Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses the present Western stance toward Turkey, as epitomized by former General Brent Scowcroft, and recommends an alternative:
“Turkish Parliament Speaker Bulent Arinc has said, “˜we have always felt contributions of the United States to Turkey`s EU process.” Arinc hosted dinner in honor of Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the Board of the American-Turkish Council (ATC), and accompanying delegation in Ankara on Thursday.” “” from this article, October 21, 2005
Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the Board of the American-Turkish Council (ATC). Well, of course. It makes sense. Hard-on-Israel ergo soft-on-Islam Brent Scowcroft. The chocolate soldier who rose through the ranks, like the Gilbert-and-Sullivan admiral who polished up the handle of the big front door and became a captain in the Queen’s navee, Scowcroft has a lifetime of polishing, apple-polishing for his civilian superiors.
And here is Turkey, the country that wishes to enter the E.U., feting Scowcroft. And here is the government of the United States pushing for Turkey’s admission to the E.U., which is a clear sign to all those who think that this Administration “secretly” understands Islam and is “just playing a clever game” (which includes all those who so tiresomely keep defending the wonderful Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Project in Iraq). And Scowcroft is getting how much from the Turkish government, directly or indirectly, for his new post, one no doubt among many?
And who cares if the E.U. has as its largest member Turkey, so that all Turks can, by the rules of the E.U., move freely anywhere within that same E.U, and set up doner kebab shops, and mosques, and swell the ranks still further of those ever-swelling ranks of Muslims who, almost without exception, have everywhere they have settled within Europe made life more unpleasant, more expensive, and more physically insecure for the indigenous Infidels (and for other non-Muslim immigrant groups who, unlike the Muslims, settle in Europe without making life more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous for everyone else)? Brent Scowcroft doesn’t. From desk-job after desk-job, he rose high. And now he lives the life of comfort, paid for by those who do not so much wish Turkey and Erdogan well, but those, and there are so many of them, who simply want the money, whether from Turkey pushing in its own way at the Gates of Vienna, or Saudi Arabia trying to prevent any understanding of what Saudi Arabia is and does and always will be and always will do.
He’s a type. Brent Scowcroft. He has nothing to do with the officers and men who were in Iraq, and some of whom are paying with their lives for the decades of misunderstanding of Islam that these well-heeled denizens of official Washington receive, in a thousand ways, in order to misinform and misdirect the government, the media, and us.
Were those well-heeled denizens of official Washington suddenly to snap to their senses, here are the three things that must be required of Turkey before negotiations can be continued:
1. Formal recognition of the mass-murder of Armenians in 1894-96, and the mass-murder, amounting to genocide as that term is often applied, in the period 1915-1920.
2. Removal of the green flag of Islam from Hagia Sophia, allowing Western (and Turkish) artisans to restore, as much as possible, the building, and permitting the holding, in Hagia Sophia, of church services — so that, as a working church, Western and Turkish visitors, both among the permanent residents and tourists, can participate in, or observe, what was the first church in what for a thousand years was the most largest and most important city in all of Eastern Christendom and, for much of that time, the most important city in Christendom, period.
3. Withdrawal of Turkey from the “Islamic club” of the O.I.C. For while the charge that the E.U. is a “Christian club” is nonsense, the O.I.C. is definitely and openly based entirely on Islam as the unifying and animating force. Turkey should not expect as a member of such an “Islamic club” to be admitted into the E.U. — see the speech of Mahathir Mohamed to the assembled worthies of the O.I.C. to get a sense of what goes on at these meetings.
These are not demands to be met AFTER admission. They are not demands to be met in a few years. They should be the sine qua non, the initial and minimal requirements that must be met.
They can’t? Turkey just can’t own up to its treatment of the Armenians (not to mention its massacres of Maronites and Assyrians and others, not to mention the mass exile of Greeks and mob violence against the much-diminished Greek remnant in 1955, not to mention the devshirme, not to mention the…). Too bad.
Turkey simply can’t can’t can’t open up the Hagia Sophia and allow it to be used again as a church, though there are mosques in every major and minor city in Europe and North America? Why not?
Turkey can’t leave that aggressive and menacing O.I.C. (see — again — that Mahathir Mohamed speech, and the ecstatic reception it received)?
No?
Too bad. We have been told in the E.U. repeatedly that Turkey is not like those other Muslim countries. Turkey, we are told, is a “secular” state, Turkey is a “modern” state, Turkey is a state that does everything it can to be a multi-ethnic, multi-religious state.
Really?
Three easy ways to begin to prove it.
If even those three steps cannot be taken, then there is no point in further discussions. And it will be hard to make the case that any of these requests were unreasonable — at least in the rest of the non-Islamic world. Although Scowcroft and his ilk will never make even these reasonable requests.
You remember that business on television a few years ago, declaring someone the weakest link, and wishing him (or her) an abrupt goodbye?
Well, goodbye.