The Turkish gate-keepers of "truth"

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jun 10, 2010 at 17:21

Lazman wrote :

>You conveniently omit that Turkey was the first Muslim country to officially recognize state of Israel in 1949<

And Iran was the second , wasn't it ? Anyway, don't you find it remarkable that official or semi-official accounts of the Turkish-Israeli relations all start with this fact conveniently forgetting, ignoring or suppressing an earlier and much more fundamental fact of the denial on the part of the Turks of the right of Jews to have their own state ? Now tell me what is more inconvenient – denying the right for a people who had been brought to the verge of extermination to have a state that would protect them or officially , i.e. opportunistically , recognizing it some two years later ?

> and if you study the geopolitics of the region you will learn that it was the fear of communism that Turkey had at the time, 1947, <

Can you imagine that the US and many other countries had the same – and even more valid - fear of communism in 1947 and yet voted "Yes" on UN General Assembly Resolution 181 ? But hey , your argument would have been a perfect pretext for the US to deny the Jews the right to statehood , wouldn't it ? And yet somehow America and many other non-communist countries found this pretext despicable while Turkey on the contrary found it decorous enough and made full use of it !

> including its desire to see anti-communist West (specifically the British) in the region instead of USSR, establish a base in this newly formed state.<

Now Turkey whose very existence is owed to Soviet Russia and communism ( the Kemal-Lenin axis ) is the last country to preach anti-communism here or anywhere else . For the laudatory speeches Ghazi Kemal held with Frunze and Aralov on Lenin , the Soviet power and communism Kemal should have been hanged by his own followers . But no ! Any critical remark on him is criminalized while treachery and perfidy widely practised by him are consistently imitated by his disciples !

Turks can suppress much truth at home but will never manage to suppress and distort it all abroad , despite their efforts to persecute and suppress free speech even abroad threatening to arrest and jail anyone who says the bitter truth about Kemal on the Internet . They do it quite officially and you pretend there is such a freedom of speech in Turkey ! Turkey is a police state and freedom of speech is no for Turks .

Coming back to your agrument , many of those communists you make us believe Turkey hated so much have been until honorary citizens of the Turkish Republic and if you have ever happened to be at Taxim Square in Istanbul and looked closely at who stands near Ghazi Kemal in the Group Sculpture there , you will have recognized a staunch communist and the founder of the Soviet Military Intelligence S.I. Aralov next to Kemal . An interesting example of your Turkey's "anti-communism" , isn't it ? It looks like the well-known fable of the sultan's new clothes to my mind.

One more thing , in 1947 Britain was really trying to establish its bases near Turkey , although not longer in Israel where the Jews hated and forced them out fighting them for their pro-Arab policy , but in Greece where they had unleashed a bloody civil war which was so welcome to Turkey , wasn't it ?

>Of course there would have been some worry about alienating the Arab states but read and you will learn that during WW1, Arab leaders, some with very high positions in Ottoman government, started negotiating with the British for the independence of today's Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine, in exchange for Arab uprising against the Ottomans Turks.<

I know the story of Lawrence of Arabia and the disgust of Arabs for the Turk .

> Also, keep in mind, Turkey not only remained neutral during the 1948 Arab Israeli War but stopped any Turkish volunteers from joining Arab forces.<

Turkish jihadists killed or captured by the Jews in 1948 might have greatly alientaed the American public opinion from poor Turkey pressed hard by its former Soviet saviour . And so instead of an American atomic bomb guarding Turkey from rightful Russian claims of treason and collaboration with the Nazis and of the Armenian genocide , America might have changed its mind on perfidious Turkey and then Kemal's promise to make Turkey Soviet would have belatedly and whimsically been implemented .

>Unlike PM Erdogan who may consider Arabs "brothers", most secular Turks then and today still consider them as "backstabbers."

Interesting how Turkish traitors accuse everybody of treason except themselves .

> Further, if you are implying that there was some animosity between the Jewish people and secular Turks ("elites" as the Islamists refer - when kind) during that time, you are absolutely wrong. Let me give you an example from that period. In 1940s many Jewish scientists and doctors had immigrated from Nazi Germany to Turkey and were faculty members at the few universities in Istanbul. Not only did they contribute tremendously to the education of mostly secular Turks they were lovingly admired and respected in return.<

Another official Turkish story ? No self-righteous pro-Turkish tale about the Jewish pogroms staged by Kemal in Thrace in 1934 ?

Yet , even this story of Jews fleeing Nazi Germany with Turkish help is misleading as it omits two essential details. First , diplomats involved in smuggling Jews to or over Turkey didn't act as official representatives of Turkey as Turkey officially forbade to grant visas to German Jews . Second , more important , you forget to tell us how much money every Jew had to pay to get a false Turkish visa ? As an official visa was impossible to get we can imagine what prices a false visa reached . The bakshish involved was enormous and many Turkish officials grew fat on the Jewish plight . Unlike Schindler the Turks were cynical and unsentimental . Some lucky and rich Jews were saved this way no doubt , but what the Turks were really after is best illustrated by the notorious case of the Struma . There were so many wretched Jews in need and they arrived at the safe Turkish port of Istanbul . They may have thought they tragic journey from hell was over . But how wrong they were ! They had nothing to pay huge bakshish to the Turkish pashas with and so they were sent back to destruction . The Turkish logic was simple - "No cash , no help !" So don't tell us fairy tales about how generous "secular" Turks were and how well they treated the Jews ! They saw the holocaust as an Allah-sent opportunity to get rich quick and they did all they could to do that ! And , besides , they grew rich both on the Jews and on the Nazis !

> Ironically, Turks even referred to them affectionately, but sadly, as "our gifts from Hitler".<

Speaking of gifts from Hitler and growing rich on Nazis , the Turks got a splendid treaty of peace and cooperation , including territorial promises , with Germany two days before Hitler's invasion of Russia . The Turkish gold reserve increased 5 times during the war thanks to the generosity of Turkey's Nazi customers who needed strategic raw materials from Turkey . This not withstanding the Turks tried to suck dry the Turkish Jews and the Greeks in Istanbul through the infamous Varlık Vergisi ="wealth tax" ! The taste of teh pudding is in the eating, isn't it ? Pan-Turkic propaganda and ambitions had been instantly revived reaching delirium fever unheard of since Enver Pasha's days with plans to invade and divide the USSR between Turks and Germans after the German conquest of Stalingrad . In exchange the Turks sent strategic raw materials and let numerous Nazi war ships through the straits either to fight the Soviets in the Black Sea or to allow them to escape the pursuing Soviets in 1944 .

And still Turkey - true to its nature of a predator and opportunist - betrayed Hitler and finally , when the Russians emerged on the Bulgarian frontier , even declared war on their admired Nazi benefactors .

> "His Holiness Ataturk" died in 1938. It wasn't until later that the Islamists who felt Ataturk had "limited" their religion and the tarikats (Islamic cults) started revolting in many areas of the country<

Kurdish Islamists used to rebel against him during his lifetime not just against his evil ghost as their successors .

>some very deadly, including as symbolism on their part, the burning of Ataturk pictures and smashing his statues (even 17 in one day) .

Nowadays even chewing a gum in front of his statue may get you into jail . As to burning the effigies of Kemal , what else did a traitor and war criminal like Kemal deserve anyway ? His movement started as a jihad , he was accorded the supreme Moslem Ottoman title of "Ghazi" , i.e. "Allah's successful warrior" , "destroyer of Christians", for his extermination of kafirs in Anatolia and yet he deceived his followers and turned against Islam . He promised the Kurds freedom and happiness and much more than they got in the Treaty of Sèvres and yet when the war was over he refused to even acknowlegde the existence of Kurds . He promised Lenin a Soviet Turkey and a common struggle against Western imperialists in exchange for such trifles as Soviet arms , gold and military expertise . And while getting all he needed he had communists assassinated and joined hands with the imperialists .

> The law was passed in 1951 to curb not the attack on his memory but what Islamist viewed as the new secular Turkey.

The reason why Law No. 5816 was passed in 1951 was that Turkey under the pressure of its new -American this time - saviour and protector - like in the earlier days of Kemal - had to make another leap to look "democratic" by finishing later Kemal's one-party system and introducing political pluralism . What was aimed by this law was this : while having many party in the country , none of them should ever become anti-Kemalist. No one would ever dare express any criticism of Kemal and so no official anti-Kemalist group or movement would ever emerge . Thus one had apparently many parties (like in a democracy) while essentially retaining the spirit of the one-party Kemalist political system before 1951 . Again, this medieval law was passed to perpetuate Kemal's regime by criminalizing and outlawing any critical discussion about Kemal .

>BTW, not laws; there is only one law

Actually, law 5816 has much to do with Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code as Turkishness widely overlaps with Kemalism or Kemal's definition of Turkishness . You can't escape this double trap and so if I wrote the above words in Turkey , I'd hardly survive the next 24 hours as a free man .

> and don't you worry yourself; during Erdogan's AKP government Ataturk haters are safe.<

How do you mean ? Has he rescinded Law Nr. 5816 ? People get jailed for such trifles as describing him as wearing a chador to escape assassination , and you imply public haters of him are safe ?

> Even AKP's second man in charge a few years ago said in an interview with NYTimes that in effect "Turks suffered trauma with Ataturk's reforms."

He was right , wasn't he? If the Turks suffered "trauma" with his reforms , what would he say about the Greeks or Armenians he had burnt alive or tortured to death and butchered by tens of thousands by his jihadist hangmen ?

> Also, a couple of years ago two covered girls gave an interview on Turkish TV stating they did not like Ataturk, but that they liked Khomeini. To my knowledge they are fine and in fact became quite popular.<

To my knolwedge they suffered much harassment as early as two days after they had made their statements as "the public prosecutor in the Istanbul neighborhood of Beyoglu initiated a criminal investigation" against them. I am not sure of its outcome , but the message is clear enough at any event . You don't even a right to say in public "I don't like Ataturk" !

>Ianus, open your "gates to the reality and truth"

From what pro-Turkish fairy tales you spread here I infer the gates to your "reality and truth" are well guarded by experienced Turkish gate-keepers , aren't they ? Thanks for the invitation , but I'd rather look for my own entry into reality and truth without any Turk helping me in and where no Turkish thugs and liars and their laws are precluding any research and any rational thought .

>and let me explain this to you another way. The issue is not a picture or a statue of a dead man that is being denigrated; it is the symbol of secularism and principles of modern Turkey that it represents and the Islamists love to attack.<

Let me explain to you that Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk was a major war criminal , liar, fraudster and traitor . His so called "secularism" was perhaps the biggest lie of them all . His movement started in May 1919 as a jihad with Friday prayers, imams , Quranic verses , shahids etc. etc. He asked the caliph to leave Istanbul and become its rightful head in Eastern Anatolia . But the caliph bluntly rejected Kemal's offer . He ordered him to come back to Istanbul for trial . When Kemal refused , a death fatwa was issued against him and a bloody civil war was unleashed with the Caliph's Army men slaughtering Kemalists and vice versa . Now after the victory in 1922 and the death fatwa still in force Kemal had no other choice - if he wanted to remain in power and alive - but by all means to get rid of the caliph all the system the caliph's power was based on , i.e. of Islam . It is how our brand new ghazi was forced to abandon Islam under whose standard his war of 1919-1922 had been fought and embrace by necessity and opportunism and not by his idealism "secularism" as the ideology that promised to keep his life and person safe .

Now what was valid for Kemal was an individual case , a vagary of history . It wasn't valid and it isn't valid for all the rest of Turks who were and are nothing but Moslems and whom kemal tried to resmould into his own queer image . The so called "Islamists" just point to this simple fact while the so called "secularists" are too corrupt or mendacious to face the facts and spread their myth so avidly gulped down by the naive West .

> I can't address any more of the angry ramblings in each of your next seven paragraphs, just counting the issues tired me out!!

I hope you got some refreshment counting these paragraphs ( which I haven't counted at all myself ) . It will be a pity if you don't treat me with more standard Turkish propaganda lies like the above . Despite their repetitiveness and the totally missing sense for proportions and probability I am not tired of exposing them . As to the feelings I have doing it , you're right . One can't but hate evil and wickedness as embodied by Turkey , be it Ottoman or Kemalist Turkey.

> But I realize it makes you feel good and certain minds may buy into this stuff.

Wrong again ! Seeing evil and wickedness doesn't make me feel good at all . Quite the contrary ! I feel badly upset and disturbed .

As to the last part of your sentence may I use an Oriental metaphor to comment on it ? Among few sure things there is one which is self-evident , namely that wherever you see a Turk guarding a gate , the gate doesn't lead to reality and truth but in the opposite direction .

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