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To Progress and Back: The Rise and Fall of Erdogan’s Turkey
No other state has catapulted itself into the future quite as rapidly, nor relapsed back into its dark past as suddenly, as Turkey. First there was modernization, and now the beginnings of a civil war. The country is divided by mistrust and hate.
by Hasnain Kazim, Maximilian Popp and Samiha Shafy
Spiegel International
This is Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s country: a gorgeous mountain scenery on the Black Sea. On lush, green hillsides, people pick tea leaves and only interrupt their work to pray.
Erdogan calls them “his people,” and for them, he erected an Ottoman-style mosque atop one of the highest peaks. It stands so high above the villages that it is barely discernable from below. A death-defying path winds up the mountain and takes about 45 minutes to traverse in a car, but many people here make the climb by foot anyway in order to feel closer to God — and to Erdogan, their beloved president.
“I wish I could kiss his hand!” cries Aysel Aksay, 40. She is out of breath but her smile radiates all the same. Aksay is from Güneysu, the village at the foot of the mountain from which Erdogan’s family also hails.
Continue Reading at Spiegel.de…
Source: http://financialsurvivalnetwork.com/2015/09/to-progress-and-back-the-rise-and-fall-of-erdogans-turkey/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=to-progress-and-back-the-rise-and-fall-of-erdogans-turkey
