More than 300,000 Turks protest Islamic-rooted government

Excerpts of Turkish army statement (as published by the BBC)

The following are excerpts of a statement by the Turkish military, quoted by the Anatolia news agency, in which it said it would defend the country's secular system.
The statement was in reaction to a disputed vote in the Turkish parliament in which the Islamist-rooted ruling party's candidate narrowly failed to be elected president.

Quote:

It is observed that some circles who have been carrying out endless efforts to disturb fundamental values of the Republic of Turkey, especially secularism, have escalated their efforts recently.


Those activities include requests for redefinition of fundamental values and attempts to organise alternative celebrations instead of our national festivals symbolizing unity and solidarity of our nation. Those who carry out the mentioned activities which have turned into an open challenge against the state, do not refrain from exploiting holy religious feelings of our people, and they try to hide their real aims under the guise of religion.


An important part of these activities were done with the permission and within the knowledge of administrative authorities, who were supposed to intervene and prevent such incidents, a fact which intensifies the gravity of the issue.


This fundamentalist understanding, which is anti-republic and harbours no aim other than eroding the basic characteristics of the state, finds courage in recent developments and discourses and extends the scope of its activities.


Developments in our region give numerous examples that playing on religion and manipulating the faith into a political discourse can cause disasters. There are accounts in our country and abroad that a political discourse or an ideology can destroy the faith itself and turn it into something else when it is imposed on faith... Doubtlessly, the sole condition for the Republic of Turkey to live in peace and stability as a contemporary democracy is through defending the basic characteristics of our state which are defined in the Constitution.


The problem that emerged in the presidential election process is focused on arguments over secularism. Turkish Armed Forces are concerned about the recent situation. It should not be forgotten that the Turkish Armed Forces are a party in those arguments, and absolute defender of secularism. Also, the Turkish Armed Forces is definitely opposed to those arguments and negative comments. It will display its attitude and action openly and clearly whenever it is necessary.


Those who are opposed to Great Leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's understanding 'How happy is the one who says I am a Turk' are enemies of the Republic of Turkey and will remain so. The Turkish Armed Forces maintain their sound determination to carry out their duties stemming from laws to protect the unchangeable characteristics of the Republic of Turkey. Their loyalty to this determination is absolute.

Tough test for Turkey's democracy
By Chris Morris
World affairs correspondent, BBC News


These are tense times in Turkey, as the country enters uncharted political waters.

Never before has the constitutional court annulled a presidential election.

Never before has a sitting prime minister accused the country's leading judges of firing "a bullet aimed at democracy".

The court ruling, coming just a few days after an ominous warning from the military about the government's plans for the presidency, means Turkey's political system has reached deadlock.


Vested interests

An early general election, producing a new popular mandate, is probably the only way out of the impasse.

The government wants the election as early as 24 June and the campaign will certainly be passionate. There are big issues at stake.




The essential problem is to find a way to stay united, preserving our differences - rights and freedoms are necessary for everybody
Recep Tayyip Erdogan

It is possible that the governing AK Party could emerge with an even bigger majority than it has now.

There will be much talk of opposition alliances to try to prevent that from happening.

But this is part of a longer term political battle about what kind of country, what kind of democracy, Turkey should be.

The army, the main opposition party and powerful vested interests in the bureaucracy and the judiciary all believe that secularism is Turkey's founding principle, and its guarantee of modernity.

But the government argues, in effect, that too strict a definition of secularism damages democracy, and restricts personal freedoms.

Although his opponents doubt him, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan says he too is committed to secularism.

But he does not think it should be at the expense of Turks who want to express their religious beliefs more openly.

"The essential problem is to find a way to stay united, preserving our differences", he says. "Rights and freedoms are necessary for everybody."




Many Turks fear that Islamists are using the EU accession process for their own ends


And "everybody" includes women who wear the Islamic-style headscarf - women who include his own wife and the wife of Abdullah Gul, Mr Erdogan's choice for president.

But the idea of a "covered woman" in the presidential palace is seen by staunch secularists as an unacceptable symbol.

That is especially true of the armed forces, which have intervened directly in Turkish politics on several occasions in the past.

Do not expect tanks on the streets and soldiers surrounding parliament again - that will only happen if things really spiral out of control.

This time, the generals simply posted a statement on the internet (an e-coup was one impolite description).

The statement accused the government of tolerating rising Islamist activity and threatened to take unspecified action.

Any military interference in politics, though, even a statement on a website, does nothing for Turkey's image abroad, particularly in Europe.

The European Commission has already warned that "the supremacy of democratic civilian power over the military" is a prerequisite for any country hoping to join the EU.


Distrust

But nationalists in Turkey (some but not all of them secular) have already become increasingly critical of EU demands for reform.



Many Turks fear that Islamists are using the EU accession process for their own ends - trying to dismantle the secular system under the guise of democracy.

There is no doubt that both Mr Erdogan and Mr Gul held fairly radical Islamist views in their youth.

But they both insist they have changed, and for the past five years they have led a government which has reformed and modernised the country faster and more effectively than most of its predecessors.

That has led many Western leaders - George Bush and Tony Blair among them - to argue that Mr Erdogan's government can become a powerful example for Turkey's neighbours in Iran, Iraq and Syria.

Proof, they say, that Islam and democracy can go hand in hand.

But that cuts no ice with the prime minister's domestic critics.

They distrust him fundamentally. On this central issue he leads a nation divided. Now he will ask the people to show where they stand.

It is clear that the majority of the people in Turkey want more Muslim ways of life in Turkey such as the wearing of head scarves and Islamic dress, religious schools, etc., but the democratic process in Turkey is being undermined by a minority which includes the military who want to continue to repress religious expression in that country.

Turkey's "modern foundations" are predicated on the imposition of Western laws, the replacement of Arabic script with the Latin alphabet, and the banning of Islamic dress that occurred back in the 1920's at the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

This extremist minority is opposed to the idea of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül's wife wearing an Islamic head scarf in the presidential palace.

And there is a possibility that the military might perpetrate a coup if Gül is elected President.

Is that what Westerners really prefer: a fascistic state instead of a democratic Islamic one because it allays their bigoted fears against Islam?

A similar thing happened in Algeria. After the Algerian Constitution was amended to allow parties other than the National Liberation Front (FLN) to run for elections in 1990 an Islamic party, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), swept local elections with 54% percent of cast votes. They also took 46% of the vote in town assemblies, and 55% of the vote in wilaya assemblies. The national government quickly curtailed the powers of the local governments.

In December of 1991the FIS won the first round of parliamentary elections by with 48% of the vote, winning 188 seats out of the 231 that were contested in that election. In the next month the military promptly cancelled the electorial process and perpetrated a coup against the government and effectively killed the democratic process in Algeria. This lead to a civil war that lasted throughout the 1990's, and spawned many groups and offshoots of radicalized Islamists, one of which recently claimed alliance with al Qaeda. In April of this year this group, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, set off a series of four explosions in Algiers, the capital of Algeria, one against the Prime Minister's office and the other three against a police station in the city's eastern outskirts.

According the the U.S. Library of Congress:

"On January 13, 1992, following the military coup that upset Algeria's burgeoning democratic system, the United States issued a formal but low-key statement condemning the military takeover. Twenty-four hours later, Department of State spokesmen retracted the statement, calling for a peaceful resolution but offering no condemnation of the coup. Since then, the United States, like many of its Western counterparts, has appeared resigned to accepting a military dictatorship in Algeria. The military government has reaffirmed its commitment to liberalizing its domestic economy and opening the country to foreign trade, undoubtedly accounting for some of the Western support for the new Algerian regime."

You equate the voluntary wearing of head scarves and Islamic dress and religious schools in Turkey with the majority in America banning gay marriages and abortions?

And you believe that the only concern the Turkish secularists have with an Islamist govenrment is the wearing of head scarves and religious schools?

Rationalized like a true hard-core social conservative.

Your extremism is especially telling in your reference to Ghul as an "Islamist Turk".

Why? He is not an Islamist? He certainly is a Turk.

You are closer to the Islamists' way of thinking than Ghul could ever be.

Really? How so?

Your assumption about what I believe should be scorned or otherwise reveal your propensity for creating asinine straw men to attack with your pitiful bigotry.

Scorn away. Any assumption I have formed about what you believe is based on what you write.

Bigotry is an easy slur to sling about. I may, in fact, be a bigot, but you have offered no proof of same.

Given these shining examples of what it has also spawned, "Western Thought" has a lot to be ashamed of.

What are "these shining examples of what Western Thought has spawned?" Do you mean my comments? I'm flattered, but even I don't presume to suggest that I am Western Thought personified.

I should correct my original post. I should have written

"Spoken like a true self-loathing, ultra-liberal Westerner."

You know you don't get to escape the karma of the Big Bad Western White Man just because you denounce him.

The concern that the alarmist Turkish secularists have is that a moderately conservative government like Ghul's will slide down the slippery slope into an extremist and/or fundamentalist government. They and you are basing your concerns on your paranoid and emotionalist reaction to what amounts to conservative Turks wanting to wear head scarves and Islamic dress, and have religious schools in Turkey. This, as exemplified by your posts, is another characteristic of the true hard-core social conservative in the US. Irrational alarmism indeed!

So the only Turkish secularists to have concerns about a religious based party in control of Turkey are alarmists? Interesting.

If Pat Robinson formed a Third Party with a clearly religious foundation and assumed majority control of the Congress and took up residence in the White House, would you really suggest that the only people who might be concerned in the US were "alarmists?" As a matter of fact I can only imagine the rants in which you might indulge if the "moderately conservative christian party of Robinson" promoted even the most superficial of christian symbols.

Ghul is not an "Islamist." Ghul is a conservative Muslim.

Ghul wishes to introduce religious tenents into the law and government of his nation - that is not a Turkish politician who happens to be a conservative Muslim, it is an Islamist. Ghul's party is identified as "Islamic" not only by me but by his fellow Turks.

You are closer to the Islamists' way of thinking than Ghul is in that you are intolerant of others' right to live their own lives along their religious convictions. In this you and the Islamists are much like the militant liberals of Europe who go so far in their intolerance for religion as to ban the wearing of religious clothing and symbols in public institutions and other religious proscriptions. Many US liberals, like the originator of this thread, share with you these militant anti-religious thoughts.

If you have been, at all, reading my posts over the years and recent months you would know that I am anything but anti-religious, and I have never taken the position that Islam is anything but one of the great religions of man. I am militantly opposed to Islamists, and all other religious zealots, who would force the tenents of their religion on all others. So your slurs are well off the mark.

Your posts reek of bigotry against Muslims, such as this one in which you rail against my very tolerance for Muslim immigrants in Europe," pretty much" equating the vast majority of those Muslim immigrants in Europe, whom you refer to as the "domineering and fecund group of unassimilated immigrants," with the small minority of Islamist "would-be restorers of The Caliphate." Intolerant" in this context, as you indubitably know, is the synonym of the word "bigot."

I have never expressed an intolerance of immigrants who happen to be muslim, and who are willing to assimilate themselves within the culture of the nation that has offered them a new home. I have, and will again, express a strong intolerance for immigrants who not only refuse to assimilate but who seek to force (violently or politically) the culture of their new home into that of the one they left. If this intolerance makes me a "bigot," so be it. I use the word differently, but then I tend to think quite differently from you in so many ways.

I did not explicitly state, nor by any means imply that you are "Western Thought" personified. Get over yourself. I explicitly stated that your thoughts are shining examples of what "Western Thought" has also (BS read what you wrote) spawned, and has to be ashamed about.

OK, so you were refering to my thoughts as shining examples of Western Thought. Thank you. I am quite proud of that.

Contrary to yet another of your asinine assumptions, I do not loath myself. I love the tolerance that the better part of my Western heritage has imbued me.

I have no doubt that you love yourself without bound. The "self-loathing" descriptor refers to your loathing of the foundations upon which you have been built.

"Big Bad Western White Man"? Who ever mentioned race here? This racial paranoia of yours is still another example of the unfortunate and shameful legacy of the worse part of "Western Thought."

Western Culture is generally accepted to be the culture of a very large portion of the White Race. This doesn't mean that people of color have not contributed to this culture because they have, but clearly the predominate racial compenent of Western Civilization is "white." (Note: "White" is not synonomous with Anglo-Saxon). Certainly so many of the critics of Western Thought have introduced race and gender into the discussion. Is it just my paranoia?

You equate the voluntary wearing of head scarves and Islamic dress and religious schools in Turkey with the majority in America banning gay marriages and abortions?

Rationalized like a true hard-core social conservative.

Your extremism is especially telling in your reference to Ghul as an "Islamist Turk".

You are closer to the Islamists' way of thinking than Ghul could ever be.

Your assumption about what I believe should be scorned or otherwise reveal your propensity for creating asinine straw men to attack with your pitiful bigotry.

Given these shining examples of what it has also spawned, "Western Thought" has a lot to be ashamed of.

I love the tolerance that the better part of my Western heritage has imbued me.

"Pat Robinson"? If you're referring to Pat Robertson then Pat Robertson is closer to the Ayatollahs of Iran than Gül is to either. Gül is closer to the sundry religiously moderate Republican politicians in the US government than the Christianist and Islamist extremists mentioned above.

Oh how clever of you to find my typo. No lesser mind could have accomplished same!

Nice dodge. Try now to respond to the point I made.

And Pat Robertson and the Ayatollahs do not promote, even remotely, the most superficial of religious symbols. You're really reaching in this incompetent analogy of yours.

What? What do you believe religious symbols to be? Clearly the Hajib is a religious symbol. The Ayatollahs are not promoting the Hajib?

What are these "religious tenents" that Gül wishes to introduce into the law and government of his nation? The whole brouhaha over Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's selection of Gül as deputy prime minister and foreign minister revolves around Gül's wife wearing a headscarf.

So says you. It's pretty hard to believe that a nation will find itself in political turmoil based solely upon on individual's wearing of a scarf, but if that makes you feel you are right... Ghul (How affected is that you choose to select a particular grecco/anglicized spelling of the name when Turks don't use our alphabet?) is an Islamist. He may be a subtle and able political Islamist, but his end game is obvious.

That Gül's party is identified as "Islamic" is correct. That you confuse "Islamic" with "Islamist" is indicative of your alarmist, bigoted and xenophobic tendencies.

Blah blah blah -- invective - blah blah blah - ad hominem

So, we think quite differently from each other in so many ways. With this I agree with you.

Actually, I tire of this silly debate, and cannot find the fortitude to respond point by point hereafter. If you take this as victory - A-OK, You Win!

To clarify for you, this is what I wrote:

You equate the voluntary wearing of head scarves and Islamic dress and religious schools in Turkey with the majority in America banning gay marriages and abortions?

Rationalized like a true hard-core social conservative.

Your extremism is especially telling in your reference to Ghul as an "Islamist Turk".

You are closer to the Islamists' way of thinking than Ghul could ever be.

Your assumption about what I believe should be scorned or otherwise reveal your propensity for creating asinine straw men to attack with your pitiful bigotry.

Given these shining examples of what it has also spawned, "Western Thought" has a lot to be ashamed of.

The last line is in reference to your rationalizations, your extremism and your closeness to Islamists thereof, and your predilection for making assumptions based on your propensity for creating asinine straw men.

These intellectual shortcomings of yours are shining (this is sarcasm because these are shameful) examples what "Western Thought" has also (meaning in addition to that which it should not be ashamed of) spawned.

You can pat yourself proudly on the back now.

You are a veritable font of what "Western Thought" has also spawned--that of which it should be ashamed--in yet another of your asinine assumptions about what I loath or otherwise in regard to the foundations upon which I have been built. I didn't say I loved myself without bound. I said:

Quote:

I love the tolerance that the better part of my Western heritage has imbued me.

Now, if you read in that sentence something along the lines of "loathing of the foundations upon which I have been built," then the question arises that either 1) yours is a lack of reading comprehension, or 2) yours is a lack of reading, period, in favor of the thoughtlessly drawn asinine assumption about the person with whom you're arguing. Which is it?

Your introduction of race into the discussion is not just your paranoia. Your introduction of race (you didn't introduce gender) into the discussion is verily and absolutely just your race paranoia. Is this something you're quite proud of as well?

You, Finn, are not "Western Thought personified." Your thoughts, however, are a virtual textbook of the unfortunate and shameful legacy of the worse part of "Western Thought."

Now how or why in the world would you hold the belief that if there was a party with real power in the US which unequivocal identified itself as Christian and attempted to institutionalize christian tenants and symbols in American society that I wouldn't be alarmed?

One thing is someone wanting to wear a headscarf in a public institution like Gül's wife would like to do. That's along the lines of someone wanting to wear a crucifix or a kufi or a kippah at the White House. The White House annually observes religious holidays.



I have no problem with that. I certainly don't think that that would call for a military coup, which because Gül's wife wants to wear a head scarf is a possibility in Turkey. The problem I would have is with someone trying to force their religion on me.

Freedom of religion yes, religious intolerance (which to a large degree includes freedom from religion) no. Is that too easy?

For all of your intellectual faults, you are truly a gas.