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Sheridan is intellectually slow on Turkey · 2 June 2010

Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of “The Australian”, has obviously been slow to understand the emerging power shifts in the Middle East and—as he now writes—“global strategic order”.

Following the recent attack on ships heading to Gaza, Sheridan has written that “it is in Ankara and Istanbul, and on the vast Anatolian plains, that we may be witnessing a profound reshaping of the Middle East strategic order, and therefore the global strategic order. It’s too early to call it definitively”.

See:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/grotesque-theatre-succeeded-brilliantly/story-e6frg6so-1225874215412

Contrary to the intellectually slow Sheridan, the emerging change has been obvious for some time. And, it is not “too early to call it definitively”. It is definite!

On 18 January 2009, I posted the following on my website: http://www.jeffschubert.com/index.php?id=62

“Wherever I went in Istanbul last week I saw large street posters deploring Israel’s actions in Gaza. And, in accordance with a directive of the Turkish Education Minister, 15 million Turkish primary and high school students stood silently for 1 minute at 11.00am on 13 January 2009. The Minister’s directive said: ‘With this stand in silence the atrocities in Palestine are condemned. This is an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people.’ Turkey may have an Ataturk-imposed secular constitution, but the influence of Islam is still very strong. Turkey has clearly taken the side of the Palestinians in the present Gaza conflict.”

And, I added: “I was warned several times that feelings are running high and to be careful in case someone mistook me for American or British.”

A Turkish businesswomen, who had lived for a time in Australia, told me that “Turkey is ripe for change”.

There have been a host of events since January 2009 that make obvious the change underway.

But is it “disturbing”, as Sheridan claims?

In my view, not at all!

Turkey is loosening itself from the yoke of “Kemalism” – an initially positive, but eventually constricting and suffocating practice of government under Kemal Ataturk that became an anti-progress ideology.

Ataturk, who was leader of Turkey from 1923 until 1938 – and is the most admirable figure in my book, “Dictatorial CEOs & their Lieutenants: Inside the Executive Suites of Napoleon, Stalin, Ataturk, Mussolini, Hitler and Mao”—is justifiably considered a hero by Turks.

But he ultimately became (in life and death) a force holding back further Turkish development. His yoke is now being loosened.

Sheridan writes that “Turkey is a member of NATO and it had traditionally been Israel’s only Muslim ally. A decade ago, Turkey’s agenda was liberalisation, European Union membership and close military co-operation with Israel. Now its agenda is hostility to the West, denunciation of Israel and creeping Islamisation.”

There is no evidence that Turkey’s agenda is now anti-liberal or “hostile to the West”. Rather, it has become (in the post-Cold War period) more sensitive to the region in which it is situated.

As for “Islamisation”, perhaps Greg should visit Istanbul and witness the powerful underlying influence that has always been there – but suppressed under various Western-backed military dictatorships (not too dissimilar to Catholicism under Communism in Poland).

Sheridan, like Israel and its “dog” the USA (Israel is clearly a “tail waving a dog”), is hopelessly at sea in his thinking.

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