Turkey after the referendum Part 2
In Iran 1960 of the “white revolution” of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, supported by American weapons, politics and capital, led to the rapid growth of wealth of the higher and partly of the middle class, the growth of the urban and educated population.
But it turned out that the lift students and the middle class in Iranian society strengthened not so much the strength of liberal democracy and not even the strength of their classical opponents on the left, how much force supporters of fundamental Islam. When, in early 1979, the revolution triumphed and the Shah fled to the United States, the liberals quickly lost power, and leftists progressives were swept away and destroyed by hordes of bearded youth, the front of which was student followers of Ayatollah Khomeini.
These hordes didn’t come from nowhere, they lived in Tehran and other Iranian cities. It was those “white revolution” the Shah called in the middle class and made the educated sections.
In July 2016, the world saw pictures of Istanbul: the bearded fellows at the call of Erdogan and mobilization online networks took to the streets to stop and then to humiliate the Turkish army. These were the children of the Turkish economic miracle, which decided that it was time to lose the shackles imposed on her Europeanism and go “native Turkish way.”
From art to propaganda
As usually happens with forcibly interrupted and suppressed by tradition, the “original way” is designed not so much in the mosques, as the postmodern, and broadcast media and social networks.
The Internet has played a huge role here, but not without more traditional media cinema. Those who saw the Turkish blockbuster “1453. The conquest (Fetih)”, should immediately to revise it.
The film is pompous to the obscene, but Faruk Aksoy guessed the request of the historical moment. In his picture already entered the fashion in the higher circles of the Turkish intelligentsia, especially those living in the West is presented in a lurid images that are understandable to a wide urban and peasant layers.
Mehmed the conqueror in the film a prototype of a mighty hero, thinly disguised perfect way to emulate the leader of Turkey. The myth of Kemal Ataturk, still popular among the masses, received a completely different historical incarnation and the opposite direction.
Strong, kind, simple and honest Turkish hero, the leader of his people, opposed to epic movie sophisticated, have become a hopeless liar, steeped in all the sins of the European empires the Byzantine Empire. It is possible to read and come to the same conclusions.
From art to practical political propaganda one step. Erdogan’s allies have been preparing the referendum with an eye on the capture of Constantinople. Isolation submit “Latin crusaders” Byzantine stronghold must be taken again, now in the form of a victory over the spiritual heirs of these crusaders liberal intellectuals, supported by the international patrons minorities, etc.
Invested with unlimited power, Erdogan has a great opportunity to keep on the hook former allies Turkey and the European Union and the United States. In Europe, he was not the petitioner and the demiurge: he still has in his hands the keys to the gateway that opens and opens the flow of immigrants from the ravaged Syria. In exchange, he may demand that European politicians not only money, but also the full legitimacy of his authoritarian regime.
Trojan horse in the big game
Trump has already congratulated Erdogan on his victory, and rightly so. From Erdogan to a considerable extent determine the fate of any US strategy in the middle East, whatever it was. Turkey was the “Trojan horse” in Europe (where it is part of his part, controlling the way from Asia to the Balkans) but also in NATO.
Erdogan over the past two years has demonstrated that it can deploy to Turkey from hostility to cooperate with her, from friendship with America the patron of Turkey since 1947 to feud with her.