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Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Street Musicians Attacked in Istanbul for Playing "Jewish Music"

Hat tip Algemeiner



In the new Turkey under the Jew-hating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, secularism seems to be fading. It seems that more and more Turks are being sucked into radical and intolerant Islam. When a group of street musicians played music near a mosque that someone thought was Jewish or Israeli, a near riot broke out.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/08/18/after-jewish-music-is-played-near-mosque-in-turkey-chaos-ensues/

(Well, a near riot by Turkish standards, not by US standards.)

This is not the Turkey I visited twice in the 1980s and liked very much. Both times I followed the custom recommended for foreign visitors and asked by my Turkish (police) hosts to take me to visit the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. He secularized the country, converted the language to the Roman alphabet, and removed the veils from the women.

I really don't know if I would return to visit Turkey again.

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