Charlie Hebdo & The Appearance Of Solidarity

Pregnant by its pointed absence from the Paris march

against terrorism, the American Administration

displayed its geopolitical ineptitude. But, pregnant by

its Prime Minister’s presence at that rally, the Turkish

Administration of Recip Tayyip Erdogan
demonstrated its consummate duplicity.

 

Inexplicably, no prominent American was present

in Paris to lock arms with other world leaders who

gathered to denounce radicalism. They joined in

exclaiming: “Je Suis Charlie.” The deafening absence 

of a distinguished American official was palpable. A

pity it is. But, the visibly attending Turkish Prime

Minister was politically precluded from even mouthing

“Je Suis Charlie.” A pity it was. But why?

 

Long story short, President Erdogan’s Turkish regime

unceremoniously disrespects free journalistic expression. 

The current Turkish government is contemptuous of

journalists and cartoonists. So, in 2005 when a Danish 

paper printed an unflattering cartoon of the Prophet

Muhammad, Erdogan (who was then Prime Minister)

rushed headlong to condemn that publication.

 

Mr. Erdogan was adamant that such cartoons cross

the red line of tolerable free speech. For Mr. Erdogan,

lampooning Mohammed was not only insulting to his

Moslem sensibilities, it was also akin to shouting

“fire” in the theater of worldwide Islam.

 

For Erdogan’s aggressively Islamist regime, Charlie

Hebdo’s satirical cartoons are abhorrent.  Had they

been published in Turkey, those cartoonists would

have been subject to incarceration. In fact, Turkish

cartoonists are customarily prosecuted for lesser

offenses. Just last year,  Erdogan ordered that

Turkish cartoonist Musa Kart be prosecuted

(or did he also mean persecuted!) for mocking

Erdogan’s own squashing of corruption charges

that had been levelled against his regime.

 

It is no wonder that Turkish Prime Minister

Davutoglu’s very presence at the Paris rally

actually outraged Reporters Without Borders.

They recognized the crystal clear perfidy patent

in Davutoglu’s attendance. They needed no

introduction to Turkey’s abysmal antagonism to

journalistic freedom. They know that an unseemly

cadre of columnists and commentators are rotting

in Turkish prisons.

 

That said, Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Davutoglu had

an indecorous dilemna. That is because Turkey is

a member of NATO. At the same time, Turkey has

long sought admission to the European Union.

Turkey was also secularized by Ataturk who

introduced European values, culture and conduct

into Turkey. So, Turkish leaders deemed it

expedient to have an official presence and to

display the appearance of solidarity with the

marchers in Paris.

 

But, while Istanbul physically vibrates on European

soil, most Turks actually live on the Asian side of

the Bosphorus. They inhale that atmosphere where

the population of the Mideast is overarchingly

Moslem. They tend to act accordingly. Under

Erdogan, Turkey has become increasingly and

aggressively Islamist. Furthermore, it is no secret

that Erdogan’s Turkey aspires to hegemony over

the entire Islamic Mideast.

 

Those geopolitical realities predispose Erdogan and

his deeply-entrenched Justice & Development Party

 (AKP) to disdain virtually everything that Charlie

Hebdo stands for. Even more pointedly, Charlie

Hebdo’s murdered journalists paid with their lives

for allegiance to the very same secularism and liberal

freedoms to which Ataturk paid obeisance. To a great

extent, those values reflect the polar opposite of

attitudes traditionally esteemed across the Moslem

Mideast.

 

Thus, Ataturk, modern Turkey’s founding father,

rejected the benighted Ottoman mentality in

favor of divorcing temporal power from the
Islam of the Ottomans. He modeled his vision
for Turkey on French notions of liberty, equality,
fraternity and free expression. Not so Erdogan.
He and his conservative followers (arguably the
majority of Turks) pursue an almost diametrically
opposite approach.

 

So, Erdogan was geopolitcally compelled by Turkey’s

alliance and aspirational ties to Europe to send his

Prime Minister to the rally in Paris. But Erdogan was

also geopolitcally constrained by his predilections to

exert influence in the Islamic Mideast to bar his

Prime Minister from verbalizing any identification

with Charlie Hebdo. As a result, the Turkish Prime

Minister’s lips may have moved, but they certainly

did not dare to utter "Je Suis Charlie."

 

All the forgoing simply suggests that the growing

number of Turks (and Moslems) living in Europe 

have great latitude to lampoon any religion they

choose. They have broad liberty to disparage any

politician who incurs their displeasure. They have

the expansive freedom to demonize any government 

that does not accommodate their demands. But

 -more often than not- they did not and would not 

have that quality or quantity of free expression in

the Islamic Mideast and, pointedly, not in Turkey.

 

So, it has been caustically argued elsewhere that

“satire is an act of being a wise-ass while

pretending it is for a higher purpose.” Upon

reflection, is it not substantially more accurate to

suggest that satire is rarely an empty charade,

that its practitioners should not be denounced as

smart-alecks and that their objectives are 

frequently laudable, often enlightening and sometimes

even ennobling? That may be precisely why the

world needs more -not fewer- cartoonists.

 

Je Suis Charlie!

Postscript:  On 14 January 2015, Charlie Hebdo

published its first edition after its journalists

were slaughtered. Not unexpectedly, the cover

featured yet another cartoon of Mohammed. 

But, also not unexpectedly, a Turkish court

promptly banned that edition while authorities

rushed to shut down an Istanbul publishing house

that was about to print a Turkish version of that

edition. A pity it continues to be!

 

 

The Kurds, The Turks, ISIS & Islamic Ebola

 

On September 30th, Kurdish Peshmerga troops mounted a

series of attacks against ISIS in Iraq. Those Kurdish boots

on the ground are in stark contrast to the distinct absence

of Arab, Turkish or Western boots attacking ISIS. With

that in mind, some insights into the Kurds, the Turks, the

West and ISIS may be illuminating.

The Kurds are, arguably, the only reliable, liberal and
somewhat secular Islamic entity in the Mideast. Yet,
the West has often notoriously ignored and/or 
periodically stabbed the Kurds in the back.

That all began -for practical purposes- right after 
WorldWar I when President Woodrow Wilson expressly
promised the Kurds a homeland. Indeed, the Kurds'
thirty million people now constitute the world's largest
ethnic minority without a national homeland. So, when
President Wilson gave the Kurds his promise, he made
a point to do so with the clear consent of then existing
Turkish authorities.

That consent was then promptly revoked by Mustafa

Kemal (who was not yet Ataturk). He feared -not

without substantial justification- what an independent

Kurdistan would do to Turkey whose eastern third is

heavily Kurdish.

In fact, about twenty percent of Turkey was and is

Kurdish.  Since WWI, the Turks have repeatedly,

woefully and unapollogetically discriminated against

the Kurds in a multiplicity of manners and egregious

forms. To be clear, the Turks and the Kurds are

anything but best buds.

Actually, Mr. Abdullah Ocalan, a founder of Turkey's

Kurdistan Worker's Party, known as the PKK, has

languished since 1999 in Turkish prisons. Interestingly

enough, the PKK -because of its wanton methods

seeking to create an independent Kurdistan - is still

deemed to be terrorist organization by the USA, the

EU and NATO.

That said, the West did not have the geopolitical
testosterone to stand up to Turkey after WWI. And
now, as ISIS/ISIL attacks Kurds in Iraq and in
northwest Syria immediately astride the Turkish border
at Kobani, the Turks are playing a not unsimilar game to
the imminent damage of the Kurds. In fact, the Turkish
army could readily aid the Kurds who are besieged
at Kobani. The Turks have wittingly chosen not to do so.

So, the West spectates as Kobani is about to fall.

More trenchantly, the West remains conspicuously

inept and unable and/or unwilling to impose its will upon

the Turks who are - in fact if not in actual sentiment

(except when it conveniently suits them) - members of

NATO.

 Moreover, the Turks have flatly refused to allow the

USA to use the huge NATO airbase at Incerlik (or any

Turkish territory) for air operations against ISIS. Even

more critically, Turkey’s own air force boasts hundreds

of American combat aircraft. Yet it has adamantly

refused to launch a single fighter or missile against

ISIS positions in Syria which are less than one

hundred miles from Incerlik.

 To add insult to injury, Turkish operatives are said

to be blatantly and flagrantly aiding ISIS by enabling

the transport and sale of rogue oil from ISIS and

thereby enriching ISIS' coffers and supporting ISIS'

barbaric endeavors.

To complicate matters, most Turks -like the minions

of ISIS- are Sunnis. So are most Kurds. But the

latter's liberal brand of Sunni Islam is anathema to

both ISIS as well as to many Turks. In short, the

ethnically different Kurds are not only heretics to

ISIS, they are also damnable potential fifth

columnists to the increasingly Islamified Turks.

To further that convoluted state of affairs, there

is an uneasy -if de facto- relationship and or

accommodation between Syria's Alawite regime 

(Shiites) and the Kurds. Syria’s President Assad

has played that game astutely. He has effectively

ceded -without undue rancor- the Kurdish northern 

sliver of Syria to the Kurds.

 In return, the Kurds have not agitated against Assad. 

His Alawite-Shiites are deemed to be worse than

Christians, Jews or even idolaters according to ISIS

and -arguably- also to President Erdogan's increasing

strident Islamist regime in Turkey.

 In the parlance of regional Arabic dialect, if one

desires to pejoratively characterize someone as

stiff-necked, the expression is: "He has the mind

of a Kurd."  Not unexpectedly, the Kurds have a

rather unique and generally agreeable relationship

with another people that was Biblically lampooned

as stiff-necked, i.e. the ancient Israelites.

It should, therefore, be no surprise that the Israelis
and the Kurds maintain a number of noteworthy
points of positive contact and mutual interest. Neither
currently has terribly favorable ratings with the
Turkish establishment. Quite the contrary. At the
same time, both the Kurds and the Israelis are reviled
by ISIS.

But pointedly, if geographic proximity is of any
consequence, the West has substantially less to fear
from ISIS than do the Kurds, the Syrian Alawites,
moderate Mideast Moslems, regional Christians and
the Israelis.

As such, the Kurds, the Israelis, Syrian Alawites and

the infidels of the West must all must confront ISIS

as an ominous adversary. Notably, ISIS is an enemy

with an unabashedly savage ideology, an aggressive 

agenda and a clear strategy.

It is, therefore, abundantly curious and thoroughly

suspect that, for as yet in explicable reasons, ISIS

wittingly and prominently released a large contingent

of hostage Turkish diplomats all of whose heads

remained quite unsevered.

So, what nation has somehow escaped designation

as ISIS' avowed enemy? What nation has now

conspicuously opted to stand virtually uncommitted

on the geopolitical sidelines as a seemingly neutral,

if not as an actual friend of ISIS? Turkey!

But wait. Underneath its geopolitical diddling, its

apparent prevarication and its seeming equivocation, 

Turkey aspires to regional hegemony. It is thus that

the Turks may be looking even beyond ISIS down

the regional path to Turkey's geopolitical rivalry

with Iran and its ethnic Persians. The latter, not so

incidentally, are -from both the Turkish and ISIS

perspectives - detestible Shiites.

Not to be outdone, the Iranians -from their exalted

ethnic Persian perspectives- deem ISIS' Arabs to

be low-life and uncouth plebians ("anaryans").

To be candid if not kind, Iranian opinion of the

Turks is equally unsavory.

 So, it is not at all unthinkable that the Turks

actually welcome the presence of ISIS as both

a buffer and as a convenient obstacle to Iran’s

hegemonical aspirations.  ISIS is also an expedient 

foil that the Turks are delightedly watching as it 

thrusts and jabs into the heart of the despised

Syrian Alawite regime. More potently, ISIS

could be Assad's Islamic ebola!

With deadly enemies like that, it is surely worth 

recognizing who one's friends really are...and

are not.

Go Kurds!