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Why Are Turks Intolerant?

Mustafa Akyol offers his take on Semih Idiz's recent piece, “Just How Tolerant Are Turks?"
Turkish author and human rights activist Adalet Agaoglu leans over a poster of late Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink as she stands next to the spot, where Dink was killed, outside the Agos newspaper building during a commemoration to mark his fifth death anniversary in Istanbul January 19, 2012. A man was sentenced to life in prison in Turkey on Tuesday for the 2007 killing of prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in a verdict that drew criticism from rights groups for failing to explore al

In his Al-Monitor piece titled, “Just How Tolerant Are Turks?,” Semih İdiz did a good job of showing that Turkey cannot be too authoritative when it preaches tolerance to other nations. After showing the “serious lack of sensitivity toward any kind of minority rights in Turkey,” he simply reminded us of a practical dictum: “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”

As a fellow Turk who also tries to be critical of his people, I agreed with Mr. İdiz’s take. But I also wondered why Turks really rank as one of the less tolerant societies on Earth. (Half of the Turkish society, for example, was opposed to having Jewish and Christian neighbors.) Two questions came to my mind:

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