Artful Dodger:

> Heyd's remarkably prescient insights

There is one thing that Heyd's analysis lacks, and which is central to the rise of radical Islamism in the Middle East. He completely fails to mention the Cold War, and how the western dominant powers allied themselves with radical islamists to destroy the Soviet Union.

The Cold War was characterized by a climate of fear and paranoia (nothing new there). Firstly, the October Revolution lead to the formation of the Soviet Union from the empire that had the largest land area at the time. Russia occupies 1/7th of the land mass of the world. Wester powers attempted to destroy the Soviet Union in the counter-revolutionary war of the 1920s, a conflict that left 13 million Russians dead. The alliance with the "Whites" failed and in spite of the little spoken genocide in Russia, western powers failed to stop communism in Europe and Asia.

WWII was characterized by intially appeasing Hitler in the hopes that he would attack the Soviet Union and destroy it. Until 1942 the USA was officially an ally, but unofficially doing bussiness and supplying Germany and Turkey with raw materials and financing in their war against the Soviet Union.

Then in 1949 China underwent a revolution that left 1/5 of the population of the world under communist rule. From 1917 to 1949 nearly 1/3 of the land area and 1/3 of the population of the world came under communist rule.

Thus 1949 becomes pivotal in western foreign policy. We have the birth of the CIA at that time, as we had McCarthyism, the American overthrow of democratically elected governments that leaned to the left, the support for fascist dictatorships, etc.

As the climate of fear increased, the dominant capitalist powers (USA, UK and France) made overtures towards their WW II enemies in the hopes that by presenting a unified front they could stop communist advance. It is at this point that western powers become allied to Germany and Turkey.

Turkey willingly acquiesced to western pressures to become secularized. Turkey's ruling elite longed to become economically integrated with western Europe in the hopes of cashing in on the big Western European markets.

However, the fall of Afghanistan into Soviet hands catalized fear both in Western powers and in islamic countries. Fear that other Islamic countries would fall under Soviet rule led the CIA and fundamentalist Moslems to form a dubious alliance. This was not unlike other dubious alliances with dictators, notorious drug traffickers and insurgent paramilitary anticommunist groups.

The USA, the UK, France, and other western powers channeled weapons, training, and money to fundamentalist Islamic groups that had as their objective to destabilize the communist countries. This is how the Soviets are driven out of Afghanistan. It is also how other conflicts arise. For example, conflicts in the Balkans, Nagorno-Karabakh (Adzerbaijan), Chechnya, and others.

Turkey, as one of the most populous Islamic countries in the world, saw itself drawn into Islamism. Mr. Heyd is right in saying that the seeds of Islamism had been there for a long time (as they had been in many other Islamic countries in the Middle East). Mr. Heyd does not acknowledge that the Cold War catalyzed western involvement in the Middle East, and that led to the birth of modern militant radical Islamism. Turkey's strategic location made it a target for western involvement.

As Marxism was undermined and lost its appeal, the ideological void to channel social discontent was lost, only to be replaced with radical Islam. If Marxism-Leninism channeled discontent into the class struggle, radical islamism could not do so and instead channeled discontent into an anti-Western anti-imperialist ideology. Turkey was not immune to that and the broad support for Iran among fundamentalist Turks is a symptom of that.

Today Turkey finds itself torn between its desire to join the EU; the desire to be a modern, free society; the desire to maintain its culture and traditions, including its Islamic roots; the desire to maintain a strong military presence; and the inability to deal with tribal discontent (Kurds) and the general rise of fundamentalist Islam.