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Originally posted by Joseph
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If those country's also condone a ongoing policy of genocide then my conclusion goes for them too lets not confuse the issue ,I am an Armenian therefore my concerns goes towards my own."All truth passes through three stages:
First, it is ridiculed;
Second, it is violently opposed; and
Third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) -
lol - I finally read that Suniforum thread...and all along I thought they (secret rulers of Turkey) were skull and bones and/or Opus Dei...
Gavur - I hear you - but it is past this now - we have to accept the mistakes of the past - nothign can be changed - we can only move forward with what is. I believe the Sevres Treaty didn't go far enough. The Turks had clearly through their actions - and not just of CUP era - had forfitted all right to rule over Anatolia and its peoples (including even themselves) IMO. They deserved severe punishment - including loss of soverignty. Of course their massive ethnic cleansing (and not just of Armenians) was largely successful - so options were difficult. Perhaps the Greeks had the right idea all along eh? (and so nearly all parties but the Turks, Russians and Italians thought at the time...up to a point).Comment
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Interesting Analysis regarding Kemalism
May 07, 2007
TIME TO BURY ATATURK
Western politicians and media unvarying hail Turkey as a democratic and social role model for other Muslim nations. `Why can’t the Muslim World be more likely Turkey,’ goes the refrain in Washington.
The recent dramatic political events in Turkey should instruct us that behind its veneer of parliamentary democracy lie unelected, semi-totalitarian power structures that have directed this nation’s affairs since the 1920’s.
Exhibit A: attempts by Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (known as AK) to elect its able Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, as president. Under the current unrepresentative system, parliament, rather than voters, elects the powerful president.
Gul failed to win election due to a boycott of parliament by opposition parties and threats from the military. He withdrew his candidacy and called for the direct election of Turkey’s president. What Turks call their `deep government’ had once again used its iron fist.
AK, which runs Turkey’s most popular and successful government in living memory, is mildly Islamist. It advocates Islamic principles of social justice, better education, some wealth distribution, and fighting corruption. AK does not advocate imposition of Sharia law or major social restrictions, as in neighboring Iran.
In fact, the moderate, centrist AK is quite close in outlook to Europe’s Christian Democratic parties.
AK has enacted more beneficial reforms in human rights, education, public finance, health,and relations with old foe Greece than all of Turkey’s previous governments since 1945.
Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has achieved great strides in aligning Turkey with the European Union’s laws and conventions. Today, the EU is the world’s leader in human rights and advancement of democracy.
Turkey’s westernized elite mobilized to prevent Abdullah Gul from replacing the outgoing president, Ahmet Necdet, a hardline secularist installed by Turkey’s powerful military. Turkey’s ironically-named Constitutional Court, created by the armed forces after its last coup, denied Gul’s legitimate election. In response, AK called national elections for 22 July.
Political power in Turkey has long been contested between the elected parliament and the generals of the 515,000-man armed forces, NATO’s second largest. Turkey’s military, too-powerful security forces, courts, government bureaucracy, universities, and industrial oligarchy are widely known as the `deep government.’ This minority has held power since the 1920’s.
Turkey’s military and security organs closely control the nation’s religious life and clergy, who are paid by the government. All sermons are written by government officials and distributed to mosques for Friday services. Islam, in Turkey, is on a tight leash. In fact, Turkey’s state control of religion was likely directly inspired by Stalin’s takeover and management of the Russian Orthodox Church.
The `deep government’ has battled all attempts to alter the status quo or abandon Turkey’s state religion, the bizarre cult of 1930’s dictator Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who continues as an idol of veneration by Turkey’s hard right and westernized elite.
Turkey’s `deep government’ has not hesitated to use gangsters and neo-fascist nationalist groups against opponents or arrest political opponents. In Turkey’s chronically unstable political equation, the `deep government’ holds about 60% of real power and the elected parliament roughly 40%.
The election of Abdullah Gul to the presidency could have seriously altered this status quo. As president, he would have been able to appoint the military’s senior officers and bringing the armed forces, a state within the state, under control of the civilian government for the first time in Turkey’s modern history.
In recent weeks, Turkey’s glowering generals openly threatened to overthrow the AK-led government of Prime Minister Erdogan. Turkey’s military juntas have ousted four governments since the 1950’s, including the last Islamist-light government in 1997. While mayor of Istanbul, the highly popular Erdogan was actually jailed for reading a classic poem that the military deemed too Islamist.
Until recently, Turkey’s military junta received unlimited American backing. Turkey closely followed Washington’s lead and acted as its regional gendarme. Close political, military, intelligence, and commercial relations were established with Israel which, in return, opened all doors in Washington for Turkey and held America’s powerful Greek and Armenian lobbies at bay. But after recent brazen coup threats by Turkey’s brass, the US and the EU rightly warned them to stay out of politics.
Turkey’s `secularists,’ who have been staging large anti-AK demonstrations, fear AK will curtail the privileges they enjoy. The generals would cease being Turkey’s shadow government and benefiting from arms purchases. Industrialists could lose their monopolies and state contracts, government bureaucrats in Ankara their perks.
Many of Turkey’s westernized urban dwellers fear Islamists, even AK’s moderate ones, might impose Iranian-style Sharia law, including dress codes and bans on alcohol. AK supporters, many of whom have emigrated from rural to urban areas in recent decades, support a return to Turkey’s more Islamic culture, but hardly to an Islamic theocracy, as claim their secular enemies.
This is the traditional open-minded, easy-going Islamic culture that Attatuk ripped out by its roots in the 1930’s in his headlong effort to transform Turkey from a Muslim into a western European nation. Remarkably, almost eighty years later, the ghost of this deified dictator, who was deeply influenced by such contemporaries as Mussolini and Stalin, continues to hold Turkey in thrall. Ataturk’s ruthless anti-Islamic revolution also left Turkey with a permanent case of national schizophrenia, unsure to this day whether it is a western or Asian nation.
Americans and Europeans who cite Turkey as a model of Islamic good government have little understanding of what really transpires behind its façade of parliamentary democracy. Turkey cannot become a real democracy or modern nation until the power of its self-serving generals and industrial oligarchs is replaced by a truly independent government, and Turks are allowed to worship as they please.
Those nations who claim to be friends of Turkey, like the US and the EU, should keep telling Turkey’s generals to get out of politics and return to their barracks for good. It’s time to shine bright lights into Turkey’s `deep government’ and end its sinister, reactionary influence.
copyright Eric S. Margolis 2007General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Originally posted by Joseph View Post
Where was that garbage published? And who wrote it? Some neocon bastard who still thinks he can still get away with spinning a web of lies to confuse the cabbage-brained liberals? Are there any cabbage-brains here who would characterise the blood-soaked genocidal Ottoman Empire as a "traditional open-minded, easy-going Islamic culture"?Plenipotentiary meow!Comment
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Originally posted by bell-the-cat View Post
He's probably a neo-con and some of what he says is certainly garbage, (especially as it relates to history). At the same time, his analysis of the of Turkish politics, Kemalism vs. AKP is very interesting and I believe accurate.General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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An Islamic demcracy wil be, by definition, a monsterous intollerant tyrany. But I suppose their sort of "democracy" is no worse than the neocons one - their sermons about Iraq could be paraphrased as "we will make you democratic, even if it kills you".Plenipotentiary meow!Comment
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Socialist Worker 2050, 12 May 2007 (www.socialistworker.co.uk)
International
Reality behind Turkey’s ‘defence of secularism’
What is behind the recent threats by the Turkish army against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)?
At the end of April, parliament was due to elect a new president.
The prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that he would stand, which was a piece of cake, given that his party has a majority in parliament. The army first started to grumble then.
Erdogan stepped back and put forward foreign minister Abdullah Gül.
The army screamed that it would not have a man whose wife wears an Islamic headscarf as president and that it would do what was necessary to defend the secular republic.
In fact, there is no threat to secularism at all. Neither from the population at large or from the government.
The AKP has been in power for four and a half years with a comfortable parliamentary majority, and has not taken a single step in an Islamic direction in that time.
It has not even done anything about women not being allowed into universities wearing a headscarf – the headscarf is banned in all public buildings.
However, for the first time in 80 years, people who are religious feel comfortable and not under pressure from the state.
The military’s ultimatum claims to defend the “secular
republic” in an attempt to mobilise the middle class which fears that its Westernised lifestyle is under threat.
In fact what the army is trying to overthrow is a government which is very open to reforms on the Kurdish issue, human rights and, perhaps most significantly, reducing the military’s role in the country’s political life.
“Secular” is a word widely used to describe Turkey. What does it mean in the context of its political system?
Turkey is secular in the sense that the state and religion are separate.
Given that 99 percent of the population is Muslim, Turkey’s secularism and parliamentary democracy is held up by the West as an example to the rest of the Muslim world. This is hypocritical claptrap.
Secularism is fine as far as it goes, and of course we are in favour of it. But the image of a democratic and harmonious Turkey hides all sorts of tensions.
As soon as a party from an Islamic tradition is elected, the military threaten a coup.
This happened in 1997, when the military issued an ultimatum against a coalition government led by the Islamic party and forced it to resign, and it has happened again now.
During the recent “secular demonstrations” the crowds chanted “we are not Armenians”. What are the origins of hostility to the Armenian minority?
The material basis for it is that the genocide of Armenians in 1915 led to huge amounts of capital and land owned by the Armenian minority being grabbed by Turks.
There is a serious (though unvoiced) fear of demands for reparations if the genocide is recognised.
Because modern Turkey emerged from the disintegration and collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, it has never known what to do with its Armenian, Greek and Jewish minorities.
They are always seen by the state as potential “enemies within”.
So the state veers between attempting to assimilate them and forcing them to leave.
What is the status of Turkey’s oppressed Kurdish population, and why are there worries over control of the oil rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk?
The Turkish state fears the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, for the obvious reason that it sets an example for the Kurds in Turkey.
The US does not allow the Turkish army to invade Iraqi Kurdistan, given that the Kurds are the main allies of the US in Iraq.
There is a Turkic minority (the Turkmens) in and around Kirkuk, and Turkey tries to use their plight as an excuse to meddle in Iraq.
But it cannot do anything as long as the US refuses to give it the green light.
If the AKP have implemented neoliberal programmes, why is there such hostility from the middle classes and the wealthy?
Big business has been solidly behind the government, and it is furious about the interruption of what was a reasonably stable political atmosphere.
When Gül’s name was put forward, the employers’ organisation immediately supported him.
They clearly did not want any military intervention.
When the constitutional court annulled Gül’s election, they immediately called for an early general election, hoping that this would restore stability.
It could, except that the AKP will win a new election and the military will get restless again.
What attitudes have the left taken towards the military and the AKP?
They have been utterly terrible.
The most common slogan is “neither Islamic fundamentalism nor a military coup”, failing to take sides and to defend the elected government against the unelected military.
The left has also failed to stand up for the right to wear the Islamic headscarf, often standing shoulder to shoulder with forces of the state against ordinary people.General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Turkish army takes its place in race
The warnings were veiled but unmistakable. With rhetoric that grew more intense each day, Turkey's senior generals accused the government of pursuing a fundamentalist Muslim agenda. Tanks rolled through the streets in a show of force. Markets tumbled. Political rallies took a violent turn.
That was 10 years ago, when the first elected government in Turkey to embrace Islamist principles was driven from power by the army. That event still colors the world's image of this vibrant but struggling secular democracy, whose political model is unique in the Muslim world.
With the 1997 military intervention still fresh in memories here, many in Turkey are asking whether the military has once again stage-managed something akin to a coup.
There is little question that the army was a driving force behind last week's dramatic decision by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose ruling party has its roots in political Islam, to set his government on a course for early dissolution, moving up the general elections to select a new parliament by nearly four months.
On Sunday, the party's presidential candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, abandoned his bid until after those elections have taken place in July. The president is elected by parliament in Turkey.
But there are key differences between the tumultuous events of a decade ago and the present political drama. Reforms put in place over the last several years as Turkey has campaigned to join the European Union have diminished the army's authority in affairs of state, though by no means ended it.
"We are in a kind of no man's land, where the military is not as powerful as it was in mounting open coups, but has not yet been transformed into a position where it accepts political decisions that grow out of the democratic system," said Bulent Aliriza, a former diplomat who directs the Turkey Project at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
'Defenders of secularism'
Erdogan's decision to call early elections came after massive anti-government demonstrations and a court decision that blocked the election of his party's candidate for president. Many analysts believe, however, that the opposition parties and their followers were emboldened, even guided, by statements from the military's powerful general staff suggesting that the army would step in if an Islamist became president.
"It must be remembered that the Turkish armed forces are … the absolute defenders of secularism," the army chieftains said in a sharply worded statement issued late April 27, hours after the first of what were to have been four rounds of voting for president. "When necessary, they will display their attitudes and actions very clearly — no one should doubt that."
When that statement was posted on the main military website, some commentators dubbed it an "Internet coup."
Erdogan's government angrily protested it as an effort to pressure the constitutional court to halt the presidential election. At anti-government protests, however, demonstrators praised the military's warnings as a needed defense of the secular way of life.
"The army will be the ones to make sure we don't have to wear Islamic head scarves," said protester Aysegul Kansak, who marched with nearly three-quarters of a million people in Istanbul on April 29.
Ultimately, though, military pressure could backfire. Though bowing for the moment to the wishes of the army and judicial establishment, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party could well emerge even stronger, many analysts say. Polls suggest that the party could once again capture a parliamentary majority in the July 22 vote.
The party, also known by its Turkish initials AKP, will spend the coming weeks trying to push through constitutional changes that could strengthen its hand, including lowering the minimum age of candidates from 30 to 25 to reflect the party's burgeoning support among the young.
The ruling party is also expected to reap benefits at the ballot box from an economic boom over the last five years, which has enriched and empowered a large swath of religiously conservative voters. The AKP's constituency, once largely rural and poor, is now increasingly urban and middle-class.
Army's central role
One of the striking aspects of the current political turmoil is the disconnect between how military muscle-flexing is regarded by the outside world and by a domestic Turkish audience.
Most Western governments view military coups, or threats of one, as the hallmark of a country whose democratic institutions are shaky at best. But here in Turkey, the notion of the army stepping in to oust a government, as it has done four times in the last 50 years, is broadly viewed as an integral part of the democratic system of checks and balances rather than a contradiction to it.
That is in part because the 1-million-member Turkish military, the second-largest standing army in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after that of the United States, occupies a central role in the national psyche. The republic's founding father, Kemal Ataturk, was a war hero who used the army as an instrument of nation-building, forging a modern state from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
From childhood on, Turks are taught to regard the armed forces as the principal defenders of the secular system devised by Ataturk, who changed the Turkish alphabet to a Roman one, gave women the right to vote and restricted Muslim dress in public settings. Public opinion polls consistently rank the military as among the most trusted national institutions.
"There's this nearly universal belief, a belief that runs very deep, that if the military isn't involved, isn't always vigilant, that Turkey will fall under Islamic rule," said Lale Sariibrahimoglu, an analyst and journalist based in Ankara, the capital. "It's a big part of the education and upbringing here."
In addition, many Turks regard the current level of army involvement in politics as mild compared with armed coups of 1960, when three senior ministers were executed, and 1980, when some politicians were jailed.
Though a big win for the ruling party might rein in the military, some analysts warn that it could also set the stage for an even more serious confrontation down the road. That risk increases, they say, if the ruling party succeeds in pushing through constitutional reforms mandating that the president be elected by a popular vote rather than by the parliament. Lawmakers on Monday approved the first step in that process.
The presidency is a symbolically charged post in the eyes of the military, which is why the looming expiration of President Ahmet Necdet Sezer's seven-year term on May 16 proved to be a tripwire for confrontation.
Turkey's past presidents, always avowed secularists, are considered direct heirs to Ataturk. And the president is at least nominally the commander in chief of the military, has veto power and makes crucial judicial and other appointments.
"As far as the military's role goes, this looks more like a crisis deferred than a crisis resolved," analyst Aliriza said.
How the military conducts itself during the electoral campaign and afterward could prove a make-or-break factor in Turkey's push for membership in the European Union.
Disillusioned
The Bush administration has strongly supported Turkey's bid in the belief that it would bolster the country's role as a bridge between the West and the Muslim world. But Turks have become increasingly disillusioned by what they see as arrogant and unrealistic European demands.
Some observers see elements of a self-fulfilling prophecy: that Turkey's already-stumbling campaign for EU membership would be weakened by greater military intervention in politics, but the military may seek to reassert itself in coming months because of the belief that Turkey is already out of the running for EU admission.
Turks paid close attention when Nicolas Sarkozy, who was elected Sunday as France's next president, said flatly last year that Turkey should not be given a place in the bloc.
Some analysts said they thought the military would reconcile itself to a new government led by the current ruling party only if it involved significant power-sharing.
"So much will depend on how events unfold, on whether the election brings about some form of coalition government," said Umit Cizre, a political science professor at Bilkent University in Ankara. "But if I had to make a prediction, this government will stick to its guns — and the army will do the same."
Kaynak: Los Angeles Times
Tarih: 07.05.2007General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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Martyrdom in Turkey
The Seed of the Church
By
Chuck Colson
Christian Post Guest Columnist
Wed, May. 09 2007 06:07 PM ET
Just a few weeks ago, Christians gathered in the Holy Land> to remember the Armenian victims of genocide. Between 1915 and 1919, 1.5 million Armenians living in Turkey were slaughtered. Shockingly, few today have even heard about the brutal persecution that nearly annihilated this ancient people—who, by the way, chose Christianity as their national religion in 301 A.D.
Ironically, one day after last month’s commemoration, Islamic extremists slit the throats of three Christians working at a Bible publishing house in Turkey—the very country where Armenian Christians were nearly exterminated. The world’s silence on this latest attack on Christians is deafening. As writer Daniel Pulliam wondered aloud at Getreligion.org, “What would the news coverage look like if three Muslims were found with their throats slit in an Islamic publishing house . . . ?” One can only imagine.
Necati Aydin was one of the three martyrs. Born into an Islamic family, he converted to Christianity in 1994. Necati openly and actively proclaimed his faith, even distributing Bibles on the street. In 2000 he spent four weeks in jail for doing so, even though such distribution is legal in Turkey. Because they could find no grounds for keeping him, authorities released Necati. Soon after, he relocated to Malatya, where he was a pastor of a local Protestant church. He also worked at the Zirve Publishing House, a Christian publishing house that has made some 10,000 Bibles available to interested Turks.
At the funeral in Izmir, Turkey, applause erupted when Necati’s coffin was carried into the church yard. Spontaneously, more than five hundred brave mourners broke out in a chorus based on Lamentations, singing “The compassion of the Lord never fails; His mercy never ceases.” And Necati’s wife spoke about the meaning of her husband’s death, saying simply, “He died for Jesus, because he loved Jesus.”
Sadly, this brutal attack against Christians in Turkey is not an isolated incident. In 2006, a Catholic priest was shot in Trabzon while praying. And a few months ago, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was brutally murdered. Dink had served time in prison for “insulting Turkishness” for an article he wrote about the Armenian genocide. Simply speaking the truth about the genocide had left Dink with many enemies.
You see, in Turkey, the potent mix of radical nationalism and religious extremism can breed this type of violence against the perceived threat posed by the Christian West. Dr. Christine Schirrmacher, an Islamic studies scholar in Germany, puts it this way: For these extremists “the mere existence of Christians on Turkish soil [is] an immediate assault which threatens to undermine the unity and character of the Turkish nation.”
You may be wondering what you can do. First, pray for God’s protection of Christians in Turkey and for the Turkish government to reign in the violence against Christians. Next, you can give of your resources. The seminary where Necati studied has established a fund for the families of the victims and for the churches in Turkey. Visit our website, www.breakpoint.org, for more information. Perhaps through our prayers and gifts, as the early apologist Tertullian once wrote, the death of these martyrs will indeed be the seed of the Church in Turkey.General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”Comment
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[QUOTE=Joseph;24070]
Big business has been solidly behind the government, and it is furious about the interruption of what was a reasonably stable political atmosphere.
The most common slogan is “neither Islamic fundamentalism nor a military coup”, failing to take sides and to defend the elected government against the unelected military.
QUOTE]
It is very good article but i have two objections. Big business is not behind the government. For example, TUSIAD (Turkey Industry-owners and Businessmen Society, which is the biggest) is still keeping silence against army memorandum and in 1997 it openly supported the coup.
The most common slogan is not “neither Islamic fundamentalism nor a military coup”. Speakers in meetings made the crowds shout "Army is Turkish nation's honour" and "Army to duty". There were several retired generals in the organization comitee of these meetings.Comment
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