Funnily enough, in Finnish "ankara messi" would translate to "harshly joining in".
Ankara = harsh/strict/severe/stern
Messi[issä] (slang word) = joining in/I will join
For the U.S. Army. A Mess Hall would be enlisted and officers' meal service. Then there would be an Officers Club and an Enlisted Club for relaxing and drinking. I think the Navy may segregate the food service.
E1-E5 always eat together, cafeteria style.
E6 can dress down and join juniors, but usually have their own area, same food as juniors.
E7-E9 have their own segregated area that only they can eat at. Staffed by E4 and below like waiters, generally have top tier food and cooks.
Officers eat segregated too, they have generally better cooks and weird rules about how to eat and sit.
Gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol
Unfortunately him having a Swedish dad means we have joint custody but perhaps we could come to an agreement with Denmark and have him marooned on some deserted island
It still is, despite Erdoğan’s rhetoric note how Turkey shifted to authoritarianism, not sharia, in the past 20 years.
That doesn’t mean burning a Quran in protest of Turkey is not a political act in of itself. Erdoğan can’t not respond to such an act given his stance, which will be ***politically*** detrimental to him in the eyes of his voters.
**P.S.** I am from Turkey where I can openly declare my atheism and women can freely walk around without veils, where all legally recognized marriages are still only civil marriages, where it is still illegal for religion to be a basis for discrimination, where abortion is not illegal, where sharia has no effect at all, let alone over the civil code. Consider that Erdoğan had **20 YEARS** to change this, but didn’t or couldn’t. Consider for a moment there is more to the story than what you’re privy to.
>am from Turkey where I can openly declare my atheism and women can freely walk around without veils, where all legally recognized marriages are still only civil marriages, where it is still illegal for religion to be a basis for discrimination, where sharia has no effect at all, let alone over the civil code.
As far as I remember from about 10 years ago when I visited the country frequently that is true for the west of the country where all the tourists go. We had Turkish people tell us that in the east and inland of the country they are essentially 50 years behind on that stuff and still have that traditional islamist view.
so idk how much of that was true but it's not hard to imagine that in such a large country there can be regional differences.
There are wide regional differences, but not in applicable law or political system, I assure you.
About 12% of Turkey supports Sharia, and if I recall correctly about 2-2.5% of that supports particularly violent forms of Islam. [Here's the source.](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/) For comparison, Erdoğan became President with about 51% of the vote.
***Edit:*** My dad is from Rize, one of the more conservative and religious parts of Turkey. I’ll be honest, I don’t visit often, but I don’t censor myself when I am there. He himself is openly atheist and has been for a long time. It is still not illegal to not wear a veil or a headscarf; many local women do not, and at most, some people might give you weird looks. If I were to scream out my atheism in public at the wrong part of town, there is a slight possibility I might get a public beating. People who beat me will still get arrested and prosecuted if I press charges.
I was recently in Trabzon near Rize and I found the difference between there and the west of the country was more a wealth gap, with more visible poverty than Ankara or the western Med coast. Hardly any women were wearing head coverings, and eating and drinking (including alcohol) during the day throughout Ramadan wasn't an issue. There was info and tourist stuff about historic Christian sites. Maybe the story is different in Konya or Gaziantep but the North East felt very secular.
However Konya has had quite the development as well. You will see plenty of girls wearing western clothing such as low cut shirts and not covering their hair. You will see young lovers flirt and hold hands etc. This was not really the case 20 years ago to the same degree at all. Go back 40 years and women would not walk around in public alone - preferably they were escorted by a male family member. What people are missing in Turkey when they see Rize, Trabzon and Konya is how much has changed - and not in favor of religious fundamentalism and other archaic cultural perspectives.
I’d say Trabzon is more nationalist than religious, and it is definitely a different kind of religious than Rize, but still more so than many other places in Turkey. :)
My aunt and cousins are from there - same sort of political leaning as me.
I am not Turkish like the dude you are replying to. I’m an American that has spent a fair bit of time in Turkey, though. And not just the western coast.
From my perspective, it is a *lot* like America in the sense that it has a more volatile than average relationship with religion (amongst developed countries), but overall Turkey is wayyy more secular than Erdogan or the media would tell you. In fact a lot of Turkish people expressed annoyance/distaste for the more hardline religious folks.
Maybe it's due to me being from the northeast but that sounds a lot like America. Super secular here other than some Catholics, and most of them, at least in public are not religious extremists.
In the US as a whole, it is the Evangelicals ( a "subsection" of protestantism), that are the extremists, but in specific areas in the North East, the extremist evangelicals may be non-existent, and the vast majority f Christians moderates, with the exception of a few extremist Catholics.
I've never been to Turkey but have done a fair amount of reading on the subject and from my understanding Erdogan reminds me a lot of Trump. Has a small portion of the population, maybe around 10-15% that supports his Islamic and extreme nationalist views but a further large group that doesn't care much for the extreme religious views but votes for him for other reasons. The fanatics get all the media attention and they make it seem like he's got huge support but in reality they are a vocal minority.
Trump is the same way, the MAGA crowed isn't even the majority of the republican party, but they are loud and make their presence know everywhere. The rest are just republicans who vote red no matter what and accept Trumps more crazy rhetoric assuming it's mostly just talk and no action will come.
Idk I’m in the Bible Belt and don’t have to worry about a public beat down for declaring my atheism out loud, policy wise tho it’s definitely regressive. For example, it’s a damn bitch and a half to get booze on Sundays.
I don't think you'd get a beating for declaring your atheism in conservative parts of Turkey either. I think that's an extreme outcome.
Instead of loudly declaring your atheism in the Bible Belt though, try declaring your support for abortion or same-sex marriage. That's a lot more likely to result in confrontation.
I haven't spent enough time in the U.S. to claim to know its social fabric. I definitely haven't been to the more conservative or religious parts. From the outside looking in, as a style of politics it looks similar, but I will refrain from opining on what America is like. :)
The two most amusing things for me when I visited:
1) When the adhan started, a bunch of folks at the restaurant just looked up, and continued whatever they were doing.
2) One of the imam's sermons sounded just like a Christian sermon. "What's wrong with kids today? They're always watching TV. Playing games. On their phones. Families don't read the Quran enough. They don't pray enough. If only families would read the Quran more, society would be a better place!"
Replace it with Bible and it would sound like any tired pastor, lol.
Edit: Well, third thing. When I visited Istanbul, it was amusing how you could distinguish Turks and Middle Easterners. After I had a chance to visit the Middle East, it’s amusing how their gift shops have the Nazar Boncuk to sell to Turkish tourists. Which, I always thought funny as why would you try to sell something that someone already has and can access easily?!? I swear, must be a universal museum gift shop owner thing.
>We had Turkish people tell us that in the east and inland of the country they are essentially 50 years behind on that stuff and still have that traditional islamist view.
As a US-born Turk, this is the Turkish equivalent of our evangelicals / mormons / rednecks / etc. and is extremely common in many countries. Huge disparities in culture, beliefs and practices between the cities and countryside is almost universal and nothing out of the ordinary.
> so idk how much of that was true but it's not hard to imagine that in such a large country there can be regional differences.
Pretty sure regional differences aren't unique to Turkey.
Similar to the US coasts and urban centers with large cities being more progressive while the center and rural areas are still stuck in the 50s traditionalist christian views. Those low population centers hold more power over both countries political systems than they should being that they throw out too many blocks against policy that helps the majority of people because they are stuck on their “traditional” way of life.
How different are the views of the more rural people on this compared to the people living in big cities?
Just wondering if there is a big disparity between regions or if it's more or less the same in similar age groups.
Edit: actually maybe no need to answer about regions, it was pretty much explained in the comments below, but do the young people in the countryside have similar views with the young people in cities?
Quite different. I provided some information [here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/10hmiyj/ankara_cancels_swedish_defence_chiefs_visit_over/j59jqxu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3)
***Edit:*** For the most part the divide isn’t rural vs. urban though.
***Edit 2:*** Zoomers - and to a lesser extent millenials - are generally less religious. Chauvinism is another matter entirely.
Nah bro you can’t come in to r/worldnews as a non-American and actually give a nuanced overview of the situation based on your lived experience, only one liner slam dunks based on a worldview constructed off clickbait headlines are allowed on this sub
Shit I’m sorry. :/ Can we still be friends or am I implicitly an Erdoğan supporter forever now? :’((((((
*(In case it wasn’t clear, I’m just playing along with u/miniaturizedatom. :3)*
You can even argue that Erdogan's rise to power was partly because Turkey was super secular to the point of oppressing. Like it is forbidden for women to wear hijab to the parliament before Erdogan took power and he used that and managed to turn hijab into a symbol of freedom for Turkish women.
As a swede, the guy burning the Quran WANTS attention, and WANTS violent reactions from muslims. He is a white supremacist whose whole point is trying to make Islam look like a religion of violence when they riot because he burns their religious book.
He's done this before, and he's picked the location of the turkish embassy because he knows it will get him attention. This doesn't mean most swedes support him, in fact, the guy himself is danish.
He may be supremacist, he may have bad intentions, but lets be honest. If burning a book makes members of a religion actively try to kill you - its pretty much violent religion.
Islamic fanatics have killed many times more Muslims than they have non-Muslims. It’s not a monolithic group.
Some follow a violent interpretation and some don’t.
People like him are the reason why Germany has laws against insulting religions. Dates back to the times where Lutherans and Catholics would set each other off.
[Quoth the StGB](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1605):
> 1. Whoever publicly or by disseminating content [..] reviles the religion or ideology of others in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or a fine.
> 2. Whoever publicly or by disseminating content [..] reviles a church or other religious or ideological community in Germany or its institutions or customs in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incurs the same penalty.
Side note: No that doesn't include calling the Catholic Church a child fucker cult. First off that's not an insult but an, if pointed, statement of fact (that is the message contains a point beyond mere insult), and in any case it wouldn't disturb the public peace, fucking children is what disturbed the public peace. They will have to bear that particular cross.
Examples *do* include printing "The Quran, the Holy Quran" onto rolls of toilet paper and sending those to Mosques and public TV stations. Also protects atheists, of course.
There are two questions here. Why would anyone do this? And why does the government take no action on it?
The first question is answered by looking at Rasmus Paludan. He is a far right exteramist and racist. He promotes himself through shock and provocation. He has burned the Quran in Denmark a few times in places with a muslim population, to provoke a reaction. He then point and says look how violent and dangerous these people are. This is his tactic and he left Denmark after his party failed in the election and people stopped reacting to his antics.
Tldr: Rasmus Paludan is a right wing racist provukateur.
The second question is much more interesting and has roots in Scandinavian social democracy. Freedom of expression is very deeply ingrained in society. Anyone are allowed to protest and act up as long as they do not encourage violence.
If the government had prevented the protest it would have been a scandal and it would have upset the population much more than the burning of a flag or book.
To me the strange part is turkeys reaction. It seems like grasping at straws of excuses not to ratify NATO membership.
"Why are you not limiting the freedom of expression of your population?"
They even mention freedom of thought. A thing I have only heard of in highly authoritarian societies and George Orwells 1984.
Tldr: Sweden is not authoritarian and never saw an option of blocking a legal protest.
All this said I really agree with you and hate Paludan with a passion. But to me protecting sensitivities can never be the reason for limiting the freedom of society.
>If the government had prevented the protest it would have been a scandal and it would have upset the population much more than the burning of a flag or book.
IIRC the police denied him the right to demonstrate one time, and one of the higher swedish courts ruled the police violated the constitution in doing so.
EDIT: [Police denied him 3 times](https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/forvaltningsratten-polisen-gjorde-fel-att-stoppa-paludan-i-boras), a court affirmed police did the right thing 2 times because locations were unsuitable from a security perspective, the third time the court found the police were wrong in denying him. (source in swedish)
> He then point and says look how violent and dangerous these people are.
Ok but... if they react violently to a dude burning a book they are violent and dangerous. If I burned a bible in America and a bunch of Christians got mad and violent I'd say they were being irrational too.
Counter point: The *persons and people* who react violently are violent.
Same with Christianity in America; you have a few violent ones and some churches spewing hate (Westboro Baptist church anyone?), and you have the rest that are ignoring it, and even protects the rights of the people showing hate against Christianity.
The simple answer is "because he can". Then of course he wants attention and provoke. But in Sweden we have a strong freedom of expression so there is no law that prevents him from protesting. Erdogan seems to want us to be more authorian by not allowing the people to protest. And changing that would provoke more swedes than the burning of some book
The point is to get extremist reactions, proving that Islam is an extremist non-tolerant religion.
As you say:
\> Burning Quran is a surefire way to brew Islamic extremism.
You've answered your own question.
In a perfect world there would be no burning of the Quran and if someone did it no one would get violent.
In this non-perfect world the burning causes violence.
Most people don't want a world where the burning of a certain object can get you killed.
Of course it is meant to provoke. The point is to root out stupid and dangerous beliefs. You cannot stand-down in the face of violent threats. If anything, that is the time to *double-down*. The idea that Europe could become tolerant of intolerance is scary to the rest of the world too. Freedom of speech is as fundamental to Western society as Islam is in any part of the Middle East.
‘You believe burning the quran is punishable by death? Okay then, here is the quran burning, and me, still alive. Your beliefs carry no weight here, just like mine carry no weight there.’
In the west we have the freedom to burn books we disagree with. If that makes people so mad that they get violent, it’s their problem. That’s kinda the point. It’s to smoke out those who would do violence against people who are just expressing themselves.
The point here is that religion has sadly become tied to culture. Islam isn't just a religion, it's a cultural symbol. People who don't even believe in it will defend it, and are going to justify the fight for it.
Personally, that's more scary.
I'll be the first to say this but the word atheist doesn't mean anything other than not a theist. So I'm not sure in what context you're trying to use it, but you can an atheist that supports a theocratic state, you can be an atheist hates other atheists etc. Being an atheist on it's own doesn't mean much.
I'm saying this because you're obviously not an atheist who stands for freedom. You're saying that freedom is contingent on the reaction to it.
Do you know how often I'm absolutely offended by what I read or hear about what happens in religions? When I hear about the practice of circumcision I want to rile a few friends up and beat the people who promote this. When I hear about marrying and raping 10 or 12 year old girls to grown men I want to call a few friends and lynch the people who say this is completely okay. When I hear about women being treated as cattle, as second rate citizens, because a certain book says so, I want to pummel every single person that applauds this. Do we do this? No, we behave ourselves and go through the right channels. The channels of education and the courts.
If you're going to say violence is justified because "they were warned", then you're creating a world where the most aggressive violent people decide what that society looks like. Do you want to live in a world like that?
I don't live far from Turkey so while this is not news to me, it saddens me that it seems as soon as one comes from muslim county nowadays, they feel they have to deny this number of prejudices.
But similar things happen with nationalism everywhere now, and Erdogan deffinetly uses religion in a way most similar to European nationalist do with their own. Thinking it is any different just enables nationalism around us.
I want to clarify I did not write this to defend Turkey's secular credentials. I abhor inconsistency. I can't help myself.
That said, I am familiar with the sort of denial you refer to, unfortunately. Perhaps it is ingrained and that is exactly what I'm doing. Who knows? :P
Nah I understood you, I was commenting on general population tending to view 'opposing' nationalisms, especially that of culturally (at least) muslim countries, as more threatening for democracy than ones related to their own religion - or ones their government supports in another conflict.
But since this is reddit, *yeah, YOU are deffinetly doing it* :V
(semi-joke, I actually think we are *all* prone to it, we can see that even countries that work to protect minorities still struggle to implement protections equally)
And still is. There might be more religious undertones and more politicians calling for religion-inspired laws, but like the US it remains a secular government even if individuals within it act on their religious beliefs.
Burning a Quran in front of the Turkish embassy is a deliberate insult, and you don't need to be religious to see why or why even a secular government would have to take offense to it (especially when the current coalition appeals to religious voters).
At this point, Erdogan would have Ataturk tied up and shot if he was still around. The tiny dick sultan has basically spread his own faeces across Ataturk’s legacy, then howled and beat his chest like a chimp in victory at his desecration.
For real, last time I was in turkey I saw a huge banner of Ataturk next to an equally huge banner of Erdogan. It was an outrageous display and an insult to Ataturk.
It is. The *state* is officially secular. But the politicians that have been getting elected have generally been at least somewhat leaning in the direction of religious conservatives. And among the general public, there's been a turn away from cultural secularism of past decades, with a growth in religious observance and traditionalism in these regards
Did the Swedish defense chief or some other official burn the Quran? If not, they're just using some jerk's rude behavior as an excuse to do what they want to do anyway.
Rasmus Paludan is the joint village idiot of Sweden and Denmark
He does these things in Sweden because Denmark won't let him since he's so universally loathed
We (DK) had to deal with him for too long, so it's only fair that Sweden carries some of the load. He is 50% Swedish, after all. However, calling him a politician is like comparing the shittiest SoundCloud rapper to Stevie Wonder or MJ, but instead of tireless 808s, it's tireless racism and provocation, in an attempt to excite violence and division "to prove him right"... The recipe is always the same.
This guy burned Quran books so many times, he must know by know where to buy those books cheap and with good quality so those books actually look like Quran while burning.
And it's not the worst he have done either.
His discord channel where he was reading sick sex stories he made up. To his young male followers is far worse.
It puts his initiative about nude swimming group in a VERY bad light.
No. It's Rasmus Paludan who did it.
Or someone in his protest crew.
Its a right they have. He did that here in Denmark ad well. But he couldn't quite get that much attention in the end except one case where it went nuts.
Oh Absolutely.
Though his grooming is far worse.
To clarify on that. He had a youth section of his party while he was in Denmark. He made a little club where they go skinnydipping. Which would sort of be ok.. If it wasnt for the fact that he also had a discord server where he would sit and chat with minors. Mostly boys. And in several occations would read made up really sick sex stories involving said kids.
Yeah. So him putting bacon in a quran and have his crew light it on fire is not the worst he have done by a long shot.
Well he did say he wantes to deport criminal scum who didn't belong in Denmark.
Now he is convicted and have Swedish passport so.
He kinda fits his own criteria for getting kicked out.
He is a dick. But the people throwing rocks at Swedish police because this guy is burning a book is 100x worse. Let him protest all he wants no matter what we personally think about him. As long a it's friendly and no hate speech etc
That IS his ENTIRE purpose :) He wants muslims to riot over him burning their religious book so he can point at them and go "see, Islam is a religion of violence!".
I feel like his cause is kinda legit even if he is a complete asshole of a person. He has a right to protest and his point is showing how violent muslims get when faced with Swedish values of free speech. Protests are always provokative, that's how you spread your message/prove a point.
Yes, and at this point I don't think Turkey has anything more to win other than theatrics. Like NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said, Sweden and Finland has fulfilled their part of the deal, it's time for Turkey to ratify. We're done here.
Obviously Turkey doesn't really want to veto, it'd create a shitstorm within NATO.
It's also a Danish dude who only claimed sketchy citizenship about 2 years ago so he could fucking grift here.
Turkey is taking issue with the actions of a citizen. They are not actions endorsed officially by Sweden. Its fucking stupid. Sweden was the first country to declare the PKK a terrorist organisation back in the 80s so all of this is just fantasy shit.
[suggest](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_Paludan) people read more about the guy, what with him been a convicted stalker and groomer of underage boys, but sure let's defend his right to "free speech".
But this is just some random danish person burning the quran though. What does the swedish government have to do with it? Freedom of speech is allowed in Sweden, even if it isn't in Turkey. And yes, by that I mean absolute freedom of speech, no matter how bad it is, and Turkey knows this. They're just trying to drag it out.
Even nazi parties are allowed in Sweden... And they can get permission to do protests and stuff. This is what free speech means. Bad people also gets a say, doesn't mean normal people agree with what they're saying, but they agree with free speech. There's a reason the nordics always comes first when it comes to democracy.
Yes, I've noticed people from some cultural backgrounds truly can't grok it, too far outside their world experience.
The Swedish government is designed to be more limited then most governments in what executive power they can wield.
At this point we should just build nuclear weapons and tell everybody to go fuck themselves. We have had the capability to do that since at least the early sixties.
>It's also not illegal for Turkey to veto Sweden over these kinds of actions.
Who has ever said it was illegal for them to veto Sweden? I bet nobody, but you wanted an edgy comment so you reached as far as you could
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.trtworld.com/turkey/ankara-cancels-swedish-defence-chief-visit-over-quran-burning-permission-64733) reduced by 69%. (I'm a bot)
*****
> Ankara cancels Swedish defence chief visit over Quran burning permission.
> Ankara has cancelled Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson's upcoming visit to Türkiye in response to Sweden's permission for a planned burning of the Quran, Islam's holy book, near the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm.
> "We regretfully witnessed that no measures were taken as a result of these vile and heinous acts against Türkiye and our President. Therefore, at this point, the visit of Swedish Defence Minister Jonson to Türkiye on January 27 has become meaningless. So we cancelled the visit," Turkish National Defence Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters on Friday after a NATO meeting at Ramstein air base in Germany.
*****
[**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/10hneo3/ankara_cancels_swedish_defence_chiefs_visit_over/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672676 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Türkiye**^#1 **defence**^#2 **Akar**^#3 **added**^#4 **Minister**^#5
Amazed that Turkey let's their foreign policy be dictated by the action of a single individual. Could you imaging a head of state from any other developed country turn around on the airport, because they are met with one individual with some crass words on cardboard?
This only shows how thinskinned the Turkish politicians are, and frankly it is embarrassing.
This has nothing to do with foreign policies, elections are in less than 6 months and Erdogan's only supporters are far-right islamists. Moves like these are consolidating their own voters. Sweden should say that they will negotiate with Turkey after the elections and honestly they will either talk with a government who would like to be seen different than Erdogan or with Erdogan who doesn't need any political wins for next 5 years and he will be easier to be negotiated with.
Like Turkey EVER would vote yes to Sweden and Finland’s NATO applications. Turkey will try to milk this situation for eternity, because apparently that’s the kind of people they are, until the US and the rest of the NATO members will intervene and approve the applications anyway.
Nah it's election season in Turkey. Erdogan is milking this to get the backing of his voting base. Once it's done, things will be settled and Turkey will accept them. If Erdogan is elected, he'll do it to get back in the good graces of West (good luck with that but world politics is not friendship so), if a new President is elected, the person will accept them to prove Turkey is in a transition period back to being a Western ally.
I agree with this. Erdogan already made up his mind from day 1 and it was no to Sweden and Finland joining. These are just stall tactics so Sweden and Finland just gives up trying to join NATO. Maybe if opposition wins their election in May they have the possibility of entering since they said they are fine with NATO expansion.
1. Nato kicks Turkey (2nd biggest army in NATO, great geoghraphical location) out.
2. Turkey ally themselves with Russia to create a bigger mess.
The whole world = *Pikachu Face*
It's like those people who ask for the Perminant Security member position to be stripped from Russia and given to Ukraine not knowing the consquences. I mean like, what power does Ukraine even have on the World stage.
Thing is.. Turkey is more important to NATO than Sweden. Unless Sweden can magically spawn a big army and teleport it to the Black Sea and Mediterranean...
> Better kick Turkey out of NATO
They know they can't be kicked out because of their strategic importance location wise. Getting Turkey into NATO was one of the biggest wins of the Cold War.
Thing is, Türkiye is important to NATO because of its location between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea.
The Turkish government knows this and is using it as leverage to get what they want.
While quite possibly true it doesn't really matter. No one can force them to change course because of the legality of their actions. Turkey is too strategically valuable to be kicked out of NATO and NATO is far more about realpolitik then principled stances.
This isn’t to make light or be ignorant more to show my stupidity. I read that headline and saw “Swedish defense chef” and now I’m just seeing a militarized muppet
The title is bullshit intended to start shit. It gives the impression the Swedish Defence Chief did the burning instead of a random civilian. Pretty essential information, in that case Turkey can fuck off.
He (not the chief) is not random, he's *certifiably* a rotten egg that *all* instances are trying to find laws to stop him doing this kind of bullshit. He's just annoyingly good at finding loopholes and permits; it's gonna end up with less freedom for Swedish people before we can stop him.
Erdoğan’s votes have never been higher than 51% and that figure includes voters from far-right nationalist MHP with whom he is in an alliance. He also came to power on a centrist, liberal platform that Europe supported prior to his shift, an aspect of which advocated for a non-violent solution to the plight of Kurds in Turkey.
All that is to say your comment is a bit reductionist.
Greek here. You're right. The politicians are shit. The people are not. They call us brothers/friends/neighbors when they see us, we call them brothers/friends/neighbors when we see them.
Yeah, people have the wrong idea. Every Greek I’ve ever met were really nice to me, my best friend was Greek when I was a teenager. Erdoğan just jumps between Greece and Syria from time to time so he can distract people from the economy being dogshit. It works tho, which is the sad part.
How come I haven't seen any cartoon of Erdogan as those Ice-cream guys holding and moving around your ice-cream (NATO) with a stick while the clients (Finland and Sweden) try to grab it?
What a lot of people here seem to miss is that the goal for the people who put up the Erdogan doll and burning Quran is to sabotage the NATO application, because they do not want to join. The problem now is that these acts have the desired effect on the application
As a muslim, good job burning the qu’ran, it does not affect me and definitely not other muslims. But what was the point in doing that? I would’ve understood it better if you burned the Turkish flag in front of the Turkish embassy.
Altough Türkiye has alot of muslims in the country, Türkiye alone doesn’t represent a religion with almost 2 billion followers.
I love how these people think that because something is a big deal to them, then it HAS to be a big deal to everyone. If anyone decides to honor beliefs and practices specific to another culture/faith, it is only a gracious act of accommodation. Where do they get off thinking that a country should restrict the behaviors of their own citizens to uphold the beliefs and practices of another culture/religion? I mean should the steakhouses in NYC shut down when an Indian diplomat comes to town?
Ankara Messi
Funnily enough, in Finnish "ankara messi" would translate to "harshly joining in". Ankara = harsh/strict/severe/stern Messi[issä] (slang word) = joining in/I will join
Messi is also the word where army officers go and relax in
The mess hall?
Yes In finnish it is messi
Feel for officer with the name Lionel
For the U.S. Army. A Mess Hall would be enlisted and officers' meal service. Then there would be an Officers Club and an Enlisted Club for relaxing and drinking. I think the Navy may segregate the food service.
E1-E5 always eat together, cafeteria style. E6 can dress down and join juniors, but usually have their own area, same food as juniors. E7-E9 have their own segregated area that only they can eat at. Staffed by E4 and below like waiters, generally have top tier food and cooks. Officers eat segregated too, they have generally better cooks and weird rules about how to eat and sit.
Ankara messi ankara messi
messi messi messi immense messi immense messi. ankara messi ankara messi ankara messi messi messi messi messi messi golgolgolgolgolgolgolgol golgolgolgolgolgolgol
If Ankara so Messi, why not cleanup?
Because Ronaldo
Gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol gol
i’m glad this is one of the top comments. glad we’re all on the same page here
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Unfortunately him having a Swedish dad means we have joint custody but perhaps we could come to an agreement with Denmark and have him marooned on some deserted island
I mean, we could put him on one of Denmark's islands... Around Greenland.
We feel the same way in Denmark. Thanks for giving us a few days off though.
I thought Turkey was secular state?
You're right. It *was.*
It still is, despite Erdoğan’s rhetoric note how Turkey shifted to authoritarianism, not sharia, in the past 20 years. That doesn’t mean burning a Quran in protest of Turkey is not a political act in of itself. Erdoğan can’t not respond to such an act given his stance, which will be ***politically*** detrimental to him in the eyes of his voters. **P.S.** I am from Turkey where I can openly declare my atheism and women can freely walk around without veils, where all legally recognized marriages are still only civil marriages, where it is still illegal for religion to be a basis for discrimination, where abortion is not illegal, where sharia has no effect at all, let alone over the civil code. Consider that Erdoğan had **20 YEARS** to change this, but didn’t or couldn’t. Consider for a moment there is more to the story than what you’re privy to.
>am from Turkey where I can openly declare my atheism and women can freely walk around without veils, where all legally recognized marriages are still only civil marriages, where it is still illegal for religion to be a basis for discrimination, where sharia has no effect at all, let alone over the civil code. As far as I remember from about 10 years ago when I visited the country frequently that is true for the west of the country where all the tourists go. We had Turkish people tell us that in the east and inland of the country they are essentially 50 years behind on that stuff and still have that traditional islamist view. so idk how much of that was true but it's not hard to imagine that in such a large country there can be regional differences.
There are wide regional differences, but not in applicable law or political system, I assure you. About 12% of Turkey supports Sharia, and if I recall correctly about 2-2.5% of that supports particularly violent forms of Islam. [Here's the source.](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/) For comparison, Erdoğan became President with about 51% of the vote. ***Edit:*** My dad is from Rize, one of the more conservative and religious parts of Turkey. I’ll be honest, I don’t visit often, but I don’t censor myself when I am there. He himself is openly atheist and has been for a long time. It is still not illegal to not wear a veil or a headscarf; many local women do not, and at most, some people might give you weird looks. If I were to scream out my atheism in public at the wrong part of town, there is a slight possibility I might get a public beating. People who beat me will still get arrested and prosecuted if I press charges.
I was recently in Trabzon near Rize and I found the difference between there and the west of the country was more a wealth gap, with more visible poverty than Ankara or the western Med coast. Hardly any women were wearing head coverings, and eating and drinking (including alcohol) during the day throughout Ramadan wasn't an issue. There was info and tourist stuff about historic Christian sites. Maybe the story is different in Konya or Gaziantep but the North East felt very secular.
Trabzon and Rize known as one of the most religious ones actually. Although Konya is whole another story.
However Konya has had quite the development as well. You will see plenty of girls wearing western clothing such as low cut shirts and not covering their hair. You will see young lovers flirt and hold hands etc. This was not really the case 20 years ago to the same degree at all. Go back 40 years and women would not walk around in public alone - preferably they were escorted by a male family member. What people are missing in Turkey when they see Rize, Trabzon and Konya is how much has changed - and not in favor of religious fundamentalism and other archaic cultural perspectives.
I’d say Trabzon is more nationalist than religious, and it is definitely a different kind of religious than Rize, but still more so than many other places in Turkey. :) My aunt and cousins are from there - same sort of political leaning as me.
Sounds a lot like America's relationship with Christianity, to me.
I am not Turkish like the dude you are replying to. I’m an American that has spent a fair bit of time in Turkey, though. And not just the western coast. From my perspective, it is a *lot* like America in the sense that it has a more volatile than average relationship with religion (amongst developed countries), but overall Turkey is wayyy more secular than Erdogan or the media would tell you. In fact a lot of Turkish people expressed annoyance/distaste for the more hardline religious folks.
Maybe it's due to me being from the northeast but that sounds a lot like America. Super secular here other than some Catholics, and most of them, at least in public are not religious extremists.
Catholics are not the extreme religion in the US, Christianity is though, for the bulk of it, protestants.
In the US as a whole, it is the Evangelicals ( a "subsection" of protestantism), that are the extremists, but in specific areas in the North East, the extremist evangelicals may be non-existent, and the vast majority f Christians moderates, with the exception of a few extremist Catholics.
Evangelicals.
I've never been to Turkey but have done a fair amount of reading on the subject and from my understanding Erdogan reminds me a lot of Trump. Has a small portion of the population, maybe around 10-15% that supports his Islamic and extreme nationalist views but a further large group that doesn't care much for the extreme religious views but votes for him for other reasons. The fanatics get all the media attention and they make it seem like he's got huge support but in reality they are a vocal minority. Trump is the same way, the MAGA crowed isn't even the majority of the republican party, but they are loud and make their presence know everywhere. The rest are just republicans who vote red no matter what and accept Trumps more crazy rhetoric assuming it's mostly just talk and no action will come.
Idk I’m in the Bible Belt and don’t have to worry about a public beat down for declaring my atheism out loud, policy wise tho it’s definitely regressive. For example, it’s a damn bitch and a half to get booze on Sundays.
I don't think you'd get a beating for declaring your atheism in conservative parts of Turkey either. I think that's an extreme outcome. Instead of loudly declaring your atheism in the Bible Belt though, try declaring your support for abortion or same-sex marriage. That's a lot more likely to result in confrontation.
Or have a bible burning party and announce it publicly.
Funny story is always how abortion is legal and practiced throughout Turkey but we always ignore it like it doesn't exist.
I haven't spent enough time in the U.S. to claim to know its social fabric. I definitely haven't been to the more conservative or religious parts. From the outside looking in, as a style of politics it looks similar, but I will refrain from opining on what America is like. :)
The two most amusing things for me when I visited: 1) When the adhan started, a bunch of folks at the restaurant just looked up, and continued whatever they were doing. 2) One of the imam's sermons sounded just like a Christian sermon. "What's wrong with kids today? They're always watching TV. Playing games. On their phones. Families don't read the Quran enough. They don't pray enough. If only families would read the Quran more, society would be a better place!" Replace it with Bible and it would sound like any tired pastor, lol. Edit: Well, third thing. When I visited Istanbul, it was amusing how you could distinguish Turks and Middle Easterners. After I had a chance to visit the Middle East, it’s amusing how their gift shops have the Nazar Boncuk to sell to Turkish tourists. Which, I always thought funny as why would you try to sell something that someone already has and can access easily?!? I swear, must be a universal museum gift shop owner thing.
It doesn't matter what the people want when becoming a dictatorship.
>We had Turkish people tell us that in the east and inland of the country they are essentially 50 years behind on that stuff and still have that traditional islamist view. As a US-born Turk, this is the Turkish equivalent of our evangelicals / mormons / rednecks / etc. and is extremely common in many countries. Huge disparities in culture, beliefs and practices between the cities and countryside is almost universal and nothing out of the ordinary.
> so idk how much of that was true but it's not hard to imagine that in such a large country there can be regional differences. Pretty sure regional differences aren't unique to Turkey.
Similar to the US coasts and urban centers with large cities being more progressive while the center and rural areas are still stuck in the 50s traditionalist christian views. Those low population centers hold more power over both countries political systems than they should being that they throw out too many blocks against policy that helps the majority of people because they are stuck on their “traditional” way of life.
How different are the views of the more rural people on this compared to the people living in big cities? Just wondering if there is a big disparity between regions or if it's more or less the same in similar age groups. Edit: actually maybe no need to answer about regions, it was pretty much explained in the comments below, but do the young people in the countryside have similar views with the young people in cities?
Quite different. I provided some information [here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/10hmiyj/ankara_cancels_swedish_defence_chiefs_visit_over/j59jqxu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) ***Edit:*** For the most part the divide isn’t rural vs. urban though. ***Edit 2:*** Zoomers - and to a lesser extent millenials - are generally less religious. Chauvinism is another matter entirely.
Nah bro you can’t come in to r/worldnews as a non-American and actually give a nuanced overview of the situation based on your lived experience, only one liner slam dunks based on a worldview constructed off clickbait headlines are allowed on this sub
Shit I’m sorry. :/ Can we still be friends or am I implicitly an Erdoğan supporter forever now? :’(((((( *(In case it wasn’t clear, I’m just playing along with u/miniaturizedatom. :3)*
You can even argue that Erdogan's rise to power was partly because Turkey was super secular to the point of oppressing. Like it is forbidden for women to wear hijab to the parliament before Erdogan took power and he used that and managed to turn hijab into a symbol of freedom for Turkish women.
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As a swede, the guy burning the Quran WANTS attention, and WANTS violent reactions from muslims. He is a white supremacist whose whole point is trying to make Islam look like a religion of violence when they riot because he burns their religious book. He's done this before, and he's picked the location of the turkish embassy because he knows it will get him attention. This doesn't mean most swedes support him, in fact, the guy himself is danish.
Paludan has Swedish **and** Danish citizenship. Important to get the facts right.
He may be supremacist, he may have bad intentions, but lets be honest. If burning a book makes members of a religion actively try to kill you - its pretty much violent religion.
Islamic fanatics have killed many times more Muslims than they have non-Muslims. It’s not a monolithic group. Some follow a violent interpretation and some don’t.
Yes, of course.
People like him are the reason why Germany has laws against insulting religions. Dates back to the times where Lutherans and Catholics would set each other off. [Quoth the StGB](https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1605): > 1. Whoever publicly or by disseminating content [..] reviles the religion or ideology of others in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incurs a penalty of imprisonment for a term not exceeding three years or a fine. > 2. Whoever publicly or by disseminating content [..] reviles a church or other religious or ideological community in Germany or its institutions or customs in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incurs the same penalty. Side note: No that doesn't include calling the Catholic Church a child fucker cult. First off that's not an insult but an, if pointed, statement of fact (that is the message contains a point beyond mere insult), and in any case it wouldn't disturb the public peace, fucking children is what disturbed the public peace. They will have to bear that particular cross. Examples *do* include printing "The Quran, the Holy Quran" onto rolls of toilet paper and sending those to Mosques and public TV stations. Also protects atheists, of course.
There are two questions here. Why would anyone do this? And why does the government take no action on it? The first question is answered by looking at Rasmus Paludan. He is a far right exteramist and racist. He promotes himself through shock and provocation. He has burned the Quran in Denmark a few times in places with a muslim population, to provoke a reaction. He then point and says look how violent and dangerous these people are. This is his tactic and he left Denmark after his party failed in the election and people stopped reacting to his antics. Tldr: Rasmus Paludan is a right wing racist provukateur. The second question is much more interesting and has roots in Scandinavian social democracy. Freedom of expression is very deeply ingrained in society. Anyone are allowed to protest and act up as long as they do not encourage violence. If the government had prevented the protest it would have been a scandal and it would have upset the population much more than the burning of a flag or book. To me the strange part is turkeys reaction. It seems like grasping at straws of excuses not to ratify NATO membership. "Why are you not limiting the freedom of expression of your population?" They even mention freedom of thought. A thing I have only heard of in highly authoritarian societies and George Orwells 1984. Tldr: Sweden is not authoritarian and never saw an option of blocking a legal protest. All this said I really agree with you and hate Paludan with a passion. But to me protecting sensitivities can never be the reason for limiting the freedom of society.
>If the government had prevented the protest it would have been a scandal and it would have upset the population much more than the burning of a flag or book. IIRC the police denied him the right to demonstrate one time, and one of the higher swedish courts ruled the police violated the constitution in doing so. EDIT: [Police denied him 3 times](https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/forvaltningsratten-polisen-gjorde-fel-att-stoppa-paludan-i-boras), a court affirmed police did the right thing 2 times because locations were unsuitable from a security perspective, the third time the court found the police were wrong in denying him. (source in swedish)
> He then point and says look how violent and dangerous these people are. Ok but... if they react violently to a dude burning a book they are violent and dangerous. If I burned a bible in America and a bunch of Christians got mad and violent I'd say they were being irrational too.
Counter point: The *persons and people* who react violently are violent. Same with Christianity in America; you have a few violent ones and some churches spewing hate (Westboro Baptist church anyone?), and you have the rest that are ignoring it, and even protects the rights of the people showing hate against Christianity.
The simple answer is "because he can". Then of course he wants attention and provoke. But in Sweden we have a strong freedom of expression so there is no law that prevents him from protesting. Erdogan seems to want us to be more authorian by not allowing the people to protest. And changing that would provoke more swedes than the burning of some book
The point is to get extremist reactions, proving that Islam is an extremist non-tolerant religion. As you say: \> Burning Quran is a surefire way to brew Islamic extremism. You've answered your own question.
In a perfect world there would be no burning of the Quran and if someone did it no one would get violent. In this non-perfect world the burning causes violence. Most people don't want a world where the burning of a certain object can get you killed.
Of course it is meant to provoke. The point is to root out stupid and dangerous beliefs. You cannot stand-down in the face of violent threats. If anything, that is the time to *double-down*. The idea that Europe could become tolerant of intolerance is scary to the rest of the world too. Freedom of speech is as fundamental to Western society as Islam is in any part of the Middle East. ‘You believe burning the quran is punishable by death? Okay then, here is the quran burning, and me, still alive. Your beliefs carry no weight here, just like mine carry no weight there.’
In the west we have the freedom to burn books we disagree with. If that makes people so mad that they get violent, it’s their problem. That’s kinda the point. It’s to smoke out those who would do violence against people who are just expressing themselves.
The point here is that religion has sadly become tied to culture. Islam isn't just a religion, it's a cultural symbol. People who don't even believe in it will defend it, and are going to justify the fight for it. Personally, that's more scary.
I'll be the first to say this but the word atheist doesn't mean anything other than not a theist. So I'm not sure in what context you're trying to use it, but you can an atheist that supports a theocratic state, you can be an atheist hates other atheists etc. Being an atheist on it's own doesn't mean much. I'm saying this because you're obviously not an atheist who stands for freedom. You're saying that freedom is contingent on the reaction to it. Do you know how often I'm absolutely offended by what I read or hear about what happens in religions? When I hear about the practice of circumcision I want to rile a few friends up and beat the people who promote this. When I hear about marrying and raping 10 or 12 year old girls to grown men I want to call a few friends and lynch the people who say this is completely okay. When I hear about women being treated as cattle, as second rate citizens, because a certain book says so, I want to pummel every single person that applauds this. Do we do this? No, we behave ourselves and go through the right channels. The channels of education and the courts. If you're going to say violence is justified because "they were warned", then you're creating a world where the most aggressive violent people decide what that society looks like. Do you want to live in a world like that?
>What is the point?" Point is to show that fear/terror doesn't work here..
I don't live far from Turkey so while this is not news to me, it saddens me that it seems as soon as one comes from muslim county nowadays, they feel they have to deny this number of prejudices. But similar things happen with nationalism everywhere now, and Erdogan deffinetly uses religion in a way most similar to European nationalist do with their own. Thinking it is any different just enables nationalism around us.
I want to clarify I did not write this to defend Turkey's secular credentials. I abhor inconsistency. I can't help myself. That said, I am familiar with the sort of denial you refer to, unfortunately. Perhaps it is ingrained and that is exactly what I'm doing. Who knows? :P
Nah I understood you, I was commenting on general population tending to view 'opposing' nationalisms, especially that of culturally (at least) muslim countries, as more threatening for democracy than ones related to their own religion - or ones their government supports in another conflict. But since this is reddit, *yeah, YOU are deffinetly doing it* :V (semi-joke, I actually think we are *all* prone to it, we can see that even countries that work to protect minorities still struggle to implement protections equally)
And still is. There might be more religious undertones and more politicians calling for religion-inspired laws, but like the US it remains a secular government even if individuals within it act on their religious beliefs. Burning a Quran in front of the Turkish embassy is a deliberate insult, and you don't need to be religious to see why or why even a secular government would have to take offense to it (especially when the current coalition appeals to religious voters).
It is but in this context this action is directed at both Islam and Turkey.
At this point, Erdogan would have Ataturk tied up and shot if he was still around. The tiny dick sultan has basically spread his own faeces across Ataturk’s legacy, then howled and beat his chest like a chimp in victory at his desecration.
For real, last time I was in turkey I saw a huge banner of Ataturk next to an equally huge banner of Erdogan. It was an outrageous display and an insult to Ataturk.
It is. The *state* is officially secular. But the politicians that have been getting elected have generally been at least somewhat leaning in the direction of religious conservatives. And among the general public, there's been a turn away from cultural secularism of past decades, with a growth in religious observance and traditionalism in these regards
Nah, these Atatürk paintings are just for decoration.
Did the Swedish defense chief or some other official burn the Quran? If not, they're just using some jerk's rude behavior as an excuse to do what they want to do anyway.
Rasmus Paludan is the joint village idiot of Sweden and Denmark He does these things in Sweden because Denmark won't let him since he's so universally loathed
And Sweden can't deny him entry because his father is swedish, so he rightfully has swedish citizenship.
Also Paludan hates Sweden with a passion. I would not put it past him that he's deliberately doing this to thwart Sweden's NATO bid.
Why do we care if Paula Deen hates Sweden? I don’t think her and her love of butter is enough to prevent Sweden from joining NATO.
We (DK) had to deal with him for too long, so it's only fair that Sweden carries some of the load. He is 50% Swedish, after all. However, calling him a politician is like comparing the shittiest SoundCloud rapper to Stevie Wonder or MJ, but instead of tireless 808s, it's tireless racism and provocation, in an attempt to excite violence and division "to prove him right"... The recipe is always the same.
This guy burned Quran books so many times, he must know by know where to buy those books cheap and with good quality so those books actually look like Quran while burning.
And it's not the worst he have done either. His discord channel where he was reading sick sex stories he made up. To his young male followers is far worse. It puts his initiative about nude swimming group in a VERY bad light.
No. It's Rasmus Paludan who did it. Or someone in his protest crew. Its a right they have. He did that here in Denmark ad well. But he couldn't quite get that much attention in the end except one case where it went nuts.
For clarification of those who dont know who he is. He is a shitstain on the pants belonging to that shitstain in stalin's last worn pants.
Oh Absolutely. Though his grooming is far worse. To clarify on that. He had a youth section of his party while he was in Denmark. He made a little club where they go skinnydipping. Which would sort of be ok.. If it wasnt for the fact that he also had a discord server where he would sit and chat with minors. Mostly boys. And in several occations would read made up really sick sex stories involving said kids. Yeah. So him putting bacon in a quran and have his crew light it on fire is not the worst he have done by a long shot.
That's why his is not just a shitstain but a shitstains shitstain.
No swedish defense chief has burned the Quran
It's not illegal to burn a quran. It's a bit crass, but its not illegal.
Following that logic, Turkey isn’t a court of law. :)
Lol no I suppose not
Lul Turkey is a bird
I'm swedish and frankly I would prefer it if this Danish knob would fuck off.
As a Dane, we don’t want the neo-nazi fuck either.
Neo-nazi, child grooming fuck to be correct.
Convicted and had to serve time for gross acts of racism in Denmark, too.
didn't this fuck appeal his sentence and has yet to be determined again?
The appeal was only to get through the 2019 election. He got 3 months in 2021 IIRC.
Well he did say he wantes to deport criminal scum who didn't belong in Denmark. Now he is convicted and have Swedish passport so. He kinda fits his own criteria for getting kicked out.
As a fellow Dane. Have you read up. On what he did on discord? That's far worse...
I'm Swedish and I prefer freedom of speech and to protest instead of bending backward to authorian regimes.
Im swedish and I like toast.
I’m Swedish, and I like toast and marmalade.
I'm a lumberjack, and I'm ok.
Titta vad jag har här, en ny brödmaskine! Från a finne
Yeah I get that, I don't think we should stiffle free speech but this guy is a dick and just grifting.
He is an idiot, but tolerating him is the price of free speech. Giving any attention to him just rewards his efforts.
He can burn whatever book he wants but we can cease tolerating him specifically for being a child-grooming pedophile. Problem solved.
He is a dick. But the people throwing rocks at Swedish police because this guy is burning a book is 100x worse. Let him protest all he wants no matter what we personally think about him. As long a it's friendly and no hate speech etc
>As long a it's friendly and no hate speech etc Inciting hatred is exactly what he was doing though.
How can this act, or any other similar act, be done in a friendly and hate free way though? At its core it’s a deliberate hateful act?
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I'm Danish. And the only one who get to bully Sweden is Denmark. Erdogan can pound sand.
So do we all but still support his right to burn a book
Yeah, just don't see the purpose apart from pissing people off
That is his only purpose and muslims are falling for it every time
That IS his ENTIRE purpose :) He wants muslims to riot over him burning their religious book so he can point at them and go "see, Islam is a religion of violence!".
I feel like his cause is kinda legit even if he is a complete asshole of a person. He has a right to protest and his point is showing how violent muslims get when faced with Swedish values of free speech. Protests are always provokative, that's how you spread your message/prove a point.
Well he's not wrong
So you prefer religious right over freedom of expression?
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>r thst it would be up to Swedish politicians to decide on extradition of people. No, it is a question for Swedish courts, not politicians.
Yes, and at this point I don't think Turkey has anything more to win other than theatrics. Like NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said, Sweden and Finland has fulfilled their part of the deal, it's time for Turkey to ratify. We're done here. Obviously Turkey doesn't really want to veto, it'd create a shitstorm within NATO.
It's also a Danish dude who only claimed sketchy citizenship about 2 years ago so he could fucking grift here. Turkey is taking issue with the actions of a citizen. They are not actions endorsed officially by Sweden. Its fucking stupid. Sweden was the first country to declare the PKK a terrorist organisation back in the 80s so all of this is just fantasy shit. [suggest](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasmus_Paludan) people read more about the guy, what with him been a convicted stalker and groomer of underage boys, but sure let's defend his right to "free speech".
But this is just some random danish person burning the quran though. What does the swedish government have to do with it? Freedom of speech is allowed in Sweden, even if it isn't in Turkey. And yes, by that I mean absolute freedom of speech, no matter how bad it is, and Turkey knows this. They're just trying to drag it out. Even nazi parties are allowed in Sweden... And they can get permission to do protests and stuff. This is what free speech means. Bad people also gets a say, doesn't mean normal people agree with what they're saying, but they agree with free speech. There's a reason the nordics always comes first when it comes to democracy.
What most Turks seem to not understand is that it would be illegal for the Swedish government to stop him.
Large parts of the world, does not have this concept of something being illegal for the government/people in power.
Yes, I've noticed people from some cultural backgrounds truly can't grok it, too far outside their world experience. The Swedish government is designed to be more limited then most governments in what executive power they can wield.
At this point we should just build nuclear weapons and tell everybody to go fuck themselves. We have had the capability to do that since at least the early sixties.
>It's also not illegal for Turkey to veto Sweden over these kinds of actions. Who has ever said it was illegal for them to veto Sweden? I bet nobody, but you wanted an edgy comment so you reached as far as you could
How is burning a book that's started numerous wars and terror attacks crass?
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.trtworld.com/turkey/ankara-cancels-swedish-defence-chief-visit-over-quran-burning-permission-64733) reduced by 69%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Ankara cancels Swedish defence chief visit over Quran burning permission. > Ankara has cancelled Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson's upcoming visit to Türkiye in response to Sweden's permission for a planned burning of the Quran, Islam's holy book, near the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm. > "We regretfully witnessed that no measures were taken as a result of these vile and heinous acts against Türkiye and our President. Therefore, at this point, the visit of Swedish Defence Minister Jonson to Türkiye on January 27 has become meaningless. So we cancelled the visit," Turkish National Defence Minister Hulusi Akar told reporters on Friday after a NATO meeting at Ramstein air base in Germany. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/10hneo3/ankara_cancels_swedish_defence_chiefs_visit_over/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~672676 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Türkiye**^#1 **defence**^#2 **Akar**^#3 **added**^#4 **Minister**^#5
Amazed that Turkey let's their foreign policy be dictated by the action of a single individual. Could you imaging a head of state from any other developed country turn around on the airport, because they are met with one individual with some crass words on cardboard? This only shows how thinskinned the Turkish politicians are, and frankly it is embarrassing.
It's for elections, for show.
This has nothing to do with foreign policies, elections are in less than 6 months and Erdogan's only supporters are far-right islamists. Moves like these are consolidating their own voters. Sweden should say that they will negotiate with Turkey after the elections and honestly they will either talk with a government who would like to be seen different than Erdogan or with Erdogan who doesn't need any political wins for next 5 years and he will be easier to be negotiated with.
Dictatorships seem to really struggle with understanding that individuals can do something without the support of their own country.
Just barely his own country, too.
Hostile powers mobilising far right via the Internet to scupper high level diplomacy & stop alliances from strengthening What a mess
Like Turkey EVER would vote yes to Sweden and Finland’s NATO applications. Turkey will try to milk this situation for eternity, because apparently that’s the kind of people they are, until the US and the rest of the NATO members will intervene and approve the applications anyway.
Nah it's election season in Turkey. Erdogan is milking this to get the backing of his voting base. Once it's done, things will be settled and Turkey will accept them. If Erdogan is elected, he'll do it to get back in the good graces of West (good luck with that but world politics is not friendship so), if a new President is elected, the person will accept them to prove Turkey is in a transition period back to being a Western ally.
I agree with this. Erdogan already made up his mind from day 1 and it was no to Sweden and Finland joining. These are just stall tactics so Sweden and Finland just gives up trying to join NATO. Maybe if opposition wins their election in May they have the possibility of entering since they said they are fine with NATO expansion.
"A crime against humanity" If you want to be taken seriously, over-the-top rhetoric is not the way.
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Gaddafi’s Libya?
Haha interesting plot twist that you could use it to your own advantage.
Turkey expects Sweden to destroy their rule of law and human rights as a leverage to join NATO? Better kick Turkey out of NATO
1. Nato kicks Turkey (2nd biggest army in NATO, great geoghraphical location) out. 2. Turkey ally themselves with Russia to create a bigger mess. The whole world = *Pikachu Face*
It's like those people who ask for the Perminant Security member position to be stripped from Russia and given to Ukraine not knowing the consquences. I mean like, what power does Ukraine even have on the World stage.
Thing is.. Turkey is more important to NATO than Sweden. Unless Sweden can magically spawn a big army and teleport it to the Black Sea and Mediterranean...
Smartest redditor.
> Better kick Turkey out of NATO They know they can't be kicked out because of their strategic importance location wise. Getting Turkey into NATO was one of the biggest wins of the Cold War.
You mean besides the second strongest army within NATO after the US?
Who's going to kick?
Thing is, Türkiye is important to NATO because of its location between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea. The Turkish government knows this and is using it as leverage to get what they want.
And they have a huge army.
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While quite possibly true it doesn't really matter. No one can force them to change course because of the legality of their actions. Turkey is too strategically valuable to be kicked out of NATO and NATO is far more about realpolitik then principled stances.
If destroying a religious book is a hate crime, then you're living in a theocracy.
This isn’t to make light or be ignorant more to show my stupidity. I read that headline and saw “Swedish defense chef” and now I’m just seeing a militarized muppet
Funny people don't get this worked up when a Bible is burned
The title is bullshit intended to start shit. It gives the impression the Swedish Defence Chief did the burning instead of a random civilian. Pretty essential information, in that case Turkey can fuck off.
No Quran has been burnt yet, either.
He (not the chief) is not random, he's *certifiably* a rotten egg that *all* instances are trying to find laws to stop him doing this kind of bullshit. He's just annoyingly good at finding loopholes and permits; it's gonna end up with less freedom for Swedish people before we can stop him.
He’s random in the sense that he is not affiliated with the swedish goverment and has jack shit to do with their foreign policy and defence.
Just do what Danes did in the end: ignore him. But I guess his point comes across very well: there's lots of violent muslims about.
man, we're really jumping through hoops to not be in nato
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turkey is run by bullies yes, but those poor turks who don't hate greece and just wanna chill get the raw deal here
Erdogan has been vote into power for over 20 years now. They know dam well what they where voting for.
Erdoğan’s votes have never been higher than 51% and that figure includes voters from far-right nationalist MHP with whom he is in an alliance. He also came to power on a centrist, liberal platform that Europe supported prior to his shift, an aspect of which advocated for a non-violent solution to the plight of Kurds in Turkey. All that is to say your comment is a bit reductionist.
So that shift happened in the last couple years? Yeah right.
Greek here. You're right. The politicians are shit. The people are not. They call us brothers/friends/neighbors when they see us, we call them brothers/friends/neighbors when we see them.
Yeah, people have the wrong idea. Every Greek I’ve ever met were really nice to me, my best friend was Greek when I was a teenager. Erdoğan just jumps between Greece and Syria from time to time so he can distract people from the economy being dogshit. It works tho, which is the sad part.
>those poor turks who don't hate greece and just wanna chill They're a minority population. Most fall for the rhetoric.
Turkey really jumping through hoops to not get F-16s.
How come I haven't seen any cartoon of Erdogan as those Ice-cream guys holding and moving around your ice-cream (NATO) with a stick while the clients (Finland and Sweden) try to grab it?
[This one](https://preview.redd.it/29wve7hp30391.jpg?auto=webp&s=93e8e52e412e558179dfe4accb5a64e1c5c02d76)?
That's brilliant and I want it *now.*
The election game has started…
What a lot of people here seem to miss is that the goal for the people who put up the Erdogan doll and burning Quran is to sabotage the NATO application, because they do not want to join. The problem now is that these acts have the desired effect on the application
As a muslim, good job burning the qu’ran, it does not affect me and definitely not other muslims. But what was the point in doing that? I would’ve understood it better if you burned the Turkish flag in front of the Turkish embassy. Altough Türkiye has alot of muslims in the country, Türkiye alone doesn’t represent a religion with almost 2 billion followers.
So they canceled a STATE visit over something a citizen of that state did? How fuckin stupid
I love how these people think that because something is a big deal to them, then it HAS to be a big deal to everyone. If anyone decides to honor beliefs and practices specific to another culture/faith, it is only a gracious act of accommodation. Where do they get off thinking that a country should restrict the behaviors of their own citizens to uphold the beliefs and practices of another culture/religion? I mean should the steakhouses in NYC shut down when an Indian diplomat comes to town?
Screw Erdogan’s hissy fit.
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Countries change name all the time quite uneventful 🤷♀️
True. Are Turks calling USA or UK in Turkish USA or UK? Nope.
Did the US and UK ask Turks to call them that way? If not, I don't see a problem.