What's up with this?  Release of Turkey generals eases tensions for now  I did not realize tensions between the military and civilian government had gotten so bad in Turkey.  I am curios as to what the man on the street thinks about the Turkish Military's role as the gaurdian of secularism?

I guess the question is directed at me but it's a very complex question to answer that needs a lot of background info so bear with me. For about 10 years now, we're being governed by the AKP, which was a spin-off of the Welfare party who was a very conservatively pro-islamist party. However AKP officials have always denied that they were the same party as the old one, saying that they were more in line with the "christian-democrat" tradition of Germany. In the past 10 years I can't say that they have shown anything to the contrary. Turkish politics is a peculiar animal, what the rest of the western world calls left is right what you call right is left over here. For example the social democrat  - CHP - is known as leftist in Turkey. However they pride themselves on being nationalists and are the most hardliners in disputes such as the kurdish problem, cyprus, armenia, greece (all foreign policy) and are fundementally secular. As I've mentioned before I'm not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination but these guys really take it to a different level. They are the political wing of the "Kemalist" camp. The military is and has always been very staunchly Kemalist. The military percieves themselves as the protector of the republic which is fine but they also percieve all other political partys (except CHP) as being threats to the republic. The CHP mostly reminds me of the Shah in Iran, looks western but it is as middle eastern and anti democratic as possible.That's the main reason why we've had coup d'etats, near coup d'etat's or post-modern syber coup d'etats every ten years or so. Personally I'm a great believer in liberal democracy, therefore I'm very supportive of this civilan governments efforts to change the Turkish culture of having the military as a political entity, irrespective of their background or any misgivings I have about them. I don't believe that they will turn us into an Islamic state, like the military would like us to believe. I truly think that these are devout muslims who have realised that individual liberties that can only be attainable if we progress to be a nation of civil liberties will let them live their faith as well as us live our own personal choices. Interesting note; most of the non muslim populace supports the so-called "Islamic" AKP rather than the CHP. It's time that the Turkish people realise that oppression can came wearing a suit and tie just as easily as it can come wearing a burka. It's funny but it's true the symbol of civil liberties in Turkey is the headscarf. As I said we're a peculiar country where everything seems as though you're in an inverted universe.

Thank you, when I say roughly the same things here in Turkey I'm regarded as an Islamist  🙂 It's been tough and I don't think we're anywhere near to the end. We've never experienced the industrial revolution and we also didn't experience the enlightment properly. We went from subjects of the Sultan who owe their very existence to God then the Sultan to a nation state almost over night. That's why it's always been too easy to manipulate the general population in Turkey. Educated population is low and its not divided equally in the country. The east and the west is like two different centuries let alone countries. It's similar to the Italians where the North creates the wealth and the south creates the babies, only much more pronounced. I believe if we had not been able to hold onto to the east of the country during our War of Independance, we would be one of the heavyweights of the EU right now. Istanbul alone as a city creates more wealth than most small eastern european states and has more population than all of Greece. But more than half of what we produce goes down the drain in the east. But because of the strongly nationalistic nature of the country it considered treason to even suggest these things.On the religious side the problem was always there but now it has come out into the open. There is still a minority which longs for the days of Sheria and the Islamic way of life. Altough they are marginal they still scare us because of their volatile nature (hence I can understand the west's ease in being scared of the Islamonuts). But majority of the population is "muslim" if you ask them but most only go to mosques on religous holiday, if even that, drink alcohol but don't eat pork for some reason  ;D , and are more scared than the Islamists then you will ever be. So we'd definitly have a full blown civil war before the country regresses back to an Islamic state. Personally altough I agree with the Islamophobes that religion is not something we need, I don't agree with their methods of creating a "militant democracy". That term was coined by the former Attorney General who thought that democracies must be aggresive, even militant against those they percieve as threats. I have never seen an idea or a thought being cencored, beaten, silenced or otherwise cohersed into submission indefinatly. You can do this for a limited amount of time, for as long as you have the muscle, but after that there will be consequences. If we somehow succed with this AKP experiment and stay within the bounds of reason and democracy I believe the consequences will be limited in depth and violance. And we can move on as a better democracy, but if there is another Coup D'etat or the CHP comes to power in a way which is percieved as undemocratically by the general population the repurcussions will be deeper. Altough they won't be today, they will hurt more. At least that's my two cents.

I have always thought that education, at least the basics, is the key to a functioning enlightened society.  Is the Turkish hinterland really so full of illiterates or marginally literate people?  And if so, is the government trying to improve schools or are they content with the status quo?  In America I see us with the opposite problem, we are regressing into a preliterate society.  People are content to be ignorant and even know they are so long as they can still get there MTV and dose of internet.  I have even taking to calling the internet mind-porn because it seems to suck the life out of people, I know people (myself included at times) that just have to get their internet fix of mindless videos and crude humor.

To answer your first question the rural east is still basically a feudal land of serfs and the landowners. It is gradually and very very slowly progressing but it's still not anywhere near what I would call satisfactory or civilized. Your second question is a little tougher to answer. All major political parties have been claiming to try their utmost to fix the problem but meanwhile all political parties also deal with the landowners and contribute to the "herd democracy" of the region. Even the local regional dynamics are against progress. As you probably know the PKK is a terrorist organisation that has been active in the southeast for almost 30 years know. Their main targets are school teachers. It's easier to manipulate the ignorant masses, once you have a thinking man as your citizen ou actually have to convince him without the mindless rhetoric.But the internet and mass media has made keeping people in the dark impossible, so altough I'm dissapointed in the current state of Turkey, I'm still hopeful for the future.