As if inspired by the example of his Palestinian brethren, a citizen of Turkey decided to express his dissatisfaction with his country justice system services in a similar way.
Five judges were wounded, two seriously, when a gunman shouting “Allah is great” opened fire during a session here of the Council of State, Turkey’s highest administrative court, Ankara governor Kemal Onal said. Earlier media reports Wednesday said one judge had died in the attack by a man TV channels identified as lawyer Aslan Alpaslan, who was immediately arrested in possession of a handgun. Alpaslan broke into the room where the 2nd Chamber of the Council was in session on the eighth floor of the building and unloaded two clips from his automatic pistol, shouting “Allahu Akbar” — God is Great — the NTV and CNN-Turk news channels reported.
The sequence of events and the consequences show clearly that Allahu Akbar. First, the gun is miraculously provided to a lawyer, of all people, for crying out loud. Then the divine guidance allows our hero to pass the security undetected and undeterred. As a final act of compassion, the deity patiently lets the lawyer to empty two clips at the judges. To kill one of them and to maim another five.
Here the limits of the divine good will were reached. After all, in the grand scheme of things lawyers are not supposed to be expert marksmen to boot. Which shows how great and all around considerate Allah is.
Oh, and the reason for the lawyer’s ire is clear:
One of the badly injured judges, 2nd Chamber president Mustafa Birden, was known for his rulings confirming a ban on women’s Islamic headscarves in the public institutions and universities of Turkey, an overwhelmingly Muslim country with a strictly secular political system.
Obviously the story will make the judges sit up and listen to the voice of reason now. Or would it?
Cross-posted on SimplyJews
OK, so it became big[ger] on Friday, but I’d think blogs would be doing more about this:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTNkYmZmY2RiMWMwOGRlMzJmZjQ3YWUwYjc1NTI0NzY=
“… What is happening in Ankara is amazing. Crowds booed Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul—the ruling party’s representative at the funeral—and police corridors had to protect the ruling AKP ministers from the crowds. Journalists are also saying people screamed “Murderer†at the Prime Minister. The crowd even booed former AKP politicians who had defected from the party in recent months. Tens of thousands of Turks are rallying spontaneously in favor of secularism and liberalism. …â€
Turks — including Moslem — are getting angry with the increasingly Islamist [as opposed to Islamic] stance of the government, especially when coupled with scandals.
If the government tries to keep going the way of Iran and Taliban, the military may break a fairly recent pledge to keep out of the conflict. A couple of times in the past, military ousted governments which it was felt were departing from norms: a couple of years ago, it said it would no longer do so — but the possibility is still present.