Whither Wanders Turkey

Turkey was once called "the sick man of Europe". Her geographic location straddling Europe and Asia continues to leave Turkey divided between Continental aspirations such as joining the European Union and the beckoning of the other side- the Islamic world. Turkey has been a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization but has not been a reliable ally to the United States, leaving America in the lurch in both her wars against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Turkey has gone from being less than trustworthy in defending the West's interests to downright hostile to the unifying values of Judeo-Christian civilization. In just the last several years, a Christian publishing house was attacked in Turkey and three members of its staff butchered, but what else would you expect from a nation that perpetrated the world's first genocide against her Armenian Christian minority early in the last century, has continued to persecute the tiny surviving remnant of said Armenian minority, even countenancing the murder by a Turkish nationalist of a prominent Armenian-Turkish journalist who was trying to highlight Armenians past brutalization at the hands of the Turks and their continuing repressed plight? Turkey has also kept its thumb on other small Christian enclaves in what fifteen hundred years back was the heartland of Christianity. Then, there is the equally oppressive treatment the Kurdish minority has faced to say nothing of the despotic treatment by Turks of the Cypriot Greeks. Now, in the last several months, Turkey has been pushing the delegitimization of Israel by sending the "Gaza Aid Flotilla" which was really nothing more than an active provocation if not an outright casus belli and doing all it could to prevent Iran's isolation. In fact, Turkey's active refusal to enforce economic sanctions on Iran may ensure that a shooting war is waged to stop Iran's budding nuclear weapons program. A porous border between Iran and Turkey actually brings us that much closer to all-out war. This all goes hand in hand with Turkey's increasing Islamization under Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Even though Turkey pretends an interest in Europe, the real aim of those who follow Erdogan is not to make Turkey more European but Europe more Islamic. Even something as cosmopolitan as a gallery crawl has become an act of courage in Turkey as the Islamists gaining ever more control over the formerly secular state feel their oats. See this link http://home.peoplepc.com/psp/newsstory.asp?category=TopStories&id=20100926/716d2514-2d0b-4c87-8d85-dffef4d4ef76 for how intolerant and insular institutional Turkey has become as it abandons European pretense to embrace true Islam. Events like these attacks wills surely teach the Turkish cognoscenti to openly consume alcohol in the Ummah or dare look at art. Who would have thought that Taliban-type action would gain purchase in Turkey?