Comments on: Turkey’s referendum: the path to tyranny

By: Ymar Sakar

Ymar Sakar — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 07:05:06 +0000

“I think of the many good Turkish officers I served with and their families. Culturally, they were modern, forward looking people almost as Western as I am. Sadly, history does not seem to be going in their direction.”

CDR’s blog during 2003 and OIF was interesting as a pro war and patriotic one.

Of course, people who like to use other people’s authorities as their own mantle of righteous will often deceive people. They do so by failing to note that Japan was Westernized before WWII. The US navy had great relations with Japan pre WWI, and naval attaches and exchanged happened regularly.

Sadly, history wasn’t going in the direction of peace in Japan.

By: OM

OM — Thu, 20 Apr 2017 05:08:09 +0000

From someone who actually knows something about Turkey/

https://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/

Recommended by cdr salamander

http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2017/04/dismal-thoughts-about-the-turkish-referendum.html

By: Yankee

Yankee — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 00:19:12 +0000

Turkey’s an odd country, with parts of it European, and the rest Asian. And before modern Turkey, there was the long history of the Ottoman Empire, then the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire before that, and then earlier still all the clashes between the ancient Greeks and the Persian Empire. But that deals with the geography only, since the Turks were relative late-comers to that land (around 1000 AD, from Central Asia).

Turkey has also had conflicts with Greece, Armenia, and Russia in the recent past. (And they all have long memories in those parts.)

By: Geoffrey Britain

Geoffrey Britain — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 15:08:41 +0000

Mark Steyn, April 16th 2007 “Who Lost Turkey?”,
“Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, there have been two Turkeys: the Turks of Rumelia, or European Turkey, and the Turks of Anatolia, or Asia Minor. Kemal Ataté¼rk was from Rumelia and so were most of his supporters, and they imposed the modern Turkish Republic on a somewhat relunctant Anatolia, where Ataté¼rk’s distinction between the state and Islam was never accepted. In its 80-year history, the population has increased from 14 million in 1923 to 70 million today, but the vast bulk of that population growth has come from Anatolia, whose population has migrated from the rural hinterland to overwhelm the once solidly Kemalist cities. Ataté¼rk’s modern secular Turkey has simply been outbred by fiercely Islamic Turkey. That’s a lesson in demography from an all-Muslim sample: no pasty white blokes were involved.” [my emphasis]

That dynamic is of course not limited to Turkey.

“One day, millions of men will leave the Southern Hemisphere to go to the Northern Hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory.” Algerian leader Houari Boumedienne speaking at the UN, 1974“

“Migrant crisis: Three million expected to reach EU by 2017”
http://www.bbc.com/news/wor…

“More than 8,000 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean and brought to Italy in the space of just three days over Easter” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…

“2030 – That’s when we take over” – a popular t-shirt slogan worn by Muslim youth in Stockholm

Only the willfully blind deny the obvious.

By: expat

expat — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 14:20:16 +0000

Here is a piece from Der Spiegel with a table showing how Turks in Germany voted:

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/tuerkei-referendum-das-merkwuerdige-wahlverhalten-der-deutschtuerken-kommentar-a-1143582.html

Even if you don’t read German, the table is clear.

The author says that Turks he talked to voted for Erdogan because they didn’t feel accepted in Germany. Apparently, what this vote means for the political system in Turkey was not really an issue.

In other Spiegel articles, they had maps of how the vote went in other European countries: Erdogan won in Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Norway, and a few Balkan countries.

By: JTW

JTW — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 03:07:40 +0000

“powerful executive presidency”.

Obama…

By: huxley

huxley — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 01:19:34 +0000

Historically, Turkey was dragged into democracy, and literacy, by Kemal Ataturk.

Esther: +1.

By: huxley

huxley — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 01:16:07 +0000

One of the reasons I supported the Iraq War was the hope Iraq could be a model for other Muslim nations to enter the post-WWII international order, which, however imperfect, has provided a way for dissimilar, antagonistic nations to coexist.

We don’t know if the Iraq experiment was doomed to fail. However, once Obama was in power, he and the Democrats promptly set up that failure by withdrawing almost all support at once.

However, left to their own devices, we find Muslim nations inevitably devolve to the Islamic template of a barbaric, authoritarian supremacism.

It’s not a mystery why this happens if you read the Koran and the history of Islam.

Big Maq, if you are there, this is why I am so down on Islam. I’m not a naturally bigoted person. I would love to embrace Islam as another jewel in the crown of human spirituality.

For that matter Islam is not lacking in spiritual gifts. Rumi, the Sufis and all that.

But at the social and political level, Islam heads off into horror like other supremacist belief systems. WWII Germany and Japan leap immediately to mind.

Malaysia and Indonesia are supposed to the great Muslim exceptions and they sort of are. For now.

But once upon a time Turkey was such an exception.

By: expat

expat — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 00:37:36 +0000

You also have to remember that there is a geographic divide in the vote. The cities, where the most successful and educated live, don’t support Erdogan. The rural areas do. From what I’ve read there has been some migration of rural types into the cities in recent years and they haven’t given up their tribal customs. They are probably looked down upon by the Attaturk Turks.

There was a German news report yesterday about the Turks here. One group of non-supporters interviewed seemed to be mostly middle-aged men who a had probably established an acceptable life here and are comfortable living under a secular government. The avid pro-Erdogan types seemed to be mostly young activist types. I suspect Erdogan has been shipping his Imams to Germany ti rile them up. A few years ago, Erdogan visited Germany and gave a talk telling Turks here not to assimilate.

By: parker

parker — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 23:38:17 +0000

Erdogan is making a mistake. As noted, the vote was a squeaker and the results highly questionable. Erdogan will need to exercise total control and this will ultimately result in a weakened economy. We have decided to cross Istanbul off our bucket list. Nothing like an Islamist state to discourage tourism.

Frog,

I remember the incident you linked. Time to boot Erdogan out of NATO and find other locations for those nukes. Islamists are so special… 1400 years of intolerance, death and destruction.