http://www.volkskrant.nl/opinie/erdogan-wil-turkije-koste-wat-kost-arabiseren~a4333917/I took the time to translate this letter a Turkish journalist / ex-military wrote to the newspaper last month.
"While Atatürk de-arabised the Turkish republic with blood, sweat and tears, Erdogan is trying to revert this vigorously.
His intention to grant Turkish citizenship to 3 million Syrian refugees is nothing more than a way to gain more votes for his AK party.
Erdogan is planning to grant citizenship to millions of Syiran refugees. In a speech to Syrian refugees, he promised that actions will be taken to realize that by the appropriate ministry with great urgency.
He made this promise during an iftar in Kilis last weekend.
Because of the influx of refugees, the size of that city has doubled over the past few years.
By giving voting rights to 3 million Syrians, Erdogan is trying to bind new voters to his AK party, and manipulate the next elections in 2019.
Ethnicity, and the place you come from, matter in Turkey, moreso than in the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands, there's no big contrasts between someone from the province of Groningen or the province of Gelderland.
However, in the Ottoman empire, there were dozens of different peoples, and in the Turkish Republic, a lot of that ethnic variety has been preserved.
The odds are high that someone from the north of Turkey is not a Turk, but a Chechen, Laz, or Pontic Greek.
In the East, there's millions of Kurds. In the West, there Thracians, who originate from the Balkan.
In Anatolia, mostly Alevitic Turks have settled.
People from the different regions have only been intermarrying for a short period of time. The preference still goes out to someone from the same village, city, or at most, province.
Your culture, your religious subculture, and your family reflect your conditioning, your political preference, and your religiosity. It's not perfect science, but it proven to be a reasonable indicator throughout the centuries, of what makes a person tick.
Now at first glance Erdogan, who's not a Turk, but a Georgian, with an ethnic arab wife, seems to give the Turkish identity a prominent place in is power politics.
But the truth couldn't be further away.
Islamists like Erdogan are the complete opposite, and are even hostile to original Turks. They conceal this with patriotic rethoric, bombastic historical propaganda, and by attacking western values.
What they really care about though, is islam, or to be more precise, sunni-orthodox islam.
For them, when you have converted to Sunni Islam, you are good people and can be mobilised.
In that case, it doesn't matter if you are a Bulgarian, or a Bosnian. This was already the case in the Ottoman empire, when almost no grand vizier or admiral was a Turk, and all the mothers of Sultans came from Eastern Europe.
The elite army of the Ottomans, the Janissaries, where converted christian boys, who eventually became the notables of the Ottoman Empire.
Thus, the convert slowly took power, and marginalised the original central Asian Turk.
Syrians will remain loyal to the Erdogan-clan, and this will provide a new voter pool for the AK party for generations to come.
When the kids of the Syrian refugees have their own kids, there'll be another 2 million on top of the 3 million already here.
This will definitively change the ethnic composition of Turkey.
Atatürk de-arabised the Turkish Republic with blood, sweat and tears. Erdogan is unfortunatly trying to reverse this, and step by step, abolish the Turkish Republic.
I advise him and his family to make haste with applying for Saudi citizenship for him and his family, because the Turkish people will never accept this."
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