ALL ABOUT TURKISH ELECTIONS
Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

American Chronicle, CA
rticle.asp?articleID=32893
July 23 2007

Yesterday evening I called Hakan, who originated from Rize lives
in Istanbul; he was one of my university students, 11 years ago. I
wished to know his intention of vote in today’s Turkish parliamentary
elections. Hakan was always a secular and pro-Western young man with
great consideration for Kemal Ataturk; I never saw him praying, and
even I do not know whether he truly knows how to do so. And it does
not matter!

As I have lived many years in Egypt, Hakan has been one of my litmus
papers, and an email friend who keeps sending me nice pictures from
Turkey’s south-western coasts where he loves constantly spending his
few days of summer recreation and relaxation.

He and his wife in bathing suits with part of the wonderful Kas
coast as background would look like an Italian couple in Capri; not a
single sign of Islamic headscarf, separate beaches for men and women,
and other similar barbaric attributes of the southern, wrong, side
of the Mediterranean. Hakan has nothing in common with the comical
Egyptian and Moroccan businessmen, who interrupt a conversation just
to go pray ….. at the ‘correct’ moment!

I knew that Hakan strongly criticized Turkish bureaucracy, and any
other existing measure or procedure that does not allow Turkey to
dethrone South Korea as Asia’s leading tiger. The sky is the limit
for Hakan who runs his own business in the booming ICT sector in
Turkey, while being the Managing Director of another, even larger ICT
company. I was aware that he knew Mr. Mustafa Sarýgul, a brilliant
statesman who represents the younger generation of the CHP, People’s
Republican Party, the main opposition party, and clashed repeatedly
with Deniz Baykal, the present leader. As a matter of fact, I called
Hakan only to confirm what I was assuming. And as it usually happens
in similar cases, I was assuming a lot……

When I asked Hakan whom he would vote today for, he nonchalantly
answered ‘whom else?’. I insisted, and I simply heard the name of
the incumbent, Islamist, Turkish premier! I was astounded because
I could expect anyone else, from the Nationalists of Prof. Bahceli
to CHP through Anavatan Partisi (the right wing party founded by the
late President Turgut Ozal, and run once upon a time by Turkey’s first
female Prime Minister, Prof. Dr. Tansu Ciller) or even some independent
candidates, but certainly never AKP, Turkey’s Islamist Party. Hakan
did not spend much time to explain to me that he was not either a
practicing Muslim or a supporter of some barbaric and cannibalistic
Arab tyrannies where the notion of Freedom does not exist, as people
are born as slaves and die as slaves, living in-between as just stupid.

All that Hakan explained to me was at the antipodes of the arguments
of Turkey’s 10 – 15% practicing Muslims, who truly intend to vote for
Erdogan hoping for a new Islamic state that would eradicate Israel,
bring "justice" to the Palestinians and the Iraqis, etc.

Westernized Turks and Western Contradictions

Many ambiguous political choices and schemes, devised by various
influential policy making factors in parts of the Western world,
have already been clearly perceived and understood by part of the
Secular Democratic establishment of Turkey.

There has been an evident anti-Turkish policy evolving around the
following axes:

– Adhesion of Southern Cyprus in the EU, a politically wrong decision
because of the island’s division, and the Southern administration’s
partial and ulcerous, Anti-Turkish policies within the EU (something
that could have been expected).

– Revival of the anti-historical and politically incomprehensible
literature about the so-called Armenian ‘genocide’ – which consisted
in a series of directives issued by another political regime (the
Ottoman Empire – diametrically opposed to the Turkish Republic) that
had nothing to do with a mythical ‘genocide’ (as it simply imposed
relocation to Armenian populations that were active against their
own country when the Ottoman Empire was engaged in WW I), except
it led to massacres of Armenian populations at the hands of Kurds
(indigenous in the areas the Armenians crossed).

– Total disregard of the positive role Turkey can play in pacifying
Iraq, by replacing US soldiers throughout the decrepit country.

– Irresponsible attitude towards the criminal tyrant and warlord
Barzani, the Northern Iraqi oppressor of Aramaeans, Yazidis, Turkmens
and other ethnic groups that are erroneously depicted as Kurds.

Impossibility to control Barzani’s monies and weapons that found way
to the hands of the PKK terrorists.

– European attitude of two measures and two weights towards Turkey.

According to EU criteria, Turkey should join EU before Bulgaria and
Romania did, as more advanced and better integrated with the European
policies and practices. French anti-Turkish biases either by means
of political declarations of the supposedly Turkey’s non European
identity or via hindrances put in the adhesion negotiations through
use of irresponsible claims of the erroneously accepted in the EU
Southern Cyprus.

– Lack of European and American coherent policy towards the Islamic
Terrorism that can only be eradicated through implementation of the
same measures Kemal Ataturk promulgated in Turkey before 80 years.

– Lack of European and American coherent policy as regards Iran,
which becomes a major preoccupation for both Turkey and Israel.

– Irresponsible and absolutely improper interference in Turkey’s
inner politics through wholehearted support offered to Erdogan in
the vicious hope of offering pretexts and venues for a later, final
rejection of Turkey’s candidacy.

– Voracious and absolutely unacceptable greed as regards many big and
lucrative Turkish state run companies that they want Erdogan to sell
out – under the scheme of liberalization – so that Western Europeans
start controlling the Turkish state and economy as they never had in
the past.

– Contradictory stance while prohibiting headscarf in European
secondary education schools (notably in France) and supporting an
extremist politician who strives to impose headscarf throughout his
country, Muslim countries, and Muslims allover the world.

– Inconsistency in preferring Islamists who denounce Salman Rushdie and
at the same time honouring the controversial author as British knight.

All these points of Western biases are very well known to Westernized
Turks like Hakan; they are only some of the reasons of an unexpected
attitude. All the reasons – and the logic behind them – for which
many Westernized Secular and Democratic Turks vote for Erdogan we
will analyze in a forthcoming article.

–Boundary_(ID_bQhWfPFQIlXjEzoCSLZ2eA)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress