Saudi Arabia and Turkey seem intent upon the full normalization of relations.
If they proceed with this (despite the fact that a journalist was murdered not TOO long ago in a Saudi embassy on Turkish soil -- which is the sort of thing that might be thought de-normalizing) the fact may significantly impact the balance of power in western Asia.
Looking at the big picture: Turkey was born in a secularist moment The Ottoman Empire was at last dead, killed by the First World War, and it was replaced with a republic that defined itself as NOT being an Islamic power. That meant defining itself as a secularist power, because in western Asia it has always been secularism that serves as the supercessionist threat to Islam.
A century later, though, Erdogan seems intent on removing that threat. He has steered Turkey not just toward Islam (it has long been predominantly Islamic) but toward the politics of Islamism, almost back to the ideas of the Ottomans.
So he and the bone-saw monarchy of Riyadh make for a compatible pair.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteIs the fact that Erdogan changed his position on admitting Sweden and Finland into NATO relevant to his normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia? He now supports their admission. Is that steering Turkey toward secularism rather than toward Islamism? I ask naively, having little background on the subject.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is, it isn't. Turkey is likely going along with the new admissions to NATO on containment-of-Russia reasoning. It has little to do with what kind of country Erdogan wants Turkey to be.
ReplyDeleteNormalization of most anything, these days, entails a lot. Once in a while, people think further than say, the next fifty to one hundred years, to wit, normal relations now will not be what they were, nor can we know just what they WILL be. Economists and social scientists are trying to figure all this out---the ones, that is, for whom history really means something. Chris Hitchens said religion poisons everything. I don't know if 'everything' is too inclusive, but views based on ideological bases must be resolved, in one peaceful way or another. I am a Longview guy. Perhaps these nations have enough of us to work some things out. We can hope.
ReplyDeleteLet's say that religion poisons much. But religion is built into the human psyche. Some of us, including me, are not religious, so to say that religion is built into the human psyche doesn't mean that everyone is religious. Perhaps, for those of us who don't have religion, our rational side suppresses it.
DeleteMy point is that we can't get rid of religion, because the problem lies deeper. Human beings are only partly rational animals, and there is nothing we can do about it. That's how we evolved. I don't mean to imply that we'd be better off if we were purely rational beings. It would nice if we could have our intuitions and some of our emotions (love, not hate, for example), without having to believe in delusions. Perhaps, however, the good and the bad non-rational aspects of our brains come as a package.
Actually, although I would not want to believe in delusions, I recognize that doing so helps some people and can be harmless. Some people are happier for believing in God, and do not, like six of the current Supreme Court justices, try to impose their beliefs on others. Others would be happier if they could believe; Hawthorne said of Melville, "He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief." I am fortunate in that I am not only comfortable in my unbelief; I am happy in it. I would be severely disappointed if evidence of a god were discovered.
DeleteThere is a theoretical notion I am working on which I have described elsewhere. It goes back more than forty years, when I worked in administrative law. A hearing officer I knew well,when asked: what is the law?, replied, "whatever the bell I say it is". This was in the context of a low-bar standard of proof, known as a preponderance of the evidence. Many years later, I understood what he had jokingly [I thought] said. The reality of his answer existed within the context of things. It would have been less relevant, had the standard of proof been the more inclusive 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. So, in many instances, reality is contextual---created by the beholders--- to be whatever they say it is. This is deceptively simplistic, but...More later, I hope. If I have time.
ReplyDeleteYour hearing officer was echoing Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote that the law can be understood as a prediction of "what the judge will do in fact." Or, by implication, the hearing officer pending appeal where that is available. This is not so much subjectivism as perspectivism: it arises from looking at law from the miscreant's point of view. "Will I be subject to penalization if I do X?" is naturally the pressing question for someone who is otherwise tempted to do X but who has the foresight to worry about the consequences.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI have a twisted notion about 'spectivisms and 'jectivisms. Things like perspective, introspective, prospective and retrospective (append, ness, to any you wish) are more intuitive, intentional sorts of senses of 'how things things probably are, not how they might possibly be'.." that was from Nagel and his The View From Nowhere. Things objective, subjective and intersubjective arise from human interactions, beyond what we think privately, without corroboration, argument or debate. So, how we think/behave on a personal, private level is of necessity, different to our interactions with others. Privately, we only need get along with ourselves. Beyond that, in the real world, it is a different story. I have remarked about this contextual reality before, on different blogs. It is a conundrum. Which I am seeking to resolve.
ReplyDelete