Comments to Steve Sailer about Turkey:
* Every less intelligent race is prone to conspiracy theory thinking, which is just another word for magical thinking. Blacks love it and it’s very entertaining listening to a black man hold forth about the Illuminati.
The idea that most occurrences can’t be ascribed to a single cause or any cause besides a chance combination usually unrelated variables takes a LOT of brainpower, hell even most whites never get there.
This is something that in an ideal world would be taught to every diplomat dealing with Africans or Arabs.
* Kemalist secularism was most successful among the urban elite in Istanbul but barely permeated the more conservative Anatolia. It probably reflected the secularist ambitions of the more cosmopolitan elite of the late Ottoman empire. AKP’s base is completely removed from this – in the conservative rural Anatolian bourgeoisie that became more powerful as Turkey became more prosperous. That, and the fact that the military’s purges of the leftists movements of the 70s meant that there was a vacuum among the working class and the urban working class and urban Islamists got on board and voted for the AKP. Liberals (like Aykol) were also excited at the prospect of the AKP being this genuinely bourgeoisie movement that was independent of military patronage and didn’t owe anything to the army so they supported it in the hopes that it would take on the authoritarian state. Which it did – but then it just became the authoritarian state, except without the Kemalist doctrine.
Turks have always been a bunch of scarily rabid nationalists. I don’t think they can help it, it’s just their nature.
* My first time to Turkey was last August – since then I visited multiple times (and even stayed in Ist) as we were planning to get married in Istanbul. In that period (August-April) Turkey went from bad to worse – in the end we switched the wedding venue to a far more sensible location. To broadly generalise the Turks are arrogant, attractive and aggressive; ironically it’s the same reputation they have in Iran (Persian believe that among the local Iranian Turks).
It was such a contrast going back to Iran last month after 25years, Persians are an order of magnitude more polite and forthcoming than the Turks. Well it does make sense since the last millennia of the core Muslim world has only had Turks, Kurds (Safavids/Saladin) & Berber dynasties; the Perso-Arabs sort of faded into the cultural sphere.
To get back on point Turkey is painfully returning back to the Ottoman model and to its Anatolian roots. I have to say it’s so disconcerting hearing the Turkish language (which was shorn of its Perso-Arabic veneer by Ataturk) still retain the core Islamic vocabulary (even though they are radically different languages, knowing Persian or Arabic lets you figure out alot of basic Turkish words – Mehraba, Tashkoglu) but written in the Latin Alphabet.
Finally I have to say that Iran really exceeded my expectation whereas Turkey in the last year will trampled on my expectations (and the sad thing is that Istanbul/Anatolia is a land like no other). In the sense that also mirrors the geopolitical ascendancy of Iran over Turkey in the past decade.
* “No stronger retrograde force (Islam) exists in the world. “. W Churchill-1899
* An important factor that is left unstated is the demographic issues in Turkey. Over the last few decades the more secularised and Westernised (Both culturally and genetically) Western Anatolians have been increasingly displaced by rural migrants from Eastern Anatolia. (Both Turkish and Kurdish)
The AKP is not so much the Islamist party as they are the rural peasantry party. Their logo is even a light bulb in reference to rural electrification that was so important in their early days. They are the Islamist party because that is what the rural East Anatolian peasantry want, not the other way around.
It’s very similar how when the Irish gained a big enough demographic presence in some US cities that they began to hold St. Patrick’s Day parades. It’s a common pattern in history, it’s just that Turkey is the only place in the modern world where it is so incredibly stark. When a population whose traditions are looked down upon gain education and confidence they no longer feel shame and instead feel emboldened in them. Hell ‘Catholic’ Ireland with a big C was only really a construct of the decades after independence when it was seen as part of Irish identity and embraced to distance Ireland from Britain. Eventually it was jettisoned as Ireland converged culturally with the rest of Western Europe.
It’s like that line from ‘A Young Doctor’s Notebook’ about the urbane doctor encountering distant rural peasants for the first time and commenting about how he was speaking across centuries.
The other factor is the demographic timebomb of the Kurdish population which is increasing faster than the Turkish population and threatens to become the majority at some point around mid-century. This is obviously an ethnic tension most pertinent in the East Anatolian heartlands of the AKP. Though what quite the avowed Turkish nationalist Erdogan hopes to achieve by attempting to forestall Kurdish independence is unclear. Does he hope a campaign of ethnic cleansing might be engaged in the future? If it were me I’d let the Kurds create a state (That is never likely to be a military threat to Turkey) so you can displace them somewhere if you feel an ethnic civil war is on the cards, but given his views on the Armenian ‘Accident’, maybe he does think mass killings are preferable to expulsion.
Will it hold? I don’t know, but Turkey won’t likely ever be a good fit with the rest of Europe.
* And not just Turkish. For those from other cultures who have experienced it, conspiracy theories are a staple of news and political analysis in the rest of the Muslim world, too. I have heard otherwise hardheaded Pakistani intellectuals collapse into the most rank paranoid explanations when explaining straightforward news items regarding US or Indian foreign policy. Any demurral on my part was met with the kind-eyed pity reserved for chronic saps and born simpletons.
This has been noted by others. Regardless of where you stand on his politics, it is worth reading Roger Cohen at the New York Times on the topic. Indeed, the phenomenon appears well known enough that there is a Wikipedia entry on Arab conspiracy mindedness (and yes, I know the Turks are not Arabs.)
In fairness, of course, one should note Richard Hofstadter’s classic essay on a parallel streak in American political discourse.
* Turks are the most hospitable and friendly people around so long as they are selling something… and you are buying. They are often compared to Orthodox Jews in this way, though I wouldn’t let them hear you say it out loud.
Iran, however, is known among the hardcore travelistas to *actually* be the friendliest place on earth. They seem a very dignified people. Certainly the Persians I have met in the West have been top notch. I give much credit to the otherwise sleezy Obama administration for dealing reasonably with Iran instead of letting certain histrionic forces prevail. In the debate of the lesser of two evils, Sunni or Shia, I think it is becoming obvious that Shia is the lesser of the evils. Maybe it is because they are so outnumbered and they are trying to ingratiate other allies, but I favor letting the Shia hold the whip over the rest of the Middle East. Knock the Saudis off their economic perch, get firm with Israel to prevent them starting any new wars, and let the Iranians be the new hall monitor.
* What happened in Turkey was that the countryside won. Like a lot of countries (US), Turkey has a sophisticated modern urban population, which tends to be secular/non-religious and a large backcountry where the people are much more conservative and religious. The city dwellers forgot to have kids and the country dwellers had lots, so the country changed from being run by secular Westernizers to being run by religious conservatives.
Why hasn’t this happened in the US?
* The Turkish economy puzzles me. There is little on the internet, yet it has a per capita income of $10,000 and, apparently, much more industrial output than any other Muslim Middle-Eastern country. (Not sure it that includes Iran.) How much is this due to foreign direct investment? Automobiles, for example — is it like Mexico in that respect, building Japanese, European, and American brands? Also, how integrated is it into NATO? Would it be allowed to stay in NATO and the OECD if it strays too far from democracy?
* Is it possible to imagine a future where diversity quotas have to take into account each group’s performance on tests (etc)? So eg on crime shows, you’d explicitly agree that some racial groups are less (or more) qualified to be forensic specialists, and the diversity quota would set a more realistic target number? And ethnic group leaders would have to look for ways to raise those test scores?
* Turkey is divided into three general zones, which are easily discerned on an election results map. The zone closest to Europe, along the coast, formerly Greek, vote against Erdogan but has the lowest birth rate in the country, below replacement. They are the past. Then there is central Anatolia, pro-Erdogan, with a falling birth rate but still a rate above the coastal zone region, and the most Islamic area of the country. They are the present. Then there is Eastern Anatolia, Kurdish, with, by far, the highest birth rate in the country. They are the future.
Right now you see the Islamic present, the resentful peasants of Anatolia grown in numbers and in wealth. But they are going to lose the country.
At current fertility rates, Turkish-speaking women will give birth to an average of less than two children during their reproductive years. The corresponding figure is four children for Kurdish women. It is only a matter of time.
* Erdogan is playing with fire here. Turkey has very high levels of external debt. It is highly reliant on portfolio flows (sales of stocks and bonds to overseas investors) as well as short term borrowing by banks. If investors get scared off and companies can no longer roll over their debts, the economy is going to crash.
* A lot of intelligent observers did, however, mindful that Erdogan’s AKP grew out of the ashes of a banned Islamic revival movement. Even back in the late 2000s plenty of us knew where everything was headed: the EU was demanding an end to the militarist authoritarian Deep State as a qualification to entry, and ironically Erdogan, the Islamist, was happy to oblige them, since gutting the only reliable guardians of Kemalism: Turkey had coups d’état about every 20 years or so following the abolition of the Caliphate whereupon the military overturned governments perceived as “too Islamic.” Now, nothing is stopping him from pursuing an Islamist agenda except the electorate, which as commenters here have noted and as history proves is adequately Muslim and disagreeable to be tempted to vote Sunni revivalists into power if and when they see fit. (Iran, at present, now has the mirror problem: an increasingly frustrated, conscious and repressed populace kept in check by a brutally clericalist military-police complex. This is why Iranians are so much more pleasant to be around. By the way, the fundamentalist Shia state is something of an oddity, as most of the major heretical mysticist/liberalizable Islamic movements have grown out of Shia Islam, while Salafism, Wahhabism and their predecessors are uniquely Sunni.)
* Islam is a regressive religion. The Turks managed, for a while, to tone down its more fanatical aspects and build a modern society. But unless you utterly undermine the religious beliefs that underpin Islam, modernity cannot be sustained. This lies at the heart of it. Ataturk was probably an atheist although, for obvious reasons, he could never have expressed himself that way.
Due to my past relationship, I got to know a lot of Turks. What I found interesting is that when the Turks arrive in the West, their “response” is quite different from that of many non-muslim Asians (as a contrast). Whereas there are (in America especially) countless examples of scientific and mathematical figures that are ethnic Asians who exploited the freedom of thought and the outstanding institutions of America (just look at MIT), I never saw this among the Turks. Among the Turkish men, freed from the pressures of family, they dived into drinking, screwing women and making money (in that order). They seemed to lack any kind of intellectual “curiosity”. Do the absolutist beliefs of Islam destroy “curiosity” among its adherents? Good question. It would seem to be that way.
* Two reasons come to mind:
(1) Especially in the past fifty years, we have foolishly imported tens of millions of Third World immigrants, mainly Mexicans, both illegally and “legally.” Most of them have lower levels of education, fewer marketable skills, and cultural mores and expectations that are incompatible with our traditional Western Anglo/European ones.
Between them and their many children and now grandchildren, they out-vote actual core-stock Euro-Americans in an increasing number of jurisdictions, even with relatively more normal, productive, common-sense, patriotic, religious, and nationalist white Americans having lots of children in the outer-suburban / exurban and rural areas.
As far as I know, Turkey hasn’t attracted a comparably massive number of hostile or incompatible immigrants.
(2) Perhaps the pressure of the mass media and government-school indoctrination is stronger here than Turkey, in a direction that discourages and stigmatizes pride, identity, and traditional family values and goals among white children. That tends to lead to white people delaying or never making the commitment to monogamous marriage, having fewer children, being sexually confused, and being afraid to stand up for their own people and interests while every other race here in the formerly UNITED States does so unapologetically.
* These clubs were always somewhat secretive – now they will probably become even more secretive and just not tell anyone who their members are. It’s as if they are begging for white men to practice going underground. Czarist oppression was like a finishing school for Bolshevik revolutionaries.
I’m sure the legal geniuses at Harvard have cleared this (or think that they have) and Harvard is a private university that doesn’t have the same free speech limitations as publicly owned institutions, but it still doesn’t smell right to me from a legal POV. They might win in the end but I could really see them getting dragged thru court on this in a way that would not make them look good.
This is just the leftists of America taking a victory lap, celebrating with the football in the end zone, rubbing the face of white men in the dirt, etc. but have they REALLY won the game or are they declaring victory too soon?
