Turkey


Richard Wiig

Recommended Posts

MSK -- I should update you on the number of 'libertarian Muslims' I have come across on Twitter. One is an American, a real libertarian and a real, life-long Muslim. His address on Twitter is https://twitter.com/#!/abuhatem -- I have to remind myself to let our LM know about Abu Hatem - and more about the crowds of folks he could find discussion and understanding with.

Update on the Freedom and Justice Party "businessmen" who are as much Republican as they are Ikhwan (MB), according to a report that got some scorn from you. I dug a bit deeper, and sure enough, many of the prominent new FJP MPs in the Egyptian parliament are an amalgam of pro-business, pro-economy, get-the-gov-out-of-business-free-market+, devout Muslims. There is whole class of older gents who were barracked or exiled by Mubarak. When not in prison they generally did two things; joined and worked as volunteers for the social services (charity hospitals, etcetera) that MB members paid for in the communities across Egypt; got busy in business. Many doctors in those ranks, many entrepreneurs. Socially conservative, determined to make money, against the army being in business, demanding de-regulation and an Islamic banking alternative to be allowed. Often as vile towards Israel as Bob is towards the Arab nation.

I know it sounds odd, and these groups within are nowhere near pervasive (the Nour party of course has the Hardcore -- a weird version of righteous legislators. Kind of reminds me of the Virginia legislature with a rump of Hardcore Transvaginal Express Christian overlords-in-training) ... but it is real. Odd but true. And, surprise surprise, Americans are talking to the MB/FJP, because I guess, they will be the Government of Egypt once the supreme military council steps aside later in the transition.

Edited by william.scherk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have to remind myself to let our LM know about Abu Hatem - and more about the crowds of folks he could find discussion and understanding with.

Abu Hatem? Sounds like a joke name, at least in English. Why not Abu Lovem? Anyway, we had another thread about libertarian Muslim stuff that I started quite a while back.

http://www.objectivi...ndpost&p=132156

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting William:

I ran across this "quote" from the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan:

mosque-turkish-pm-erdogan-quote.jpgHave you heard anything reliable about his health?

Adam

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I found the article hilarious. Does anyone here want to explain why they think that there is a push to reduce the school age of compulsory schooling? Why they'd have a push for more Islamic schools and after all of that, try and explain what the Islamic schools are like in Turkey? Anyone have any ideas? Infidel, as you started this thread, you should do so.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm sure it's not because they're libertarians so want to decrease state involvement. That would be a valid reason. I thought the article gave a likely reason. If there's a more likely alternative, then you'll have to enlighten me. As far as what Islamic schools are like in Turkey, I don't know. I know that I hope they're not like the Islamic schools in Pakistan, which I doubt they are, although I bet they are not amicable toward America, Liberty and Capitalism. Regardless of what they are like though, the trend is the point - not what they are today, but what they are likely to become - what Turkey is likely to become.

Things such as this...

http://www.sundayszaman.com/sunday/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=274468

... do not look good.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Michael, was there something wrong with my response to Libertarian Muslim?

No.

I just saw it.

I normally don't take so long to approve moderated posts, but the proliferation of sniping and all the hatred over time has put this chore really low on my priority list. I neither attend to it frequently, nor pay much attention when I do.

This one escaped me until now.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This discussion is like playing cards without cards. Libertarian Muslim, do you want to have a conversation?

If so, I am on Twitter yapping with Muslims of all kinds every single day ... @wsscherk

If not, enjoy your time responding to the dullardly, one-eyed Commander Infidel.

Edited by william.scherk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Yes, we can't all match the erudite wit of William, or possess the flair and pizzazz to make it on twitter, but, while William is dazzling - and being dazzled - with tales such as the Brotherhood being Egypts next best thing since Adam Smith, and probably sliced bread to boot, the singular-minded notice that the jihad rages on. It isn't one-eyedness that enables me to see that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I'm sure it's not because they're libertarians so want to decrease state involvement. That would be a valid reason. I thought the article gave a likely reason. If there's a more likely alternative, then you'll have to enlighten me. As far as what Islamic schools are like in Turkey, I don't know. I know that I hope they're not like the Islamic schools in Pakistan, which I doubt they are, although I bet they are not amicable toward America, Liberty and Capitalism. Regardless of what they are like though, the trend is the point - not what they are today, but what they are likely to become - what Turkey is likely to become.

Things such as this...

http://www.sundaysza...n?newsId=274468

... do not look good.

Actually, that's the exact reason. The State controls everything with primary education and doesn't allow parents to choose their children's education curriculum. Some parents want to home school, some parents want to include a religious education in their children's upbringing etc.

And no, they won't be like religious schools in Pakistan, this is Turkey we're talking about, they're a very educated and proud nation and they won't ever accept such a thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

LM, I have the Commander on ignore, so I see only your fitfull attempts to correct his moral myopia.

If I gave a donation to your favourite charity, will you enjoin discussion with a non-maniac, a non-SOLOite Islam-hater?

Not that I will slash my wrists or push a wall over onto homosexual criminals or anything if you do not respond, but I wonder: why are you talking to Richard Wiig.

Edited by william.scherk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

LM, I have the Commander on ignore, so I see only your fitfull attempts to correct his moral myopia.

If I gave a donation to your favourite charity, will you enjoin discussion with a non-maniac, a non-SOLOite Islam-hater?

Not that I will slash my wrists or push a wall over onto homosexual criminals or anything if you do not respond, but I wonder: why are you talking to Richard Wiig.

William I sincerely apologize if I seem to have ignored what you have said. I do appreciate your comments and would love to discuss more with you. I don't really use twitter though, what would you like to discuss?

Thanks,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I will DM you with some links and comments you may have missed. I know you do not spend much time here. Turkey and its complex cultures cannot be reduced to Islam or this or that. Even 'Turkishness' is in dispute, though insulting it can get you jail. Turkey is still investigating its lengthy 'Plot of the Generals' which eventuated many arrests, including many journalists, some one dozen of which remain in detention today awaiting trial, convicted, or subject to inquiry. Erdogan this week again raised the idea of a change to Turkey"s constitution that would usher in a French or US style presidency and cabinet.

I like Turks and hope they get through a proper readjustment of the history of the lands they now inhabit. I wish more cultural room for Turkey's minorities, a more Yugo-slav notion, and barring that, full integration into the European Union.

Only when Turkey becomes or makes itself become a fully Western style democracy (Plot of the Generals? Kurdish rights under Brussels?) will they become European, however. In Europe those nations who set Turks apart (Germany) from their own societies while allowing them the privilege of work and residency ... they wish to integrate, but I think those two things are on the same course. Slow.

Inevitable to come to religion. As a titularly secular state that has managed to retain if not maintain its quilt of tradition and communities (barring the occasional million or so Armenians, Circassians, Syriacs or other infidel driven from their homes), it deserves our solid support in terms of pure Western self-interest, as a beachhead of enlightenment.

It gets our support in NATO, which is the key to our interest in Turkey.

This is all uninteresting floaty bits on the pot of simmering racialist hysteria that Richard likes, so ... see you back here perhaps sometime for your own evaluation or analysis or run-on sentence.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Emphases added.

The GOP Brotherhood of Egypt

Demonized in the U.S. as radical terrorists, Egypt's Islamists are actually led by free-market businessmen

By Avi Asher-Schapiro

While

often depict Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood as a shadowy organization with terrorist ties, the Brotherhood’s ideology actually has more in common with America’s Republican Party than with al-Qaida. Few Americans know it but the Brotherhood is a free-market party led by wealthy businessmen whose economic agenda embraces privatization and foreign investment while spurning labor unions and the redistribution of wealth. Like the Republicans in the U.S., the financial interests of the party’s leadership of businessmen and professionals diverge sharply from those of its poor, socially conservative followers.

I invite those who are kind of not looking at Egypt (let alone Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen or ugh Libya) for fear of finding out that everything you feared about the Islamist Boogeyman is true, give the article a read. It is meaningful in an Objective-ish way. It is not exactly reassuring, but IDs some actors and lets us better plot the future on our charts.

Update on the Freedom and Justice Party "businessmen" who are as much Republican as they are Ikhwan (MB), according to a report that got some scorn from you. I dug a bit deeper, and sure enough, many of the prominent new FJP MPs in the Egyptian parliament are an amalgam of pro-business, pro-economy, get-the-gov-out-of-business-free-market+, devout Muslims. There is whole class of older gents who were barracked or exiled by Mubarak. When not in prison they generally did two things; joined and worked as volunteers for the social services (charity hospitals, etcetera) that MB members paid for in the communities across Egypt; got busy in business. Many doctors in those ranks, many entrepreneurs. Socially conservative, determined to make money, against the army being in business, demanding de-regulation and an Islamic banking alternative to be allowed.
If anything, Morsi to me sounded like a Jesus Republican in his speech today (carried live by Al-Jazeera), a God-bothered Republican accepting office; the speech was long on Gawd, 'unity' boilerplate, recognition of Egyptian social reality (enduring civil society, non-Muslims) and the margin of maneuver left to him by SCAF ... and not-so-oddly, repeated assurances to women, Copts, secularists and those hoping for a time of stability to usher in necessary economic reforms and reconstruction.

-- this article by Robert Wright appeared in The Atlantic today.

Turkey's 'Islamists' Remarkably Like Republicans

By Robert Wright

When the AKP, the party of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, swept into power in 2002, it was American Republicans, more than Democrats, who viewed this development with alarm. The rise of the AKP, which was sometimes called "Islamist," struck some on the American right as one more manifestation of the Islamic fundamentalism that, post-9/11, was viewed as the main threat to America's security.

But since arriving in Istanbul more than a week ago, I've been struck less by the parallels between AKP and the Muslim Brotherhood than by the parallels between AKP and the Republican Party. The analogy really hit home a few nights ago as I was having dinner (at a restaurant with a nice view of Istanbul, as my cell-phone photo attests) with a Turkish friend of mine whom I hadn't seen since college.

He is the CEO of a Turkish construction and energy firm, and he is the demographic opposite of the Turks who, according to stereotype, constitute Erdogan's political base. They are lower income and very religious, whereas my friend is affluent and almost militantly secular.

But on balance, he's reasonably happy with the past 10 years of Erdogan's rule, because Erdogan is by and large a free marketer, favoring low barriers to trade and a smaller government role in the economy. My friend is no cheerleader for AKP, and he has his complaints, but while listening to his surprising tolerant view of Erdogan it hit me: Turkey's current government, like the Republican party, rests on two seemingly paradoxical pillars: the affluent commercial class and lower-income, religiously conservative voters.

There are even parallels between the specific social issues that AKP champions and the issues Republicans champion. Erdogan wants to ban abortion, and he thinks the educational system should be more amenable to expressions of religiosity in the classroom. In his case, the big issue is head scarves, which had long been banned in Turkish universities but in the AKP years have started showing up there.

There are differences, to be sure, between AKP and the Republicans. Republicans align with many lower income religious voters on social issues, but they haven't delivered much in the way of economic goods to that part of their base. (Hence the famous question, "What's the Matter with Kansas?") The AKP, in contrast, has brought material benefits to lower income voters, including energy subsidies and, as a local lawyer explained to me over lunch on Thursday, improved access to health care. (Trivia for any of you who read an earlier Turkey dispatch: This lawyer is the woman who begged to differ with my estimate of Istanbul's head-scarf density, an intervention that led to our meeting for lunch.)

[ ... ]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

Here's the video to the last post.

Gorgeous music.

Here is a video of the piece without the political message.

I believe that precisely because people like Fazil Say manage to develop and exist within the Islamic world, the backwards side of that culture is ultimately cooked.

We are seeing a strong push-back right now by fundamentalists, and they should be ashamed of themselves for imprisoning Fazil Say. They need to be exposed and resisted. But the story behind the development of such a rich culture in the Islamic world as Fazil Say represents should not be ignored.

That culture--the modern Islamic society integrated with Western values--will ultimately win out in those parts. It takes a long time and a social structure to operate in to learn how to play piano like that. So that is a sign to me that this culture is too ingrained for an easy defeat by the fundamentalists.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Apropos, things are exploding in Turkey.

Britons warned to steer clear of Turkey as 1,700 protesters arrested after riots rock the country for a third day
By SUZANNAH HILLS
2 June 2013
DailyMail

From the article:

The Foreign Office has warned against travel to various parts of Turkey except in cases of emergency following another day of rioting.

Tens of thousands took to the streets in the country’s four biggest cities yesterday – the third day of anti-government protests – with demonstrators clashing with riot police, who repelled them with tear gas.

The unrest initially erupted on Friday when trees were torn down at a park in Istanbul’s main Taksim Square under government plans to redevelop the area. But they have widened into a broad show of defiance against the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the main secular opposition party for inciting the crowds, and said the protests were aimed at depriving his ruling AK Party of votes as elections begin next year.

Erdogan said the plans to remake the square, long an iconic rallying point for mass demonstrations, would go ahead, including the construction of a new mosque and the rebuilding of a replica Ottoman-era barracks.


Somehow I think Turkey is going to come through this OK. It might get ugly, but I predict the result will move away from Islamist fundamentalism.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

" But the story behind the development of such a rich culture in the Islamic world as Fazil Say represents should not be ignored."

You can thank Kemal Attaturk and his suppression of Islam for that. What we are seeing in these protests is nothing that hasn't been seen before. The reason they are out there is because of their concern at the ongoing reislamization of their country that has been happening ever since the end of Kemalism. Fazil Say is part of the remnants of what is dying in Turkey. He is part of what cannot exist alongside Islam. Where are the Western leaders denouncing Turkey's Government for its Islamization? Nowhere to be seen. Instead they are denouncing their own citizens for their criticism of Islam, even in the wake of Islamic beheadings in public streets. Islam ultimately can't win, but right now it looks pretty good for Islam in Turkey and bad for the secularists.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fazil Say is part of the remnants of what is dying in Turkey.

Yeah, right.

I forgot that Islam was wiped out in Turkey in the good old days right after the Ottoman empire and then the country became paradise. A regular bastion of freedom, technology and cutting edge capitalism it was.

Yeah, right... again.

I will always hold that when you fight one lie with another lie, you do not make things right. but you sure make them good for the liars.

Michael

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Umm, Turkey did make progress into modernity as Islam waned, or rather, was suppressed. Those protests aren't over nothing. Islam is on the rise again and those protesters are fighting for the gains that they dont want to lose. But they are losing. Who controls the army in Turkey? At one time it was the secularists, but not anymore. Perhaps my comment was a bit rhetorical, but it certainly wasn't a lie. What was gained in Turkey is dying, or at least is being killed off, and it isn't anything Islamic that is being killed. Fazil Say is suffering for his unIslamicness.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now