I had added a short video on the fall of the Shah and the emergence of the Islamic republic in one of the other topics on Iran. I can’t seem to find it now so I’m going to refer to the BBC’ documentary series on the foundation and downfall of the Iranian Monarchy and their switching to this “Islamic” Republic.
https://youtu.be/0s5pRsCWW9k?list=PLcWY4...lq9fpB&t=2
The Turkish issue also needs some explanation. So I am going to add my version of the events so we can try to understand where exactly we are standing in this “Islamic Republic of Turkey” project of The Man who has been designated President for Life. / In fact I’m going to refer to him as Dictator Erdogan. I’m not doing this simply because I don’t like him. It’s because in Democracies a president cannot be systematically reelected for decades. Yes there is still Mrs. Merkel who was the chancellor between 2005-2021 (16 years), People like Macron or even Barrack Obama who because they are successful are able to be reelected. But remember in 2015 Obama simply did not run for presidency. There are practical reasons to that. That’s not how democracy works. Even if you are a good leader, democratic presidents do not run for presidency like that even they are successful and popular. And 2) The elections are not fair. The state apparatus, the media (of which 90% belongs to the party) are entirely working in favor of the current “president” and his party. Yes, the elections in Turkey are free, but no they are not fair. Anyone who opposes him is like a boxer on the ring facing someone with a baseball bat. It’s not impossible to beat him (in fact we almost did that) but it’s simply not fair. And that’s not how democratic presidents are elected. So that’s a hoax.
So back to History. Atatürk (1881-1938) was a great leader who put this country on the path of modernization, secularism and democracy. You may simply want to browse Wikipedia on that. His follower Ismet Inonu (1884-1973) was also a man of great caliber (like Mr. Winston Churchill for instance). Both of them were military geniuses who worked hard to take a backward and primitive feudal society and turn it into a 20th century democracy. Yet both of them did (especially Inonu) did not really understand socialism a lot. In fact it would not be an exaggeration to say that they simply hated the idea. And this became a government legacy. Old school military leaders until the purge carried out by Dictator Erdogan also hate socialism for many reason. And the Americans liked that a lot (in a way that is very similar to their policies in Iran). So the CIA seems to have backed this approach starting from the 1950’s. I don’t blame anyone for that. It was the cold war era and the US did not want a Soviet-Friendly middle-east nor did the Europeans. Still this became a problem and I will come to that.
The problem with feudal societies is that they rely on cheap labor provided by people who got used to selfdom. For such people there is no democracy / human rights / environmentalism you name it. Life if seen as a process full of suffering at the end of which they will all get to heaven if they are pious and obedient to God (and the State). And that’s where Both Ataturk and Inonu failed to see the potential of socialism. See: After the American invasion in Japan, US general did not repress socialist propagandists coming from Russia + China. Because they knew that these people would work in their favor. What Inonu did (and he was still a great man), was the opposite. We have a worldwide famous poet called Nazım Hikmet (1902-1963) who spent half of his life in prison before dying in exile in Moscow in 1963. Russians today think he was Russian.
Also, after switching to a multiple party system in 1946, right wing politicians started to do everything they could to oppress all forms of left wing ideology. Why? – Culture. Many of these rich / male individuals saw themselves as feudal landlords and perceived the ordinary people as medieval mobs. And the army backed them in this ideology because of the rising influence of some ultra nationalist ideologies typical of the 20th century.
So what happened to the ordinary man? Just like Iran, they did what they always did. They carried out a minimalist life while relying on religion as a mean of finding comfort (as they are still doing today). That’s where political Islam started to kick in more and more visibly starting from the 60’s and the 70’s. The death sentence of the Modern Turkish republic was signed by Mr. Kenan Evren the commander of the Armed forces in 1980 (a year before I was born), when he made concessions to political Islamists. He allowed them to build schools where they were able to raise brainwashed fanatical followers and allowed them to hold newspapers, TV channels, businesses etc.
And in the same era, especially in the 70’s left wing people were arrested, tortured, imprisoned, and prosecuted. In fact, before the putsch of 1980, left wing youth were fighting ultra-nationalists and political Islamists in the streets (and this was the alleged cause of the third military intervention in Turkish history). The Pro-Kurdish para-military organization was founded after that. Many left wing ideologists saw no issue but armed conflict against the government. We lost 6500 soldier, 12,000 civilians and also 32,000 PKK militants (mostly peasant boys and girls) during that conflicts.
And (naturally) communism is seen as a huge “demon” by the ordinary citizens and “Islam” is seen as the absolute good and salvation by the ordinary people. We are talking about people still living in a feudal state of mind. So the way I see it, we did create a modern state, but we made mistakes and handed it over to political islamists on a silver plate. If you go to poor neighborhoods, it was simply too easy, especially since the 1970’s for political islamist propagandists to reach them. The man is poor, he is suffering, has no access to education, cannot even afford healthcare, cannot even heat himself properly during winter and what the government did was to forbid any left-wing ideology to reach them and start getting organized to demand more rights, more freedom, more welfare as they do in modern societies. So they did this social engineering going to preserve their own interest despite the needs of the ordinary man and ended up (not yet but it’s coming) in exile like the Iranian elites living in Los-Angeles / London / Oslo etc…
As a conclusion: I think western policies toward the Middle East from 1945 to 1973 were very aggressive. Yes it was the end of the colonial era, yes it was the Cold-War era but still: There could have been efforts to try to “maintain” the civilized nature of this entire geography. One less known example is the Example of King Faisal who ruled Iraq between 1935 and 1958 or the Syrian Republic (1946-1963) or even General Naser in Egypt (1954-1970) or the Afghan king Zahir Shah (1933-1973) were all people who were not dictators, who looked at the West and asked themselves “Can my people become like that at some point?”. I knew such an Iraqi family as a child who were very nationalistic but had to flee to Turkey when Saddam came to power in 1979.
So back to my own place: A democratic state cannot be repressive yet it cannot indulge to non-democratic tendencies either. On a path to modernization you have to allow the expression of left-wing tendencies within a democratic social framework while being very vigilant on religious movements who are willing to politicize the spiritual faith of ordinary citizens as well as right wing extremism and ultra-nationalism (See: Germany in the 1930’s and the rise of the NSDAP). In fact. You are not allowed to have a copy of Mein-Kampf in Germany. You also cannot possess any swastika or other national-socialist sign or emblem.
Back to today / to this geography: No one is giving anything to anyone. Yet Political Islam is often described as a pressure cooker. When society is over heated, they remove the lid for a while and shut down the fire. When is seem to have cooled down a little, they put society back on the oven and start cooking it again? So who are the potatoes? – not the women with their headscarves of course. Even if the government is completely medieval in nature, we are still here. If I flee to Germany today, there are still kids being born here today. Once they are 14-15 they will (inevitably) want to know why they can’t have a boy-friend / girl-friend like any one else. So again, they will cook it, than they will cool a little, cook a little, cool a little. In their logic they are (in theory) getting us to a point of (their understanding of) a pious society.
So the man above and the man bellows were both great – Great leader. But even they did not truly realize the importance of being more open-minded on some issues, and that’s where they failed. I mean we will tame these political Islamists one way or the other. But what about the economy? What about the dreams of so many generations? What about (today) the energy transition? All this energy and several decades, is lost just to explain that there is no such thing as “mandatory Hijab” in Islam and the Holy Book wants us to “work to create valuable things” instead of wasting our energy on Ego-based power struggles.
Sometimes, societies can be really stupid
Here is a Picture of Mr. İsmet Inonu who is also buried in Ataturk's Mausoleum in Ankara:
![[Image: 5e03168dd3806c212c8e2a0f.jpg]](https://i4.hurimg.com/i/hurriyet/75/750x422/5e03168dd3806c212c8e2a0f.jpg)
https://youtu.be/0s5pRsCWW9k?list=PLcWY4...lq9fpB&t=2
The Turkish issue also needs some explanation. So I am going to add my version of the events so we can try to understand where exactly we are standing in this “Islamic Republic of Turkey” project of The Man who has been designated President for Life. / In fact I’m going to refer to him as Dictator Erdogan. I’m not doing this simply because I don’t like him. It’s because in Democracies a president cannot be systematically reelected for decades. Yes there is still Mrs. Merkel who was the chancellor between 2005-2021 (16 years), People like Macron or even Barrack Obama who because they are successful are able to be reelected. But remember in 2015 Obama simply did not run for presidency. There are practical reasons to that. That’s not how democracy works. Even if you are a good leader, democratic presidents do not run for presidency like that even they are successful and popular. And 2) The elections are not fair. The state apparatus, the media (of which 90% belongs to the party) are entirely working in favor of the current “president” and his party. Yes, the elections in Turkey are free, but no they are not fair. Anyone who opposes him is like a boxer on the ring facing someone with a baseball bat. It’s not impossible to beat him (in fact we almost did that) but it’s simply not fair. And that’s not how democratic presidents are elected. So that’s a hoax.
So back to History. Atatürk (1881-1938) was a great leader who put this country on the path of modernization, secularism and democracy. You may simply want to browse Wikipedia on that. His follower Ismet Inonu (1884-1973) was also a man of great caliber (like Mr. Winston Churchill for instance). Both of them were military geniuses who worked hard to take a backward and primitive feudal society and turn it into a 20th century democracy. Yet both of them did (especially Inonu) did not really understand socialism a lot. In fact it would not be an exaggeration to say that they simply hated the idea. And this became a government legacy. Old school military leaders until the purge carried out by Dictator Erdogan also hate socialism for many reason. And the Americans liked that a lot (in a way that is very similar to their policies in Iran). So the CIA seems to have backed this approach starting from the 1950’s. I don’t blame anyone for that. It was the cold war era and the US did not want a Soviet-Friendly middle-east nor did the Europeans. Still this became a problem and I will come to that.
The problem with feudal societies is that they rely on cheap labor provided by people who got used to selfdom. For such people there is no democracy / human rights / environmentalism you name it. Life if seen as a process full of suffering at the end of which they will all get to heaven if they are pious and obedient to God (and the State). And that’s where Both Ataturk and Inonu failed to see the potential of socialism. See: After the American invasion in Japan, US general did not repress socialist propagandists coming from Russia + China. Because they knew that these people would work in their favor. What Inonu did (and he was still a great man), was the opposite. We have a worldwide famous poet called Nazım Hikmet (1902-1963) who spent half of his life in prison before dying in exile in Moscow in 1963. Russians today think he was Russian.
Also, after switching to a multiple party system in 1946, right wing politicians started to do everything they could to oppress all forms of left wing ideology. Why? – Culture. Many of these rich / male individuals saw themselves as feudal landlords and perceived the ordinary people as medieval mobs. And the army backed them in this ideology because of the rising influence of some ultra nationalist ideologies typical of the 20th century.
So what happened to the ordinary man? Just like Iran, they did what they always did. They carried out a minimalist life while relying on religion as a mean of finding comfort (as they are still doing today). That’s where political Islam started to kick in more and more visibly starting from the 60’s and the 70’s. The death sentence of the Modern Turkish republic was signed by Mr. Kenan Evren the commander of the Armed forces in 1980 (a year before I was born), when he made concessions to political Islamists. He allowed them to build schools where they were able to raise brainwashed fanatical followers and allowed them to hold newspapers, TV channels, businesses etc.
And in the same era, especially in the 70’s left wing people were arrested, tortured, imprisoned, and prosecuted. In fact, before the putsch of 1980, left wing youth were fighting ultra-nationalists and political Islamists in the streets (and this was the alleged cause of the third military intervention in Turkish history). The Pro-Kurdish para-military organization was founded after that. Many left wing ideologists saw no issue but armed conflict against the government. We lost 6500 soldier, 12,000 civilians and also 32,000 PKK militants (mostly peasant boys and girls) during that conflicts.
And (naturally) communism is seen as a huge “demon” by the ordinary citizens and “Islam” is seen as the absolute good and salvation by the ordinary people. We are talking about people still living in a feudal state of mind. So the way I see it, we did create a modern state, but we made mistakes and handed it over to political islamists on a silver plate. If you go to poor neighborhoods, it was simply too easy, especially since the 1970’s for political islamist propagandists to reach them. The man is poor, he is suffering, has no access to education, cannot even afford healthcare, cannot even heat himself properly during winter and what the government did was to forbid any left-wing ideology to reach them and start getting organized to demand more rights, more freedom, more welfare as they do in modern societies. So they did this social engineering going to preserve their own interest despite the needs of the ordinary man and ended up (not yet but it’s coming) in exile like the Iranian elites living in Los-Angeles / London / Oslo etc…
As a conclusion: I think western policies toward the Middle East from 1945 to 1973 were very aggressive. Yes it was the end of the colonial era, yes it was the Cold-War era but still: There could have been efforts to try to “maintain” the civilized nature of this entire geography. One less known example is the Example of King Faisal who ruled Iraq between 1935 and 1958 or the Syrian Republic (1946-1963) or even General Naser in Egypt (1954-1970) or the Afghan king Zahir Shah (1933-1973) were all people who were not dictators, who looked at the West and asked themselves “Can my people become like that at some point?”. I knew such an Iraqi family as a child who were very nationalistic but had to flee to Turkey when Saddam came to power in 1979.
So back to my own place: A democratic state cannot be repressive yet it cannot indulge to non-democratic tendencies either. On a path to modernization you have to allow the expression of left-wing tendencies within a democratic social framework while being very vigilant on religious movements who are willing to politicize the spiritual faith of ordinary citizens as well as right wing extremism and ultra-nationalism (See: Germany in the 1930’s and the rise of the NSDAP). In fact. You are not allowed to have a copy of Mein-Kampf in Germany. You also cannot possess any swastika or other national-socialist sign or emblem.
Back to today / to this geography: No one is giving anything to anyone. Yet Political Islam is often described as a pressure cooker. When society is over heated, they remove the lid for a while and shut down the fire. When is seem to have cooled down a little, they put society back on the oven and start cooking it again? So who are the potatoes? – not the women with their headscarves of course. Even if the government is completely medieval in nature, we are still here. If I flee to Germany today, there are still kids being born here today. Once they are 14-15 they will (inevitably) want to know why they can’t have a boy-friend / girl-friend like any one else. So again, they will cook it, than they will cool a little, cook a little, cool a little. In their logic they are (in theory) getting us to a point of (their understanding of) a pious society.
So the man above and the man bellows were both great – Great leader. But even they did not truly realize the importance of being more open-minded on some issues, and that’s where they failed. I mean we will tame these political Islamists one way or the other. But what about the economy? What about the dreams of so many generations? What about (today) the energy transition? All this energy and several decades, is lost just to explain that there is no such thing as “mandatory Hijab” in Islam and the Holy Book wants us to “work to create valuable things” instead of wasting our energy on Ego-based power struggles.
Sometimes, societies can be really stupid
Here is a Picture of Mr. İsmet Inonu who is also buried in Ataturk's Mausoleum in Ankara:
![[Image: 7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/71/51/bc/7151bc275de2d3d422106a4008215efe.jpg)
