kapoo .. Why Erdogan is ‘Armenian-minded’ Tuesday, November 29, 2011 MUSTAFA AKYOL
Seems to me Erdogan's apology was a decent move. Many in Australia were upset at Kevin Rudd's (he was PM then) apology to our Aborigines. i appreciated that one, too.
Last week, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s all-secularist main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), gave a furious speech at Parliament.
He particularly targeted Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, saying: “The mental map of the prime minister of this country is the same with that of the Armenian Diaspora. His job is to protect unity, but he is trying to create divisions in society. He is so wild-eyed that do not be surprised if he imposes the Armenian genocide allegations onto this nation soon.”
What made Kiliçdaroglu so angry was the “apology on behalf of the state” that Erdogan voiced for the massacres that the Turkish state perpetrated against the Alevi Kurdish tribes of Dersim in the late 1930s. (The city is now known as Tunceli. It was renamed by law in 1935.) Most liberals have welcomed Erdogan’s apology, for this is really a first in the Republic’s history: So far, statesmen had always maintained the state makes no mistakes. Erdogan, however, acknowledged not just a mistake but a “massacre,” and even apologized for it.
Of course, sensible people realize this might be the beginning of a new era in which ugly truths in near history, including what really happened to the Armenians in 1915, might be faced. As the cult of the state unravels, the ghosts from the past will emerge from where they are locked by the state.
The tragicomical thing is that Kiliçdaroglu should be more sensitive about the Dersim issue than Erdogan, for he himself is from the city. However, like many other Dersimians, his commitment to Kemalism has blinded him to the crimes of Kemalism. For decades, the Alevis of Tunceli were made to believe that “Atatürk did not know about the massacres,” and the real culprit was the “Sunni prejudice” against them. Consequently, they have become lovers of their own killers. Some Turkish liberals have dubbed this as the Alevi version of the Stockholm Syndrome.
What makes Erdogan more sensitive to Dersim, despite the “Sunni prejudice” that really exists in his party to some extent, is that he represents a segment of Turkish society that has felt oppressed by the state for decades. That is why he has a strong sense of solidarity with the oppressed, which can be seen globally in his support for the Palestinians in Gaza, the Egyptians in Tahrir or the Syrians in Hama.
Within Turkey, too, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have clashed with the Kemalist state establishment, which they see as the cause of many injustices Turkey has suffered in the past century. The suffering of pious Muslims was the AKP’s main concern, but the distance this concern put between them and the establishment created a new space in which all past crimes of the state could be discussed. That is the main reason why Turkey’s liberals, who have very little popular support, have supported the AKP, albeit sometimes half-heartedly. The Kemalists, on the other hand, have blamed the AKP for being not only too Islamic but also too unpatriotic.
In other words, Kiliçdaroglu’s recent outburst on Erdogan’s “Armenian-mindedness” is just one example of a common pattern. Last year, one of the deputies of his party, Ensar Ögüt, had blamed Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu for deserving to be called “Davutyan,” clearly implying an Armenian origin. Canan Aritman, another CHP deputy, had made headlines in 2009 by claiming President Abdullah Gül, a former AKP minister, was a “secret Armenian.”
The truth, however, is less conspiratorial. The AKP, out of its own political values and interests, has challenged the cult of the state that permeated Turkey since the 1920s. And the Kemalists, whose minds are not open to think outside of that cult, cannot just get what is really happening. Tuesday, November 29, 2011
I blanched at your description of Erdogan, don't know much about him, but have never seen him labelled as you did before .. i appreciated him saying Assad should stand down .. a couple more here .. excerpts ..
The west will not prevent a Palestinian state's eventual birth [...]
In Cairo this week Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, proclaimed that "the world is changing to a system where the will of the people will rule". This is self-serving rhetoric from a politician with clear authoritarian tendencies. Nevertheless, Erdogan's assertion that "Israel is the west's spoiled child" is unlikely to be challenged in the Arab world or, for that matter, a swath of Asian countries, where Palestinians are seen as victims of a western-style and western-aided expansionism. .. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=67101333
Syria is important to the US as a major country abutting the Eastern Mediterranean, neighboring NATO ally Turkey, as well as non-NATO allies Jordan and Israel. It also shares a border with Lebanon and with Iraq. It is central to the Palestinian-Israeli struggle and had been part of Turkey’s hopes for a big expansion of regional trade in the Middle East. The Damascus regime is allied with Iran and so is on the wrong side of the geopolitical divide in the region from an American, Israeli and Saudi point of view. The one-party, authoritarian Baath Party has ruled with an iron fist for decades. http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=63840200
Turkey: Erdogan Weighs in on Egypt, Ankara Confronts Democratization Dilemma [...]
"I have a very sincere piece of advice for ... Hosni Mubarak," Erdogan told deputies and party supporters in Ankara, at the same time hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets of Cairo to demand political change in Egypt. "No government can survive against the will of its people. The era of governments persisting on pressure and repression is over ... All of us are mortals, transient things. All of us will die and will be judged on what we have done. Our resting place as Muslims is two square meters of earth." http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=59466155
Note: There is most always more on both sides of any post, too, for those interested in more.
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