By Walid Shoebat

When 20-year-old Özgecan Aslan was stabbed and beaten to death after trying to fight off a man bent on raping her on a minibus, Turkey’s president called violence against women the country’s “bleeding wound”.

Sounds righteous, right?

But two months after her murder, under Erdoğan’s rule, groups that have campaigned for years on women’s rights complain that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is still sidelining them, preferring to work with newer organizations including one in which his daughter has a prominent role.

“Women cannot be treated equal to men” Erdoğan once said. Under Erdoğan everything regarding women was reversed where he is changing set laws. Inheritance rights for women were introduced in Ottoman Turkey in 1847 and Turkey began to slowly adopt western laws and women won the right to become civil servants in 1913 with equal education rights introduced in 1924 to only have women win the right to vote in municipal elections in 1930 and were granted full suffrage by a constitutional amendment on Dec. 5, 1934, 25 years earlier than Swiss women (Turkish women obtained 35 parliamentary seats in elections in 1935.)

Today the policy makers have changed. “Women should have chastity. They should not laugh in public” says Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç. However, 80 years after granting women full suffrage, Turkey under Erdoğan is probably better known to the rest of the world for its habitual honor killings, rape stories, underage marriages (at one-third of all marriages) and violence against women.

A 2011 survey (1) revealed that 33% of Turks (male and female) think women should be beaten if they deserve it while 60% (both male and female) think women should obey men. 81% of the surveyed identify themselves as religiously devout. In 2014, 281 women were murdered up 31% from the previous year. (2)

Erdoğan even uses his family to promote his anti-women agenda. Erdoğan’s daughter Sümeyye is the deputy head of KADEM (Women and Democracy Association). In a speech last month she said it was normal for women to inherit less because men are the breadwinners. Islamic inheritance laws mandate that women inherit half the man since a woman also has half a brain.

Erdoğan and his daughter Sümeyye

“The government [under Erdoğan] has turned its back on the mainstream women’s movement. They’re acting very politically, they ask the opinion [of established women’s groups] when they have to, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to listen to what they say,” the official told Reuters.

The treatment of women and religious minorities are key to becoming part of the European Union and NATO requires respecting the Jewish, Christian, Hellenic and secular humanist values that have characterized Western Civilization, and contributed to civil rights, democracy, philosophy and science, from which everyone can benefit. While Turkey slipped into NATO in 1952 prior to Erdoğan’s ascent to power, but its entry into the European Union has been difficult especially since Erdoğan destroyed the entire Christian cultural heritage of Asia Minor which shows that the old habits of Ottoman Turks do not seem to die. Indeed, they have revived back to life.

The West Doesn’t Get It

The whole scenario of the unfolding events in Turkey and the Middle East presents a major problem for western students of biblical prophecies, especially when it comes to ignoring how women play a role as well as Turkey represents the eastern parts of the Roman Empire which the idea is promoted that someday Europe will revive to form what the Bible calls “the beast”.

So far, this eastern leg has not joined its western half and from the inception of their theories, none of their predictions have come to past and there are as many different interpretations as there are so-called ‘experts’. Even if it does join the European Union, this does not mean that the European Union will become “the beast” for we have no literal reference anywhere in Scripture that relates to any European country being a threat.

From the 10 European states confederacy (which turned out so many more) to Russia’s supposed plans to invade Israel including China (joining in as Kings of The East) and so far no one was able to get any statements from the European Union, Russia or China showing these have any interest in conquering Jerusalem. Yet Turkey under Erdoğan, not only does Erdoğan not “honor the desires of women” (Daniel 11:37) and is prohibiting them entry into the government while promoting the Hijabization of Turkey forcing women to submit against their will, but Erdoğan has made countless promises himself regarding his interest in reclaiming Jerusalem. The Turkey phenomenon presents a major problem for all the books that advertise to have ‘figured it all out’.

Western students of Bible Prophecy think that the verse “he will not honor the desire of women” pertains to his homosexual affiliation since they believe the verse is saying that Antichrist “does not desire women” which is far from what the text says “he will not honor the desire of women” which pertains to “women’s desires” because this prophecy stems from Genesis 3:15 “And I will put enmity between you [the devil] and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

The devil hates the woman, especially since it was the woman (Mary) who brought forth the Messiah. How could we ignore such a crucial key? If we want to make sermons on why man should love and cling to His wife, there is no better verse to use than Genesis 3:15.

Women’s desires and rights in Turkey are being suppressed and the devil in Turkey hates women.

If an Antichrist is to rise, as it seems, Muslim Turkey provides the bulk of evidence on the ground as well as from Scripture while Europe shows nothing. Today no European Union, Russian or Chinese leaders have ever made such proclamations as Erdoğan did. And as we predicted, Turkey failed entry into the European Union since the beast is the body of a Leopard, Greco-Roman and not European, with its feet of a Bear, Persia and its mouth of a Lion. It is ancient Babylonia in Arabia which its mouth spewed out Islam against the Church way before such outlandish interpretations were made and today we see Turkey and Iran arising to be the power peg in the Mediterranean region just as Daniel promised, this beast comes out of the Great Sea: the region around the Mediterranean or the Middle East as we know it.

And while these students begin to admit some failures that America is not Mystery Babylon, they still ignore Arabia, even though it is literally mentioned by name in the context of the future destruction of Babylon (Isaiah 21). One prophecy buff writes:

” … it is possible, perhaps, for a city such as given in Revelation chapter 18 to be constructed. Still, logic dictates that it would take a very long period to have the merchants of the earth grow rich from the delicacies that Babylon the great will offer. I think it is time to reconsider whether it has been America the whole time that this prophecy references.”

While amateurs wrote books that Babylon will be rebuilt in Iraq, this prophecy buff says that it will take a longtime for it to become a commercial hub. We have argued for years, Babylon already existed in Arabia and even was recently constructed as the most massive building in the world, larger in size than the tallest building tower on earth, yet they still ignore it. It is as if the crowds are waiting for the Messiah to come riding a white horse into Jerusalem and someone comes running to say “could it possibly be a donkey?” Should we ignore Zechariah? Why then should we ignore John who was taken to “the desert” to see it? Could it be this:

The Ka’ba with the largest modern massive structure in the world, the Seven Towers, built on Mount Babel in Mecca

From books predicting and claiming Rome to New York and Iraq, we see zero fulfillments to prove such theories. Nothing. We find no American leader calling to burn New York and no Italian Tsar wants to burn the Vatican while we find Persia (also biblical Elam) today threatens Arabia (Isaiah 21).

All such ignorance is done for one reason, to serve as a divide between Protestants on the one hand and Catholic, Orthodox, Serbs, Greeks, Copt, Ethiopian … on the other. It is as if the Church which Christ promised to establish that the gates of hell cannot prevail against it, are a set of Puritans who only exist in America which is viewed as the center of everything, Israel is a time clock, of course, destined to calculate Christ’s second coming, while the command and control center, is some ‘prophecy club’ none of whom even agree on Prophecy, but that is okay, so long they all uphold a pre-Tribulation Rapture theory, hate Rome, hate Russia, and even including to many who belong in this club, it is okay to hate even America, denouncing it as Mystery Babylon the Great.

Even the foreigners with an accent like myself, who can see their lunacy have more of a will to say that I have hope for America, the key is never to give up, God ordained nationalism, and since He ordained it in order to denounce Babel, then nationalism is God’s will and therefore is worth dying for.

But it is not love for America that these trumpeters of doom and gloom write their daily nonsense for. The Bible says of Babylon “Come out of her, my people” and I have seen first hand, a bunch of prophecy buffs flea their ‘command and control center’ becoming expats just because they believed such nonsense. How patriotic is this? Instead of fighting the good fight, they leave their land while the foreigner is always ready and more willing to consume it.

Therefore, we must keep our eyes where God instructed in the Bible to focus on “Pergamum” (Revelation 2:13), Turkey, which is also “Lydia” (Ezekiel 30), and not New York, Rome or Berlin. It is “Yavan” (Ionia) the city that is cursed and not Rome, which Christ will invade Himself (Zechariah 9:13). Rome was “destined to be saints” (Romans 1:7) and it is neither harlot or Antichrist. Now they will slander and say that I am but an agent of Rome while I am just a humble  ambassador for Christ.

A deceiver is someone who deceives while being deceived (2 Timothy 3:13). These, while it is not necessary for them to know they intentionally deceive, they always lead the sheep astray. You shall know them by their interpretations, for they allegorize the literals and literalize the allegories, they pronounce allies as foe while elevating foe as allies. Italy and Spain are allies while China is no threat to us militarily but Japan and Turkey are.  They forgot to ask their grand parents the sufferings they endured from Imperial Japan which is also reviving. The Pharisees, while they focused on Messiah riding on a horse, the wise, read Zechariah and focused on the “donkey”. In other words follow the humble and not the proud.

SOURCES

(1) Survey, 2011, by a team of academics from Istanbul’s Bahçesehir University

(2) See findings from Monitoring group Bianet