It’s a capital offense in Turkey for a girl to talk to a boy.
The father and grandfather who committed this horrible murder have brought dishonor upon themselves, their family, their country, and their religion.
The mainstream media have nothing to say.
Comments 39
is the ny daily news mainstream?
February 7th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
fuster,
I’ve never thought of the Daily News as mainstream. But whether it is or not, is that the only reaction you have to the story?
February 7th, 2010 at 1:16 pm
I’m not quite sure of the meaning of your question, George.
If you mean do I have other instances of media reaction and reporting, yes, I do.
If you’re asking if I have a personal reaction to the murder, again,yes, I do.
It’s about the hundredth or two hundredth report of such things that I’ve read. From Pakistan, through the Gulf, to Palestine I’ve read variations of the same thing.
I have no suitable way of expressing my feelings.
Ultimately, I despair.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:24 pm
Fortunately the attempt to bring Turkey into the EU is dead.
February 7th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
@ Sully:
fortunately?
February 7th, 2010 at 7:53 pm
@ fuster:
My opinions re gratuitous importation of trouble have been thoroughly aired elsewhere. There are plenty of trading and immigration partners in the world with populations that do not hold slaughter of all who do not submit to their religious beliefs as a sacred duty handed down by God.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
yeah, I was afraid it was more of that
you’re still pissed that they let the Sicilians into the EU, aren’t you?
February 7th, 2010 at 8:24 pm
Unreconstructed Sicilians are well worth watching; but they haven’t been crashing planes into buildings lately. Nor have they been shooting up army bases yelling Allahu Akbar.
February 7th, 2010 at 8:36 pm
@ Sully:
Sully, my underlying point is that we’re civilized on a continuum. I’m sure that you remember reading things from 70 years ago where the differences between the Protestant Northern Europeans were contrasted with the less advanced Southern European Catholics, both more civilized than the Eastern Europeans with their prediliction for authoritarianism.
You the guy that agrees with the Islamic fundies that there must be no contamination from those others?
February 7th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
@ fuster:
We’ve had this discussion before fuster. The Protestant Northern Europeans did not owe Southern European Catholics or Eastern Europeans the right to immigrate or to trade. And we today do not owe anyone else in the world the right to immigrate or trade.
As to what the Protestant Northern Europeans believed about Southern European Catholics and Eastern Europeans, they may have been wrong or right at the time. It might surprise you that I think they were in part right although “less advanced” is a contentious way to put it. I don’t, for instance, believe Islamic populations to be “less advanced” than ourselves in a general sense, not that it matters.
But whether the Northern Europeans were wrong or right at that time about those other populations offers little instruction on whether it is wise for us to encourage or permit immigration or trade with Islamic populations at this time.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Sully, perhaps we should put aside whether we have the obligation or they the right and stick to considering the wisdom of mingling.
I have to agree that we’ve suffered an enormous amount by allowing barbarians to benefit from our ideas and even to base their religions upon our own, but, sooner or later, it’ll even out.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:19 pm
@ fuster:
To state that categorically is categorically wrong, as any number of peoples who became Allies and Friends of Rome could instruct you, if they were around anymore.
February 7th, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Sully, perhaps you should reread my last comment and think about what I meant by “we” in that second sentence.
http://amadeo.blog.com/repository/119326/1858801.jpg
February 7th, 2010 at 9:41 pm
@ fuster:
Bah! Regardless of the meaning of “we” the simple fact is that mingling does not necessarily leads to gains for both parties and, in history, it has often led to severe losses on the part of one party. It has, in fact, often led to severe losses on the part of both parties.
February 7th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
Bah. good answer.
But let’s talk Turkey.
You know anything about the place that leads you to think that excluding them from the EU is a fine and dandy idea? Or do you merely dislike the predominant religion?
February 7th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
@ fuster:
I don’t like the signs I’ve read about that indicate the secular compact of Attaturk is unravelling, although I guess I’ve always suspected it would unravel. More religious people tend to reproduce more than less religious people. That appears pretty much true for all major religions and it’s probably no accident for evolutionary reasons.
But I don’t mind saying that my main reason is that I don’t trust the adherents of the predominant religion of Turkey at this stage of its development. I don’t in general “dislike” Islam any more or less than I “dislike” any religion.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Always fun, Sully.
But hardly true in the western hemisphere.
February 7th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
You assume there are any really religious people left in the west.
February 8th, 2010 at 5:50 am
@ fuster:
@ JEM:
Jem has a good point, the West has in general dampened religious fervor; but it’s not an exhaustive point.
Go out to Salt Lake City and see the parade of marrying young people at the Mormon Temple sometime. Then walk around and see the four and six kid families in the parks. Or go out to Lancaster and drive around Amish country sometime. I’ve never spent time in the Ultraorthodox Jewish neighborhoods of New York but I suspect I would find the same Lancaster like scenes of six and eight kid families. To a lesser extent virtually any Catholic Church after a Sunday Mass will present three and four kid families. All that is leaving aside the breakaway heretic Mormons like the fellow and his five wives in last month’s National Geographic with their 49 kids.
Finally, just to tweak fuster, Sarah Palin is not the only Baptist with four kids.
February 8th, 2010 at 6:30 am
sure the welfare queens in Utah keep pumping them rugrats out faster than humanly possible, but surely this has nothing to do with any major religion.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:06 am
Epic fail, LG, they tithe and are self sufficient up there
February 8th, 2010 at 8:09 am
@ fuster:
Said Ramses and Nero and Constantine III.
Major religions got to be major religions mostly by pumping out rugrats.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:18 am
But they did add “improvements” over time.
Judaism – All organic growth, no prosletyzing
Christianity – Why not prosletyze?
Islam – Why not submit or die?
Alt:
We got the deal and you don’t.
We got the word and you can have it.
We got the word and you have to take it.
You could look it up, it’s in the books
February 8th, 2010 at 8:24 am
No Sully, they got to be popular religions.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:25 am
The only doctrines that people accept with absolute, blind faith are Marxism and Islam. We no longer execute witches and homosexuals, but Iran hangs gays, and honor murders are still taking place in relatively enlightened countries like Jordan. Turkey, despite its history of secularism enforced by Kemal Ataturk, seems to be going crazy. North Korea is absolute in its commitment to thought control, but in China, children no longer report their parents to the authorities for being rightists or counter-revolutionaries.
There is no political movement whatsoever among Mormons, Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Baptists, etc for making witchcraft a capital offense. Salem will never have another witch trial. Americans may think they have faith, but they don’t, thank God.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:27 am
you don’t think it suspicious that Utah’s Mormons allow witches to live comfortably? There’s something altogether too cozy about that.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:36 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
I agree with you when it comes to pluralistic countries where no religion dominates and in times and places when/where religious beliefs are cool rather than hot; but I’m not sure I fully trust any prosletyzing religion to avoid the tendency toward enforcing its beliefs when it achieves a large majority in any place and time. Neither did the writers of the constitution, of course.
February 8th, 2010 at 8:40 am
Turkey is a particularly interesting — and increasingly sad — case, because of Ataturk’s founding commitment to secularism in government and public life. Modern Turkey didn’t start out as a hotbed of radical Islamism. Indeed, in its earlier incarnation as the seat of the Ottoman Empire, it was decidedly un-radical, and endlessly disappointing to the itinerant wahhabists (mainly Arabs) who were the ancestors of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda. They hated the Ottoman rulers who governed their Arab provinces, considering them (things never change) corrupt, irreligious, and, yes, too accommodating to the West.
Turkey doesn’t have Republicans and Democrats, it has multiple political parties who have to form governing coalitions in its parliament. The phenomenon of the last decade has been the rise of what is still an electoral minority of avowed Islamist voters, whose representatives are a large enough bloc that no one can govern without them. There is still quite a bit of official, and legacy cultural, commitment to secularism in Turkey. The Turks are not a passel of rioting nitwits like “Palestinian youths,” and for most of them, pride in their national heritage is more of a self-identification factor than Islam, or at least as much. You’ll find plenty of Turkish Muslims who are as proud of Asia Minor’s role in the spread of early Christianity as they are of the Islamic Ottoman victory over the post-Roman Byzantines in 1453. (The Kurds, of course, have a different perspective, and their problems with the central government continue.)
We’ll probably never know if it would have helped Turkey keep her commitment to secularism if the EU had admitted her 15 years ago. What is obvious is that the commitment to secularism made by Kemal Ataturk, a leader whom Turks still revere as we do George Washington, has so far pulled its punches in standing up to the challenge from Islamism at the ballot box. Honor killings are not a phenomenon of the cultural majority in Turkey, but the civil government’s posture for standing against them is weak, and will only grow weaker if the direction it’s going is an indication.
February 8th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Turkey arguably wasn’t ready to join Europe – or Europe wasn’t ready to take the Turkish project on – but however you choose to look at it, it’s not surprising that the culture would react by pushing off in its own direction, including by putting all of its Westernizing assumptions, and Western connections that don’t have anything directly to do with Europe, to the test.
Turkey may continue to explore the practical limits of applied Islamism, but eventually the country will have to choose a path – either cosmopolitan modernity or backwardness and, sooner or later, war and instability. It may travel far in its current direction before it swings back, assuming it ever does. Perhaps the Turks can be forgiven if they look at Western Civilization ca. 2010 and wonder whether they want to join that club. They may have to prove to themselves, in concrete experience, that there’s not some better way of realizing their aspirations.
February 8th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
They sure did want to join that club. I’m not sure that having them as a member wouldn’t have suited us.
February 8th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
@ fuster:
Maybe. At the moment of rejection, the club/company/love object/etc. may seem most desirable… but a bit later its attractions will tend to fade.
“What did I ever see in her?”
February 8th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
you? you can’t even see the handwriting on the hand, you heartthrobbing Tsar, you.
http://www.grizzlybay.org/LearnMore/sarah%20palin%20images/Palin%20gams%5B1%5D.jpg
I sorta think that having Turkey as an ally is a pretty good idea. She may not be wart-free, but I’m the jealous type and don’t want her snuggling up to anyone might want to cover all but her eyes.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:01 pm
@ fuster:
Thanks. You’ve neatly stated my case.
Generally you would want to be fairly sure that having a new member of our club WOULD suit us.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
@ Sully:
As someone once told me ” Keep yourself to yourself and you end up by yourself. ”
Course she was
stoned to the tips of her toesbeing a bit dramatic at the time, but there was a fair thought there.Turkey brings a lot to the party and we don’t want to push her onto someone else’s arms.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
@ fuster:
Which might not be a bad thing if the alternative is dinner with Hannibal Lecter.
Turkey needs us and Europe more than we and Europe need Turkey.
February 8th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
@ fuster:
She don’t even like you.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
@ Sully:
Turkey’s checking out her alternatives. Giving them a good long look. You would, too.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:08 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
I have no problem with Turkey checking out her alternatives. And, actually, I wish Turkey well. Her evolution into a modern and truly pluralistic and tolerant state would be a very good thing.
I’m just a bit skeptical about the probabilities.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:24 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
but she loves me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdDnqSFYXFs&feature=related
February 8th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
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