No Freedom, No Prosperity: The roots of Middle Eastern rage lie in their closed societies

The evidence is all there and I will be happy to enlighten you by sending you websites and titles if you wish. But I am sure you can find the information yourself.

You continue to miss the point. I never claimed that Turkey was a model society. I was only disputing the statement that it is not possible to have a secular state with an Islamic populace. It is indeed possible to separate church and state, even in Islam.

"I never claimed they were a model state."

"They killed Armenians, who happened to be Christian. And it happened before Ataturk. Certainly they're not proud of it, any more than we are proud of how we treated the aboriginal people in the Americas. How does that prove that they today have an Islamic State?"

99.9% of Turks are Muslim. It is an Islamic state in all but name only and that is because they are clever enough to have played the Cold War card and NATO was and is stupid enough to have bought into it to the detriment of our true allies - Greece etc. Christians live in virtual terror and remain because of the Patriarchate mainly.

Bottom line: You are an apologist for the Turks. AND - For you to compare what happened in the US and Turkey is an abomination! There is no comparison!

Bottom line: You are an apologist for the Turks.

I'm not apologizing for them. The slaughter of the Armenians was odious. I'm simply pointing out that they are a secular state with an Islamic populace.

AND - For you to compare what happened in the US and Turkey is an abomination! There is no comparison!

Of course there's a comparison. There's always a comparison--it is illogical to say otherwise. Arguably, we treated the Indians worse than the Turks did the Armenians--at least the Armenians still have their own independent nation. We thoroughly decimated the native American population, through slaughter, disease and destruction of their food supplies. I'm not saying that we should necessarily apologize for it (they were no shrinking violets when it came to killing and torture themselves), but it is an historical reality.

"Arguably, we treated the Indians worse than the Turks did the Armenians--at least the Armenians still have their own independent nation. We thoroughly decimated the native American population, through slaughter, disease and destruction of their food supplies."

You are d**n right it's arguably but you again mistate the facts. Sure, the Armenians have their own homeland no thanks to the Turks. The remnants of refugees who made it out alive and then had to live under Soviet oppression...gee whiz those lucky Armenians...From the beginning, North America witnessed battle after battle, war after war with the natives who were fighting amongst themselves too. There was never -I repeat never -an official policy of extermination of any people in the US. There were declared Indian Wars yes, but at no time did you see hordes of Americans/Euros rushing into indian villages and slaughtering men, women, and children like the Turks hace done for generations. In fact. as many Euro Americans died over the past several hundreds years at the hands of Native people as the other way around. To the contrary, there was an official policy developed by the ottoman Turks and then the Kemalist Turks to eradicate the "yiaours", the Christians etc.

Today there are millions of native aborignals living on the North american continent. Where are the Christians (Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, etc) in Asia Minor? Answer that!

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