Posted on 03/24/2005 8:34:24 AM PST by quidnunc
His new Middle East neighborhood cannot make Syria's dictator Bashar Assad very happy. Turkey is democratic to his north. A million Arabs vote in Israel to the south. Palestinians are near civil war to establish democratic rule — their own terrorists more a threat to the newly elected Abu Abbas than are Israeli tanks.
Iraq to the east is settling down under its new autonomy, forging through blood and fire the Arab world's first true democracy. Lebanon is now afire with anti-Syrian sentiment, equating its occupation with the last obstacle to a democratic renaissance.
Beyond Syria's borders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's announcement that he may be forced to act as if he will hold real elections is not welcome to Assad. Nor is the strange behavior of once-kindred Col. Moammar Gadhafi and all his unexpected talk of giving up forbidden weapons and letting Westerners back into Libya.
When Wahhabist Saudi Arabia promises municipal elections, or Afghan women line up at the polls for hours, then the world has been turned upside down. Syria's worst nightmare is not an American invasion, but an Arab League that is dominated by nascent democracies.
Thugocracies and kleptocracies, however, die hard. So will that of Bashar Assad. His henchmen probably blew up former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, in fears that the Westernized entrepreneur dreamed of an open Arab Singapore or Monaco on the border. Now they are planning to unleash enough 1970s-style violence to terrify the Lebanese into preferring Syrian order to their own messy freedom. Hand-in-glove with fellow pariah Iran, Syria hopes to keep sending enough cash and expatriates back into Iraq to stop the democracy contagion before it infects any more.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
FYI
"Turkey is democratic to his north."
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What is Hanson smoking. He's gotta be kidding...agendized writers are frequestly useless.
Why do you say that?
When did Turkey cease to be a democracy?
There was nothing about it in the papers or on FOX News?
It has never been a democracy. It is a military dictatorship 99% Muslim - and before that was a heinous personality cult putting Hitler and Stalin to shame and before that it was a decrepit empire.
And what is your agenda?
Turkey is a parliementary republic at this time with freely elected representatives and executive. The last military coup was in the early 1990's. Attaturks' personality cult was nothing compared to Stalin's
What in the world are you gibbering about?
democracy:
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections2 : a political unit that has a democratic government
Turkey has free elections, therefore it is a democracy.
It may not be the kind of democracy which we might wish to live under, but it is a democracy nonetheless.
In pure numbers Stalin killed far more...in pure viciousness and hatred, the Muslim Kemalists commited a genocide that Hitler found enchanting: "who will remember the Armenians 50 years from now?" he claimed as he pondered the fate of the Jews.
At one time, Asia Minor was Christian. Millions of Christians were butchered by the Muslim Turks the preponderace of them in the 20th century. Today the few remaining Christians (for show) live in fear and are harrassed and their churches are constantly attacked and the remains of the past civilizations are quietly but effectively erased. Typical Muslim tactics.
"It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood, a beautiful day in the neighborhood..."
If it were only so easy...to look up a definition in the dictionary and just apply it willy nilly.
Here is some additional info for you from Freedom House, generally supportive to Muslim nations like Turkey:
"Freedom House rated the country on political rights with a 3 and on civil rights with a 4, both on a scale of 1 to 7 (in which 1 is the most free). Freedom House considers Turkey to be a partly free country."
You need to get out more often. Turkey has an elected government.
Saying so does not make it so...As a freeper you ought to be able to back your claims instead of just spouting inanities.
minor quibble: "the Arab world's first true democracy" isn't Iraq, it was Lebanon's, prior to the PLO ingress, the civil war, and Syrian occupation.
Are you a Kurd or an Armenian?
Are you Mr. Jeeves? How about thinking for a change Jeeves?
Is your heritage Armenian or Greek by any chance?
Turkey may not be Switzerland, or even Taiwan, but it DOES meet the definition of a democracy.
Is your heritage Muslim or former tourist to Turkey and seduced by a belly dancer or a baklava??
Or maybe are you a lapsed Christian or someone who does not care to understand the history of the region and has been deluded and believes that Turkey is secular and not Muslim and not a dangerous conspirator to Islamic extremism?
Which is it?
You're blathering.
That's right... get out of the kitchen when the heat is on.
for Turk dreamers here (as well as Muslims Turks themselves), it's difficult to get them to face up to the facts.
Failure is hard to take...so you just practice avoidance behavior is that right?
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