Mehmet
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Turkey is the only nation on Earth during a world war to have turned a military defeat into a victory. 
In the Turkish war of independence the British and their allies felt the resolve and defiance of the Turkish people once again which was captured by an Indian newspaper at the time stating that "the Turks instead buried the British in the coffin that was meant for them".
We must also not forget that by changing the written script from one that is based on Arabic to a Latin based script literacy skyrocketed in a few years from less then 10 percent to over 90 percent.
When regarding what Ataturk did for Turkey we must not forget these things.
Of course the Turkish people would have loved to have their empire exist as a political reality but the situation in the last 30 years of the Ottoman empire was one of complete utter hopelessness and despair, desertions were common and it was not unheard of to hear families having lost the entirety of their male members to war; the Ottoman empire had come to the end of it's time and did not have the willpower to defend it's borders let alone try and expand and retake it's former holdings. Ataturk changed all this and established the modern republic of Turkey based on democratic ideals.
Among other achievements Ataturk destroyed the 300 year old British myth of invincibility, caused the British government of George Lloyd to collapse without ever having spoken to the British, destroyed the Greek Megali idea, created the first example of Blitzkrieg by driving the Greek invasion force from Ankara all the way to the Aegean within 3 weeks, gave equal rights to women as well as giving women the right to vote, Ataturk's daughter became the first female combat pilot in the world and Ataturk managed to turn one by one the Russians, French and Italians against the British and Greeks thus eliminating any hope of the Greeks to gain reinforcements against the Turkish great counter offensive in 1922.
From Ataturk's creation of the modern republic of Turkey to the current status it can be honestly seen as the recovery era of Turkey because only until recently Turkey had not yet truly recovered from world war 1 to it's former strength. For example the Milgem warship is the first major warship construction project since Ottoman times and Turkish diplomats have never been so active outside of their home nation while the economic might of Turkey has increased dramatically with Turkish goods and services not just flooding Europe but flowing into Arabia, Africa and Asia as well.
The Turkish people are waking up and the nation of Turkey is once again powerful, wealthy and willing to flex it muscle. However the time of colonial conquest is over and the future will honestly not be a British style empire (of colonies and conquests) for the Turkish people (more a American empire of influence) but instead be a blending of Ataturk's neutrality mindset and the desire and requirement for Turkey to take an active role in many areas of modern issues. Turkey will most likely have a region of influence that includes the Arabic speaking nations as well as parts of north Africa and the Balkans, this influence will be a combination of military alliances, joint technological and economic adventures and establishment of goodwill (such as the recent building of higher education institutions in Bosnia).
Areas of influence will also include traditionally hostile nations such as Greece. Having no choice but to accept Turkish influence (Greece will see a further reduction of economic and industrial capacity as it's pop shrinks to 9 mil by 2050) as well as the fact that Greece will find that the economic crisis of 2009-2011 will be the first of a series of readjustments.
So what can be analysed if one studies Turkey seriously is that:
1. The Ottoman and previous empires of the Turkish people were the imperial era.
2. The republic of Turkey until very recently (say the inauguration of the AKP government into office) was recovery and neutral internal mindset (sort of like Japan's splendid isolation but with greater interaction to total isolation in Turkey's case) period with the only major intervention by Turkey during this period being the forced intervention in Cyprus.
3. AKP and post AKP is a period of the expansion of Turkish influence in the region and Turkey is increasingly willing to take a more active role on global matters. The vast number of military projects I believe point to this (like the British and the U.S but a Muslim majority nation doing major global intervention and peace keeping roles).
The Armenian genocide, Greek genocide and the recently invented phrase Kurdish genocide are all tools to prevent a strong Turkey and a Muslim majority nation from once again becoming a powerful global player.
While it can be readily seen that these supposed genocides have dubious and downright false claims (such as both the Armenians and Greeks claiming that their section of Izmir burned down (when only 1 section burned down) which is not only contradictory it also clearly points out that 1 or both are lying about this event nevermind the fact that the Greeks in their retreat were openly practicing a scorched Earth policy and the Turkish army would have very little reason to burn their own reconquered city.).
To commit genocide a political entity would require first of all the manpower to commit such a crime against humanity and the Turkey of 1850 (from the time of the great naval disaster of Russia having ambushed and destroyed the Ottoman black sea fleet) to the 1922 period certainly did not have the required manpower as it was constantly involved in wars with the result often being defeat for the Ottomans due to lack of materials and manpower. By the time of the Turkish war of independence women were almost exclusively manning the factories and what little logistics support network that were hastily established. All available able bodied men at the time were required on the front lines, in many places children also took up the fight against enemy troops.
Compare Turkey's situation of the increasing lack of manpower and decades without peace to that of NAZI Germany and it becomes obvious that not only did NAZI Germany have the willingness and infrastructure to commit such a crime but also the manpower as the mass executions did not stop until Soviet troops overran the concentration camps in which an estimated 3 million innocent people were killed.
It is also not difficult to see why such underhanded tactics are used as people in the Balkans and Europe still have bad memories of the Ottomans and in a Europe that is once again heading down the path of intolerance the obvious target in the post 9/11 world are people who practice the Islamic faith. After all Europeans have been fighting for centuries amongst themselves and the only common thing the vast majority have are their religion so what better way to unite the masses of Europe through religious lines (ironically the EU was setup to be free of religious influence on it's political processes) and this is sadly what it means to be European. Today their is no doubt the only reason a cash strapped EU does not accept an economically strong Turkey is due to Turkey being a majority Muslim country.
With underhanded tactics failing them nations and people have instead opted to directly sponsor opposition groups to the Turkish nation such as the PKK.
It should come as no surprise that Europe hosts the propaganda channel of the PKK despite the PKK being listed throughout the world as a terror organization. I would also like to point out that while the sale of it being illegal Belgium remains the world's number one seller of land mines, many Turkish troops have lost their lives to land mines.
Furthermore when the Soviet Union was a strong and credible threat to NATO, Turkey was supported by all NATO nations eagerly with vast amounts of military equipment often being sold cheaply to an understandable nervous Turkey who had to face 22 Soviet tank divisions with her own (and costly to upkeep) 17 divisions on the border.
Turkey suddenly had to face the internal threat of the PKK coincidentally when it started becoming obvious in the 80's the U.S was much more powerful then the USSR, with this realization and the PKK having emerged in the 80's, military equipment was often sold to Turkey with conditions attached such as the forbidding of advanced weapons being used on PKK terrorists.
While technically allies Europe is definitely not a friend of Turkey neither do they see the benefits of a strong Turkey nor do they want it, being nervous that the "dark days" of the Ottomans may just come back. For reference understand that the Maltese continue to tell their children to goto bed early or else the Ottomans may take them away from their homes.
Unlike many of our "allies" many Turks throughout the world continue to maintain their allegiance to the nation of Turkey ironically this allegiance is also reinforced due to the discrimination that they experience simply for being Turkish and increasingly for being both Muslim and Turkish. With Turkish families outside of Turkey being much larger and often having 3 or 4 offspring the population of Turks outside of Turkey continues to grow and it can be envisioned that the "diaspora" of Turks will one day be just as large or larger then other famous diaspora's.
It is not difficult to see when this external Turkish population growth is achieved that some of the negative decisions other nations have taken in regards to Turkey will be reversed, this of course will play directly into a strengthening Turkey as it's overseas population will realign nations of their residence to accept policies that favor Turkey.
Of course nothing is certain and the population growth may be stopped if intolerant nations decide to evict their foreign ethnic populations but given the consequences of such actions and the resulting economic and industrial impacts such decisions will have, it is highly unlikely.
One thing for certain is that Turkey is coming out of it's neutral, internal looking mindset and once again wants to take center stage also what is certain is that nations that are traditionally hostile to Turkey will try to prevent this by continuing their underhanded tactics in an attempt to weaken Turkey and the Turkish people, what they simply fail to understand is that for the Turkish people anything less then a powerful independent Turkey is not acceptable and it is respect to Ataturk's vision and the continued remembrance of the dark days of the closing years of the Ottoman empire that kept the Turks quite for so many years.
In the Turkish war of independence the British and their allies felt the resolve and defiance of the Turkish people once again which was captured by an Indian newspaper at the time stating that "the Turks instead buried the British in the coffin that was meant for them".
We must also not forget that by changing the written script from one that is based on Arabic to a Latin based script literacy skyrocketed in a few years from less then 10 percent to over 90 percent.
When regarding what Ataturk did for Turkey we must not forget these things.
Of course the Turkish people would have loved to have their empire exist as a political reality but the situation in the last 30 years of the Ottoman empire was one of complete utter hopelessness and despair, desertions were common and it was not unheard of to hear families having lost the entirety of their male members to war; the Ottoman empire had come to the end of it's time and did not have the willpower to defend it's borders let alone try and expand and retake it's former holdings. Ataturk changed all this and established the modern republic of Turkey based on democratic ideals.
Among other achievements Ataturk destroyed the 300 year old British myth of invincibility, caused the British government of George Lloyd to collapse without ever having spoken to the British, destroyed the Greek Megali idea, created the first example of Blitzkrieg by driving the Greek invasion force from Ankara all the way to the Aegean within 3 weeks, gave equal rights to women as well as giving women the right to vote, Ataturk's daughter became the first female combat pilot in the world and Ataturk managed to turn one by one the Russians, French and Italians against the British and Greeks thus eliminating any hope of the Greeks to gain reinforcements against the Turkish great counter offensive in 1922.
From Ataturk's creation of the modern republic of Turkey to the current status it can be honestly seen as the recovery era of Turkey because only until recently Turkey had not yet truly recovered from world war 1 to it's former strength. For example the Milgem warship is the first major warship construction project since Ottoman times and Turkish diplomats have never been so active outside of their home nation while the economic might of Turkey has increased dramatically with Turkish goods and services not just flooding Europe but flowing into Arabia, Africa and Asia as well.
The Turkish people are waking up and the nation of Turkey is once again powerful, wealthy and willing to flex it muscle. However the time of colonial conquest is over and the future will honestly not be a British style empire (of colonies and conquests) for the Turkish people (more a American empire of influence) but instead be a blending of Ataturk's neutrality mindset and the desire and requirement for Turkey to take an active role in many areas of modern issues. Turkey will most likely have a region of influence that includes the Arabic speaking nations as well as parts of north Africa and the Balkans, this influence will be a combination of military alliances, joint technological and economic adventures and establishment of goodwill (such as the recent building of higher education institutions in Bosnia).
Areas of influence will also include traditionally hostile nations such as Greece. Having no choice but to accept Turkish influence (Greece will see a further reduction of economic and industrial capacity as it's pop shrinks to 9 mil by 2050) as well as the fact that Greece will find that the economic crisis of 2009-2011 will be the first of a series of readjustments.
So what can be analysed if one studies Turkey seriously is that:
1. The Ottoman and previous empires of the Turkish people were the imperial era.
2. The republic of Turkey until very recently (say the inauguration of the AKP government into office) was recovery and neutral internal mindset (sort of like Japan's splendid isolation but with greater interaction to total isolation in Turkey's case) period with the only major intervention by Turkey during this period being the forced intervention in Cyprus.
3. AKP and post AKP is a period of the expansion of Turkish influence in the region and Turkey is increasingly willing to take a more active role on global matters. The vast number of military projects I believe point to this (like the British and the U.S but a Muslim majority nation doing major global intervention and peace keeping roles).
The Armenian genocide, Greek genocide and the recently invented phrase Kurdish genocide are all tools to prevent a strong Turkey and a Muslim majority nation from once again becoming a powerful global player.
While it can be readily seen that these supposed genocides have dubious and downright false claims (such as both the Armenians and Greeks claiming that their section of Izmir burned down (when only 1 section burned down) which is not only contradictory it also clearly points out that 1 or both are lying about this event nevermind the fact that the Greeks in their retreat were openly practicing a scorched Earth policy and the Turkish army would have very little reason to burn their own reconquered city.).
To commit genocide a political entity would require first of all the manpower to commit such a crime against humanity and the Turkey of 1850 (from the time of the great naval disaster of Russia having ambushed and destroyed the Ottoman black sea fleet) to the 1922 period certainly did not have the required manpower as it was constantly involved in wars with the result often being defeat for the Ottomans due to lack of materials and manpower. By the time of the Turkish war of independence women were almost exclusively manning the factories and what little logistics support network that were hastily established. All available able bodied men at the time were required on the front lines, in many places children also took up the fight against enemy troops.
Compare Turkey's situation of the increasing lack of manpower and decades without peace to that of NAZI Germany and it becomes obvious that not only did NAZI Germany have the willingness and infrastructure to commit such a crime but also the manpower as the mass executions did not stop until Soviet troops overran the concentration camps in which an estimated 3 million innocent people were killed.
It is also not difficult to see why such underhanded tactics are used as people in the Balkans and Europe still have bad memories of the Ottomans and in a Europe that is once again heading down the path of intolerance the obvious target in the post 9/11 world are people who practice the Islamic faith. After all Europeans have been fighting for centuries amongst themselves and the only common thing the vast majority have are their religion so what better way to unite the masses of Europe through religious lines (ironically the EU was setup to be free of religious influence on it's political processes) and this is sadly what it means to be European. Today their is no doubt the only reason a cash strapped EU does not accept an economically strong Turkey is due to Turkey being a majority Muslim country.
With underhanded tactics failing them nations and people have instead opted to directly sponsor opposition groups to the Turkish nation such as the PKK.
It should come as no surprise that Europe hosts the propaganda channel of the PKK despite the PKK being listed throughout the world as a terror organization. I would also like to point out that while the sale of it being illegal Belgium remains the world's number one seller of land mines, many Turkish troops have lost their lives to land mines.
Furthermore when the Soviet Union was a strong and credible threat to NATO, Turkey was supported by all NATO nations eagerly with vast amounts of military equipment often being sold cheaply to an understandable nervous Turkey who had to face 22 Soviet tank divisions with her own (and costly to upkeep) 17 divisions on the border.
Turkey suddenly had to face the internal threat of the PKK coincidentally when it started becoming obvious in the 80's the U.S was much more powerful then the USSR, with this realization and the PKK having emerged in the 80's, military equipment was often sold to Turkey with conditions attached such as the forbidding of advanced weapons being used on PKK terrorists.
While technically allies Europe is definitely not a friend of Turkey neither do they see the benefits of a strong Turkey nor do they want it, being nervous that the "dark days" of the Ottomans may just come back. For reference understand that the Maltese continue to tell their children to goto bed early or else the Ottomans may take them away from their homes.
Unlike many of our "allies" many Turks throughout the world continue to maintain their allegiance to the nation of Turkey ironically this allegiance is also reinforced due to the discrimination that they experience simply for being Turkish and increasingly for being both Muslim and Turkish. With Turkish families outside of Turkey being much larger and often having 3 or 4 offspring the population of Turks outside of Turkey continues to grow and it can be envisioned that the "diaspora" of Turks will one day be just as large or larger then other famous diaspora's.
It is not difficult to see when this external Turkish population growth is achieved that some of the negative decisions other nations have taken in regards to Turkey will be reversed, this of course will play directly into a strengthening Turkey as it's overseas population will realign nations of their residence to accept policies that favor Turkey.
Of course nothing is certain and the population growth may be stopped if intolerant nations decide to evict their foreign ethnic populations but given the consequences of such actions and the resulting economic and industrial impacts such decisions will have, it is highly unlikely.
One thing for certain is that Turkey is coming out of it's neutral, internal looking mindset and once again wants to take center stage also what is certain is that nations that are traditionally hostile to Turkey will try to prevent this by continuing their underhanded tactics in an attempt to weaken Turkey and the Turkish people, what they simply fail to understand is that for the Turkish people anything less then a powerful independent Turkey is not acceptable and it is respect to Ataturk's vision and the continued remembrance of the dark days of the closing years of the Ottoman empire that kept the Turks quite for so many years.
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since given the apparent constant territorial violations our ships and planes find themselves in logic dictates that Turkey is hardly afraid. On the contrary having a read through 
