While the Bush administration and its neocon allies continue their incessant media campaign to appropriate the legacy of the late Pope John Paul II, the Turks are offering up to the world an astonishingly clear demonstration of exactly how and why the arguments and parallels that the neocons have been using to sustain their case ring completeley hollow.
From today's WaPo:
In Turkey, heralded as the model of a Westward-looking Muslim democracy, sales records were shattered this spring by a book that imagines a U.S. invasion of this nation, a longtime U.S. ally. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Turks regard that scenario as a real possibility.
Now, I don't know about you, but I sincerely doubt that the majority of Turks would even seriously entertain the possibility that the late Pope would have encouraged such an invasion
even in a fictional context.
Conspiracy theories, a staple topic at teahouses and water coolers, are now taken so seriously that in December the U.S. Embassy felt compelled to issue a statement denying that the United States had caused the tsunami in South Asia and, with it, the deaths of more than 200,000 people.
Hmmm... Why such anger and rampant fear among a relatively democratic and sophisticated population of Muslims towards a modern Western regime which styles itself as the "liberator" and "freedom-bearer" of the Arab-Muslim world? Isn't the current US administration full of peaceful promoters of diplomatic conflict-resoltion, outreach and religious tolerance on the model of the late Karol Wojtyla?
Well....ummm.. it's not exactly perceived that way:
The latest survey, gathered in February by the private Metropoll organization, found that
four in 10 Turks regard the United States as their country's "biggest enemy." That is more than double the number who named Greece, the ancient rival Turkey has come to the brink of war with three times in the last half-century.
"Yes, definitely, the opinions are changing," said Ismail Baykus, 45, at the door of his stationery store in a middle-class Istanbul neighborhood. "Based on what we hear and see in the press, the Americans talk one way and then act another, especially when they say they will bring stability and peace to a region."
And why, in heaven's name, is all this taking place? you ask:
By all accounts, the turnabout can be traced to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some 90 percent of Turks opposed the war, and their parliament voted to deny the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division permission to open a northern front against Iraq from Turkish territory.
"It obviously all starts with Iraq," said a senior Western diplomat in Ankara. "All this is going on in the context of the U.S. sending 140,000 troops next door."
But more than two years later, U.S. officials voice growing concern that the rift between the two governments not only has not healed, but is deepening.
"It was obvious after September 11 that the United States was going to feel provoked and attack a Muslim country," said Sezai Oflaz, 33, carving meat in a kabob restaurant overlooking the Bosporus Strait, which divides Europe from Asia through the center of Istanbul.
"It looks like it will come to this: First they invade Iraq, then maybe Iran and Syria. Eventually, Turkey. So rather than waiting for it, I'd rather go and fight now in Iraq," Oflaz said.
Obviously, the majority of Muslims will not be praying and weeping over Bush's coffin when his number gets called. Ungrateful sons o' bitches!!!