{"id":1930,"date":"2017-06-20T07:29:30","date_gmt":"2017-06-20T07:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/new\/?p=1930"},"modified":"2017-07-13T12:38:21","modified_gmt":"2017-07-13T12:38:21","slug":"the-fairy-tale-of-post-modern-turkey-by-burak-bekdil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/2017\/06\/20\/the-fairy-tale-of-post-modern-turkey-by-burak-bekdil\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fairy Tale of &#8220;Post-Modern&#8221; Turkey  by Burak Bekdil"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<ul class=\"content_preface_bullets\">\n<li>In 2014, one <i>Yeni Akit<\/i> columnist wrote that a &#8220;Gaza fund contribution tax&#8221; should apply to Turkish Jews, as well as foreign Jews doing business in Turkey, Turkish nationals with commercial ties to Israel, and any business that maintains a partnership with a Turkish Jew. The penalty for failing to pay the tax should be the revocation of the Jew&#8217;s business license and the seizure of his property.\n<ul>\n<li>\n<hr id=\"system-readmore\" class=\"mceItemReadMore\" \/>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>It was not even considered shocking when the Turkish man who shot at the journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse said in his testimony, &#8220;I was deeply annoyed by his news reporting &#8230; I knew he had been to Britain for a while&#8230; I thought he was a British spy&#8230;&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"itemprop_articlebody\" style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n<p>The Western euphemism for Turkey&#8217;s supposedly mild, &#8220;post-modern&#8221; Islamists, who came to power in 2002, was problematic from the beginning. The past five years has seen the Turkish &#8220;post-modern&#8221; Islamist&#8217;s sad funeral &#8212; sad because they, in reality, never lived in this universe. They were the brainchild of the optimists sipping their coffee at a Washington caf\u00e9, or a London pub or a Berlin beer house. Now there is just the official funeral service with an empty coffin: there was, in fact, no such a thing as &#8220;post-modern&#8221; Islamism.<\/p>\n<p>Political Islam, when it wins popular support, tends to adopt direction of the majority rather than the pluralistic route [see Turkey and Egypt]; and when mixed with cultural and religious nationalism in the Orient, it often adopts not just the direction of the majority but also a few militant turns [see Hamas].<\/p>\n<p>It was not even considered shocking when the Turkish man who shot at the journalist Can Dundar outside a courthouse said in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.milliyet.com.tr\/can-dundar-a-saldiranlar-adliyeye-gundem-2242756\/\" target=\"_blank\">testimony<\/a>, &#8220;I was deeply annoyed by his [Dundar&#8217;s] news reporting &#8230; I knew he had been to Britain for a while&#8230; I thought he was a British spy&#8230; I planned this [shooting] in order to teach him a lesson.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Why did the man think that a Turkish journalist, declared an undesirable by the country&#8217;s president, was a British spy? Was it actually because Dundar had been to Britain, like thousands of other Turks do every year? Hardly. It was because the president of the country had loudly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hurriyetdailynews.com\/two-journalists-arrested-for-story-on-intelligence-trucks-bound-for-syria.aspx?PageID=238&amp;NID=91722&amp;NewsCatID=339\" target=\"_blank\">labelled him a spy<\/a>, a traitor, a terrorist &#8212; even without a court verdict. Dundar was eventually acquitted of the charges.<\/p>\n<table class=\"mceItemTable\" style=\"margin-bottom: 5px; max-width: 600px;\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"0\" align=\"center\">\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"max-width: 600px; border: 1px solid black;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/pics\/1640.jpg\" width=\"600\" height=\"366\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 82%; margin: 4px 6px;\">Murat Sahin (left) attempts to shoot journalist Can Dundar (crouching at right, with his back to the camera) outside a court in Istanbul, Turkey, on May 6, 2016. Sahin later stated that &#8220;I was deeply annoyed by his news reporting &#8230; I knew he had been to Britain for a while&#8230; I thought he was a British spy&#8230; I planned this [shooting] in order to teach him a lesson.&#8221; (Image source: RT video screenshot)<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>In his newly-published book, <i>The Glorious Defeat: The Islamists&#8217; Test With Power<\/i>, the author Levent Gultekin, himself a figure from the Islamist ranks, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hurriyet.com.tr\/satafatli-maglubiyetin-yazari-levent-gultekin-ben-mahallemi-degistirmedim-mahalleliler-tasindi-29994329\" target=\"_blank\">concludes<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The war [within] has been won by the Akit line thanks to [President] Erdogan. The Akit approach has captured not just the Islamists but Turkey as a whole &#8230; Erdogan has hauled the voters to this line. That [Akit&#8217;s] is the [political] lingua franca in every field.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The &#8220;Akit&#8221; in question is the daily newspaper <i>Yeni Akit.<\/i> It is a fiercely pro-Erdogan, fiercely Islamist newspaper, whose editors often find a seat in the president&#8217;s private jet on his foreign trips &#8212; an expression of the president&#8217;s appreciation of their less than subtle editorial line.<\/p>\n<p>In 2014, one <i>Yeni Akit<\/i> columnist wrote that a &#8220;Gaza fund contribution tax&#8221; should apply to Turkish Jews, as well as foreign Jews doing business in Turkey and Turkish nationals with commercial ties to Israel. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gatestoneinstitute.org\/4727\/turkey-anti-semitism\" target=\"_blank\">He suggested<\/a> that the tax should apply to any company or business that maintains a partnership with a Turkish Jew. The penalty for failing to pay the tax should be the revocation of the Jew&#8217;s business license and the seizure of his property.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly before the November 1 general elections, another <i>Yeni Akit<\/i> columnist <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hurriyetdailynews.com\/Default.aspx?pageID=238&amp;nID=90987&amp;NewsCatID=398\" target=\"_blank\">claimed<\/a> that Erdogan would become the new &#8220;ecumenical&#8221; caliph once he has won the executive presidential powers he so passionately desires: the 105th Caliph!<\/p>\n<p><i>Yeni Akit<\/i> also recently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yeniakit.com.tr\/foto-galeri\/bu-markalara-para-veren-muslumanlar-filistinli-cocuklarin-kaniyla-yikaniyor-2184\" target=\"_blank\">published a list<\/a> of companies under the headline: &#8220;Muslims who pay [buy from] these companies are bathing in Palestinian children&#8217;s blood.&#8221; The subtitle read: &#8220;Muslims who consume these products are financing Israel that occupies Palestine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The list includes the world&#8217;s most prominent brands: 17 in the tobacco industry, six fast-food chains, 11 soft-drink producers, 12 technology giants, 15 carmakers and brands of cars, 16 clothing and fashion brands, a whisky producer, two cargo companies, three oil companies, one battery-maker, one famous cigarette lighter producer, dairy products companies, coffee, tea, drinking water producers, detergent, margarine and ice-cream companies and&#8230; one credit card company, one of the usual top three that we all use &#8212; call it X.<\/p>\n<p>This author asked a friend to call <i>Yeni Akit&#8217;s<\/i> subscription office for our little socio-political experiment. This was the conversation:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8211; Hello, is that subscription?<\/p>\n<p><i>Yeni Akit:<\/i> Yes, how can we help you?<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Could I subscribe to your newspaper and pay by credit card?<\/p>\n<p><i>Yeni Akit:<\/i> Of course you can. What region or city are you in?<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; Ankara, (&#8230;) neighborhood. Can I pay with my X credit card?<\/p>\n<p><i>Yeni Akit:<\/i> Sure, you are more than welcome.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ah, those Muslims who bathe in Palestinian children&#8217;s blood&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a Turkish columnist for the H\u00fcrriyet Daily and a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2014, one Yeni Akit columnist wrote that a &#8220;Gaza fund contribution tax&#8221; should apply to Turkish Jews, as well as foreign Jews doing business in Turkey, Turkish nationals with commercial ties to Israel, and any business that maintains a partnership with a Turkish Jew. The penalty for failing to pay the tax should be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4668,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1931,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930\/revisions\/1931"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egretnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}