Moderate Islam In Turkey

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Apr 19, 2007 at 15:43

Dear yonatan silverman , you wrote :

"There seems to be great support for moderate Islam in Turkey."

for which you earned Dr. Pipes' praise .

Turkey is an Oriental police state where few things , if any , happen spontanteously . If a demonstration of c. 300 000 people takes place and people arrive by plane , bus and train from all over the country (it would be interesting to know who they are exactly) on a weekday to participate with a 2km long flag ( which is besides identical with the old Ottoman flag) , then you may be sure that the demonstration was carefully planned and organized by the police and the militarists with the explicit consent of the new chief of staff general Yasar Büyükanit , if it was not simply his brainchild. It should serve his objectives , otherwise nothing would have happened.

Now if he really wanted to stop the advent of what Dr. Pipes would call "Islamism" in Turkey , he would move in the troops he is currently concentrating on the Kurdish frontier , instead of ordering civilians to turn up en masse in Ancara. The Turkish army has much expertise in conducting coups d'etats. The publicly proclaimed aim of the demonstration (defence of alleged Turkish "secularism") cannot be taken at its face value.

What is more probable is that a secret agreement between the Turkish militarists ( Büyükanit was appointed chief of staff with Erdogan's approval in September last year ) and the "Islamists" was concluded to the effect that the "Islamists" will not touch and influence the army in any way - its training , indoctrination , operation and personel - while the army will not intervene in case Erdogan becomes the president with his party "AKP" winning as well later on in the parliamentary elections. The common ground for both sides to share is the desire to destroy the Kurdish state in Iraq - if America allows it , the Turks will gladly invade Iraqi Kurdistan and conduct one more local genocide. They have enough expertise in this field too. But to mislead the public opinion of the West as to the new power arrangements the demonstration against the "Islamists" was staged and duly publicized.

Antisemitism and anti-Americanism are very strong in Turkey. In November of 2003 two synagogues were simultaneously blown up in Constaninople with more than 20 dead . One of the arguments voiced against Büyükanit's appointment was that he was "a Jewish spy". Also in 2003 the Turks forbade the Americans to use the Turkish territory to invade Iraq. It bluntly refused America's request to send any troops to Afghanistan. The Current secretary of the Organization of Islamic Conference (since January 1 2005) is Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu from Turkey. In 1996 he received a honorary doctorate from Dowling College Long Island New York , the USA. In Northern Cyprus the Turkish occupation army helps the imported Anatolian "Cypriotes" to change Greek churches and monasteries into mosques or stables or level them to the ground , to name just a few examples of how generous Turkish Islam is.

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