Ottoman Dreams: Why Are Americans Surprised by Turkey’s Islamic Turn?
Why are we so surprised?
Because we failed to recognize Turkey for what it always was: a treasonous ally, a resolute enemy, and a despotic state to the core.
When many in the West waxed poetic about either the Kemalist autocrats or the Islamist “democrats” in turn is that they failed to realize that Kemal’s status quo relied on everything remaining just so, and that any shift would bring one side to power at the expense of the other. The world is just realizing now how utterly and completely Kemal effed up the situation in Turkey, and now we are reaping the seeds of that.
I restate what I have always felt: Turkey never has been and never will be an ally save in the most cynical and superficial sense against a force that endangers them even more than us under either the Kemalists of the Islamists. The sooner we realize that the sooner we can start taking appropriate measures.
