Thursday, October 30, 2025

Part I

The Republic of Turkey Celebrates 102 Years: The End of the Ottoman Empire and the Founding of the Republic of Turkey and the History of the Ottoman Empire

Yesterday was Republic Day in the nation of Turkey. The Republic of Turkey began on October the 29th, 1923 when it was declared. And this really is a big story in terms of world history, and it takes us to a big fabric, a big tapestry of history, particularly the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. What in the world is going on here? Well, for one thing, as you end the 19th century and begin the 20th century, we’re not talking about the Republic of Turkey, we’re talking about the Ottoman Empire. Now, just keep in mind a timeline of history. The Ottoman Empire seized Constantinople and established the Ottoman Empire with Constantinople as its capital. And by the way, it really wasn’t known as Istanbul widely until the 20th century.

And so Constantinople became the very center of Ottoman life. And remember, this was an Islamic empire. It was known as the Ottomans because of the families that began it. And of course, the Ottoman Empire at the time was one of the most powerful empires ever seen on Earth. At its height, it controlled much of Southern Europe going up into the Balkans and it went across North Africa all the way across the Mediterranean area. It was a massive empire, and it was a massive threat to Europe. And as a matter of fact, there were particular battles, battles in places like Vienna and battles in Budapest, right at the gates. Had those battles gone differently, Europe as we know it would not exist, and then you fast forward the United States of America as we know it would also not exist. So we’re looking at the fact that history could have been otherwise.

In human terms, we always have to remember that history could have been otherwise. We have to remember, there are contingent events from a human perspective that make a dramatic difference. Who wins a war? Which empire rises, which Empire falls? So the Ottoman Empire was already known as the Sick Man of Europe at the end of the 19th century, all kinds of reasons for that. But one of the major reasons was the Ottoman dynastic succession. And just to put it bluntly over time, even just in terms of say genetics, things don’t always go so well. The Ottoman Empire was a fascinating thing unto itself. It was also recognized as the greatest threat to Christian Europe throughout much of the Middle Ages, and it wasn’t so much considered that way in the 20th century, and that is because of the weakening of the empire. In the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire was the sick man of Europe.

It also made a very bad decision siding with the Germans in what became known as World War I. After World War I was over, Germany was defeated. Imperial Germany was no more. The fact is that over time, the Ottoman Empire was going to be no more as well. It lasted just a few years longer. The end was kind of a soap opera, but the fact is that history could have been otherwise than the modern nation of Turkey. That is to say the end of the Ottoman Empire did not mean necessarily there would be a republic and a democratic form of government in the place, which was the Ottoman Empire’s very heartland. But that is what happened over time. Another lesson of history. Sometimes political logics have to work themselves out over time, but in the case of Turkey, it gets very, very interesting. Modern Turkey, as we know, it was the construction of a man who was known as Mustafa Kemal.

Later he was given the title of Atatürk, or Father of the Turks because of his role, as I’ve often heard in Turkey just over the course of the last 24 hours, the George Washington of Turkey. He was a military officer, he was a field marshal. He was very well respected, and he was the father of Turkish nationalism. So Turkish nationalism is very different than the imperialism of the Ottoman Empire. It’s centered in the Turkic peoples, in the residents here of this area, in what is now modern Turkey, and it made the assertion of nationhood. So given all the conversation about nationalism, Christian nationalism and other issues, this is a good opportunity for us to remember what a nation is in this sense. What was it that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk wanted to put in place? Well, in one sense, it was a form of a republic, a nation that was a republic.

In this sense, he was defining the nation at least largely in ethnic terms, mostly in terms of the Turkic people now known as the Turkish peoples. And that led to some massive disasters in the time of the formation of this nation, including the genocide of people who were not Turkic inside Turkey. Now, all of this took place with other vast world events, including the similar kinds of developments that took place in Greece. And there was the agreement that peoples would exchange and largely in ethnic and nationalistic terms would go from one place to the other. Things went badly. The point is that out of the maelstrom of all of that, few people at the time thought that a modern nation such as Turkey could emerge. And quite honestly, it didn’t emerge even as a nation, much less as a republic in a way that was absolutely consistent.

Now, some people hearing that might see that or hear that as a criticism of Turkey, and to some degree perhaps it is, but it would also have to be a criticism of the United States of America. Let’s just say the 19th century wasn’t a particularly placid century for the American national experiment either. But here’s what’s interesting. At the end of the 20th century, in the beginning of the 21st century, Turkey was not only recognized as a viable nation, not only recognized as a workable republic, it was also recognized as a member of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Central Pact to the United States and our allies mostly in Europe. 

Now, in the list of those allies, Turkey stands out as different than all the rest. First of all, in religious terms, the vast majority of the citizens of Turkey are Muslims. There is simply no doubt if you are here that this is a Muslim majority nation and Islam matters a great deal. Having been here almost two decades ago and coming back, I can tell you it feels even thicker on the ground now than before. That’s largely due to the influence of the current president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. President Erdogan decades ago was the prime minister of the nation. He then became by constitutional change, the first directly elected president of the Turkish Republic. He has served in that role since 2014. He is himself a nationalist. He’s often thought of in Turkey as kind of a Turkish Trump, or it might be said that from a Turkish point of view, president Trump is an American Erdogan. Let’s just say that the way you apply the metaphor has a lot to do with where you live. But President Erdogan has brought a much stronger Islamic identity. One of the ways that has been seen is that, for instance, the historic great Christian Church, the Hagia Sophia, built in the fifth century by Emperor Justinian had been about two decades ago a museum.

It has been transformed back into a mosque. Similar things have happened in other major facilities here in the nation of Turkey, but yesterday was the Nation’s 102nd anniversary and they made much of it. It’s very interesting to be in a place like Turkey on their version of the 4th of July. Let’s just say they’re into it. You have red and white lights everywhere, banners, massive banners hanging on buildings. You have entire sports arenas with the colors out for public display. You have the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, a high-rise right there on the Bosporus that turned its upper stories into a giant electronic flag, the Turkish flag. So it reminds us of the fact that the nation is an achievement regardless of whether it’s the United States of America or Turkey or any other nation. A nation is a political achievement for a nation to survive even 102 years. When we’re looking at the rise and fall of empires in the modern age, that is a remarkable achievement. It’s something that should rightly bring the Turkish people pride. 

As I said, Turkey is now a member of NATO. It is the only Islamic-majority member of NATO. It is not a member of the European Union, and that has been an issue of contention, but it’s also very interesting to look at things from a Turkish point of view. And I will just say as a Christian, I think it makes a lot of sense that the people in Turkey find incredible pride in their Turkish identity and in their government. Let me just say, I think we should be troubled if we are in a place that has its own version of the 4th of July and no one cares. But I can tell you from first-hand experience, that’s not Turkey. 

When it comes to some of the most interesting headline issues of the day and the great clash of worldviews, well, you have a clash of worldviews that includes a clash from historic Christian civilizations and historic Islamic civilizations. That’s a major worldview fault line, and we see that in many of the that run day by day. Turkey is straddling two worlds in that respect. And by all accounts, that can’t be an easy task. But I can tell you that being here where I’ve been able to see firsthand with others the rise and fall, not just of one but of three different empires, it is amazing to be in this part of the world that has been the epicenter of so much history and to understand reassuringly, the history continues, but so also do the challenges no matter where you are in the world. One final note when it comes to Turkey’s role in NATO. The local press here was reporting yesterday about how the nation is gearing up to host the next NATO summit meeting that’ll come in 2026. And so we’re told that Ankara, that means the capital, the government is “ramping up security and logistical preparations for the NATO leader Summit set for July seven and eight of next year at the presidential complex marking Turkey’s second major NATO summit since Istanbul in 2004.”

The most important thing I want to note is the pride reflected in this news account about the government getting ready to host the NATO leader Summit, which is still many months away. We’re told about the agenda. It will, “Focus on strengthening defense capabilities, modernizing forces, preparing for cyber attacks, and energy insecurity, reviving transatlantic cooperation and enhancing NATO’s ability to manage regional crises and global security challenges.”

Now, let me just say it again. When you look at Turkey on the map and you see the Bosporus here, that very narrow body of water that separates Asia and Europe, and you understand that Turkey is on both sides of that incredibly historic strait, when you understand that the northern part of the Bosporus leads into the Black Sea, and that’s where you find Ukraine and Russia, when you look at the traffic out there in that shipping canal, and you understand how much of the traffic of the world goes through it, when you think about the headlines of the day and realize how many of them center on this area, let me just say that being here reminds me of the strategic importance of Turkey and the fact that I’m thankful that it is a full member of NATO. And as this story makes clear, probably. So may it stay so.

Part II

Elon Takes on A.I.’s Left-Wing Bias: The Leftist Bias in A.I. and Online Platforms is Undeniable, and Elon Musk is Offering an Alternative

Next big headlines in the United States, when Elon Musk announced that his company XAI would launch what is known as Grokipedia on October the 27th. So by the time you hear this Grokipedia should be up, it is to compete with online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which as the press here in Turkey is reporting, “Elon Musk thinks is guilty of ideological bias.” So Grokipedia is supposed to be the correction to Wikipedia. Grokipedia is supposed to be the conservative alternative. Elon Musk has had enough of Wikipedia, and he’s one of the rare human beings who’s in a position single-handedly to change this equation. And this won’t be the first equation that he single-handedly has changed. We are told this, “the launch came with the promise of a newer version 1.0, which Musk said would be 10 times better than the current live site, which he claimed is ‘already better than Wikipedia.’”

Have you ever notice how friends, or in this case may be former friends sound alike? I’ll just leave it at that. Okay, Musk said this, “The goal of Grok and Grokipedia is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We will never be perfect, but we shall nonetheless strive towards that goal.” He posted this on X, which he also owns following the launch. Okay, they had hoped to launch in September, it was delayed. Most high-tech things are often delayed. But it wasn’t delayed for long and it is up and operating and it is intended as a direct challenger to Wikipedia, which Elon Musk says is liberal. Okay, so is Wikipedia liberal or not? The bottom line is that a fair assessment, and this has been done independently and objectively, is that Wikipedia does lean left. And as we’re going to see AI currently, artificial intelligence leans left as well. Major AI platforms lean left.

Okay, so why? Let’s ask the question why. The first thing people would think of is, well, the people who are doing this lean left. That would make absolute sense at one point. I’m not sure it makes absolute sense now. As a matter of fact, some of the figures in Silicon Valley, even in the last few days, have been indicating rather conservative concerns or concerns that would be identified as rather conservative along these lines. So if they’re not the problem directly, then what is the problem? The conservative consensus about the nature of the problem is the privileging of sources that become the database from which AI draws material and evaluates it. And so this is a very important point. Wikipedia is probably indicative of the same kind of problem. So it reminds us as Christians that there are two forms of bias, or at least there are two and perhaps even more forms of bias.

But the two I’m thinking of are conscious and unconscious, or you could say deliberate and non-deliberate. I won’t say accidental, but deliberate and less deliberate. And that doesn’t mean that the bias is any less dangerous. If anything, that source-based bias may be more difficult to check or correct. Okay, very interesting argument made just in recent days of the Telegraph of London by Mark Brolin, who is well in this field. He writes, “ask a mainstream AI chatbot for a critique of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. And what you get might well sound like a polished resume, carefully worded accomplishments, faint allusions to critics. Some have questioned this or that, but the airbrushing is palpable. [He writes,] the algorithm comes off like a nervous intern, terrified of upsetting management.

He then says this, “Then ask about Donald Trump or JD Vance. And the AI is more likely to treat you to a list of alleged scandals with the zeal of an over-caffeinated prosecutor. Hillary Clinton meanwhile is handled with museum-like care, controversy wrapped in a velvet glove. The result, certain figures are subtly cast as threats, others as misunderstood visionaries, always with the same ideological tilt.”

Okay, so that’s interesting. This is a pretty severe indictment, “always with the same ideological tilt.” But at the very same time, Mark Rowan goes back to raise the structural problem. “The minimalist Silicon Valley AI interfaces may project the image of neutrality, but so far they’ve often echoed rather than challenged mainstream biases. The left-leaning tilt is not the result of a secret plot so much as the consequence of who curates the material that models learn from and how safety rules are set.” He continues, “When universities, research centers, think tanks, regulators and other official bodies lean a certain way, their judgments become,” and this is put quotation marks, “‘The reputable sources that artificial intelligence is trained to trust.’”

Okay, this is very insightful and it gets to an issue that conservative Christians need to keep in mind. And that is that many of the obstacles we face are not so much personalized as structural, but the structural ones, if anything, are often more difficult to overcome. And when it comes to what we now know is fueling AI, what is treated as a reputable source versus a non-reputable source. And furthermore, which databases are simply being drawn from that, at least in part is the answer about the liberal drift. But I’m not going to let the AI platforms off so easily. I think there’s also selectivity going on here, and that’s clear because there are conservative think tanks as well as liberal think tanks. There are conservative intellectual authorities as well as liberal intellectual authorities. There is no doubt in the administrative state and in the prestigious universities, yes, they lean left and that’s a large part of the problem.

But it does demonstrate the fact that when you go to one of these platforms, whether it’s Wikipedia or anything else for that matter, when you go to these AI platforms, you are not entering an arena of value neutrality of worldview neutrality. And we as Christians understand there is no such thing in the first place. Sometimes it is good to be reminded of that and we need to keep reminding ourselves of that. We can’t trust artificial intelligence anymore than well as William F. Buckley might put we would just want to put our finger on anyone from the faculty directory of an elite university and say, I’ll trust you.

Part III

Religious Liberty and Pro-Abortion Positions: Confronting a Liberal Jewish Argument in Support of Abortion

Okay now also coming back to the United States, A very interesting argument that we need to track is one that ties religious liberty to the pro-abortion position. And it’s a particular issue when it comes to liberal Judaism. So for example, a pair of Jewish writers in an article published in the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Well, let me just tell you the headline, “Post-Roe Fetal Personhood Laws Threaten Jewish Religious Freedom.” The subhead, “While IVF Remains Legal, State-by-State Authority Means Families Face a Patchwork of Laws that May or May not Respect their Beliefs.” Okay, this is something that’s been coming into shape over the course of the last several years, particularly after the Dobbs decision reversed Roe V. Wade, that decision by the Supreme Court in 2022. Some of the pro-abortion agents are now arguing what they claim is a religious liberty argument. And they’re primarily making this argument on behalf of liberal religious bodies, pro-abortion religious bodies. And this would include Judaism, liberal Judaism. And the claim is that restrictions on abortion, which could lead to restrictions on in vitro fertilization due to the protection of human embryos, would restrict the Jewish religious freedom to use those things consistent with their own liberal Jewish theology.

Okay, here’s what’s really interesting. The argument here is, as you just take it at face value, that life really begins at the moment of birth. And so I just find it very interesting that no one seems to be tracking this argument down when it comes to something like late-term abortion. When you look at the argument, these two women making a liberal Jewish argument, they’re making, it really can’t be counted as a human being until the moment of birth. And let’s just understand what that does in ethical terms. I think it could be illuminating for conservative Christians to understand what we are up against. And as you look at the controversy over abortion, particularly as it began in the 1960s and the 1970s, there were really three positions. Those positions were a consistent pro-life position, the radical pro-abortion position, and what was defined by the Supreme Court itself in Roe V. Wade in 1973 as a middle position.

And so that middle position wasn’t saying no abortions. And that middle position, at least in theory, wasn’t saying all abortions. It said abortions up to a certain point of viability, fetal viability. And that meant that even the Supreme Court in Roe V. Wade recognized there was a moment when that unborn human life became a person deserving of legal protection. Now, the interesting thing for us, of course, is that we have to begin that at the moment of Fertilization. But the interesting thing when it comes to this particular argument, is that once again, we see the radical abortion argument being made in this case coming from a liberal Jewish perspective. And the argument really does come down to the fact that if the baby hasn’t been born, it really has no ethical or moral claims whatsoever. The two writers, Elana Frank and Allison Tombrose Korman writing at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution say this, “For years, Jewish organizations have fought for abortion access as a matter of religious freedom. Jewish law is clear. Life begins at first breath, not fertilization. Until that moment, a pregnancy is considered an extension of the pregnant person.”

Notice it doesn’t say pregnant woman, pregnant person. You have a real revelation of total worldview here. “And their health takes precedence over potential life.” So notice potential life all the way up until the fact that the baby draws its first breath. And you’ll also notice this is a categorical, unconditional argument saying that up until that point, the life in the womb is entirely provisional. We just need to let that logic sink in and understand what we are up against. The less significant part of this argument has to do with the claim about religious liberty, and we’ll come back to that issue. But it does show you that the pro-abortion side right now is number one, growing more radical. And number two, coming up with whatever argument it can throw up against the wall.

Part IV

Thanks to the Donkeys: Animals Used in Trash Collection in Turkish Village Receive Well-Earned Retirement

All right, now I want to come back to Turkey to conclude. This is a heartwarming story and it tells you in the timeline of human history how things can jump around very significantly. Past, present, and future sometimes can collide. And in this case, they are colliding with working donkeys who have been picking up garbage for let’s just say, a very, very long time here in Turkey in the southeastern province of Mardin in a district known as Artuklu. And we are told they’re, “Where narrow, winding, and often stepped streets make access difficult for vehicles, the municipality’s long-serving donkeys, once essential for garbage collection are now being retired.” We are told, “In their place the municipality will soon introduce small, fully electric tracked vehicles capable of maneuvering through the ancient city’s alleys.” The local mayor, “Announced that the donkeys, which have long been a part of daily life in Mardin’s old quarters, will be sent to a newly established retired animal farm that will span 22,000 square meters.”

The mayor said, “We have signed a protocol with HATAP,” that’s the Animal Rights Federation, “To annually retire the donkeys used in waste collection on treasury-owned land covering 22,000 square meters. We are rapidly developing a project called The Retired Animals Farm. This will serve as a peaceful sanctuary where the animals can spend the rest of their lives in comfort.”

The story goes on to explain, “For years Mardin’s donkey teams have played an indispensable role in keeping the old city clean. Each morning at dawn, municipal workers harness the donkeys and begin collecting garbage from streets inaccessible to modern trucks. The teams we are told work until about 10:00 AM, then they take a five-hour rest and meal break.” Evidently it takes a while for donkeys to eat. And then they resume until 5:00 PM. “After an average of seven years of service that donkeys are retired and cared for in a municipal shelter.”

All right, the city is saying this is progress. It’s progress that they’re going to be moving to these vehicles, which we are told at one point in this article can climb stairs. I’m just going to say my guess is the donkeys are the superior technology. It’s a sweet story. It does remind us of how close human beings and animals have been in relationship for a very, very long time. And this is a sweet story about these donkeys that are being retired and they’re being sent to a retired animal facility where they can live out their days as donkeys, doing donkey things and no longer having to pick up the trash. But it just reminds us that history, even something that seems very, very ancient, can actually be very, very close. And I want to say as Christians, it’s not only a story that’s sweet, it shows the glory of God in the creation of donkeys, even donkeys who pick up garbage and can now retire.