Turkey, cognitive dissonance and Judas Iscariot's kiss

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Jan 30, 2013 at 23:45

Dear Ron Thompson,

Thanks a lot for your kind reply. Let me comment on a few things. You wrote :

> As for the Afghan Communists, even if they were doing some good things, their classic creed could only have led them to one-party control, with secret police, etc, if they had achieved power. No long-term hope there.<

With the Taliban, Afghanistan's drug-based economy, the shariah and US occupation (and heroin exports that enrich both parties and ruin the rest of the world ) and political "pluralism" of Afghan tribes, in short with a big-time return to the Middle Ages Afghanistan since Dr. Najibulla's brutal murder hardly inspires more hopes, does it?

What the Afghan communists did was in comparison to what their US-backed jihadist enemies do a sincere and great attempt to modernize and de-Islamize their country. As under the rightist regime, say Latin American or Pakistani-style - this could not be done, the only option left was communism. But some tend to think - better Taliban even with 9/11 than communist without it, don't they ?

>>some Jews might be tempted to think that Ataturk was a moderate anti-Semite remembering how he praised Jews when he needed them and how he persecuted, expropriated and expelled them when he stood no longer in need of them and seeing how obstinately the Turkish-Israeli "friendship" -just like everything else relating to Turkey - is justified with quotes of and references to Ataturk.<<

> A contradiction in that sentence? How could the once utilitarian modus operandi between Israel and Turkey, now killed off by not-so-secret Islamic fanatic Erdogan, be attributed to Ataturk if he'd been as negative to Jews as you claim.<

What do you call "claims", my friend ? The statistics of the Jewish population in Kemalist Turkey between 1922-1927 with 60% (!) of Jews disappearing from Turkey ? It's no claim. It's a fact ! Kemal's policy of forced Turkification of Jews with a ban on speaking Ladino even at home and using their own names and surnames? The Kemalist Kristall-Nacht style pogroms in Thrace in 1934?Check it for yourself ! Google "Pogroms in Thrace 1934"! The way Turkey voted on resolution 181 (creation of Israel) ? Am I claiming Turkey voted the way it didn't ? The extortionist property tax that ruined so many Jews in 1941/42 or the (again!) pogroms in Constantinople in 1955 that targeted Jews as much as they did Greeks and Armenians? All "claims" by Ianus and no hard and bloody historical substance ?

Anyway, have you ever heard of Sibel Edmonds? She is worth knowing and praising by all means! Do you know how much Turks spend on buying your politicians and their employers from the business world, your media and academia, on their front organizations like the "American-Turkish Council" or the "Turkish American Associations" etc. to spread the stories and myths like the ones you seem to have reproduced ? Also prominent Jews got their share of baskshish (bribes) to spread the happy Turkish news and promote the opportunist and self-defeating agenda of Turkish-Israeli alliance which turned out to be both an embarrassing and painful misunderstanding discretiting Israel most. And one more question, why do you think neither the US nor Israel have ever recognized the Armenian genocide which incidentally Kemal completed in 1920-1923 e.g. by burning the Armenians alive in their churches in Smyrna ? I see ... they have much more important things to do than remembering the Armenians - as Hitler once cynically remarked. It's a pity Hitler never amplified who will exactly not remember the Armenians. At least he remembered them quite well.

> I could be deficient in knowledge about this aspect of his career, but nothing I've read refers to his expropriation of Jews, and certainly not to anti-Semitism.<

The spirit of the "Israeli-Turkish friendship" (or any other x...-Turkish friendship) and the spirit of the historical truth (and I'd add "of common sense") are not compatible. If you choose one you sacrifice the other.

> I admit that my opinion of him is governed by his comprehensive and unremitting attempt to uproot Islam from Turkish life – his abolition of the caliphate and sharia, his disapproval of the veil and attempt to give equality of status to women.<

And you believe his motivation was idealistic,modern, Western-inspired and had nothing to do with his basic opportunism, his tortuous career and mendacious and revengeful character that never forgot and forgave those who were so close to annihilate him in 1919-1923, don't you ? You also believe that one can form in a purely Moslem society which Kemal's jihad=gazavat created a secular order simply by decree ? What he achieved was that his Moslem subjects instead of becoming secular only learned to hide and lie better than ever before. Now that the lie of Turkey's secularism has been revealed, many are at a loss.The Turks told them a happy story and yet its ugly opposite proved to be the case. How to cope with such a cognitive dissonance ?

> he also performed a real post-WW I service by specifically renouncing any irredentist claims to former lands of the Ottoman Empire.<

Did he? Why was he therefore so eager to grab the Alexandrette district that belonged to the French mandate of Syria? What he did in this respect looks like a blue print for what later happened in Cyprus - with gangs of armed Turks in the streets, blaming the French whenever the local (or imported) Turks failed to get what they wanted - e.g. a majority in local elections; Kemal's threats and consultations with the Turkish General Staff, his ostentatious trips to the south, concentration of Turkish troops along the Syrian border, arming the Turkish "freedom fighters" in Syria (no hint at what is happening today included ;) etc.

I am just reading an interesting book ("A history of Turkey in the 20th century " by N.G. Kireev , Moscow 2007) where a long passage with several long footnotes is devoted to Kemal's efforts to revive the Caucasian irredentism starting at the end of the 20-ies. Yes, he did it ! He relied on the Caucasian diaspora in Turkey which by the way he was forcibly Turkifying in his own country, still complained how much the Caucasians and Turks were being oppressed in the USSR. One of the main agents of the secretive movement in Turkey was imam Shamil's grandson Said-bey who in the summer of 1932 met on several occasions Nadmi-bey , the head of the Turkish Military Intelligence. Among others they discussed establishing "military and intelligence points" along the Soviet-Turkish border which would deal with espionage, collecting information and dispatching to and receiving agents from the Soviet territories. The Turkish General Staff elaborated a more detailed plan of operations that foresaw training, financing and equipping the Caucasian "freedom fighters", to foment revolts and spread anti-Soviet and anti-Russian propaganda with a strategic aim of annexing the Turkic and Islamic territories that had formerly belonged to the Ottoman Empire. At the same time the French and British hinted at possible territorial accretions of Turkey at the expense of the USSR including Nakhichevan,parts of Armenia, Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Adjaria. The Caucasian diaspora in Turkey voiced such plans more or less openly and later the Pan-Turkic hysteria reached its peak between 1941-1943 for the known reasons. In Kemal's police state no public opinion was ever allowed to pop up unless approved of or created by the authorities. Yet, not to spoil its relations with the USSR which was helping economically Turkey with credits, oil and many major projects, the most active representatives of the Caucasian diaspora moved to Brussels where on 14.07.1934 they signed "Agreement on Establishing the Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus" which Turkey warmly welcomed. Kemal's logic was simple. In case Russia was knocked down in a major war Turkey would get a chance to re-establish its power in the Caucasus and as an ideal pretext it would use "a request for friendly help of Turkey" from the said "Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus" (ibidem p.218-220 and 501-502) .

So much for the claims of official Turkish hagiographers and the facts on the ground.

> And all the violence he engaged in seems nationalist in motive, with none of it Islamist – he was never, as far as I can tell, a Jihadi.<

And "ghazi" has nothing to do with "gazavat"(=jihad), does it? And such eye witnesses of Kemalist jihad and genocides such as George Horton are no match for Kemal's hagiographers and their parrots who get millions of dollars from the Republic of Turkey to translate the official Turkish hagiography into European languages and spread it to every corner and brain of the West, are they ?

> In his magnificent history of the first World War (5 vols), Winston Churchill gives grudging praise to Ataturk as an honorable adversary, something he certainly wouldn't have done if he thought Ataturk were any kind of promoter of Islam, which Churchill had powerfully condemned as early as 1899, when he said of the religion, "no stronger retrograde force exists in the world".(what a shame no western leader would, so far, dare to say any such thing today)<

I wouldn't ascribe as much value to what Churuchill said about Kemal as you do. He has a questionable record as far as veracity and humanism is concerned (compare 'the Lusitania') even though his mastery of rhetoric and literture is so impressive, not to say overwhelming.

> Whereas if Mohammed actually existed, as seems overwhelmingly probable, then you have a flesh and blood leader and icon who must be taken down if anything tolerable is ever going to replace his hateful and supremacist creed.<

Taken down by whom?The communists in Afghanistan wanted to take it down for which they were taken down by the US-jihadist axis and the same happened to the Christian Serbs and their efforts to stop the spread of US-backed jihad in Europe. When Greece declared total moblization on hearing the news of Turkey's barbaric invasion of Cyprus in 1974, she was threatened and humiliated by the US which allowed Turkey to complete its conquest and re-Islamization of Northern Cyprus. Nowadays the most active promoter and defender of this hateful and supremacist creed and of this most retrograde force in the world is your own government. We saw it in Northern Cyprus, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. So in war against Islam which is inevitable unless we are suicidal (I am not) we can rely on America the same way Jesus could rely on Judas Iscariot and his kisses.

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