I highly recommend that you read Turkey and the Ecumenical Patriarch posted at Pontifications. I also urge you to write your elected representatives in the House and Senate.

Turkey’s outright persecution of the Ecumenical Patriarch and of Orthodoxy in general is repulsive. This persecution extends to the Patriarch of the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Church, Roman Catholics, and evangelical Christians.

Please express to them the need to hold Turkey’s allegedly democratic feet to the fire and to hold them accountable for their outright persecution of Christians.

Based on the events of the last several months alone, the EU should be running from Turkey as fast as it can.

Let’s hope Greece, Poland, Denmark and other EU countries that have dealt with Islamofascists for a thousand plus years would work to veto any inclusion of Turkey.

The ideas of Mustafa Kemal Atatí¼rk have been destroyed in less than 100 years. Atatí¼rk said: “The major challenge facing us is to elevate our national life to the highest level of civilization and prosperity.”

While Atatí¼rk was a nationalist and while his ideas led to the participation in the wholesale slaughter of Armenians in the genocide and the expulsion of Greeks and Christians in general is reprehensible, the parts of Atatí¼rk’s philosophies that took a generally progressive and socialist attitude toward modernizing Turkish life had some value. The Ottoman state, against which he fought, was as outmoded as the rest of Arabia. Atatí¼rk resolved to lead his country out of the crumbling Islamic past into the future.

Ostensibly his program of modernization, secular government and education were positives. He, at least on paper, made religious faith a matter of individual conscience. His secular system could have allowed all in Turkey the freedom to practice their faith.

I always found the elimination of the fez to be interestingly symbolic. Since Atatí¼rk’s democratic ideals and western tendencies are generally summarized by his elimination of the fez, I hereby decree that all Turks are to begin wearing the fez once again.

If you’re going to throw off ‘democracy’ why not look the part.

Part II of my decree will include the elimination of the fez in favor of the bomb hat.

Check out online retailer Hats in the Belfry for all your fez needs. The fez is also available from VillageHatShop.com