Re: [A-List] No Taksim May Day in Turkey: 500-900 Demonstrators Detained

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 8:05 AM, Sabri Oncu <sabri_oncu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  > If they are all the same, though, why so much social conflict
>  > revolving around these divisions?
>
>  Good question in one sense, but in other sense,
> it shows a complete ignorance of understanding what is going on in Turkey!

One reason I specifically found this struggle around Taksim refreshing
was that this -- for once! -- didn't revolve around hijab.  I didn't
think that workers would immediately win, but it's a better (or rather
more promising) struggle for leftists than last year's "rallies for
the republic" and this year's AKP closure case.

>  Why do you think I got kicked out when I "insulted" the prophet of the secularists?
>
>  Do you think the islamists would be equally satisfied after kicking me
>  out, had they learned my views about their "prophet"?
>
>  I could have been equally bold to say what I thought about their
>  "prophet", but it just did not happen. Not because I was afraid, but
>  because  there was no occasion in which I found myself to publicly say
>  what I thought about their  prophet!
>
>  One of the things I said about the prophet of the secularists was that
> I thought he had psychological problems, and do you think I think any
>  differently about the prophet of the islamists?
>
>  Indeed, I think Moses had serious psychological problems, too, meaning
>  he was a liar, who knows, maybe for strategic reasons.
>
>  Why the heck someone called God would send him some tablets?
>
>  Why don't I get any myself, and if I claim I did, who would take me
>  seriously in this day and age?

A Japanese equivalent of a symbolic conflict that on the surface
appears to have no material substance might be the long-standing
conflict revolving around Yasukuni, the Shinto Shrine where _eirei_
("heroic spirits") of soldiers who perished in WW2 are enshrined.  The
Right worship it; the Left dissent from the worship.

The conflict over Yasukuni is at bottom not a religious conflict,
though -- not even a "nationalist vs. internationalist" conflict,
though the Right claims the mantle of nationalism and the Left
foolishly let it wear it.  It's a conflict over whether Japan is to
continue to be a servant of the USA or to establish a new relation
with other Asians.  The Japanese officials' insistence on visits to
Yasukuni is meant to keep Japan as an odd man out in Asia, politically
and militarily dependent on the USA, no matter how much Japan gets
economically integrated into Asia.
-- 
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>