The Holy Father and Turkish Incoherence

Below is another “lost” article by Sergei Bourachaga, which was first published in 2006 but is no longer available on the internet after the collapse of CCD’s site. Mr. Bourachaga says, “Prior to the visit of the pope to Turkey I wrote an essay on that country. It might give your readers a better understanding of how the Turkish psyche works.”


The Holy Father and Turkish Incoherence
by Sergei Bourachaga

My first encounter with the Turks was on Sept.12, 2001 while on a business trip to Turkey to promote the services of a Russian company. I was tired from the long journey that started several days earlier in Moscow, but instead of having a nap after refreshing myself in my hotel room, I decided to go to one of the popular coffee shops of Istanbul, and attempt to gauge the reaction of the average person on the street to the jihadists’ attack on the Twin Towers in New York.

I was convinced that this move would allow my body to adjust itself to the local time zone, and help me establish a firsthand experience with a nation I had studied extensively in different academic institutions in Russia. Ironically, years of studies in different universities of the Soviet Union failed to yield a solid grasp of what gives the Turks their unique ability to balance contradictions in the external and internal political arena, as well as in the religious realm. This balancing act projects to the West the questionable but strongly convincing image that Turkey is a reliable partner, ready to protect Western interests in the Middle East, and simultaneously alleviates the distrust of 300 million Muslim Arabs by insisting that Turkey will never sell Islam out to Western infidels — who are destined to perish in the lowest recesses of hell, according to the Koran.

I stepped into a coffee shop a few blocks away from the hotel, and within seconds I heard the loud voice of the shop’s owner/manager conveying to a waiter in Turkish the following instruction: “Ahmad, bak gavour ne istior”. In plain English: “Ahmad, see what the infidel wants”.

To me this was a strong evidence that decades of secularism — or projecting to the rest of the world the image without any substance of secularism — Turkey’s so-called secular governmental institutions failed to change the worldview of the average Turk, who is very proud of his Islamic heritage and the faith that gave the Islamic world the Seljuk Khan Alparslan. It was Alparslan who in 1071 defeated the Byzantine army in the battle of Manzikert and gradually paved the way for the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in the fourteenth century, an empire that propelled the Turks and Islam to glorious heights, almost crushing the European continent under the banner of the Prophet Mohamed.

I requested a Turkish coffee in English and Russian to reinforce the impression entertained by the owner, the waiter, and the other patrons of the coffee shop, that the Russian gavour did not understand Turkish. While waiting for the order to arrive, I tuned my ears to the joyful conversation that was going on at the next table, where four young Turks in their mid-twenties were debating the issue of who would be buying the next round of tea and “Baklava” (Turkish sweet), in celebration of the victory scored by the “Martyrs of Islam” in New York.

It was obvious from the political views exchanged by the four Turks that the humiliation inflicted on America by a small group of Muslim shahids dedicated to the will of Allah was long overdue. After all, Turks, like the rest of the Islamic world, were absolutely convinced that the economic and social evils Turkey was suffering from in the beginning of the new millennium have been inflicted on Turkey by successive American administrations who wanted Turkey to trade its Islamic values and worldview for a set of corrupt democratic principles designed to protect American hegemony in the region.

But what shocked me the most was not the explicit hatred the young Turks harbored for America, and every single value connected to the American way of life. It was the big million-dollar question all four Turks tried to figure out: Would the events of 9/11 affect negatively their immigration applications submitted to American authorities, and harm the heavy financial sacrifices invested in that project?
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I could not fathom the depth of the contradictions I was hearing. In a state of bewilderment I tried to make sense of the entire conversation, until my thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the waiter who placed my Turkish coffee on the table followed by a glass of water. This interruption made me realize that I am using a Western rational approach to understand a collective psyche shaped and conditioned by Islamic values and principles clearly stated in the Koran. I remembered that Muslims are encouraged to practice al-taqiyya, which means that believers can pretend to be something they are not, can lie or conceal an intention as a preventive measure of self-defense, or to protect Islam, or to neutralize threats faced by oneself or loved ones. God issued the following instructions to Muslims: “Let believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful. He that does this has nothing to hope from Allah-except in self-defence.” (Koran 3:28).

The Koran also points out to the Muslims that the falsehoods uttered by believers to the rest of the world (the unbelievers/gavours/infidels, people of the book) will not be held against them by Allah on the Judgment Day. The Most Merciful will only scrutinize the thoughts and values that lie unobserved and unsuspected in the hearts and minds of the true believers (Muslims only).

For the four Turks, moving to America was an act of economic survival/self-defense. Once well-established in the heartland of the Great Satan that persecutes and oppresses Muslims all over the world, it would be easier for young Turkish Muslims to destroy the enemy from within — a dream openly conveyed to the US media by Omar M Ahmad of CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations): “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

Mr. Ahmed’s statements are in absolute harmony with the thoughts of Ayman al Zawahiri (#2 of Al Qaida), who boasted in his latest video released to the media on Sept.29, 2006 that:

“We (Al Qaida), by the grace of Allah, are seeking to exact revenge on behalf of Islam and Muslims from you (Mr. George W. Bush) and your soldiers and allies (Europe). We call upon Benedict the Sixteenth and all of the Christians to become Muslims who do not recognize the Trinity or the crucifixion of Issa Ibn Mariam (Jesus), or face the mighty sword of the Prophet (Mohamed)”.

One wonders if these statements made by different Muslim figures are not in fact part of a well-orchestrated global plan to destroy Christianity, first on the European continent and then in the empire of Satan-America. The incoherence of the four Turks at the next table overshadows the fact that their mentality of hatred of Christians and Jews is widespread in the Muslim world.

Incoherence has also been a primary trait of the Turkish foreign policy since the emergence of modern Turkey in the early 1920s. Though the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, was determined to sever the ties of the new “Republic” with its Ottoman past and Islamic legacy, and despite draconian efforts to distance the Turkish state from Islamic influence, the population’s resistance to change and dedication to the glorious Islamic past remained very strong.

To avoid major unrest in the country during the late 1930s, his successor, president Ismet Inonu, had to take into serious consideration the dominant anti-Jewish sentiments in Turkey’s neighboring Arab countries in particular, and the Muslim world in general.

Allah had clearly told Muslims in the Koran, “You will find that the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews (Koran 5:82)”. This verse was the rallying cry of the hero of Palestine and Arab nationalism, Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.

From 1936 to 1939 the Grand Mufti masterminded and led a popular revolt in Palestine against the Jewish population of the country and the British Army, who were depicted as the invaders of the Holy Land. Before slaughtering innocent Jews, angry Muslim mobs chanted: “Allah akbar, el yom el sabt wa boukra el ahad”. English translation: “God is great, today Saturday and tomorrow Sunday”. In other words today we will slaughter those who celebrate the Lord’s day on Saturday (the Jews), and once we are done with the Jews we will settle the score with those who celebrate the Lord’s day on Sunday (the Christians).

According to documents from the Nuremberg trials, the Grand Mufti requested financial and military aid from his close friend Adolf Eichmann “to settle the question of Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries in accordance with the national and racial interests of the Arabs and along the lines similar to those used to solve the Jewish question in Germany and Italy”.

Based on the realities of the Arab world in 1939, Turkey refused to fight Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. On June 18,1941 the Turkish State signed the “German-Turkish Friendship Agreement”. Turkey continued to trade freely with Nazi Germany, providing vital material badly needed to sustain the Nazi war machine, up until February 23, 1945 when serious threats from the Allies to blockade Turkey, forced the Turkish to declare war on Germany, approximately 3 months before the end of the war on the European theatre, and without committing a single soldier to the war efforts of the Allies.

Nazi Germany deposited in the Turkish Central Bank several tons of gold looted by the German Army from countries invaded during the different phases of military operations in Europe and Jewish Holocaust victims. Since 1946 the Tripartite Commission (formed by the United States, Britain, and France), whose sole task has been the recovery and redistribution of the looted gold to the legitimate owners or their successors, has failed to recover anything from Turkey. In a report published at the end of a conference held in London on December 4,1997, the Commission pointed out that after five decades of relentless hunt for the gold stolen by the Nazis, “Four neutral countries in World War Two handed back less than 20 percent of the looted Nazi gold estimated to be stashed in their banks. Turkey never repaid a penny of the millions of dollars in looted bullion.”

Turkish incoherence has occupied also a prominent role in Turkish internal politics. Technically the country was classified as a modern democracy, where the ruler and the laws governing the country must reflect the popular will. Every time the popular will strayed away from the likes and dislikes of the Turkish Army, military coups were imposed to tune the popular will by the power of the gun and make it more compatible with the thoughts and dictates of the Turkish General Staff. Today a precarious balance, closely monitored by the Turkish Army, exists between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamic Party and the pro-secular opposition group. The present reality worries the European Union, where military coups are non-existent, and most leaders have no answer to the following question: “Isn’t it a mockery of democracy when the power of the gun dictates who can or cannot have control of the State?”.

Of course, everyone knows the incoherence of Turkey as it concerns helping the US and Britain in introducing democracy to Iraq. Initially Turkey paid lip service to the US, and promised to provide all kinds of logistical support to the US expeditionary force. A few days before the invasion of Iraq, Turkey reversed its position and even banned the use of its air space to any aircraft connected to the activities of the US Army in Iraq. Turkey insisted that the Koran explicitly forbids Muslims to kill fellow Muslims, and “Believers (Muslims) are a band of brothers. Make peace among your brothers and fear Allah.” as the Prophet Mohamed instructed the faithful in 49:10.

On October 8, 2006 the Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, Bishop Luigi Padovese, announced to the media that “tensions caused last month by the Pope’s Regensburg address have calmed, and that the Holy Father’s visit to Turkey is a welcomed event.”

Holy Father, what are you trying to achieve by visiting Turkey? Obtain municipal permits to renovate your churches that are in dismal condition, due to decades of discriminatory policies adopted by the municipal authorities of Turkey against Christian edifices? Give up on your meager possessions in Turkey if you don’t want St. Peter’s Basilica to become the Mosque of Sultan Mohamed el Ghazi, the way St. Sofia cathedral in Istanbul was converted to a mosque after the city fell into the care of the Ottoman Turks.

Remember, in return for symbolic concessions, Turkey will manipulate you to lobby the European Union on its behalf, and convince countries such as France and Germany, to dismiss their reluctance and endorse Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. Remember what Oriana Fallaci (peace be upon her soul) told you during her private meeting about the huge catastrophic demographic imbalance that will engulf the European continent if Turkey succeeds in joining the EU. Do the math properly before you put the Vatican and Europe on a disastrous collision course with Islam. Presently you have 50 million Muslims on the European continent. That number will become 125 million if you add the 75 million Turks impatiently waiting to join the EU. According to official statistical figures released this year in Europe, the average Christian couple’s reproduction rate is 1.2, while Muslim couples have a reproduction rate of 3.4. In less than one generation (18 years), the numerical superiority of Muslims will make the Koran a required reading for all students from Grade 5 to grade 12, and your aging priests will have to master the Arabic language, the language of God, to preach Islam. By the way Arabic is a very difficult language, especially if a priest has to learn it after the age of sixty. Those who resist forced conversion to Islam and remain alive will be unemployed.

Remember what the devout Muslim Colonel Ghadafi, the great leader of Libya, said to the media: “There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe-without swords, without guns, without conquests; the fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades”.

Remember the speech of the former Algerian President Houari Boumedian: “One day millions of men will leave the Islamic world to go to the Northern hemisphere (Europe). They will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us (the Moslem Ummah) victory”. Remember what your Bishops reported to you after they returned from their last interfaith meeting with Moslem clerics in Turkey. Read the passage in the report that clearly says: “Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you. Thanks to our Islamic laws and Allah willing, we will conquer you”.

Remember: interfaith dialogue has no meaning with a faith (Islam) whose revelations you have not accepted. You will be punished by Allah, who said to the prophet Mohamed: “Leave to Me those that deny this revelation (Koran). We will lead them step by step to their ruin, in ways beyond their knowledge. I shall bear long with them: My stratagem is sure” (Koran 68:45). As far as Islam is concerned your blasphemy is unforgivable. You and your Christian followers have made the founder of Christianity, Issa Ibn Mariam, the Son of God. No genuine respect can ever be extended to you, the gavour who promotes falsehood, because the Koran warns true Muslims to: “admonish those that say that Allah has begotten a son. Surely of this they could have no knowledge, neither they nor their fathers: a monstrous blasphemy is that which they utter. They preach nothing but falsehoods.” (Koran 18:3)

Last but not least, Holy Father, remember what Mr. Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said about your place in history. You, the Pope, are “going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini”. Holy Father, Mr. Kapusuz will be very uncomfortable in the presence of a fake Hitler who does not carry in his heart and mind the genuine interest of the Turkish people. Before you go, it would be a good idea to divert some of the gold reserves owned by the Vatican (estimated at 3.5 billion dollars by the NY Times), to the Central Bank of Turkey. But then again you won’t be able to command any respect from such visionary Turkish politicians such as Mr. Kapusuz. For he has memorized what Allah has instructed him and the rest of the Muslim Ummah: “Do you fear them (the unbelievers who did not accept Islam)? Surely Allah is more worthy of your fear, if you are true believers. Make war on them: Allah will chastise them through you and humble them. He will grant you victory over them and heal the spirit of the faithful.” (Koran 9:14)

Holy Father, I bet you that you will be humbled by your trip to Turkey, but between now and the start of your journey, pray to the Lord and ask him to deliver the Turks from their own incoherence. Remember also what you said to the Italian media on October 11, 2006: “The path of dialogue, so necessary, must not make us forget the duty to rethink and to witness always with as much force the guidelines of our Christian identity that cannot be given up”. Just out of curiosity, how much of your Christian identity are you willing to give up to become a good Muslim in the eyes of the Turkish Government and the Muslim Ummah?


Previous posts by Sergei Bourachaga:

2008		May		28		The Koran and The Psychopathology of The Prophet (Part I)
2010		Aug		14		The Koran and the Psychopathology of the Prophet (Part II)
				18		The Koran: A “Holy Book” or Hate Literature?