Turkey Ponders Obama As Cure for Anti-Americanismobserver.com
Turkey Ponders Obama As Cure for Anti-Americanism
Made popular 1963 days ago in Society & Religion
observer.com — The young, well-educated, secular Turkish woman who hated Bush had never heard of the presidential candidate Barack Obama. I told her Obama was black and his middle name was Hussein. "Really?" she said, raising her eyebrows on cue. She understood why these tiny facts made an American curious about a Turk's opinion of Obama, and she smiled politely.

"Is he a good person?" she finally said.

In June, a Pew poll found that out of 47 countries, Turks had the least favorable view of the United States. This must have been confusing news to Americans who heard it: Isn't Turkey our ally? What did we do to them? Didn't we do much more terrible things to other countries? And what would it take to change their minds?

Such generalizations are easiest to communicate in simple Turkish, but there are thousands of specific grievances. One source of Turks' antipathy toward Bush-only one, but a big one-blew up during this holiday season of elections, assassinations and teen pregnancy. Turks not only opposed the war in Iraq, but grew infuriated that America was also preventing them from chasing down the PKK, the Kurdish guerrilla organization that had been hiding out in northern Iraq and attacking Turkish soldiers. The oppressed Kurds have been America's treasured allies in Iraq, but a few weeks ago, the U.S. provided Turkey with satellite imagery and the air space to invade.
"America is very good. I don't like Bush, but I like Americans."

Turks are fascinated by the idea of a half-black president with a Muslim name, but aren’t sure it would matter

“It will take a while, but if this doesn’t work, then anti-Americanism is beyond repair,” said Soli Ozel, a professor at Istanbul’s Bilgi University and a columnist and writer for various Turkish and international publications.

Report This Post
Posted by JoshMadison
Add To Favorites
210 Votes
Similar Issues
1 Comment
ShareThis
What Presidential Candidate do you believe is most likely to Cure Anti-Americanism around the World?
John Edwards
8.1%
Joe Biden
4.3%
Ron Paul
28%
John McCain
0.5%
Rudy Giuliani
1%
Barack Obama
40%
Hillary Clinton
10%
Mitt Romney
3.3%
Mike Huckabee
4.8%
Fred Thompson
1%
This is not a scientific survey, click here to learn more. Results may not total 100% due to rounding and voting descrepencies.
User Comments
cuda
Posted 1963 days ago
0 up votes, 0 down votes
Post Comment...8. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL): A "Dishonorable Mention" last year, Senator Obama moves onto the "ten most wanted" list in 2007. In 2006, it was discovered that Obama was involved in a suspicious real estate deal with an indicted political fundraiser, Antoin "Tony" Rezko. In 2007, more reports surfaced of deeper and suspicious business and political connections It was reported that just two months after he joined the Senate, Obama purchased $50,000 worth of stock in speculative companies whose major investors were his biggest campaign contributors. One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation Obama pushed just two weeks after the senator purchased $5,000 of the company's shares. Obama was also nabbed conducting campaign business in his Senate office, a violation of federal law.

The guy is a dirt bag and a thief.
You will have 2 minutes to edit your comment.

Add your comments