Turkey Basting
By Jack Kinsella
Turkey is one of the great mysteries of modern times insofar as Bible prophecy is concerned. According to the Book of Ezekiel, the pro-Western, legally secular NATO member and aspirant to membership in the European Union is numbered among the Gog-Magog allies that are scheduled to invade Israel in the last days.
“Son of man, set thy face against Gog, the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, And say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal:”
“Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya with them; all of them with shield and helmet: Gomer, and all his bands; the house of Togarmah of the north quarters, and all his bands: and many people with thee.” (Ezekiel 38:2,5-6)
The names assigned to the protagonists in the battle are mainly those of the sons and grandsons of Noah, and correspond to the areas in which they settled.
What Ezekiel prophesied is an end-time battle involving the following nations coming against Israel: Russia (Gog); Turkey (which includes elements of Magog, Meschech, Tubal Gomer, Togarmah); Sudan (Kush) and Libya (Put).
“And thou shalt come from thy place OUT OF THE NORTH PARTS, thou, and many people with thee, all of them riding upon horses, a great company, and a mighty army…” (Ezekiel 38:15)
Take a look at the map. Turkey is directly north of Israel. Geographically speaking, then, the invasion must go through Turkey.
While only these last three regions are openly dedicated to the destruction of Israel, Turkey has traditionally been a major part of the Western military alliance in the Middle East.
Russia is the wild card. Russia is at once with and against everybody, depending on its own self-interests. And Ezekiel clearly says that ‘Gog’ will be drawn, as if it had a ‘hook in its jaws’ into the conflict, seemingly against its better judgment.
But Turkey, while largely Islamic, is Constitutionally secular. Turkey was formerly part of the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic caliphate the ruled the Middle East under Islamic law from 1517 to 1917.
The Ottoman Empire, which was centered in Turkey, had allied itself with Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany in WWI and fell to the Western Allies when the German alliance was defeated.
Turkey’s Constitution asserts that Turkey is a secular and democratic republic, deliberately breaking from its Islamic past by enshrining the principle that it gets its authority to govern from the people.
In an effort to ensure that it remains secular, the army is charged with the role of guardian of the secular and unitary nature of the Republic. When the Islamic Welfare Party won a significant percentage of seats in the Turkish elections in 1998, the army ordered the party banned, fearing it would replace the Constitution with Islamic Law.
The Welfare Party went through a number cosmetic changes, and, thanks to a minor amendment to its constitution, was reborn as the Islamic Party which now governs Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Assessment
Secular Turkey, while still officially secular, has gradually been returning to its Islamic roots, due at least in part to the European Union’s rebuff of its efforts to join the EU.
One secular Turk alarmed at the Islamization of Turkey told the International Herald Tribune;
“In a very quiet, deep way, you can sense an Islamization,” said Bedrettin Usanmaz, a jewelry shop owner in Denizli. “They’re not after rapid change. They’re investing for 50 years ahead.”
For the first time in 70 years, Islam has returned to the Turkish public school system. The government began handing out little red prayer books in public schools containing the message; “Pray in the Muslim way. Get others to pray that way, too.”
By Islamic standards, that is a pretty mild statement, given that Islam’s central message is “Get others to pray the Muslim way — and if they refuse, cut off their heads.”
But by Turkish secular standards, the fact the government is handing out Muslim prayer books, no matter how mild the message, is a warning sign of a shift towards the bad old days of Islamic rule.
“Islam is not like other religions,” Kadim Yildirim, a history teacher in Denizli from an opposition labor union told the IHT. “It influences every part of your life, even your bedroom.”
Yildirim is part of a number of concerned teachers who say that the new teachers hired in recent years, often from Islamic backgrounds, are adding up to a change in the education system.
And THAT is where Islam is most deadly. In the schools. In the Palestinian territories, the students indoctrinated by Yasser Arafat in the 1990’s are the teachers indoctrinating the students of 2007. The result was the electoral victory of Hamas in the last election by a majority vote.
There is no way to turn back the clock once it starts ticking. There are now only two ways to effectively end radical Islam in the Palestinian territories. Reeducate the entire population — or kill every Palestinian under forty.
The former is impossible, the latter is unthinkable.
“They are coming to power, and it scares the hell out of the established elite,” said Baskin Oran, a professor of international relations at Ankara University. The two groups “have nothing in common,” he told the IHT. “Try to find a similarity.”
It should be scaring everybody. Not just the Turkish ‘established elite’.
As a NATO member, Turkey was once the West’s most reliable ally in the Middle East. When the US-led coalition was laying out the invasion plans for Saddam’s Iraq in 2003, the US sent the Fourth Infantry Division north by ship to Turkey.
The US invasion plan depended on a ‘pincers movement’ in which the 4th ID would sweep into Iraq from the north and meet US forces of the 3rd ID coming in from the south through Kuwait.
Turkey was no friend of Saddam Hussein and had functioned as an ally in the 1991 Gulf War. It’s NATO airbase at Incirlik played a crucial role in the 1991 air war. Coalition air forces stationed at Incirlik patrolled the Iraqi ‘no-fly’ zone over Iraq for the next twelve years.
Despite their political differences with Saddam, the Turks unexpectedly refused to participate in the invasion of another Muslim country, and, at the last minute, with troops ships in its harbor, refused to let the Fourth ID disembark or use its territory.
The State Department was literally ‘shocked:’ “They did what?” one official reportedly blurted out at the US State Department on learning of Ankara’s refusal.
One by one, the pieces of Ezekiel’s puzzle continue to fall into place.
It once seemed impossible that Russia could be drawn into an invasion of Israel as part of an Iranian Islamic coalition.
Iran is not Arab, but Persian. Persian-Arab animosity goes back to the days of the Persian Empire of Artaxerxes and Cyrus. Russia, reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union, was seeking closer alliances with the West.
Turkey was member in good standing of NATO, a supplicant for membership in the EU, and a sworn enemy of Iraq. Turkey was the only Islamic state in the Middle East to have a military mutual defense contract with Israel.
The Islamic world was fractured and in shambles. Radical Islam was shunned by most of the national leaders of Islamic world who feared for their own regimes.
Today, most of those regimes have embraced radical Islam as a way of remaining in power. Russia’s nuclear alliance with Iran almost guarantees a Russian response to any Israeli attack on its shared Iranian nuclear facilities.
Turkey’s secular government is shifting its focus away from the West and embracing Islam once again. And the Persians and the Arabs are uniting under the banner of Islam, overturning thousands of years of ethnic animosity. What does it all mean?
“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh… Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled.” (Luke 21:28,32)
Originally Published: June 5, 2007.