[erenyeager]

This is an insidious implicit assertion that because the current mayor is a “good” secular Turk and the “bad” Islamists are protesting, I even note you did not describe these people as turks… this is a typical contrast for Turkey, a division of white and black turks, going back to the time when Turkey was more oppressive towards religious practice for the sake of “secularism”…

This style of bowing down to some altar of laic secularism and appealing to a western audience is quite overdone and out of touch with the modern day west, which mostly accepts freedom to practice religion especially in Anglophone countries.

Luckily with globalization and the internet, more and more these woven narratives are being exposed for their baselessness. It’s clear that Turkey as a whole has continued its choice to vote for its leader Erdogan of the AKP. This is a signal of the fact that most Turks still support this alternate approach to the country, compared to the changes going back to Ataturk which was imposed on the native population.

That is to say, I am always finding curious this group of white Turks and secularists who assume themselves to be above the others and irreverent to their beliefs. Perhaps this arrogance is what continues to be their downfall as they cannot accept sharing power with the other, more religiously oriented Turkey.

[dang]

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar, regardless of how provocative another comment is or you feel it is.

It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've had to warn you about this more than once before.

Edit: it looks like your account is still using HN primarily for ideological battle. In fact, it looks like you've been using HN exclusively for ideological battle. That's seriously not ok. Since you've ignored our previous request to stop doing this, I've banned the account. We don't care what your ideology is, but we do care about not letting accounts abuse HN in this way—whatever they happen to be battling for or against.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [e-mail] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

[erenyeager]

That’s clearly not the case it’s not about ideological battle, the comments are very clearly not only about ideological battle. I’m very disappointed to hear that you came to this conclusion.

[dang]

You've been posting argumentatively in flamewar threads about race, sex, religion, drugs, crime, nationalism, etc., and basically nothing else. That's an abuse of this site, and we already asked you twice to stop. Not cool.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35760046 (April 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34861659 (Feb 2023)

[mrtksn]

You are reading too much into it, there is nothing Islamic about an old fez hat factory. There is no such thing as hat factory values. You are just repeating the overused “ white Turks” idiom which no longer has any credibility since if fell off grace after 20 years of absolute Islamist rule - there is no longer a white Turk establishment. Besides, I’m not Turkish born, I’m an immigrant I cannot be a white Turk.

It’s true that Erdogan won in Turkey again, but we are talking about Istanbul here and in Istanbul he is no longer the most popular one.

[erenyeager]

As for the Fez, it certainly is symbolic of ottoman times, and was famously outlawed by Ataturk in favor of brim caps, in what is called the Hat Revolution [1]. This was part of an assault on older values and also had anti religious elements.

Next, your characterization of Erdogan’s government as 20 years of absolute Islamist rule is a very loose definition. I do not think you can liken all of his rule as absolute and after all Turkey is still a democracy yet. Also he is not “Islamist” except in a loose terminology, as he did not change Turkey’s government system and overturn in favor of Sharia.

You also likened the protesters to an “old api” that interferes with new development… how is one to interpret that except you see the protesters and their values as an old impediment to progress, one which needs to be removed or “updated”? It’s not so long ago there were protests for Taksim square for Gezi park.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_Revolution

[mrtksn]

I like how you make up stuff on the fly but the protest itself wasn't about "disrespecting the fez" but about holding an art exception there. As I said, the place was used as a food market and has nothing to do with fez production anymore. Apparently there were sculptures of goats and the islamists decided that those are knights and got offended. The less unhinged ones said that this is unacceptable because the place is close the the old town, the more unhinged ones acted as the old factory was a religious site and the invaders desacralised it through putting knight sculptures in it. No one brought up any claims about fez being sacred or religions or anything like that, simply there are bunch of Islamist in Turkey who act as if any writing in Arabic or any artefact from the Ottoman era is sacred. A few yers back they attacked an exhibition in an old mansion. The mansion in question has nothing to do with Islam, it's simply a large house that used to belong to a guy from the royalty but at the end of the list for the throne who himself was into music and painting and has artworks on exhibition in other museums.

No one is obligated to please islamist, if they don't like the exhibition they should simply skip it.