deconstructing

Submitted by sims01 (United States), May 27, 2008 at 19:49

Well, where to start. It looks like every sentence is an accusation for everything Turkish, and most of them are wrong and out of context.

>Gazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha as a pure fascist state, based on his own personal dictatorship

Pure fascist states don't want opposition parties. Ataturk tried to have fully democratic system twice and both times it failed since the violence got out of control. Ataturk's righthand man and later president Inonu was a party leader after we switched to the multi party system. Show me one dictatorial head of state who could possibly do that.

Greeks in Smyrna and Pontus were not exterminated (except some who died in the fire). 1.5 million Greeks left Anatolia in accordance with Lausanne treaty, and received half a million Turks from Greece . Again, I want to point out the other treaties signed between Greece and Turkey at 1930, which would have been impossible if we exterminated millions of Greeks as you claim.

So he purified the language, what is wrong with that again? Otherwise we would still be speaking half-Ababic and writing in Arabic script. The theories that were advanced at those times, (they are not really thought at schools, or "dominate Turkish minds" as you claim, I should now as I am a product of Turkish educational system) were an effort to forge a nation out of the ruins of an empire in a very short time. if you can come down from your ivory tower consider how much time and blood and turmoil did that take for say, Italy or Japan or France to do the same, ours was a walk in the park.

There were more than a dozen different ethnic groups in Turkey at the time, not sharing a basic sense of identity. Most of them were kicked out of Balkans during the wars (again , you won't find them complaining about that today, I wish others would get a clue). All but possibly some of the Kurdish population are totally integrated into a single nation today. And they fared incomparably better in Turkey than they did in Iraq or Syria.

Coups were bad. But in all cases civilian control was restored after a couple of years. I am not defending them at all, but I need to ask again : which fascist government willfully returns to a multi part system? Please read the 1961 constitution if you can find it (and if not why are you arguing about these anyway) and tell me if it is the work of a fascist state.

Most, if not all of the political murders in Turkey were the handiwork of either militant Islamist (in the case of Ugur Mumcu for example), leftists (in the 70s) or extreme nationalists.

I can also see that you don't really understand the difference between the people who you call Kemalists and Turanists. Ataturk was against the idea of territorial expansion (again, a fascist trait, rejected by him). The Turanists were mostly followers of Enver (one of three Pashas). During the coups, especially during the 1980 coup the army (Kemalists) rounded up both the leftists and Turanists (extreme nationalists). If you want further proof, they have different political parties today , CHP is what you'd call "kemalist" and BBP and to some degree MHP is what you'd call "turanist".

Best Regards,
Barbarian Turk.

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