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Turkish
Foreign Minister Says Europe is Racist
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Originally published under the title "'Liberal' Turkey
Claims Europe Is Racist."
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Turkish
Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu (left) blasted European countries for
"racism" and being "anti-Islamic and anti-Turkish,"
partly in response to a tweet by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom
(right) saying that a "Turkish decision to allow sex with children
under 15 must be reversed."
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It's not a bad joke; it's a very bad joke. Turkey, where all variants
of ethnic and religious xenophobia are a national pastime, is accusing
the West of being racist.
Speaking after a spat with Austria and Sweden over news reports and
tweets from those countries that accused Turkey of allowing sex with children under the
age of 15, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu claimed that the behavior of
European countries reflected the "racism, anti-Islamic and
anti-Turkish (trend) in Europe."
He is talking about the same Europe where the inhabitants of one of
its biggest cities, London, recently elected a Muslim as its mayor. In
Turkey, not even the smallest village of a few hundred inhabitants has a non-Muslim
mayor.
In "racist" Austria, the police immediately arrested two suspects in connection with an attempt
to set fire to a Turkish cultural center in the northern Austrian town of
Wels -- and at a time of rising tensions with Turkey. By contrast,
Turkish law enforcement officials arrested five former gendarmerie intelligence
officers just recently -- nine years after the murder of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink. These officers would probably never have been
implicated if the two Islamist allies, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Fethullah Gulen, his
staunchest political ally when Dink was assassinated, had not turned into
each other's worst nemesis in power-sharing fight in 2013.
Yeni Akit is an Islamist newspaper and one of Erdogan's media
darlings, a kind of TurkishPravda in its fanatical support of the
president. Its editors always find a seat in the elite group of
journalists who accompany the president in his private jet traveling to
foreign capitals.
Recently, one of Yeni Akit's most prominent columnists,
Abdurrahman Dilipak wrote:
There is no such religion as
Christianity ... In reality, Jesus Christ was a Muslim coming from Jewish
tradition ... The name of the religion revealed to Christ was Islam ...
Christianity is nothing more than a cultural adherence ... Judaism is
already a tradition that has imprisoned itself to its own race ...
[Jews'] fears are as big as their rage.
Funny, Dilipak is an Islamist and his holy book acknowledges the two
monotheistic religions he denies.
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Yeni
Akit
columnist Abdurrahman Dilipak: "There is no such religion as
Christianity."
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In another column, Dilipak claimed that "there is no such thing as
the Greek nation or the Greek civilization." Then, in following lines
that exhibit typically an Islamist's confused mind, he claims that
"the Greek civilization is a civilization of ... plagiarism."
Yeni Akit did not need to hide its racism even in the aftermath
of a bloodshed the entire world -- except Islamist- denounced. In July,
in Nice, France, shortly after the Islamist terror attack that killed
more than 80 civilians, the newspaper's headline read: "France, the perpetrator of
genocide in Africa, deserves worse."
Yeni Akit is a perfect reflection of Turkey's popular and
official racism. In March, when a jihadist suicide bomber killed three
Israelis and one Iranian on a busy Istanbul street, Irem Aktas, head of
the women's and media division of the AKP branch in Istanbul's Eyup
district, commented on social media that: "Let the Israeli
citizens be worse, I wish they all died." When she wrote that in her
Twitter account, at least 11 Israeli citizens injured by the bomb were
being treated at Turkish hospitals. She was not prosecuted for her
remarks that "wished death" to injured Israelis.
Turkey's religious -- and ethnic -- xenophobia can take amusing turns,
too. In September 2015, Turkish authorities banned showing religious symbols and playing music
related to various religions at yoga centers. They said that having
Buddha sculptures and mantra symbols, as well as playing religious music
and burning incense, could be considered violations which could lead to
the closure of these centers.
About a month before Turkey's war on the "religion of yoga,"
the country's top religious body, the Religious Affairs General
Directorate, issued a warning about the spreading of the new
"religion" of Jediism" -- the religion of the Jedi
warriors in the Star Wars series. "Jediism ... is spreading today in
Christian societies. Around 70,000 people in Australia and 390,000 people
in England currently define themselves as Jedis," the article said,
before engaging in an Islamic-based critique of a number of Hollywood
blockbusters.
Against this embarrassing background, Turkey is accusing Europe of
being racist. That would be like North Korea accusing Europe of being a
rogue state.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based
columnist for the Turkish newspaper Hürriyet Daily News and a fellow at the
Middle East Forum.
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