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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

You are reading too much into it, there is nothing Islamic about an old fez hat factory. There is no such thing as hat factory values. You are just repeating the overused “ white Turks” idiom which no longer has any credibility since if fell off grace after 20 years of absolute Islamist rule - there is no longer a white Turk establishment. Besides, I’m not Turkish born, I’m an immigrant I cannot be a white Turk.

It’s true that Erdogan won in Turkey again, but we are talking about Istanbul here and in Istanbul he is no longer the most popular one.

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As for the Fez, it certainly is symbolic of ottoman times, and was famously outlawed by Ataturk in favor of brim caps, in what is called the Hat Revolution [1]. This was part of an assault on older values and also had anti religious elements.

Next, your characterization of Erdogan’s government as 20 years of absolute Islamist rule is a very loose definition. I do not think you can liken all of his rule as absolute and after all Turkey is still a democracy yet. Also he is not “Islamist” except in a loose terminology, as he did not change Turkey’s government system and overturn in favor of Sharia.

You also likened the protesters to an “old api” that interferes with new development… how is one to interpret that except you see the protesters and their values as an old impediment to progress, one which needs to be removed or “updated”? It’s not so long ago there were protests for Taksim square for Gezi park.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hat_Revolution

I like how you make up stuff on the fly but the protest itself wasn't about "disrespecting the fez" but about holding an art exception there. As I said, the place was used as a food market and has nothing to do with fez production anymore. Apparently there were sculptures of goats and the islamists decided that those are knights and got offended. The less unhinged ones said that this is unacceptable because the place is close the the old town, the more unhinged ones acted as the old factory was a religious site and the invaders desacralised it through putting knight sculptures in it. No one brought up any claims about fez being sacred or religions or anything like that, simply there are bunch of Islamist in Turkey who act as if any writing in Arabic or any artefact from the Ottoman era is sacred. A few yers back they attacked an exhibition in an old mansion. The mansion in question has nothing to do with Islam, it's simply a large house that used to belong to a guy from the royalty but at the end of the list for the throne who himself was into music and painting and has artworks on exhibition in other museums.

No one is obligated to please islamist, if they don't like the exhibition they should simply skip it.

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