To simply say “protestors good, government bad” in Turkey is a symptom of the Blair delusion, that in civil conflicts there are guys with white hats and guys with black hats, and that the West’s role is to ride into town and kill the guys in the black hats. That is what “liberal intervention” means. The main aim of my second autobiographical book, “The Catholic Orangemen of Togo”, was to explain through the truth of the Sierra Leone experience how very, very wrong this is.
In fact civil conflicts are usually horribly complex, anent a variety of very bad people all trying to gain or retain power, none of them from an altruistic desire to make the world a better place. There may be ordinary people on the streets with that altruistic desire, being used and manipulated by these men; but it is not the ordinary altruistic people on the streets who ever come to power. Ever.
In Turkey the heavy crushing of a rainbow of protests in Istanbul has been going on for at least a month now. A week ago I was discussing it with my publisher, whose son lives in the city. A fortnight ago I was in Istanbul myself.
The Turkish people I was with were natural Erdogan supporters, and what struck me very forcibly was the fact that he has sickened many of his own natural allies by the rampant corruption in Turkey at present. Almost everyone I met spoke to me about corruption, and Turkey being Turkey, everyone seemed to know a very great deal of detail about how corruption was organised in various building and development projects and who was getting what. It therefore is hardly surprising that the spark which caused this conflict to flare to a new level was ignited by a corrupt deal to build a shopping centre on a park. The desecration of something lovely for money could be a metaphor for late Erdogan government.
The park is very small beer compared to the massive corruption involved in the appalling and megalomaniac Bosphorus canal project. Everyone talked to me about that one. The mainstream media, who never seem to know what is happening anywhere, seem to have missed that a major cause of the underlying unrest in Istanbul was the government’s announcement eight weeks ago that the Bosphorus canal is going ahead.
People are also incensed by the new proposal that would ban the sale of alcohol within 100 metres of any mosque or holy site, ie anywhere within central Istanbul. That would throw thousands of people out of work, damage the crucial tourist trade and is rightly seen as a symptom of reprehensible mounting religious intolerance that endangers Turkish society.
So there are plenty of legitimate reasons to protest, and the appalling crushing of protest is the best of them
But – and this is what it is never in the interest of Western politicians to understand – Government bad does not equal protestors good. A very high proportion – more than the British public realise by a very long way – of those protesting in the streets are off the scale far right nationalists of a kind that make the BNP look cuddly and Nigel Farage look like Tony Benn. Kemalism – the worship of Ataturk and a very unpleasant form of military dominated nationalism – remains very strong indeed in Istanbul. Ataturk has a very strong claim, ahead of Mussolini, to be viewed as the inventor of modern fascism
For every secular liberal in Istanbul there are two secular ultra-nationalist militarists. To westerners they stress the secular bit and try to hide the rest, and this works on the uncurious (being uncurious is a required attribute to get employed by the mainstream media). Of course there are decent, liberal, environmentalist protestors and the media will have no difficulty, now they have finally noticed something is happening, in filling our screens with beautiful young women who fit that description, to interview. But that is not all of what is going on here.
There certainly was no more freedom in Turkey before the AKP came to power. Government for decades had been either by the Kemalist military in dictatorship or occasionally by civilian governments they tolerated and controlled. People suddenly have short memories if they think protest was generally tolerated pre-Erdogan, and policy towards the Kurds was massively more vicious.
The military elite dominated society and through corruption they dominated commerce and the economy. The interests of a protected and generally fascist urban upper middle class were the only interests that counted at all. The slightest threat to those interests brought a military coup – again, and again, and again. Religion was barely tolerated, and they allied closely with Israel and the United States.
When Erdogan first came to power it was the best thing that had happened to Turkey for decades. The forgotten people of the Anatolian villages, and the lower middle class of the cities, had a voice and a position in the state for the first time. In individual towns and villages, the military and their clients who had exercised absolute authority had their power suddenly diminished. I witnessed this and it was a new dawn, and it felt joyous.
Then of course Erdogan gradually got sucked in to power, to money, to NATO, to the corruption of his Black Sea mafia and to arrogance. It all went very wrong, as it always seems to. That is where we are now.
Yes of course I want those pretty, genuinely liberal environmentalist girls in the park to take power. But they won’t. Look at the hard-eyed fascists behind them. Look at the western politicians licking their lips thinking about the chance to get a nice very right wing, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel government into power.
We should all be concerned at what is happening in Turkey. We should all call for an end to violent repression. But to wish the overthrow of a democratically elected government, and its replacement – by what exactly? – is a very, very foolish reaction.
Well said, Macky. Everyone who has attempted engagement and discussion has found the same.
‘Social media is the worst menace to society,’ says Recep Erdogan after thousands take control of Istanbul’s main square
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/02/turkish-protesters-control-istanbul-square
Apparently both Syrian AND Turkish forces have found Syrian rebels in possession of chemical weapons:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/turkish-police-find-chemical-weapons-in-the-possession-of-al-nusra-terrorists-heading-for-syria/5336917
Why isn’t Hague intoning gravely upon that, eh?
Here’s another article which gives further details on Hague’s Syrian friends, caught with chemical weapons by Turkish police.
“While widely reported in the Turkish press, the arrests Wednesday have been virtually blacked out by the corporate media in the US.”
UK too, I’d imagine.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35150.htm
And still no word from the ever principled Hague. In fact, I think he wants to give them more weapons.
Is he just some cheap charlatan, or is there another explanation?
Incredible article. I am from Turkey and i couldn’t put it in a better way, incredible observation, i am so impressed that some one outside of Turkey could give such a clear picture about whats going on. I think some people misunderstood (or are too blind to see) that he has nothing against Ataturk, he is criticizing people who are Kemalist, who live Ataturk to the extreme. With this kind of people you DON’T have freedom of speech, because even if you want to say Ataturk has done one little thing wrong they will declare you as a disgrace to your country. I want to be able to criticize his bad actions and take a lesson from the past. One thing i admire about the West is actually any western country is able to do this with any of their leaders, we should learn this from them. I just want to say: Thank you thank you thank you for this wonderful article, from the bottom of my heart.
I think we could compare worship of Ataturk to British adulation for Winston Churchill, responsible for 1-3 million deaths in the Bengal famine. I don’t need to mention the millions recently spent on the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, supporter of Pinochet and Pol Pot.
From the BBC’s commentary on the Istanbul protests:
‘In another development, a public sector trade union confederation, Kesk, says it will begin a two-day strike starting on Tuesday in support of the demonstrators.
The left-wing confederation accused the government of being anti-democratic and carrying out “state terror”.’
It’s bizarre that quite a lot of the ‘fascist’ demonstrators are posing as anarchists judging by their signs.
To put is sarcastically if Turks have killed all Armenians we would not have Kardashians today and the world would be much better place.However that whole area is a cesspool of historical conflicts and hatred that are somehow “always fresh” and renewable.To look at that problem with the eyes of average “happy consumer of the west” is sort of a joke.
The article here: http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-is-happenning-in-istanbul/5337371 is from someone in Istanbul who attempts to explain why the demos. Adds to the excellent info here . Thanks craig
Villager – thanks. All communications from the grass roots, via social networks (which need help to get their truths out), but checked before I repost. Suhayl’s take on this is as usual v cogent, seems to me too that this is “civil society rising up and refusing to accede” in the hope of “a democratically-elected government recognising that it cannot behave like a junta intent on demolishing democracy from within (democracy is not just about a ballot box; this is common Islamist fantasy). There must NOT be a military coup, otherwise there might an ‘Algerian 1990s’ situation and much else that is terrible.”
Civil society rose up in Iran, of course, as well as Egypt and elsewhere, but in the first instance it was brutally crushed by the state and in the others co-opted by the US and allies.
@ Macky :
“Sorry I do not waste time engaging with somebody who pretends to “debate”, but offers only fallacious & specious nonsense,”
——–
Perhaps not, but I note that you did have time to write a long paragraph, in which you accuse me of “misleading” (an accusation you can’t back up, of course).
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La vita è bella, life is good!
Erdogan’s confident belief that Turkey’s problems are not the beginning of another Muslim Spring rests upon the assumption that he has done far more than enough to avoid another Pentagon-made earthquake.
If there is still another one, either around Izmit or up in the mountains around Lake Van, his government is history, no matter how much aid the Americans and Israelis offer, and how eager he is willing to accept it.
Then it would just be a matter of determining whether it was really another man-made one, or a ‘natural’ one, helped along by all the previous monkeying around with its plates.
Have to believe that Erdogan is keeping his fingers crossed, and saying a few entreating prayers somewhere.
Sophie (Kibo) says, at 18h32 :
“I think we could compare worship of Ataturk to British adulation for Winston Churchill, responsible for 1-3 million deaths in the Bengal famine. I don’t need to mention the millions recently spent on the funeral of Margaret Thatcher, supporter of Pinochet and Pol Pot.”
__________
She would do better to stick to her Private Eye-style diary or her Coleridge adaptations, because the above is nonsensical.
1/. The comparison in the first sentence is false and meaningless : Ataturk is revered (and not worshipped) as the founder of the modern Turkish nation whereas the ‘adulation’ of Churchill was such that he and the party he led went down to a crushing defeat in the 1945 General Election.
2/. In what way, exactly, was Churchill ‘responsible’ for the Bengal famine?
3/. And what is the relevance of the cost to the public purse of Baroness Thatcher’s funeral to the question of Ataturk/Turkey?
Beta double minus.
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La vita è bella, life is good!
Is it not strange that you rightly find the “Arab Spring” (spring in the Arab lands is fruitless and barren. In fact the end of summer and beginning of the autumn are the time of plenty in the Arab lands, hence an Arab Autumn would have made a lot more sense to any Arab) as a US springboard for furtherance of its hegemony in the Arab countries that were in fact re-enacting the earlier Iranian revolution. Yet you then leap into the same narrative of the mendacious “West” that has never forgiven the Iranians for kicking out the Wests’ favourite poodle and vassal out of Iran.
The “civil society” in Iran that your refer to, were no more than a Gucci Brigade and a bunch of rich brats objecting to the restrictions on their favoured life style of; sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Having talked to numerous people who were in the Great March (at least three million people turned out for this march in Tehran, that was not reported in any of the medjia in the West) in response to the “riots”, “where is my vote?” and “green make up”.
These demonstrators were indignant about fact that; what about the votes of millions from around country that evidently did not count in the face of those claiming “where is my vote”? Tehran is only one city in Iran, and there are many more villages, towns, and cities with a heck of a lot more Iranians who are not into; sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
There is a singular lack of understanding that Iranians prefer to live under the current arrangements there, otherwise they would have made a quick job out of the current bunch of their political leadership. Somehow everyone has a blind spot about their revolution, when the rest of the world has sat by and let their political leadership to oppress, and suppress their way into the current pitiful state of affairs; ideologically bankrupt, politically bankrupt, financially bankrupt, and morally bankrupt.
The Syrian civil war is being led by a US carrot that maps will be redrawn, part 1/ creation of a bite out of Iraq for a larger, Sunni Syria and part 2/creation of a bite out of Turkey for a larger, Sunni Kurdistan.
The US is lying, and it will definitely not deliver these 20 year old promises which have been salivating Sunni political Islam all this time. The present disruption in Turkey, following quickly after the peacemaking with Kurdish groups, makes it look as though the US is manoevering towards the promised plan.
The other carrot is the lie that Islam’s interests lie with “””””Christian”””””, democracy and capitalism as opposed to “””””Atheist”””””” Russia. No, both the old EAST and WEST are under the control of Israel, whose objective in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Syria is to harrass and murder as many Muslims through their proxy jihadist groups as they possibly can.
In my experience Turkey is deeply shafted by Sufi-Gulen-Masonism.
I witnessed a bearded imam openly re-pray his prayers because he was dissatisfied with the monkey version of the official imam. I witnessed shock and concern at my own intention to join the mosque that read the whole of the Qur’an in the month of Ramadhan.
That was so much more inspiring for me as a silent protest than the spiritually blind and politically illiterate massacrefest we have witnessed in Syria,Iraq and Afghani-/Paki-stan.
The website Global Research which gets links, including from myself from time to time, exposes itself as completely false in an article about “Wahabism”. The briefest scan of the Qur’an will show that the worshipping of saints is absolutely and totally prohibited in Islam, yet this deceitful site reveals its malice against Islam by stating the following:
” Basically, Wahhab contrived the idea that, simply by the trivial act of offering prayers to saints, their Turkish brethren had forfeited their faith, and therefore, that it was permitted to kill all who refused to adhere to his reforms”
It is not a trivial act to disobey the very essence of the Qur’an. This exposes Global Research as liars. Egodan is highly respected amongst Sunni Muslims for carrying the light of the Qur’an against Sufi error where his predecessors efforts had been overwhelmed by Attaturk Secularism. Whatever his political affiliations may be, his Islamic courage is humbling.
Government is the bad guy here. No ifs or buts about it.
In the second paragraph, you just described Erdogan and his elite’s rise to power in the last 10 years.
You fell into the false notion of the propagandists which used this propaganda for the last 10 years. Lies and manipulations about the founding of Turkish Republic. Ataturk never advocated military fascism. Even his detractors, in the beginning of the campaign to stagger the power of the military often repeated that fact. He didn’t believe in military symbol for power. Like his stance on what happened tı Armenians in WW1. His opposition still today sometimes uses his words to advocate that Turkey should apologize for Armenian genocide. Poster guy for fascism ? Not really. It doesn’t match his m.o. either.
This view of Ataturk has colored your view on the protestors who carry his symbols. And it’s very clear that you don’t know about the camps in the protest. Even Kurdish and Turkish nationalists are walking together. Tell me, does it look like there are ultranationalists in movement?
There was more freedom before Erdogan.Because there was always a step central authority figures was afraid to take or they would move back from their hard stance positions on some issues due to criticisms.
Erdogan doesn’t like backing down and he never backs down. he sidesteps the issue and always moves forward with his agenda. One way or the other. That’s the crucial difference. And you always miss that.
Not to mention the arrests and other anti citizen rights initiatives which surpass even the coup ruling time measure in 80s.
Your depiction of society before Erdogan is skewed and wrong. And the ones who replaced those “bad guys” in your depiction,they made peace with the old money and went onto collect profits for themselves in Erdogan’s time are not any better. In fact they are worse. And you, blatantly ignore this fact.
Even your assertion about being allied with Israel is wrong. You are either extremely ignorant. Or too tied up in your own world views to see the facts for what they are. Or you just like akp too much.
Anyway, you are wrong in almost every one of political talking points. Which is worrying because you like to talk about the issue.
I’m not surprised. Many ambassadors have a flawed view of the world. Call it a disease related to the profession they chose.
@ Fedup, who says :
“There is a singular lack of understanding that Iranians prefer to live under the current arrangements there, otherwise they would have made a quick job out of the current bunch of their political leadership”
———-
If the Iranian people were so good at “making a quick job” out of their political leaderships, how come the Shah held on for 26 years?
The nonsensical nature of your “quick job” argument of course invalidates your first claim, which is that the Iranian people prefers to live under the current arrangements.
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La vita è bella, life is good!
Quickbuck
Shut up
Fedup: interesting, thanks. I know that large sections of the countryside (particularly the carpet weavers, wasn’t it?) supported the state, but is the below not also true, then?
The mass uprising after the electoral coup of 2009, which came to be known as the Green Movement, involved a wide-ranging array of secular, left, liberal, and moderate religious elements. It was defeated mainly because of the unbelievably brutal suppression of the activists, which included killing, maiming, and raping arrested protesters. But the movement’s leadership also played a role. Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoobi were both establishment figures; while they sought reforms, they did not want to challenge the regime in its totality. And the fact that the members of street movements failed to link up with workers and employees who had the power to shut down factories and other institutions as they had done during the Iranian Revolution of 1979, also contributed to this failure.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/saeed-rahnema/iran-grim-choices-for-president
NB: Habbakuk, your leaping on a bandwagon to attack Mary once again serves only to make any right thinking person wish to defend her. Mary, I’m sorry if that sounded tetchy, but when a thread gets into a rhythm where opinions & facts are being exchanged, it feels very disconcerting to have something else apparently randomly inserted as a cut and paste into the middle. I was learning rather a lot (of course did not even bother reading the other stuff).
There you have it, yet another colour revolution, alongside the others that brought Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine, and Mikheil Saakashvili in Gerogia to power, the same bunch of crooks and liars who have since lead the most brutal and corrupt governments.
The fact often missing from an debate is the amounts of money US had been pouring into creating a contrived opposition based on the thesis of Gene Sharp, and the ex Yugoslav franchise “Otpor”. This fact can be corroborated by the fact that the “green” regalia were ordered months in advance and imported through Dubai to Iran (BTW green is a sacred colour in Iran and those choosing the colour were fully aware of the nuances and knew how to get away with mock raking and causing mayhem in Tehran)
The secular left have little or no traction in Iran, simple fact is Iranians are a religious bunch and they would like to adhere to their religious imperatives. Therefore secularism dose not attract many other than very few in the minority, who are mostly confused left so to speak. So far as liberalism goes, these adhere to religious imperatives too. However, this minority tends to aspire towards the goals that are very much dependent on shaky grounds of “International co-operation”, a pipe dream considering the four decades of none stop assault of the West on Iran.
The religious moderates who were in the leadership ie Mehdi Karroubi, this character despite his “reformist” label that was bestowed upon him, had his own private prisons that housed anyone he deemed undesirable, and one of the reasons for his early demise was his extra judicial excesses during the early years of revolution. This thoroughly despicable character however has his own sponsors in the West. Musavi the leader of the “greens” is a crook, and the stories of his looting of the public funds are stuff of the legends.
This kind of throw away remark very much applies to the years of Shah, during which under the close supervision of Mossad, and CIA the Iranian Savak was torturing the opponents of the regime through many inhuman methods that included sexual humiliation, and rape by insertion of coke bottles (the metal cap kind), and all manner of other implements including the use of animals that were specifically trained for such rapes.
In the current Iran any rapist will face the death penalty by hanging, this law is applied to anyone who has raped regardless of their position, and standing (no fucking security services staff would even dare to think of it). Therefore rape is not a torture in the current Iran, and anyone talking otherwise are lying through their tiny fucking teeth.
The killings which are constantly referred to are akin to the Venezuelan fiasco coup during which the opposition was firing on the population and pretending it was the police and the army. In fact their shenanigans were caught on videos. The same principle applied to the so called “green movements uprising”.
In the case of Venezuela, after the failed coup, Condi Rice went on the telly and threatened the hell fire and brimstones that will be unleashed on Venezuela if the exposed US assets were to be harmed by Chaves and his government. In the Iranian case the failure of the half baked colour revolution is attributed to the leaders of the “green movement”.
Finally an admission to defeat from the horses mouth so to speak. How can Gucci Brigade and rich brats army link up with any kind of workers movement? These were the minority rich that had the motivation to try and wrest control to enjoy their wealth in a more ostentatious manner. These had very little in common with any workers movement.
I reiterate, Iranians were the people who rose against Shah and his oppression apparatus that had its tentacled Savak reaching every part of the Iranian society, with the most inhumane torture methods terrorising the population of Iran. The criminal scum bag Shah was feted as “His Imperial Majesty”, by his sponsors, and Iranians were left at his mercy. The same criminal protectors of banksters sponsored Pinochet, and any other scum bag such as Manuel Antonio Noriega. However now the same bunch of criminals are denouncing the Iranian “Regime” and are preaching human rights, whilst keeping quiet about the genocide in Palestine, and are intent on helping the mercenaries in Syria, less said about Gitmo Abu Ghraib.
ON matters regards Iran take any Western piece of “news” with a huge pinch of salt, and don’t forget Iranian revolution is a model that horrifies the banksters and their sponsored politicians, and is the stuff of nightmares for these blood sucking leeches. Self determination among the oppressed nations of the south Asia and mid east would only mean loss of the Western assets and disruption of the flow of the petrodollars, and free money.
Anony
Thanks. You know more than I, but what I do know fits what you say.
This is a pro-erdogan article and i do not agree with at least half of what’s written here. Wrong observations. And yes, i know better than you it is wrong, i am turkish.
Ayyas
You are perfectly free to outline what is wrong.
I have a heart but that don’t make me a heart surgeon, I also have a pair of kidneys, despite the higher number of the kidneys I am still no renal surgeon, then there are 206 bones I have, but damned if I am an orthopaedic surgeon, ……. get the drift?
@Craig;
“of those protesting in the streets are off the scale far right nationalists”
How can you name people protesting on the streets far right nationalists? This is People’s movement. The hundreds of thousands that have been on the streets belong to all ethnicities, political parties( yes, even to the governing one), and ages. Wrong observation.
“Kemalism – the worship of Ataturk and a very unpleasant form of military dominated nationalism”
You might be worshipping Winston Churchill, or the states citizens might be worshipping George Washington which I don’t think so, but people who see Ataturk as a leader and founder of secular democratic system will not agree with your definition of worshipping. They only worship to Allah, their god, and they do not choose Ataturk over it. This is the image AKP has been trying to give foreigners for long time about the Ataturk followers.
“to be viewed as the inventor of modern fascism”
How in any way Ataturk was fascist? Because he saved his country from Brits, French and Italians? He did change the Alphabet. He gave women the right to vote and to be elected first in the world. He did not want to be elected as a president after the republic was established, but wanted Inonu instead, but people had elected him by heart.
“Of course there are decent, liberal, environmentalist protestors and the media will have no difficulty”
I assume you are talking about either foreign media or the social media we have been using to keep the world aware. The definition needs to be sharper in my opinion.
“There certainly was no more freedom in Turkey before the AKP came to power. Government for decades had been either by the Kemalist military in dictatorship or occasionally by civilian governments they tolerated and controlled”
I do not agree with the above sentence in the lightest way, and I don’t have any military personnel from my relatives or family. There was much more freedom of speech and expressing yourself before. The military coup that happened in 1980 (and two more times before). Three years later in 1983 Turgut Ozal with his party got elected and since then it’s been 20 years. However, it is a true statement that military had influence on the governing political parties if they would turn the steer from West, developed, modern countries, to East, Arabic, Persian countries. Because, we like Ataturk’s ideas of following the West where there are human rights (at least more than East), people have respect to each other, they are more educated, etc.
“Religion was barely tolerated”
This is not true. Religion has always been tolerated. Ataturk himself was a muslim. He even threatened to go down with his armies to Yemen in 1919 when the news of Yemenis were going to move Prophet’s tomb from its original place. There are also other many examples you can find that he was by the religion not against. Hence, the religion before AKP was not tolerated. Again, this is the image Erdogan wants you to believe. The only non-tolerance and if you accept it as a religious figure is, that black thing that covers the whole body and not the scarf but the turban. Previous governments, and none of them, accepted the idea of people wear clothing like this to come go to governmental buildings, schools, etc. Because we are not Iran. We don’t believe we can protect the women that way by wrapping them up. They wear what they want on the streets, that is freedom, but not in governmental places. On the other hand this is a two sided story; if we are talking about freedom of clothing, then I want to be able to go to parliamentary or to schools by bikini or shorts. Will this be allowed? If not, where is my freedom then? Hypocracy…
“When Erdogan first came to power it was the best thing that had happened to Turkey for decades. The forgotten people of the Anatolian villages, and the lower middle class of the cities, had a voice and a position in the state for the first time.”
Erdogan is the worst thing that happened to Turkey since Ottomans. He lied to people, there are videos on youtube showing how he lies, and you are welcome to watch anytime. As a matter fact, here is one; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07y6R9rC2c
People in Anatolia were not forgotten. How? Many of us have relatives in small cities, villages, or towns. This is the first time I hear such a statement since 70s and it smells like another Erdogan product to West.
“very right wing, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel government into power”
This is not a coup movement. It is not anti-muslim at all. It is not pro-israeli or very right wing either. I am wondering how you get these assumptions. This is people’s movement. All parties’ people, ethnicities, everybody is there.
“But to wish the overthrow of a democratically elected government”
A democratically elected government? There were power outages during the elections, and many vote boxes were found either burned or trashed in cities, and guess what, TVs then showed these incidents. There were hackers located in foreign countries that changed the results in favor of AKP. And yes, there were also people who were persuaded to vote for them by manipulating and using religion as a tool against them.
“and its replacement – by what exactly? – is a very, very foolish reaction.”
Again, people on the streets are not to overthrow anybody, but to express whole world that they are not free, they are oppressed for years, Erdogan does not hear or consider or even allow what they ever might have to say. He is a modern day dictator. Two days ago on TV he said he cannot show any respect to a male and a female that sits next to each other in a bench. What? Yes, you didn’t hear me wrong. And we are not even talking about the romantisicm here, such as hugging and kissing. Probably he would kill them. Hey, this is not our culture. But this is what he wants. He should explain all the corruptions that included his family, others around him. He should explain how it is explainable to jail hundreds of journalists, news people, generals, military personnels, etc. There is much more to write about him but you can help me save some time by doing some researches yourself too. I’d appreciate it.
The west has to stop supporting and backing him up just because they want to change the balance in the middle east. You can still do this. But do it without him, because we are enough of him. Really. This is not Turkish spring and but want our freedom back!
@fedup;
Thanks, I am aware of the drift. It was written in an upset way, however, I still defend what I said in this case. Your example is too general, mine is not an example. If I lived in the country, forced to read the history books, witnessed all political debates on TVs (since it changed from black & white to color) and from radios, I’d believe someone who had the same life time experiences could understand what I’m talking about better. Reading some books or journals or talking to government party people only about Turkey’s political history will not reveal the real and whole facts. Hear many millions of others in Turkey too. Thanks.
Don’t you see any of the shades of the “Cedar Revolution” (Lebanon), there in turkey?
Ayyas
I get very bored indeed by every single Kemalist, like yourself, comparing Turkish attitudes to Ataturk with British attitudes to Churchill. This shows just what a centralist dogma Kemalism is – you all use the same argument – and it is anyway bollocks.
I am not sure when I last saw an image of Churchill. Not for six months, I think. I was just a week in Istanbul recently and saw scores of images of Ataturk. I only know of one Churchill statue in the UK. There are thousands of Ataturk statues in Turkey, some on Soviet iconography scale.
“He did not want to be elected as a president after the republic was established, but wanted Inonu instead, but people had elected him by heart”. You really believe this bullshit. And you are fond of Inonu, the admirer of Adolf Hitler?
Get over this ludicrous cult of personality. Have some thoughts of your own. Admit the fate of the Armenians, Greeks and others who were massacred by Ataturk in modern day Turkey. Do those things and then start to expect a sympathetic hearing from the West.
I visited the graduation display by art students of the university. The female students were having fun together absolutely regardless of dress. A slight majority wore a headscarf, nobody covered their face. Who was wearing a headscarf and who wasn’t plainly had no impact on their social interactions and friendship.
Until Erdogan came to power, the headscarf was banned. I was delighted to see a more liberal regime now. Of course it would be appalling to make the headscarf compulsory – and there are no plans to do that – just as it was appalling to ban it.
I take it you still support the banning of headscarfs in universities, hospitals, libraries etc? And you pretend to be a liberal?
You ultra nationalist social fascists might be able to get away to the mainstream media pretending to be social liberals. But not on this website.
As a Turkish citizen, I can not understand why you imply that Erdogan couldn’t be a dictator because he was selected by receiving 50% of total votes. So was Hitler.
He always says that he does not need to ask anyone’s opinion during the decision making processes because he was selected, so he can do whatever he wants, this authority was given him by the half of the population. Literally he says that in almost every case of opposition. What about the other half? What about the minorities?
There is a journalist and political scientist, Nuray Mert, she supported Erdogan for along time at the beginnig, then when he started to become a dictator, she withdrew her support and stood against his despotism. Then of course she lost her job, they didn’t let her write on the newspaper anymore. She began to write again in the beginning of 2013 for a leftist newspaper, since nobody could dare to employ her, but only leftists. (Please note that leftists are not Kemalists in Turkey)
And I would like to share one of her speech, which took place in a Kurdish organization. So I hope you wouldn’t claim that she is a Kemalist, too. Date of the video is January 2013. This speech is not about those protests, this is about the Kurdish movement but she also mentioned the democratisation process in last decade. So I think it would provide you a different point of view about how the democracy transformation shaped in Turkey during last decade. I believe this would help you to figure out why people in Turkey are stil in fear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4uOvHW9UvU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuray_Mert
Craig,
From what you wrote, you are very rude and manipulative. You did not even comment on a quarter of what I wrote. We know who are the fascists, imperialists, using Erdogan as a puppet, pulling his strings until mission accomplished. You know what, you are not far different than him, because you cannot take criticizing. How much does AKP pay you to do their lobby in your country????
I won’t write on your fascist, one sided web page anymore. Sorry for keeping it busy.
@ Oske :
“Erdogan couldn’t be a dictator because he was selected by receiving 50% of total votes. So was Hitler.”
———-
I’m too lazy to look it up, but is it correct to say that Hitler received 50% of the votes at the last election before the foundation of the Third Reich? I had thought it was (a lot) less than that….?
Best article I’ve ever read on Turkey.
Brilliant job sir.