FWIW I fail to see how an honest person could disagree with your musings on Turkey. The wilful ignorance in this thread is as amazing to me as it is seemingly pointless.
I went over the top, but I just find it incredibly frustrating when people are more interested in winning an argument than learning something new(arguing that a strict interpretation of Islam isn’t anathema to democracy is the same as arguing that a strict interpretation of Christianity isn’t anathema to abortion, or homosexuality).
Turkey was once the glimmering hope that Islam could be secular, could be (relatively) liberal, and could be progressive. The creeping Islamification under the AKP is both disheartening and worrying - if it can happen in Turkey, it can happen in any Islamic country - and no-one seems to be really all that bothered about it. I mean, Turkey has more journalists in jail that China, or Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or fecking Syria - but apparently democracy is improving?!
What’s really disheartening to me, is that this as much or more a cultural change than “just” a political one. For example, pre-AKP Turkey made massively great strides in opening up higher education and other apolitical male bastions for women. Now all manner of harassment, blocking of both student and teaching positions, and outright theft of people’s work is commonplace. I’ve friends and former colleagues joking about having to prostitute themselves for a job. It’s badly messed up and getting worse, not better. And holy shit I’m glad we decided to live here in Denmark instead.
As for Islam, it’s the believers that matter in this discussion, not the religion itself. And you’d have to be blind and deaf to think the majority in Turkey haven’t been growing increasingly orthodox for more than a decade now. Istanbul is a bit deceptive for a tourist in this respect, because for several reasons a tourist is very unlikely to get a fair impression of it, much less of the country in general. Incidentally it’s also my favourite city in the world, and a very pretty one with an amazing history, so please don’t think I’m trying to discourage anyone from visiting.
I don’t know why we don’t care. Is is the end of the Cold War? Is Turkey no longer so useful? We are very invested in the Mid-East so that makes little sense. Are we so powerless that we refuse to even speak of the issue? Do we place so much faith in Democratic institutions that we ignore what the AKP is actually doing?
I don’t think foreigners appreciate how naive American policymakers are. Our leadership really buys into that high-minded presidential rhetoric, it’s not just for show. Sadly, the real world is a rough place and one where ideals rarely survive first contact with reality. Iraq is a perfect example that.
Re - Democracy and Islam, many people view Democracy as a path to Theocracy. It’s the Iran model, redux, and that’s effectively what Erdogan promised with his Tram Car comment.
Tony Judt liked to call Chicago the great American city, noting that New York was too foreign, too strange, and it only had one foot planted in the United States. I think that’s true of Istanbul as well, it’s a port town that will never be completely Turkish. This is a problem in foreign policy because too often we visit places like Istanbul and we assume they speak for the rest of the country. It doesn’t help that we create the strongest bonds with the most pro-western elements in society. Are they more than a fraction of the greater populace? Do they speak for their country? Tom Friedman makes this mistake all the time.
There’s also a strong Overton Window-like effect associated with this. The more changes the once-fringe manages to see through, the more of their sick stuff becomes “the way we do things” and the less sick their really sick stuff becomes in the eyes of everyone, die-hard opponents included.
I don’t really have the vocabulary to discuss things like these in the way Qt3 usually does it, but… Imagine if the US religion vs. politics discussions around here were about equally extreme things, and that these things didn’t just have a tendency to draw little real political opposition, but also weren’t born out of a religious majority feeling increasingly dis-empowered, but instead by a religious majority feeling (and being, in a very, very real way) increasingly empowered.
Tony Judt liked to call Chicago the great American city, noting that New York was too foreign, too strange, and it only had one foot planted in the United States. I think that’s true of Istanbul as well, it’s a port town that will never be completely Turkish. This is a problem in foreign policy because too often we visit places like Istanbul and we assume they speak for the rest of the country. It doesn’t help that we create the strongest bonds with the most pro-western elements in society. Are they more than a fraction of the greater populace? Do they speak for their country? Tom Friedman makes this mistake all the time.
If anything this is much more true of Istanbul, and has been for several times longer than the US has existed. Major western mass media often give the impression that Turkey is somewhere between Bronze Age tribalism and just shy of, or very early industrialisation. That’s ridiculously wrong in just about any imaginable way of looking at the country (same goes for the Middle East, of which Turkey isn’t a part - just FYI given earlier posts in this thread). But… It does not mean that just because Istanbul and London are pretty much the same sort of place for a visitor, that the country in general - or even the city itself for that matter - is anything at all like the UK in general or London in particular.
In a lot of ways, Istanbul is like a gay bar in the middle of a Catholic cathedral. You totally can find young idealistic socialist anarchists protesting in the streets and having incomprehensible high-brow political discussions, something you’re going to look insanely hard for and mostly in vain elsewhere in the country. Though you might also find that several of them are a decade older than you’d have expected, because you really can end up spending 8 years in prison for being such a person in Turkey (that’s the most I know of personally, not the upper limit, mind). But even so, it’s very much a gay bar in the middle of a Catholic church. The city at large is religious conservative in a way you probably have to be Polish or from the Bible Belt to appreciate - and even that is so much more progressive than most of the country that the city and the country might as well exist on opposite sides of the planet.
If one of the best bits of Istanbul is how thoroughly schizophrenic the city’s culture is (and has been pretty much throughout its more than 2500 year history), the worst bit about Turkey is that its culture really isn’t at all schizo. Unless you count the Kurdish commie minority, but… Turks certainly don’t. And they’re nor really a different culture in most ways. I’m pretty sure you can persuasively argue those guys are as or more socially ass-backwards than Turkey in general, just more inclined to kill people (yes I’m biased. You would be too in my shoes).
EDIT: Actually, this post is probably not a bad example of just how different Istanbul is from the country in general. I’ve lived and worked there for a long time, and married into a family from Istanbul. And it clearly colours how I see Turkey, its modern history, present and likely future.
Soon enough Turkey won’t give a shit about joining the EU anymore. Considering Turkish demographics and economic growth, they are going to surpass most of ‘Old Europe’ the next years/ decades. Blasphemy laws and the possible road to theocracy are entirely irrelevant.
Good luck with religion running a country.
It works pretty well in China. At least for some.
Religiosity is increasing in the region, in a way that is unparalleled elsewhere. I think that’s difficult for most Westerners to understand, we assume our path is both universal and the natural end state of all things.
That may not be true.
If anything this is much more true of Istanbul
Oh, absolutely agreed.
I love your gay bar comparison. Well put, and hilarious.
In the spirit of calling you on your constant bullshit, the current government won 50%+ of the popular vote. Unless you are going to argue that only countries where a single governing party wins 50%+ of the popular vote are democratic?
1931 - Turnout 76.4% .The National Government got 90.1% of the vote, for 68.8% of all voters.
2010 - Turnout 65.1%. The Coalition Government got 59.1% of the vote, for 38.5% of all voters.
Keep drinking your spirits. I’ll keep campaigning for PR.
(Okay, I’m ignoring the war years. You can argue that one if you like, but there ain’t a war on. Next up, you claim there’s only your definition of words!)
Oh Christ, you’re including eligible voters who didn’t vote to define what counts as the popular vote.
No, I don’t believe in your god, or your word definitions, American.
You don’t believe in ‘my’ word definition for vote and voters?
You’re arguing eligible voters, but saying popular vote, and then condescending to Aceris when he points out that you are factually incorrect.
I said I didn’t believe in your faith either. But thanks for acting as assisting to Aceris, disciple of the Church of Thatcher, Christ. The condensation is yours (Spelling intentional). Done here, since you’re determined to insist on the One True Way.
What is this i don’t even…
Drive on brother, drive on.
Bump.
With the protests in in Turkey I thought it was good time to revive this topic.
The secular Turks are minority, and they’re increasingly out of step with the rest of the country. Erdogan won’t flinch, he won’t bend, he doesn’t have to.
If they are truly in the minority, then I am hoping for a military coup. Fundamentalist+democracy= eventual tyranny of the majority that is often worse than your average dictatorship.
When you look at the political map…there’s a fair chance of partition, which could get really nasty.