That Far More Worrying Islamist Nation

On fine form today, Peter Hitchens writes:

Amid all the palaver about Iran's slow-motion attempt to build a nuclear weapon (my experience of Iranian technology and ability to complete major projects on time suggests that they might get there somewhere around 2050, if they really, really try), there is momentous news from that far more worrying Islamist nation -Turkey.

We like to think of Turkey as being an honorary Western country. It's in NATO (whatever that is now) and it wants to be in the EU (heaven knows why). Kemal Ataturk got the Mullahs under control nearly 100 years ago. Hijabs are banned on state property. It's secular, modern, etc etc.

I don't agree. In fact I think this picture is completely out of date. My own experience of Turkey suggests that its population, including much of the new urban middle-class, are (unlike the Iranians) fervently and increasingly Islamic, and want to be more so. The country during Ramadan is enormously and enthusiastically devout. People I interviewed during the day didn't even drink water, traffic was nervous and violent (my Istanbul-bound taxi crashed 100 yards from the airport, and this was the driver's explanation) because everyone was so frazzled from fasting since first light. I just don't believe the repeated conventional wisdom that Prime Minister Erdogan and his AK Party have given up the militant Islamism they used to espouse, when he wrote 'Our minarets are our bayonets.'

Western liberals (as usual forced into folly by dogma) see Erdogan as a sort of hero, and Turkey's secular military as the villains, a 'deep state' threatening dictatorship. Well, the Turkish military certainly aren't democrats, and have intervened many times in coups d'etat to shut down governments they didn't like, including several incompetent ones and one Islamist one. But they are in the Ataturk tradition, firm secularists who don't want Turkey to be an Islamic republic. So are the liberals really sure they're less of a worry than the AK Party, in the long run? By the way, if Turkey were to go fully Islamic, it would be a majority Sunni state, unlike Iran which is Shia, and so a bit of an outcast from the rest of the Muslim world. Sunni Muslims regard Shia as heretics, and often persecute them. I'll also touch on the significance of this a little later, while discussing Afghanistan.

He does:

Those who insist that the Taleban, or the non-existent fantasy organisation 'Al Qaeda' would be more likely to commit terrorist crimes in this country if our troops withdrew from Helmand, need to explain the logical process which leads them to this belief. What is the process by which the British military presence in this portion of Afghanistan has this effect? I cannot see it myself, but would be willing to accept it if someone would explain it to me, in short, simple steps with factual evidence to back up the argument. Assertion doesn't do it for me. And the burden of proof is on them. It's they who want others sent to die in the name of this policy. They must show us how this policy actually operates in practice.

Ronnie Clews [who comments on his blog] says: ’If you can reassure me that all will be well and that we have nothing at all to fear from the likes of Osama Bin Laden and his terror network, or from their paymaster Iran and their 'peaceful' exploitation of nuclear energy - fine! I'll be the first to agree with you.’

There are two things wrong with this point. One, I offer no such reassurance. I cannot guarantee anyone that they will be safe from terror attacks. Terrorism is by its nature secret and based upon surprise. What I am saying is that the British government, also, cannot offer any such guarantee, or explain how British troops in Afghanistan make terrorist attacks in Britain more unlikely. They might as well say that our military presence made fog in Somerset more unlikely, or road accidents in Peebles less likely. There is no evidence to connect the two things. There is a rival argument (which I don't myself buy) that our presence in Afghanistan makes terror attacks on Britain more likely, and I have to say that, thin as it is, and likewise lacking evidence, it is considerably less laughable than the opposite case. I am not the one doing the pretending. Any country is at risk from terror attacks, and one of the main things we need to grasp is that the elaborate 'anti-terror' mechanisms now in place are largely useless in reducing this danger, for many reasons including human fallibility. Terrorism, by its nature, cannot be entirely prevented. Such security is a fantasy. Those who offer it are fakes.

His other error is his absurd claim that Iran is the 'paymaster' of Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden is a Wahhabi Sunni Muslim, who regards Iranian Shia Muslims as dangerous heretics (the Shia minority in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia suffers severe discrimination). The Taleban loathes Iran, and it is mutual (Taleban fanatics actually crossed over into Iran to try to destroy the (astonishingly majestic) Shia shrine at Mashhad, such is their loathing of their supposed co-religionists). People who want to warn us of the terrible danger from the Islamic world really do need to know a little more about it, if they want to be taken seriously.