from thirteen million sick and poor to seventy million of today

Submitted by yasemin (Turkey), Mar 7, 2010 at 22:00

The only untouchables are AKP and their backups. They are taking all the advantage of some laws, which were established not ever thinking that one day some government could use them to the destruction of democracy and republic. Everyone else apart of AKP and their friends are under threath. But the end of the road for them has approached. Ofcourse AKP and their backups still have, who knows which scenarios in their minds to play the victimised, offended poors, as they always do even after 8 years of governance. They are always the victim!

When Turkish Republic was established, it was after a great war towards the occupation forces of the WW1 and also against the sheriat followers inside.

In 1923, after the war, as a new republic, Turkey was only 13 million people, men died in the war. The thirteen million that were left behind had no education, mostly bad health because of the hunger during the wars, no money and lots of debt that belonged to the previous empirement. With Ataturk and his friends' leadership our grandfathers and mothers worked hard, payed all our debts, then built factories and opened schools all over the country, since Arabic letters were not easy to write Turkish Ataturk changed to Latin alphabet and suddenly it was easy to learn read and write. Ataturk made the laws so that women had equal rights with men and had the right to vote before most western women.

Do you think it was easy to do these against some people who still wanted to have empires rather than being a republic. Those days the problem Turkiye dealing was not that we had not more than one party, instead the struggle was to be able to maintain that party and the parliament. Because the radicals were against being republic and wanted a padishah-king. But those days all empirements in the world had ceased. A new era had already started.

Ataturk was the biggest reformist, opening all the doors to a modern way of living. And this revolution is done with the agreement of Turkish people- exept the radicals -, and is the most smooth and bloodless revolution also when compared to all other revolutions in history.

And besides, as I mentioned before, the best Mouslims are in Turkiye since we are Mouslims with our own individual free will. We can see the essence of our religion. Not deceived by the so-called religious leaders - which is forbidden in İslam, religion is between self and Allah, it is forbidden to obey any human being but Allah. If anyone obeys and bends before another human being he is not obeying Allah. all people are equally human. If people are not good to other people,( Mouslim or not), his prayers are not heard by Allah. This is the essence of Islam. And best Mouslims are in Turkiye. Each and evryone has the right to change his/her religion but we do not. Without any force and obligation we are Mouslims individually. One by one. That is Islam. No sheriat laws of the 5th century. Allah says " I gave you brains, so use them to be a real human and real mouslim". With blind faith no one can be a real Mouslim.

Every person has all the right to live his/her religion freely whatever it is, or live as an atheist. We are protected by laws. And forcing religion to each other. That is completely forbidden.

And,

Darkness can never succeed to replace enlightment.

We, majority in Turkiye believe so.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".