Fitzgerald: Why is Turkey in NATO?

The headline should be: "Why are turkey and albania in NATO?", as there are currently two and not just one islamic countries in NATO.

NATO membership should not just be offered to Israel, but to other infidel countries threatened by jihadists: Cyprus, Armenia, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Russia, India, Thailand, Singapore, East Timor, the Philippines and Australia as well.

Turkey is moving ideologically Eastward (i.e., towards Islamism) and its membership in NATO is appearing more and more out of place. Just recently Turkey and Syria signed an agreement to do away with visa requirements between the two countries.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-190236-turkey-seeks-regional-peace-with-moral-responsibility-in-mind.html

This is much more than just a lifting of red tape: the event prompted the remark from a Turkish minister "common history, common future" and a columnist in Today's Zaman writes of the brotherhood of Turks and Syrians.

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/yazarDetay.do?haberno=190163

The same columnist writes of the discomfort of some in Europe with Turkey's rising influence in the Middle East.

Turkey must choose its future course: Erdogan wants to play a double game, but given the Turkish Muslim's disdain for the Arab Muslim, the future is not yet clear.

What does it take to disenfranchise a NATO member? NATO is prime for some serious re-alignment and/or reorganization..as the worlds turns...things change, loyalties change, affiliations change, priorities change, alliances change...well, except for Islam and it has not changed significantly at any time during the past 1400 years...Islam plans to conquer with whatever means possible and that includes infiltrating its opponents security forces...yep

I argued for the same thing in the blog a few days ago, when I found out about Turkey banning the Israeli forces from the Anatolia Eagle NATO exercise.

The AKP has really started to ratchet up the Islamism with a vengeance this year, starting with Erdoğan's pig-ignorant outburst at Shimon Peres at Davos in January.

Since then we have had the NATO fiasco above, the TV drama - and only this weekend, Erdoğan has been on national TV, slamming Israel as a 'persecutor'

Any viability of Turkey as a military partner that might have existed before has now evaporated. There is simply no sane rationale for Turkey's continued membership of NATO.

Dear Hugh, you hit the nail. There is no room for Turkey in NATO and even less in the EU. We need Israel where our roots are, the only civilised country in the Midddle East, the only democracy there.

Voting for that despot Erdogan the Turks gave up their quest for democracy, they're going back to the old times of Islamism, anti-Semitism, genocide of the Armenians. Islamic business as usual.

Is Turkish membership of any value?

No.

or is it a danger to the effectiveness of NATO?

Yes!

One needs only visit the NATO HQ in Bryssels to notice how political correctness creeps into every photo montage in the building. Each and every major one has a headscarved woman to indicate that NATO certainly is no enemy of Islam.

Since NATO is not a supranational organisation, each member has (formally full) veto power. With Turkey (and Albania) on board, it will be very difficult to take effective action against any further attacks from Islamic countries.

Afghanistan was the right reaction (except that we should perhaps have pulled out after just one year), but things have changed significantly since then, not least in Turkey. I can hardly imagine a similar assertive reaction from the Obama Administration - and any attempts to do such thing would certainly be twarthed by the Turks.

Thx, Hugh, great point.
It's no coincidence that Turkish Islamic arrogance ratcheted up after Obama's ascendance and ensuing adulatory speech in Turkey. Erdogan figures that he can be in NATO and stick it to Israel and the West, and still get his derriere kissed. I wonder how long that will last...

That's interesting.
Imagine you are a jihadist and you want to travel to Iraq or Afganistan to kill as many "crusaders" as you can...
You obviously have to get a plane...

If you were from Europe, America or Africa, you would have to stop over Turkey in order to travel to these sites for sure.

What I mean is that Turkey is the final stopover for most islamic terrorists...

...are you thinking the same that I am about Turkey in the NATO?

Actually, NATO itself is outdated, and the recent expansion of NATO to countries on Russia's borders doesn't make any sense. During the Cold War, there was a NATO doctrine that any Soviet attack on any NATO country would be considered an attack on NATO (implying that WWIII would start were they to try an invasion of Turkey or Norway).

Since then, a number of countries, not just Poland and Czech Republic but also countries like Latvia, Ukraine among others have been considered. I understand that during the Cold War, preventing Communism from taking over was a major deal, but what's the goal of NATO today - preventing Russian hegemony in its backyard? Noble as that idea may sound, it doesn't come close to confronting the OIC, sooner or later. Also, if Russia decided, for any reason, to invade one of the new NATO members, such as Ukraine, to, say, conquer and annex Crimea (majority population Russian), would that be grounds for a declaration of war by NATO?

Assuming that the West even knew that Islam/OIC is the enemy, what would make sense would be to have a loose pact of non-Islamic countries that are committed to fighting Islam, and containing Muslims w/in dar ul Islam. When an infidel country is committed to this idea, it's a part of this organization, and when it isn't, it automatically gets temporarily disqualified until it cleans up its act. E.g. Venezuela wouldn't qualify, but were Chavez to be replaced by someone like his Columbian neighbor, Venezuela would! Similarly, Israel would qualify, but were Netenyahu to be succeeded by Olmert or someone similar, it would lose its membership automatically until it had a policy that was consistent w/ these goals. Muslim countries such as Tunisia, Kyrgyzstan would never qualify for membership.

Make such an organization, and make it worldwide - no 'North Atlantic' or 'South Pacific' or 'Central Indian (Ocean)' or anything of that sort. Basically, such an organization would be a counterblast to the OIC.

"But who could imagine Recep Tayyip Erdogan offering bases today, or any kind of military aid, that would be part of an Infidel coalition against what would be understood to be representatives of Islam? Turkey today is in the control of a regime that is intent on undoing Kemalism and determined to make Turkey firmly part of the Muslim world -- even if, at the same time, the regime of Erdogan is outraged by any attempts by Europeans to keep Turkey out of the E.U."
Hugh

Ataturk never rejected Islam and never became an apostate. Maybe his thoughts about the kuffars were the same. Ataturk simply observed that some skills -in the West- are useful in a public administrative level to modernize a country.

This is like Osama bin Laden asking himself about the use of Russian-made -or whoever- sub-machine guns. Of course, as you know in Islam it is haram to buy things from the infidels but it seems there is an extreme for Islamic extremism.

No the bigger question is why are we still in NATO and
the UN. NATO does nothing for America except to use us.
The UN doesn't only use us but most often work against us.
They are both a waste of our tax money and our time. In the
case of the UN they are also a waste of some very nice
land in Manhattan.

Hugh,

The first thing I ask of people who write about Turkey is, "When was the last time you were in Turkey and for how long?" I ask this because change is occuring very quickly in Turkey. I would be careful about criticizing Turkey's right to be a member of NATO. During the Cold War, Turkey anchored NATO in the East and continues to be a steadfast member. For those who cry about the 'rapid' Islamisization of Turkey, I would ask them to give me some examples. I have lived in Turkey for over two years...and I see more secularization...not more Islamisization. Yes, Turkey is a Muslim country...but it is certainly moving WEST...not East. Women are entering the workforce in greater numbers and behave just like European women. Yes, Erdogan is more Islamic...but even staunch secularists will say he's better than the CHP leader, Baykal.

Just be careful of creating a perception that you hope is reality...because for those of us on the ground....the reality is very different(Erdogan's party lost 10 percent of the vote in recent elections last year...not a convincing sign that his party is gaining power). When I'm in Turkey...I feel like I am in Europe....not the Middle East...and you can any foreigner who lives here...they will probably agree.

Thanks.

Freeman

Freeman,

I believe that your statement: "(j)ust be careful of creating a perception that you hope is reality...because for those of us on the ground....the reality is very different..." is overly optimistic. Here is an older, but still pertinent study that was done in 2007 showing the dramatic trends of Turkish attitudes away from the West. The numbers are frightening and include such findings as: "a majority of Turks (58%) already said that they opposed 'the US-led efforts to fight terrorism,' in Pew's 2002 survey. That jumped to 79 percent in 2007." Another states that "the numbers saying NATO is essential for Turkey's security fell from a bare majority in 2004 (53%) to 44 percent in 2006..."

In addition, a thorough Web search will find a significant number of influential Turks that are pushing for Turkey's voluntary departure from NATO, seen by many as a tool of Western colonialism; which I believe will happen long before they are asked to leave.

The base, formerly a rail stop used by the Turks to transport Armenians to their eventual deaths, should be closed. Here is how to do it:

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/48156/us-congress-should-weigh-importance-of-incirlik-base.html

http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/detaylar.do?load=detay&link=147967

http://www.forward.com/articles/10177/

“When I'm in Turkey...I feel like I am in Europe....not the Middle East...and you can any foreigner who lives here...they will probably agree."

That is certainly a feeling one can have, if one has experienced first the deeply Muslim Arab countries, or Iran . Of course visiting Turkey as a tourist, or a businessman, or even living in it for a few months or a few years, can make a non-Muslim from North America feel , as the poster “Freeman” tells us he felt, “like I am in Europe….not the Middle East.”

But the implication – that Turkey is just like Europe, and most Turks just like Europeans – is false. It is only by the comparison that is invited with other Muslim countries in the area, that Turkey gains.

But here are some points to consider.

When you, “Freeman,” feel that “you are “in Europe” is it when you are in Turkey – all over Turkey, or only when you are in Istanbul, or Ankara, or possibly Izmir, the three places where almost all foreigners live (with the overwhelming number of them living in Istanbul)? Have you visited, and lived, for example, in Konya, in eastern Turkey? None of the cities – Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir – can be said to be “representative” of the rest of Turkey, and indeed not even all parts of those cities would make one feel “like I am in Europe” and “not [in] the Middle East.” There are parts of Istanbul, for example, that would feel just like the rest of the Middle East, where enthusiasts for Erdogan live, and the bookstores are nothing like the bookstores near Taksim Square and along Istiqlal Caddesi, but are, rather, those grim and forbidding places where every single volume is in that hideous simulacrum of leather, gold-stamped with Qur’anic writing on it, and always about the Qur’an, the Hadith, the Sira, or some Qur’anic commentatror, or jurisconsult – that is, those books that in their gold-stamped finery suggest to Westerners the kind of cheesy reaching for elegance that, say, some private presses in the Western world, strive to achieve to impress the kind of non-reading, even nearly illiterate book-buyers who want to make an impression in comically – too comical and touching really to mock – parvenu fashion.

When you go to the movies, do you see “Valley of the Wolves” or other things? And do you have any explanation as to why “Valley of the Wolves” was the box-office sensation of Turkish films, when it depicted American troops in Iraq as Nazis, and offered as a credible personage a Jewish doctor who supposedly was in the business of harvesting the organs of Iraqis “murdered” by those American Nazi soldiers, which organs were then sold in New York, Los Angeles, and Tel Aviv? What do you think explains the wild popularity of such a movie?
There is not one Turkey, but several Turkeys, and a synchronic study suggests that the truly secular, not in the sense of the secular Turkish nationalists who can be extremely unpleasant and fanatical, but in the sense of the true secularists, the ones who are neither deeply impressed with Islam (though they may be quiet about it, and prefer to speak of “Islamists”), nor with the substitute theology that the followers of Ataturk created, with “the Turks” substituting for “the Muslim” as the “best of peoples,” and Turks rather than Arabs endowed, as “the Sun People” (see Inonu), as the most excellent of peoples, and with Ataturk himself, and the Cult of Ataturk, substituting – apparently not obviously enough for some – for Muhammad as the human who most deserves desdcription as al –insan al-kamil, the Perfect Man.
Now that for the past six or seven years the Turkish ruling elite, Erdogan and his henchmen, take every opportunity they can to denounce Israel, and to parrot the world-view of Muslim Arabs – where once Turks would have been quick to carefully distinguish themselves from the long-despised Arabs, and no doubt the secular Turkish elite still does – denouncing every Israeli attempt to defend itself against the Jihad, trying to squeeze Israel out militarily from joint maneuvers with other NATO countries, opening up borders with Syria, a country that is so hideously run, by such primitives (see Wafa Sultan’s forthcoming book), and otherwise encouraging a change in attitudes toward America, Israel, and the rest of the West that is undoing, in small and big ways, the Kemalist constraints on Islam and the hold of Ataturk on the minds and imaginations of Turks, when his example is needed now, by intelligent Muslims, more than ever.
That trend toward Islamization can be seen , not merely in the press and on television and in public opinion polls, but even in academic publications. In collective works on Ottoman history, for example, the underlying assumption of the contributors appears to be that something called “Islamic civilization” is uniquely rich, and that when Muslim dynasties start in previously non-Muslim lands, this is always and everywhere to the good. Recip Dundar’s account of the conquest of Cyprus in the 2002 collective work “The Turks,” is one example: the Ottoman invasion is presented as a measure that was necessary, undertaken for humanitarian reasons, to help peaceful (Muslim) pilgrims to Mecca and protect Muslim women and children from those dangerous Christian Europeans.

I don’t think the absurd nonsense of the creationist Harun Yahya (whose real name is something else) can qualify as academic work, in the Western sense, but while he is mocked and held up for ridicule in the advanced West, Harun Yahya’s book is for sale in bookstores all over Istanbul, even in areas favored by tourists.

And what about all those conspiracy-theorists with their books and articles about the "Crypto-Jews," the Donme, to whom are attributed everything malevolent in modern Turkish life. Utter craziness, but in Muslim societies conspiracy theories (present in all societies) find the most fertile ground in the minds of those who have been encouraged all their lives not to question any part of Islam, to simply accept and not reason why, ideally to be "slaves of Allah" who do not question, intellectually or morally, any part of Islam. The discouragement, in Muslims, of free and skeptical inquiry naturally has a much greater effrect, and that is why the craziest conpsiracy theories so easily take root in Muslim lands. The habit of skepticism has not been acquired.

When the poster (“Freeman”) says that Turkish women “behave just like European women” I am not sure what he means. I don’t think he means that the deadening effect of Islam on social life in any of the quarters, in the cities of Western Europe, where there are a dangerously large number of Muslims, is similar to what he sees in Turkey – but he might have meant that, and with justice. There is certainly a wide cultural gulf between the women of eastern Turkey and the women, or many of them, in the cities of western Turkey where secularists still exist in large numbers. In such places as Sivas and Erdincan women do not expect to be treated, and are not treated, as human beings in the Western sense. And there are many more people in Turkey who live in places closer in manners and mores to such cities, than there are Turks who live like those who may attend parties or receptions with John or Maureen Freeley.

But you can do this research for yourself. You need not take my word for the observable changes in Turkish society, changes which support Erdogan and his fellows, and in turn are supported by Erdogan and his fellows. Just look at photographs of street scenes of Istanbul and Ankara in the 1960s and 1970s. Almost no woman in the photographs has her head covered. Now look at the Turkey you visit, or live in, today. Look from your window, or look as you walk the streets. What do you see? About 40% of the women even in those cities appear to be covering their heads. Think of Edirne, a city where fifteen years ago no woman had a head-covering, and now almost every woman does.

Do you think all of these changes, in outward and visible signs, and in what we can learn of the innermoset thoughts of those who live in Turkey, do not bespeak a dangerous Return to Islam?

And why does pointing this out, and drawing conclusions for Western policymakers who must, after all, think of whether or not Turkey can or should be seriously relied on, or whether Turkish membership in NATO is at this point not a danger, from within, not be permitted? Are you suggestin g that this kind of open discussion, this display of worry and wariness, will actually cause Turks to become still more anti-American and still more Islamic?
I don’t think so. I think that if the good guys in Turkey become aware of, and spread the word, that not only will Turkey not be allowed into the E.U., but may also lose its member ship in NATO, and that the Western world is at long last reacting to the outrageous behavior of Erdogan and his various foreign ministers, this will actually work to the advantage of the real secularists, who can warn others that if Turkey continues to embrace Islam, and to undo Kemalist constraints on Islam as a social and political force, there will be consequences. How many Turks are really impressed with, would wish to be like, Syria, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan, or any other Muslim country in the world? And how many would like most to be akin to a real European country, and understand that what is holding them back -- politically, economically, socially, intellectually, morally -- is exactly what Ataturk recognized was holding them back -- that is, Islam?

It is only logical. NATO murdered Serb Christians and brutally eradicated Christianity from Kosovo to please the Muslims. While the American herd slept, NATO has turned into an Islamo-Nazi force. So, the openly Islamist Turkey is a perfect fit there.
Ruslan Tokhchukov, EnragedSince1999.

Ruslan -- a rage-assuaging musical interlude tol'ko dlya vas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMXhiTgSzIE

Excuse the minor grammatical errors in my above post. There unfortunately is no edit option.

Excuse the minor grammatical errors in my above post. There unfortunately is no edit option.

I believe that all Turkish citizen, regardles of their religion, should have freedom of faith. Islam should have absolutly no role in Turkish identity. Armenians, Greeks, or Jews born in Turkey should be considered just as Turkish as Turks of muslim descent.

Turkishness should be defined by citizenship, not by ethnicity or religion. Turks can convert to whatever religion they want, and still should be considered Turkish. Though I am of muslim descent, I am a defacto agnositic. No one has ever questioned my Turkishness because I am not a practicing muslim.

That being said, I absolutly do not agree with the Hagia Sophia being converted from a secular museum to a religious Greek Orthodox Church. The Hagia Sophia had been a mosque for over 400 years. This is a long time span, nearly twice the age of the United States of America. The Hagia Sophia for better or for worse played an integral part of Ottoman Islam. Many Ottoman Sultans invested vast sums into repairing the structure of the Hagia Sophia, espessialy after earthquakes.

Ataturk recognized that as a mosque, the Hagia Sophia was disconnected from its Orthodox Christian roots. Converting it back to Church would alienate Turks from the Haghia Sophia's rich Christian history and also deny the Hagia Sophia's undeniable influence in the Ottoman Empire. To keep both legacies alive, Ataturk did the right thing by turning it into a secular museum.

Now, all the Byzantine murals that have been hidden under the Islamic veil have been resurfacing since Ataturk's decree. How could Turks appreciate this previously forbidden Byzantine beauty if the Hagia Sophia were a Church? Greek Orthodox priests would view muslim Turkish visits to the Hagia Sophia as an existential threat to Greek sovereignty. Thus, they would most likely forbide such visits. Vice versa, the same would happen to Christian vistors if the Hagia Sophia remained as a mosque.

As a museum, the Hagia Sophia can be appreciated by all people. There isn't a single self-repecting secular Turk who would want the Hagia Sophia to become a Church. Such an act would be an insult to Turkish national sovereignty over the Greeks.

There is no difference between secular Turks and Islamist Turks on the subject of the Armenian/Assyrian genocides.
On that subject they are both in agreement: It never happened!
Why should we think Turkey more dangerous as it moves to embrace Islam?

High,

Blagodaryu, Sudar. Spasibo.
As always, thanks for a tune from the Old Country.

Ruslan Tokhchukov, Temporarily Not Enraged, Enjoying The Music ... .

I mean, thank you, Hugh. Sorry for the typo.

Ruslan, Still Cool and Chilling (: .

Armen, their isn't a simple dichotomous secular versus Islamist divide in Turkey. Liberal/progressive thinking Turks with respect to democracy and civil rights can either be pious Turks who are not adherents to political Islam, or they can be secular Turks. However, there are also many secular and Islamist Turks who are outright jingoist fascists. It is these often older generation Turks who are the most adamant genocide deniers.

I personally do believe Christians were massacred in the Ottoman Empire. However, it wasn't simply a "classic jihad genocide" as DA suggests. The whole massacre was planned by elite ethnic Turkish nationalists, but was executed by the rapid Islamist Anatolian peasantry.

Btw, I am a frequent contributer in the www.armeniangenocide.com forum (under a different Alias) so I have a lot of experience talking to Armenians.

There were many massacres of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In 1860, for example, in Damascus, the Arabs set up and killed the Maronites. In 1894-96, Muslim Turks and Muslim Kurds killed -- there was no war on then, no worry about an Armenian fifth-column as would later be the claimed excuse -- hundreds of thousands of Armenians. And then there was the much bigger mass-murdering that began in 1915 and continued for several years. The "elite ethinc Turkish nationalists" of that time were still perfectly good Muslims -- Ataturk, far less enamored of Islam, sensing it as the source of Ottoman and Turkish weakeness and failure, had not yet taken command -- and that Islam in their hearts and minds naturally contributed to their murderous willingness to massacre the Armenians.

I observe I have my answer: despite his protestations of secularism and open-mindedness, motokosoma absolutely cannot even begin to entertain the idea that the Hagia Sophia should be given back to the Christians.

OK, it was a mosque for 400 years, after a BRUTAL conquest - including mass murder of the worshippers - defenceless men, women and children - inside the church itself. It was DESECRATED by the Muslims. It was VANDALISED. And then, like so many of the other holy places of humanity, seized by Muslim conquerors, it was squatted in.

BUT before the Muslims had it, it had been a church for ONE THOUSAND YEARS.

And despite motokosoma's ridiculous assertions, there is not a single church anywhere in Christendom - especially those which are beautiful and historic - that is not freely open to interested visitors of all faiths.

The Hagia Sophia, if returned to its original purpose as a church, would I am *sure* remain open to tourists of all faiths and none.

By insisting that it MUST remain a museum - that it CANNOT and MUST NOT be returned to the Christians, ever (why? because it would hurt the feelings of the Muslim supremacists?) - motokosoma exposes himself to be, when all is said and done - a shameless Turkish supremacist and/ or Muslim supremacist at heart.

If he had even a milligram of normal human empathy he would know how deeply it grieves Christians - not only Greek Christians, but Christians of all traditions and ethnicities - that this lovely place cannot be used for Christian worship; that Christian visitors to Hagia Sophia, like Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount (also squatted upon, sneeringly, by arrogant Muslim supremacists) are prevented from praying, except of course in their secret heart.

And what a *peculiar* phrase with which to end - "There isn't a single self-repecting secular Turk who would want the Hagia Sophia to become a Church. Such an act would be an insult to Turkish national sovereignty over the Greeks."

*Turkish national sovereignty over the Greeks*. WTF?

IOW, what he means is: if we Turks cannot have the Hagia Sophia as a mosque, we will prevent the Christians from having it as a church, in order to spite - and humiliate - the Greeks; in order to display our power and dominance over them.

Puke.

My grandfather survived the Hamid Massacres in the 1890's. He lived to the ripe age of 96 and passed away in 1986. He never spoke of the Turks, but only of Mohammedans. I guess seeing an Armenian priest immolated in the churchyard made him realize that belief in Mohammed fuels murderous hatred.
The priest had been tied to a tree and set afire.

"My grandfather survived the Hamid Massacres in the 1890's. He lived to the ripe age of 96 and passed away in 1986. He never spoke of the Turks, but only of Mohammedans. I guess seeing an Armenian priest immolated in the churchyard made him realize that belief in Mohammed fuels murderous hatred.
The priest had been tied to a tree and set afire."

That testimony is valuable to me. I have been constantly repeating that the murders of Armenians was prompted by Islam, and not by ethinc hatred. And a good example is that earlier, seldom-mentioned massacre of 1895-96, when those who did the massacring do not even have the figleaf of "it was wartime, and the Armenians might have been helping our enemies. No such excuse then (and in fact the excuse later on is absurd, for all kinds of reasons). And the fact that Turks and Kurds killed Armenians, and took special pleasure in killing the pregnant wives of Armenian priests, and when they did their killings often screamed about the "giavour" (the Infidel, the non-Muslim) tells us what we need to know. It is important for the Western world to understand that the massacre of the Armenians was a war not of Turks against Armenians, but of Muslim Turks (and Kurds, and in the Syrian desert, against the stragglers, the women and children trying to get to co-religionists in Haleb and Beirut, also Arabs)against Christians, who happened to be Armenians.

And it is also important for the Turks to realize this. For those Turks who are truly secular, who like Ataturk have deep misgivings about Islam, can better admit to the massacres and mass-murderings as the work, not of "Turks," but of Muslims, and thus put the blame where it belongs -- on those who take to heart the ideology of, the texts of, the tenets of, Islam.

Thank you, Armen, for that testimony from your grandfather.

Hugh,

Islam was the primary force behind the Armenian Genocide. Infact, it should be more accuarly described as Chrisitan genocide. Anatolians at the turn of the 20th century had no nationalist identity, villagers were segregated by religion. Hency why Kurds and Turks together massacred the non-muslim Armenians, Assyrians, etc.

However, the genocide was planned by the Young Turks, who exclusively came from the frontier cosmopolitan provinces of the Ottoman Empire such as the Balkans and Caucasus (not Anatolia). The heavy mixture of ethnic groups and religions within these areas helped the Young Turks develop a strong Turkish ethnic national identity, rather than an Islamic identity. It was was these Young Turks who first reduced the power of the Islamic Ottoman Sultanate. The goal of the Young Turks was to create an ethnic Turkish state.

The non-Turkish populations within Anatolia were a hindrance to their goal. The Young Turks knew that Anatolians were ignorant and too brainwashed by Islam to be aware of their ethnic roots. They exploited the religious fanaticism of Anatolian Muslims in order to purify Anatolia from non-Turkish ethnicities.

This was all before Mustafa Kemal's time. After he took power, he expelled all the rival Young Turks who planned the genocide. Ataturk was not an ethnic nationalist, he believed that anyone, regardless of ethnicity or religion, can be a Turkish citizen.

-
DA,
You need to calm down. I will not respond to any of your posts until you have a more respectful tone.

Hugh,

Islam was the primary force behind the Armenian Genocide. Infact, it should be more accuarly described as Chrisitan genocide. Anatolians at the turn of the 20th century had no nationalist identity, villagers were segregated by religion. Hency why Kurds and Turks together massacred the non-muslim Armenians, Assyrians, etc.

However, the genocide was planned by the Young Turks, who exclusively came from the frontier cosmopolitan provinces of the Ottoman Empire such as the Balkans and Caucasus (not Anatolia). The heavy mixture of ethnic groups and religions within these areas helped the Young Turks develop a strong Turkish ethnic national identity, rather than an Islamic identity. It was was these Young Turks who first reduced the power of the Islamic Ottoman Sultanate. The goal of the Young Turks was to create an ethnic Turkish state.

The non-Turkish populations within Anatolia were a hindrance to their goal. The Young Turks knew that Anatolians were ignorant and too brainwashed by Islam to be aware of their ethnic roots. They exploited the religious fanaticism of Anatolian Muslims in order to purify Anatolia from non-Turkish ethnicities.

This was all before Mustafa Kemal's time. After he took power, he expelled all the rival Young Turks who planned the genocide. Ataturk was not an ethnic nationalist, he believed that anyone, regardless of ethnicity or religion, can be a Turkish citizen.

-
DA,
You need to calm down. I will not respond to any of your posts until you have a more respectful tone.

And as for motokosoma, I really do have to say that his refusal to even begin to entertain the idea that the Hagia Sophia, the great church of the Holy Wisdom, might ever be given back to the Christians - to *any* Christians - to be used for the purpose for which it was originally designed and built *by Christians*, and for which it was used for a thousand years, is terribly revealing, and very, very sad.

The 'secular' Turkish regime appears to me to have displayed for over eighty years a 'dog in the manger' attitude, namely, "if the *Muslims* can't have it, then that will be all right so long as, at all costs, the *Christians* are locked out, too". And thus, to that extent, Muslim supremacism remains unchallenged; what they stole from the Christians, by appalling violence, continues to be denied to the Christians; the most beautiful church in Christendom remains an empty shell, silent and cold, no longer filled, as it was once filled, day and night, for a thousand years, with light and with song and with such visible and audible beauty that the visitors from Kiev declared "we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth". (Its subsequent use as a mosque, for four hundred years, I regard as four hundred years of deliberate desecration, accompanied as it was by centuries of unremitting Muslim contempt toward, and cruelties practised upon, the Christian population of Asia Minor, cruelties that continued well after the end of the Caliphate).

If the Turkish regime were *truly* secular, it should not have a problem with giving Hagia Sophia to the Christians to be rededicated. Muslims have mosques aplenty. Muslims have the Blue Mosque. But there is no other Hagia Sophia; Muslims did not build it, and Muslims only care about it as a trophy, a sign of their continuing dominance over the remnant Christians of Asia Minor.

I am perfectly shameless about praying that Hagia Sophia may one day be given back, rededicated, reconsecrated, cleansed and restored to its original beauty - yes, all the original icons. I pray that there may come a day when the great Paschal Liturgy may be celebrated there...not just in Greek, but in Slavonic, and in Armenian, and...in Kurdish and Turkish translation, for nowadays there *are* formerly-Muslim Turks, and Kurds, who have abandoned Islam, and become Christians. Some of them have been martyred - by Muslims - for so doing...

Here is a test for motokosoma's credentials as a modern, secular, 'moderate' Turk: can he contemplate, can he imagine, viewing with equanimity the sight of a Turk, or of a Kurd, formerly-Muslim, in the white robe of a catechumen, descending into the waters of baptism...in a Hagia Sophia repossessed and rededicated and used as a normal church, by the Christian community within Turkey, used just as, say, St Paul's in London or St Peter's in Rome, are currently used?

Is he able to understand that if such a thing were - per miraculum - to happen, it might be understandable (at least, to all human beings whose brains are not addled by Islam) not as humiliating and offensive, but as marvellous and beautiful: as an example of human beings exercising freedom of conscience and freedom of religion; and as a sign of restitution, a healing of one of the many great gaping wounds inflicted on humanity by the Jihad?