Coup folks are holding the navy head and frigate, maybe too soon to give up, however
A major bridge was illuminated by the French national colors in order for the new leaders to show whom they sympathize with when it comes to the most recent major terrorist attack. For 95 years, the Turkish army was seen as a major force that supported decency and the Western values in the country.
However, soon afterwards, President Erdogan ordered the public to rally and do everything to suppress the revolt. He pretty much restored his control over the country within hours. It seems that the coup had no chance. It may have been a false flag operation or the last desperate attempt to preserve the Westernized Turkey established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after the First World War.
Coup isn't a morally or systemically optimal way to improve political affairs. But extraordinarily bad developments require extraordinary measures; similar military coups have saved several countries (such as Chile and Egypt) from a complete collapse in the past. And Turkey is also evolving in an extraordinarily bad direction under Erdogan, away from freedom and secularism and towards Islamism and authorianism. The evaporation of the media freedom, the terror against the Kurds, and the open cooperation with Daesh are just three of the signs of the trouble, three symptoms that remind us why our ancestors had to fight against the Turks so courageously. There are also more innocent symbols. Ergogan has built a new Ottoman-style palace for himself and restored the military uniforms from the Ottoman Empire.
This trend has the support of the public – Erdogan got some 49 percent in elections half a year ago – but this fact makes the trend even more troubling and serious. Those who say that the Westernization of countries – in the Middle East etc. – is irreversible are surely being proven wrong by Turkey, a rather important case.
Sadly, the fans of freedom and secularism – and I think that the makers of the coup deserve this label, despite the chaos and complexity – who live in Turkey (or any country with the Muslim majority) get no support home and, more shamefully, no support from the Western countries. No Turkish Parliamentary party has endorsed the coup. It was pretty brave – and suicidal – for the 1500 army personnel to launch this major operation with so little support. The 1500 soldiers who were arrested will probably be executed. Try to imagine the amount of fear that this "resolution" will create. Who will dare to be a genuine opposition?
The international reactions were mostly supporting Erdogan, too. Barack Obama said that all parties should lick the rectum of his Islamist brother Erdogan. The U.S. president is unlikely to eliminate our feeling (see the best comments here) that he is a bribed pro-Islamist Trojan horse.
The only major sensible exception was represented by the British minister of foreign affairs who described Erdogan in an award-winning, poetic way:
The readers of center-right iDNES.cz have a pretty unanimous opinion about the future of Turkey and I share this opinion (and so do most people at the left-wing Novinky.cz forums). Turkey as a pro-Western country is probably over now once the coup has failed and that's bad. Erdogan will use the opportunity to consolidate his power and we will see a more Islamist, more aggressive, less free Turkey than at any moment in the recent 95 years. Opponents of the Erdoganization of Turkey will probably not get another opportunity anymore.
Czech readers are generally disgusted by the tendency of the official Western politicians to endorse Erdogan and to allow him to blackmail us. All of us. Comments with 50-to-0 voting scores also point out that they should have simply shot Erdogan dead or wait for the moment when it's actually possible.
Incidentally, I am also annoyed by the typically totalitarian tricks that Erdogan himself has done in the wake of these events. He has immediately blamed Muhammed Fethullah Gülen, a moderate preacher who lives in Pennsylvania (and who was Erdogan's ally as recently as three years ago), for the coup. It seems very likely to me that this guy has nothing to do with the coup and not only due to his location. He is moderate (and speaks to the Jews and the Vatican) but I think that the people behind the coup are even more secular than he is. Erdogan has simply abused the coup to damage the image of the Pennsylvanian guy (whom he is really afraid of) – which will probably take place because the coup will be constantly presented in negative colors in the near future. And the freedom in Turkey is so limited that almost no one will be able to say or learn that this attribution of the coup is just a plain lie.
To some extent, we are witnessing a conflict of the civilizations. It has the form of terrorist attacks and attempts of the Muslims to increase their influence over the Western countries. Sadly, we are not seeing the analogous credible efforts of the Westerners to increase their influence over the Muslim world.
However, the war of the civilizations isn't just concerned with the "intensity of influence" in the well-defined civilizations. The war of the civilization is also taking place on the battlefront in between the civilizations – where the boundary between the "mostly Western" and "mostly Islamic" world is being refined at every moment. And Turkey is clearly the main country that defines the borderland in between the West and the Muslim world. To some extent, we should see the pro-freedom fighters in Turkey as our friends and allies in the war of civilizations. They are "our guys" who are fighting for every squared mile that belongs to the Western civilization – on the Turkish territory. Unfortunately, it's clear that the Islamists are winning this part of the war of civilizations, too. And lots of Western leaders are helping us to lose.
It is hard to overlook the brutally hypocritical attitude of the White House and others to various anti-regime revolts. Whenever Islamists launch a revolt against a secular, democratically elected leader, e.g. in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Egypt, and so on (but also Maidan in Ukraine), the likes of Obama and Kerry support them. Even though their goal is clearly to replace the freedom with Islam (=submission), they are called the freedom warriors. But when the political career of a pro-Islamist strongman is at stake, Obamas and Kerrys of the world immediately arrive to support the strongman.
(And more shocking comparisons may be made. Obama's and Kerry's support for Erdogan is much more unequivocal than their support for the governments of Poland, Hungary, and Israel, among others!)
Well, I am surely not the only one who thinks that this bias should be smaller than what we see and it should have the opposite sign. The Western leaders should be more likely to support a secular revolt against an Islamist strongman than the other way around because they should be able to see an important lesson of the recent 500 years – that the enlightenment principles have turned the world into a better place.
LHC: First, a cute excess of the day. In a CMS search for vector-like quarks, there is a 3-sigma \(410\GeV\) top quark excess on page 5, Figure 2d, in decays with electrons. If this bump were real, it's already discovered in the recorded 2016 data.When we woke up in Europe today, we learned about the coup attempt in Turkey. The army, on behalf of the Turkish Peace Council, overtook the country with the immediate goal "to reinstate constitutional order, human rights and freedoms, the rule of law and general security that was damaged" which was surely worth praising. The new regime promised to respect all international treaties.
A major bridge was illuminated by the French national colors in order for the new leaders to show whom they sympathize with when it comes to the most recent major terrorist attack. For 95 years, the Turkish army was seen as a major force that supported decency and the Western values in the country.
However, soon afterwards, President Erdogan ordered the public to rally and do everything to suppress the revolt. He pretty much restored his control over the country within hours. It seems that the coup had no chance. It may have been a false flag operation or the last desperate attempt to preserve the Westernized Turkey established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after the First World War.
Coup isn't a morally or systemically optimal way to improve political affairs. But extraordinarily bad developments require extraordinary measures; similar military coups have saved several countries (such as Chile and Egypt) from a complete collapse in the past. And Turkey is also evolving in an extraordinarily bad direction under Erdogan, away from freedom and secularism and towards Islamism and authorianism. The evaporation of the media freedom, the terror against the Kurds, and the open cooperation with Daesh are just three of the signs of the trouble, three symptoms that remind us why our ancestors had to fight against the Turks so courageously. There are also more innocent symbols. Ergogan has built a new Ottoman-style palace for himself and restored the military uniforms from the Ottoman Empire.
This trend has the support of the public – Erdogan got some 49 percent in elections half a year ago – but this fact makes the trend even more troubling and serious. Those who say that the Westernization of countries – in the Middle East etc. – is irreversible are surely being proven wrong by Turkey, a rather important case.
Sadly, the fans of freedom and secularism – and I think that the makers of the coup deserve this label, despite the chaos and complexity – who live in Turkey (or any country with the Muslim majority) get no support home and, more shamefully, no support from the Western countries. No Turkish Parliamentary party has endorsed the coup. It was pretty brave – and suicidal – for the 1500 army personnel to launch this major operation with so little support. The 1500 soldiers who were arrested will probably be executed. Try to imagine the amount of fear that this "resolution" will create. Who will dare to be a genuine opposition?
The international reactions were mostly supporting Erdogan, too. Barack Obama said that all parties should lick the rectum of his Islamist brother Erdogan. The U.S. president is unlikely to eliminate our feeling (see the best comments here) that he is a bribed pro-Islamist Trojan horse.
The only major sensible exception was represented by the British minister of foreign affairs who described Erdogan in an award-winning, poetic way:
There was a young fellow from AnkaraCan you spot the difference from the attitude of Obama's and Kerry's? Later, Boris Johnson and staff published a neutral statement that focused on the safety of the British citizens in Turkey.
Who was a terrific wankerer
Till he sowed his wild oats
With the help of a goat
But he didn’t even stop to thankera.
The readers of center-right iDNES.cz have a pretty unanimous opinion about the future of Turkey and I share this opinion (and so do most people at the left-wing Novinky.cz forums). Turkey as a pro-Western country is probably over now once the coup has failed and that's bad. Erdogan will use the opportunity to consolidate his power and we will see a more Islamist, more aggressive, less free Turkey than at any moment in the recent 95 years. Opponents of the Erdoganization of Turkey will probably not get another opportunity anymore.
Czech readers are generally disgusted by the tendency of the official Western politicians to endorse Erdogan and to allow him to blackmail us. All of us. Comments with 50-to-0 voting scores also point out that they should have simply shot Erdogan dead or wait for the moment when it's actually possible.
Incidentally, I am also annoyed by the typically totalitarian tricks that Erdogan himself has done in the wake of these events. He has immediately blamed Muhammed Fethullah Gülen, a moderate preacher who lives in Pennsylvania (and who was Erdogan's ally as recently as three years ago), for the coup. It seems very likely to me that this guy has nothing to do with the coup and not only due to his location. He is moderate (and speaks to the Jews and the Vatican) but I think that the people behind the coup are even more secular than he is. Erdogan has simply abused the coup to damage the image of the Pennsylvanian guy (whom he is really afraid of) – which will probably take place because the coup will be constantly presented in negative colors in the near future. And the freedom in Turkey is so limited that almost no one will be able to say or learn that this attribution of the coup is just a plain lie.
To some extent, we are witnessing a conflict of the civilizations. It has the form of terrorist attacks and attempts of the Muslims to increase their influence over the Western countries. Sadly, we are not seeing the analogous credible efforts of the Westerners to increase their influence over the Muslim world.
However, the war of the civilizations isn't just concerned with the "intensity of influence" in the well-defined civilizations. The war of the civilization is also taking place on the battlefront in between the civilizations – where the boundary between the "mostly Western" and "mostly Islamic" world is being refined at every moment. And Turkey is clearly the main country that defines the borderland in between the West and the Muslim world. To some extent, we should see the pro-freedom fighters in Turkey as our friends and allies in the war of civilizations. They are "our guys" who are fighting for every squared mile that belongs to the Western civilization – on the Turkish territory. Unfortunately, it's clear that the Islamists are winning this part of the war of civilizations, too. And lots of Western leaders are helping us to lose.
It is hard to overlook the brutally hypocritical attitude of the White House and others to various anti-regime revolts. Whenever Islamists launch a revolt against a secular, democratically elected leader, e.g. in Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Egypt, and so on (but also Maidan in Ukraine), the likes of Obama and Kerry support them. Even though their goal is clearly to replace the freedom with Islam (=submission), they are called the freedom warriors. But when the political career of a pro-Islamist strongman is at stake, Obamas and Kerrys of the world immediately arrive to support the strongman.
(And more shocking comparisons may be made. Obama's and Kerry's support for Erdogan is much more unequivocal than their support for the governments of Poland, Hungary, and Israel, among others!)
Well, I am surely not the only one who thinks that this bias should be smaller than what we see and it should have the opposite sign. The Western leaders should be more likely to support a secular revolt against an Islamist strongman than the other way around because they should be able to see an important lesson of the recent 500 years – that the enlightenment principles have turned the world into a better place.
Failure of coup: bad news for Turkey, Europe, West
![Failure of coup: bad news for Turkey, Europe, West]()
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on
July 16, 2016
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