Unlike the Bibles blessing hotel rooms in the U.S., you won’t find Qur’ans in hotels across Turkey. Unlike Ontario Catholic schools, no Islamic school system in Turkey is funded by the state. Unlike the Queen celebrating her 60th anniversary on the throne with an official church service, no Turkish leader dare mark a state occasion in a mosque. Yet we are being inundated with news and commentary on how Turkey’s “Arab Spring” is a “secular” uprising against the “Islamist” Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, an “authoritarian” “neo-sultan.” There is no Arab Spring in non-Arab Turkey. The nation has had its spring over the last 10 years under his leadership, as he rightly claims. Istanbul’s Taksim Square is not Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in appearance or spirit. It is small and ugly, not a Romanesque expanse. It is not the centre of a revolution against an entrenched “dictatorship.” It is only the central site of a democratic protest against prime ministerial arrogance and hubris, which will prove his undoing if he does not learn to control it. normanfinkelstein/2013/sensible-commentary-on-turkey/
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 18:27:43 +0000
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