I know Islam is the cry-baby of organized religions, but the Turkish state (specially the secular military junta tha runs the show) uses these sort of thought crimes to both silence opposition, and also to pander to the right-wing factions.
This has nothing to do with the secular military. In fact, the current pro-Islamic administration has imprisoned more than 10% of the generals in the military (trial ongoing for four years); and recently started "cracking down" on liberal journalists, NGOs, artists, professors, and so forth. This trial seems to be a continuum of those crack downs.
This. The ongoing "Ergenekon" case is the poster child of jail without prosecution.
We think you're guilty, so we'll toss you in jail. But we can't come up with your charge right now because we're in the process of writing it. But you're a flight risk so it's okay.
I'm fine with people being punished for crimes but a lot of people were kept in for years before they were even charged. Some of them barely maintained their health and sanity. This is the sort of fascist-style suppression AK and Erdogan regularly engage in to make an example of people.
Meanwhile, I get extremely angry when Erdogan and his gang enjoy hero status in the Western press because they have taken steps to allow headscarves in government institutions. They did this not because of human rights, they did it to appeal to their heavily anti-secular constituency. Never mind the Ergenekon case and other horrors that AK is part of!
For a long time, he's vocally sought to increase tax on or ban alcohol, he's also suggested that everyone have multiple children, and recently his administration has spoken out against abortions, saying that he shall ban them. Whether this will happen is doubtful but I hope it sheds some light into what sort of people we're dealing with.
First, I don't see Erdogan et al. being styled as heros in the Western media (except for the self-hating, more left-leaning ones). We know very clear that their politics isn't about human rights but re-islamization.
Second, they run a pretty Nazi-like agenda: pure Turkish blood ideology (when it comes to marriages), supporting demographic pressure, strict top-down government, militarization, ideological intolerance, brutal assimilation of Kurds and other minorities, one can even count their recent anti-Israel doctrine and their attempts to establish themselves as the protector of Muslim interests and their volkisch politics to protect the Turkish immigrants in Western Europe (where they clearly influence politicians of Turkish origin and use their network of mosques and religious institutions to steer "their" population). It's a neo-Osmanic power game similar to what the Nazis did in the 1930s.
To expand on that, the new (now 10 years long) party in control of Turkey's government has been fining and jailing media companies, journalists, and prominent businessmen who don't toe the party line. A common technique is to charge "unpaid taxes" that exceed the value of the person or company's assets.
They have popular support for this. They have been re-elected twice, gaining millions of votes each time.
The crackdown on dissent in the military is important because under the 20th-century regime, the military had the duty of maintaining the secular character of the state and would regularly overthrow governments that seemed to become Islamic. The charge that people in the military are planning to overthrow the government is immediately
believable, but so many people have been arrested and the evidence against them is so thin that it appears like a partisan purge. Here is some commentary:
Turkey has recently begun also arresting officers involved in the 1997 coup against the same Islamic party. They waited ten years to collect the power to do this.
The first statement is backed up by the war on christmas hysteria every yeah as well as christianity is oppressed meme. Both of which are crybaby bullshit.
As for Islams tendency to commit violence, numerous examples can be named, such as the USS Cole, the embassy bombings in Africa and the murders of Theo Van Gogh.
Because its more geopolitics than religion. Christians have been ultraviolent in certain times and places, as have Muslims. Separating politics and religion is like getting the chocolate back out of the milk.
What did Theo van Gogh's assassination have to do with demographics, geopolitics, or relative power differences? The simple fact of the matter is that he was killed for insulting (or more accurately, criticising) a religion.
Are some issues, such as the issues surrounding Israel, a lot more complicated than religious differences? Absolutely. Are all of them? Absolutely not.
Are you suggesting that there are no political issues with Muslim integration in the Netherlands? That there are no power differences between that subculture and the majority culture? No tensions?
Facts are simple for people who choose their frames of reference. Reality, nothing is simple. When I read about the past of Mohammed Bouyeri, I see a displaced kid looking to find something solid to hang on to, to build his life around and gain respect. I think he was misguided and that he chose the wrong path. But I think religion is just a scapegoat; it's a convenient way for people to ignore the underlying social mechanics, to avoid dealing with the issue directly, dismissing a whole group on a prejudicial basis. And the irony is that this prejudicial approach will breed more violence, because it fosters the very alienation that caused this kid to feel like his identity was being attacked.
Theo was not a politician. He insulted Islam, and then he was killed. To attempt to paint any other picture is intellectually dishonest. Where the topic anything other than religion we would not be making any of these excuses.
The "silenced opposition" in Turkey is barely different from a terrorist organization. And most of that opposition is somehow soldiers. High Officers with great clout in the army and we're talking about an army with a habit of coup d'etats every 10 year.
> How do you prevent descent from democracy to a repressive society, when the people vote against the rule of law?
There is no such descent I think, it is just that the new ruling classes of the country is more religiously conservative than their predecessors. The old ruling classes were actually more conservative but in racism, totalitarianism and militarism.
> Atatürk tried very hard to pull Turkey out of the Middle Ages.
This is a very common misconception. Modernization of the Empire/Turkey had begun long before Ataturk was even born. He is an important figure in Turkish history for sure but you can't attribute the progress of a whole nation to him.
