Subject:
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Re: My over-simplification of the anti-war movement
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Tue, 1 Apr 2003 12:30:36 GMT
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Viewed:
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348 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Maggie Cambron writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Selçuk Göre writes:
> > Hi guys, a long time passed since I last posted anything here but be sure
> > that I'm still lurking around.
>
> Hi Selçuk! I'm glad to see you posting-- over the past few weeks I would
> sometimes think how it would be good to have someone from Turkey post with
> their take on this whole mess, and of course you were the obvious person I
> thought of! It's nice to know you are still lurking around!
Hi Maggie..:-)
Things are not pretty here. Although the "no to US troops" decision is
mainly based on the usual misorganization of our government, it quite
represents the public opinion about the whole mess. This opinion of course,
has both emotional (which can be quite understandable) and economical reasons.
Turkey's second biggest income is based on tourism, and it is dying very
quickly right now. Some visitors that we expected to meet in Istanbul for
business purposes are canceled their trips becuse of this war thing, for
example, so you can guess what will happen to reservations for this summer,
which are just for touristic purposes (Istanbul is 3000 miles away from
Baghdad, by the way...). The estimated 5 year loss of Turkey income was
about 100 billion US dollars after the first Gulf War, which is half of our
annual national income.
There are also some economical side effects of this war all around the
country, because it creates uncertanity. Just as a sample, I'm working for a
company manufacturing locks, panic exits and door closers, and since the
consruction market is completely stopped as a consequence of the
instability, we stopped, too. For April, 80 percent of employees (470
people) are on payed holiday. If situation continues later, we will be on
haliday again, but this time unpayed.
The last three intelligent(!) cruise missiles landed in our southeastern
cities are not helping much, by the way. I saw some footage on TV showing
local people throwing eggs and stones to the US experts that came to take
over the remains of those misfired missiles. They left the scene in cars
with broken windshields.
As a result, everybody here is swearing about the actions taken by US and
nobody want to see a quick and easy end in coalition(!) forces' favor. Worse
than that, I think this already started to be realized. I don't know what
you are watching on televison in US, but I heard that most of the "unhappy"
news are not aired by your national news channels (dead and prisoned US
soldiers, burning british tanks, self(!) exploding US tanks, soldiers killed
in friendly fire-which is more than half of declared British causalties,
tank fired civilian vehicles, downed apache helicopter-by a 70 something
year old farmer with only a sporting gun, etc.). I'm not saying Al Cazirah
and other channels are much more objective, but at least things are not
broadcasted as a happy fireworks show as it was during the first gulf war.
And when you put together everything that thrown at to you by the media (I
have CNN, CNN Turkey, BBC World, FoxNews, EuroNews and our own news channels
like NTV, SKYnews, HaberTürk), things not seem to be bright for coalition
forces.
I hope I'm not misunderstood by the way. I'm intelligent enough to
defferentiate between individuals and thier misbehaving governments against
the will of the same individuals.
Selçuk
> > Actually I can't see your troops' near future a bright one.
>
> On this I agree. For that reason I can't really bring myself to even read
> more than the first few lines that appear on the web interface of most of
> these debate posts, it is too depressing. So other than reading what you
> have to say, this will pretty much be a drive-by for me.
>
> > I think coalition(!) is just a blink away from creating a new Vietnam.
> >
> > Selçuk
> >
> > PS. I'm not saying Saddam will gain anything from that, I'm just saying the
> > price will be unimaginably high for US.
>
> *sigh* Agreed.
>
> Maggie
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