FIELDS: Turkey’s abrupt about-face

Israel is the canary in the coal mine, the first to breathe the toxic fumes of political change as the Turks seek to win Islamist friends. The government expelled the Israeli ambassador and cut military ties with Israel after the Israelis refused to apologize for the deaths of nine Turkish “activists” on a ship in a Turkish-based flotilla attempting to break the Israeli embargo to Gaza. Israel has expressed “regret for the loss of life,” and a United Nations investigation concluded that the Israeli blockade was legal and the Israeli commandos acted only in the face of “organized and violent resistance.”

The Turkish reaction sounds like a ploy to signal Islamists that Turkey is on their side. “While diplomats and generals too often ascribe tensions between Turkey and the West to a reaction to the Iraq War,” says Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, “or disappointment with the slow pace of the European Union-accession process, or anger at the death of nine Turks killed in a clash with Israeli forces aboard the blockade-challenging Mavi Marmara, in reality Turkey’s break from the West was the result of a deliberate and steady strategy initiated by Mr. Erdogan upon assuming the reins of government.” Mr. Erdogan emphasized his secularism initially and Western officials, eager to believe him, ignored his record and his party’s ties to Islamist ideology.

“Thank God Almighty,” said Mr. Erdogan in 1994, when he was the mayor of Istanbul. “I am a servant of Shariah.” His favorite newspaper, an anti-Western daily, espouses “neo-Ottomism,” celebrating Turkey’s imperial past in contrast to Attaturk’s modernism. Many in the West hailed his reduction of the army, but he destroyed the check-and-balance role of the military without putting a civilian alternative in its place. The prime minister has locked up without charges secular officers, journalists and opposition leaders

When a young populist politician in 1999, Mr. Erdogan ran afoul of Turkey’s constitutionally mandated secularism and was imprisoned for reciting a poem expressing militant Islam: “Minarets are our bayonets, the domes our helmets, the mosques our barracks, and the believers our army.” Many Turks, who have learned that keeping a low profile is the better part of survival, fear Mr. Erdogan was not merely reciting poesy, but speaking his mind and biding his time.


http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/19/turkeys-abrupt-about-face/

I don't understand why you keep posting articles from RW and far-RW sources at a site like this.

more Kurds?

It's a bit of a random bit of hyperbole...

then get back to me.

Here's a suggestion. Go read the post you replied to and get back to me. What you said had nothing at all to do with what the poster you replied to said.

located near the middle east...grunt one for yes, two for no.

After that we delve into the article itself.

ahh hell, explain what you think the article says, why it is bad bad to be a jew in Turkey, and what the article says to you that is invisible to literate people.

I do need sleep, and i get grumpy without it, and i suspect you have not read the article.

You replied to post #1 which said: 'Washington Times is another RW source. I don't understand why you keep posting articles from RW and far-RW sources at a site like this.'

What you replied with had nothing at all to do with what you were replying to.

so in you world of gum drops and candy

1) Turkey did not expel The Israeli Ambassador.
2) There has been no politically motivated diploCRAPtics between turkey and Israel
3) unnamed sources say...(well one was named but that is over 15 years ago)...


Oh and attacking the source, means you acknowledge you just making shit up, instead of disputing it. Now you have to attack dozen's or sources around the globe or admit your a ignorant reactionary idiot.

If you had a shred of skin in this discussion, you would not make crap up.

Either yr having some sort of argument with yrself, or yr just inventing me saying things I haven't said. All I've done is point out the bleeding obvious point that what you posted in reply to the first post you replied to had absolutely nothing to do with what was being said. Not sure how that's 'making shit up' or disputing anything.

Apart from paying attention to what yr actually replying to, I wish you'd quit with the nastiness. There's really no need for it...

ok, we get it, you do not like particular publications or authors. It does not detract from the facts of the article.

No attacks of any kind on my part, and I've got no idea who the royal 'we' is supposed to be. If yr referring to Arutz Sheva, unlike you I don't like extremely bigoted RW publications like that at all.

on edit: What was that you were saying about sources? Or does that only apply to RW sources you use? Bit of a pot, kettle, black moment....


NYT never misses an opportunity to hold Israel to an impossible stand and give arabs a pass


I do not believe that the NY Times ever printed a correction after they perpetuated the Muhammed al Dura hoax. The hoax, itself, was an incitement to violence and incited a number of murders.

Quite frankly, the grey lady has lost her way. I will not weep when the paper finally fails and goes under.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=124x369800#369802

fyi, very few publications post 'corrections' just because conspiracy theorists think they should....

I cite a specific example of the shoddy journalism of the NY times, pointing out a specific hoax. You simply state that you do not like a particular news source.

FYI: Responsible publications post corrections when they get the facts wrong. Conspiracy sites like Electronic Intifada do not post corrections because they would end up posting more corrections than actual "content" when they are not busy being arrested for ties to terrorists.

Where did you manage to get 'you simply state that you do not like a particular news source' from me pointing out to the other poster that what they said in reply to another post had nothing at all to do with what the DUer they replied to had said?

FYI: Responsible publications don't publish bigoted and hateful crap about other groups of people. You appear to see Arutz Sheva as a responsible publication, and also think that because you don't agree with something, it becomes a 'hoax'. I hope you can see why you can't be taken seriously when it comes to trying to tell others what's responsible when it comes to the media...

you seem to cling to any factoid and myth that perpetuates your pre-conceived notions that somehow Israel is the bad guy. Because you want to believe that there was a "massacre" in Jenin, you do not accept the established facts that the faux "massacre" never actually occured.

I hope you see why I cannot take you seriously.

Interesting to see Erdogan has a long history of anti-semitism and this is not some new phenomenon.

I was getting it mixed up with the Washington Post there for a second, but then went and took a look and see what you mean...

Though I think the Moonies have sold it.

Still, they are proudly and unapologetically conservative RW.

and while you are to much of a tight tush to learn anything, perhaps those around you can describe what the results come up with.

Learning is painful, if you dead set against it, so it best come from someone you are familiar with, sure it not change the facts...but you are interested in sources apparently, not facts.'

A classic, the facts suck so much i cannot defend so i prevaricate (pass the buck in case you not familiar with 6th grade vocabulary)

Or why you are insulting me.

For someone so quick to critique others' intelligence you are amazingly inarticulate in presenting your own argument.
No one here has any idea what your point is.

The PKK are a terrorist group that the Turks have been openly slaughtering. So does this make the WT more or less trustworthy in your somewhat discombobulated opinion?

I can only assume that you find the article to be factually correct and therefore you must rely on attacking the messenger.

...and beyond.

By not following through on campaign promises, instead continuing and expanding on the polices of the previous administration, the current one has come dangerously close to completing the total polarisation of the Middle East.

Wind down in Iraq, Afghanistan? My arse. Repositioning for fresh conflict in Iran and Pakistan is how it looks to me and much of the rest of the world - Including surprise bloody surprise Turkey and Egypt.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Turkey invades another sovereign nation. How is that Karl Rove's doing? Turkey is nothing more than an inert element, looking for a catalyst by the way of the US foreign policy that it cannot act independently on its own? Do you know how US-centric and racist that sounds? That no one acts without the US' OK?