Short Primer on the Turkish Constitution

The Coup in Turkey must be seen in light of the Constitution of Turkey of which there can be more than one at any given time. The one the government runs on can be different than the Founding Principles of the Republic of Turkey (an approximate translation) while the leaders in Turkey often make small changes kind of personalizing the constitution to their tastes. The Founding Documents (as we will refer to them) task the Turkish Military with keeping Turkey a secular democratic nation and to guard against any Islamist takeover of the government or a dictator cancelling elections and ruling by fiat (not just a small car). The military was prepared to remove Erdogan once before and had told NATO command as Turkey is a member of NATO. Turkey has also been attempting to join the EU, perhaps they can replace Britain now, and back then really thought they were close. The EU backed strongly by George W. Bush demanded the Turkish military back down because civilized nations do not do things this way. Erdogan having gotten wind of this replaced most of the Generals with his puppets. Still, the Turkish military, even with Erdongan’s puppets, take their Constitutional duty very seriously plus a number of these puppets have retired and younger officers promoted and we believe it is these commanders pulling to change the government and undo the Islamization done by Erdogan.

 

George W. Bush followed by Barack Obama produced Recep Tayyip Erdogan

 

So the military acting on their Constitutional duty to keep Turkey secular are attempting a coup, something which would have been easy back in 2005 but will be more difficult as Erdogan controls a very militarized set of police forces and has his own military he keeps as a personal guard. The free world will be fed this blah blah blah coup evil blah bad coup, blah blah no true democratic nation operates blah blah and so forth. Know that when Kamil Ataturk ruled Turkey at the end of World War I and the end of the Ottoman Empire which was ruled from Turkey, he made a Constitution as a Muslim man who understood the Islamic directives for Islamist Sharia to be the law of the land but had seen how democratic nations with their individual freedoms and market driven economies had made mincemeat of the Ottoman forces with modern weapons and individual soldiers who were independent and could operate without being told every little order and he wanted Turkey to emulate this model and set up a secular state. He knew there would be leaders who would, either on their own or bending to popular will, would try to in stages enshrine Sharia.

 

Turkey has had a number of coups to remove leaders attempting to take dictatorial power or enact Sharia or other Islamizations. Erdogan was getting away with his Islamization and march towards Sharia but probably crossed the line for even his own generals in the last elections. What occurred was the Kurdish Party won far more votes than ever before feeling empowered by the Kurds stand against Islamic State and in Iraq against everybody else both Shia and Sunni. The Kurds, for the record, are predominantly Sunni but as Kurds are spurned by the Arabs as lesser human beings at best. This why the Kurds always need stand alone and why they took the lead and were largely responsible for rescuing the Yazidiz from the mountain siege which saw girls and women throw themselves off the cliffs rather than fall to then ISIS forces. This meant that Erdongan’s “Freedom and Justice Party” (which is neither freedom nor justice but Islamic Sharia oriented) did not have a clear majority of the seats in the Parliament and would need a coalition. Erdogan does not share power so he made sure that the coalition he could easily have made refused to allow any majority coalition forcing a redo on the elections. In the weeks between the elections his enforcers killed any number of Kurdish candidates who were elected and terrorized other parties’ supporters and other niceties. Needless to say, his Party won an overwhelming majority and he restarted his Islamization at a quickened pace as he saw that he might not continue to have such support in the future and he desired to become Caliph of the new Ottoman Empire starting with conquest of Syria, or what is left of Syria. With a modern military and NATO weaponry he could carry this out and as long as he left the Alawite coastal area where the Russians are located alone he would easily crush the Kurds and the other less able factions. But Erdogan saw he had a time limit to operate, until the American elections.

 

Erdogan had President Obama in his pocket and can do anything and his BFF in the White House would bless it as really needed. Should Clinton lose and Trump become President he would not be able to do as he pleased and get away with it. Even Hillary might pose difficulties as she would not desire such a conflagration on the front end of her Presidency and won knows after that. As things are Erdogan saw he needed to strike while the iron was hot, so to speak. His military seeing his ambition and his probability to engage in a war, which would eventually pace them fighting Saudi Arabia, Egypt and potentially Israel, were probably not the happiest Generals in the world, because they realize, as Erdogan does not, that they would lose badly in the end. Erdogan only sees him as world ruler as the Caliph of the great and final Caliphate which conquered the world for Allah. He believes that is his destiny and reality be damned. The military is very reality oriented and do not desire damning reality as reality will smack you back and hard. This may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

 

Now we will just wait and see who wins and pray that Turkey has a restored Constitution and election sometime in the coming year as that would be a huge step in the right direction. What is almost comical is the threat of a new American President, Clinton or Trump, but definitely Trump, has already started paying dividends. It is sad that the vast majority, say 85%, will not see this as anything but some war somewhere they cannot find on a world map and know not that it was what ruled the Ottoman Empire (if they know there ever was an Ottoman Empire) and may will never even know that there is a war in Turkey. I kind of had forgotten how little attention the average person takes in world affairs as long as they are not bothered in some way. I guess as long as it is over there and not here what do I care is a theme everywhere, it is sad.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

A Fundamental Difference

 

There was an episode of Star Trek titled “The Savage Curtain” where a molten rock creature named “Yarnek” decided to learn what the difference was between the forces of good and evil. It pitted Spock, Kirk, Abraham Lincoln and Surak representing the forces of goodness against Colonel Green, the Klingon Kahless, a tribal savage woman named Zora, and evil incarnate from Earth history, Genghis Khan representing the forces of evil. After good finally triumphs over evil Yarnek argues that it sees no difference between the forces of good and evil. The difference pointed out was what each side fought for, their root cause and not their methods of achieving victory which was defined by a base and simple reality of the contest. Yarnek is satisfied that it understand and returns Spock and Kirk to the Enterprise and returns to standing motionless happy in its new found wisdom and prepares to stand motionless is some prop room until Yarnek gets a new role in some ‘B movie’ in the future.

 

The simple premise depicted in the episode was a basic principle for the studies of history and philosophy which prepares college freshmen to critical thinking on a not so critical basis in 100 level coursework. It also can be utilized to define the root differences and similarities between Islamist Fundamentalism and other driving forces throughout human history, but for simplicity sake we might wish to limit the discussion to what would fit into a single Star Trek episode. We might even simplify the discussion to Yarnek style simplicity and examine what each driving force behind other philosophical movements in the past and present.

 

Let us first look at Fundamentalist Christianity and their desire as it pertains to the goals set for Christianity. The end goal of Fundamental Christianity is to live a life which is beneficial to mankind and to spread the words of G0d as defined in the New Testament and fulfilling the new Covenant defined within. Christianity is a proselytizing religion where they are pressed to spread the world of Christ, the sacrifice which Jesus made in the name of all mankind, and to persuade all people through their actions and the introduction to the teachings of Jesus as defined by the Apostles depiction of the teachings and life of Jesus in the New Testament. Initially the Christians were a passive force spreading their newly found faith by word of mouth and by their actions and ultimately their passivity and refusal to lift up arms against their oppressors. This changed after the Roman army fought under the banner of Christendom under the Constantine. After Constantine had his vision, his revelation, the drive for conquest, which was a Roman concept, was married to the message of Jesus and Christianity. This led to the new definition of what could be called an Imperial Christianity. Christianity carried forth with it now being the accepted religion of the Roman Army and thus its new defining principle to spread Christianity over the world and convert all to Christianity. This continued until the Reformation of Christianity which introduced those forces which introduced competing definitions of Christianity. These new and supposedly more pure forms of Christianity ended up married to governments of Christian nations and then began the attempts of each strand of Christianity to become preeminent. This continued until Christianity was purged from the political attachment it held to governance until then. Once Christianity was stripped from defining governance a remarkable thing happened, no longer were wars fought between Christian nations to impose their particular brand of Christianity on the others; Christianity now allowed for the separate forms of Christianity to exist, though the version practiced by the reigning monarch did tend to receive preference. The wars continued but were now no different in their aims, to conquer the known world and rule all mankind; it just was no longer performed in the accepted name of Christianity. The splitting religion away from the state and thus from earthly politics allowed for the birth in Christianity for freedom of religion which is the present state though the attaining a complete break from imposing Christianity rather than spreading Christianity through example and teaching and a total reliance on persuasion and devoid of the means of force is a concept still being perfected. What can be said is that Christendom has made great strides towards the allowance of freedom of religion and equality of all religions before the governance.

 

If we now investigate Fundamental Judaism, a force that likely only existed for a few short periods; we find the target of this early form of Judaism which spanned from Abraham through to the conquest of the lands which made up the kingdom of the two most heralded rulers of the Jews, King David and his son, King Solomon. The initial period of Jewish Fundamentalism was during the becoming a people through realizing their goals of conquering the lands they believed were granted them by G0d. The period of Jewish History in question stretched from the start of Judaism with Abraham, their Exodus from Egypt and their forty years of purification and change from a mindset of a people under bondage to a people enjoying freedom with Moses and on until they had conquered their “Promised Lands” under the leadership and marshalling of forces initially by Joshua. Once these lands were brought under Jewish rule their designs on the world were completed and the rest of their mission, their desire to live as G0d had intended, was to be a force for good as defined within Torah, and to study Torah and divine from Torah what being a people of goodness actually required from them and by living a life defined by Torah, the Jews were to be a light unto the nations of the world, an example of living a holy and blessed life. There were no designs or desires to rule the world or over any peoples once the Jewish state was established. The second period of Jewish Fundamentalism could be defined as the modern Zionist movement which has defined their purpose is to reestablish Jewish rule and autonomy over those same lands as are defined in Torah as the ancient homelands gifted them by G0d. There is no desire to conquer the world or to convert the world, but only to live in their corner of the world and be as a light unto the nations, a representation of goodness as defined in Torah. As above, there are no designs or desires to rule the world or over any peoples once the Jewish state has been established nor is there any desire to convert anybody. The region under Jewish control will have a religious theme and basis over the governance, or at least is supposed to have such, but is still instructed by Torah to not only allow freedom of worship, but equal treatment under any Torah ruled kingdom thus the concept of freedom of religion is one of the basic ideals of Judaism. There is no driving desire to convert others to Judaism unless a person chooses to seek conversion and even then there are stringent requirements of any convert but they would be welcome within any Jewish society.

 

Islam has a more original belief on the ideals of conversion which will ultimately lead to a world where the survivors are all Muslims as there would be no room for anything else. Islam teaches its adherents that their religion had replaced Judaism and Christianity. This is the concept of supersessionism. Christianity believed they were the replacement under G0d and they had superseded the Jews thus negating the Covenant between G0d and the Jews and Islam believes they have superseded the Christians and through that, also superseded the Jews. The Muslim believes fervently that the revelation by Muhammad to be the final revelation and that no further revelation is possible as Muhammad was actually the restatement of the Covenant between mankind and G0d and that Islam is the true path while Judaism and Christianity had corrupted the words of Allah and thus perverted religion making their versions of worship an abomination and their sole hope for paradise was through Islam. This is an important part of Islam as it is necessary in order for Islam to fulfill their Covenant with Allah. Islam tasks the Muslims to fulfill Jihad which is defined as the Greater and Lesser Jihad. One form of Jihad is the perfection of oneself under the rule of Allah and the complete and utter surrender of the self to Allah producing a perfected person. The second form of Jihad is the conquest of the entirety of the world for Allah in order to bring the perfect religion of Allah before all in the world allowing them the opportunity to realize their sins and to repent and surrender to Allah and thus become a believing Muslim. Each person is to be permitted the offer of joining Islam and surrendering themselves before Allah willingly but should they continue to reject Islam then they are to be presented with one final choice, Islam or death. This is instructed in the Quran where the Muslim is instructed to spread Islam by the sword if that is what is required. The finality defined by Islam is a world where all believe in Islam and Islam rules the world according Sharia. Nothing less than the complete subjugation of the world by Allah can be accepted as Islam is currently defined and since the Quran cannot be altered there is a point of contention which is not capable of reconciliation between Islam defined by the Quran and freedom, only one can survive. Islam defines the perfection of the world as the supremacy of Islam and the sole existence of mankind is to surrender to Allah and obey the Quran as defined under the Sharia and nothing less is acceptable and the end result is you will ultimately have a world that has been conquered by Allah forever with any person expressing even the most innocent free thought not defined as acceptable under the Quran to be defined as an apostate for leaving the true faith of Islam and who must be put to death.

 

Under Judaism the world continues as it desires with the Jews only insisting on ruling their little corner of the world which is a nation not quite the size of the Philadelphia to Boston greater megalopolis, Christianity desires to teach the world the message of Jesus and hope that their actions are of sufficient influence along with the loving words of Jesus to persuade the world to follow their teachings and Islam simplifies everything and boils it down to conquer the world for Islam and convert all to surrender before Allah. Well, at least that definition just might fit into the basis of a Star Trek episode, nice, compact and simplified to the point of absurdity. I could see Spock correct Bones and Kirk who were arguing, explaining, “Simply put for your understanding, Doctor (glance emotionless at Dr. McCoy); Jews are content in telling only those who ask, while Christians burst forth telling the world, as where the Muslims are simply commanded to conquer and purify the world of nonbelievers. (look with slight smirk at Kirk, sharply turns and returns to his station on bridge)”

 

Beyond the Cusp