Always amazed by statements like these, oblivous to reason and fact.

Submitted by Doc Tater (United States), Dec 17, 2007 at 18:45

The capacity to make completely backwards statements, like the assertion that the European Union is Islamizing Turkey, appears to be a uniquely Middle Eastern phenomenon. I guess it's because they didn't bother with The Age of Reason. And I don't want to hear about some "Golden Age of Muslim Scholarship": they had a few decades of relatively humane treatment of the indentured Jews and Christians they used to help them design war machines (was it 700 years ago?), but never overcame their superstitious distrust of secular knowledge for the sake of secular knowledge.

Lest anyone lose track of what's happening in the world, I feel compelled to restate the obvious (at least, I thought it was obvious): Muslims are Islamizing Europe. Admittedly, they're trying to Islamize the whole world, but right now they're obviously making great headway in Europe.

Let's put things back on track for Secular Turk, OK?

If Turkish Secularists had managed to evolve and learn anything useful in the last 75 years, instead of inflexibly clinging to strict interpretations of Kemalist doctrine, Turkey wouldn't be in the situation today of lapsing back into the ignorant fog of Islamism.

I really can't recall how the West could have been involved in crippling Turkey's "Secular Military", since Turkey has the most powerful military in the Middle East, and all of those flashy modern weapons came from the West. I suppose a sore loser could assert that the West crippled the Turkish Secularist Military by refusing to allow Turkey to overwhelm all the lands surrounding Turkey, including Greece and Central Asia, remembering all too well the ruthless example set by the Ottoman Empire and The Young Turks, but that would be like saying that doctors and scientists discriminated against the Polio virus by creating vaccines.

Ianus put it so well when he asked if it matters that a country might be shattered and overrun by Turkish Islamists, or by the somehow less terrible "Secularist" Turkish Military.

Yesterday, in fact, anywhere from 20 to 50 Turkish military planes engaged in attacks into northern Iraq, up to 60 miles over the border, and it won't matter to the poor souls on the ground if the rockets and bombs were launched by Secularist Turks or Islamist Turks. Those people targeted in this attack are hiding in caves today, and all they know is that Turks launched the attack. OK, I know the Iranians didn't want to be left out so they launched some artillery rounds into the same region, but the attack was primarily Turkish.

Erdogan and his AKP have accomplished the birth of a new sort of Islamist political agenda never seen before in either the Middle East or Central Asia. The AKP has managed to establish itself as supporting the Turkish business community, including segments that engage in international trade, and in the process the AKP has managed to win the support of that community in political arenas. This is the first time an Islamist political agenda has focused on any internal or international trade relations beyond the Muslim World's tired old one-trick pony known as "The Oil Weapon", but the foundations of knowledge that supported the AKP's "new deal" are modern and secular.

Once Islamism takes over in Turkey the inevitable retrograde Islamist cultural evolution will occur, and in a couple of generations the Turks won't be able to keep the water running or keep the lights on. Golden Age of Scholarship, indeed.

In other words, Secular Turks were given a chance at stepping into a modern, free world, but they just couldn't hack it. SO, DON"T BLAME US.

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