Until end of the cold war, nationalism in Turkey was hand in hand with the west (actually more than that: their legs were touching under the table; they were heart to heart ) .
What happened so that saliva from nationalists becomes this acidic when the word ´west´ being mentioned?
Lets look at the recent events a bit closely................................
The ruling power managed quite well in 1960 and 1970s, with the left and in 1980s and 1990s with the Kurds. Although it took two coup d´etats to deal with the left and then a continues military regime to deal with the Kurds they were kind of successful and they always had the western support (specially about the struggle with the left..West has always been sympathetic to Kurds but being a Nato ally, being an only reliable power in the middle east etc prevented the west from condemming anything harshly)..............................
..That is why these anti western rethorics became a de facto chewing gum for some of the people in Turkey.......................................
The ruling class started to look ways to close AKP by accusing them with their ´secret agenda´-sheria-, .....
I have a Turkish friend who talks about AKP and "secret agenda, etc" just like this.
I really appreciate this piece Handsom. Couple of points. Americans who were involved in cold well still appreciate Turkeys part with us (USA). Americans don´t know much about Kurdish people. When Saddam Hussein was killing them they got press during the First Bush Presidency as heros because they fought against Saddam, but now Saddam is gone and I would say no cares anymore (about Kurds). Kurdish people in US have no well financed lobby like the Armenians, who have many prominent Senators and congressmen "in their pocket" because they donate huge amounts of money.
The Irak war has gone so badly that we doubt what we believed before. And PKK is understood to be a terrorist group, if people know about it.
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