Research during MA -- from US foreign policy perspective. My thesis adviser could speak 7 languages, including Arabic, Persian, Kurdish and Turkish. I also studied major revolutionaries of the early 20th century who includes your founder.
I have professional connections with several Middle Eastern countries, including Turkey.
Religion per se might not be conducive to violence any more than belief in nothing, I guess. But I agree that Islam has been politicized as soon as it started to bring about power. That's in a sense unavoidable for a teaching that, according to its hardliner advocates, should control and regulate every aspect of your life, from public to the most private. Once religion becomes embedded with political power, or rather, a source of political power and legitimacy (Middle Age papal-ism or the Khalifa doctrine), then, it is bound to become expansionist, brutal and inflexible.
Turkey's Islamists have discovered something that Levant Islamists such as those in Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood) had discovered long ago: When you suffer from legitimation crisis or seek avoidance from corruption, just employ a rhetoric laden with religious references. Along with this comes hatred toward anything that is alien (irreligious): women (By nature, man and woman is not equal), LGTB, Armenians (Did not the Turkish president say: "They even called me, pardon my language, an Armenian"?), Jews, Alawits, Kurds, and even other secular Turks and now maybe Asian looking foreigners. Then religion becomes a political tool and a tool of oppression and regulating peoples' lifes.
I would ascribe this to a lack of secular experience in the traditional Middle East. Turkey went through a reformation but, apparently, that was not deeply ingrained and hence, the clock started to tick backwards again during the past decade. Compared to other Islamic countries in the region, Turkey fares well thanks to the ingrained secularism, but, the trend is towards a serious erosion of these gains as the people seem to be over-radicalized. There seems to be a whole system backing up the new Islamic bourgeoisie from fashion to media and universities. Of course, foreign policy is always an extension of domestic policy. When domestic policy becomes fractionist, it will reflect on foreign policy as sectarianism.
I read about the Communist bogeyman -- not in Turkey, probably across the Arabic world -- since I consider myself a student of Marxist thought. Islamists in Turkey kept whining about being persecuted by the Kemalist republic while the reality was that it was the Leftists and Marxists that were almost completely eradicated. The Left that is 'left" is a poor copy of Collectivist politics. There is this over Islamic "sensitivity." And with the present government (Justice and Development), Islam has been politicized and commercialized to historic levels. Even those that used to have more moderate life style apparently adopted the discourse because it promised wealth and status. This is exactly how fascism took hold in Germany. And Hitler always had the upper hand and popular supper in elections. I agree that Islamic parties might tell one thing to their people and do another in real life: Like even growing trade between Israel and Turkey after the maritime shooting. Islamism is not necessarily about becoming a better Muslim, or a better person. Islamism is about holding onto power at all cost and manipulating the masses. That's a dangerous ideology.
That's unfortunate for the country. At least a sizable portion of the country that define themselves as secular. Their country, their rule, their life. I am not to judge about this. What would concern me the implications on foreign policy, such as Syria or XinJiang. That's where my real interest is in. In this respect, personally, Turkey has little to no relevance in China's most strategic-geopolitical calculations. The two countries are not simply in the same league. I guess those who run for the top in the Premier League would have little time to worry about the goings-on in the amateur league. That's just hard (statistical) reality.
You are completely right.
There is one point that I want to add. In Iran, after 1953 coup, Shah started to oppress leftists(Tudeh Party) and liberals(National front of Iran) but religious leaders were unofficially free to expand their influence because they cooperated in 1953 coup with Shah and also shah was seeing them as a good barrier against expansion of communists and communism in Iran. So, new young generation of Iranians after 1953, found nothing but religious authorities and their groups, to form groups and raise their voice against the kingdom from time to time. West was also OK with it, because it could create an islamic green belt in Southern borders of USSR. About Turkey, as you said, it was the Leftists and Marxists that were completely eradicated, so the void was needed to be filled, and it was filled by islamists. Again, the same story as Iran, almost happened for Turkey, as well.
About religions, and how political religion may lead to fascism, I agree with you. There is one point here, though. All religions are not similar to each other, specially islam has some fundamental differences with Christianity, in which many western analysts fail to understand. Unlike Christianity, Islam was created as a political party, and religion is inherently mixed with politics in Islam. 1/10 of Quran is just about promoting Jihad, 1/3 is nasikh mansukh, and the rest is either arabized stories of Judeo-Christians books, or stories of muslim's war.
To be honest, i dont think Erdogans time is over at all.
His time is not over, just the situation has become complicated for him, because of Kurds gaining seats in the parliament.
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You are in a self-contradiction mode right now.
There is no official and proven research about genetics, so you cannot post them. that is why when you claimed and used Turkification, you could not post any fact, or research data.
Also when you used Turkification, You alse should have posted Ottoman population and culture policies in order to back up your claim; however, you yet again failed to do so. You either do not know, or know the demise of your ''argument''.
This is not the right place for such discussions, however, I see the last argumen/hope for people in desperate conditions in failing positions in a debate always sticks to this ''argument'' of yours.
What do you mean by "There is no official and proven research about genetics"?
There are literally tons of research already done about Turkey, Iran, Arab world, ... and they have exactly shown were your people are mostly coming from. You can search for Y-chromosome DNA haplogroups, mitochondrial dna haplogroups, their maps, ... and educate yourself about it.
For most people of Northern Middle east(Jews, Levant Arabs, Anatolia, Western and Northern Iranians, many of Caucasians), they have roots in neolithic revolution in the middle east, and the mass emigrations from fertile crescent to the rest parts of the northern Middle East, and theories such as emigrations from central asia are proved to be wrong or have negligible effects.
Just one of these nice maps: