A Surprising History of Turkey in America
How do you get from Christopher Columbus to Butterball by way of Constantinople? Just ask Ataturk.
BY Nick Danforth
NOVEMBER 26, 2014
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently made the news when he claimed that Muslim seafarers "discovered America" and that when Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba in 1492 he found a mosque, built there by the natives, who were also Muslim. It may sound ridiculous (OK, it is ridiculous), but it says a lot about Turkey's president and the Islamic chauvinism that makes Erdogan's "new Turkey" so different from the secular ideals of the country's founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
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