Mike Ballard, normally a pacific man not known for any sympathy for militarism, seems positively elated by a big pro-military rally in Turkey, _just because_ it is billed as a rally in defense of secularism against an Islamist party (even though, in this case, it's a party that is more cosmopolitan and more oriented to Europe than hard-line secular nationalists) and favorably covered in the corporate Western media. Western leftists can be as simple and provincial as that, and I doubt that Mike is an exception. I'd expect many of them to support the Democratic Left Party (social democrats, <http://www.dsp.org.tr/MEP/>) which joined the rally (if they look into the matter enough to find out that it was also part of it). -- Yoshie ***********************
Yoshie's right. I don't support military dictatorship, anywhere. I doubt that many, if any socialists in Turkey support a military dictatorship, although there may be some leftists who prefer it to having political Islam in control of the State apparatus. Neither do I support a theocratic State in Turkey nor in any other place in the world, even if it comes about through bourgeois democratic elections. I do support the strict separation of religion and the State though. "Gott mit uns? Nein danke." ;p
Regards, Mike B)
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