BTW, young Cleburne, your comparison of Turkey with the USSR is a little like using a sledgehammer to kill a housefly, besides just being plain bloody-minded.
Don't you think that some of your rhetorical devices are mebbe just a little high falutin' ?
I did not mean to imply that Stalin was equal to the Young Turks (and certainly not the modern Turkish government), but that their ideas were similar. It's not my theory really, comes from a comparative history study I'm reading, but it's implications make sense- to me anyway. There is a pattern to revolutionary, authoritarian governments in which minorities pose a problem- real or imagined- to the revolutionary government. Revolutionary in particular, as it is necessary to maintain a fairly homogeneous population, preferably a population composed of your supporters. It is in the autoritarian's best interest to eliminate ethnic groups, religous minorities, social classes, etc, that threaten (or at least he percieves them as a threat) his rule.
In modern-day Turkey there is not the added dimension of a revolutionary government, but it is still quite authoritarian- so I would say the patterns of other governments are applicable. Christian (or for that matter, Muslim) groups who are not members of the status quo pose a problem. Perhaps it is understandable, in light of Turkey's situation, but I certainly hope the US never adopts Turkey's solution.