your turkey analysis not correct

Submitted by mete (Turkey), Dec 1, 2010 at 11:52

Mr Pipes, the conspiracies of the Turkish army are not fabrications. Turkish army always meddles with politics and messes up the country. Secondly you dont realize that Turkish secularists are more openly anti-western than the conservatives. Because they call the West "imperialists". And one bold new fraction of Kemalists called the "ulusaljis" (nationalists) are against joining the EU. Remember the 1 March 2003 bill in the Turkish parliament that would allow USA to use Turkish soil to attack Iraq? Guess whose party voted no as a bloc? The secularist party CHP did. AKP didnt make a group decision but left the decision to every individual when they vote; they were being more open minded about it. And also note this: when the coup plots of army generals were exposed, it was revealed that one army general called Eruygur planned to help the "insurgents" in Iraq after he seizes power in Turkey. Seems consistent with their anti-Western stance. Eruygur and many "ulusalji" pioneers are known to suggest being a bloc with Russia and Iran against the West.

Lastly, I think you are exaggerating it when you say Islamists are going to establish Sharia after the 2011 election. That doesn't seem likely. AKP's (Erdogan's political party) constituents are not all fundamentalists. It is more a center-right party than an Islamist party. Quite a few atheistic liberal intellectuals support AKP today because it is more open minded than Kemalists on many issues, varying from Kurdish problem to EU reforms. These intellectuals also see it essential for military guardianship over our democracy should be broken already. BEcause the army doesn't let any elected governments to actually make any progress in issues such as Cyprus, or Kurdish issue, or the Armenian issue. Basically the army wants to make the decisions on all important issues. And unfortunately the stance of the military is nationalistic and without any compromise... Basically no progress or change. They would rather have problems like Kurdish or Cypriot problems to be the way they are forever.

As a last note, the army generals have terrible economical views. Their coup plans revealed that they planned to shut down the stock market! Refuse to pay any external debts. And assign a general to every bank central. Turkish economists noted that generals plans would destroy the economy in 24 hours.

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