House of Saud pulls a Taleban

Hakki Alacakaptan nucleus at superonline.com
Tue Jan 15 00:20:19 PST 2002


|| -----Original Message-----

|| From: Robert Dean

||

|| Saudi Arabia defends razing of fort

||

|| By Suzan Fraser

||

|| Jan. 14, 2002 | ANKARA, Turkey (AP) --

||

|| Saudi Arabia acted in the interests of Muslim pilgrims

|| by razing an Ottoman-era fortress close to shrines in

|| Mecca, the Saudi ambassador said Monday, defending an

|| action that outraged many Turks.

||

|| The Turkish government called it a "cultural

|| massacre," and Turkish ultra-nationalists burned

|| posters of the Saudi king in front of the Saudi

|| embassy in Ankara on Saturday.

||

(...)

Iraq has also wrecked Ottoman-era buildings and monuments in the past. Arabs, like Serbs, Greeks, and Armenians, find it hard to forgive Turkey's Ottoman past - real or imagined. But that fort really hurt because Turks have a soft spot for forts. You see many nouveau riches from the provinces living in crenellated houses and mansions, often with a tower or two, often with a statue of a howling wolf in the garden in lieu of a dwarf.

Hakki



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