Posted on 04/18/2017 7:10:33 AM PDT by Rummyfan
As they used to say way back when in the long Ottoman twilight, the Turk is the sick man of Europe. Following this weekend's Caliph-for-Life referendum, the Turk is sicker than ever. But he's no longer of Europe, and instead is exiting for a destination dark and catastrophic for almost all his neighbors.
Sultan Erdoğan - who, a mere 15 years ago, was banned from holding political office - has now succeeded in dismantling almost every defining element of the Kemalist republic. What replaces it will be a crude strongman state in service of Islamic imperialism. I have read a lot of commentary this morning, starting with Douglas Murray's "Turkish Democracy Has Just Died" and moving on to Yavuz Baydar's "The End Of Turkey As We Know It" via Alex Alexiev's "Who Lost Turkey?" And several readers have been kind enough to inquire where's my own "Who Lost Turkey?" piece. Well, the truth is I published it exactly ten years ago, to the day of Erdoğan's referendum.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
If you look at the road ahead in Turkey, and if you were an educated Turk with some value in a job....then I’d probably put my resume out in Europe and leave Turkey. None of this business since the coup of last year gives you any incentive to stick around. A brain-drain will occur, and probably 25-percent of the more valuable engineers or doctors will probably leave over the next couple of years. If I were some young Turk in college....I wouldn’t waste any time looking for work in Turkey...I’d be planning on another career elsewhere.
Great piece by Mark Steyn on the changing demographics in Turkey.
Every word Steyn writes should be read.
You can have a functioning democracy in a relatively homogeneous society in which parties compete over tax policy and health care. But, when a nation is divided into two groups with fundamentally opposing views of what that society is or should be, then democracy becomes tribal, and the size of the tribe determines the outcome.
Where the Democrats were taking us.
Ultimately, in Turkey as elsewhere, demography trumps democracy.
Key sentence.
Unfortunately, Erdoğan realized that and very carefully removed secular officers from the senior ranks, largely through retirement. In their place, he promoted Islamists who owed their allegiance to him and would never challenge his grip on power, as long as he took care of his military allies. The recent failed coup--if it actually was a coup--illustrates how impotent secular elements in the military have become.
An equally important question: who lost the TGS?
Well, I hope conservatives are out-producing leftists. But they still have the schools to convert our kids to their idiocy.
Today Turkey, tomorrow Europe.
Talk about jumping back into the dark ages.
Trump needs to tell Erdogan (in polite, diplomatic language of course) to GTF out of Syria & northern Iraq. He’s helping nothing there (other than potentially advancing his ambition to gain new territory for Islamist Turkey) and is complicating possibilities for settlement of the conflicts.
Now that Turkey has become a defacto dictatorship can it remain a member of NATO?
The US, under Obama, was essentially a de facto dictatorship...
Interesting tidbit - every spring, when the promotion list came out, the Turkish GO/FO would gather to discuss the names and remove any considered ‘too Islamist’. That process ceased around 2008, when Erdogan took a hard line with the military, and it’s been downhill ever since.
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