You're crazy too.Let me know when they're "on the radar", and we'll drone them to death, then nuke em' if that doesn't work
Untill then, freak out all you want
Dhimmis surrender their "radar" when they capitulate and cooperate with the captors.
You are a Muslim and if not, you POST like a Muslim.
That warrants treating you as an apologist for Islam.
Until it's shown otherwise.
You're crazy too.Let me know when they're "on the radar", and we'll drone them to death, then nuke em' if that doesn't work
Untill then, freak out all you want
Dhimmis surrender their "radar" when they capitulate and cooperate with the captors.
You are a Muslim and if not, you POST like a Muslim.
That warrants treating you as an apologist for Islam.
Until it's shown otherwise.
None of the Turkish people I know would have any idea what you're talking about.Thank you....you just proved to me you're crazy
Like I said a Turkey was and probably is different. I have not been there but have studied enough. Many of my friends and family have been there for vacation. Heard its beautiful, but I'm not setting foot in any Muslim country ever again. Have you read about Turkey's history? This is the reason a non Muslim can marry a Muslim. Unfortunately many of the reforms have been reversed. Read this and ask yourself, why did a Muslim nation ABOLISH Islam from its national psyche? Perhaps FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE? The Shah of Iran and his father were very similar rulers before the Islamist animals took over and destroyed the country:
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (pronounced [mustäˈfä ceˈmäl äˈtäˌtyɾc]; 19 May 1881 (conventional) – 10 November 1938) was aTurkish army officer, reformist statesman, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of theRepublic of Turkey. His surname, Atatürk (meaning "Father of the Turks"), was granted to him in 1934 and forbidden to any other person by the Turkish parliament.[1]
Atatürk was a military officer during World War I.[2] Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he led theTurkish National Movement in the Turkish War of Independence. Having established a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His military campaigns led to victory in the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk then embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern and secular nation-state. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory, and women were given equal civil and political rights, while the burden of taxation on peasants was reduced.[3] His government also carried out an extensive policy of Turkification.[4][5][6][7] The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism.
Domestic policies
Mustafa Kemal's basic tenet was the complete independence of the country.[63] He clarified his position:
“ ...by complete independence, we mean of course complete economic, financial, juridical, military, cultural independence and freedom in all matters. Being deprived of independence in any of these is equivalent to the nation and country being deprived of all its independence.[64] ”
He led wide-ranging reforms in social, cultural, and economical aspects, establishing the new Republic's backbone of legislative, judicial, and economic structures. Though he was later idealized by some as an originator of sweeping reforms, many of his reformist ideas were already common in Ottoman intellectual circles at the turn of the 20th century, and were expressed more openly after the Young Turk Revolution.[65]
Mustafa Kemal created a banner to mark the changes between the old Ottoman and the new republican rule. Each change was symbolized as an arrow in this banner. This defining ideology of the Republic of Turkey is referred to as the "Six Arrows", or Kemalist ideology. Kemalist ideology is based on Mustafa Kemal's conception of realism and pragmatism.[66] The fundamentals of nationalism, populism and etatism were all defined under the Six Arrows. These fundamentals were not new in world politics or, indeed, among the elite of Turkey. What made them unique was that these interrelated fundamentals were formulated specifically for Turkey's needs. A good example is the definition and application of secularism; the Kemalist secular state significantly differed from predominantly Christian states.
Civic independence and the Caliphate, 1924–1925
Abolition of the Caliphate was an important dimension in Mustafa Kemal's drive to reform the political system and to promote the national sovereignty. By the consensus of the Muslim majority in early centuries, the caliphate was the core political concept of Sunni Islam.[72] Abolishing the sultanate was easier because the survival of the Caliphate at the time satisfied the partisans of the sultanate. This produced a split system with the new republic on one side and an Islamic form of government with the Caliph on the other side, and Mustafa Kemal and İnönü worried that "it nourished the expectations that the sovereign would return under the guise of Caliph."[73] Caliph Abdülmecid II was elected after the abolition of the sultanate (1922).
The caliph had his own personal treasury and also had a personal service that included military personnel; Mustafa Kemal said that there was no "religious" or "political" justification for this. He believed that Caliph Abdülmecid II was following in the steps of the sultans in domestic and foreign affairs: accepting of and responding to foreign representatives and reserve officers, and participating in official ceremonies and celebrations.[74] He wanted to integrate the powers of the caliphate into the powers of the GNA. His initial activities began on 1 January 1924, when[74] İnönü, Çakmak and Özalp consented to the abolition of the caliphate. The caliph made a statement to the effect that he would not interfere with political affairs.[75] On 1 March 1924, at the Assembly, Mustafa Kemal said
“ The religion of Islam will be elevated if it will cease to be a political instrument, as had been the case in the past.[76] ”
On 3 March 1924, the caliphate was officially abolished and its powers within Turkey were transferred to the GNA. Other Muslim nations debated the validity of Turkey's unilateral abolition of the caliphate as they decided whether they should confirm the Turkish action or appoint a new caliph.[75] A "Caliphate Conference" was held in Cairo in May 1926 and a resolution was passed declaring the caliphate "a necessity in Islam", but failed to implement this decision.[75]
Two other Islamic conferences were held in Mecca (1926) and Jerusalem (1931), but failed to reach a consensus.[75] Turkey did not accept the re-establishment of the caliphate and perceived it as an attack to its basic existence; while Mustafa Kemal and the reformists continued their own way.[77]
On 8 April 1924, sharia courts were abolished with the law "Mehakim-i Şer'iyenin İlgasına ve Mehakim Teşkilatına Ait Ahkamı Muaddil Kanun".[65][78]
The removal of the caliphate was followed by an extensive effort to establish the separation of governmental and religious affairs. Education was the cornerstone in this effort. In 1923, there were three main educational groups of institutions. The most common institutions were medreses based on Arabic, the Qur'an and memorization. The second type of institution was idadî and sultanî, the reformist schools of the Tanzimat era. The last group included colleges and minority schools in foreign languages that used the latest teaching models in educating pupils. The old medrese education was modernized.[79] Mustafa Kemal changed the classical Islamic education for a vigorously promoted reconstruction of educational institutions.[79]Mustafa Kemal linked educational reform to the liberation of the nation from dogma, which he believed was more important than the Turkish War of Independence.
“ Today, our most important and most productive task is the national education [unification and modernization] affairs. We have to be successful in national education affairs and we shall be. The liberation of a nation is only achieved through this way."[80] ”
In the summer of 1924, Mustafa Kemal invited American educational reformer John Dewey to Ankara to advise him on how to reform Turkish education.[79] His public education reforms aimed to prepare citizens for roles in public life through increasing the public literacy. He wanted to institute compulsory primary education for both girls and boys; since then this effort has been an ongoing task for the republic. He pointed out that one of the main targets of education in Turkey had to be raising a generation nourished with what he called the "public culture". The state schools established a common curriculum which became known as the "unification of education."
Unification of education was put into force on 3 March 1924 by the Law on Unification of Education (No. 430). With the new law, education became inclusive, organized on a model of the civil community. In this new design, all schools submitted their curriculum to the "Ministry of National Education", a government agency modelled after other countries' ministries of education. Concurrently, the republic abolished the two ministries and made clergy subordinate to the department of religious affairs, one of the foundations of secularism in Turkey. The unification of education under one curriculum ended "clerics or clergy of the Ottoman Empire", but was not the end of religious schools in Turkey; they were moved to higher education until later governments restored them to their former position in secondary after Mustafa Kemal's death.
Atatürk with his Panama hat just afterthe Kastamonu speech in 1925.
Beginning in the fall of 1925, Mustafa Kemal encouraged the Turks to wear modern European attire.[81] He was determined to force the abandonment of the sartorial traditions of the Middle East and finalize a series of dress reforms, which were originally started byMahmud II.[81] The fez was established by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826 as part of the Ottoman Empire's modernization effort. The Hat Law of 1925 introduced the use of Western-style hats instead of the fez. Mustafa Kemal first made the hat compulsory for civil servants.[81] The guidelines for the proper dressing of students and state employees were passed during his lifetime; many civil servants adopted the hat willingly. In 1925, Mustafa Kemal wore his "Panama hat" during a public appearance in Kastamonu, one of the most conservative towns in Anatolia, to explain that the hat was the headgear of civilized nations. The last part of reform on dress emphasized the need to wear modern Western suits with neckties as well as Fedora and Derby-style hats instead of antiquated religion-based clothing such as the veil and turban in the Law Relating to Prohibited Garments of 1934.
Even though he personally promoted modern dress for women, Mustafa Kemal never made specific reference to women's clothing in the law, as he believed that women would adapt to the new clothing styles of their own free will. He was frequently photographed on public business with his wife Lâtife Uşaklıgil, who covered her head in accordance with Islamic tradition. He was also frequently photographed on public business with women wearing modern Western clothes. But it was Atatürk's adopted daughters, Sabiha Gökçen and Afet İnan, who provided the real role model for the Turkish women of the future. He wrote: "The religious covering of women will not cause difficulty ... This simple style [of headcovering] is not in conflict with the morals and manners of our society."[82]
On 30 August 1925, Mustafa Kemal's view on religious insignia used outside places of worship was introduced in hisKastamonu speech. This speech also had another position. He said:
“ In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey's civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheiks. The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheiks, dervishes, and disciples. The best, the truest order is the order of civilization. To be a man it is enough to carry out the requirements of civilization. The leaders of dervish orders will understand the truth of my words, and will themselves close down their lodges [tekke] and admit that their disciplines have grown up.[63] ”
On 2 September the government issued a decree closing down all Sufi orders and the tekkes. Mustafa Kemal ordered their dervish lodges to be converted to museums, such as Mevlana Museum in Konya. The institutional expression of Sufism became illegal in Turkey; a politically neutral form of Sufism, functioning as social associations, was permitted to exist.[citation needed]
The abolition of the caliphate and other cultural reforms were met with fierce opposition. [75]
Modernization efforts, 1926–1930
President Kemal at the 1927 opening of the State Art and Sculpture Museum.
President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri on 20 September 1928.
Present Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the library of the Çankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara, 1929.
Attending a class at the Law School of theIstanbul Darülfünunu in 1930.
In the years following 1926, Mustafa Kemal introduced a radical departure from previous reformations established by the Ottoman Empire.[88] For the first time in history, Islamic law was separated from secular law, and restricted to matters of religion.[88] Mustafa Kemal said
“ We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and our legal institutions from the bonds which, even though they are incompatible with the needs of our century, still hold a tight grip on us.[89] ”
On 1 March 1926, the Turkish penal code was passed. It was modelled after the Italian Penal Code. On 4 October 1926, Islamic courts were closed. Establishing the civic law needed time, so Mustafa Kemal delayed the inclusion of the principle of laïcité until 5 February 1937.
Ottoman practice discouraged social interaction between men and women in keeping with Islamic practice of sex segregation. Mustafa Kemal began developing social reforms very early, as was evident in his personal journal. He and his staff discussed issues like abolishing the veiling of womenand the integration of women into the outside world. The clue on how he was planning to tackle the issue was stated in his journal on November 1915;
“ The social change can come by (1) educating capable mothers who are knowledgeable about life; (2) giving freedom to women; (3) a man can change his morals, thoughts, and feelings by leading a common life with a woman; as there is an inborn tendency towards the attraction of mutual affection.[90] ”
Mustafa Kemal needed a new civil code to establish his second major step of giving freedom to women. The first part was the education of girls and was established with the unification of education. On 4 October 1926, the new Turkish civil code passed. It was modelled after the Swiss Civil Code. Under the new code, women gained equality with men in such matters as inheritance and divorce. Mustafa Kemal did not consider gender a factor in social organization. According to his view, society marched towards its goal with men and women united. He believed that it was scientifically impossible for him to achieve progress and to become civilized if the gender separation continued as in Ottoman times.[91] During a meeting he declaimed:
“ To the women: Win for us the battle of education and you will do yet more for your country than we have been able to do. It is to you that I appeal.
To the men: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West.[92] ”
In 1927, the State Art and Sculpture Museum (Turkish: Ankara Resim ve Heykel Müzesi) opened its doors. The museum highlighted sculpture, which was little practised in Turkey owing to the Islamic tradition of avoiding idolatry. Mustafa Kemal believed that "culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic."[93] and described modern Turkey's ideological thrust as "a creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal." He included both his own nation's creative legacy and what he saw as the admirable values of global civilization. The pre-Islamic culture of the Turks became the subject of extensive research, and particular emphasis was laid upon Turkish culture widespread before the Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations. He instigated study of Anatolian civilizations--Phrygians and Lydians, Sumerians and Hittites. To attract current public attention to past cultures, he personally named the "Sümerbank" (1932) after the Sumerians, and the "Etibank" (1935) after the Hittites. He also stressed the folk arts of the countryside as a wellspring of Turkish creativity.
In the spring of 1928, Mustafa Kemal met in Ankara with several linguists and professors from all over Turkey where he unveiled to them a plan of his to implement a new alphabet for the written Turkish language based on a modified Latin alphabet. The new Turkish alphabet would serve as a replacement for the old Arabic script and as a solution to the literacy problem in Turkey. When he asked them how long it would take to implement the new alphabet into the Turkish language, most of the professors and linguists said between three to five years. Mustafa Kemal was said to have scoffed and openly stated, "we shall do it in three to five months".[citation needed]
Over the next several months, Mustafa Kemal pressed for the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet as well as made public announcements to the upcoming overhaul of the new alphabet. On 1 November 1928 he introduced the new Turkish alphabet and abolished the use of Arabic script. At the time, literate citizens of the country comprised as little as 10% of the population. Dewey noted to Mustafa Kemal that learning how to read and write in Turkish with the Arabic script took roughly three years with rather strenuous methods at the elementary level.[79] They used the Ottoman Language written in the Arabic script with Arabic and Persian loan vocabulary.[79] The creation of the new Turkish alphabet as a variant of the Latin alphabet was undertaken by the Language Commission (Turkish: Dil Encümeni) with the initiative of Mustafa Kemal.[79] The tutelage was received from an Ottoman-Armenian calligrapher Hagop Dilaçar.[94] The first Turkish newspaper using the new alphabet was published on 15 December 1928. Mustafa Kemal himself travelled the countryside in order to teach citizens the new alphabet. As he predicted, the country's adaptation to the new alphabet was very quick, and literacy in Turkey jumped from 10% to over 70% within two years.[citation needed] Beginning in 1932, the People's Houses (Turkish: Halk Evleri) opened throughout the country in order to meet the requirement that people between the ages of four and 40 were required to learn the new alphabet as mandated. There were congresses for discussing the issues of copyright, public education and scientific publishing. Literacy reform was also supported by strengthening the private publishing sector with a new law on copyrights.
Mustafa Kemal promoted modern teaching methods at the primary education level, and Dewey took a place of honour.[79]Dewey presented a paradigmatic set of recommendations designed for developing societies that are moving towards modernity in his "Report and Recommendation for the Turkish educational system."[79] He was interested in adult educationfor the goal of forming a skill base in the country. Turkish women were taught not only child care, dress-making and household management, but also skills needed to join the economy outside the home. Turkish education became a state-supervised system, which was designed to create a skill base for the social and economic progress of the country.[95] His "unified" education program was designed to educate responsible citizens as well as useful and appreciated members of society.[79] Turkish education became an integrative system, aimed to alleviate poverty and used female education to establish gender equality.
Mustafa Kemal generated media attention to propagate modern education during this period. He instigated official education meetings called "Science Boards" and "Education Summits." to discuss the quality of education, training issues and certain basic educational principles. He said, "our schools [curriculum] should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and to achieve." He was personally engaged with the development of two textbooks. The first one was Turkish: Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (1930). The second, Geometry (1937), was a text for high schools. The Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (Civic knowledge for the citizens) introduced the science of comparative government and explained the means of administering public trust by explaining the rules of governance as applied to the new state institutions.
On 5 December 1934, Turkey moved to grant full political rights to women, before several other European nations. The equal rights of women in marriage had already been established in the earlier Turkish civil code.[109] Women's place in Mustafa Kemal's cultural reforms was best expressed in the civic book prepared under his supervision.[110] Mustafa Kemal said that
“ There is no logical explanation for the political disenfranchisement of women. Any hesitation and negative mentality on this subject is nothing more than a fading social phenomenon of the past. ...Women must have the right to vote and to be elected; because democracy dictates that, because there are interests that women must defend, and because there are social duties that women must perform.[111]
And you just proved to me that you're about as ignorant as a redneck when it comes to the history of Turkey and the Middle East. Like I said, your limited exposure in Turkey didn't count because you A- were in a very secular reformed country, with an anti Islamization culture in it's past, and B- Weren't really in touch with any minorities, so how the fuck would you know what the Muslim majority was doing to them?
Good news is I'm not going to charge you for this free education, dufus. Here's what is happening to all the reforms that Attaturk had brought about. Telling the truth isn't crazy. Ignoring it is:
4 Jarring Signs of Turkey s Growing Islamization - The Atlantic
Turn right at the omelet," said the gas-station attendant. We were standing on the outskirts of Edirne, a small city about two hours north of Istanbul. My Turkish is poor so I turned for help to my Turkish friend.
"Omelet?" I asked.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques constructed by the government since 2002.
"He meant outlet," he said, as in outlet mall. On today's Turkish highways, outlet malls are more common than caravanserais or roadside inns once were on the Silk Road. The malls are just one sign of the economic boom that is bringing western consumerism to the masses. Arriving in Istanbul from one of the phlegmatic economies of Europe or even from the United States is a jolt. Drive around western or central Turkey and you'll see new roads, high rises, and construction sites everywhere. Much of it comes from Middle Eastern oil money, much of it reinvested into industries such as automobile manufacture, textile, and food production. A recent trip revealed a Turkey that is wealthier than ever in its modern history.
And yet, the gas jockey had it right. For the average person, Westernization is about as deep as the difference between "omelet" and "outlet." The Turkish government wouldn't have it any other way. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power for more than ten years, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in charge for most of them. Their goal is change. They want to make Turkey wealthy and Islamic. They have turned from the vaguely socialist policies of their predecessors to crony capitalism, and from the staunchly secular and pro-western policies established by Ataturk, the Republic's founder, to religious and Muslim-world-centered policies. They have abandoned Ataturk's non-interventionist stance for an active role in Egypt, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now Syria.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques built by the government since 2002. The state is planning an enormous mosque, more than 150,000 square feet in size, to loom over Istanbul on a hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Secularists are outraged, and an opposition leader, Republican People's Party (CHP) MP Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, calls this just another step in a process that, he claims, will end in an Islamic republic.
Whither Turkey? Erdogan's visit to Washington last week is a reminder of how important that question is. President Barack Obama has called Turkey a critical ally and has spoken of his friendship for the Turkish leader. Yet Erdogan is trying to change the Turkish constitution from a parliamentary to a presidential system -- with the hope, of course, that he will be the president. His opponent's charge that Erdogan's model is Russia's Putin, a virtual dictator by legal means.
A visitor can only wonder where Erdogan's country is headed. Consider four scenes from the road:
1) Lecturing in a public university on Turkey's western coast -- the country's secular region -- I saw a small but significant number of women wearing headscarves. The government not long ago overturned a ban on headscarves in public places. From the American point of view, that seems like a good thing and a move in favor of religious freedom. Turkish secularists, however, consider it the thin end of a wedge.
2) In Amasya in north-central Turkey sits the graceful Kapiaga Madrasa. It was built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Bayezit II, an enlightened ruler who welcomed Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain in 1492. The octagonal structure is constructed around a central, arcaded courtyard. A visitor encounters what sounds at first like the buzzing of bees. In fact, it is boys studying religious texts.
The day I saw the madrasa I was wearing a baseball cap purchased earlier at a Turkish naval museum. It was decorated with a Turkish flag and a historic warship. The students looked at me with a certain aloof surprise. I didn't realize that I was making a political statement, but my Turkish friend explained that the symbol was nationalist and secular in their eyes.
3) On the way to Edirne, we drove past the exit to Silivri. A summer resort, Silivri is also home to a huge prison. It houses hundreds of top military officers along with journalists, lawyers, and members of Parliament accused of plotting against the government. It is Turkey's answer to the Bastille, the notorious jail for political prisoners in pre-revolutionary France. With 47 reporters incarcerated, Turkey has been called the world's leading jailer of journalists.
4) Arriving in Istanbul at night after a trip to the Anatolian heartland, my friend drove down Baghdad Avenue -- the Rodeo Drive of Istanbul. Rock music and short skirts were on order, not headscarves and religious chanting. Political prisoners seemed far away. But the boys in the madrasa will soon be adults and the women in headscarves will be college graduates. What kind of a country will they build, I wondered, when they come to Istanbul and look up at its grand new mosque? And what will Turkey's future mean for Americans and our own long and troubled quest to build better relations with Muslim countries?
Erdogan resurrects debates of Islamization
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/09/193621.html
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment that his government wants to “raise a religious youth” has touched a nerve in society, fuelling debates over an alleged “hidden agenda” to Islamize secular Turkey.
“We want to raise a religious youth,” said Erdogan, himself a graduate of a clerical school and the leader of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), during a parliamentary address last week.
“Do you expect the conservative democrat AK Party to raise an atheist generation? That might be your business, your mission, but not ours. We will raise a conservative and democratic generation embracing the nation’s values and principles,” he added.
Erdogan’s remarks drew strong criticism from the staunchly secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with its leader calling him a “religion-monger.”
“It is a sin to garner votes over religion. You are not religious but a religion-monger,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accusing Erdogan of polarizing the country by touching its faultlines.
“I’m asking the prime minister: what can I do if I don’t want my child to be raised as religious and conservative?” wrote prominent liberal commentator Hasan Cemal in Milliyet daily.
“If you are going to train a religious and conservative generation in schools, what will happen to my child?” he asked.
Columnist Mehmet Ali Birand also criticized Erdogan this week in an article titled, “The race for piety will be our end.”
“What does it mean, really, that the state raises religious youth? Is this the first step towards a religious state?” he wrote in Hurriyet Daily News.
Erdogan must explain what he meant, otherwise a dangerous storm may erupt and go as far as fights about being religious versus being godless, he argued.
Neither religious nor political uniformity can be imposed on Turkey given regional, ethnic and sectarian diversity in the country, wrote Semih Idiz in Milliyet daily on Tuesday.
He said millions of people “have subscribed to secular lifestyles” even before the republic.
Erdogan’s AKP has been in power since 2002 and won a third term with nearly 50 percent of the vote in the 2011 elections, securing 325 seats in the 550-member parliament.
But since then the influence of the military, considered as guardian of secularism, has waned.
Dozens of retired and active army officers, academics, journalists and lawyers have been put behind bars in probes into alleged plots against Erdogan’s government.
Critics accuse the government of launching the probes as a tool to silence opponents and impose authoritarianism.
Secular quarters argue Erdogan’s conservative government is also step by step imposing religion in every aspect of life, saying many restaurants already refuse to serve alcohol during Ramadan.
They also criticize recent changes to legislation under which religious school graduates will now be able to access any university branch they like, while in the past they had only access to theology schools.
Birand expressed fears that the changes would not be confined to this and would lead to censorship in television broadcasts.
The Turkish television watchdog RTUK “will restrict all kissing scenes; they will confuse pornography with explicit broadcast and all television screens will be made pious,” he added.
“Then will come religious foundations. After them, it will be municipalities. All kinds of Koran teaching courses, legal or illegal, will mushroom.”
Observers say Erdogan’s message contradicts what he had said during a recent tour of Arab Spring countries, in September.
“As Recep Tayyip Erdogan I am a Muslim but not secular. But I am a prime minister of a secular country. People have the freedom to choose whether or not to be religious in a secular regime,” he said in an interview with an Egyptian TV, published by Turkish daily Vatan.
“The constitution in Turkey defines secularism as the state’s equal distance to every religion,” he said in remarks that provoked criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
I'm sure you had to look up how to spell rescind.
None of the Turkish people I know would have any idea what you're talking about.Thank you....you just proved to me you're crazy
Like I said a Turkey was and probably is different. I have not been there but have studied enough. Many of my friends and family have been there for vacation. Heard its beautiful, but I'm not setting foot in any Muslim country ever again. Have you read about Turkey's history? This is the reason a non Muslim can marry a Muslim. Unfortunately many of the reforms have been reversed. Read this and ask yourself, why did a Muslim nation ABOLISH Islam from its national psyche? Perhaps FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE? The Shah of Iran and his father were very similar rulers before the Islamist animals took over and destroyed the country:
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (pronounced [mustäˈfä ceˈmäl äˈtäˌtyɾc]; 19 May 1881 (conventional) – 10 November 1938) was aTurkish army officer, reformist statesman, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of theRepublic of Turkey. His surname, Atatürk (meaning "Father of the Turks"), was granted to him in 1934 and forbidden to any other person by the Turkish parliament.[1]
Atatürk was a military officer during World War I.[2] Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he led theTurkish National Movement in the Turkish War of Independence. Having established a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His military campaigns led to victory in the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk then embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern and secular nation-state. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory, and women were given equal civil and political rights, while the burden of taxation on peasants was reduced.[3] His government also carried out an extensive policy of Turkification.[4][5][6][7] The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism.
Domestic policies
Mustafa Kemal's basic tenet was the complete independence of the country.[63] He clarified his position:
“ ...by complete independence, we mean of course complete economic, financial, juridical, military, cultural independence and freedom in all matters. Being deprived of independence in any of these is equivalent to the nation and country being deprived of all its independence.[64] ”
He led wide-ranging reforms in social, cultural, and economical aspects, establishing the new Republic's backbone of legislative, judicial, and economic structures. Though he was later idealized by some as an originator of sweeping reforms, many of his reformist ideas were already common in Ottoman intellectual circles at the turn of the 20th century, and were expressed more openly after the Young Turk Revolution.[65]
Mustafa Kemal created a banner to mark the changes between the old Ottoman and the new republican rule. Each change was symbolized as an arrow in this banner. This defining ideology of the Republic of Turkey is referred to as the "Six Arrows", or Kemalist ideology. Kemalist ideology is based on Mustafa Kemal's conception of realism and pragmatism.[66] The fundamentals of nationalism, populism and etatism were all defined under the Six Arrows. These fundamentals were not new in world politics or, indeed, among the elite of Turkey. What made them unique was that these interrelated fundamentals were formulated specifically for Turkey's needs. A good example is the definition and application of secularism; the Kemalist secular state significantly differed from predominantly Christian states.
Civic independence and the Caliphate, 1924–1925
Abolition of the Caliphate was an important dimension in Mustafa Kemal's drive to reform the political system and to promote the national sovereignty. By the consensus of the Muslim majority in early centuries, the caliphate was the core political concept of Sunni Islam.[72] Abolishing the sultanate was easier because the survival of the Caliphate at the time satisfied the partisans of the sultanate. This produced a split system with the new republic on one side and an Islamic form of government with the Caliph on the other side, and Mustafa Kemal and İnönü worried that "it nourished the expectations that the sovereign would return under the guise of Caliph."[73] Caliph Abdülmecid II was elected after the abolition of the sultanate (1922).
The caliph had his own personal treasury and also had a personal service that included military personnel; Mustafa Kemal said that there was no "religious" or "political" justification for this. He believed that Caliph Abdülmecid II was following in the steps of the sultans in domestic and foreign affairs: accepting of and responding to foreign representatives and reserve officers, and participating in official ceremonies and celebrations.[74] He wanted to integrate the powers of the caliphate into the powers of the GNA. His initial activities began on 1 January 1924, when[74] İnönü, Çakmak and Özalp consented to the abolition of the caliphate. The caliph made a statement to the effect that he would not interfere with political affairs.[75] On 1 March 1924, at the Assembly, Mustafa Kemal said
“ The religion of Islam will be elevated if it will cease to be a political instrument, as had been the case in the past.[76] ”
On 3 March 1924, the caliphate was officially abolished and its powers within Turkey were transferred to the GNA. Other Muslim nations debated the validity of Turkey's unilateral abolition of the caliphate as they decided whether they should confirm the Turkish action or appoint a new caliph.[75] A "Caliphate Conference" was held in Cairo in May 1926 and a resolution was passed declaring the caliphate "a necessity in Islam", but failed to implement this decision.[75]
Two other Islamic conferences were held in Mecca (1926) and Jerusalem (1931), but failed to reach a consensus.[75] Turkey did not accept the re-establishment of the caliphate and perceived it as an attack to its basic existence; while Mustafa Kemal and the reformists continued their own way.[77]
On 8 April 1924, sharia courts were abolished with the law "Mehakim-i Şer'iyenin İlgasına ve Mehakim Teşkilatına Ait Ahkamı Muaddil Kanun".[65][78]
The removal of the caliphate was followed by an extensive effort to establish the separation of governmental and religious affairs. Education was the cornerstone in this effort. In 1923, there were three main educational groups of institutions. The most common institutions were medreses based on Arabic, the Qur'an and memorization. The second type of institution was idadî and sultanî, the reformist schools of the Tanzimat era. The last group included colleges and minority schools in foreign languages that used the latest teaching models in educating pupils. The old medrese education was modernized.[79] Mustafa Kemal changed the classical Islamic education for a vigorously promoted reconstruction of educational institutions.[79]Mustafa Kemal linked educational reform to the liberation of the nation from dogma, which he believed was more important than the Turkish War of Independence.
“ Today, our most important and most productive task is the national education [unification and modernization] affairs. We have to be successful in national education affairs and we shall be. The liberation of a nation is only achieved through this way."[80] ”
In the summer of 1924, Mustafa Kemal invited American educational reformer John Dewey to Ankara to advise him on how to reform Turkish education.[79] His public education reforms aimed to prepare citizens for roles in public life through increasing the public literacy. He wanted to institute compulsory primary education for both girls and boys; since then this effort has been an ongoing task for the republic. He pointed out that one of the main targets of education in Turkey had to be raising a generation nourished with what he called the "public culture". The state schools established a common curriculum which became known as the "unification of education."
Unification of education was put into force on 3 March 1924 by the Law on Unification of Education (No. 430). With the new law, education became inclusive, organized on a model of the civil community. In this new design, all schools submitted their curriculum to the "Ministry of National Education", a government agency modelled after other countries' ministries of education. Concurrently, the republic abolished the two ministries and made clergy subordinate to the department of religious affairs, one of the foundations of secularism in Turkey. The unification of education under one curriculum ended "clerics or clergy of the Ottoman Empire", but was not the end of religious schools in Turkey; they were moved to higher education until later governments restored them to their former position in secondary after Mustafa Kemal's death.
Atatürk with his Panama hat just afterthe Kastamonu speech in 1925.
Beginning in the fall of 1925, Mustafa Kemal encouraged the Turks to wear modern European attire.[81] He was determined to force the abandonment of the sartorial traditions of the Middle East and finalize a series of dress reforms, which were originally started byMahmud II.[81] The fez was established by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826 as part of the Ottoman Empire's modernization effort. The Hat Law of 1925 introduced the use of Western-style hats instead of the fez. Mustafa Kemal first made the hat compulsory for civil servants.[81] The guidelines for the proper dressing of students and state employees were passed during his lifetime; many civil servants adopted the hat willingly. In 1925, Mustafa Kemal wore his "Panama hat" during a public appearance in Kastamonu, one of the most conservative towns in Anatolia, to explain that the hat was the headgear of civilized nations. The last part of reform on dress emphasized the need to wear modern Western suits with neckties as well as Fedora and Derby-style hats instead of antiquated religion-based clothing such as the veil and turban in the Law Relating to Prohibited Garments of 1934.
Even though he personally promoted modern dress for women, Mustafa Kemal never made specific reference to women's clothing in the law, as he believed that women would adapt to the new clothing styles of their own free will. He was frequently photographed on public business with his wife Lâtife Uşaklıgil, who covered her head in accordance with Islamic tradition. He was also frequently photographed on public business with women wearing modern Western clothes. But it was Atatürk's adopted daughters, Sabiha Gökçen and Afet İnan, who provided the real role model for the Turkish women of the future. He wrote: "The religious covering of women will not cause difficulty ... This simple style [of headcovering] is not in conflict with the morals and manners of our society."[82]
On 30 August 1925, Mustafa Kemal's view on religious insignia used outside places of worship was introduced in hisKastamonu speech. This speech also had another position. He said:
“ In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey's civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheiks. The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheiks, dervishes, and disciples. The best, the truest order is the order of civilization. To be a man it is enough to carry out the requirements of civilization. The leaders of dervish orders will understand the truth of my words, and will themselves close down their lodges [tekke] and admit that their disciplines have grown up.[63] ”
On 2 September the government issued a decree closing down all Sufi orders and the tekkes. Mustafa Kemal ordered their dervish lodges to be converted to museums, such as Mevlana Museum in Konya. The institutional expression of Sufism became illegal in Turkey; a politically neutral form of Sufism, functioning as social associations, was permitted to exist.[citation needed]
The abolition of the caliphate and other cultural reforms were met with fierce opposition. [75]
Modernization efforts, 1926–1930
President Kemal at the 1927 opening of the State Art and Sculpture Museum.
President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri on 20 September 1928.
Present Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the library of the Çankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara, 1929.
Attending a class at the Law School of theIstanbul Darülfünunu in 1930.
In the years following 1926, Mustafa Kemal introduced a radical departure from previous reformations established by the Ottoman Empire.[88] For the first time in history, Islamic law was separated from secular law, and restricted to matters of religion.[88] Mustafa Kemal said
“ We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and our legal institutions from the bonds which, even though they are incompatible with the needs of our century, still hold a tight grip on us.[89] ”
On 1 March 1926, the Turkish penal code was passed. It was modelled after the Italian Penal Code. On 4 October 1926, Islamic courts were closed. Establishing the civic law needed time, so Mustafa Kemal delayed the inclusion of the principle of laïcité until 5 February 1937.
Ottoman practice discouraged social interaction between men and women in keeping with Islamic practice of sex segregation. Mustafa Kemal began developing social reforms very early, as was evident in his personal journal. He and his staff discussed issues like abolishing the veiling of womenand the integration of women into the outside world. The clue on how he was planning to tackle the issue was stated in his journal on November 1915;
“ The social change can come by (1) educating capable mothers who are knowledgeable about life; (2) giving freedom to women; (3) a man can change his morals, thoughts, and feelings by leading a common life with a woman; as there is an inborn tendency towards the attraction of mutual affection.[90] ”
Mustafa Kemal needed a new civil code to establish his second major step of giving freedom to women. The first part was the education of girls and was established with the unification of education. On 4 October 1926, the new Turkish civil code passed. It was modelled after the Swiss Civil Code. Under the new code, women gained equality with men in such matters as inheritance and divorce. Mustafa Kemal did not consider gender a factor in social organization. According to his view, society marched towards its goal with men and women united. He believed that it was scientifically impossible for him to achieve progress and to become civilized if the gender separation continued as in Ottoman times.[91] During a meeting he declaimed:
“ To the women: Win for us the battle of education and you will do yet more for your country than we have been able to do. It is to you that I appeal.
To the men: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West.[92] ”
In 1927, the State Art and Sculpture Museum (Turkish: Ankara Resim ve Heykel Müzesi) opened its doors. The museum highlighted sculpture, which was little practised in Turkey owing to the Islamic tradition of avoiding idolatry. Mustafa Kemal believed that "culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic."[93] and described modern Turkey's ideological thrust as "a creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal." He included both his own nation's creative legacy and what he saw as the admirable values of global civilization. The pre-Islamic culture of the Turks became the subject of extensive research, and particular emphasis was laid upon Turkish culture widespread before the Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations. He instigated study of Anatolian civilizations--Phrygians and Lydians, Sumerians and Hittites. To attract current public attention to past cultures, he personally named the "Sümerbank" (1932) after the Sumerians, and the "Etibank" (1935) after the Hittites. He also stressed the folk arts of the countryside as a wellspring of Turkish creativity.
In the spring of 1928, Mustafa Kemal met in Ankara with several linguists and professors from all over Turkey where he unveiled to them a plan of his to implement a new alphabet for the written Turkish language based on a modified Latin alphabet. The new Turkish alphabet would serve as a replacement for the old Arabic script and as a solution to the literacy problem in Turkey. When he asked them how long it would take to implement the new alphabet into the Turkish language, most of the professors and linguists said between three to five years. Mustafa Kemal was said to have scoffed and openly stated, "we shall do it in three to five months".[citation needed]
Over the next several months, Mustafa Kemal pressed for the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet as well as made public announcements to the upcoming overhaul of the new alphabet. On 1 November 1928 he introduced the new Turkish alphabet and abolished the use of Arabic script. At the time, literate citizens of the country comprised as little as 10% of the population. Dewey noted to Mustafa Kemal that learning how to read and write in Turkish with the Arabic script took roughly three years with rather strenuous methods at the elementary level.[79] They used the Ottoman Language written in the Arabic script with Arabic and Persian loan vocabulary.[79] The creation of the new Turkish alphabet as a variant of the Latin alphabet was undertaken by the Language Commission (Turkish: Dil Encümeni) with the initiative of Mustafa Kemal.[79] The tutelage was received from an Ottoman-Armenian calligrapher Hagop Dilaçar.[94] The first Turkish newspaper using the new alphabet was published on 15 December 1928. Mustafa Kemal himself travelled the countryside in order to teach citizens the new alphabet. As he predicted, the country's adaptation to the new alphabet was very quick, and literacy in Turkey jumped from 10% to over 70% within two years.[citation needed] Beginning in 1932, the People's Houses (Turkish: Halk Evleri) opened throughout the country in order to meet the requirement that people between the ages of four and 40 were required to learn the new alphabet as mandated. There were congresses for discussing the issues of copyright, public education and scientific publishing. Literacy reform was also supported by strengthening the private publishing sector with a new law on copyrights.
Mustafa Kemal promoted modern teaching methods at the primary education level, and Dewey took a place of honour.[79]Dewey presented a paradigmatic set of recommendations designed for developing societies that are moving towards modernity in his "Report and Recommendation for the Turkish educational system."[79] He was interested in adult educationfor the goal of forming a skill base in the country. Turkish women were taught not only child care, dress-making and household management, but also skills needed to join the economy outside the home. Turkish education became a state-supervised system, which was designed to create a skill base for the social and economic progress of the country.[95] His "unified" education program was designed to educate responsible citizens as well as useful and appreciated members of society.[79] Turkish education became an integrative system, aimed to alleviate poverty and used female education to establish gender equality.
Mustafa Kemal generated media attention to propagate modern education during this period. He instigated official education meetings called "Science Boards" and "Education Summits." to discuss the quality of education, training issues and certain basic educational principles. He said, "our schools [curriculum] should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and to achieve." He was personally engaged with the development of two textbooks. The first one was Turkish: Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (1930). The second, Geometry (1937), was a text for high schools. The Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (Civic knowledge for the citizens) introduced the science of comparative government and explained the means of administering public trust by explaining the rules of governance as applied to the new state institutions.
On 5 December 1934, Turkey moved to grant full political rights to women, before several other European nations. The equal rights of women in marriage had already been established in the earlier Turkish civil code.[109] Women's place in Mustafa Kemal's cultural reforms was best expressed in the civic book prepared under his supervision.[110] Mustafa Kemal said that
“ There is no logical explanation for the political disenfranchisement of women. Any hesitation and negative mentality on this subject is nothing more than a fading social phenomenon of the past. ...Women must have the right to vote and to be elected; because democracy dictates that, because there are interests that women must defend, and because there are social duties that women must perform.[111]
And you just proved to me that you're about as ignorant as a redneck when it comes to the history of Turkey and the Middle East. Like I said, your limited exposure in Turkey didn't count because you A- were in a very secular reformed country, with an anti Islamization culture in it's past, and B- Weren't really in touch with any minorities, so how the fuck would you know what the Muslim majority was doing to them?
Good news is I'm not going to charge you for this free education, dufus. Here's what is happening to all the reforms that Attaturk had brought about. Telling the truth isn't crazy. Ignoring it is:
4 Jarring Signs of Turkey s Growing Islamization - The Atlantic
Turn right at the omelet," said the gas-station attendant. We were standing on the outskirts of Edirne, a small city about two hours north of Istanbul. My Turkish is poor so I turned for help to my Turkish friend.
"Omelet?" I asked.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques constructed by the government since 2002.
"He meant outlet," he said, as in outlet mall. On today's Turkish highways, outlet malls are more common than caravanserais or roadside inns once were on the Silk Road. The malls are just one sign of the economic boom that is bringing western consumerism to the masses. Arriving in Istanbul from one of the phlegmatic economies of Europe or even from the United States is a jolt. Drive around western or central Turkey and you'll see new roads, high rises, and construction sites everywhere. Much of it comes from Middle Eastern oil money, much of it reinvested into industries such as automobile manufacture, textile, and food production. A recent trip revealed a Turkey that is wealthier than ever in its modern history.
And yet, the gas jockey had it right. For the average person, Westernization is about as deep as the difference between "omelet" and "outlet." The Turkish government wouldn't have it any other way. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power for more than ten years, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in charge for most of them. Their goal is change. They want to make Turkey wealthy and Islamic. They have turned from the vaguely socialist policies of their predecessors to crony capitalism, and from the staunchly secular and pro-western policies established by Ataturk, the Republic's founder, to religious and Muslim-world-centered policies. They have abandoned Ataturk's non-interventionist stance for an active role in Egypt, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now Syria.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques built by the government since 2002. The state is planning an enormous mosque, more than 150,000 square feet in size, to loom over Istanbul on a hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Secularists are outraged, and an opposition leader, Republican People's Party (CHP) MP Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, calls this just another step in a process that, he claims, will end in an Islamic republic.
Whither Turkey? Erdogan's visit to Washington last week is a reminder of how important that question is. President Barack Obama has called Turkey a critical ally and has spoken of his friendship for the Turkish leader. Yet Erdogan is trying to change the Turkish constitution from a parliamentary to a presidential system -- with the hope, of course, that he will be the president. His opponent's charge that Erdogan's model is Russia's Putin, a virtual dictator by legal means.
A visitor can only wonder where Erdogan's country is headed. Consider four scenes from the road:
1) Lecturing in a public university on Turkey's western coast -- the country's secular region -- I saw a small but significant number of women wearing headscarves. The government not long ago overturned a ban on headscarves in public places. From the American point of view, that seems like a good thing and a move in favor of religious freedom. Turkish secularists, however, consider it the thin end of a wedge.
2) In Amasya in north-central Turkey sits the graceful Kapiaga Madrasa. It was built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Bayezit II, an enlightened ruler who welcomed Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain in 1492. The octagonal structure is constructed around a central, arcaded courtyard. A visitor encounters what sounds at first like the buzzing of bees. In fact, it is boys studying religious texts.
The day I saw the madrasa I was wearing a baseball cap purchased earlier at a Turkish naval museum. It was decorated with a Turkish flag and a historic warship. The students looked at me with a certain aloof surprise. I didn't realize that I was making a political statement, but my Turkish friend explained that the symbol was nationalist and secular in their eyes.
3) On the way to Edirne, we drove past the exit to Silivri. A summer resort, Silivri is also home to a huge prison. It houses hundreds of top military officers along with journalists, lawyers, and members of Parliament accused of plotting against the government. It is Turkey's answer to the Bastille, the notorious jail for political prisoners in pre-revolutionary France. With 47 reporters incarcerated, Turkey has been called the world's leading jailer of journalists.
4) Arriving in Istanbul at night after a trip to the Anatolian heartland, my friend drove down Baghdad Avenue -- the Rodeo Drive of Istanbul. Rock music and short skirts were on order, not headscarves and religious chanting. Political prisoners seemed far away. But the boys in the madrasa will soon be adults and the women in headscarves will be college graduates. What kind of a country will they build, I wondered, when they come to Istanbul and look up at its grand new mosque? And what will Turkey's future mean for Americans and our own long and troubled quest to build better relations with Muslim countries?
Erdogan resurrects debates of Islamization
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/09/193621.html
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment that his government wants to “raise a religious youth” has touched a nerve in society, fuelling debates over an alleged “hidden agenda” to Islamize secular Turkey.
“We want to raise a religious youth,” said Erdogan, himself a graduate of a clerical school and the leader of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), during a parliamentary address last week.
“Do you expect the conservative democrat AK Party to raise an atheist generation? That might be your business, your mission, but not ours. We will raise a conservative and democratic generation embracing the nation’s values and principles,” he added.
Erdogan’s remarks drew strong criticism from the staunchly secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with its leader calling him a “religion-monger.”
“It is a sin to garner votes over religion. You are not religious but a religion-monger,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accusing Erdogan of polarizing the country by touching its faultlines.
“I’m asking the prime minister: what can I do if I don’t want my child to be raised as religious and conservative?” wrote prominent liberal commentator Hasan Cemal in Milliyet daily.
“If you are going to train a religious and conservative generation in schools, what will happen to my child?” he asked.
Columnist Mehmet Ali Birand also criticized Erdogan this week in an article titled, “The race for piety will be our end.”
“What does it mean, really, that the state raises religious youth? Is this the first step towards a religious state?” he wrote in Hurriyet Daily News.
Erdogan must explain what he meant, otherwise a dangerous storm may erupt and go as far as fights about being religious versus being godless, he argued.
Neither religious nor political uniformity can be imposed on Turkey given regional, ethnic and sectarian diversity in the country, wrote Semih Idiz in Milliyet daily on Tuesday.
He said millions of people “have subscribed to secular lifestyles” even before the republic.
Erdogan’s AKP has been in power since 2002 and won a third term with nearly 50 percent of the vote in the 2011 elections, securing 325 seats in the 550-member parliament.
But since then the influence of the military, considered as guardian of secularism, has waned.
Dozens of retired and active army officers, academics, journalists and lawyers have been put behind bars in probes into alleged plots against Erdogan’s government.
Critics accuse the government of launching the probes as a tool to silence opponents and impose authoritarianism.
Secular quarters argue Erdogan’s conservative government is also step by step imposing religion in every aspect of life, saying many restaurants already refuse to serve alcohol during Ramadan.
They also criticize recent changes to legislation under which religious school graduates will now be able to access any university branch they like, while in the past they had only access to theology schools.
Birand expressed fears that the changes would not be confined to this and would lead to censorship in television broadcasts.
The Turkish television watchdog RTUK “will restrict all kissing scenes; they will confuse pornography with explicit broadcast and all television screens will be made pious,” he added.
“Then will come religious foundations. After them, it will be municipalities. All kinds of Koran teaching courses, legal or illegal, will mushroom.”
Observers say Erdogan’s message contradicts what he had said during a recent tour of Arab Spring countries, in September.
“As Recep Tayyip Erdogan I am a Muslim but not secular. But I am a prime minister of a secular country. People have the freedom to choose whether or not to be religious in a secular regime,” he said in an interview with an Egyptian TV, published by Turkish daily Vatan.
“The constitution in Turkey defines secularism as the state’s equal distance to every religion,” he said in remarks that provoked criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
It's easy to be as far from reality as you are, having never lived with Muslims
You're putting words in my mouth. It's quite easy for me to remember the many living rooms I sat in over there that have 2 pictures hanging on the wall. One of Ataturk, and the other a prophet.None of the Turkish people I know would have any idea what you're talking about.Thank you....you just proved to me you're crazy
Like I said a Turkey was and probably is different. I have not been there but have studied enough. Many of my friends and family have been there for vacation. Heard its beautiful, but I'm not setting foot in any Muslim country ever again. Have you read about Turkey's history? This is the reason a non Muslim can marry a Muslim. Unfortunately many of the reforms have been reversed. Read this and ask yourself, why did a Muslim nation ABOLISH Islam from its national psyche? Perhaps FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE? The Shah of Iran and his father were very similar rulers before the Islamist animals took over and destroyed the country:
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (pronounced [mustäˈfä ceˈmäl äˈtäˌtyɾc]; 19 May 1881 (conventional) – 10 November 1938) was aTurkish army officer, reformist statesman, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of theRepublic of Turkey. His surname, Atatürk (meaning "Father of the Turks"), was granted to him in 1934 and forbidden to any other person by the Turkish parliament.[1]
Atatürk was a military officer during World War I.[2] Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he led theTurkish National Movement in the Turkish War of Independence. Having established a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His military campaigns led to victory in the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk then embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern and secular nation-state. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory, and women were given equal civil and political rights, while the burden of taxation on peasants was reduced.[3] His government also carried out an extensive policy of Turkification.[4][5][6][7] The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism.
Domestic policies
Mustafa Kemal's basic tenet was the complete independence of the country.[63] He clarified his position:
“ ...by complete independence, we mean of course complete economic, financial, juridical, military, cultural independence and freedom in all matters. Being deprived of independence in any of these is equivalent to the nation and country being deprived of all its independence.[64] ”
He led wide-ranging reforms in social, cultural, and economical aspects, establishing the new Republic's backbone of legislative, judicial, and economic structures. Though he was later idealized by some as an originator of sweeping reforms, many of his reformist ideas were already common in Ottoman intellectual circles at the turn of the 20th century, and were expressed more openly after the Young Turk Revolution.[65]
Mustafa Kemal created a banner to mark the changes between the old Ottoman and the new republican rule. Each change was symbolized as an arrow in this banner. This defining ideology of the Republic of Turkey is referred to as the "Six Arrows", or Kemalist ideology. Kemalist ideology is based on Mustafa Kemal's conception of realism and pragmatism.[66] The fundamentals of nationalism, populism and etatism were all defined under the Six Arrows. These fundamentals were not new in world politics or, indeed, among the elite of Turkey. What made them unique was that these interrelated fundamentals were formulated specifically for Turkey's needs. A good example is the definition and application of secularism; the Kemalist secular state significantly differed from predominantly Christian states.
Civic independence and the Caliphate, 1924–1925
Abolition of the Caliphate was an important dimension in Mustafa Kemal's drive to reform the political system and to promote the national sovereignty. By the consensus of the Muslim majority in early centuries, the caliphate was the core political concept of Sunni Islam.[72] Abolishing the sultanate was easier because the survival of the Caliphate at the time satisfied the partisans of the sultanate. This produced a split system with the new republic on one side and an Islamic form of government with the Caliph on the other side, and Mustafa Kemal and İnönü worried that "it nourished the expectations that the sovereign would return under the guise of Caliph."[73] Caliph Abdülmecid II was elected after the abolition of the sultanate (1922).
The caliph had his own personal treasury and also had a personal service that included military personnel; Mustafa Kemal said that there was no "religious" or "political" justification for this. He believed that Caliph Abdülmecid II was following in the steps of the sultans in domestic and foreign affairs: accepting of and responding to foreign representatives and reserve officers, and participating in official ceremonies and celebrations.[74] He wanted to integrate the powers of the caliphate into the powers of the GNA. His initial activities began on 1 January 1924, when[74] İnönü, Çakmak and Özalp consented to the abolition of the caliphate. The caliph made a statement to the effect that he would not interfere with political affairs.[75] On 1 March 1924, at the Assembly, Mustafa Kemal said
“ The religion of Islam will be elevated if it will cease to be a political instrument, as had been the case in the past.[76] ”
On 3 March 1924, the caliphate was officially abolished and its powers within Turkey were transferred to the GNA. Other Muslim nations debated the validity of Turkey's unilateral abolition of the caliphate as they decided whether they should confirm the Turkish action or appoint a new caliph.[75] A "Caliphate Conference" was held in Cairo in May 1926 and a resolution was passed declaring the caliphate "a necessity in Islam", but failed to implement this decision.[75]
Two other Islamic conferences were held in Mecca (1926) and Jerusalem (1931), but failed to reach a consensus.[75] Turkey did not accept the re-establishment of the caliphate and perceived it as an attack to its basic existence; while Mustafa Kemal and the reformists continued their own way.[77]
On 8 April 1924, sharia courts were abolished with the law "Mehakim-i Şer'iyenin İlgasına ve Mehakim Teşkilatına Ait Ahkamı Muaddil Kanun".[65][78]
The removal of the caliphate was followed by an extensive effort to establish the separation of governmental and religious affairs. Education was the cornerstone in this effort. In 1923, there were three main educational groups of institutions. The most common institutions were medreses based on Arabic, the Qur'an and memorization. The second type of institution was idadî and sultanî, the reformist schools of the Tanzimat era. The last group included colleges and minority schools in foreign languages that used the latest teaching models in educating pupils. The old medrese education was modernized.[79] Mustafa Kemal changed the classical Islamic education for a vigorously promoted reconstruction of educational institutions.[79]Mustafa Kemal linked educational reform to the liberation of the nation from dogma, which he believed was more important than the Turkish War of Independence.
“ Today, our most important and most productive task is the national education [unification and modernization] affairs. We have to be successful in national education affairs and we shall be. The liberation of a nation is only achieved through this way."[80] ”
In the summer of 1924, Mustafa Kemal invited American educational reformer John Dewey to Ankara to advise him on how to reform Turkish education.[79] His public education reforms aimed to prepare citizens for roles in public life through increasing the public literacy. He wanted to institute compulsory primary education for both girls and boys; since then this effort has been an ongoing task for the republic. He pointed out that one of the main targets of education in Turkey had to be raising a generation nourished with what he called the "public culture". The state schools established a common curriculum which became known as the "unification of education."
Unification of education was put into force on 3 March 1924 by the Law on Unification of Education (No. 430). With the new law, education became inclusive, organized on a model of the civil community. In this new design, all schools submitted their curriculum to the "Ministry of National Education", a government agency modelled after other countries' ministries of education. Concurrently, the republic abolished the two ministries and made clergy subordinate to the department of religious affairs, one of the foundations of secularism in Turkey. The unification of education under one curriculum ended "clerics or clergy of the Ottoman Empire", but was not the end of religious schools in Turkey; they were moved to higher education until later governments restored them to their former position in secondary after Mustafa Kemal's death.
Atatürk with his Panama hat just afterthe Kastamonu speech in 1925.
Beginning in the fall of 1925, Mustafa Kemal encouraged the Turks to wear modern European attire.[81] He was determined to force the abandonment of the sartorial traditions of the Middle East and finalize a series of dress reforms, which were originally started byMahmud II.[81] The fez was established by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826 as part of the Ottoman Empire's modernization effort. The Hat Law of 1925 introduced the use of Western-style hats instead of the fez. Mustafa Kemal first made the hat compulsory for civil servants.[81] The guidelines for the proper dressing of students and state employees were passed during his lifetime; many civil servants adopted the hat willingly. In 1925, Mustafa Kemal wore his "Panama hat" during a public appearance in Kastamonu, one of the most conservative towns in Anatolia, to explain that the hat was the headgear of civilized nations. The last part of reform on dress emphasized the need to wear modern Western suits with neckties as well as Fedora and Derby-style hats instead of antiquated religion-based clothing such as the veil and turban in the Law Relating to Prohibited Garments of 1934.
Even though he personally promoted modern dress for women, Mustafa Kemal never made specific reference to women's clothing in the law, as he believed that women would adapt to the new clothing styles of their own free will. He was frequently photographed on public business with his wife Lâtife Uşaklıgil, who covered her head in accordance with Islamic tradition. He was also frequently photographed on public business with women wearing modern Western clothes. But it was Atatürk's adopted daughters, Sabiha Gökçen and Afet İnan, who provided the real role model for the Turkish women of the future. He wrote: "The religious covering of women will not cause difficulty ... This simple style [of headcovering] is not in conflict with the morals and manners of our society."[82]
On 30 August 1925, Mustafa Kemal's view on religious insignia used outside places of worship was introduced in hisKastamonu speech. This speech also had another position. He said:
“ In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey's civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheiks. The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheiks, dervishes, and disciples. The best, the truest order is the order of civilization. To be a man it is enough to carry out the requirements of civilization. The leaders of dervish orders will understand the truth of my words, and will themselves close down their lodges [tekke] and admit that their disciplines have grown up.[63] ”
On 2 September the government issued a decree closing down all Sufi orders and the tekkes. Mustafa Kemal ordered their dervish lodges to be converted to museums, such as Mevlana Museum in Konya. The institutional expression of Sufism became illegal in Turkey; a politically neutral form of Sufism, functioning as social associations, was permitted to exist.[citation needed]
The abolition of the caliphate and other cultural reforms were met with fierce opposition. [75]
Modernization efforts, 1926–1930
President Kemal at the 1927 opening of the State Art and Sculpture Museum.
President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri on 20 September 1928.
Present Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the library of the Çankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara, 1929.
Attending a class at the Law School of theIstanbul Darülfünunu in 1930.
In the years following 1926, Mustafa Kemal introduced a radical departure from previous reformations established by the Ottoman Empire.[88] For the first time in history, Islamic law was separated from secular law, and restricted to matters of religion.[88] Mustafa Kemal said
“ We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and our legal institutions from the bonds which, even though they are incompatible with the needs of our century, still hold a tight grip on us.[89] ”
On 1 March 1926, the Turkish penal code was passed. It was modelled after the Italian Penal Code. On 4 October 1926, Islamic courts were closed. Establishing the civic law needed time, so Mustafa Kemal delayed the inclusion of the principle of laïcité until 5 February 1937.
Ottoman practice discouraged social interaction between men and women in keeping with Islamic practice of sex segregation. Mustafa Kemal began developing social reforms very early, as was evident in his personal journal. He and his staff discussed issues like abolishing the veiling of womenand the integration of women into the outside world. The clue on how he was planning to tackle the issue was stated in his journal on November 1915;
“ The social change can come by (1) educating capable mothers who are knowledgeable about life; (2) giving freedom to women; (3) a man can change his morals, thoughts, and feelings by leading a common life with a woman; as there is an inborn tendency towards the attraction of mutual affection.[90] ”
Mustafa Kemal needed a new civil code to establish his second major step of giving freedom to women. The first part was the education of girls and was established with the unification of education. On 4 October 1926, the new Turkish civil code passed. It was modelled after the Swiss Civil Code. Under the new code, women gained equality with men in such matters as inheritance and divorce. Mustafa Kemal did not consider gender a factor in social organization. According to his view, society marched towards its goal with men and women united. He believed that it was scientifically impossible for him to achieve progress and to become civilized if the gender separation continued as in Ottoman times.[91] During a meeting he declaimed:
“ To the women: Win for us the battle of education and you will do yet more for your country than we have been able to do. It is to you that I appeal.
To the men: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West.[92] ”
In 1927, the State Art and Sculpture Museum (Turkish: Ankara Resim ve Heykel Müzesi) opened its doors. The museum highlighted sculpture, which was little practised in Turkey owing to the Islamic tradition of avoiding idolatry. Mustafa Kemal believed that "culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic."[93] and described modern Turkey's ideological thrust as "a creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal." He included both his own nation's creative legacy and what he saw as the admirable values of global civilization. The pre-Islamic culture of the Turks became the subject of extensive research, and particular emphasis was laid upon Turkish culture widespread before the Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations. He instigated study of Anatolian civilizations--Phrygians and Lydians, Sumerians and Hittites. To attract current public attention to past cultures, he personally named the "Sümerbank" (1932) after the Sumerians, and the "Etibank" (1935) after the Hittites. He also stressed the folk arts of the countryside as a wellspring of Turkish creativity.
In the spring of 1928, Mustafa Kemal met in Ankara with several linguists and professors from all over Turkey where he unveiled to them a plan of his to implement a new alphabet for the written Turkish language based on a modified Latin alphabet. The new Turkish alphabet would serve as a replacement for the old Arabic script and as a solution to the literacy problem in Turkey. When he asked them how long it would take to implement the new alphabet into the Turkish language, most of the professors and linguists said between three to five years. Mustafa Kemal was said to have scoffed and openly stated, "we shall do it in three to five months".[citation needed]
Over the next several months, Mustafa Kemal pressed for the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet as well as made public announcements to the upcoming overhaul of the new alphabet. On 1 November 1928 he introduced the new Turkish alphabet and abolished the use of Arabic script. At the time, literate citizens of the country comprised as little as 10% of the population. Dewey noted to Mustafa Kemal that learning how to read and write in Turkish with the Arabic script took roughly three years with rather strenuous methods at the elementary level.[79] They used the Ottoman Language written in the Arabic script with Arabic and Persian loan vocabulary.[79] The creation of the new Turkish alphabet as a variant of the Latin alphabet was undertaken by the Language Commission (Turkish: Dil Encümeni) with the initiative of Mustafa Kemal.[79] The tutelage was received from an Ottoman-Armenian calligrapher Hagop Dilaçar.[94] The first Turkish newspaper using the new alphabet was published on 15 December 1928. Mustafa Kemal himself travelled the countryside in order to teach citizens the new alphabet. As he predicted, the country's adaptation to the new alphabet was very quick, and literacy in Turkey jumped from 10% to over 70% within two years.[citation needed] Beginning in 1932, the People's Houses (Turkish: Halk Evleri) opened throughout the country in order to meet the requirement that people between the ages of four and 40 were required to learn the new alphabet as mandated. There were congresses for discussing the issues of copyright, public education and scientific publishing. Literacy reform was also supported by strengthening the private publishing sector with a new law on copyrights.
Mustafa Kemal promoted modern teaching methods at the primary education level, and Dewey took a place of honour.[79]Dewey presented a paradigmatic set of recommendations designed for developing societies that are moving towards modernity in his "Report and Recommendation for the Turkish educational system."[79] He was interested in adult educationfor the goal of forming a skill base in the country. Turkish women were taught not only child care, dress-making and household management, but also skills needed to join the economy outside the home. Turkish education became a state-supervised system, which was designed to create a skill base for the social and economic progress of the country.[95] His "unified" education program was designed to educate responsible citizens as well as useful and appreciated members of society.[79] Turkish education became an integrative system, aimed to alleviate poverty and used female education to establish gender equality.
Mustafa Kemal generated media attention to propagate modern education during this period. He instigated official education meetings called "Science Boards" and "Education Summits." to discuss the quality of education, training issues and certain basic educational principles. He said, "our schools [curriculum] should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and to achieve." He was personally engaged with the development of two textbooks. The first one was Turkish: Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (1930). The second, Geometry (1937), was a text for high schools. The Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (Civic knowledge for the citizens) introduced the science of comparative government and explained the means of administering public trust by explaining the rules of governance as applied to the new state institutions.
On 5 December 1934, Turkey moved to grant full political rights to women, before several other European nations. The equal rights of women in marriage had already been established in the earlier Turkish civil code.[109] Women's place in Mustafa Kemal's cultural reforms was best expressed in the civic book prepared under his supervision.[110] Mustafa Kemal said that
“ There is no logical explanation for the political disenfranchisement of women. Any hesitation and negative mentality on this subject is nothing more than a fading social phenomenon of the past. ...Women must have the right to vote and to be elected; because democracy dictates that, because there are interests that women must defend, and because there are social duties that women must perform.[111]
And you just proved to me that you're about as ignorant as a redneck when it comes to the history of Turkey and the Middle East. Like I said, your limited exposure in Turkey didn't count because you A- were in a very secular reformed country, with an anti Islamization culture in it's past, and B- Weren't really in touch with any minorities, so how the fuck would you know what the Muslim majority was doing to them?
Good news is I'm not going to charge you for this free education, dufus. Here's what is happening to all the reforms that Attaturk had brought about. Telling the truth isn't crazy. Ignoring it is:
4 Jarring Signs of Turkey s Growing Islamization - The Atlantic
Turn right at the omelet," said the gas-station attendant. We were standing on the outskirts of Edirne, a small city about two hours north of Istanbul. My Turkish is poor so I turned for help to my Turkish friend.
"Omelet?" I asked.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques constructed by the government since 2002.
"He meant outlet," he said, as in outlet mall. On today's Turkish highways, outlet malls are more common than caravanserais or roadside inns once were on the Silk Road. The malls are just one sign of the economic boom that is bringing western consumerism to the masses. Arriving in Istanbul from one of the phlegmatic economies of Europe or even from the United States is a jolt. Drive around western or central Turkey and you'll see new roads, high rises, and construction sites everywhere. Much of it comes from Middle Eastern oil money, much of it reinvested into industries such as automobile manufacture, textile, and food production. A recent trip revealed a Turkey that is wealthier than ever in its modern history.
And yet, the gas jockey had it right. For the average person, Westernization is about as deep as the difference between "omelet" and "outlet." The Turkish government wouldn't have it any other way. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power for more than ten years, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in charge for most of them. Their goal is change. They want to make Turkey wealthy and Islamic. They have turned from the vaguely socialist policies of their predecessors to crony capitalism, and from the staunchly secular and pro-western policies established by Ataturk, the Republic's founder, to religious and Muslim-world-centered policies. They have abandoned Ataturk's non-interventionist stance for an active role in Egypt, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now Syria.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques built by the government since 2002. The state is planning an enormous mosque, more than 150,000 square feet in size, to loom over Istanbul on a hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Secularists are outraged, and an opposition leader, Republican People's Party (CHP) MP Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, calls this just another step in a process that, he claims, will end in an Islamic republic.
Whither Turkey? Erdogan's visit to Washington last week is a reminder of how important that question is. President Barack Obama has called Turkey a critical ally and has spoken of his friendship for the Turkish leader. Yet Erdogan is trying to change the Turkish constitution from a parliamentary to a presidential system -- with the hope, of course, that he will be the president. His opponent's charge that Erdogan's model is Russia's Putin, a virtual dictator by legal means.
A visitor can only wonder where Erdogan's country is headed. Consider four scenes from the road:
1) Lecturing in a public university on Turkey's western coast -- the country's secular region -- I saw a small but significant number of women wearing headscarves. The government not long ago overturned a ban on headscarves in public places. From the American point of view, that seems like a good thing and a move in favor of religious freedom. Turkish secularists, however, consider it the thin end of a wedge.
2) In Amasya in north-central Turkey sits the graceful Kapiaga Madrasa. It was built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Bayezit II, an enlightened ruler who welcomed Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain in 1492. The octagonal structure is constructed around a central, arcaded courtyard. A visitor encounters what sounds at first like the buzzing of bees. In fact, it is boys studying religious texts.
The day I saw the madrasa I was wearing a baseball cap purchased earlier at a Turkish naval museum. It was decorated with a Turkish flag and a historic warship. The students looked at me with a certain aloof surprise. I didn't realize that I was making a political statement, but my Turkish friend explained that the symbol was nationalist and secular in their eyes.
3) On the way to Edirne, we drove past the exit to Silivri. A summer resort, Silivri is also home to a huge prison. It houses hundreds of top military officers along with journalists, lawyers, and members of Parliament accused of plotting against the government. It is Turkey's answer to the Bastille, the notorious jail for political prisoners in pre-revolutionary France. With 47 reporters incarcerated, Turkey has been called the world's leading jailer of journalists.
4) Arriving in Istanbul at night after a trip to the Anatolian heartland, my friend drove down Baghdad Avenue -- the Rodeo Drive of Istanbul. Rock music and short skirts were on order, not headscarves and religious chanting. Political prisoners seemed far away. But the boys in the madrasa will soon be adults and the women in headscarves will be college graduates. What kind of a country will they build, I wondered, when they come to Istanbul and look up at its grand new mosque? And what will Turkey's future mean for Americans and our own long and troubled quest to build better relations with Muslim countries?
Erdogan resurrects debates of Islamization
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/09/193621.html
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment that his government wants to “raise a religious youth” has touched a nerve in society, fuelling debates over an alleged “hidden agenda” to Islamize secular Turkey.
“We want to raise a religious youth,” said Erdogan, himself a graduate of a clerical school and the leader of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), during a parliamentary address last week.
“Do you expect the conservative democrat AK Party to raise an atheist generation? That might be your business, your mission, but not ours. We will raise a conservative and democratic generation embracing the nation’s values and principles,” he added.
Erdogan’s remarks drew strong criticism from the staunchly secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with its leader calling him a “religion-monger.”
“It is a sin to garner votes over religion. You are not religious but a religion-monger,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accusing Erdogan of polarizing the country by touching its faultlines.
“I’m asking the prime minister: what can I do if I don’t want my child to be raised as religious and conservative?” wrote prominent liberal commentator Hasan Cemal in Milliyet daily.
“If you are going to train a religious and conservative generation in schools, what will happen to my child?” he asked.
Columnist Mehmet Ali Birand also criticized Erdogan this week in an article titled, “The race for piety will be our end.”
“What does it mean, really, that the state raises religious youth? Is this the first step towards a religious state?” he wrote in Hurriyet Daily News.
Erdogan must explain what he meant, otherwise a dangerous storm may erupt and go as far as fights about being religious versus being godless, he argued.
Neither religious nor political uniformity can be imposed on Turkey given regional, ethnic and sectarian diversity in the country, wrote Semih Idiz in Milliyet daily on Tuesday.
He said millions of people “have subscribed to secular lifestyles” even before the republic.
Erdogan’s AKP has been in power since 2002 and won a third term with nearly 50 percent of the vote in the 2011 elections, securing 325 seats in the 550-member parliament.
But since then the influence of the military, considered as guardian of secularism, has waned.
Dozens of retired and active army officers, academics, journalists and lawyers have been put behind bars in probes into alleged plots against Erdogan’s government.
Critics accuse the government of launching the probes as a tool to silence opponents and impose authoritarianism.
Secular quarters argue Erdogan’s conservative government is also step by step imposing religion in every aspect of life, saying many restaurants already refuse to serve alcohol during Ramadan.
They also criticize recent changes to legislation under which religious school graduates will now be able to access any university branch they like, while in the past they had only access to theology schools.
Birand expressed fears that the changes would not be confined to this and would lead to censorship in television broadcasts.
The Turkish television watchdog RTUK “will restrict all kissing scenes; they will confuse pornography with explicit broadcast and all television screens will be made pious,” he added.
“Then will come religious foundations. After them, it will be municipalities. All kinds of Koran teaching courses, legal or illegal, will mushroom.”
Observers say Erdogan’s message contradicts what he had said during a recent tour of Arab Spring countries, in September.
“As Recep Tayyip Erdogan I am a Muslim but not secular. But I am a prime minister of a secular country. People have the freedom to choose whether or not to be religious in a secular regime,” he said in an interview with an Egyptian TV, published by Turkish daily Vatan.
“The constitution in Turkey defines secularism as the state’s equal distance to every religion,” he said in remarks that provoked criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
It's easy to be as far from reality as you are, having never lived with Muslims
Kamal Attaturk is a national hero and the father of the Turkish nation. Any semi educated Turk would know Attaturk. Unless you hung out with some low class ignorant ones. "Having never lived with Muslims" after everything that has transpired are you back to bragging about your tourist credentials?
You're brilliant.
You're putting words in my mouth. It's quite easy for me to remember the many living rooms I sat in over there that have 2 pictures hanging on the wall. One of Ataturk, and the other a prophet.None of the Turkish people I know would have any idea what you're talking about.Thank you....you just proved to me you're crazyLike I said a Turkey was and probably is different. I have not been there but have studied enough. Many of my friends and family have been there for vacation. Heard its beautiful, but I'm not setting foot in any Muslim country ever again. Have you read about Turkey's history? This is the reason a non Muslim can marry a Muslim. Unfortunately many of the reforms have been reversed. Read this and ask yourself, why did a Muslim nation ABOLISH Islam from its national psyche? Perhaps FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE? The Shah of Iran and his father were very similar rulers before the Islamist animals took over and destroyed the country:
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (pronounced [mustäˈfä ceˈmäl äˈtäˌtyɾc]; 19 May 1881 (conventional) – 10 November 1938) was aTurkish army officer, reformist statesman, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of theRepublic of Turkey. His surname, Atatürk (meaning "Father of the Turks"), was granted to him in 1934 and forbidden to any other person by the Turkish parliament.[1]
Atatürk was a military officer during World War I.[2] Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he led theTurkish National Movement in the Turkish War of Independence. Having established a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His military campaigns led to victory in the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk then embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern and secular nation-state. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory, and women were given equal civil and political rights, while the burden of taxation on peasants was reduced.[3] His government also carried out an extensive policy of Turkification.[4][5][6][7] The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism.
Domestic policies
Mustafa Kemal's basic tenet was the complete independence of the country.[63] He clarified his position:
“ ...by complete independence, we mean of course complete economic, financial, juridical, military, cultural independence and freedom in all matters. Being deprived of independence in any of these is equivalent to the nation and country being deprived of all its independence.[64] ”
He led wide-ranging reforms in social, cultural, and economical aspects, establishing the new Republic's backbone of legislative, judicial, and economic structures. Though he was later idealized by some as an originator of sweeping reforms, many of his reformist ideas were already common in Ottoman intellectual circles at the turn of the 20th century, and were expressed more openly after the Young Turk Revolution.[65]
Mustafa Kemal created a banner to mark the changes between the old Ottoman and the new republican rule. Each change was symbolized as an arrow in this banner. This defining ideology of the Republic of Turkey is referred to as the "Six Arrows", or Kemalist ideology. Kemalist ideology is based on Mustafa Kemal's conception of realism and pragmatism.[66] The fundamentals of nationalism, populism and etatism were all defined under the Six Arrows. These fundamentals were not new in world politics or, indeed, among the elite of Turkey. What made them unique was that these interrelated fundamentals were formulated specifically for Turkey's needs. A good example is the definition and application of secularism; the Kemalist secular state significantly differed from predominantly Christian states.
Civic independence and the Caliphate, 1924–1925
Abolition of the Caliphate was an important dimension in Mustafa Kemal's drive to reform the political system and to promote the national sovereignty. By the consensus of the Muslim majority in early centuries, the caliphate was the core political concept of Sunni Islam.[72] Abolishing the sultanate was easier because the survival of the Caliphate at the time satisfied the partisans of the sultanate. This produced a split system with the new republic on one side and an Islamic form of government with the Caliph on the other side, and Mustafa Kemal and İnönü worried that "it nourished the expectations that the sovereign would return under the guise of Caliph."[73] Caliph Abdülmecid II was elected after the abolition of the sultanate (1922).
The caliph had his own personal treasury and also had a personal service that included military personnel; Mustafa Kemal said that there was no "religious" or "political" justification for this. He believed that Caliph Abdülmecid II was following in the steps of the sultans in domestic and foreign affairs: accepting of and responding to foreign representatives and reserve officers, and participating in official ceremonies and celebrations.[74] He wanted to integrate the powers of the caliphate into the powers of the GNA. His initial activities began on 1 January 1924, when[74] İnönü, Çakmak and Özalp consented to the abolition of the caliphate. The caliph made a statement to the effect that he would not interfere with political affairs.[75] On 1 March 1924, at the Assembly, Mustafa Kemal said
“ The religion of Islam will be elevated if it will cease to be a political instrument, as had been the case in the past.[76] ”
On 3 March 1924, the caliphate was officially abolished and its powers within Turkey were transferred to the GNA. Other Muslim nations debated the validity of Turkey's unilateral abolition of the caliphate as they decided whether they should confirm the Turkish action or appoint a new caliph.[75] A "Caliphate Conference" was held in Cairo in May 1926 and a resolution was passed declaring the caliphate "a necessity in Islam", but failed to implement this decision.[75]
Two other Islamic conferences were held in Mecca (1926) and Jerusalem (1931), but failed to reach a consensus.[75] Turkey did not accept the re-establishment of the caliphate and perceived it as an attack to its basic existence; while Mustafa Kemal and the reformists continued their own way.[77]
On 8 April 1924, sharia courts were abolished with the law "Mehakim-i Şer'iyenin İlgasına ve Mehakim Teşkilatına Ait Ahkamı Muaddil Kanun".[65][78]
The removal of the caliphate was followed by an extensive effort to establish the separation of governmental and religious affairs. Education was the cornerstone in this effort. In 1923, there were three main educational groups of institutions. The most common institutions were medreses based on Arabic, the Qur'an and memorization. The second type of institution was idadî and sultanî, the reformist schools of the Tanzimat era. The last group included colleges and minority schools in foreign languages that used the latest teaching models in educating pupils. The old medrese education was modernized.[79] Mustafa Kemal changed the classical Islamic education for a vigorously promoted reconstruction of educational institutions.[79]Mustafa Kemal linked educational reform to the liberation of the nation from dogma, which he believed was more important than the Turkish War of Independence.
“ Today, our most important and most productive task is the national education [unification and modernization] affairs. We have to be successful in national education affairs and we shall be. The liberation of a nation is only achieved through this way."[80] ”
In the summer of 1924, Mustafa Kemal invited American educational reformer John Dewey to Ankara to advise him on how to reform Turkish education.[79] His public education reforms aimed to prepare citizens for roles in public life through increasing the public literacy. He wanted to institute compulsory primary education for both girls and boys; since then this effort has been an ongoing task for the republic. He pointed out that one of the main targets of education in Turkey had to be raising a generation nourished with what he called the "public culture". The state schools established a common curriculum which became known as the "unification of education."
Unification of education was put into force on 3 March 1924 by the Law on Unification of Education (No. 430). With the new law, education became inclusive, organized on a model of the civil community. In this new design, all schools submitted their curriculum to the "Ministry of National Education", a government agency modelled after other countries' ministries of education. Concurrently, the republic abolished the two ministries and made clergy subordinate to the department of religious affairs, one of the foundations of secularism in Turkey. The unification of education under one curriculum ended "clerics or clergy of the Ottoman Empire", but was not the end of religious schools in Turkey; they were moved to higher education until later governments restored them to their former position in secondary after Mustafa Kemal's death.
Atatürk with his Panama hat just afterthe Kastamonu speech in 1925.
Beginning in the fall of 1925, Mustafa Kemal encouraged the Turks to wear modern European attire.[81] He was determined to force the abandonment of the sartorial traditions of the Middle East and finalize a series of dress reforms, which were originally started byMahmud II.[81] The fez was established by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826 as part of the Ottoman Empire's modernization effort. The Hat Law of 1925 introduced the use of Western-style hats instead of the fez. Mustafa Kemal first made the hat compulsory for civil servants.[81] The guidelines for the proper dressing of students and state employees were passed during his lifetime; many civil servants adopted the hat willingly. In 1925, Mustafa Kemal wore his "Panama hat" during a public appearance in Kastamonu, one of the most conservative towns in Anatolia, to explain that the hat was the headgear of civilized nations. The last part of reform on dress emphasized the need to wear modern Western suits with neckties as well as Fedora and Derby-style hats instead of antiquated religion-based clothing such as the veil and turban in the Law Relating to Prohibited Garments of 1934.
Even though he personally promoted modern dress for women, Mustafa Kemal never made specific reference to women's clothing in the law, as he believed that women would adapt to the new clothing styles of their own free will. He was frequently photographed on public business with his wife Lâtife Uşaklıgil, who covered her head in accordance with Islamic tradition. He was also frequently photographed on public business with women wearing modern Western clothes. But it was Atatürk's adopted daughters, Sabiha Gökçen and Afet İnan, who provided the real role model for the Turkish women of the future. He wrote: "The religious covering of women will not cause difficulty ... This simple style [of headcovering] is not in conflict with the morals and manners of our society."[82]
On 30 August 1925, Mustafa Kemal's view on religious insignia used outside places of worship was introduced in hisKastamonu speech. This speech also had another position. He said:
“ In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey's civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheiks. The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheiks, dervishes, and disciples. The best, the truest order is the order of civilization. To be a man it is enough to carry out the requirements of civilization. The leaders of dervish orders will understand the truth of my words, and will themselves close down their lodges [tekke] and admit that their disciplines have grown up.[63] ”
On 2 September the government issued a decree closing down all Sufi orders and the tekkes. Mustafa Kemal ordered their dervish lodges to be converted to museums, such as Mevlana Museum in Konya. The institutional expression of Sufism became illegal in Turkey; a politically neutral form of Sufism, functioning as social associations, was permitted to exist.[citation needed]
The abolition of the caliphate and other cultural reforms were met with fierce opposition. [75]
Modernization efforts, 1926–1930
President Kemal at the 1927 opening of the State Art and Sculpture Museum.
President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri on 20 September 1928.
Present Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the library of the Çankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara, 1929.
Attending a class at the Law School of theIstanbul Darülfünunu in 1930.
In the years following 1926, Mustafa Kemal introduced a radical departure from previous reformations established by the Ottoman Empire.[88] For the first time in history, Islamic law was separated from secular law, and restricted to matters of religion.[88] Mustafa Kemal said
“ We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and our legal institutions from the bonds which, even though they are incompatible with the needs of our century, still hold a tight grip on us.[89] ”
On 1 March 1926, the Turkish penal code was passed. It was modelled after the Italian Penal Code. On 4 October 1926, Islamic courts were closed. Establishing the civic law needed time, so Mustafa Kemal delayed the inclusion of the principle of laïcité until 5 February 1937.
Ottoman practice discouraged social interaction between men and women in keeping with Islamic practice of sex segregation. Mustafa Kemal began developing social reforms very early, as was evident in his personal journal. He and his staff discussed issues like abolishing the veiling of womenand the integration of women into the outside world. The clue on how he was planning to tackle the issue was stated in his journal on November 1915;
“ The social change can come by (1) educating capable mothers who are knowledgeable about life; (2) giving freedom to women; (3) a man can change his morals, thoughts, and feelings by leading a common life with a woman; as there is an inborn tendency towards the attraction of mutual affection.[90] ”
Mustafa Kemal needed a new civil code to establish his second major step of giving freedom to women. The first part was the education of girls and was established with the unification of education. On 4 October 1926, the new Turkish civil code passed. It was modelled after the Swiss Civil Code. Under the new code, women gained equality with men in such matters as inheritance and divorce. Mustafa Kemal did not consider gender a factor in social organization. According to his view, society marched towards its goal with men and women united. He believed that it was scientifically impossible for him to achieve progress and to become civilized if the gender separation continued as in Ottoman times.[91] During a meeting he declaimed:
“ To the women: Win for us the battle of education and you will do yet more for your country than we have been able to do. It is to you that I appeal.
To the men: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West.[92] ”
In 1927, the State Art and Sculpture Museum (Turkish: Ankara Resim ve Heykel Müzesi) opened its doors. The museum highlighted sculpture, which was little practised in Turkey owing to the Islamic tradition of avoiding idolatry. Mustafa Kemal believed that "culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic."[93] and described modern Turkey's ideological thrust as "a creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal." He included both his own nation's creative legacy and what he saw as the admirable values of global civilization. The pre-Islamic culture of the Turks became the subject of extensive research, and particular emphasis was laid upon Turkish culture widespread before the Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations. He instigated study of Anatolian civilizations--Phrygians and Lydians, Sumerians and Hittites. To attract current public attention to past cultures, he personally named the "Sümerbank" (1932) after the Sumerians, and the "Etibank" (1935) after the Hittites. He also stressed the folk arts of the countryside as a wellspring of Turkish creativity.
In the spring of 1928, Mustafa Kemal met in Ankara with several linguists and professors from all over Turkey where he unveiled to them a plan of his to implement a new alphabet for the written Turkish language based on a modified Latin alphabet. The new Turkish alphabet would serve as a replacement for the old Arabic script and as a solution to the literacy problem in Turkey. When he asked them how long it would take to implement the new alphabet into the Turkish language, most of the professors and linguists said between three to five years. Mustafa Kemal was said to have scoffed and openly stated, "we shall do it in three to five months".[citation needed]
Over the next several months, Mustafa Kemal pressed for the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet as well as made public announcements to the upcoming overhaul of the new alphabet. On 1 November 1928 he introduced the new Turkish alphabet and abolished the use of Arabic script. At the time, literate citizens of the country comprised as little as 10% of the population. Dewey noted to Mustafa Kemal that learning how to read and write in Turkish with the Arabic script took roughly three years with rather strenuous methods at the elementary level.[79] They used the Ottoman Language written in the Arabic script with Arabic and Persian loan vocabulary.[79] The creation of the new Turkish alphabet as a variant of the Latin alphabet was undertaken by the Language Commission (Turkish: Dil Encümeni) with the initiative of Mustafa Kemal.[79] The tutelage was received from an Ottoman-Armenian calligrapher Hagop Dilaçar.[94] The first Turkish newspaper using the new alphabet was published on 15 December 1928. Mustafa Kemal himself travelled the countryside in order to teach citizens the new alphabet. As he predicted, the country's adaptation to the new alphabet was very quick, and literacy in Turkey jumped from 10% to over 70% within two years.[citation needed] Beginning in 1932, the People's Houses (Turkish: Halk Evleri) opened throughout the country in order to meet the requirement that people between the ages of four and 40 were required to learn the new alphabet as mandated. There were congresses for discussing the issues of copyright, public education and scientific publishing. Literacy reform was also supported by strengthening the private publishing sector with a new law on copyrights.
Mustafa Kemal promoted modern teaching methods at the primary education level, and Dewey took a place of honour.[79]Dewey presented a paradigmatic set of recommendations designed for developing societies that are moving towards modernity in his "Report and Recommendation for the Turkish educational system."[79] He was interested in adult educationfor the goal of forming a skill base in the country. Turkish women were taught not only child care, dress-making and household management, but also skills needed to join the economy outside the home. Turkish education became a state-supervised system, which was designed to create a skill base for the social and economic progress of the country.[95] His "unified" education program was designed to educate responsible citizens as well as useful and appreciated members of society.[79] Turkish education became an integrative system, aimed to alleviate poverty and used female education to establish gender equality.
Mustafa Kemal generated media attention to propagate modern education during this period. He instigated official education meetings called "Science Boards" and "Education Summits." to discuss the quality of education, training issues and certain basic educational principles. He said, "our schools [curriculum] should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and to achieve." He was personally engaged with the development of two textbooks. The first one was Turkish: Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (1930). The second, Geometry (1937), was a text for high schools. The Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (Civic knowledge for the citizens) introduced the science of comparative government and explained the means of administering public trust by explaining the rules of governance as applied to the new state institutions.
On 5 December 1934, Turkey moved to grant full political rights to women, before several other European nations. The equal rights of women in marriage had already been established in the earlier Turkish civil code.[109] Women's place in Mustafa Kemal's cultural reforms was best expressed in the civic book prepared under his supervision.[110] Mustafa Kemal said that
“ There is no logical explanation for the political disenfranchisement of women. Any hesitation and negative mentality on this subject is nothing more than a fading social phenomenon of the past. ...Women must have the right to vote and to be elected; because democracy dictates that, because there are interests that women must defend, and because there are social duties that women must perform.[111]
And you just proved to me that you're about as ignorant as a redneck when it comes to the history of Turkey and the Middle East. Like I said, your limited exposure in Turkey didn't count because you A- were in a very secular reformed country, with an anti Islamization culture in it's past, and B- Weren't really in touch with any minorities, so how the fuck would you know what the Muslim majority was doing to them?
Good news is I'm not going to charge you for this free education, dufus. Here's what is happening to all the reforms that Attaturk had brought about. Telling the truth isn't crazy. Ignoring it is:
4 Jarring Signs of Turkey s Growing Islamization - The Atlantic
Turn right at the omelet," said the gas-station attendant. We were standing on the outskirts of Edirne, a small city about two hours north of Istanbul. My Turkish is poor so I turned for help to my Turkish friend.
"Omelet?" I asked.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques constructed by the government since 2002.
"He meant outlet," he said, as in outlet mall. On today's Turkish highways, outlet malls are more common than caravanserais or roadside inns once were on the Silk Road. The malls are just one sign of the economic boom that is bringing western consumerism to the masses. Arriving in Istanbul from one of the phlegmatic economies of Europe or even from the United States is a jolt. Drive around western or central Turkey and you'll see new roads, high rises, and construction sites everywhere. Much of it comes from Middle Eastern oil money, much of it reinvested into industries such as automobile manufacture, textile, and food production. A recent trip revealed a Turkey that is wealthier than ever in its modern history.
And yet, the gas jockey had it right. For the average person, Westernization is about as deep as the difference between "omelet" and "outlet." The Turkish government wouldn't have it any other way. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power for more than ten years, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in charge for most of them. Their goal is change. They want to make Turkey wealthy and Islamic. They have turned from the vaguely socialist policies of their predecessors to crony capitalism, and from the staunchly secular and pro-western policies established by Ataturk, the Republic's founder, to religious and Muslim-world-centered policies. They have abandoned Ataturk's non-interventionist stance for an active role in Egypt, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now Syria.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques built by the government since 2002. The state is planning an enormous mosque, more than 150,000 square feet in size, to loom over Istanbul on a hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Secularists are outraged, and an opposition leader, Republican People's Party (CHP) MP Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, calls this just another step in a process that, he claims, will end in an Islamic republic.
Whither Turkey? Erdogan's visit to Washington last week is a reminder of how important that question is. President Barack Obama has called Turkey a critical ally and has spoken of his friendship for the Turkish leader. Yet Erdogan is trying to change the Turkish constitution from a parliamentary to a presidential system -- with the hope, of course, that he will be the president. His opponent's charge that Erdogan's model is Russia's Putin, a virtual dictator by legal means.
A visitor can only wonder where Erdogan's country is headed. Consider four scenes from the road:
1) Lecturing in a public university on Turkey's western coast -- the country's secular region -- I saw a small but significant number of women wearing headscarves. The government not long ago overturned a ban on headscarves in public places. From the American point of view, that seems like a good thing and a move in favor of religious freedom. Turkish secularists, however, consider it the thin end of a wedge.
2) In Amasya in north-central Turkey sits the graceful Kapiaga Madrasa. It was built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Bayezit II, an enlightened ruler who welcomed Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain in 1492. The octagonal structure is constructed around a central, arcaded courtyard. A visitor encounters what sounds at first like the buzzing of bees. In fact, it is boys studying religious texts.
The day I saw the madrasa I was wearing a baseball cap purchased earlier at a Turkish naval museum. It was decorated with a Turkish flag and a historic warship. The students looked at me with a certain aloof surprise. I didn't realize that I was making a political statement, but my Turkish friend explained that the symbol was nationalist and secular in their eyes.
3) On the way to Edirne, we drove past the exit to Silivri. A summer resort, Silivri is also home to a huge prison. It houses hundreds of top military officers along with journalists, lawyers, and members of Parliament accused of plotting against the government. It is Turkey's answer to the Bastille, the notorious jail for political prisoners in pre-revolutionary France. With 47 reporters incarcerated, Turkey has been called the world's leading jailer of journalists.
4) Arriving in Istanbul at night after a trip to the Anatolian heartland, my friend drove down Baghdad Avenue -- the Rodeo Drive of Istanbul. Rock music and short skirts were on order, not headscarves and religious chanting. Political prisoners seemed far away. But the boys in the madrasa will soon be adults and the women in headscarves will be college graduates. What kind of a country will they build, I wondered, when they come to Istanbul and look up at its grand new mosque? And what will Turkey's future mean for Americans and our own long and troubled quest to build better relations with Muslim countries?
Erdogan resurrects debates of Islamization
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/09/193621.html
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment that his government wants to “raise a religious youth” has touched a nerve in society, fuelling debates over an alleged “hidden agenda” to Islamize secular Turkey.
“We want to raise a religious youth,” said Erdogan, himself a graduate of a clerical school and the leader of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), during a parliamentary address last week.
“Do you expect the conservative democrat AK Party to raise an atheist generation? That might be your business, your mission, but not ours. We will raise a conservative and democratic generation embracing the nation’s values and principles,” he added.
Erdogan’s remarks drew strong criticism from the staunchly secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with its leader calling him a “religion-monger.”
“It is a sin to garner votes over religion. You are not religious but a religion-monger,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accusing Erdogan of polarizing the country by touching its faultlines.
“I’m asking the prime minister: what can I do if I don’t want my child to be raised as religious and conservative?” wrote prominent liberal commentator Hasan Cemal in Milliyet daily.
“If you are going to train a religious and conservative generation in schools, what will happen to my child?” he asked.
Columnist Mehmet Ali Birand also criticized Erdogan this week in an article titled, “The race for piety will be our end.”
“What does it mean, really, that the state raises religious youth? Is this the first step towards a religious state?” he wrote in Hurriyet Daily News.
Erdogan must explain what he meant, otherwise a dangerous storm may erupt and go as far as fights about being religious versus being godless, he argued.
Neither religious nor political uniformity can be imposed on Turkey given regional, ethnic and sectarian diversity in the country, wrote Semih Idiz in Milliyet daily on Tuesday.
He said millions of people “have subscribed to secular lifestyles” even before the republic.
Erdogan’s AKP has been in power since 2002 and won a third term with nearly 50 percent of the vote in the 2011 elections, securing 325 seats in the 550-member parliament.
But since then the influence of the military, considered as guardian of secularism, has waned.
Dozens of retired and active army officers, academics, journalists and lawyers have been put behind bars in probes into alleged plots against Erdogan’s government.
Critics accuse the government of launching the probes as a tool to silence opponents and impose authoritarianism.
Secular quarters argue Erdogan’s conservative government is also step by step imposing religion in every aspect of life, saying many restaurants already refuse to serve alcohol during Ramadan.
They also criticize recent changes to legislation under which religious school graduates will now be able to access any university branch they like, while in the past they had only access to theology schools.
Birand expressed fears that the changes would not be confined to this and would lead to censorship in television broadcasts.
The Turkish television watchdog RTUK “will restrict all kissing scenes; they will confuse pornography with explicit broadcast and all television screens will be made pious,” he added.
“Then will come religious foundations. After them, it will be municipalities. All kinds of Koran teaching courses, legal or illegal, will mushroom.”
Observers say Erdogan’s message contradicts what he had said during a recent tour of Arab Spring countries, in September.
“As Recep Tayyip Erdogan I am a Muslim but not secular. But I am a prime minister of a secular country. People have the freedom to choose whether or not to be religious in a secular regime,” he said in an interview with an Egyptian TV, published by Turkish daily Vatan.
“The constitution in Turkey defines secularism as the state’s equal distance to every religion,” he said in remarks that provoked criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
It's easy to be as far from reality as you are, having never lived with Muslims
Kamal Attaturk is a national hero and the father of the Turkish nation. Any semi educated Turk would know Attaturk. Unless you hung out with some low class ignorant ones. "Having never lived with Muslims" after everything that has transpired are you back to bragging about your tourist credentials?
I understand your need to discredit my experiences over there, while you probably don't. The subconscious is tricky that way. The conversations I had over there always involved lot's of questions about how Americans viewed Turks. I learned early on how genuinely hurt people would get when I told them Americans don't care about things they thought we would. After 911 when somehow, I forget the particulars, the Turkish press got ahold of comments someone made portraying Turks as the lap dog of American policy. THAT created Anti American sentiment. Another thing that would blindly outrage them, being a proud people...are your posts.
The last thing they need is you, a stranger, telling them all about how they are. I feel a little that way when I see you telling me stuff I already know quite well, and stuff that never entered any conversations I had over there.
What you can't possibly realize it what the average day is like for most Turks.
Some of the mind numbing hysterical rants...which you call posts...would not go down well at the Turkish dinner table. The stuff I see you alarmed about is created by politicians in a chaotic parliament, and doesn't affect the price of Domates and Peynir.
I'm simply relating my experiences over there, and I know it must be an obstacle to your abstracts.
You're putting words in my mouth. It's quite easy for me to remember the many living rooms I sat in over there that have 2 pictures hanging on the wall. One of Ataturk, and the other a prophet.None of the Turkish people I know would have any idea what you're talking about.Thank you....you just proved to me you're crazyLike I said a Turkey was and probably is different. I have not been there but have studied enough. Many of my friends and family have been there for vacation. Heard its beautiful, but I'm not setting foot in any Muslim country ever again. Have you read about Turkey's history? This is the reason a non Muslim can marry a Muslim. Unfortunately many of the reforms have been reversed. Read this and ask yourself, why did a Muslim nation ABOLISH Islam from its national psyche? Perhaps FIRST HAND KNOWLEDGE? The Shah of Iran and his father were very similar rulers before the Islamist animals took over and destroyed the country:
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (pronounced [mustäˈfä ceˈmäl äˈtäˌtyɾc]; 19 May 1881 (conventional) – 10 November 1938) was aTurkish army officer, reformist statesman, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of theRepublic of Turkey. His surname, Atatürk (meaning "Father of the Turks"), was granted to him in 1934 and forbidden to any other person by the Turkish parliament.[1]
Atatürk was a military officer during World War I.[2] Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, he led theTurkish National Movement in the Turkish War of Independence. Having established a provisional government in Ankara, he defeated the forces sent by the Allies. His military campaigns led to victory in the Turkish War of Independence. Atatürk then embarked upon a program of political, economic, and cultural reforms, seeking to transform the former Ottoman Empire into a modern and secular nation-state. Under his leadership, thousands of new schools were built, primary education was made free and compulsory, and women were given equal civil and political rights, while the burden of taxation on peasants was reduced.[3] His government also carried out an extensive policy of Turkification.[4][5][6][7] The principles of Atatürk's reforms, upon which modern Turkey was established, are referred to as Kemalism.
Domestic policies
Mustafa Kemal's basic tenet was the complete independence of the country.[63] He clarified his position:
“ ...by complete independence, we mean of course complete economic, financial, juridical, military, cultural independence and freedom in all matters. Being deprived of independence in any of these is equivalent to the nation and country being deprived of all its independence.[64] ”
He led wide-ranging reforms in social, cultural, and economical aspects, establishing the new Republic's backbone of legislative, judicial, and economic structures. Though he was later idealized by some as an originator of sweeping reforms, many of his reformist ideas were already common in Ottoman intellectual circles at the turn of the 20th century, and were expressed more openly after the Young Turk Revolution.[65]
Mustafa Kemal created a banner to mark the changes between the old Ottoman and the new republican rule. Each change was symbolized as an arrow in this banner. This defining ideology of the Republic of Turkey is referred to as the "Six Arrows", or Kemalist ideology. Kemalist ideology is based on Mustafa Kemal's conception of realism and pragmatism.[66] The fundamentals of nationalism, populism and etatism were all defined under the Six Arrows. These fundamentals were not new in world politics or, indeed, among the elite of Turkey. What made them unique was that these interrelated fundamentals were formulated specifically for Turkey's needs. A good example is the definition and application of secularism; the Kemalist secular state significantly differed from predominantly Christian states.
Civic independence and the Caliphate, 1924–1925
Abolition of the Caliphate was an important dimension in Mustafa Kemal's drive to reform the political system and to promote the national sovereignty. By the consensus of the Muslim majority in early centuries, the caliphate was the core political concept of Sunni Islam.[72] Abolishing the sultanate was easier because the survival of the Caliphate at the time satisfied the partisans of the sultanate. This produced a split system with the new republic on one side and an Islamic form of government with the Caliph on the other side, and Mustafa Kemal and İnönü worried that "it nourished the expectations that the sovereign would return under the guise of Caliph."[73] Caliph Abdülmecid II was elected after the abolition of the sultanate (1922).
The caliph had his own personal treasury and also had a personal service that included military personnel; Mustafa Kemal said that there was no "religious" or "political" justification for this. He believed that Caliph Abdülmecid II was following in the steps of the sultans in domestic and foreign affairs: accepting of and responding to foreign representatives and reserve officers, and participating in official ceremonies and celebrations.[74] He wanted to integrate the powers of the caliphate into the powers of the GNA. His initial activities began on 1 January 1924, when[74] İnönü, Çakmak and Özalp consented to the abolition of the caliphate. The caliph made a statement to the effect that he would not interfere with political affairs.[75] On 1 March 1924, at the Assembly, Mustafa Kemal said
“ The religion of Islam will be elevated if it will cease to be a political instrument, as had been the case in the past.[76] ”
On 3 March 1924, the caliphate was officially abolished and its powers within Turkey were transferred to the GNA. Other Muslim nations debated the validity of Turkey's unilateral abolition of the caliphate as they decided whether they should confirm the Turkish action or appoint a new caliph.[75] A "Caliphate Conference" was held in Cairo in May 1926 and a resolution was passed declaring the caliphate "a necessity in Islam", but failed to implement this decision.[75]
Two other Islamic conferences were held in Mecca (1926) and Jerusalem (1931), but failed to reach a consensus.[75] Turkey did not accept the re-establishment of the caliphate and perceived it as an attack to its basic existence; while Mustafa Kemal and the reformists continued their own way.[77]
On 8 April 1924, sharia courts were abolished with the law "Mehakim-i Şer'iyenin İlgasına ve Mehakim Teşkilatına Ait Ahkamı Muaddil Kanun".[65][78]
The removal of the caliphate was followed by an extensive effort to establish the separation of governmental and religious affairs. Education was the cornerstone in this effort. In 1923, there were three main educational groups of institutions. The most common institutions were medreses based on Arabic, the Qur'an and memorization. The second type of institution was idadî and sultanî, the reformist schools of the Tanzimat era. The last group included colleges and minority schools in foreign languages that used the latest teaching models in educating pupils. The old medrese education was modernized.[79] Mustafa Kemal changed the classical Islamic education for a vigorously promoted reconstruction of educational institutions.[79]Mustafa Kemal linked educational reform to the liberation of the nation from dogma, which he believed was more important than the Turkish War of Independence.
“ Today, our most important and most productive task is the national education [unification and modernization] affairs. We have to be successful in national education affairs and we shall be. The liberation of a nation is only achieved through this way."[80] ”
In the summer of 1924, Mustafa Kemal invited American educational reformer John Dewey to Ankara to advise him on how to reform Turkish education.[79] His public education reforms aimed to prepare citizens for roles in public life through increasing the public literacy. He wanted to institute compulsory primary education for both girls and boys; since then this effort has been an ongoing task for the republic. He pointed out that one of the main targets of education in Turkey had to be raising a generation nourished with what he called the "public culture". The state schools established a common curriculum which became known as the "unification of education."
Unification of education was put into force on 3 March 1924 by the Law on Unification of Education (No. 430). With the new law, education became inclusive, organized on a model of the civil community. In this new design, all schools submitted their curriculum to the "Ministry of National Education", a government agency modelled after other countries' ministries of education. Concurrently, the republic abolished the two ministries and made clergy subordinate to the department of religious affairs, one of the foundations of secularism in Turkey. The unification of education under one curriculum ended "clerics or clergy of the Ottoman Empire", but was not the end of religious schools in Turkey; they were moved to higher education until later governments restored them to their former position in secondary after Mustafa Kemal's death.
Atatürk with his Panama hat just afterthe Kastamonu speech in 1925.
Beginning in the fall of 1925, Mustafa Kemal encouraged the Turks to wear modern European attire.[81] He was determined to force the abandonment of the sartorial traditions of the Middle East and finalize a series of dress reforms, which were originally started byMahmud II.[81] The fez was established by Sultan Mahmud II in 1826 as part of the Ottoman Empire's modernization effort. The Hat Law of 1925 introduced the use of Western-style hats instead of the fez. Mustafa Kemal first made the hat compulsory for civil servants.[81] The guidelines for the proper dressing of students and state employees were passed during his lifetime; many civil servants adopted the hat willingly. In 1925, Mustafa Kemal wore his "Panama hat" during a public appearance in Kastamonu, one of the most conservative towns in Anatolia, to explain that the hat was the headgear of civilized nations. The last part of reform on dress emphasized the need to wear modern Western suits with neckties as well as Fedora and Derby-style hats instead of antiquated religion-based clothing such as the veil and turban in the Law Relating to Prohibited Garments of 1934.
Even though he personally promoted modern dress for women, Mustafa Kemal never made specific reference to women's clothing in the law, as he believed that women would adapt to the new clothing styles of their own free will. He was frequently photographed on public business with his wife Lâtife Uşaklıgil, who covered her head in accordance with Islamic tradition. He was also frequently photographed on public business with women wearing modern Western clothes. But it was Atatürk's adopted daughters, Sabiha Gökçen and Afet İnan, who provided the real role model for the Turkish women of the future. He wrote: "The religious covering of women will not cause difficulty ... This simple style [of headcovering] is not in conflict with the morals and manners of our society."[82]
On 30 August 1925, Mustafa Kemal's view on religious insignia used outside places of worship was introduced in hisKastamonu speech. This speech also had another position. He said:
“ In the face of knowledge, science, and of the whole extent of radiant civilization, I cannot accept the presence in Turkey's civilized community of people primitive enough to seek material and spiritual benefits in the guidance of sheiks. The Turkish republic cannot be a country of sheiks, dervishes, and disciples. The best, the truest order is the order of civilization. To be a man it is enough to carry out the requirements of civilization. The leaders of dervish orders will understand the truth of my words, and will themselves close down their lodges [tekke] and admit that their disciplines have grown up.[63] ”
On 2 September the government issued a decree closing down all Sufi orders and the tekkes. Mustafa Kemal ordered their dervish lodges to be converted to museums, such as Mevlana Museum in Konya. The institutional expression of Sufism became illegal in Turkey; a politically neutral form of Sufism, functioning as social associations, was permitted to exist.[citation needed]
The abolition of the caliphate and other cultural reforms were met with fierce opposition. [75]
Modernization efforts, 1926–1930
President Kemal at the 1927 opening of the State Art and Sculpture Museum.
President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk introducing the new Turkish alphabet to the people of Kayseri on 20 September 1928.
Present Mustafa Kemal Atatürk at the library of the Çankaya Presidential Residence in Ankara, 1929.
Attending a class at the Law School of theIstanbul Darülfünunu in 1930.
In the years following 1926, Mustafa Kemal introduced a radical departure from previous reformations established by the Ottoman Empire.[88] For the first time in history, Islamic law was separated from secular law, and restricted to matters of religion.[88] Mustafa Kemal said
“ We must liberate our concepts of justice, our laws and our legal institutions from the bonds which, even though they are incompatible with the needs of our century, still hold a tight grip on us.[89] ”
On 1 March 1926, the Turkish penal code was passed. It was modelled after the Italian Penal Code. On 4 October 1926, Islamic courts were closed. Establishing the civic law needed time, so Mustafa Kemal delayed the inclusion of the principle of laïcité until 5 February 1937.
Ottoman practice discouraged social interaction between men and women in keeping with Islamic practice of sex segregation. Mustafa Kemal began developing social reforms very early, as was evident in his personal journal. He and his staff discussed issues like abolishing the veiling of womenand the integration of women into the outside world. The clue on how he was planning to tackle the issue was stated in his journal on November 1915;
“ The social change can come by (1) educating capable mothers who are knowledgeable about life; (2) giving freedom to women; (3) a man can change his morals, thoughts, and feelings by leading a common life with a woman; as there is an inborn tendency towards the attraction of mutual affection.[90] ”
Mustafa Kemal needed a new civil code to establish his second major step of giving freedom to women. The first part was the education of girls and was established with the unification of education. On 4 October 1926, the new Turkish civil code passed. It was modelled after the Swiss Civil Code. Under the new code, women gained equality with men in such matters as inheritance and divorce. Mustafa Kemal did not consider gender a factor in social organization. According to his view, society marched towards its goal with men and women united. He believed that it was scientifically impossible for him to achieve progress and to become civilized if the gender separation continued as in Ottoman times.[91] During a meeting he declaimed:
“ To the women: Win for us the battle of education and you will do yet more for your country than we have been able to do. It is to you that I appeal.
To the men: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West.[92] ”
In 1927, the State Art and Sculpture Museum (Turkish: Ankara Resim ve Heykel Müzesi) opened its doors. The museum highlighted sculpture, which was little practised in Turkey owing to the Islamic tradition of avoiding idolatry. Mustafa Kemal believed that "culture is the foundation of the Turkish Republic."[93] and described modern Turkey's ideological thrust as "a creation of patriotism blended with a lofty humanist ideal." He included both his own nation's creative legacy and what he saw as the admirable values of global civilization. The pre-Islamic culture of the Turks became the subject of extensive research, and particular emphasis was laid upon Turkish culture widespread before the Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations. He instigated study of Anatolian civilizations--Phrygians and Lydians, Sumerians and Hittites. To attract current public attention to past cultures, he personally named the "Sümerbank" (1932) after the Sumerians, and the "Etibank" (1935) after the Hittites. He also stressed the folk arts of the countryside as a wellspring of Turkish creativity.
In the spring of 1928, Mustafa Kemal met in Ankara with several linguists and professors from all over Turkey where he unveiled to them a plan of his to implement a new alphabet for the written Turkish language based on a modified Latin alphabet. The new Turkish alphabet would serve as a replacement for the old Arabic script and as a solution to the literacy problem in Turkey. When he asked them how long it would take to implement the new alphabet into the Turkish language, most of the professors and linguists said between three to five years. Mustafa Kemal was said to have scoffed and openly stated, "we shall do it in three to five months".[citation needed]
Over the next several months, Mustafa Kemal pressed for the introduction of the new Turkish alphabet as well as made public announcements to the upcoming overhaul of the new alphabet. On 1 November 1928 he introduced the new Turkish alphabet and abolished the use of Arabic script. At the time, literate citizens of the country comprised as little as 10% of the population. Dewey noted to Mustafa Kemal that learning how to read and write in Turkish with the Arabic script took roughly three years with rather strenuous methods at the elementary level.[79] They used the Ottoman Language written in the Arabic script with Arabic and Persian loan vocabulary.[79] The creation of the new Turkish alphabet as a variant of the Latin alphabet was undertaken by the Language Commission (Turkish: Dil Encümeni) with the initiative of Mustafa Kemal.[79] The tutelage was received from an Ottoman-Armenian calligrapher Hagop Dilaçar.[94] The first Turkish newspaper using the new alphabet was published on 15 December 1928. Mustafa Kemal himself travelled the countryside in order to teach citizens the new alphabet. As he predicted, the country's adaptation to the new alphabet was very quick, and literacy in Turkey jumped from 10% to over 70% within two years.[citation needed] Beginning in 1932, the People's Houses (Turkish: Halk Evleri) opened throughout the country in order to meet the requirement that people between the ages of four and 40 were required to learn the new alphabet as mandated. There were congresses for discussing the issues of copyright, public education and scientific publishing. Literacy reform was also supported by strengthening the private publishing sector with a new law on copyrights.
Mustafa Kemal promoted modern teaching methods at the primary education level, and Dewey took a place of honour.[79]Dewey presented a paradigmatic set of recommendations designed for developing societies that are moving towards modernity in his "Report and Recommendation for the Turkish educational system."[79] He was interested in adult educationfor the goal of forming a skill base in the country. Turkish women were taught not only child care, dress-making and household management, but also skills needed to join the economy outside the home. Turkish education became a state-supervised system, which was designed to create a skill base for the social and economic progress of the country.[95] His "unified" education program was designed to educate responsible citizens as well as useful and appreciated members of society.[79] Turkish education became an integrative system, aimed to alleviate poverty and used female education to establish gender equality.
Mustafa Kemal generated media attention to propagate modern education during this period. He instigated official education meetings called "Science Boards" and "Education Summits." to discuss the quality of education, training issues and certain basic educational principles. He said, "our schools [curriculum] should aim to provide opportunities for all pupils to learn and to achieve." He was personally engaged with the development of two textbooks. The first one was Turkish: Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (1930). The second, Geometry (1937), was a text for high schools. The Vatandaş İçin Medeni Bilgiler (Civic knowledge for the citizens) introduced the science of comparative government and explained the means of administering public trust by explaining the rules of governance as applied to the new state institutions.
On 5 December 1934, Turkey moved to grant full political rights to women, before several other European nations. The equal rights of women in marriage had already been established in the earlier Turkish civil code.[109] Women's place in Mustafa Kemal's cultural reforms was best expressed in the civic book prepared under his supervision.[110] Mustafa Kemal said that
“ There is no logical explanation for the political disenfranchisement of women. Any hesitation and negative mentality on this subject is nothing more than a fading social phenomenon of the past. ...Women must have the right to vote and to be elected; because democracy dictates that, because there are interests that women must defend, and because there are social duties that women must perform.[111]
And you just proved to me that you're about as ignorant as a redneck when it comes to the history of Turkey and the Middle East. Like I said, your limited exposure in Turkey didn't count because you A- were in a very secular reformed country, with an anti Islamization culture in it's past, and B- Weren't really in touch with any minorities, so how the fuck would you know what the Muslim majority was doing to them?
Good news is I'm not going to charge you for this free education, dufus. Here's what is happening to all the reforms that Attaturk had brought about. Telling the truth isn't crazy. Ignoring it is:
4 Jarring Signs of Turkey s Growing Islamization - The Atlantic
Turn right at the omelet," said the gas-station attendant. We were standing on the outskirts of Edirne, a small city about two hours north of Istanbul. My Turkish is poor so I turned for help to my Turkish friend.
"Omelet?" I asked.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques constructed by the government since 2002.
"He meant outlet," he said, as in outlet mall. On today's Turkish highways, outlet malls are more common than caravanserais or roadside inns once were on the Silk Road. The malls are just one sign of the economic boom that is bringing western consumerism to the masses. Arriving in Istanbul from one of the phlegmatic economies of Europe or even from the United States is a jolt. Drive around western or central Turkey and you'll see new roads, high rises, and construction sites everywhere. Much of it comes from Middle Eastern oil money, much of it reinvested into industries such as automobile manufacture, textile, and food production. A recent trip revealed a Turkey that is wealthier than ever in its modern history.
And yet, the gas jockey had it right. For the average person, Westernization is about as deep as the difference between "omelet" and "outlet." The Turkish government wouldn't have it any other way. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been in power for more than ten years, with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in charge for most of them. Their goal is change. They want to make Turkey wealthy and Islamic. They have turned from the vaguely socialist policies of their predecessors to crony capitalism, and from the staunchly secular and pro-western policies established by Ataturk, the Republic's founder, to religious and Muslim-world-centered policies. They have abandoned Ataturk's non-interventionist stance for an active role in Egypt, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and now Syria.
Turkey's building boom includes 17,000 new mosques built by the government since 2002. The state is planning an enormous mosque, more than 150,000 square feet in size, to loom over Istanbul on a hill on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. Secularists are outraged, and an opposition leader, Republican People's Party (CHP) MP Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, calls this just another step in a process that, he claims, will end in an Islamic republic.
Whither Turkey? Erdogan's visit to Washington last week is a reminder of how important that question is. President Barack Obama has called Turkey a critical ally and has spoken of his friendship for the Turkish leader. Yet Erdogan is trying to change the Turkish constitution from a parliamentary to a presidential system -- with the hope, of course, that he will be the president. His opponent's charge that Erdogan's model is Russia's Putin, a virtual dictator by legal means.
A visitor can only wonder where Erdogan's country is headed. Consider four scenes from the road:
1) Lecturing in a public university on Turkey's western coast -- the country's secular region -- I saw a small but significant number of women wearing headscarves. The government not long ago overturned a ban on headscarves in public places. From the American point of view, that seems like a good thing and a move in favor of religious freedom. Turkish secularists, however, consider it the thin end of a wedge.
2) In Amasya in north-central Turkey sits the graceful Kapiaga Madrasa. It was built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Bayezit II, an enlightened ruler who welcomed Jews and Muslims expelled from Spain in 1492. The octagonal structure is constructed around a central, arcaded courtyard. A visitor encounters what sounds at first like the buzzing of bees. In fact, it is boys studying religious texts.
The day I saw the madrasa I was wearing a baseball cap purchased earlier at a Turkish naval museum. It was decorated with a Turkish flag and a historic warship. The students looked at me with a certain aloof surprise. I didn't realize that I was making a political statement, but my Turkish friend explained that the symbol was nationalist and secular in their eyes.
3) On the way to Edirne, we drove past the exit to Silivri. A summer resort, Silivri is also home to a huge prison. It houses hundreds of top military officers along with journalists, lawyers, and members of Parliament accused of plotting against the government. It is Turkey's answer to the Bastille, the notorious jail for political prisoners in pre-revolutionary France. With 47 reporters incarcerated, Turkey has been called the world's leading jailer of journalists.
4) Arriving in Istanbul at night after a trip to the Anatolian heartland, my friend drove down Baghdad Avenue -- the Rodeo Drive of Istanbul. Rock music and short skirts were on order, not headscarves and religious chanting. Political prisoners seemed far away. But the boys in the madrasa will soon be adults and the women in headscarves will be college graduates. What kind of a country will they build, I wondered, when they come to Istanbul and look up at its grand new mosque? And what will Turkey's future mean for Americans and our own long and troubled quest to build better relations with Muslim countries?
Erdogan resurrects debates of Islamization
http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/09/193621.html
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comment that his government wants to “raise a religious youth” has touched a nerve in society, fuelling debates over an alleged “hidden agenda” to Islamize secular Turkey.
“We want to raise a religious youth,” said Erdogan, himself a graduate of a clerical school and the leader of the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), during a parliamentary address last week.
“Do you expect the conservative democrat AK Party to raise an atheist generation? That might be your business, your mission, but not ours. We will raise a conservative and democratic generation embracing the nation’s values and principles,” he added.
Erdogan’s remarks drew strong criticism from the staunchly secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, with its leader calling him a “religion-monger.”
“It is a sin to garner votes over religion. You are not religious but a religion-monger,” said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, accusing Erdogan of polarizing the country by touching its faultlines.
“I’m asking the prime minister: what can I do if I don’t want my child to be raised as religious and conservative?” wrote prominent liberal commentator Hasan Cemal in Milliyet daily.
“If you are going to train a religious and conservative generation in schools, what will happen to my child?” he asked.
Columnist Mehmet Ali Birand also criticized Erdogan this week in an article titled, “The race for piety will be our end.”
“What does it mean, really, that the state raises religious youth? Is this the first step towards a religious state?” he wrote in Hurriyet Daily News.
Erdogan must explain what he meant, otherwise a dangerous storm may erupt and go as far as fights about being religious versus being godless, he argued.
Neither religious nor political uniformity can be imposed on Turkey given regional, ethnic and sectarian diversity in the country, wrote Semih Idiz in Milliyet daily on Tuesday.
He said millions of people “have subscribed to secular lifestyles” even before the republic.
Erdogan’s AKP has been in power since 2002 and won a third term with nearly 50 percent of the vote in the 2011 elections, securing 325 seats in the 550-member parliament.
But since then the influence of the military, considered as guardian of secularism, has waned.
Dozens of retired and active army officers, academics, journalists and lawyers have been put behind bars in probes into alleged plots against Erdogan’s government.
Critics accuse the government of launching the probes as a tool to silence opponents and impose authoritarianism.
Secular quarters argue Erdogan’s conservative government is also step by step imposing religion in every aspect of life, saying many restaurants already refuse to serve alcohol during Ramadan.
They also criticize recent changes to legislation under which religious school graduates will now be able to access any university branch they like, while in the past they had only access to theology schools.
Birand expressed fears that the changes would not be confined to this and would lead to censorship in television broadcasts.
The Turkish television watchdog RTUK “will restrict all kissing scenes; they will confuse pornography with explicit broadcast and all television screens will be made pious,” he added.
“Then will come religious foundations. After them, it will be municipalities. All kinds of Koran teaching courses, legal or illegal, will mushroom.”
Observers say Erdogan’s message contradicts what he had said during a recent tour of Arab Spring countries, in September.
“As Recep Tayyip Erdogan I am a Muslim but not secular. But I am a prime minister of a secular country. People have the freedom to choose whether or not to be religious in a secular regime,” he said in an interview with an Egyptian TV, published by Turkish daily Vatan.
“The constitution in Turkey defines secularism as the state’s equal distance to every religion,” he said in remarks that provoked criticism from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
It's easy to be as far from reality as you are, having never lived with Muslims
Kamal Attaturk is a national hero and the father of the Turkish nation. Any semi educated Turk would know Attaturk. Unless you hung out with some low class ignorant ones. "Having never lived with Muslims" after everything that has transpired are you back to bragging about your tourist credentials?
I understand your need to discredit my experiences over there, while you probably don't. The subconscious is tricky that way. The conversations I had over there always involved lot's of questions about how Americans viewed Turks. I learned early on how genuinely hurt people would get when I told them Americans don't care about things they thought we would. After 911 when somehow, I forget the particulars, the Turkish press got ahold of comments someone made portraying Turks as the lap dog of American policy. THAT created Anti American sentiment. Another thing that would blindly outrage them, being a proud people...are your posts.
The last thing they need is you, a stranger, telling them all about how they are. I feel a little that way when I see you telling me stuff I already know quite well, and stuff that never entered any conversations I had over there.
What you can't possibly realize it what the average day is like for most Turks.
Some of the mind numbing hysterical rants...which you call posts...would not go down well at the Turkish dinner table. The stuff I see you alarmed about is created by politicians in a chaotic parliament, and doesn't affect the price of Domates and Peynir.
I'm simply relating my experiences over there, and I know it must be an obstacle to your abstracts.
