Year: 2009

Gates of Vienna

A Turkish agit prop speaks from a position of power and considers Turkey’s full membership in the EU beyond any doubt, as a privileged partnership is out of the question.

He  starts with outrageous and preposterous claims such as these:

• Turkish contributions to European culture and way of life, such as Mozart’s Turkish March, the opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio”, and coffee; Turkey has geared its policies towards the West for the past centuries

• The EU is in need of Turkey’s young and well-educated and trained manpower.
• Turkey is crucial for European energy resources.
• Turkey as a full member raises the political strength of the EU.
• Turkey is pushing democratization.

Reality Check:

Bringing the Turkish constitution into line with EU principles would entail the destruction of both pillars of the Turkish constitution and would thus put an end to Atatürk’s Turkey. In addition, it can be seen in all clarity that the EU will either accept a de facto military dictatorship or an Islamic state within its ranks provided the “negotiations” with the EU continue to proceed at the same pace. In any case, the EU will remain the pawn of Turkish politics.

Turkeys ploughs its way into the European Union. It bullies concessions and does not show any willingness to fulfill accession criteria. It follows its well-established negotiation tactics: wooing — being offended — threatening.

It wants a Turkish Europe, as clearly expressed by the Turkish prime minister, during his recent appearance in Cologne.

Reason becomes nonsense, benefits turn into menace.

Read the whole thing>>

Links:

UK: Army Outraged After British Soldier Killed Rescuing NYT Reporter Who Was Repeatedly Warned Not to Enter Taliban Stronghold….

Dhimmi Watch: Fitzgerald: Turkey vs. free speech

Fitzgerald: Turkey — Not E.U. Membership, But Support And Understanding For Turkish Secularists

The many decades during which the systematic attempt, through legislation, by Ataturk to remove Islam in Turkey from the political sphere and to limit its power to fashion society, over time managed to allow the formation of a class of Turks who, in their mental outlook are not as distant as from Western man as are, say, Arabs or Pakistanis.

They do, unsurprisingly, continue to identify themselves as Muslims, sometimes out of civilisational defensiveness or filial piety. To abandon Islam might seem like abandoning a pious grandmother, or viewing the islamization of the former Byzantine Empire as a historic mistake, and many cannot bring themselves to do that. This secular class consists, in the main, of businessmen who have dealings with the West (the Sabanci family comes to mind), writers (Orhan Pamuk, about to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard), journalists, professors, rectors of universities, art gallery owners, musicians who play Western music.