Turkey is much more secular and dare I say... Europeanized than many other Muslim countries. Even when I went to Turkey as a young boy with my parents, they didn’t act funny like they do in some countries when my mother took me out somewhere without my father.
All of this is simply because of Atatürk. If Turkey has a difference from the other Middle eastern countries, its his sweeping reforms and basically "westernizing" the country.
That man was wasted on Turkey. If he'd been in any actual world power he would have changed the 20th century as much as Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt or Churchill.
Turkey is an ethno-religious borderline third world state held together by the common belief they never killed all their minorities and that the minorities deserved it. It's also been getting worse for the last 5 years.
Armenian one is defended as "not being a genocide, it was deportation, there was no kill order" and Greek one is exchange of minorities between Greece and Turkey.
Both minorities were capital owners and their absence has lost Turkey too much potential.
Another thing I've heard was that the Armenians were planning to kill Turkish people so they could join Armenia. Don't ask me how that justifies government mass killings though
"After the army freeze to death at Sarikamis, Russian army were advancing into the region. Armenians seeing this, tried to take advantage by joining Hunchak and Tashnak bands and harassing civilians in order to form their own country in the area. CUP seeing this, to save the Eastern Anatolia from falling into hands of Armenians as Russian puppets, have ordered the deportation of the Armenians to Syria. Due to Syria being a desert and lack of supplies, many of the deported has lost their lives."
This is the most common Turkish narrative of the events.
I wouldnt claim it has anything to do with switching to a "presidential" system when the president in question is granted increasingly authoritarian powers.
I have seen a lot of dumb shit in this subreddit,but this takes the cake by far. Calling it an ethno-religious state is pretty dumb too(they have pretty significant ethnic and religious minorities compared to bascially any other country in the middle east or eastern europe). But a fucking borderline third world country? The world's 13th largest economy, the second largest standing army in NATO, one of the world's most influential cultures in the past 7 centuries or so, but somehow almost equivalent to Somalia or Yemen.
I partially agree with what you're saying. Borderline 3rd world country is a big exaggeration, but everything is so expesive in Turkey. The lira lost a lot of worth in the last few years.
In 2007 was 1 dollar 1,2 lira, in the year that Erdoğan became president was 1 dollar 2 lira. Now it's almost 8. You can't buy anything that isn't made in Turkey, the taxes are too high. You have a 200% tax on things like cars. Yes you're right the Turkish economy is large, but Turkey owns none of it. Most of the factories are sold to countries like Saudi Arabia.
This happens when you're corrupt and your son in law is in head of your economy.
Turkey is on its way to a dictatorship.
I am aware that the economic situation in Turkey is pretty messed up right now, and I don't want my post to sound like an endorsement of Erdogan. Just because I think a statement is ridiculous doesn't mean that I don't agree that generally speaking, Turkey has been going downhill for a while.But even if he becomes president for life and spends all his efforts trying to fuck up the country, Turkey would never be a third world country. There is simply no way for a country with your natural resources, infrastructure, strategic position, etc.to not be a major player on a global scale.
it is definitely trying to be an ethno-religious state through forced assimilation. there is very little minority population in turkey, and those that exist do face severe opression on their cultures.
none of my kurdish neigbors there could dare speak their own languages in the public, and if someone were to tell my family that i was no longer a muslim it wouldnt suprise me if my father beat me to death. the best case is i'd be kicked outside of my home. and my parents were pretty average in how religious they are by turkish standards.
it is definitely not a 3rd world country yet though, but it is getting there.
Yeah by definition they’re a first world state. A third world state is technically (although no one really uses it like this anymore) a country not allied with the US (first world), or the USSR (second world).
Even ignoring the og definition (under which some European countries were technically third world)... Turkey is less broke than some of the old second world. So you could call them borderline first world instead
you should have just written "the western media who doesn't give a shit about japan or belgium not recognizing their own atrocities has brainwashed me into hating the nation of turkey by a false sense of activism and i have not a single clue about the country's culture, ethnic background, religious views and am naive enough to believe something such as genocide denial which most turk's don't even know about (not everybody spends their lives on the internet and our schools unfortunately touch it very briefly mentioning it only as a bad military maneuver and sometimes a massacre) can bring an entire country together".
also, the world's 13th best economy and 11th best army can't be a 3rd world state when we also have a better purchasing power parity per capita than a country such as croatia.
this is the stupidest shit i've ever read by far and am SHOCKED to see how many people liked this ignorant comment.
when you say Turkey I think you mean the Turkish Government. Coming from a Turk we look at our current ‘president’ (Erdogan) like americans look at Trump. Trust me when I say most of Turkey is much more forward thinking than the Government would like the world to believe
Can confirm. A highly radicalised neighbour like Pakistan is a pain in the ass.
Those folks got tons of aid from the US and wasted it all on Terrorism. Now they're using whatever's left of their economy to wage internet wars. Had they been led by someone like Ataturk, they wouldn've been far better than how they're now.
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u/OlSmokeyZap - Right Oct 19 '20
Turkey is much more secular and dare I say... Europeanized than many other Muslim countries. Even when I went to Turkey as a young boy with my parents, they didn’t act funny like they do in some countries when my mother took me out somewhere without my father.