Hagia Sophia Mosque in Istanbul
Verne Strickland Blogmaster: August 25, 2013
Turkey has always attracted me, and two business trips there to shoot U.S. trade documentaries only stirred my fascination. From Istanbul's mysterious sophistication to a working-man's border city like Tokat, the country's deep roots are always felt if not seen. Back then, in the 70s and 80s, the rise of combative Islam was not so visible. As a result, caution was often ignored by Western visitors like myself. Still, seeing banged-up sedans parked carelessly on the sidewalk lose to the American Airlines ticket office made me uneasy. The Soviet Embassy was but a few steps from the Grand Bazaar and hulking Hagia Sophia Mosque. One rainy night my video shooter wrapped the camera in a black poncho. As we passed in front of the Embassy building, the shrouded camera began more and more to look like a rocket launcher. We quickly ducked into the bazaar and ditched the wet poncho under a counter. You remember things like that. Today, such freedom would be akin to madness.
John McCain says that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan “is acting like a dictator
rather than a president in the eyes of many Turks.” He charged that
“There are more journalists jailed in Turkey than any other country in
the world.”
It
should not surprise anyone to discover that US President Barack Hussein
Obama invited Muslim Brotherhood officials from Egypt as well as
Turkish diplomats to meet with him at the White House.
The Jerusalem Post reported (August 6, 2013) that according to the
Egypt Independent the meeting should take place “sometime this month.” The
Independent suggested moreover that the “Turkish diplomats were expected to lobby for Morsi’s (deposed Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi)
reinstatement, or at minimum, a continued political role for the Muslim Brotherhood.”
A White House press release issued on August 7, 2013 stated that “The
President (Barack Obama) and Prime Minister of Turkey (Recep Tayyip
Erdogan) expressed concern about the situation in Egypt and a shared
commitment to support a
Democratic
and inclusive way forward. The two leaders agreed to have their teams
continue to coordinate closely to promote our shared interests.”
Obama’s and Erdogan’s shared interests go beyond their common cause
to unseat the Assad regime in Syria. They agree as well on the
importance of a unified and inclusive Syrian opposition (inclusive of
MB). Obama has nurtured a soft spot in his heart for Islam. He spent
his formative years in Indonesia under the guidance of his Indonesian
Muslim step-father. His biological father was a Muslim from Kenya.
Obama’s first foreign trips as President of the United States, which he
called a New Beginning, was to Erdogan’s Turkey and Egypt, where he
delivered his keynote speech at Cairo University, and was co-hosted by
the Al-Azhar Islamic University.
Speaking at the Brookings Institute, US Senator (R-AZ) McCain said that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan “is acting like a
dictator
rather than a president in the eyes of many Turks.” He charged that
“There are more journalists jailed in Turkey than any other country in
the world.”
Infused with confidence that three democratic electoral victories
have provided him, Erdogan has set out in recent years to wipe out the
legacy of secular Kamalist Turkey founded by Mustafa Kamal, better known
as Ataturk (The Father of Turks), and is seeking to replace it with an
Islamist state. Since 1923, Turkey has seen a clash between the two
opposing cultural streams: the Ottoman Islamic tradition that ruled
Turkey for centuries, and the secular tradition of Kamalism.
The rural poor and Islam-inclined multitudes of Anatolia (in eastern
and southern Turkey) provide massive votes for Erdogan’s Justice and
Development Party. The urban middle-class, on the other hand, which is
more educated and economically advantaged, is largely concentrated in
western and northern Turkey. They opposed the excessive reaches of
Erdogan and his party.
Secular-Kamalist Turkey joined NATO and sought to be part of the
West. Erdogan, in recent years, shifted Turkey’s focus from the West to
the Islamic and Arab worlds. He is hoping to become the champion of
the Sunni Muslim world, and the “protector” of the Sunni Muslim
Brotherhood in Syria, as well as the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza.
The Turkish military and the judiciary have been the guardians of
Turkey’s secularism. The military, according to the Turkish
constitution, is to safeguard the secular character of the nation. The
Army has used its constitutional powers to remove governments in 1960,
1971, 1980, and, more recently, in 1997, when it removed the first
Islamist government of Necmettin Erbakan. Erdogan’s Justice and
Development Party grew out of the ideological bedrock of the Islamist
Welfare Party and governed Turkey since 2002.
In recent weeks alone, Erdogan’s regime imprisoned 250 top public figures who were charged with an attempted coup. The
Associated Press (AP)
reported on August 5, 2013, that in a “landmark trial, scores of people
– including Turkey’s former military chief, politicians and journalists
– were convicted of plotting to overthrow PM Edrogan’s government soon
after it came to power in 2002. Retired General Basbug was the most
prominent defendant among
250
people facing verdicts after a five-year trial that has become a
central drama in tensions between the country’s secular elite and
Erdogan’s Islamic-oriented Justice and Development Party.”
Erdogan’s regime has been committed to the destruction of Turkey’s
secular watchdogs: the military, judiciary, and presidency. In a slow
but consistent process, Erdogan succeed in capturing the presidency. He
was able to appoint and elect his personal friend, and former Foreign
Minister of the Justice and Development Party, Abdullah Gul, as
President of Turkey. At the same time, Erdogan managed to pass new laws
that enabled him to install Supreme Court justices more amenable to his
ideological thinking, and who were not part of the secular elite. As
with the Supreme Court justices, Erdogan found a way to replace retiring
military officers with Islamist and loyalist officers, thus eroding the
steadfastly secular and anti-religious character of the military.
The Ergenekon Affair that has been gripping Turkey is the name given
to an alleged clandestine secularist organization with alleged ties to
members of Turkey’s military and security forces. It is named after
Ergenekon, a mythical place located in the inaccessible valleys of the
Altay Mountains. The Ergenekon group is accused of terrorism. The
trial has been conducted secretly and away from the probing eyes of the
media by the Erdogan regime. Demonstrators who protested against the
trial and the way the regime has been handling it were brutally
dispersed by the police.
Protests last June in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, ostensibly over the
future of Gezi Park, has spread throughout Turkey into demonstrations
against Erdogan and his authoritarian and Islamist regime. Four
demonstrators were killed by the regime’s security forces, and
5000 were
wounded. It has divided the country into two hostile camps, and it
stands to color Turkey’s future image. Will Turkey become a modern
liberal state that Ataturk hoped for? Or will it revert to the
Ottoman-era Islamic backwater and become once again the “sick man of
Europe”? The army, media, academia, art and business world are poised
for the fight of their lives to preserve Turkey as a modern state.
Erdogan and his regime are on the other side seeking to do away with
Kamalist secularism.
One thing is clear. Erdogan’s dictatorial nature and his singular
ambitions, regardless of the wishes of many Turks, make Turkey less than
a democratic state, where basic human rights and the rule of law are
being abused.
President Obama has shown his hypocrisy and his pro-Islamist bias by
his continued backing of his friend Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling
Islamist party. This hypocrisy has been starkly demonstrated in his
being mute on Erdogan’s human rights abuses, and his authoritarian and
downright dictatorial behavior, not to mention his anti-Semitism.
Obama, who has been vociferous in his support of Arab Spring protests
against the Arab authoritarian regimes, including that of Mubarak’s
Egypt, has been silent on Erdogan’s authoritarianism. The same Obama
administration that is currently critical of the military in Egypt for
its suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood’s violent demonstrations, has
said nothing about Turkey’s emerging dictatorship of Recep Tayyip
Erdogan.
