My Answer to Bostonian

Submitted by Debanjan Banerjee (India), Mar 4, 2010 at 07:55

Dear Mr. Bostonian

See , I believe Mustafa Kamal was a great leader who did his utmost to save Turkish people at a very difficult time.

But you see the world has changed a lot since the time of Mustafa Kemal. In this new millenium , Muslims (Turks included) worldwide need to think ahead and think forward.

I have two problems with the Kemalists :

1. They follow a very narrow form of nationalism. instead of doing good for all the people living in the Turkish homeland they have resorted to a very restrictive form of something called "Turkishness". Kemalists need to think about people like the Kurds , Turkomen , Armenians etc.

2. The Kemalists tend to take a hands-off approach when it comes to issues involving the West-Muslim world. Kemal was as you said a very devout Muslim. So his followers should not forget Islamic issues like Gaza , Iran etc when interacting with the West. This is something where the AKP has got an edge over the secular Kemalists.

3. The Kemalists should understand a basic fact that Europe will never admit them. So they should try to regain their lost position that they had previously i.e. the leader of the Muslim world.

4. Kemalists tend to focus moe on trivial issues like Head scraves for women. I do not understand why they do it this way. They should focus more on equal education for both the men and women.

5. Toeing Western and Israeli line on important issues such as Gaza and Iran is never going to be helful in the long term. Kemalists need to understand that. This makes the Kemalists as accomplishes in the unjsut western policies in the eyes of common Turkish Muslims as well as Muslims worldwide.

Hoping to hear more from you on all the above mentioned points.

Debanjan

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