Will he or won't he?
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is deciding whether to stand for President of Turkey. This is worrying as his Islamist tendencies go against the principles, the Six Arrows, on which Kemal Ataturk founded the republic.
The Six Arrows were republicanism (moving away from the multi-cultural Ottoman Empire to the nation state of Turkey), populism (no class privileges and an introduction of women’s rights including the right to vote), secularism (not only a separation of religion from state but also religion from educational, cultural and legal affairs and a banning of headscarves), reformism (modernising traditional institutions), nationalism (which preserved the independence of the Republic of Turkey and respected the right to independence of all other nations) and statism (whereby the state should regulate the economy and engage in areas where there was no private enterprise).
Mr Erdogan’s wife wears a headscarf. He was imprisoned for reciting an Islamic poem in public which included the lines, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers..." He’s now trying to make out that he’s not as hard-line as people believe and is saying that he won’t bring his wife to official functions. Some compromise!
posted by Whispering Walls at 10:34 am
20 Comments:
Hmmm...Not sure what your point is here, Winchester.
I hardly think that Turkey is a bastion of civil liberties and the upholding of human rights currently.
As for the headscarves, it was only in the 1940s that the Church of England allowed women to enter church with their heads uncovered. What is your point here ?
My point is that Ataturk was a hero and did a great job with the Turkish constitution and with women's rights. Erdogan is likely to make it more Islamist, repress women and make it very unlikely that it will join the EU. I hear what you say about human rights but I must confess to being a general Turkophile, having lived there for a while. I think it's important to have Turkey as a European ally rather than seeing it go the way of Iran.
Fair point, but although I haven't lived there, I see trying to shoe-horn Turkey into the EU, and moving the Eastern border further, is a recipe for disaster.
Are you worried about immigration? Ataturk tried to make the country European. He replaced Arabic script with Roman letters. It is a secular state and I think the West should be more on-side. The French attitude simply fires anti-Western propaganda and makes it more unstable.
I'm pretty relaxed about intra-EU migration, as long as everybody plays by the same rules. But I'm not convinced that the 'Eastern Front' of the EU can have a non-porous border with Turkey included. But then I think the EU is fundamentally anti democratic and serves no useful purpose being the huge size it is.
But that is a much bigger debate !
Hmm..rather worrying..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6568911.stm
I take your point, but do we really persuade them to get their house in order AFTER they get in to the EU, or prevent them getting in until they do ?
That is horrible but in a way underlines the point about how important it is that the country remains secular, otherwise events like this may be more common.
It is a difficult debate. I personally feel Turkey should not become an EU member although like you, WW, I am a turkophile. On the other hand could it not be possible that by accepting Turkey as a EU member, the Union will have a secure border between east and west and could keep islamist fundamentalism at bay? But then not with people like Erdogan. How can we progress with medieval attitudes. Keep your wife locked up and don't show her in public.
This is not what Allah preached.
Any proposals to do a post explaining to your Welsh readers the English obsession with class ? KingLear has done a good one, but he doesn't allow 'anony' comments, and being an ID card 'refusenik' [and also bloody lazy] I can't be bothered with all that 'data harvesting' which being a signed up member of the googleverse entails.
In particular, is there a committee somewhere which decides what the correct word for the smallest room in the house is ? [and no, witn, I don't mean the pantry]
Perhaps it has its origins in the history of our fair nation ? Or in 'chivalry' ? Or is it just a clever way to keep the likes of Beckham and Charlotte Church out of polite society, even though they have lots of money ?
Perplexed of the Welsh Marches..
I suppose that Nancy Mitford is still Class Queen. Have you read Noblesse Oblige?
No, and I'm afraid I won't be, since all this u and non-u stuff is total, complete and utter bollocks, I'm sorry to say..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?xml=/portal/2007/04/17/nosplit/ftkate117.xml
"It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him." - Luckily, not all of us are English..
"For its part, the middle class has always contained those who secretly aspire to promotion to a higher league. For all their attacks on aristocratic languor, it was a section of the middle class that devoured Nancy Mitford's essay on U and non-U, searching for etiquette tips."
"If members of the prince's circle did make all those snobbish remarks - and we should remember that is an "if" - we should hope they are now being told with appropriate royal bluntness that such ugly attitudes are no longer acceptable. Snobs can be re-educated. I had lunch with Alan Clark shortly before he died and as he devoured a starchy pudding, he reflected: "The older I get, the more I am drawn back to my family's working-class roots." For Clark's family - like all families at some stage - had bought its own furniture. If royal hangers-on reflect on that, we might finally be able to leave Shaw's terrible dictum behind."
It's meant to be nonsense...
I am sorry but what is the relevance of all this class stuff. I thought we were talking about Turkey and Erdogan. I must have missed something.
"Ils sont fous ces Anglais" as Astérix would have it.
C'est a cause du fou gallois qui a lit quelquechose chez KingLear
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=449880&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=
Check out the reference to Turkey.
Yikes, a rather prescient post here, methinks..
Thank you for that interesting article about Iran by Peter Hitchens. I don't agree with his comment about Turkey, however. It is not a militant Islamic state. It is a secular state, the majority of whose population is Muslim, and the most progressive Muslim country with regard to women's rights. The generals are very powerful and have a record of toppling governments but the army does not represent radical Islam and is committed to protecting the secular state, hence its recent threat to refuse to acknowledge Erdogan as President.
What is your insight into the military 'voiding' the election result ?
Should we pleased that they are trying to keep out a religious leader, by dint of him not getting a two thirds majority ?
Or is over-turning a simple majority an alarming sign of the military over -stretching their grip on democracy?
I find it all rather alarming to be honest - perhaps you ought to do another post when you've caught up a bit.
I have to wonder - because I really know very little about Turkey - are there provisions in its constitution for "voiding" elections? Even if there are, I tend to doubt they include military involvement. In any case, this controversy appears to boil down to the fact that no matter how "democratic" a country is; no matter how just its constitution and no matter how independent its judiciary, where the military "voids" an election held according to the provisions outlined in that constitution, there has been a break-down in that democracy. And darker forces are at work. The Turkish people can either do what is necessary to stop them . . .. or not. The issues at stake here can't be resolved in a democratic theater because they are rooted in religion. The two, as history has shown, don't work well in double harness. I guess what I'm trying to say is if Turkey's democracy is so fragile that the military has the power to void an election, then it has far larger problems than can be solved by admission to the EU: and far more pressing.
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