Larssen wrote:
So the leader of a country that isn't yours, who is known for his oppressive behaviour back home (among which jailing journalists en masse, using goons to intimidate protesters, bombing the shit out of another ethnic minority, removing all opposition from government & politics) creates chapters of his government religious organisation in other countries. The leaders of those chapters are trained and educated in the 'home country' and have a mission to export the party policy and their distinct nationalist version of the religion. Those chapters are also put to use as an intelligence network to keep tabs on 'anti home country activists' among the emigrant population, and religious texts are pushed that outlaw events or norms in the host countries. All the while the home country is very much idealised, particularly Dear Leader, for whom you must all vote.
The both of you look at this and say to yourselves 'there's nothing wrong here'. Better yet if someone does say that it's foreign influencing ops you act as though you've been put in a room with a supremacist.
Do you have your heads in your asses?
i don't approve of erdogan. but i don't approve of incriminating all turks living in western countries and accusing them of 'secret alliances' or 'conflicts of interest'. frankly you have never had to negotiate dual-identities or growing up in a culture other than your native one, so i think you should lay off a bit with the accusatory and inflammatory rhetoric. if they want to retain pride in turkey and show support for their country of origin, that's their prerogative. it does NOT mean that they're all radical islamist terrorists in training, or are somehow 'subverting democracy' and impeding progress, etc etc.
it just seems unfair to me that we have historically invited these people over, asked them to contribute to our societies (which they have), and now you want to punish them because they still wish to retain some of their origins or roots. a turkish family living and abiding by the law in the west for generations isn't enough for you? they have to decry erdogan too? maybe renounce their traditional garb and start wearing cocktail dresses? re-prove that kemalism and a secular turk identity isn't an impossibility, again and again? it's entirely in their right to show support for a nationalist turkish leader that wants to guide turkey to more international prominence, and so on and so forth. it's complex, to be sure, but that's the nature of having both national citizenship and an ethnic identity. something, again, that you've never had to negotiate or test.
of all the countries to finger for extremism and having a role in breeding terrorists, turkey would be somewhere near the bottom of my list. yes, it has undoubtedly got worse under erdogan -- but he is contemporaneous with 'hard men' figures in hungary, poland, britain, the US, russia, etc, who have similarly stoked the blue-collar, little-guy element to great success. not a unique and worrying sign about the future of islam in europe, if you ask me. i doubt that many terrorist attackers have been inspired to violence by erdogan and not, say, fundamentalist sunni clericism. turkey is still, again, at least notionally a secular democracy. you can make worrying noises about religious groups' influence but the same situation pertains in america, or france, or denmark, or any other avowedly 'secular' country that in fact has (very) powerful religious lobbies and influential churches. i am seeing far more worrying evidence of your so-called 'religious-nationalism' in poland, a neighbouring country with many millions of residents and patriots in western countries, than turkey.
so i ask again: are you having brow-furrowing conversations in brussels about poland's membership of the EU? it's safety as a partner, going forward? it's future and 'compatibility' with 'western democratic' values?
why exactly do you want to blame average immigrants for the 'failure of multiculturalism'? this seems like you have your head in your ass, to me. you want to blame your average gastarbeiter for the excesses and violences of islamic terrorism but not even look twice at, say, your own benevolent technocratic EU foreign policy. it's just bizarre. most all turkish residents here in the UK are moderate, law-abiding muslims, not sleeper cells or secret agents.
Last edited by uziq (2020-10-27 08:11:21)