Turks rally against radical Islam
It’s good to see that at least one predominantly Muslim country is holding the line on theocracy and radical Islam.
Per the Associated Press, on Saturday, 12,000 marchers in the Turkish capital city of Ankara marched in protest of radical Islam and urged their government to avoid giving concessions to Kurdish terrorist groups in order to gain entrance into the European Union.
My experiences in Iraq with the Turks were fairly positive. The FOB I was at, Q-West Base Complex, is in northern Iraq and was full of Turks. Most were there as part of Serka Group, Yuksel, 77 Construction, and Nasa, performing construction and services primarily as subcontractors for KBR or independently for the U.S. Army. In addition, we had several vendors who had set up stores on the FOB.
Generally, they were hard-working and industrious. Although Turkey is predominantly Muslim, they were far more Western in their dress and actions than the local Iraqi population. For example, Turkish satellite television was full of women in revealing clothing. With being more Westernized, we did have problems with some of them regarding smuggling in illicit drugs, alcohol, pornography, and the like. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of those vendors eventually got kicked off the FOB.
Despite being predominantly Muslim, the Turks were deathly afraid of going off the FOB without escort. If a Turkish person was injured, the last place they wanted to go to was an Iraqi hospital - because they knew they would be a target based on their affiliation with the Coalition. They generally don’t speak Arabic, and they usually only worked with local Iraqis when they absolutely had to. Several of them bore scars from previous rocket attacks.
The Iraqis, on the other hand, weren’t too crazy about the Turks either. I heard one Iraqi Army officer say, “Why does the U.S. do so much business with the Turks? What did they ever do for you?” Meaning, they didn’t help with the Coalition, so why are you paying them now? He had a point. Unfortunately for the Iraqi economy, the quality of work on a Turk contract is generally far superior to that produced by an Iraqi company. Most of the Iraqi work was shoddy and used inferior materials.
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