Marginal Gains Posted May 18, 2018 Posted May 18, 2018 (edited) 1 hour ago, Storm Rider said: That is the problem with Turkey's current leadership - Turkey was a secular nation as stated in their constitution, but now is becoming an Islamic nation. Attaturk is rolling in his grave. A secular nation is of preference to a religious nation? Is that the point you’re making? Edited May 18, 2018 by Marginal Gains
RevTestament Posted May 18, 2018 Posted May 18, 2018 1 hour ago, Storm Rider said: That is the problem with Turkey's current leadership - Turkey was a secular nation as stated in their constitution, but now is becoming an Islamic nation. Attaturk is rolling in his grave. Ataturk is painted as a secular unifying leader in most history, but it is not at all clear to me that he was much different than those who committed the Armenian genocide just before he took power in 1919. Under his rule in 1920 Turkish forces went into Cilicia and attacked Marash and Hajan where Armenians who had repatriated apparently ended up being all treated as if they were allied with the French, and by October of that year, had been burned out or killed. The French ended up evacuating the last of the Armenians in October of 1921. In 1922 when his forces pushed the Greek army out of Smyrna, the Christian Armenian neighborhood became set ablaze, and the Armenians were again forced out. Essentially all of the Armenians were Christian. With the vast majority of the remaining Christians gone, Ataturk painted himself as a great unifier of Turkey. He was pragmatic, but also extremely nationalistic to the point of appearing racist. The name Ataturk granted to him by the Turkish Grand National Assembly in 1934 means "father of the Turks," which certainly wouldn't put Armenians or Kurds at ease. He founded the Turkish Historical Society and physical anthropology department which tried to prove that Turkey had been the land of the Turkish race for thousands of years sparking tones of Aryanism under the Nazis a few decades later. Armenians apparently never felt at ease under his rule, and in his last year he pressured the French into annexing a region they still controlled called Iskenderun. Most of the 23,000 Armenians there opted for relocation to Syria and Lebanon. It appears he maintained a secular rule for the sake of preventing a foreign takeover of their government more than wanting a true secular rule over all the peoples in Turkey. So the Muslim Turks like him just fine even if they had lost their caliphate.
Storm Rider Posted May 18, 2018 Posted May 18, 2018 4 hours ago, Marginal Gains said: A secular nation is of preference to a religious nation? Is that the point you’re making? A secular nation i.e. a separation between church and state and a religious nation - an Islamic state - are two widely different things. Having lived in the Middle East for seven years and traveled extensively throughout the region and North Africa I came to appreciate a secular form of government similar to the one we have here in the USA.
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