casual discontent against the western world

My fellow blogger Ayak posted a video about mistreated dogs in a shelter in Turkey, and she got a lot of negative reaction. I think she didn't deserve them all.

It is up to you to decide whether the negative comments are just or not. You can read the first thread here.And then you can jump to this follow-up thread she opened because she had to lock the comments of the first one. But her post and especially the reaction she got reminded me about this topic I have been actually planning to write for a while.

The casual discontent against the western world in Turkey... 

There was definitely an increasing discontent against the western world in Turkey around the begining of this millennium, among the part of the society who are nowadays defined as the White Turks. This term is used to define the political elites who ruled this country and the people who supported them, who see themselves as the owner of the country, but lost power in the last 10 years. They prefer to see themselves as more educated, more open minded, more secular, and more of probably everything else. It is another matter if this statement reflects the truth or not, but personally, I think such a self-definition is far from the reality.

This discontent is largely different than the kind of grudge more conservative part of the society who has the power now has against the western world. The thing is, us White Turks started to feel that we are extremely abused by the western world, with all the unkept promises especially by the EU. And there is a common belief that both Europen countries and USA actively helped the PKK terrorists. We feel betrayed and we are angry. It is abslolutely another matter if the allegations are true or not. I am talking about the feelings here. 

On the other hand, the conservative society has a more rigid grudge against the western world based on some historical reasons such as the collapse of the Ottomans, along with the open credit USA has given to Israel against Palestine.

White Turks have already made peace with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, as the descendants of the people who were already sick of this ill body and looking forward to something entirely new, hopefully better. On the other hand, the conservatives still have fantasies about the mighty Ottomans.

So the discontent of us White Turks has a completely different fabric. But the fabric does not matter. It was pretty much clear that the path to unifying with the western world was obviously speeding to a wall.

For those who wonder what all these have to do anything with my fellow blogger Ayak's post, you can now read the negative comments in this perspective: "You migt be right but who the truck are you to tell me this as if you are perfect yourself."  Now, this is the kind of the discontent I am talking about.

And of course, the let's not forget the fact that she considers herself as a part of this country after being married to a Turkish man and living in Turkey for 13 years, and I thought this was the main principle in Turkey that we have been fighting for all the time: Everyone who considers himself/herself as a Turk is a Turk.

...and the rise of the incumbent AK Party.

Just at that time, Turkish political scene witnessed an unprecedented rise of a political figure: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who is now the prime minister of Turkish Republic. 

Even though there were several video records of him saying all the things against the western world and democracy itself, he changed his political views almost overnight and became very democratic and very pro-western. 

Those people who dared to call him and his companians as pretenderds were rapidly labeled as ultra-nationalist Kemalist White Turks, trying to imply that we were something evil. There was an enormous PR campaing which AKP handled almost prefectly, both domestic and international, and suddenly they were the saviours of democracy in Turkey as opposed to archaic White Turks. 

I am not going to say something very stupid such as the" USA or the western world brought Erdoğan to power." No, this is too much even for the current superpower. But you know what, they really didn't have to. They just stopped backing the so-called White Turks and started to support Erdoğan who seemed to be a more promising ally for them. 


And this whole thing has some consequences, of course.