How come you know so much about Turkiye?
Research during MA -- from US foreign policy perspective. My thesis adviser could speak 7 languages, including Arabic, Persian, Kurdish and Turkish. I also studied major revolutionaries of the early 20th century who includes your founder.
I have professional connections with several Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey.
The religion factor is very important as you mentioned. Knowing muslims' mentalities is very important. Muslims are not grown up in a way to learn to use their brains and think practically about life, rather they are grown up to follow the orders. That's why they are on average emotional, brutal, and living in dream worlds. Their governments though, know their mentalities, and can play their people easily. add that to the fact that islam was initiated as a political cause and political party than as a religion, and the amount of hatred that islam expresses about non-muslims. It means that political islam can easily be a fascistic cause that millions of muslim hordes follow it eagerly. The more one chants islam, and the more one is brutal, and extremist, people will follow him more. That's how Muslim Brother has achieved huge supports in all muslim world from Turkey(AKP) to Egypt(Mursi), ... That's how other extremists have achieved support in other muslim countries.
Religion per se might not be conducive to violence any more than belief in nothing, I guess. But I agree that Islam has been politicized as soon as it started to bring about power. That's in a sense unavoidable for a teaching that, according to its hardliner advocates, should control and regulate every aspect of your life, from public to the most private. Once religion becomes embedded with political power, or rather, a source of political power and legitimacy (Middle Age papal-ism or the Khalifa doctrine), then, it is bound to become expansionist, brutal and inflexible.
Turkey's Islamists have discovered something that Levant Islamists such as those in Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood) had discovered long ago: When you suffer from legitimation crisis or seek avoidance from corruption, just employ a rhetoric laden with religious references. Along with this comes hatred toward anything that is alien (irreligious): women (By nature, man and woman is not equal), LGTB, Armenians (Did not the Turkish president say: "They even called me, pardon my language, an Armenian"?), Jews, Alawits, Kurds, and even other secular Turks and now maybe Asian looking foreigners. Then religion becomes a political tool and a tool of oppression and regulating peoples' lifes.
I would ascribe this to a lack of secular experience in the traditional Middle East. Turkey went through a reformation but, apparently, that was not deeply ingrained and hence, the clock started to tick backwards again during the past decade. Compared to other Islamic countries in the region, Turkey fares well thanks to the ingrained secularism, but, the trend is towards a serious erosion of these gains as the people seem to be over-radicalized. There seems to be a whole system backing up the new Islamic bourgeoisie from fashion to media and universities. Of course, foreign policy is always an extension of domestic policy. When domestic policy becomes fractionist, it will reflect on foreign policy as sectarianism.
From muslims' point of view, Chinese are some Kafir(infidel Communists) who are now exposed to be oppressing innocent burqa wearing Uyghurs. This one sentence is enough to flip muslims. Then, some statements regarding this issue will be made by their politicians to gain public support that was decreased because their politicians did screw up everything starting from their economy. When politicians gained control of power, then they will change the propaganda to how evil jews(Israel), and west are, so they need dear China to boost the economy and buy arms. the public will then follow the new propaganda like sheeples. That's how politics truly works in many muslim countries.
I read about the Communist bogeyman -- not in Turkey, probably across the Arabic world -- since I consider myself a student of Marxist thought. Islamists in Turkey kept whining about being persecuted by the Kemalist republic while the reality was that it was the Leftists and Marxists that were almost completely eradicated. The Left that is 'left" is a poor copy of Collectivist politics. There is this over Islamic "sensitivity." And with the present government (Justice and Development), Islam has been politicized and commercialized to historic levels. Even those that used to have more moderate life style apparently adopted the discourse because it promised wealth and status. This is exactly how fascism took hold in Germany. And Hitler always had the upper hand and popular supper in elections. I agree that Islamic parties might tell one thing to their people and do another in real life: Like even growing trade between Israel and Turkey after the maritime shooting. Islamism is not necessarily about becoming a better Muslim, or a better person. Islamism is about holding onto power at all cost and manipulating the masses. That's a dangerous ideology.
Founding fathers of Turkey wanted turkey to become a secular country, but they simply failed. Current day Turkey has been the capital of islamofascism(caliphate) for centuries, and some of the methods that founders of Turkey used to secularize the society, were wrong; Hence, we see islamofascism gaining power openly for one more time in Turkey.
That's unfortunate for the country. At least a sizable portion of the country that define themselves as secular. Their country, their rule, their life. I am not to judge about this. What would concern me the implications on foreign policy, such as Syria or XinJiang. That's where my real interest is in. In this respect, personally, Turkey has little to no relevance in China's most strategic-geopolitical calculations. The two countries are not simply in the same league. I guess those who run for the top in the Premier League would have little time to worry about the goings-on in the amateur league. That's just hard (statistical) reality.
bullshit.. by the same logic we could say most kurds are no kurds they are lost arabs.. germans are not german.. only japanese are mostly japanese
