Bush holds up Turkey democracy as example

[bemildred]

WASHINGTON - President Bush held up Turkey's democracy as an important example for other Mideast nations Wednesday during an Oval Office meeting with the country's prime minister in which both leaders declared a strong relationship after differences over Iraq.

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"Turkey and the United States have an important strategic relationship," Bush said. "I told the prime minister how grateful I was that he is a strong supporter of the Broader Middle Eastern Initiative."

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Erdogan said they also discussed plans to reunify Cyprus, a tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea that has been divided since 1974 between a Greek Cypriot-controlled south and the Turkish-occupied north. Turkey alone recognizes the breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north, and keeps 40,000 troops there.

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Turkey's relations with the United States showed some strain after Ankara refused to allow U.S. troops in the country for the Iraq war. Erdogan's trip to Washington has been seen as a fence-mending visit and both leaders said he also encouraged U.S. investment in Turkey.

SLO .com

[sniffa]

1. hmmmmm

i can't be the onLy one who immmediateLy thought:

[HockeyMom]

4. Yep

[ekelly]

45. big turkey

"Hey there, how ya doin' little lady? I'm a big turkey!.....I mean....uhhhhh..... look at this big turkey!"


::Thinks to self::
(Damnit....screwed up again. I practised for this photo op a hundred times!)

[TheCentepedeShoes]

50. Exactly what I thought, too. n/t

[Teaser]

2. This is the country where

the military overthrows governments if it feels they are insufficiently secular.

[struggle4progress]

51. Didn't the Bushistas complain two years ago, when Turkey's military ..

.. DIDN'T disobey the civilian government during the Iraq invasion?

[athena]

52. Yes.

The ruling party (AKP) at first agreed to provide military bases and air space for the American attack against Iraq. At least 80% of the public disapproved. (The 20% that was pro-war was simply afraid of the consequences of not obeying the wishes of the U.S.) All the newspapers criticized the government's position. Thousands protested in the streets. The AKP, when it saw that it was losing its popularity, reversed its decision. The shrubbery encouraged the Turkish military to interfere, but the military refused. The Bush administration can't even recognize democracy when it sees it.

[Fire Walk With Me]

53. When BushCo mention or show up in your country, it means "conform"

or else.

[struggle4progress]

56. When the Bushistas appear, I'd say: "Hide the women and the silver." eom

[Fire Walk With Me]

57. Nice tagline. Just a reminder due to this administration

that cowardice is not skillfull. A coward cannot gain acceptance through direct discussion or demonstration, they must skulk between the walls and use deceit to gain an undeserved, immoral advantage. However, cowards are fine with this sort of thing, which is the problem we need to solve.

[dchill]

3. Bush ...

wants to spread Turkey Democracy EVERYWHERE.

Including here in the USA.

[Javaman]

21. Plastic turkey, that is, like Iraq....

Call me kooky, but is this the same Turkey that has been committing genocide against it's Kurdish population for low these umpteen years?

But then again, we are killing thousands of Iraqi civilians, so I guess it's okay with moron*

Colossal Jackass.

[athena]

26. Half of Turkey's presidents have been Kurdish.

And Kurds are over-represented in parliament. Speaking Kurdish has been legal for several years now. You can go to Turkey and buy Kurdish books and CDs at any major store. The ratios of Kurds in government, academia, and business is much higher in Turkey than the corresponding ratios of blacks here.

That's not to say that the shrub has any right to make use of Turkey's democracy for his own selfish purposes. Secular Turks are especially annoyed at being called a "moderate Islamic state", since Turkey is not an Islamic state.

The genocide of the Armenians happened a hundred years ago, and it was carried out by the Ottoman empire -- not by Turkey, which overthrew the Ottoman empire. I don't see other states being forced to apologize for the actions of their predecessors.

Everyone here who goes on and on about how horrible Turkey is should go to Turkey, learn Turkish, and see just how free the Turkish press is. Unlike their American counterparts, Turkish journalists don't consider themselves to be doing their jobs if they don't hold the government's feet to the fire -- even if that gets them assassinated.

It seems to me that a lot of the people here would be much happier to see Turkey turn into another version of Iran than to see it solve its few remaining problems. And if the EU continues along its xenophobic, islamophobic path, that may just happen.

[eissa]

29. Not true

Only several years ago an Assyrian priest was arrested after being interviewed by a western journalist. He was asked about the genocide committed against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks and when he acknowledged that it did happen (I believe it's still illegal to even admit that it occurred), he was promptly arrested. Were it not for the intervention of Amnesty International and other European human rights groups, he would probably still be languishing in some God-forsaken prison cell. And if it was not the modern Turks who took part in that horrific chapter of Turkey's history, why do they have such difficulty even admitting that it happened?

[Robeson]

37. The systematic extermination of the Armenians began....

...shortly after the Turkish victory at Gallipoli. Lord Kinross states in "The Ottoman Centuries", pg. 607.:

"The British failure at Gallipoli gave a breathing space to the Young Turk triumvirate, leaving if free to pursue, without external interfernce, a premeditated internal policy for the final elimination of the Armenian race. Their proximity to the Russians on the Caucasus front furnished a convenient pretext for their persecution, on a scale far exceeding the atrocities of Abdul Hamid, through the deportation and massacre of one million Armenians, more than half, of whom perished."

Please note, that the ruling government at the time was the Ottoman government, and not the Nationalists. It was lead largely by Enver Pasha, who should, rightly, take much of the blame for the Armenian massacres. It was, basically, his policy.

As to why the Turkish Republic doesn't take responsibility, I could only speculate. It could be because they don't won't to be held responsible for the actions of a previous government, or the fact that many of the Young Turks who were in that previous government, and therefore may have personally been involved in those attrocities, or supported them, had later careers in the Nationalists government.

But to clarify, the extermination of the Armenians was an Ottoman policy, that actually went back a long ways. Sultan Abdul Hamid II also had a genocidal policy towards the Armenians - with the help of the Kurds - in the 1890's. Ironically, Sultan Abdul Hamid may have been half Armenian...

[athena]

39. Thank you. That's what I thought.

Turkey is being held responsible for the crimes of the empire it overthrew. I wonder why Turkey doesn't point this out.

[Vladimir]

40. The problem is that it was completed under Ataturk

http://www.armenian-genocide.org/kemal.html

On the other hand, Ataturk did condemn the genocide of 1915 (and no-one can seriously dispute that he took Turkey out of its monarchic/feudalist era)...

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,353274,00.html

I am kind of sorry I started this whole mess with what I should have realised was a rather crap bit of sarcasm.

[athena]

44. Turkey was under attack on all sides.

This was the first world war, and the Armenians, helped by the French, were also fighting against Turkey. There was a lot of killing on all sides. You are saying that killing while defending one's country is not allowed in war? Or is it only when Turks do it that it's a problem?

[Robeson]

47. Yes, I tried to touch on some that on the post below.

[blockhead]

54. if Turkey were attacked from behind, do you think Greece would help? n/t

[blockhead]

55. sorry

[Robeson]

46. Yes, unfortunately many Armenians were killed....

...during the the reconquest of Anatolia by the Nationalists forces. But as for it being state policy to genocide a people, as it was under the Ottomans, that necessarily wasn't the case.

In the reconquest of Cilicia, events soon escalated out of hand, in that it was the mobs and townspeople themselves, along with paramilitary forces, who were opening up and firing on every Armenian that moved. Also, it was a general war going on at that point for national survival. The French were the enemy of the Nationalists, they occupied Cilicia. The Armenians supported them and were protected by them. Hence, they were seen as being with the French.

In the Causus region, Russia and the Nationalists were both racing for Armenia, and it was a geopolitical struggle.

Izmir, was not a pretty scene at all, and many Turks were seeking revenge on anyone protected in that city, since the Greeks had also just savaged Western Anatolia, and wholesale slaughtered Turks in a bid to conquer it and to defeat the Nationalists. When the Nationalists pushed them back into the sea, the soldiers revenged themselves on the Greeks, or anyone protected by them.

Its complicated, and ugly. Wars usually are.

[eissa]

41. And Envar Pasha was

a Turk. End of story. "A different government" does not wash away the stain. Is bush not an American? In a few years from now, when the real story behind the war in Iraq will become clearer (hopefully) to the American public, will we then say "that was the republicans -- it was a different government."

I think the reason that Germany was welcomed back into the world of nations after the horror of the Holocaust is because (for the most part) the German people owned up to what their government had done and made amends for it. Turkey will of course not have to worry about that since there are few survivors left now to tell of their experiences. They will eventually be accepted into the EU and the request for a simple apology will never occur.

[Robeson]

43. By your reasoning, should Lenin, leader of the Communist government,...

...have been held responsible for the actions of the Czarist government? A government he overthrew? Does that make sense to you?

[sasquatch]

5. Bush LOVES Turkey's democracy because he wants to kill Armenians too!

Specificly these guys:

:(:cry:

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

6. He should check with his kurdish buddies on that one. n/t

[0007]

9. At least Saddam took care of his own business.

[walkon]

7. Did we liberate Turkey, too?

Looks like Turkey has a little business for the Military-Industrial Complex in Cyprus. It's kissy-kissy make up time.

[sasquatch]

10. Yeah, and we're changing it's name to Chicken

:D

[Supersedeas]

19. Turkey is where it is b/c of Iraqi Nuclear bomb of Democracy, no?

[David__77]

8. Turkey is a semi-fascist state.

Kurds aren't even allowed to speak Kurdish. This talk of "democracy" is utter nonsense. It's like lauding Pinochet as a guarantor of "humanr rights." Many thousands have perished in Turkey's political prisons.

[Vladimir]

14. Although you gotta love a bit of Kemal Ataturk

:evilgrin:

[eissa]

23. Good God

Please tell me you were being sarcastic! That animal is rotting in hell next to his pal Hitler where he belongs.

[Vladimir]

24. Yes, and I'm sorry if it was in

bad taste.

[eissa]

25. No apologies needed

I'm just relieved :-)

[athena]

27. Ataturk is an animal? For giving women the right to vote?

For separating religion from government? For deposing the expansionist imperial regime and replacing it with a parliamentary democracy where people can vote? For allowing all citizens, including females and Kurds, to attend the same schools?

Go and do some research -- read some history books -- before you post. Otherwise, you'll only reveal your own ignorance and prejudice -- as you just did.

[Vladimir]

28. In fairness, he was also quite

a central figure in the Armenian genocide...

[eissa]

30. I consider first-hand stories

from my grandparents to be truer history than any book written by some Turkish apologist. They were there; they suffered the atrocities and lived to tell about them. Don't you dare call me ignorant.

[kskiska]

32. I've heard the stories in my family, too.

My grandfather lost most of his family back then.

Aside from the Armenians, anyone remember the movie "Midnight Express?"

[eissa]

33. My Armenian mother-in-law

lost her entire family with the exception of her father and uncle. My own grandmother was born on the side of a road during the death marches. Her mother died shortly thereafter from infection. My grandfather would tell me how he watched as snipers picked off refugees as they were making their way out of the country and into neighboring Syria, Iraq and Iran.

[kskiska]

48. My grandfather got out early

and arrived here via France in 1909. I never knew him, as he died in 1930 at the age of 35, but my non-Armenian grandmother told his stories of the Turks running their swords through babies.

[athena]

36. You do know, don't you, that that movie was highly exaggerated?

Not to mention that it was made in 1978, and shot mostly outside Turkey, and that there were almost no Turkish actors in it?

Nearly 30 years have gone by since then, and Turkey is a country that changes very quickly. If you're still stuck on a film made in 1978, which was only loosely based on reality, then you have a problem.

I suggest you go to Turkey and see what it's like. That might help you get a better grip on reality.

[cascadiance]

42. There was also Armenian involvement in its production...

I'm not saying that's bad, but I take the movie with a grain of salt. It was well crafted, but the story was exaggerated as you said. I read the book too, and there were many deviations from what the book said and what was in the movie. He didn't kill the guard in escaping the prison in a big confrontation like he did in the movie.

I lived in Turkey myself for five years about the time that film took place. I bumped into the ambassador a few times that Billy Hayes mentions as having written to a number of times in his book. Probably more prominent in the news at that time than Hayes' issues, was the plight of a young teenage British kid that was arrested and held in those same prisons (that is actually mentioned in Hayes book). That got a lot of bad press when I was there, and many of our parents used that to keep us scared as hell from using drugs then. That didn't stop some kids from doing so, and if they got caught, the Turks usually gave the American MPs 24 hours to clear them out of the country to avoid them going to prison then. I knew a few fellow classmates that "disappeared" one day back to the U.S. when this happened.

One saw a small, ugly part of Turkey in that movie. There's a lot more to Turkey than a Turkish prison that was dwelled upon in that movie. A lot of nice people too and fun places to go. They have different laws around drugs there. It's a different environment there. You could pick wild poppies off of the street almost anywhere you walked around there. If drugs were growing that wildly here, I wonder if we might have more harsh laws against drugs here in the states too.

I think there are usually two sides of every story, and they especially get polarized if there aren't a lot of verifiable "legitimate" accounts of a given event. Both Turks and Armenians over the years have exagerrated their claims. Both I think want more than just to "ignore it" or to "have the other acknowledge it". That's what's sad. I really too would like to see them put these conflicts behind them. But I think it takes efforts to come to the middle on *both* sides to come to some sort of agreement or acceptance of what happened. For one side to expect other to bend over backwards is what leads to a forever "Hatfield vs. McCoy's" type of battle that never ends.

And if you feel that Turks should be able to trust everyone to come forward and accept that there won't be anything they need to do other than "acknowledge" the genocide happening, you should look at the mess that happened with the Cypriot vote to enter the EU. For both the Greek and Turkish Cypriots to be added to the EU, both areas needed to vote for unification as a precondition to admittance to the EU. Well, the Turkish Cypriots voted for unification and the Greek Cypriots voted against it. So what happens? Greek Cypriots are let into the EU and the Turkish Cypriots are kept out. Does that make any sense? Can you see how that might make Turks a little skeptical of others' motivations and agendas when asking them to do certain things?

[athena]

34. There are plenty of history books written by non-Turks about Turkey.

Diasporic Armenians are the only ones insisting on an apology. If you weren't ignorant, you would know that Armenia itself prefers to move on and do trade with Turkey than ruin its relations with Turkey because of something that happened a hundred years ago.

My personal opinion is that Turkey should just apologize and move on. But I can't tell Turkey what to do. And there are much more important things than apologies, like ending poverty. The U.S. and Canada committed the worst form of genocide on the Indians, giving them blankets infected with smallpox and putting bounties on their heads. It's only recently that the last bounty was lifted. Was there ever an apology? If there was, did it help? Do you see many native Americans in government? Are they just as wealthy on average as white Americans are?

It sounds like you would much rather see the whole population of Turkey burn to death than to see things improve in Turkey. The current population of Turkey is not responsible for what happened to your ancestors. And the longer the EU keeps Turkey out, the higher the chances that Turkey will turn into another Iran. I suppose that would make you happy.

[Calico Jack Rackham]

59. I hear you eissa

My grandmother was a little girl at the time Ataturk and his hordes swept into Smyrna in 1922 and slaughtered the Greeks and Armenians and then burned it to the ground. She lost her father there and the rest of her family was forced to flee to Greece. 1922 marked the end of the Greek and Armenian centuries long presence in Smyrna.

[athena]

61. Surprise! People die in war. Greece attacked Turkey;

was Turkey not supposed to defend itself? I'm sure you would have been a lot happier if Ataturk had allowed the Greeks, the French, the Armenians and others to take over the country.

And your calling Izmir by its Greek name Smyrna says a lot about your anti-Turkish bias.

[Calico Jack Rackham]

62. Interesting, my great grandfather was born and raised in Smyrna

he was not a soldier and not a combatent nor did he aid the Greek forces in anyway, his only crime was being an ethnic Greek in Smyrna. He was murdered for this reason alone and his family was forced to leave Smyrna.

[cascadiance]

38. Umm... He saved many Jews from his "pal" Hitler

before World War II by offering many Jews asylum from the coming Nazi holocaust then, shortly before he died. Getting a lot of Jewish intellectuals to move there also helped him with his goals for education and westernization of that country then too. That is why Turkey has had very good relations with Israel through most of this century. I don't think Ataturk had any warm feelings at all for Hitler! The Turks were allies of the Germans in World War I, but they weren't fans of Nazis in WWII. Get your history straight. Ataturk also had an Armenian mistress too. He was the start of Turkey's secularization and moving away from the older ways of the Ottoman Empire.

[athena]

35. Turkey is not half as fascist as the US.

Unlike the U.S., Turkey has an extremely free press.

And check your facts. Kurds are allowed to speak Kurdish. Go to any major bookstore in Turkey and you'll find books and CD's in Kurdish. Go to amnesty international, and you won't find any criticism of Turkey's treatment of its Kurds from the last few years.

And the political prisons were from a few decades ago. There is still a problem of police brutality, but there are few countries that don't have that problem.

[Roland99]

11. Hmm...bet the Kurds would beg to differ a bit from that stance.

[Calico Jack Rackham]

12. Ahh yes, Turkey

The Pseudo-Democracy of Anatolia. The real power is held by Gen. Himli Ozkok, the Chief of the Armed forces. The Turkish military is sworn to uphold the secularism espoused by the Turkish man-god Ataturk. Turkey is rife with human rights abuses and a campaign of ethnic cleansing which is conducted against the Kurdish minority. Still to this day the vast majority of Turkish ctizens refuse to admit that the Armenian genocide took place. Any Turk who deviates from the official mantra dictated by Ankara will find themselves the guest of Turkish state hospitality. This is especially true of reporters who criticize the governments actions against the Kurds.

Not to mention its illegal occupation of Cyprus which left the Turkish Cypriots in poverty and turned the northern 33% of the island into a modern day militarstic shithole, while the republic of Cyprus flourished into a prosperous EU state.

[BooScout]

13. There's a reason....

that the EU doesn't want to let Turkey join. Maybe Tony will clue Bush in on the fact that Turkey is a Democracy in name only and has abysmal Human Rights violations.

[athena]

49. Yeah. Xenophobia and Islamophobia.

And they think they're so smart. By not letting Turkey in, they're practically ensuring that Turkey will turn into another Iran.

Turkey is not a democracy in name only. Unlike in the U.S., the people there are able to vote a government out when it messes up. Originally, the ruling party (AKP: Justice and Development Party) which is very pro-U.S., wanted to provide military bases for the U.S. to attack Iraq. 80% of the people disagreed; thousands spilled out onto the streets and protested. When the AKP realized it would be kicked out in the next elections if it provided the bases, it reversed its stance. You call that a democracy in name only?

[chelsea0011]

15. Right....Say Kurdistan. They have disputes over the land, don't they.

[UCLA Dem]

16. Yeah Turkey is a real shining example. They've got more human rights...

violations than people.

[cthrumatrix]

17. you forgot...with bush... up=down

[varun]

18. Well, if Pakistan is a shining example for Bush...

...then Turkey should be a beacon of Democracy. :eyes:

[Robeson]

20. This is just typical American foreign policy.....

...if you support us, you're great! If you don't, you're an evildoer...

[yellowcanine]

22. The same Turkey that treats Kurds like shit and invaded Cyprus in 1974?

Where detention without trial and torture are used routinely?

[athena]

31. Turkey treats its Kurds better than America treats its Blacks.

How many of America's presidents have been black? How many blacks are there in Congress?

Half of Turkey's presidents have been Kurdish, and the percentage of Kurds in parliament is higher than the percentage of Kurds in Turkey. Check your facts before you post nonsense.

And Turkey put soldiers on Cyprus only because Greece started putting soldiers there first. Look on a map to see how close Cyprus is to Turkey and you'll see why Turkey had reason to feel threatened.

[Calico Jack Rackham]

58. LOL

Up until last year it was a crime to speak the Kurdish language in Turkey. To this day anyone who speaks out publicly let alone publish anything on the Kurdish situation that is not lockstep with the official line from Ankara is arrested. So why don't you spare us the speeches of how great Turkey treats the Kurds because their actions prove otherwise.

[athena]

60. And you know this how?

I bet you've never even been to Turkey. As anyone with an unbiased mind can see by reading this thread, the anti-Turkish lobby is very good at spreading misinformation without having a clue as to the actual history/truth.

And if your response to a country changing its laws to make them more humane is "LOL" followed by more hateful misinformation, that indicates that you don't really want Turkey to improve its human rights. You just want to spread your irrational hatred.

Focus on your own country, dude. Unlike Turkey, it still practices capital punishment. Turkey has had a moratorium on capital punishment since 1984, and banned it completely a few years ago. In the same period, executions multiplied in the U.S.: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/exe.htm

[Calico Jack Rackham]

63. Ok maybe its time to post the pics of

Humane Turkish soldiers playing football with the heads of decapitated Kurds. My LOL was for your fantasy laced BS which in a round about way claims how Turkey is the bastion of human and civil rights while denying the most basic freedoms to your Kurdish minority.