United States at least, for a long time they in fact were.
......Turkeys biggest problem is Islam....whoops, Islam is also the worlds biggest problem....Islams history shows nothing but death, despair, misery, violence, hate, mistrust, broken treaties, confiscations of the lands of NOn MUslims, genocide, mass executions, kidnappings, constant political assassinations, lying, internal struggle, honor killings, Shar'ia law, land deforestration, pollution of all natural resources, and ugly clothes....
....I will probably never live long enough to see the world heal itself by eliminating Islam, but until I die, I will continue to inform all I can about Islam....Islam ain't all the Muslims tell you it is.....
.....MUslims killing Muslims, as many have noted, is probably the only good thing they do....and the Muslims accept this....how odd...
ban Muslim Immigration....
Sheik, if you want to de-islamify turkey you have to THROW OUT all the turks! Mahometanism is liek the BITE of the VAMPIRE.. you may even seem cured of it at times.. only to see your offspring succumbing to it in even more virulent form.
I really wish that serious scientists f all stripes would for a Mahometan project to determine how this curse/virus can be effectively cured.
Well old Count Dracula had the cure