The Future of Turkey

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Clarissa

July 20, 2016

What’s really sad about Turkey’s failed coup is that the people very clearly and aggressively rejected it. It’s not just this coup that they rejected. It’s Kemal Ataturk’s entire vision of the country’s future.

Turkey is a magnificent country with a great culture but Ataturk’s ideas are still way to progressive for most of the Turkish people, even now in the 21th century. And Europeans did all they could to make the EU-oriented plan for Turkey’s future look as unappealing as possible.

It’s not Erdogan that’s the problem. Just like in Russia Putin isn’t the problem. It’s that the people refuse to look forward and grasp onto outdated ways of life that keep clashing with modern reality in painful and violent ways.

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9 responses to “The Future of Turkey ”

Anon

July 20, 2016

Did you hear that Turkey has now banned all academics from traveling abroad? I have a couple of friends who went back to Turkey as academics; I hope they are ok.

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 20, 2016
  “Did you hear that Turkey has now banned all academics from traveling abroad?”
  
  It’s a disaster. It’s the death of Turkish scholarship.
  
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cliff arroyo

July 20, 2016

Part of the problem is that Turkey has strong regional cultural divisions that are mostly unrecognized.

Grossly oversimplified, there is at least

The westernized part (Ankara and the Aegean/Mediterranean coast) the population of which in most ways is not that different from Italians and Greeks. Nominal muslims they most treat the religion with the same sort of benign neglect as other western populations do. And they have abismally low birth rates and are losing the war of the crib against the rest of the country.

There are the Turkish hinterlands which are a lot less….. adapted to modernity and not very secular and very attached to hierarchical religious and cultural values. Higher birth rates than the westernized turks. These are Erdogan’s people.

There are also the Kurds who make the hinterlands look positively progressive. Over religious (and prone to crime when they emigrate – “Turkish” criminals in Europe are almost invariably Kurds) they also have the highest birthrates in the country and unless something drastic happens the country will be Kurdish majority in a few generations.

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cliff arroyo

July 20, 2016

In a sense, Iran and Turkey have spent the last 20 or so years becoming mirror images of each other.

Iran has a population chaffing under the rule of a bunch of theocratic fossils. A secular modern Iran ready for participatory democracy and modernity is straining to break free. It would be interesting to see what direction the country would go without the greybeards breathing down their neck and trying to make them not think bad thoughts.

Turkey has a population chaffing under the remnants of secular rule and longing for despotic theocracy so they can free themselves of the burden of choices and the possibility of success (and failure).

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 20, 2016
  
  An interesting parallel. It might just turn out that Iran has a more hopeful future than Turkey.
  
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el

July 21, 2016

I spent a handful of years living in Turkey, and I’d like to take a little of your time discussing how Turkey went from a typical Eastern European country to the emergent Islamist state it is today.
(This piece is by Sean-Paul Kelley – Ian)
http://www.ianwelsh.net/what-happens-now-that-the-turkish-coup-has-failed/

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1. Clarissa
  
  July 21, 2016
  
  Please, whatever you do, don’t quote Ian Welsh’s blog here. The fellow is very sick and should be left in peace for the illness to run its course.
  
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  1. el
    
    July 21, 2016
    
    \Please, whatever you do, don’t quote Ian Welsh’s blog here. The fellow is very sick and should be left in peace for the illness to run its course.
    
    The article wasn’t written by him, but by Sean-Paul Kelley. I read it and it rang true, based on other things I read about Turkey. Since Sean-Paul Kelley called Turkey his second home and lived there – “spent a handful of years living in Turkey” – I thought his take would be interesting.
    
    Of course, if you wish, I won’t link anything from Ian’s blog.
    This article may be the pearl in the mud, though.
    
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el

July 21, 2016

Regarding Turkey’s women, the change is coming:
http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.co.il/2016/07/more-on-future-of-womens-rights-in.html

The article echidne links to gives the most info.

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