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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Turkish Payback to Ralph Peters and Signs of Things to Come?

Remember when Ralph Peters made his map of a redrawn Middle East and then Catholicgauze got on board too? When I did that post a Turk commented with what his opinion of the idea. It appears the Turk and his friends have created their response. They are featuring a collection of maps which show a redrawn America. Most of the maps and text are in Turkish but some are in English and reveal much about the cartographers.

One map is especially troubling. I will let it speak for it self:



Now I know there are bad apples in any country and the internet gives them all a voice. The map in and of itself is just the work of one man. It may be; however, a poisonous fruit from Turkey, long an ally of the United States and the West, which is finding itself on a new team in the post-9/11 world.

Turkey has been on a slow but steady slide towards reactionary thought. Riots over the Mohamed Cartoons and the Pope's speech occurred in Turkey. A Catholic priest was murdered during mass by an assassin yelling "Allah Akbar!" Turkish-Armenian writer Hrant Dink was murdered by a youth who stated "I shot the non-Muslim" after Friday prayers.

The map shows anti-American, anti-Israeli, and anti-Jewish feelings which are becoming more common in Turkey. America and Israel have done nothing negative to Turkey but in fact have worked together on many issues. The people of Turkey; however, want to take Turkey in a new, dangerous direction.

For more thought on Turkey's future direction see TDAXP's post Turkey-in-Europe, or Turks out of Europe?

3 comments:

Jay@Soob said...

I have a very hard time labeling Turkey as anything more than generally ambivalent. If an ally is an entity that doesn't overtly attack you than I guess the term qualifies.

Dan tdaxp said...

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Subadei. I will still quite the Turkophile as tdaxp launched, so my change of heart has been painful. But as long as significant parts of Europe wait to join the Union and be fully free of Russia (Urkaine, etc), it's hard to see why it's wise to add a large, Islamic, and only somewhat friendly population to that bloc.

Adrian said...

"America has done nothing negative to Turkey"

How about invading Iraq, which has a good possibility of leading to an independent Kurdistan, which could then lead to irredentist claims on Turkey?