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Down in the valley...
The Valley Of The Wolves
2/4

Is this 2006 anti-American movie a payback
for the 1978 anti-Turkish film 'Midnight Express'?
Many of one stripe believe so, many of another stripe hope so.
And they aren't all from the same-old-tired list of 'usual suspects'...

Thanks to Valley of the Wolves
Promo website at:
www.valleyofthewolvesiraq.com

Freedom of Speech gets a fiendish French Twist

TIME Magazine caves to 'True Believers' 3/3

The God-Awful State of
Turkish-American Relations
Continued...

Glenn Williams first contacted us on April 7th, 1997 -- with a suggestion to improve Turkish character-display on LPT for Netscape users. It was an idea whose time had come and we began quite soon thereafter to do his bidding. That first useful exchange planted a seed in our mutual minds, I guess, because the seed sprouted, to became a vine. And, the mature vine has continued to bear fruit for 10 seasons now -- as you'll see in the continuation of our discussions from last week...
Glenn W: Well, now that Republicans have become the party of waste, we won't have to fret about Democrats getting in! (We might not notice, except for the recent Supreme Court fad for removing the Constitution from daily life).
It is horrible how Bush has wasted every ounce of the sympathy he started with.
And finally, on the Armenian Lobby. I'm afraid it's worse than you think. The "Armenian Genocide", as defined by the Lobby, has become undisputed here. People only debate whether or not the US has any reason of State to pass such a resolution. Not a word about its correctness. They simply attack people like Justin McCarthy as "holocaust deniers" and "paid agents of the Turkish government". Your comment on the Indian Genocide and slave Reparations is very apropos....
j & p: Re: Those undisputed genocide claims... In that case, we're heading for a more precipitous decline in US/Turkish relations. And, although US 'approbation' of wild-eyed Armenian True-Believer claims (without regard to whether they are right or wrong) would certainly be bad enough in Turkish eyes, that's not the only problem brewing.
Yesterday's headlines in my favorite Turkish Newspaper (old 'Gözcü' reborn recently as 'Sözcü') concerns 'confessions' (of captured PKK terrorists) that the US has provided weapons to the PKK (in the area around their Kandil Mountain hide-outs in Iraq)...and that those weapons have subsequently been used to kill soldiers of the Turkish Army (which is still the most trusted and admired institution in this country).
Couple that with recent American finger-wagging at Turkish desires to cross the border into Northern Iraq to smash the PKK, and it looks like America supports an 'official' independent Kurdish entity (if not a nation) on the powder-keg southeastern Turkish border.
The lead article on the subject in 'Sözcü' contends that, if America intends to both provide weapons to the PKK that kill Turks and, also, to support an official independent Kurdish 'entity' then she'd better be prepared to deal with a 3 front war in the region...against two enemies and a 'former' ally. That is to say, against an enemy in Afghanistan, against another in Iraq -- and against its former Turkish ally... in the region of the US backed Kurdish 'entity'.
And that could easily escalate, Glenn -- to include Iran. We'd have Sunni's and Shiite's battling each other part of the time, and at other times, they'd be joining hands to battle 'the infidel'. Palestinian camps would erupt, making former 'intifada-lar' look like a picnic in the park. Not a very pretty picture... straight out of 'Clash of Civilizations', eh?
(I'm thinking about making this exchange of ours the subject of a 4 part 'Habibullah Speaks' blog. The main thing that's causing me to hesitate is my feeling that no one would read it...that everyone's mind is already made up on these issues [on both sides of the fence]...that I'd just be pissing in the wind...)
Glenn W: You may be right about people having made up their minds (on both sides).
Here in the U.S., sympathies are definitely with the Armenian lobby, since the use of the word "holocaust" conjures up such powerful images. And as you mentioned, selective memory comes into play as well.
With the PKK there is less sympathy, but they are essentially lumped together with the generic name "Kurds", and hence benefit from the general idea that they are oppressed by Turks and Iranians, etc. People are in fact inclining toward a Kurdish state in northern Iraq simply because they perceive it as the only "stable" part of Iraq. Turkey's concerns are hardly on the agenda.

As for Armenia, many people I have talked to say, "Why don't the Turks just say it happened but is was the Ottomans who did it. We're sorry, but it happened before the Turkish Republic even existed.".
There is a good deal of (often useful) political scepticism here. They feel that something MUST have occurred or the Turkish government wouldn't be denying it so vigorously. However, I suspect that it will be essentially out of pure laziness Americans will most likely believe what they are told without further inquiry. What do events "so long ago" matter to them? Sometimes I like the ahistorical aspect of American thinking, since one isn't weighed down by the past. But sometimes it just bugs the hell out of me that they are never willing to look deeply into anything.
I do think the issue is also obscured by the draconian laws about insulting the Republic and/or Turkishness. This makes Turkey into the "bad guy" and reinforces the "Midnight Express" image. Using the power of the state to enforce opinions doesn't convince many people... (Sorry if I ran on a bit. Just finished McCarthy's book, "Death and Exile: the Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821-1922".)

Next: j & p on '...it was the Ottomans who did it'
Back: The God-Awful State of Turkish-American Relations 1/4

Down in the valley...The Valley Of The Wolves2/4

Down in the valley...
The Valley Of The Wolves
2/4