Turkey will not go the Venezuelan way

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Oct 23, 2019 at 22:15

Dear Dr Pipes, I was not able to read your article in the WSJ about Turkey going the Venezuelan way. So, . I do not know all your arguments. But I disagree with your title itself. Turkey cannot go the Venezuelan way; if it goes anywhere it will be worse than Venezuela. Venezuela went the way of socialism. Socialism makes you poor. It makes you very poor, But it does not kill you. Islamism is worse. It makes you poor in the long run but it first tries to kill you. So the Turks and the Kurds will fight each other and the Shias and the Wahabis will join the fray. Then down there the Iraqis and Yemenis and he Saudis will also play whatever part they can play and the life will go on. And in the process they will all join hands to eliminate the Yezidis, whenever the opportunity arises.

I do not want to be so sarcastic. But Muslim societies like to shoot themselves in the foot while they chase the Islamic Utopia (which, in reality, is not even a Utopia!). I wish I could just plant 10000 Mahatma Gandhis or MLKs or Nelson mandelas in the Islamic countries (about one per 10000 sq miles). I want to see peace, prosperity and democracy all around the Islamic world but they are just so off-target.

So let me assure you: Turkey will not go the Venezuelan way. It will either become much worse or wisdom will dawn on it and the rest of the Islamic world.

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