"I'm nothing... The idea is important: why people resist the government. The government doesn't want to understand, didn't try to understand why people are on the streets. This is really silent resistance. I hope people stop and think 'what happened there?'"
१८ जून, २०१३
"'Standing man' inspires Turkish protesters in Istanbul."
"Performance artist Erdem Gunduz stood silently for eight hours, facing a portrait of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern, secular Turkey."
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I guess I'm low information today, so can someone explain the unrest in Turkey to me? Is it because Erdogan has gone too far with the Islamist creep? is the artist for or against the secular state created by Ataturk?
Think of Erdogan as an Islamist Mike Bloomberg. The problem the people in Istanbul have with him is less that he's an Islamist (though there is that) and more that he's becoming increasingly authoritarian and dictatorial over time. He has lots of support out in the rest of Turkey, though.
@Nichevo.
This guy is part of the secularist middle-class centered almost ENTIRELY in Istanbul. The country-side is, and always has been, comprised almost entirely of retrograde Islamistists who were kept tamped down by Attaturk and subsequent secular rulers but are now feeling their Islamist oats and give the present Islamist regime their full-throated support. We are witnessing the slow-motion destruction of one of the world's great cities as strict Islamic law is being incrementally imposed. Erdogan has purged the secular Army officer corps--the one element which traditionally was highly secular in outlook and insured a secular society and government after Attaturk's death--so he has no real meaningful opposition save for the Istanbul middle-class and the students, as the enlisted rank & file of the Army are mainly devout Islamic rural peasants.
Turkey is yet another example--as if the world needed another--of a naive middle-class voting in its own jailer. (c.f. Hitler, Il Duce, Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Obama, etc.)
When his legs cramp up he should try whirling like a dervish.
Peking Summer redux.
I wish him luck.
We are witnessing the slow-motion destruction of one of the world's great cities as strict Islamic law is being incrementally imposed.
Before I started studying Islam I used to wonder what happened to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire and the great center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity.
Then I discovered it became Istanbul after it was conquered by the Ottomans in 1453. The first thing Mehmed II did was ride to the Hagia Sophia, the holiest cathedral of the Eastern Church and have it sacked. Then Muslims chanted the Shahada ("There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet") and it became a mosque.
Islam means "submission." Never forget that.
We need one standing man/woman against the NSA,
one against the IRS,
one against criminalizing real journalists doing their Constitutionally protected jobs,
one against the Justice Dept targeting whistle blowers,
one against Benghazi and scapegoating,
one against Fast & Furious,
one against free condoms for Sandra,
one with an umbrella against Big Govt malfeasance.
Wonder how long the One Man-Woman can stand across from the WH without being arrested as a terrorist suspect casing the joint.
Paco Wové said... Think of Erdogan as an Islamist Mike Bloomberg.
Agree. But there is no stand up New Yorker to stand up to Nanny Mike.
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