Post by Pluto: In Istanbul, a ‘Traitors’ Cemetery’ provokes outrage, same treatment Labour supporters received in recent history

In the past days, The Times posted a story about a “Traitor’s Cemetery”, one of the decidedly unpalatable effects of the failed coup d’etat in Turkey. It seems that the religious and the secular have indeed melded into one in this supposedly European Country.

The politicians are using religion to further their agenda and in the case of “Captain Mehmet Karabekir”, decided to bestow a final and lasting insult by denying his remains proper Muslim interment. I wonder whether the fact that he could not defend himself in court, was even given just a cursory thought in this, and again I reiterate, supposedly democratic Country.

I also wonder how the Turkish Religious Elite came by this method of showing either their displeasure at a man’s supposed betrayal of his Country or in their willingness to toady up to the Government. Perhaps it is also the other way round and the present supposedly secular government is in fact toadying up to some Muslim religious entity or other.

In the recent past, we had a similar situation in Malta. Labour Party supporters were denied burial in hollowed ground by the Church under the supposedly holy stewardship of Archbishop Gonzi. Perhaps the Turks are avid students of Maltese contemporary history.

Perhaps the present Nationalist Party elite are attentively looking to Turkey and wishing that they could once more institute the religio et patria philosophy still worshiped in the inner circles of the Nationalist Party.

Let us learn from our history and from what is occurring in our own ‘now’ time. Any politician who tries infusing secular politics with a dose of religion seems to have a seat waiting for them in the Turkish parliament if only they can read the Holy Quran and become apostates. Definitely not on Malta in the 2016s and not whilst I and many like me draw breath.

The Nationalist Party maxim is as extinct as the Party itself and most of its biggest and greatest. Let’s not allow history to repeat itself