Tuesday, 04.01.08
A Turkish Coup?
SEZAYI ERKEN/AFP/Getty Images
The last time the Turkish military faced off against Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's popular AKP prime minister, it was to prevent Erdogan's ally Abdullah Gul from being made president of the republic. Gul's grave crime, in the eyes of the military, was being married to a woman who wore a headscarf. Erdogan didn't blink. He called an early election and won in a landslide. This must have been pretty galling. One can easily imagine mustachioed villains at the Turkish General Staff balling their hands into fists and yelling that they would have their revenge. Thanks to Turkey's ever-accommodating Constitutional Court, now they have their chance.
If the AKP is banned, it will become the 25th Turkish political party to meet that fate. And it won't be the last. There is also an effort to ban the Democratic Society Party, which stands accused of being too solicitous of Turkey's Kurdish minority. Who knows which party will be banned next? Actually, we already know the answer -- it will be yet another socially conservative party that represents the interests of Anatolia's small-scale entrepreneurs and the urban lower-middle-class, and that dares to question the military's right to rule as a shadow government.
Of course, this all assumes that Turks will take yet another coup -- a thinly-veiled (so to speak) "judicial coup," in this case -- lying down. It's by no means obvious that they will. Outbreaks of peaceful protest have sparked dramatic political change across the world in recent years, from Ukraine to Pakistan. Perhaps Turkey will have its own color-coded revolution to defend its legitimately elected government. Yet the Turkish military is so zealous, so convinced of its own righteousness, and so paranoid that there is a real danger peaceful protest will be met with armed violence. This is the secular democracy the Turkish military claims to uphold. In truth, the Turkish military isn't defending lofty principles so much as its bloated budgets and outsized power. Perhaps the generals can be bribed with villas and chocolates. Or perhaps the European Union can politely explain to the generals that if they continue undermine Turkish democracy, they will no longer be permitted to frolic in the secular xanadus they love so dearly.
Mere clothThe International Herald Tribune editorializes that Turkey's current crisis is "much ado about head scarves." |
Secularism mattersContra the IHT, Anne Applebaum explains why head scarves matter. |
Law of the landSeyla Benhabib wondered whether Turkey's headscarf legislation was "one step backwards or two steps forward." |
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Do you know what the signs of all the protestors in the photo for this piece say?
AKP'YI ISTEMIYORUZ
in english that means
WE DON'T WANT THE AKP
Get it? That's what the people are saying.
"Of course, this all assumes that Turks will take yet another coup -- a thinly-veiled (so to speak) "judicial coup," in this case -- lying down."
Look to the photo for your answer. They're asking for a coup STANDING UP.
the author's name is reihan salam - a most likely wetern educated, proud-of-muslim, arrogant self.. who even does not dare to understand what do these people chant in this picture - "WE DON'T WANT AKP".. Like 53% of the population in the last election. Like many among the 47% who voted for AKP in the last election feel now.. We don't want Turkey to become Iran or Malesia, or a so-called "Moderate Islamic Republic". WE DON"T WANT IT - just 20% wants it! WHY THE HELL YOU DON'T HEAR IT - is it because that you are an Arab or Pakistani that you feel insulted that the Turks don't care Islam as you do? Get a life.. Don't do political analysis.
And I voted for AKP in the last election. Mistake..
People imagine things in their heads about Turkey and then assume that it is the reality. Some of them even dare make an "opinion" piece and manage to get it published in the Western Media.
I would have dignified this article with a much better response had the author BOTHERED to do research and LEARNED about what real people in Turkey are thinking. Last time I checked, journalists did research as opposed to conjuring up scenarios in their heads.
Well, guess I was wrong. The author seems to have a preconceived notion of Turks as being against Islam. But perhaps it is the very Muslim hatred she sees in the West as coming from within Turkey. Confusion, confusion, confusion... :))))
Perhaps the author will kindly let me enlighten her as to the illegal AKP dealings when awarding contracts to businesses OR the fact that you cannot get promoted within AKP unless you have a wife that covers. The author should not need to be reminded of the fact that every country that tried to practice "Moderate Islam" has fallen prey to the hands of Fundamentalists, and that Turkey is the only Muslim country that has managed to practice Islam in the peaceful and moderate fashion due to the very fact that secularist principles have been guarded and protected...
Of course, the author seems to be too ignorant to make such connections because she seems to be so caught up in her defense of a first lady wearing the veil. Wake up to the real world, honey, that's NOT the issue here.
Perhaps the author will one day enlighten herself as to the complexity of this problem and learn that the free thinking people of the Turkish Republic will not allow their religion to be hijacked by political parties such as AKP who use and abuse it for political purposes.
And LET this enlightenment extend to her perception of the Democratic Social Party. Perhaps she can one day see the true colors of PKK terrorism that kills innocent people as opposed to being too "solicitous" for the Kurdish minority.
The above comments give you and idead of the rabidness of the so-called "secularists," who are in fact opposed to any form of government that would take the reins of power out of the hands of the urban elites of Ankara and Istanbul. The people in the photo were chanting slogans calling for the military to "rise to its duty," despite the fact that it was military dictator Kenan Evren who, 27 years ago, instigated the proliferation of koranic schools throughout the country in order to ensure the proper religious inoculation of Turkish children against the communist virus.
The spread of koranic schools went unchecked by subsequent "secular" governments and the military even gave its covert backing to the fundamentalist terror of the Turkish Hezbollah, yet the righteous "secularists" uttered nary a peep.
The Turkish representative of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Necmeddin Erbakan, came to power as a coalition partner (of Mrs. Ciller, known to her CIA handlers as "the Rose of Istanbul"), yet our "secularists" were still silent as lambs. The military ultimately took care of him.
The so-called "pro-republic" marches against the AKP were organized by a kemalist association headed by the former head of the gendarmerie General Sener Eruygur, currently under preliminary investigation for his authorship of two abortive coups against the AKP. At the final and largest march in Izmir, the head of one of the participating kemalist associations was prevented from speaking because she was a vocal opponent of a military coup.
Turkey's unpecedented progress in the last 5 years shows that the vast majority of Turks knew what they were doing when they voted for the AKP and that the elites who sputter their rage and calumnies against it are totally clueless pawns of cold-war leftover putschists.
Before AKP came to power in the first elections I was visiting Istanbul. I warned my secular friends, not to vote for AKP. Knowing full well, their ultimate goal was an end to secularism in government and public life. Secular Turks voted for AKP out desperation for change, young and old alike. The young out of naivety the older out of desperation. All one has to do, is study Erdogan and Gul's background to see their commitment, to their vision of Turkey. They are methodical in their intent to remove all obstacles in their way to achieve their ultimate goal. Sharia law. In the words of Erdogan " There is no moderate Islam"..... "Secularism is not a religion". Europeans while fretting about the Muslims amongst them, are lecturing Turkey, about Costitutional courts that may outlaw the AKP party and banish its members from politics. Americans and Europeans are truly ignorant about Turkey as a "Nation" and it's people. I love the Turkey I know, not the one Erdogan and Gul has in mind.
I recommend Mr. Salam to learn his facts before writing an article about Turkey. There are so many errors in his article that I will attempt to correct only the first one:
Turks did not object Mr Gul because his wife happened to have a headscarf. Mr and Mrs. Gul were married when he was 30 and she was 15; she had to leave school to marry him, and she covered her head after she got married. Needless to say, it was an arranged marriage.
Turks, millions of them demonstrated in cities, were not against Mrs Gul's headscarf, but Mr Gul's mentality.
Posted by Sermin Noker | April 1, 2008 4:30 PM