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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