Yoshie: > Sabri says they aren't elitist, at least not as much as the NYT > claims they are, and I'm sure he's right, but they sure don't seem > as concerned about workers as they appear to be about secularism.
I did not say that they are not elitists or otherwise. All I said was that those people who took to the streets were not a homogeneous group of people. They were mostly urban middle class people well "trained" in the tradition of Kemalizm but there were those from the rural Turkey as well, in addition to the ultranationalists and the urban elite. Majority of Turkey, to the north of 70 percent of the population, neither has anything to do with Islamism nor do they support the AKP or other hard core Islamist parties. What is described in the English media is a distortion of the reality. Among those 70 percent there are those who are devout Muslims who practice their prayers five times a day regularly but they are not Islamists. Being a devout Muslim is one thing, being an Islamist is another. Devout Muslims who are not Islamists focus on the other world whereas Islamists focus on this world and try to organize it to their liking, whatever their liking is. And those who took to the streets are not concerned about workers to our liking because most of them are obedient citizens of the Republic of Turkey, just as an average American is an obedient citizen of the US, who do not question what their leaders are up to. Most of them were your average Turkish, whatever Turkish means in this context. Best, Sabri ____________________________________________________________________________________ It's here! Your new message! Get new email alerts with the free Yahoo! Toolbar. http://tools.search.yahoo.com/toolbar/features/mail/
