More than admiration

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Apr 18, 2012 at 19:16

Nazim wrote

"Your Anti-Turkishness is so obvious at each interview."

to which Dr. Pipes replied :

"I had long admired Turkey, till the 2002 elections. See my writings on this website."

In point of fact Dr. Pipes not only "admired Turkey" but was a board member of the American-Turkish Council ("Pipes' advice is clearly respected in the United States as he is on the board of 15 prestigious committees and organizations including the American-Turkish Council ...") - an organization which , if one believes whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds , was under investigation from the FBI for spying, biasing and bribing US politicians and infiltrating US institutions like the FBI itself. When Melek Cam Dickerson - a Turkish spy in the FBI translation unit - tried to recruit Sibel Edmonds to work for Turkey , her first offer was to join the American Turkish Council.

I don't know what specific activities and duties Dr. Pipes was supposed to engage in and fulfill or what sort of reward - if any - was connected with that high position. But , alas , I have to say that neither the Armenian nor Greek nor Assyrian genocide nor any other evident disturbing events like the staunch Kemalist-Soviet alliance seem to have been prominent in his writings or to have ever made him feel uncomfortable as a scholar or an admirer of Kemalist Turkey and personally of Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha who was clearly one of the worst mass murderers of the 20th century. True, I have never heard of anyone working for the American Turkish Council or any other pro-Turkish organization as being concerned with such trifles. Some blatantly deny them, some prefer to never mention them.

Dr. Pipes' confession that it is the 2002 elections that made him change his mind on Turkey tells me also something. Had the elections gone in a different direction and had no Turkish-Israeli split developed, he would probably be still a board member of the American Turkish Council telling us how fine it is to have Kemalist militarists ruling Turkey and happily distorting and denying history and assuring us of being "staunch allies" and customers of the US and Israel.

Be that as it may, I welcome Dr. Pipes' belated awakening to the threat Islamist Turkey poses , even though I wish he had realized that also Kemalist Turkey posed no lesser threat as was shown e.g. in the horrors of the Kemalist invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

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".