I heard you the first time when you talked about your "fundamentalist religious faction". If you think repeating it will magically offer some kind of evidence to back that claim up, then think again. Since you on the other hand did evidently not hear me the first time, I will repeat: if you're at all honest, you will have to admit the problem of the military being too influential and interfering too much in politics has grown far less in recent years - the civilian government feels secure enough to attack the military head-on at times, and the military finds itself forced to cave in. If you want to contest that, you're really going to have to bring some concrete evidence to the contrary. If you don't contest it, I can't see I see the point in you repeating your earlier statements.

And good job focusing on my throwaway comment and ignoring the actual valid comparison I made about Germany electing its president in precisely the same way Turkey used to do until 2007. Does that mean Germany is somehow less democratic than the US, keeping in mind the limited role and powers of the president in both countries? I'll throw in Israel while we're at it, yet another country that does it that way.

You know, you really might want to consider that I - and snoop, who is British after all - know what I'm talking about when I say it's not a punishable offense in the UK and other countries, that text notwithstanding. The European Commission is very influential, alright, but when enough member states say "absolutely not", the Commission can say what it likes but it won't happen. France and Germany both do have Holocaust denial laws, but they weren't going to support any attempt by the Commission to force the UK to do the same.

So again I say, it's a punishable crime in *some* EU states, including at least Belgium, Germany, France and Austria that I know of and presumably more, but not in all.

When the military allows its officers to be arrested by the police and caves in when the civilian government confronts them openly, that sounds nothing like a junta. And even before the recent changes in the balance of power, calling the Turkish government a junta was not very accurate: yes, the military was very powerful and could block a lot of things, but it wasn't actually governing the country (not since 1989 anymore, in any case).

And there is an enormous difference between a government "sympathizing with terrorism" and a government declining to exert its power of censorship on a show that presents events in an exaggerated but widely agreed with manner. (Even if you may disagree, but then you do have a tendency of trying to present things, at least on some topics, in as black vs. white terms as possible.) I can sympathize with Israel's dismay about that show, and obviously it isn't going to help relations, but that show in no way represents the views of the Turkish government, and doesn't alter Turkey's stances in the conflict or the fact of Turkey being allied with Israel. It is not my or Turkey's fault that, the US not having a public broadcasting channel that is in any way comparable to those existing in Europe, you have trouble understanding the position and degree of independence of such channels.