Guest5 wrote:
> Do you think a civil war could start between secular and religious
> Turks? When I visited Turkey, the contrast was stark. The urban
> elites and the Turks living in the western half of the country
> smoked, drank beer, and wore bikinis. The east was a bunch of
> impoverished country bumpkins. The poor support the religious
> parties because of the welfare benefits these parties offer. I
> find it impossible to believe the western oriented Turks would
> tolerate an Islamic take over. I apologize for asking so many
> questions earlier. I know this blog requires a lot of work. Thank
> you.
My view of the situation in Turkey is that the secular versus
religious split is more political, and unlikely to be a fault line
across which a war will occur. This is based on the fact that the
coup fizzled very quickly, and there seems to be relatively little
opposition to all of Erdogan's purges. If there were going to be a
civil war, we would have seen signs of it by now.
However, to get a definitive answer to that question, one would have
to research what happened in World War I. We know that there was a
major ethnic fault line between the Turks and the Armenians, but some
research would be required to see if there was a deeper split within
the Turks. I suspect not, but it has to be researched.
We also know that there's a fault line between the Turks and the
Kurds. Another interesting question is what will happen to the
millions of Syrians now living in Turkey.