Turkey Under Erdogan: Lurching Toward Sharia & A New Ottoman Empire

“These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.” ~ Erdogan, PM of Turkey

Turkey took another step backwards this week … lurching toward Sharia … when 4 female MPs marked the end of a ban enforced since the early days of the Turkish Republic. The female MPs were wearing headscarves, as they walked into Turkey’s parliament in Ankara on Oct. 31st, designating the end of a prohibition vigorously imposed since the dawn of a secular Turkey.

On its face, this step seems harmless … but considering the steps since Erdogan’s reign, it’s anything but benign…

A little on Turkey’s birth as a Republic: The Turkish Republic was founded in 1923, after the fall of the barbaric, Islamic Ottoman Empire. (The Ottoman’s Motto: Devlet-i Ebed-müddet, “The Eternal State” … kind of makes them roommates with the Titanic.) Aside from the millions killed in expanding their Fiefdom … the Ottoman’s were responsible for the death of 1.5 million Armenian Christians, which they ethnically cleansed from their Empire.

But in 1923, a secular Muslim by the name Mustafa Kemal Ataturk became the first President of Turkey. He was determined to modernize the new Republic of Turkey and institute Western social reforms into this fledgling democracy. That meant rolling back the oppressive dictates of Sharia Islamic Law which guided the draconian empire.

All that progress has slowly but surely been chipped away under Erdogan’s Islamist reign. Here’s how the Caliphate-wannabe Erdogan has tried to resurrect the Ottomans:

— He’s utilized Islamist demagoguery to win elections, by intimidating the media and destroying opponents.
— He has gone on a mosque-building rampage, constructing thousands of new mosques in the decade he has ruled. Despite the fact that there are already over 3,000 mosques in Istanbul alone. This is including the world’s highest minaret in Istanbul.
— His brutal response to peaceful demonstrations, injuring over 4,000 a few months ago in Gezi Park. Turkish human rights organizations told Der Spiegel, that he later engaged in a campaign to punish journalists, teachers and activists involved in the remonstrations, arresting at least 3000 people, including children.
— His war on women is really same old, same old under the Quran. In 2010, he stated: “I don’t believe in equality between men and women.” In 2011, Erdogan talked about violence against women and statistics stating that so-called honor killings had increased 14-fold in Turkey from 2002 – 2009. But that, he added, was simply because more murders were being reported, and that there are basically few acts of violence against women. 
— Through his now majority Islamist parliament, he spearheaded a new law banning the sale of alcohol at night and near mosques. He said that the original law had been conceived by “a pair of drunks”, meaning Ataturk and his successor Ismet Inonu.

So, where do Jews fare in this landscape of Erdogan?

Although the Ottoman’s allowed the Jews to flourish, and enjoyed the fruit of their communities, they eventually … like all anti-Semites, blamed them for the downfall of the their empire (i.e. Hitler). Erdogan has not even attempted to conceal his anti-Zionism based upon his anti-Semitism. He’s had a history of Jew-hatred (as per Algemeiner.com):

— In 1974, he directed and played a leading role in a play entitled Maskomya, based on the evil global influence of Jews, Communists and Freemasons.
— When Mayor of Istanbul in 1998, he stated “Today the image of the Jews is no different from that of the Nazis”.
— In 2006 he endorsed the popular, venomous anti-Semitic film Valley of the Wolves about an American Jew who trades in body parts.
— He held Jews liable for the Gezi Park environmental protest on the “interest rate lobby”, the “dual loyalists” and the “rootless cosmopolitans”, unequivocal references to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. His deputy blamed the riots on the Jewish Diaspora.
— At a UN conference in Vienna in February 2012, Erdogan stated, “Just like Zionism and fascism, Islamophobia must be regarded as a crime against humanity”.

A new and “improved” Ottoman Empire, based more strictly on the Quran and Hadiths … reflecting the misogyny, Islamic Supremacy and anti-Semitism of Sharia … appears to be the kind Erdogan is imagining and determined to establish.

And with a weak West, and the little Islamist lapdogs, like Obama, as his bulwark … he just might get his fiendish heart’s desire.

Shalom through strength…

Image: Courtesy of http://setobuje.deviantart.com/art/Recep-Tayyip-Erdogan-167596731