Cyprus-Forum.com

[humanist]

Nikitas I reallly enjoy listening to you put forward your statements and I agree with you also thnks for your genuiness

[denizaksulu]

There's a thought...

he looks sweet and decent.

Could you post a photo of yourself in esharp (headcover),karmacim...
Just to see if you'd look as sweet and innocent as Yashar pasha...

Please dont Karma. Esharps are ugly. A see - through ferace (tul) will do nicely just showing your eyes. 19th Century Uskudar style. Nothing is more seductive. Sorry BK.
Regards
DA

[Nikitas]

I read lots of worries about Turkey becoming an Islamic Republic and parallels are drawn with Iran.

Is this realistic? Iran went through the Shah years with the secret police being a law unto itself. There is a difference, I think, between that kind of repression and the dominant will of the Turkish army to keep Turkey secular (or Kemalist you pick the term). Not that I like or approve of the military mixing in politics, but there is a difference. Is Turkish society anywhere near the state that Iran was in during the late 70s?

The European way guarantees freedom of religion. So if a lady wants a scarf she can wear it. It would be a paradox to forbid the scard for the sake of promoting democracy! Sometimes one wonders if the scarf is not a manucactures issue to bring forth other matters that have little to do with religion.

My access to Turkish news is via the net and translations of the Turkish press provided by (of all people!) the Cyprus Information Office. It is sketchy info and not enough to allow me to form an opinion. But somehow the Iran parallel just does not sound convincing.

[karma]

There's a thought...

he looks sweet and decent.

Could you post a photo of yourself in esharp (headcover),karmacim...
Just to see if you'd look as sweet and innocent as Yashar pasha...

Please dont Karma. Esharps are ugly. A see - through ferace (tul) will do nicely just showing your eyes. 19th Century Uskudar style. Nothing is more seductive. Sorry BK.
Regards
DA

forget both Esharp and Tul...You 2 will see me only in my wedding dress

[denizaksulu]

There's a thought...

he looks sweet and decent.

Could you post a photo of yourself in esharp (headcover),karmacim...
Just to see if you'd look as sweet and innocent as Yashar pasha...

Please dont Karma. Esharps are ugly. A see - through ferace (tul) will do nicely just showing your eyes. 19th Century Uskudar style. Nothing is more seductive. Sorry BK.
Regards
DA

forget both Esharp and Tul...You 2 will see me only in my wedding dress

Even better. Then we will know that you have finally attained you karma Inshallah

[Pyrpolizer]

Pyropolizer,
Needless to say the army is a very powerful institution in Turkey, and the return of the AKP and the election of Gul is certainly not an end to the army's power. Indeed the army's power is not only decades in the making but it will be many decades in the unmaking. The struggle between the AKP (and many other parties and movements) with the army is going to run and run.

For what it is worth I have never been persuaded that the struggle in Turkey over the last ten or fifteen years has been between a rising Islamist movement bent on destroying the secular foundations of the state. This is the story which the old established elite, including the army, in Turkey believed and continue to believe with a passion and which is the basic story which is reported by the major news agencies around the world.

The headscarf question is symbolically of high profile, of course, but it is quite diversionary to the real and substantial changes that have been going on in Turkish society and politics for well over a decade. Also I'm not convinced of the idea of 'hardcore Islamists' - neither that they are numerous nor that they are particularly powerful. The best days of the thoroughly secular business families of Sabanci and Koc have been during AKP rule. Have these so-called Islamists fought against the liberal capitalism of IMF and World Bank imposed privatisations, public spending cuts and so on ? No, on the contrary they've simply asked how can we privatise faster, how can we sell even more of our national capital to international capital. The AKP is, contrary to the old elite story, the secular state's best friend, the EU's best negotiator and even the US's loyal ally.

I say all of this as an atheist, as an anti-nationalist and no friend of the AKP.

Thank you CopperLine. Everything you said makes sense.

[Pyrpolizer]

Gul's democratic election is a great opportunity for Turkey.If he becomes the President for all Turkish citizens,as he has pledged, and if he defends the secular,democratic state ,as he has pledged,Turkey could pull herself together and might even manage to deal with the Kurdish problem.
Please remember that in the Kurdish regions the vote for AKP was even higher than the national average of 47%...

Not so long ago,Gul gave an interview to a British reporter in which he claimed that secularism has had its day in Turkey and it must be put to bed...Given Erdogan's statement (again some years ago) that "Democracy is a train you get on to take you where you want to go",it might be too premature to hail the election of these two to the highests posts in Turkey.

My personal belief is that both Gul and Erdogan are too cunning to provoke the military too much...They will make deals with the generals and deliver as much of their Islamic agenda as possible to thier voters,stopping just short of dismantling secularism which will inevitably trigger a military coup...The biggest bargaining chip the AKP has to keep the military happy is Cyprus...The election of Gul hence ensures that no concessions will be forthcoming on Cyprus...And given my strong suspicion that Gul or Erdogan do not really want Turkey to join the EU,we can look forward to another 30 years of stalemate on our homeland...All Cypriots have been the losers by the election of Gul...except of course those who are praying for partition...

That's what I asked bigOz from the very begining but so far he did not answer.

So it's quite possible there has been a deal already over the Cyprus issue.
On the other hand if someone from the Army elite would become President, no deal was necessary. "No concessions" to Cyprus would go without saying.
So I guess with Gul+Erdogan we still have a chance, no?

[karma]

Gul's democratic election is a great opportunity for Turkey.If he becomes the President for all Turkish citizens,as he has pledged, and if he defends the secular,democratic state ,as he has pledged,Turkey could pull herself together and might even manage to deal with the Kurdish problem.
Please remember that in the Kurdish regions the vote for AKP was even higher than the national average of 47%...

Not so long ago,Gul gave an interview to a British reporter in which he claimed that secularism has had its day in Turkey and it must be put to bed...Given Erdogan's statement (again some years ago) that "Democracy is a train you get on to take you where you want to go",it might be too premature to hail the election of these two to the highests posts in Turkey.

My personal belief is that both Gul and Erdogan are too cunning to provoke the military too much...They will make deals with the generals and deliver as much of their Islamic agenda as possible to thier voters,stopping just short of dismantling secularism which will inevitably trigger a military coup...The biggest bargaining chip the AKP has to keep the military happy is Cyprus...The election of Gul hence ensures that no concessions will be forthcoming on Cyprus...And given my strong suspicion that Gul or Erdogan do not really want Turkey to join the EU,we can look forward to another 30 years of stalemate on our homeland...All Cypriots have been the losers by the election of Gul...except of course those who are praying for partition...

That's what I asked bigOz from the very begining but so far he did not answer.

So it's quite possible there has been a deal already over the Cyprus issue.
On the other hand if someone from the Army elite would become President, no deal was necessary. "No concessions" to Cyprus would go without saying.
So I guess with Gul+Erdogan we still have a chance, no?

NO

[phoenix]

I read lots of worries about Turkey becoming an Islamic Republic and parallels are drawn with Iran.

Is this realistic? Iran went through the Shah years with the secret police being a law unto itself. There is a difference, I think, between that kind of repression and the dominant will of the Turkish army to keep Turkey secular (or Kemalist you pick the term). Not that I like or approve of the military mixing in politics, but there is a difference. Is Turkish society anywhere near the state that Iran was in during the late 70s?

The European way guarantees freedom of religion. So if a lady wants a scarf she can wear it. It would be a paradox to forbid the scard for the sake of promoting democracy! Sometimes one wonders if the scarf is not a manucactures issue to bring forth other matters that have little to do with religion.

My access to Turkish news is via the net and translations of the Turkish press provided by (of all people!) the Cyprus Information Office. It is sketchy info and not enough to allow me to form an opinion. But somehow the Iran parallel just does not sound convincing.

Nikitas, freedom for religious practice as exercised in Europe is fine, up to a point.

When it gives men the right to use terms such as "if a lady wants a scarf she can wear it" then what you gain in freedom of expression through Democracy, you lose from the Right to Equality that Western women have been battling with for over 100 years.

If for no other reason than the above, Turkey should not be allowed into the EU to corrupt through stealth, the freedoms that we have been refining over the years.

Pip-pip
Phoenix

[zan]

I wonder how much support they have gained from the Arabic countries EU Here we come