Tag: occupation

Erdogan slams French president over EU bid

Update:

Turkey calls on EU “not to act as Greek Cyprus spokesperson” Turkey expressed disappointment over an EU report on Turkey’s progress in 2009 during its accession process.

The increasingly islamicized Muslim country of Turkey appears to have dreams of another Ottoman empire.

The Ascent of Evil: Receding American Hegemony/Atlas Shrugs

Hurriet/Turkish Daily

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan has criticized French President Nicolas Sarkozy over his opposition to Turkey joining the European Union in an interview to mark the launch of the Euronews television channel’s new Turkish language service.

In his first interview with the European TV channel Euronews on Saturday, ErdoÄŸan spoke about a range of topics, from Turkey’s negotiations aimed at eventual full membership in the European Union to Cyprus, relations with Israel, and questions on Kurds and Armenia.

The Turkish prime minister said some of the EU member states were not acting honestly during Turkey’s ongoing negotiation with the bloc. “This is where a problem arises. Why am I saying this? Because they are trying to corner Turkey with conditions that do not exist in the acquis communautaire [the total accumulated body of EU law]. This is really wrong,” he said.

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Bulgarian History, The Ottoman Turks

The Sofia Echo

What the Ottomans did to the people of Bulgaria was far worse – and on a much grander scale – than the Crusades over which Muslims are still enjoy whining.

The Ottoman Turks had been steadily marching through Asia Minor and the Balkans since the early 1300s. Winning a decisive victory over the Serbs in Kosovo in 1389 and conquering most of the Bulgarian lands as well as its capital Veliko Turnovo by about 1393, the Turks captured the last Bulgarian stronghold of Vidin in the northwest in 1396. Several rebellions against the Turks were put down, and when Constantinople itself fell in 1453, regional hope of continued resistance vanished and five centuries of “The Turkish Yoke” began.

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It was the beginning of a bloody and violent era, and some estimate that almost half the Bulgarian population perished in massacres or was carted off to other parts of the Ottoman Empire to be used as slaves. The Turkish governor took up residence in Sofia and Turkish colonists poured in to live on the plains surrounding the city and other prime, fertile land. A more severe system of feudalism was established, whereby Bulgarians who had survived the initial massacres and enslavement were forced to live as serfs of the Spahis, the Turkish knights who were landowners. The government as well as the feudal lords imposed harsh taxes, and the most hated was the devshirme, or “blood tax,” where families were stripped of their oldest boys, who were taken away to be trained as janissaries in the Ottoman military. Only pomaks, or those Bulgarians who had been converted to Islam, were exempt.

Those who kept Christianity were called Rayah, or the “herd,” and many strived to keep the old traditions of Bulgaria and the church alive by living in hidden mountain monasteries. These establishments, too, were usually overrun and looted by the Ottomans, who forced the official Orthodox Church of Bulgaria to be subordinate to the Patriarchy of Constantinople, headed by Greek clergy faithful to the Sultanate.

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