Mustafa Akyol

For most people, especially westerners, the all-covering black chador is a sign of the repression of women. And it often really is. Authoritarian Islamist regimes such as Saudi Arabia force their female citizens to wear these "niqabs," which turn the latter into BMO’s, i.e., "Black Moving Objects," as tourists sometimes call them. The shapeless veil deprives women of their personality and turns them into exiles from society.

With the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the black chador gained another meaning, which gave women some social personality, but still not a very inspiring one.

The female militants of the revolution, who wore head-to-toe black uniforms, were displaying anything but anger and reaction. After the death of hundreds of thousands Iranian soldiers during the disastrous Iran-Iraq War of the '80’s, which fitted into the Shiite veneration of martyrdom, their black chador also became the symbol of grief.

Stand-up comedy in veilTo date, I haven’t seen a case of black chador which goes hand-in-hand with joy, fun, and laughter.

And that’s why the story of Turkey's first veiled Muslim stand-up comedian, Hatice Çöpoğlu, is worth exploring. Mrs. Çöpoğlu, 39, made the news in Turkey last weekend, when she took the stage at the Levent Kırca - Oya Başar Theatre in Istanbul’s Bakırköy district.

Turkey has had many stand-up comedians before, and almost all of them have been men. What made Mrs. Çöpoğlu remarkable was not just that she is a woman, but also that she was wearing the all-covering black chador.

Reportedly, she was also quite successful. The audience of two hundred, mostly housewives from conservative backgrounds, fully enjoyed the performance and often burst into laughter, as several Turkish newspapers wrote.

She cracked jokes about her experience in life as a "çarşaflı," which literally means "those who wear sheets" in Turkish, and is seen as the most "backward minded" of the whole spectrum of covered women. Whenever she went to the airport, everybody assumed that she was going on the Hajj, i.e., the Muslim pilgrimage, she said.

It has become tough to watch the global breaking news as a Muslim. Once in a while a bomb goes off, or gunmen fire their weapons, in some part of the world killing innocent people. And the people who do this butchery very often act in the name of Islam. For a more than a billion Muslims who, like me, think that human life is sacred and invaluable, this evil committed in the name of our faith is a big disgrace. The recent attack on Mumbai, the financial capital of India, once again gave me that feeling of shame. At least 125 people are reported to be killed and about 300 more seem to be injured. And not just the city of Mumbai, or even the country of India, but also the whole world feel shocked and traumatized. As I was writing this piece, the perpetrators had not been clearly identified, but it seemed likely that this was yet another act of Jihadist terrorism. Probably not al-Qaeda, but some other fanatic group that claims to lead an "Islamic struggle," was the most likely candidate to be the executor of this carnage.

I am no terrorism expert and can not even claim any depth about the political landscape of the Indian subcontinent. But let me tell you what I think about this carnage, as a Muslim who is concerned about the condition of his faith and his "umma," the faith community.

First, let me note that terrorism, i.e, violence against civilians, is against not just the spirit but also the clear instructions of Islam, as is understood by the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims. Islam cannot be defined as pacifist religion, to be honest, because it has the idea and tradition of just war. That is rooted right at the heart of the main source, the Koran, as it is also rooted in the Old Testament. But just war, as its name implies, is not wanton killing. Quite the contrary: From the earliest days, Islamic teaching put great emphasis on the distinction between combatants and civilians. The Prophet is on record for ordering his soldiers to, "avoid harming women, children, the elderly, or people at temples and monasteries." The "ulema," i.e., religious scholars, debated in the Middle Ages whether it would be lawful to use catapults against enemy fortresses. Quite a few of them found this unlawful, and the stated reason was that such imprecise weapons could harm civilians as well, besides the soldiers. But today, we have terrorists who deliberately target the civilians whom they consider as enemies, and refer to this as "jihad." But, no, it is not jihad in the Koranic sense. It is indiscriminate killing. It is barbaric, cruel and evil.We Muslims should denounce all forms of such immoral violence that is perpetrated in the name of our religion. We should do this not because non-Muslims are asking it from us, but because it is a major insult to our values. And we should do that forcefully and steadily, because only then those who might be sympathetic to terrorism among us can realize that they are on a wicked track.

Seeds of hatred
Moreover, we Muslims should be honest and frank about all this. It does not suffice to just say, "Islam is a religion of peace," and those who kill innocents, "have nothing to do with Islam." Let us be honest. They are Muslims and they have something to do with Islam. And Islam is not just a "religion of peace," but it also has a tradition of war. But today’s vicious terrorists are not on the path of the noble warriors of the Middle Ages, like, say, Saladin who showed utmost respect to the civilians among the Crusaders that he fought with. Today’s Islamist terrorists do refer to Islam, but theirs is an ideology that is closer to violent Marxism-Leninism than to the traditional faith we perform in our mosques. They subscribe to a perverted form of our faith and it is our duty to be vigilant against them. As for non-Muslims, there are things to be careful about, too. They should never fall into the misconception of extrapolating from this tiny faction of fanatics to the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims. If they do so, they will only be empowering those fanatics, who are dying to pull more and more Muslims to their side. And while judging these fanatics, the westerners should remember that they had their own, ranging from the Crusaders to the Inquisitors, to militant Israeli settlers. The people of India, whose suffering I share, should also be very careful in handling the aftermath of this tragedy. The country has a sad history of inter-communal violence between Hindus and Muslims. A big task right now is to prevent this evil act in Mumbai from ripping the scab off those old wounds. The terrorists certainly knew that they were sowing the seeds of hatred while planning this bloodbath. We should do everything that we can to make them fail.

Soner Çağaptay is a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is also a prolific author, whose commentaries about Turkey appear quite frequently in prestigious newspapers and magazines. When you read them, you can’t help but sense what appears to be his strong political orientation against the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, which has governed Turkey since 2002. The takeaway message, it seems, is that the AKP is perilously Islamist and is taking the country away from its secular principles. The second message is that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and his authoritarian "single party" regime is the best thing that ever happened to the Turks. In Turkey, Mr. Çağaptay has millions of like-minded thinkers. We call them Kemalists. Atatürk is a respected figure for most of us, to be sure, as a war hero and a state founder. But Kemalists also strictly subscribe to the ideological program that he imposed for 15 years by banning all political opposition. In that sense, Kemalists constitute only a faction of Turkish society. Yet they are very powerful, thanks to their dominance in the military, judiciary, bureaucracy and the media.

Kemalism at home, Kemalism abroad
But there is a striking difference between Mr. Çağaptay and his Turkey-based comrades. And you can see this only when they start to talk about the United States. In his writing, Mr. Çağaptay often refers to the rampant anti-American tendency in this country and then puts the blame on the AKP. Turkey turns out to be the most-American nation, as argues in his recent Newsweek piece, because the AKP "has taken the easy way, bashing America at home in an attempt to boost its own popularity." The more you read him, the more you will be convinced that the AKP is turning the America-loving Turks into America-hating fanatics.

Yet on the other side of the Atlantic, Mr. Çağaptay’s fellow Kemalists promote the exact opposite thesis. For them, the AKP is an American puppet. You can come across this depiction almost everyday in the nationalist media, which abhors the AKP and characterizes it as an un-patriotic, un-Turkish "traitor" that sells the country (and Cyprus) to "Western imperialists." When almost a million secular Turks marched against the AKP in May 2007, they denounced not just the government but also the EU and the U.S. They protested against now-President Abdullah Gül, who was then AKP’s candidate, with a pun on his name: "We want no ABDullah," was the motto on huge posters - and the emphasized "ABD" is the Turkish for "U.S.A."

To date, the charges that the AKP is an agent of the American conspiracies to establish a "moderate Islamic Republic" in Turkey and a "Greater Kurdistan" in the region Ğ delusions that exist only in some Turkish minds Ğ have been extremely popular. The CHP and MHP, the two main opposition parties, and the smaller and crazier Workers Party (İşçi Partisi) of the ex-Maoist-turned-Kemalist Doğu Perinçek, constantly bash the government as being a pawn of America, "international finance," or "Zionism."

So, how should we explain the fact that the AKP is being bashed by Kemalists at home as pro-American, and by Kemalists in Washington as anti-American? And also, how should we explain the curious fact that Mr. Çağaptay, who leads the latter effort, never mentions the fact that AKP’s rivals are the real sources of anti-American propaganda in Turkey?

My personal explanation is this: Kemalists are simply leading a propaganda war against the AKP, and they fashion their arguments according to the context in which they are in. If you are sitting in an institute in Washington, it is silly to bash a party for being an American pawn, of course. But that is the perfect argument if you want to bash it in a nation which is growingly anti-American.

Which brings me to the factual side of Mr. Çağaptay’s alarmism. Yes, there has been rampant anti-Americanism in Turkey since 2003. But the reason is not the AKP government or even the Kemalists per se. It is the Iraq War. And it is a multi-layered story.

The Kurdish element
First, there is the understandable - and, in my view, justified - reaction to the fact that America invaded a county and caused so many deaths without any credible reason. No wonder not just Turks, but almost the whole world, including Europe - and even Blue America - have been very upset with that. So, Turks are not alone in being, at the very least, anti-Bush.

The second and more poisonous factor is what made the post-Saddam Iraq more distasteful to the Turks than anybody else: The emergence of Iraqi Kurdistan under the protection, and as an ally, of America. This region, willingly or unwillingly, provided the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, a safe heaven to use to attack Turkish targets, which created great uproar in Turkish society. But besides the PKK’s terrorism, most Turks, especially the Kemalists, can’t simply stand to see a country named "Kurdistan" on the side of their borders. They perceive this as an evil scheme, which is carried out by the Kurds, but mastered by, of course, the United States! No wonder anti-Americanism and anti-Kurdism go hand-in-hand in Turkish media.

Now, Mr. Çağaptay would have done a much better job had he honestly shown all these facts, and criticized the AKP accordingly. He is indeed right about something: The AKP hasn’t shown the leadership needed to combat anti-Americanism, and other forces of fanatic nationalism, that grows in Turkish society. Moreover, anti-American tendencies exist within AKP’s grassroots and some parts of the pro-AKP media as well. It would be only fair to criticize these, and then call on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan to work more seriously in order to mend the Turkish-American relationship, which is crucial for both nations.

But to blame the AKP for being the source of anti-Americanism, and even to breed a "tsunami of young Turks ready to die while trying to kill Americans?" Oh boy, that is way over the top. And I am sure, if he rediscovers that virtue called objectivity, Mr. Çağaptay can do much better than that.

My column neighbor Burak Bekdil, with whom I often disagree, had an interesting piece last month titled "I give up... No Panama hats or alcohol!" By using sharp examples and witty stories, he was basically questioning the level of acceptance that religious-freedom-seeking Turks are ready to grant to those who seek freedom from religion "I am not an atheist, but I am very curious...," he was asking, "...would the Istanbul Municipality agree to run ads on its buses that would read, ’There is probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy life'?"

That quote came from the campaign led by Oxford University biologist Richard Dawkins, the world’s foremost atheist televangelist. His followers would soon put that atheistic "good news" on London buses as a paid advertisement. And Mr. Bekdil was asking whether the same thing would be tolerated in Turkey.

Well, I can’t speak for the Istanbul Municipality, but as a theist I personally would not have any problem with seeing such ads on the streets of Istanbul. The open society I believe in should give space to the proclamations of all beliefs, including atheism. (Yes, by the way, atheism is a belief, not disbelief, as it is sometimes called mistakenly. A true disbeliever would be an agnostic, not an atheist.)

Yet what interested me in all this was not just whether Turkish society has matured enough to allow such unorthodox views whether they be on God, Atatürk, or "Turkishness." We all know that the answer is not positive. What interested me rather was the message given by the Dawkinsian atheists. From the premise that "there is probably no God," they were concluding, "now stop worrying and enjoy life." But why would the existence of God, rather than His nonexistence, be something that we should be worried about?

At the root of this message lies a presupposition that most atheists and other seculars take for granted: Belief in God is an obstacle to enjoying life. Or, to put it differently, life is more fun when you don’t think that there is a God who gave it to you.

Of course there are fun-hating, joy-destroying theists who can apparently confirm that presupposition. Extreme pietism in all religions is a problem. The Taliban, the most extreme case in Islam-dom, systematically fought against joy by banning kites, tape players and chessboards. Similar tendencies can be found in the histories of all religions. But they can also be found in the histories of atheist ideologies. The communist Khmer Rouge was actually much more barbarous than the Taliban in the way it banned and punished "deviant behavior," which could be as simple as eating an apple from a tree or having soft hands that hinted at a lack of hard work.

Yet today most of us live in open, free societies. We are, thank God, no longer forced to be theists or atheists. So the real question is whether believing in God influences one’s psychology in a negative way, as the Dawkinsians implied in their ad. Atheists, since Sigmund Freud who considered belief in God as a "neurosis" that needed to be cured, have asserted that it does. No wonder the modern science of psychology, which took Freud as its main pillar, has taken a very secularist approach.

However, empirical data does not conform to the Freudian vision. Rather than being the traumatized victims of a neurosis, research has shown that religious people are actually, on average, mentally and physically healthier than secular people. As former atheist Patrick Glynn points out in his impressive book, "God: The EvidenceÑThe Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Post-secular World," studies demonstrate that religious commitment boosts overall happiness, and frees people from depression, stress, and alcohol abuse. Observant people turn out to be four times less likely to commit suicide than others. The more religious people are, on average, the more they seem merrier. From that point on, even some secular scientists have concluded that our brains are "hardwired for God." Why is that? My answer is that theistic religion addresses and satisfies the existential problems of mankind: Why do we exist? What is the meaning of our lives? What happens when we die? You don’t need to be a religious believer in order to see that a there is more peace of mind in answering these questions within a godly, not a godless, paradigm. Even Richard Dawkins concedes that there is an "evolutionary advantage" to having a brain that can experience religion.

One thing that might strengthen the atheist argument to "stop worrying" is that religious belief brings not just good news but also sobering responsibility. But then again, we have to ask whether man is happier when he feels free from responsibility or when he takes on responsibilities that he willingly fulfills. I would place my bet on the latter. Therefore, I have to turn down the kind suggestion to "stop worrying and enjoy life" that atheists are spreading around. If I were an atheist, I would rather sit down, reflect about the meaninglessness and the inevitable tragic end of all my existence, and descend pessimistically into nihilism. I am rather happy because I am convinced that life has a meaning and death is not the end Ñ and that there is a God.

Turkey’s Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül made the headlines recently with his remarks on the history of the country’s nation-building process. "One of the great achievements of Atatürk... is the population exchange between Greece and Turkey," he said, speaking at the commemoration of the death of the country’s founder. "Could Turkey be the same national country had the Greek community still lived in the Aegean or Armenians lived in many parts of Turkey?"

These words of the minister -- whose ministry is a most weird one, because it is subordinate to the military that it is supposed to supervise in a real democracy -- implied that he was content with the loss of Turkey’s Armenians and Greeks. The former had been "lost" during the tragic expulsion of 1915, and the latter were "exchanged" with the Turks in Greece in 1923. And according to Mr. Gönül, Turkey became the nation it is today thanks to these designs on its populace. Before criticizing the minister, I think we should simply acknowledge that he was telling the truth.

 

Yes, in the past century Turkey has been "Turkified" by state power. This was done by the removal of the non-Muslim elements, first, and then by the assimilation of the non-Turkish Muslims into "Turkishness." Turkey’s ethnically conscious Kurds, who are the only "survivors" of this Turkification policy, are today also the focus of the country’s deepest problem. This historical truth definitely sounds irritating to the liberal and even multi-cultural ears that most of us have. But we can get such things right only by putting them in their historical context. And we can understand this context only by going back to the Ottoman Empire. In the middle of the 15th century, with the conquest of Constantinople and other Balkan territories, the Ottoman state had turned into a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. And until the beginning of the 19th century, it had little reason to worry about the continued existence of this structure.

 

Yet as the tides of European nationalism poured in, the Christian people in the Western parts of the empire started to crave independence. First the Serbs and than the Greeks rebelled, and the latter achieved their independent state as early as 1829. It was a sign of the coming troubled times.

 

In return, the Ottomans started to think of ways to win the hearths and minds of their non-Muslim subjects. Soon they would try this by turning them into full citizens with equal rights, through the reforms edicts of 1839 and 1856. "I notice the Muslims of my people in the mosque, the Christians in the church, and the Jews in the synagogue," said Sultan Mahmud II, who initiated this reform process. "There is no other difference between them in terms of my love and justice." But this policy called "Ottomanism" did not work. Uprisings among Christian people of the empire continued.

 

In recent years, the more moderate and reasonable Kemalists are asking themselves a curious question: How in the world has Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s founder, who devoted himself to fighting "dogmatism" become a dogma himself? How has such a bold champion of "science and reason" turned into the symbol of a rigid, irrational, insensible ideology that impedes the country’s progress, including its candidacy for the European Union? Can Dündar, recently received the wrath of radical Kemalists because his documentary titled "Mustafa," was asking the same question last week in his column in daily Milliyet. Under the headline, "Turning A Leader Who Fought Dogmas Into a Dogma," Dündar was pondering how such a bizarre paradox emerged in Turkey. Like many other moderate and reasonable Kemalists, he was thinking that this was a most unfortunate and unexpected turn of events.

The Goddesses of Reason
I beg to differ. I rather think that the deification of a radical secularist leader such as Atatürk is indeed not a paradox or a surprise. It actually is the very natural outcome of the route he initiated in the late 1920’s.

To see this, one just needs to look at how radical secularism ended up creating ersatz religions in other cases. When the French Revolutionaries dethroned Christianity in that organized bloodshed called the Great Revolution, they established not a free medium of rationality, but a cult of reason. The atheistic "Culte de la Raison" devised by Jacques HŽbert, Pierre Gaspard Chaumette and their supporters was not a lack of dogma; it was rather an alternative dogma. Thanks to their campaign, the French Convention proclaimed a "Goddess of Reason" on Nov. 10, 1793, and the statue of this new idol was enacted on the high altar of the Notre Dame de Paris. Maximillian Robespierre, who was a little less radical, preferred to create a deistic religion named "the Cult of the Supreme Being," which yet again celebrated an alternative god to the Judeo-Christo-Muslim one.

The same thing also happened in the communist dictatorships of the 20th century. The totalitarian secularism of Lenin and Stalin created not a godless society, but one that worshiped these dictators as if they were gods. In the east, Mao and Kim Il Sung became national deities for China and North Korea. Except for western European societies, in which secularization happened as a long-term, evolutionary process, the purging of traditional religion almost always resulted in the rise of ersatz religion. (European secularization, for that matter, created its own problems, such as nihilism and moral relativism, as Pope Benedict XVI has been wisely pointing out.)

So, there is nothing surprising about the deification of Atatürk. He and his followers believed that "science and reason" would be enough of a guide for society. But, in fact, although both science and reason are important and valuable, they don’t cover all aspects of the human condition. Science does not tell us why we exist and what moral principles we should follow. Reason is all-relative and does not give us any certainty when we need it. That’s why humans also need intuition, tradition and beliefs in the metaphysical concepts that some might regard as superstition. And it is only normal that when the traditional religions that cultivate this spiritual side of the society are purged, artificial religions such as Kemalism arise to fill the vacuum.

Blaming Atatürk for all this wrong direction would be unfair, because he simply followed the best wisdom of his time and milieu. In the early 20th century, belief in the all-encompassing power and virtue of science was very widespread in Europe, especially in the French and German intellectual traditions that he was deeply influenced by. Positivism, the anti-metaphysical doctrine that he was fascinated with, was after all an invention of the French philosopher Auguste Comte. The poor young Mustafa was not accustomed to other philosophers, such Edmund Burke or Alexis de Tocqueville, whose ideas emphasized the supportive role of religion in social progress, and who would be proved true in the latter half of the 20th century.

Lessons from the Turkosphere
That proof especially came from the British and the American experiences of modernization, in which religion acted not as an obstacle to, but, quite the contrary, an agent of progress. Walter Russell Mead, whose must-read title "God and Gold" is an eye-opening history of the ideas that led to the Anglo-Saxon ascendancy, put it this way:

"If the history of the Anglosphere is indeed any guide, it appears that the most vigorously open society, the society that presses hardest and fastest Westward, is a religious society. To the degree that a secular society -- one in which religion has been effectively marginalized -- is shaped by reliance on reason rather than on the complex dance of conflicting elements that characterized the Anglophone powers at their various apogees, it is likely to be less open and dynamic than one that acknowledges more fully the irrational elements of the human psyche." And if the history of the Turkosphere is any guide, it appears that a secular society -- one in which religion has been effectively marginalized -- can also grow disturbingly nationalist, xenophobic and paranoid. It is sad story with little hope of change in sight.

Since its release on the anniversary of the Turkish Republic, Oct. 29, Turkey’s pundits have been hotly debating “Mustafa,” a documentary by Can Dündar, columnist for daily Milliyet and popular voice of the moderate left. The Mustafa in question is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s founder, the film intends to show his “human side,” often neglected or even hidden in modern Turkey.

If you know a little bit about this country, you can sense that Dündar’s idea was ambitious. Here, Atatürk is treated not as a man, but as a God. His cult personality, paralleled only in North Korea, is depicted as an all-knowing, all-encompassing leader whose supra-human intellect left behind a flawless blueprint for the nation to follow. “O mighty Atatürk who has given us this day, I will relentlessly walk down your path,” Turkish students are made to swear in every school every week. Poets describe him as “the Sun who enlightened the nation,” and “the God who stepped in to Samsun [to start the war of liberation].”

Unveiling historical Atatürk
Behind this curtain of deification there lies, of course, a historical Atatürk, who, like all of us, was not just a man of virtue and wisdom, but he also sinned and made mistakes. And Can Dündar’s “Mustafa” sheds light on some, only some, of the latter. The film shows that the “Supreme Leader” had many moments of ambition, anger and arrogance. He was a borderline alcoholic in later years. When he abolished the Caliphate in 1924, he was taking revenge for the beating he took from his madrasah teacher when he was a child.

According to Yılmaz Özdil, a columnist for Hürriyet, the film not only documented all of the above, but also showed Atatürk as a “cold, heartless, ruthless, egoistic, hedonistic, womanizing, megalomaniac.”

You can guess what followed. In just a week Can Dündar and his film turned into a scapegoat. Deniz Baykal, leader of the main opposition People’s Republican Party, or CHP, declared that he despised the documentary and criticized Dündar for being influenced by “the Ergenekon trial.” Many secularist commentators joined in. One of them, Yiğit Bulut of Vatan, even argued for a counter-campaign, “Do not watch this film, and dissuade others from watching it,” he suggested in his column. “Especially do not allow your children to see it and have their minds corrupted by seeds that belittle Atatürk.”

The reaction to Dündar goes on, and what makes all this remarkable is that he is no Islamist, Kurd, or even a liberal that makes him a standard “internal enemy” from the Kemalist perspective. He is actually a fan of Atatürk and his stance has been pretty firm on that. He is just not as fact-blind as other Kemalists and believes that respect of the Supreme Leader should not blind people from seeing his “human side.”

But just like the Bolsheviks who thought their “revisionist” comrades were in fact traitors, die-hard Kemalists think more realist Atatürk-admirers, are defectors. Hence Can Dündar is accused not of being naïve, but of being malicious. According to Yiğit Bulut, he turned out to be a pawn of “the imperialist powers who are carrying out a psychological operation in order to devalue Atatürk in the eyes of the Turkish nation and render the Turkish Armed Forces powerless.”

What is curious in all this mania is the lack of any factual basis. None of the Kemalists who chided Dündar tried to show that he portrayed Atatürk in a historically inaccurate way. The film was a documentary and as this definition implies, Dündar prepared it by reviewing documents in Turkish archives. A rational person would challenge him by referring to other documents, or by showing his inferences as untruthful. But I have not seen even one such empirical argument. Rather, what the Kemalists assert is the historical “Mustafa” Dündar unearthed is in conflict with the mythical Atatürk in their minds.

WASHINGTON - In his recent book, “The Obama Nation,” conservative pundit Jerome Robert Corsi was criticizing the growing popularity of the then Democratic presidential candidate. If he wants to keep on, he might now consider writing a sequel: “The Obama Nations.” For now not just millions of Americans, but also billions of foreigners are inspired by the hope that the African-American president-elect spreads.

In my country, Turkey, that enthusiasm is most evident in the media. This morning I took a look at the web pages of the top ten Istanbul papers, and came across more than two dozen editorials or columns celebrating the change in America. As a nation disillusioned by most foreign policy decisions of the Bush administration, and most notably the Iraq War, Turks were happy to see the march of a whole new face to the White House. A commentator was reminding us — albeit a little inaccurately — of Winston Churchill’s word of wisdom:

“Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing... after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” Others were saying that Americans have proven that they are not racist bigots. Obama’s tone, style and integrity were highly praised. Even John McCain received admiration for the humble and honest concession speech he gave on the election night.

Alas, it is the first time that I have seen such a positive Turkish view of the United States since 2003, the beginning of the Iraq War. And this is not limited to Turkey. Europe’s fascination with Obama has been obvious for quite a while, but now the Middle East sounds optimistic, too. The Eyptian Gazzete, in its editorial, says that Obama’s presidency will be “a golden chance at hand to put Arab-U.S. ties in good shape.” “In inspiring millions in America and millions more around the world,” says The Jordan Times, “Obama is likely to become an iconic leader before he has even started work.” According to the Cairo-based Middle East Times, “A brave new world” is dawning.

All this is a great advantage for Mr. Obama, but it also puts a great responsibility on his shoulders. If he can really bring to U.S. foreign policy the change that the world now believes in, he will remake history. But if he fails and disappoints, both the U.S. and the rest of us will be in a situation that is much worse than now.

Because of that, I have decided to make a few suggestions to Mr. Obama. I highly doubt that he starts the morning by reading the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review (the new name of our aged paper), but I still hope that my message in a bottle might somehow make it all the way down to the Obama White House.

So, here are the five pillars of my humble advice:

Close down Guantanamo: That giant human cage in Cuba has become the icon of America’s thoughtless over-reaction to 9/11. It also has become the symbol of an America which tramples on human rights whenever it deems necessary. So, Guantanamo needs to be closed down. It might be difficult to decide what to do with some of the inmates, because they have no country to go to, but a solution can be found. Maybe America can convince a friendly Muslim country to accept and settle them. Even if the solution is not perfect, it will be much better than the maintenance of that wicked place.

End “rendition”: Another horrific image of post-9/11 America is a country that kidnaps people and tortures them in undercover CIA planes or hidden “black sites.” Again, this should be immediately terminated. The innocent people who suffered from such cruel tactics, including the victims of Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison and similar places, should be compensated by the U.S. government. America should say “sorry” to those whom it wronged. This will only add to her dignity.