Friday, October 04, 2013

blog 4: Turkey's new democratic reforms

Turkey has recently been in a hotbed of political unrest due to its severe limitation of rights for citizens.  The article criticizes the Turkish government for not granting everything that he had wanted to see permitted.  The author, to be fair, is a Turkish citizen who wished to see much more free speech possibilities as well as much more religious acceptance.  The author begins by informing us of a massacre that occurred last summer due to young people protesting in Istanbul for rights they believed should be awarded to them.  The Turkish government has also been suppressing the Alevi minority group by not recognizing their place of worship in official governmental papers.  The government has also been suppressing a sizable minority in the Kurdish people.  The government has gone so far as to ban the letters w, q, and x from all buildings to remove all Kurdish influence, but has recently removed the ban. 

The problem in Turkey is in no way a nontraditional one.  The Middle East seems to be plagued with governments who do not wish to move forward with extending religious and speech rights to their citizens.  I believe this is very clearly an equal rights issue that is not race based but rather faith based.  The Turkish government has had a reputation with attempting to make all people remove their particular cultural affiliations in order to join the larger Turkish citizen body as a whole.  The author also presents the common issue of people demanding fellow citizens to either remain a loyalist to their government or join the rebel side in order to form new and larger protests.  The problem in Turkey can certainly be alleviated but cannot without leaders from both the government and also the rebel factions to lay down their arms and join minds in order to find a middle ground to enhance civil rights and stop future bloodshed. 
Ryan Clark 
10/4/2013
11:16

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