Unfortunately true

Submitted by Kaplan A. Wallace. (Turkey), Apr 2, 2016 at 11:33

"If Iran is today the Middle East's greatest danger, Turkey is tomorrow's." ...Dr Pipes is absolutely right. Turkey, having a heavy historical baggage as the inheritor of the Ottoman Empire, being a strategically positioned country in this volatile region of the world and combining many factors of a relatively strong state (75 million people, a strong army, natural resources etc.), can cause serious problems for the world if it falls in wrong hands.

This unfortunately seems to be the case today. Erdogan is a political Islamist, bent to undo Ataturk's miraculous work of making Turkey a secular, western-oriented and modernist country, fully integrated to and a responsible member of the contemporary world. Erdogan is a demagogue and a populist in the pejorative sense of this word. He can easily manipulate a large portion of the Turkish people, which is impoverished, uneducated, religious, conservative, male dominated, nationalistic and, more dangerously, suffering from a great inferiority complex. After coming to power Erdogan has allocated incredibly high budgets (much bigger than those of many government departments) to religious affairs. He personally champions to spread Sunni Islam. His public discourses are full of references to the "glories" of Islam and the Ottoman Empire. He glorifies and urges the preservation of "our national and moral values", which mean religion, nationalism, male domination, discrimination against women, absolute obeyance to authority/the state/the leader/husband and the inferior position of non-Muslims.

I am terribly sorry to use the following expression for it is the best way to describe Turkey's plight: We are in a very very deep and shi$$y situation.

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