OT: Anti Islamic Protest in Turkey ** Yesterday

[Guest guest]

Howdy Ien .. other good folks ..

 

>>The below was posted by AP at 1117 this morning. I was at the protest

>>around 1200 .. stayed till 1400 or so .. and during that time I saw

>>folks coming in droves .. continuously. So if the cops said there

>>were 200,000 folks at 1100 .. I'd say maybe 100,000 more came later.

 

See the update below. As I said yesterday .. the original guesstimate

was 100,000 short. And the 300,000 they report here was those who

showed up at the protest site .. throughout Ankara (perhaps Turkey?)

folks flew flags from their balconies to show support for the protest.

I do not personally know of more than a half dozen folks who are not

protesting .. but I don't have many Islamic Fundamentalist friends.

 

> Thanks for the local presence! Thank (Deity of choice) for

> folks who like to maintain a separation between church and

> state.

 

Welcome you are and right you are .. that is one of the reasons that

the military establishment is held in such high esteem here.

 

> Ien in the Kootenays

> http://freegreenliving.com

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/15/europe/web-0415turkey.php

 

300,000 Protest Islamic Hue of Turkish System

 

By Sabrina Tavernise

Published: April 14, 2007

 

ANKARA, Turkey: Tens of thousands of people filled the central streets

of Turkey's capital on Saturday to protest what they see as an

increasingly Islamic tint to their government.

 

A presidential election is approaching in Turkey, and the protesters

were voicing their opposition to the head of the leading party in

Parliament, with its Islamist roots, taking the post.

 

" We don't want to become another Iran, another Afghanistan, " said

Hanife Sahin, a retired nurse, stooping under the red tent formed by a

Turkish flag that ran like a river over the crowd.

 

News reports said demonstrators numbered as many as 300,000, an

unexpectedly high turnout for a gathering that was initially expected

to draw only harder-line nationalists. The numbers underlined the

deepening divide within Turkish society over the role of Islam in

Turkey, a country whose very charter scrubbed the government clean of

religion.

 

" Believe me, all of Turkey is here, " said a 27-year-old market

researcher, as teenage boys draped in Turkish flags jostled her.

 

But there are two Turkeys now. Turkish society is opening a lively,

sometimes painful, debate on its past for the first time since 1923

when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk stamped out public religion to create the

Turkish state. That has divided society and focused attention on the

contest over the presidency, which controls the military and is the

country's most important post safeguarding secularism.

 

Officials from the governing party, Justice and Development, known by

its Turkish initials, AK, have kept their religious background away

from the process of government over the five years since they were

elected.

 

Still, the guardians of Turkish secularism have grown increasingly

vocal, before the election, in accusing the governing party of

bringing their religion into politics before the election.

 

On Friday, the current president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, gave his final

speech before a military audience in Istanbul, warning that the

country's secular system faced its most serious danger since the

founding of the state. The secular establishment Sezer represents has

several times in Turkey's short history ousted ruling parties it

deemed too religious.

 

That sentiment was splashed on banners and spoken through loudspeakers

at the protest on Saturday.

 

After five years in power, the party had made Turkish society more

accommodating to Islamic piousness, many people said. A gaggle of

high school girls ticked off the reasons they did not want the party

and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to take the presidency.

 

More women are wearing head scarves, said Ecem Karanfil, a 17-year-old

in a T-shirt and jeans. " We want to feel comfortable dressing the way

we want, " she said.

 

Her friend said she sensed something suspicious in the attractive new

design of religion textbooks being given out in their high school. " I

am wondering why, " she said, as a pretzel seller squeezed by, his

wares stacked in a pyramid on his head.

 

A 65-year-old woman who had come from Izmir, a town in western Turkey,

said she was annoyed at what she saw as the new state laxness allowing

state workers to take time off for prayer on Fridays.

 

" I go to the post office on Friday, and I can't see a single person at

their desk, " she said, sounding indignant.

 

A small thing had caught Sahin's attention. A government official had

recently suggested increasing the number of letters in the Turkish

alphabet to 32 to allow the language to better accommodate Arabic

sounds. " I've done pretty well with 29 so far, " she said, smiling.

 

Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting.

 

2007 International Herald Tribune. All rights reserved.