World Trade Center and Turkish Flag

A recent episode of famous American animated TV show “South Park” featured an image of terrorist attacks being carried out by al Qaeda aircraft bearing Turkish flags, drawing complaints from Turks for an apparent attempt to link the terrorist group and Turkey.

The plot of the episode, titled “Jersey Things,” jokingly posited that New Jersey’s inhabitants were slowly expanding and taking over a greater portion of the United States. Following a zombie-like siege of the small town of South Park, Colorado, the town’s inhabitants fight back against “the tanned, sleeveless hordes.” One of the show’s characters then decides that the solution to the Jersey “problem” is to request help from the elusive al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. After bin Laden agrees, suicide bombers crash into South Park’s Jersey population with planes that bear Turkish flags.

The “South Park” episode comes shortly after a similar but unrelated move by the Christian Action Network, a US based right wing organization, which recently produced a documentary on Sept. 11 featuring a Turkish flag flying among the debris of the World Trade Center on the film’s promotional poster. The documentary, which was filmed in response to proposals to build an Islamic center and a mosque near Ground Zero, the site where the World Trade Center had stood, is titled “Sacrificed Survivors: The Untold Story of the Ground Zero Mega Mosque.

echr , European , Osama bin Laden , Pakistan , Saudi Arabia , Syria , Turkey , United States

Spring on the Arab people

A major disagreement between observers and commentators is on the nature of the driving force of change. Is it domestic or international, meaning is it the US holding the strings? Whatever the verdict may be, everyone seems to be surprised and is unsure of the outcome.

If observed carefully, one can see similar trends of change as well as different clusters of countries that may end up with similar political structures. The most obvious are Tunisia and Egypt, which avoided bloodshed and are in transition to constitutional democracies. This does not mean that the armed forces overseeing the transition period will not remain in the equation until a pluralistic regime can mature.

There is another group, like Syria and Bahrain, with varying degrees of participation by armed forces. The fall of minority governments in these countries may have such devastating effects that they may opt to negotiate to remain in power provided that they share that power with other forces which had been kept out of the political center. If they do not, they are likely to fall as well, with much bloodshed.

Algeria , Iran , Israel , Jordan , Libya , Morocco , Oman , Saudi Arabia , Turkey , Yemen