Job Discussion Forums

hotncold · Joined: 28 Mar 2006 Posts: 7

The glee with which some people, who think of themselves as liberals, talk about a military coup, is frankly disturbing.

As others have pointed out - Mark Mardell and others at the BBC News page, for instance http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2007/07/the_general_line.html - the AK Party has simply failed to carry out any radical Islamist actions and indeed has carried out far more progressive reforms than any Turkish politician since Ataturk. Even their adultery law was meant to punish men, who traditionally avoid any legal or social penalty from divorce - see Ataturk for example, who divorced his wife in one go, and then hypocritically called the law by which he did so "misogynistic."

Y'all don't have to live in Turkey if you don't like the Turks - and most of them are muslim. If you want the military to run things, keep the "Islamics" down, and drink alcohol and party - there's always Riyadh and other places. If you want to live in a secular democracy with a largely muslim population, stay in Turkey.

And yes, it was Reuters who was reporting that the Armenians, some Alevis, and Greek Orthodox minorities largely supported the AK Party as respecting their rights - and as one EU politician (and Gul echoed him) said dryly: "Enacting reforms to absorb the EU legal code hardly seems to be the first step towards constructing a 'Shariah state.'"

Otherwise, get back to getting pissed and self-absorbed, ESL teachers, and don't worry about respecting or disrespecting the people you live amongst - after all, you can leave when you want, and the people who live here will have to live with the military regime which you want to defend your lifestyle - and not those of the majority of Turks.[/url]

comrade in arms · Joined: 01 May 2007 Posts: 61

Technical mishap!

comrade in arms · Joined: 01 May 2007 Posts: 61

yaramaz · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 12:14 pm Post subject:

I don't think anyone here actually called for a military coup or military regime. I certainly prefer a democratically elected moderately Islamist outward-looking group to isolationist, militaristic, nationalistic ones who think they have more of a right to be in power simply because they are secular. If the majority of Turks feel they AKP suits their needs then they have every right to be in power. We can't dismiss their opinions just because they are not exactly the same as us. A lot of foreigners have a very limited view of Turkey since we mainly deal with educated, western Turks who have enough money to pay for private courses, private kolejs, private unis. We usually only hear about the Other Side of Turkey from them and this view is so full of classism and subtle racism that we can't disentangle fact from prejudice so easily as we might think.

Turks living outside of this narrow parametre are not ignorant k�yl� barbarians trying to drag it all back to the village with full on sharia law and burqas for all. I spent two years in the conservative heartland and knew a lot of people who epitomised AKP supporters (hell, I taught Abd G�l's brother in law French for a while) and they were smart, often quite well educated, thoughtful, and had very good reasons for believing whatever it was they believed. And I respect them for that even though I didn't always agree.

Listener · Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 140 Location: Istanbul

Alevis themselves claim to be persecuted here. I remember reading an article last year about how there was an Alevi group with a case before some international body (European Court of some kind? help me out here?) because they wanted to be able to exempt their kids from religious ed, because the curriculum is based on Sunni beliefs and I THINK I remember that some Alevis claimed their kids had some other problems in the classes in some areas. Sorry, my memory is fuzzy on this.

007 · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 10:59 pm Post subject:

yaramaz · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:10 am Post subject:

Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be the Prime Minister, not President.

Listener · Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 140 Location: Istanbul

Isn't the Religious Ed Program designed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs? I could be wrong, of course.

tararu · Joined: 07 May 2006 Posts: 494

007 · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 8:16 am Post subject:

Golightly · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2007 9:20 am Post subject:

The Alevi culture sees itself as very distinct from the alawite culture it originated in, and incorporating ideas that are ethnically Turkish. To describe it as being the same as alawi is bit like saying that Quaker ideology is the same as Calvinism.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alevi
There is an agenda with certain Milliyetci and conservative Sunni groups to paint alevis as being the same as the Shia extremists who flagellate themselves with metal whips and so on.

tararu · Joined: 07 May 2006 Posts: 494