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All about Turkish Elections

By: Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
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[ Posted On: 2007-07-22 ]

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 Sarigül, 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.

Article Source: http://www.afroarticles.com/article-dashboard

About The Author: Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis - is Orientalist, Assyriologist, Egyptologist, Iranologist, Islamologist, Historian and Political Scientist. Dr. Megalommatis, 49, is the author of 12 books, dozens of scholarly articles, hundreds of encyclopedia entries, and thousands of articles. He speaks, reads and writes more than 15, modern and ancient, languages.

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