The View from the Quai Voltaire

Ah, Turkey. The predatory nation par excellence. I hasten to say that I have never met a Turk I didn't like, and that when I play bridge online, Turks are right up there with Italians as civilized, fun, forgiving bridge-partners. But that said, Turks have done an awful lot of damage in the world. Turks sacked Constantinople (1453), and blew up the Parthenon (1687), albeit with some help from the Venetians in both cases. Their way of dealing with their neighbours has, throughout history, been to enslave and oppress them. Nor has being a Turkish "citizen" and a domestic slave of the Sultan ever been much better, or much different, than being any other sort of slave of the Sultan. Under the old regime, before Ataturk, there were essentially two classes: The Sultan, who was predator; and everybody else, who were prey. It is easy to demonize the Turkish sultanate, because it was in fact a hellish form of government..The spirit of the sultanate still prevails in Turkey...All Ataturk did was put a paper-thin parliamentary facade over the innate Turkish inclination to despotism....