The socialists were the first who got their heads chopped off when Khomeini came to power in Iran. Benhabib is a delusional poptart, like all lefties.

Turkey is gone. Ataturks reforms lasted 70 years, that's it.

Turkey is islamized already beyond repair, they just don't know it yet.

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at August 3, 2007 2:30 PM

The outrageous chutzpah by which this Erdogan/Gul government got itself into power is unbelievable.

The claim that 'secularism restricts the rights of the individual to practice his religion' is just so vile and perverted I can't get over it.

Orwellian in nature, the ultimate in turnspeak.

Islam is a criminal organization. Full stop.

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at August 3, 2007 2:35 PM

Muslims in attempt to be civilised and secular. Remind me on vers from Bible:
'Is it possible for the skin of the Ethiopian to be changed, or the markings on the leopard? Then it might be possible for you to do good, who have been trained to do evil.' (Jeremiah 13.23)

Posted by: svemirko at August 3, 2007 2:36 PM

The recent political shift in Turkey, for the irreversible worse I fear, kinda' puts a damper on all those visit Turkey tourism TV spots I've been seeing lately.

Posted by: awake at August 3, 2007 2:42 PM

Turkey, without massive funding by the EU, most of all Germany, which to this very day finances infrastructure, subsidises flights, hotel-building and heaven knows what, would be just another crapola like all the Islamic nations in the ME.

It was all in vain.

Turkey's Muslim people are stooped in the same 7th century insanity as the rest. The jiziah from the West was wasted, it brought Turkey modern appliances, technology, but nothing more. Europe should have spent its money to build a modern army instead.

Everything in the name of business and trade, normally not a bad thing, but when dealing with Islamo-fascists its a one-way street. We give, they take.

When you see how the French are prostituting themselves in Libya and how the Brit's fall over themselves to compete, then you know that all morals, pride, everything that we used to hold dear has gone out the window.

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at August 3, 2007 3:17 PM

Benhabib's comments are boilerplate crap that every Muslim professor and liberal apologist use to condemn and silence critics of Islam.

Also Benhabib is full of shit in stating that the AK Party will make Turkey a pluralistic society. Muslim societies can be nothing of the sort, especially Turkey which exterminated its ethnic and religous minorities.

Posted by: waltc at August 3, 2007 3:32 PM

Things are still worse for Turkey than the mere presence of an Islamic party at the head of government. Looming presently is the question of EU accession. It is a foregone conclusion Turkey will not be allowed in, and it will be a long no that lasts many years and breeds resentment, as do long term grievances in any situation. In this the Islamic parties (and all Muslims for that matter) have a ready-made conspiratorial excuse. Just throw the Jews in for good measure, and you have an answer for the failings of Turkish society as the Islamization steamrolls forward.

Posted by: Quijybo at August 3, 2007 7:46 PM

There is no chance that Turkey will be admitted to the EU. While the EU may be viewed as a complete sellout to Eurabian projections for the future, the EU is made up of individual nations, many of which have waken up to the cultural/societal threat of immigration without assimilation. A serious push by bureaucrats in Brussels to accept a non-European country, both in geography (the former Constantinople and its surrounds are the only part of Turkey in Europe) and in culture, would mean a dissolution of the EU. Easily, 3/4 of the EU would leave the Union if something like this were pushed forward.

The EU must appear to consider the entry of Turkey into the EU, in order to appease Eurabianists and its Euro-PC inclinations, but a real attempt to allow Turkey into the EU would be met with unsurmountable opposition. This would probably be the case even before the Erdogan government, but after its ascendance, it is an absolute certainty. It is simply another hypocrisy of Europe that the possibility is still discussed. Everyone knows that it will never come to pass.

If Eurabia is about oil, then this does not help Turkey. Saudi Arabia doesn't care a wit about Turkey, a country that has until recently been closer to Israel in many ways than Saudi Arabia. When push comes to shove, Muslim brotherhood does not run so deep.

If Eurabia is about appeasing the restive Muslims already in Europe, Europeans know full well that national, ethnic or tribal affiliations run far deeper than pan-Islamic ones. Only Germany has a huge Turkish presence, and we all know that Germany can act in a "non-humanitarian" manner when it wants to. Do you think the Algerian and Moroccan immigrants in France or the Netherlands or the Pakistani immigrants in Britain care about Turkey? The EU knows this.

So they will continue the flirtation because the EU bureaucrats are divided between those who want to see the end of Europe and those who are simply afraid of offending anyone, but when push comes to shove, Turkey will not be admitted, ever.

Posted by: Wimbledon Womble at August 3, 2007 8:59 PM

Turkey has always used secularism as an excuse to deny everyone but Muslim's their rights.

On this site some time ago I asked the question to someone who identified himself as Turkish, why the Turks don't give back the Agia Sophia to the Greeks? His response was because it should remain a museum as we are a secular nation.

I have to say I find this totally reprehensible and I find it interesting how this great secular shrine manages to still have an Islamic crescent moon on its dome still.

Turkey was always secular in name only and that is now gone for good.

The only reason anyone has thought of Turkey as partially European is because of Constantinople, and that was always Greek. Turkey will never get into the EU, and that is really our first great hope for saving Europe.

Posted by: The fanatic at August 4, 2007 1:07 AM

"Seyla Benhabib, professor of political science and philosophy at Yale University, told Daniele Castellani Perelli (“Mosque and State,” Dissent Magazine, Fall 2007) that “Miss Hirsi Ali’s language is a language of confrontation that basically presents a homogeneous, orthodox Islam as closed to reform and transformation. And it is a language that presents a unified, uncritical and un-reflectively positive view of liberal democracies—as if they didn’t have their own problems and reasons to be criticized.”

Benhabib says the AK party is “carrying out an incredible experiment and it is unusual for some one who is a democratic socialist like myself to be supporting, and watching very carefully, a party like them. But we are all watching carefully because they also represent a kind of pluralism in civil society, which is absolutely essential for Turkey.”

Tu-Quoque from Seyla Benhabib,whose loyalty to Islam trumps all else, including her self-described "democratic socialist" leanings. No, like Fatimia Mernissi and Leila Ahmad,who quickly draw back whenever they sense Islam itself may be criticized for the treatment of women in Islam, showing that thie loyaltyto Islam trumps their supposed devotion to the cause of women's rights, Seyla Benhabib's predictable, and nauseating, attempt to call Ayaan Hirsi Ali's piercing and truth-telling remarks into question with the usual blague about "reformation" in Islam -- there is the deceptive ignis fatuus of such "reform" but it keeps receding further into the marecage of Islam, the closer one tries to approach it, and her equally revealing tu-quoque in telling us, amazingly, something of which we are all perfectly aware and which is irrelevant to Ayaan Hirsi's Ali's criticism; to wit, that she uses a "language that presents a unified, uncritical and un-reflectively positive view of liberal democracies—as if they didn’t have their own problems and reasons to be criticized.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, of course, does no such thing. And Seyla Benhabib merely reveals where her deepest loyalties lie. And they don't lie with the survival of our mot imperfect liberal democracies, not if such survival requires a true grasp of the nature of Islam, that "doubly totalitian" (Charles-Emmanuel Bosquet) belief-system, based squarely on the uncompromising division of the world between Believer and Infidel.

A little Henri Lammens, Georges Vajda, Bousquet, and Bat Ye'or would so Seyla Benhabib, literary theorist, and Defender of the Faith (Democratic Socialist Division) good, if she were not impervious to learning truthfully, showing herself willing to end her innate bent toward Islamic apologetis, and being willing to study the tenets, attitudes, and atmospheris of Islam, as contained in, or prompted naturally by, Qur'an, Hadith, and
Sira.

Posted by: Hugh at August 4, 2007 3:58 PM

Turkey, without massive funding by the EU, most of all Germany, which to this very day finances infrastructure, subsidises flights, hotel-building and heaven knows what, would be just another crapola like all the Islamic nations in the ME.

Yes, how very foolish of us. We are hopelessly liberal..

Posted by: Allahfanculo at August 4, 2007 6:31 PM

Another thing about the Benhabib person that I find fairly typical of nasty academics, is the preoccupation with the idea of language as such, at the expense of truth or even thought.

"Hirsi Ali’s language is a language of confrontation that basically presents ... "

"it is a language that presents a unified, uncritical ..."

It is a style of thought that I think is characteristic of people who have given up on the idea of truth. Benhabib doesn't come right out and say that Hirsi Ali is wrong or mistaken, but rather that her "language" is presenting things, as it it had a life of it's own.

It's a rather bizarre way of arguing without actually coming out and stating an argument.

Anti-thought.

Creepy.

Posted by: joeblough at August 5, 2007 9:49 AM

sheik yer'mami wrote: "Turkey is gone. Ataturk's reforms lasted 70 years, that's it."

Indeed, sheik, this shows us just how amenable to "reform" the Mahometan cult really is. 70 years out of 1400 = only 5% of the total time that Islam has blighted the human race. Only five percent (and Turkey has been a typical backward stone age third world S@#$hole even during it's "reform" period.) What does this tell us about our prospects for the future??

The fanatic wrote: "Turkey will never get into the EU......."

No, but in, say, 20 or 30 years, when Europe's native population is to old and too few to fight (demography is destiny) a resurgent "Ottoman Empire" may well CONQUER Europe.

Posted by: One_of_the_last_few_Patriots_left at August 6, 2007 11:20 AM