Re: [A-List] Turkey & the EU

[Esen Tolga <zabazom@xxxxxxxxx>]

Sabri,

I totally agree what you've written.

Modernization struggle of people of Turkey is about
200 years  older than the EU campaign and the secular
state is the result of that 200 years struggle.

Regards,

Tolga.

--- Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Salaam:
>
> > However, my understanding - please correct me, if
> I
> > am wrong - is that Turkey has a secular
> government,
> > because the Turkish army wants it that way. The
> army,
> > in other words acts as the guardian of the secular
>
> > revolution of Kemal Attaturk.
>
> I don't think this is the case. To an outsider it
> may appear that way but it
> was the army that put us in this weird situation in
> the first place.
> Nationalist, fascist and islamic ideologies were
> encouraged by the army to
> counter the left from early seventies and this may
> have some connection with
> the US strategy of containing "communism" through
> the use of Islam in that
> era as well. Also, after the 1980 coup, the military
> changed the election
> laws in such a way that majority in the national
> assembly does not require
> majority in the elections anymore. AKP, the Islamist
> party, won only about
> 33% of the votes, which according to some is about
> 25% of all registered
> voters when those who did not vote are included, but
> whatever the actual
> support of AKP is, it is not as big as outsiders may
> deduce from the fact
> that they have the majority in the parliament.
> Moreover, majority of the
> Turkish citizenry is quite content with secularizm
> as I see it. There has
> always been a small Islamic fundamentalist base in
> Turkey since way back
> when but I don't think, even after the encouragement
> of the seventies and
> eighties, they constitute more than 10% of the
> current population. That AKP
> received 33% of the votes in the last election has
> other social, political
> and economic reasons.
>
>
>



		
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