A Muslim siege is re-born in Turkey. Since the founding of modern Turkey in 1923 by secular military officer Kemal Ataturk, there has been an ongoing battle between the military services and the forces of political Islam over how the nation shall be governed – by Sharia (Muslim law) or by secular democratic methods. The recent arrests of fifty senior Turkish military officers, charging twenty of them with a 2003 plot to overthrow the government, demonstrate that Islam and Sharia are alive and well in that nation. The implications for the freedom of Europe and The West are significant, as they were at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 (pictured above).
Five admirals, three generals, the former commanders of Turkey’s navy and air force, and the former deputy chief of staff of the military are accused. By arresting the heart and soul of its military officer corps the Turkish government, , under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan , may have made an overt move away from secular rule toward making Turkey into another Sharia-ruled Muslim state that is now demanding admission through the gates of the European Union. A Los Angeles Times Editorial presents the thumbnail sketch, albeit with scant and naive understanding of the sinister nature of Islam and jihad.
The L.A. Times Editorial is here:
“The Turkish military has long served as the guardian of secular rule in Ankara, even when it meant staging a coup to do so. Turkey’s elected Islamist-based government, meanwhile, has sought to subordinate the military to civilian rule as befits a democratic country, although perhaps not always by the purest means.
Now, that simmering conflict has become a crisis, with police detaining about 50 senior military figures, 20 of whom have been charged in an alleged 2003 plot to overthrow the government. They include the former commanders of the navy and air force and the former deputy chief of staff of the military, leading to a heated national debate about what’s behind the arrests: Is there credible evidence against the highly respected commanders, or is the ruling Justice and Development Party concocting a scandal to eliminate its opponents? Is this a showdown between secular and religious ideology? Between military and civilian forces? Or is it a case of elites competing for the spoils of power?..”
This looks like a lose-lose situation for democratic Turkey and for any hopes the Western World may have held out for Islam’s compatibility with Western-style democracy. If the attempted coup allegations are proven true with bona fide evidence they will provide ammunition for the voices of Turkish Islam that call for purification of the government by installing Sharia.
If the allegations are mendacious, and a crushing of the Turkish military’s backbone by fallaciously convicting the officers in Muslim-dominated civilian Courts occurs, the voices of political Islam will – call out for Sharia.
In the meantime, Bat Ye’or’s “Eurabia – Land of Dhimmitude – Land of Islam” becomes a prophetic and depressingly accurate work, as the Islamization of the European Continent rolls on. And in strange echoes from 1683, Turkey is again at the Gates of Vienna.
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