A revealing look inside the soon-to-be newest member of the EU. From AP, with thanks to Anthony:
ISTANBUL, Turkey - It's the sort of scene that rattles Turkey's Western-looking establishment: angry demonstrators raising fists for Islam and waving posters supporting Chechen separatists, the Iraq insurgency and hard-line Palestinian factions such as Hamas."Islamic resistance will win!" chanted nearly 400 protesters, including women wearing green headbands with Quranic verses — similar to those worn by suicide bombers in farewell videos.
Radical cries from the fringe — like these in Istanbul last weekend — are driving concerns that the Muslim nation's push toward Europe may stir momentum in the opposite direction. Ahead of a key European Union vote Friday, pro-Islamic political groups appear ready to seek gains if Ankara's bid to join the EU falters and more extremist elements could use the East-West split as fresh ground for recruits in a country still stunned by bombings last year linked to al-Qaida.
"Turkey is like a firewall between radical Islam and the West," said Dogu Ergil, a political science professor at Ankara University. "The consequences if the firewall comes down are scary."
Interesting. I don't think much of Turkey as a "firewall," but it doesn't seem as if Ergil buys into the tiny-minority-of-extremists media line.
AP also seems to buy into Erdogan's veiled "Accept us or else" threat:
If the EU rejects Turkey, pro-Islamic political groups could find a springboard to reassert more power and seek stronger bonds with the wider Muslim world, including neighboring Iran. Authorities also could confront new challenges to contain extremists in Turkey, where secularism has been a pillar of the nation since it formed in 1923 from the remains of the Ottoman Empire."An EU rejection of a Muslim Turkey is also going to reinforce the notion that the West is, indeed, now engaged in a war against Muslims worldwide," said John Robertson, an expert in Middle Eastern affairs at Central Michigan University....
Meanwhile, on a Constantinople street:
Istanbul's Carsamba neighborhood is a case in point. Nearly the entire place pushes the panic buttons of the nation's secular circles.Men openly wear skullcaps and religious-style robes — technically illegal for everyone but clerics inside mosques. Bookstores offer volumes about perceived "Zionist" conspiracies against Islam and extolling the Palestinian intefadeh. Street peddlers hawk CDs about Muslim commandos in Chechnya waging "holy war" against Russia and sermons from firebrand Turkish imams silenced by the state.
Nearly every woman has a head scarf and many wear a full chador that hides all but their eyes. A five-minute cab ride brings the Turkey that EU proponents want the world to see: miniskirts, designer stores and wine bars.
"Islam is reclaiming its rightful place in Turkey," said Kenan Alpay, an organizer at Ozgur Der, or Freedom Association, a conservative Islamist group. "We have been on the sidelines of politics and society too long. That's ending."
Will the decision to allow Turkish membership of the EU be down to a majority vote or can any single nation veto it?
I'm not sure.
Please can someone enlighten me.
I'm hoping that there is a veto, the only realistic hope is Cyprus.
Reason, Elephant! Reason is the last god we have left! Reason will prevail and we WILL remember the past!
That our ancestors were fighting the muselmans just before they could reach Vienna a few hundred years ago and that Spain got them out, and they WILL be driven out of Cyprus too!
Once we (get the message across) everyone can understand that this is against Islam and not simply a case of terrorist activity or just another 'religion'- that's the day when everything changes.
A few more attacks, a little more pressure, a few more killings in the name of 'Islam' and the s**t hit's the fan, then you will see change. I can see myself driving the cattle trains to saudi arabia to offload the excess muslim- pest -come-- economic- refugees from Europe! Good riddance, Shalom!
No Islam, No terror. No Muslims= Peace! SHALOM!!!
My understanding is that there must be a unanimous vote to admit Turkey. A veto by any one EU member country is grounds to refuse admission.
I really hate to be so negative. I fully expect in a decade or two, that Turkey will become a EU member country despite the will of the people and despite the final cultural destruction of European identity which will result.
European elites might think in this fashion: "We've invested this much time and energy, there is a lot at stake and the financial benefits in the long run make this arrangement a sensible one. So we will vote favorably to allow the decision to progress this Friday, and a lot can happen between now and 10 or 15 years." What will happen between now and then is the slow acculturation among the European population to the idea of Turkey in the Union AND the endless immigration will further Islamize Europe such that by then, their conditioning (brainwashing) will be complete. Turkey fully anticipates to surge West to conquer Europe for Islam with the establishment of a new capitol in Istanbul for the new European caliph.
Dhimmification at the moment as bad as it is will only become more difficult to resist or shed because the idea of Islam is becoming such a part of the social consciousness of Europe through the long term planning of whoever is ultimately controlling this process and something tells me Europe is not the one in control here.
Deutschland/Europa: Du hast meine, mitgefuhl aber wer hat schuld? Nicht Ich oder Jihad Watch. Du warst gewarnt und du hast dich dazu entchieden es zu ignorienen.
Was für eine schande eure geschichte, kultur, und civilitzation, hat auf gegeben ohne einen kampf.
Andrew,
Despite my sunny optimism, I do agree that the Eu has shown itself to be perfectly capable of doing itself in. Hope lies in the eastern non-dhimmifioed part of europe, if only they can muster the votes and politically incorrect courage necessary to call a spade a spade and stop this mass-cultural suicide.
Andrew,
I thank you for your words from the bottom of my heart.
"Was für eine schande eure geschichte, kultur, und civilitzation, hat auf gegeben ohne einen kampf."
Yes,it is our shame...
If there is any "firewall" to talk about, it's the border between EU and Turkey. If Turkey joins the EU, that firewall comes down, and then, yes, "the consequences are scary".
It's interesting: not admitting Turkey to the EU means being at war with the Muslim world. Does that mean that if Turkey is accepted, and Morocco, Algeria or Iran will be the next ones knocking at the door, we'll be "at war" with "the Muslim world" anyway, if we don't welcome them too in the "club" - or if we fail to fulfill some other of their demands? (Isn't it curious that there even is such a thing as "the Muslim world", given that there no longer can be a "Christian world", or even a "christian club"?) So what exactly is there to win?
If Turkey gets into the EU I'm moving to the states, in fact I'm strongly considering it anyway. It will spell the end for Europe, it's bad enough now, but with Turkey joined onto us... it's a gateway for the middle east, a gateway to doom.
IF Turkey could be kept out for at least the next ten years, then by then, muslims living in the west will just make themselves so unwelcome, that Turkey won't have a hope of getting in.
Rikki:
I think that it's a good idea to come to the 'States anyway. It is the last, best hope for mankind, which is why it is hated by all the Leftist academics and Islamofascists. If it falls, then there is no hope for civilization as we know it.
I'm sure the non-Islamic Asian countries can take care of the Islamic scourge in short order as they will not be bothered by such things as human rights and "religious freedom." They have plenty of people and plenty of nukes. I'm sure these populous countries would just love more arable land and oceans of oil. The Japanese are quite familiar with conducting wars of annihilation. What's left after this "final conquest" is not Western civilization, but at least it would be "Islam-free."
I'm not an optimist as far as Europe goes. Even before the Muzzies, Western civilization was not safe in Europe, especially in the 20th century. Now, the elite of Europe are trying hard to destroy Western civilization without resorting to war. Clever Nihilists. The Eurotrash elites should be destroyed first.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If there are degrees of evil which can be assigned, I would rank the following political groups in descending order of evil:
1. Environmentalists;
2. Leftists and anti-rational intellectuals;
3. Muzzies and other totalitarian theocrats;
4. Socialists and other "soft" utopians;
5. Limousine liberals and other pampered, altruistic scumbags.
The environmentalists are the worst and they are truly evil. I'm not talking about the "moderates", those people who recycle garbage, drive Prius's and believe in global warming. I'm talking about the "fundamentalist" enviros who believe that mankind is a scourge on Earth and long for any pandemic or giga-disaster to befall planet Earth. These people want humans to either die out as a species or go back to the caves where they can live "at one with nature." They view man as being of no metaphysical significance. I can think of nothing so vile as hating your own species and wishing its complete extinction.
Hard-core leftists and other irrational intellectuals who lead a pampered life in the West, but long to destroy civilization. What motivates them, at root, is the hatred of man's mind and what they long for is the destruction of the present. Their roots may go back to the Nihilist movement in early 19th century Europe. They are just slightly less hateful of their fellow man than the enviros. This group only wants to destroy the present, not mankind.
The Muzzies are the anti-rational utopians who see men as being above animals, believe in the destruction of the present order, the West, and would replace it with something that is more flattering to Allah. When it comes to sacrificing mankind to something, at least the Muzzies think they are making human sacrifices to god. But, since their god does not exist, Allah being an invention of Mohammed, it is really a sacrifice of mankind to the delusion of the collective, like a Borg religion.
Socialists and other soft Utopians wish to replace the present order through non-violent means with an egalitarian economy in order to destroy the rich and reduce or eliminate "inequality." I think that some of this group are really with the Enviros or Hard-core left. The Socialists think that human beings should sacrifice to benefit their neighbors. At least the sacrifice is for something real and it is for other human beings.
Limousine liberals are just the anti-ideological enablers of any of the above four groups. They are guilt-ridden and want to buy off their unearned guilt, in their own minds, by funding any of the above four groups. The limousine liberals include not just those rich people in the West, but also Saudi princes. Individuals in this group may include wealthy, productive businessmen, trustafarians, royalty of other countries, currency traders, criminals and quasi-criminals (US trial lawyers).
I made up this list to put the Muzzies in context among the enemies of free and rational men.
First off: DOES ANYBODY TODAY REMEMBER THE FATE OF THE GREEK CITY SMYRNA IN THE YEAR 1922 ??????
So, Islam has a place in Turkey? That's rich.
Turkish people are merely Arabs transplanted onto what had been Greece until the 11th century.
The Arab Muslims attacked the Greeks beginning in the 11th century and slaughtered them wholesale (possibly more than 50 million of them). The Arab Muslims subsequently stole territories that rightfully belonged to the Greeks.
Turkey is nothing but a front for Saudi Arabia. It will never be anything else. Islam and Turkish-Arabs do not belong there and never have. Islam never will belong there either.
Islamic peoples have been living their propaganda lies so long they no longer understand reality.
Metalmuncher:
'Japanese good at annihilation'-yeah yeah yeah-
only today's Japanese are not the Japanese from the second world war. Today's Japanese are are hardly militant; similar to today's Germans who are equally good couch- potatoes.
And in both those places there is little interest in matters of defence, Japan has but a small force, very pampered short of being timid. And the red-green German biotope is constantly reducing spending as well as size of their unmotivated Military.
I don't see any heroes there...
There needs to be some fundamental change here, otherwise I see no hope...
No, Pythagoras, Turks are not Arabs. They're Central Asians who moved West and absorbed a lot of people they found already there (when they weren't massacring people). Their language is Altaic rather than Semitic, and whatever links it has to Arabic are a bit like the Hebrew "Amens" and "Hallelujahs" that, I am sure, are used even in the Greek liturgy (pure borrowing).
Vulcan: You find the attitude there very odd?
Funny!! When I came back from the Far East (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and of course Vietnam!) in 1973 I enrolled at the 'Free University of Berlin"- this great bastion of freedom in the midst of a communist sea...
I couldn't believe that day after day(my fellow students) these brats (protected by the US) after a good meal in the 'mensa' had nothing better to do then to stage demo's against America -in the form of attacking the American Embassy in Berlin with rocks and molotov-cocktails.. yabbadyyabbady etc. you know what I mean, It's just like that... it sux, and how many times was I screamed down when I said: 'I was there, it's not like you think, listen to me, this is not about dropping napalm on children, -you know the story. Been there, done that.
The attitude is very odd indeed. Perhaps it is good for these people to have Turkey join and to finally subject them to Sharia 'Law'- How goes the song 'you don't know what you got till it's lost, they killed paradise and put up a mosque...'