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" It's also laughable to claim that only Turkey has a national identity, ... " I meant among the muslim majority countries that spun off after the fall of the

by gkya 10y ago

" It's also laughable to claim that only Turkey has a national identity, ... " I meant among the muslim majority countries that spun off after the fall of the empire. Iran has continuously been home to some local sovereign state since 3200 bc. Saying things are not clear cut is sort of a way to divide guilt and avoid it. Nations didn't have time to naturally form in middle east. Almost all states have been formed top to bottom, after WWI, whereas in europe some of the current nations' quest to be a nation stretch at least to the 17th century. Turkey has been established top to bottom and via forced, fascistic westernisation and nationalistic unification, via assimilation and bloodshed, and the people's quest for a real, honourable identity is what the ilk of Erdoğan use to get votes today. I'd love to live in the state Atatürk wanted, but what he did ultimately lead to what we have today, a mess. " [Turkey] also was lucky enough to join NATO which while being "western/european expansionism" really helped to stabilize it. " Just as we cannot call a civilisation/nation cruel and savage for one mistake, we cannot say that it's perfect and all innocent because it got one thing right.

dogma1138 10y ago
I'm not saying it's perfect and at all innocent, the "west" (as in modern social democracies) is a far cry from being perfect or innocent, but it's a sure of a lot better than anything else we got right now, or tried before. For the most part it was rare for nations to form naturally, most of them including those in Europe have evolved through quite a bit of mess, and the middle east now is actually "older" than some European countries not that it was pretty either but it was quite different than what the middle east going through. And if we are talking about religious terrorist then it's new even in the scale of the middle east, if you look at early Palestinian/Arab terrorist groups they were socialists/communist, the PLO PLFP AMAL and the likes in the 60-70's had nothing to do with religion. The 1st real religious transformation were the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan they were not only made religious but effectively converted because Islam in Afghanistan at the time wasn't really a religion especially not outside the cities, the literacy rates were extremely low and even now you won't find minarets in the tribal regions. Saudi Wahhabism was introduced into Afghanistan and from that things like AQ grew which started the "global jihad" movements across the middle east, asia and africa. From the Shia side you had the iranian revolution and after the iran-iraq war has ended the IRGC went to work constructing various proxies across the middle east primarily in the form of Hezbollah which now evolved from a fairly small military organization in the early 80's to effectively a nation state within Lebanon.

by gkya 10y ago

dogma1138 10y ago

I'm not saying it's perfect and at all innocent, the "west" (as in modern social democracies) is a far cry from being perfect or innocent, but it's a sure of a lot better than anything else we got right now, or tried before. For the most part it was rare for nations to form naturally, most of them including those in Europe have evolved through quite a bit of mess, and the middle east now is actually "older" than some European countries not that it was pretty either but it was quite different than what the middle east going through. And if we are talking about religious terrorist then it's new even in the scale of the middle east, if you look at early Palestinian/Arab terrorist groups they were socialists/communist, the PLO PLFP AMAL and the likes in the 60-70's had nothing to do with religion. The 1st real religious transformation were the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan they were not only made religious but effectively converted because Islam in Afghanistan at the time wasn't really a religion especially not outside the cities, the literacy rates were extremely low and even now you won't find minarets in the tribal regions. Saudi Wahhabism was introduced into Afghanistan and from that things like AQ grew which started the "global jihad" movements across the middle east, asia and africa. From the Shia side you had the iranian revolution and after the iran-iraq war has ended the IRGC went to work constructing various proxies across the middle east primarily in the form of Hezbollah which now evolved from a fairly small military organization in the early 80's to effectively a nation state within Lebanon.