"Were it to do so, the EU would find out that it has much to learn and little to fear from Turkey."

Well - Turkey WAS the first to use modern methods of genocide on an indigenous ethnic population. Let's not forget that. Is Europe looking to pick up on that?

Ukraine and Bulgaria shrinking?

*cough cough* -ullshi- *cough cough*

"share the European values of democracy, the rule of law, secularism, and women’s rights"

Oh - so Europeans think women should be killed for adultery? (Or maybe just have their noses cut off.) And their favorite book is Mein Kampf?

Really?

NO, not really.

"'Atta Turk".

For I am

Prophet Geoff
BBUH

Posted by: Geoff at November 2, 2005 12:33 PM

Idiots.

PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH PBUH

The first step towards disassembling Islam in the Free World is disassembling the intellectual elite, and roust the lazy, blind morons from their worse-than-useless Ivory Towers.

Posted by: Chaz MarteL 732 at November 2, 2005 12:35 PM

If Turkey is such a progressive modern country, why is it that it has never acknowledged the genocide that it committed against Armenians, Assyrians and other minorities 90 years ago? Turkey moves aggressively each time to suppress any study or memorial to that dark time in their history. Europe has little to gain and much to lose if they bring in millions of Turks, who will, in turn, open their back doors and allow their fellow Muslims from the Middle East to enter the EU. Turkey is the Trojan Horse from the East. Do the Europeans remember history?

Posted by: maryrose at November 2, 2005 12:35 PM

Re: "As a secular country, Turkey provides Europe with lessons for how to deal with—and perhaps even modernize—Islam"

This is a strange statement given how Turkey appears to be now reverting back to a fundamental Islam. Never let the facts get in the way I suppose.

Posted by: johnb at November 2, 2005 1:20 PM

"If Turkey is such a progressive modern country, why is it that it has never acknowledged the genocide that it committed against Armenians, Assyrians and other minorities 90 years ago?"
-- posted by maryrose

Cuz they're not one damned bit sorry for having done what they did. Unlike the Germans, who are so apoplogetic that they have decided to systematically dismantling their nation and culture.

It's gonna be pretty clumsy sitting at those EU meetings whilst the Turkish army is slaughtering Kurdish revolutionaries by the tens of thousands.

Posted by: Chaz MarteL 732 at November 2, 2005 3:09 PM

One wonders what Monsieur Sarkhozy would learn from Turkey. That the best way to deal with troublesome rioters is through genocide?

Yes, Turkey has many, many things to teach us. Lessons on standing shoulder to shoulder in order to better resist invaders. Instructive pedogogical reminders of how Islam takes advanced cultures and turns them backwards. Mind broadening enlightenment as pertains to the fate of brutally subjegated peoples.

Yes, Turkey is a real study!

Posted by: John Palubiski at November 2, 2005 4:22 PM

There are several reasons for rejecting the Turkish bid, and only one valid reason to accept it: to transfer European factories to a country with a cheaper manpower. In other words, the ordinary European will lose whilst the wallets of some industrials will get fatter.

Question: Will anyone explain to me why the European left that is so keen in protecting the "workers" is completely mute regarding the Turkish bid?

Answer: Because the only way for the radical left to win at the ballots is by flooding the countries with poor uneducated "workers". After a few years' residency, foreigners can vote in most elections, and as you know, as the living conditions of a population go up the later tends to swing towards the right.

I wouldn't have any problems in admitting those Turks that are actually westernized (most of them live in Istambul and in the coastal areas). Unfortunately, accepting those 20 or so million Turks also implies being forced to accept 40 or 50 millions of individuals who are culturally closer to the Middle East than to Europe. So thanks, but no thanks: go sell your "Cures-everything" lotion to another town.

Posted by: cruzado at November 2, 2005 4:30 PM

cruzado:

The Turks from Constantinople aren't any better in any way that really matters. I've had the displeasure of educating several of them when I tought part-time at a large US university and without exception they all 1) denied the existance of the Armenian Holocaust 2) blamed all of their nation's problems on America and Europe and 3) were all unrepentent nationalists. Nasty bunch.

Posted by: Sephiroth at November 2, 2005 4:57 PM

This article is taqiyya hogwash
and utter balderdash.
So I wrote the estemed scholar
a respectful e-mail to remind him
that the turkish government's treatment
of Orhan Pamuk was in keeping
with a secular democracy.

Posted by: the poetess at November 2, 2005 4:59 PM

oops,post above should read:
"not in keeping with a secular democracy."

Posted by: the poetess at November 2, 2005 5:00 PM

Why does my name point to "sephiroth.it?" I did NOT type that into the submission box, and it certainly isn't in my typekey account. Weird.

Posted by: Sephiroth at November 2, 2005 5:02 PM

Ithink that the riots in France have awakened Sarkosy. I saw and heard him on Deutsche Welle TV, this morning condemning the rioters "full of animosity, who don't want to integrate, respect the law or work"

Posted by: Nariz at November 2, 2005 6:08 PM

The first step towards disassembling Islam in the Free World is disassembling the intellectual elite, and roust the lazy, blind morons from their worse-than-useless Ivory Towers. Posted by: Chaz MarteL 732

The intellectual "elite" don't have the money and power, and it is money that runs the world, money to get power, power to keep the money, and the money and power lie in the hands of the "capitalists", those who profit from cheap imported labor (legal and illegal) and who look with loving eyes at the markets of Muslim countries, and the profits that their oil provide.

Continue believing that it is all intellectual lazy, blind moron, elites and you or your descendants will wind up a dhimmi.

It takes a right wing and a left wing for any bird to fly, and both wings are part of the same bird.

A new vision, and a rapproachment between those whom the left and right demonizes is needed, but first we have to recognize the visage of the enemy and the visage of the enemy are the craven elite who care only about profits and power.

Posted by: Nariz at November 2, 2005 6:13 PM

There IS much to learn from Turkey. Like: despite decades of secularism and the best efforts of Mustafa Kamal and his heirs, the siren call of Islam, sharia and jihad is still mighty enticing.

Posted by: scaramouoche at November 2, 2005 6:14 PM

All those Americnas who are pushing for Turkey to enter the EU, just like all those who push insistently the theme of the "moderate" Muslim at the very moment when most non-Muslims have no idea what Islam is all about, and so would eagerly embrace the slippery nearly useless quasi-fiction of the "moderate Muslim" -- are not to be trusted as analysts of the situation, nor their prescriptions on policy accepted. Even if they may be doing this because they cannot conceive of what else could or should be done, that is ony a reason, and not a justification.

Turkey's secularists want Turkey in the E.U. for their own good reasons. They want to dilute Islam. They want the E.U. to somehow save them, because they are not sufficiently cunning or ruthless or determined to preserve, much less expand upon, Kemalism. Just keeing one secular university president, Askin, from going to jail because of his views, and the relentless campagin by Erdogan's party against him, shows that there is a secret civil war going on within Turkey. It should go on. But the side that we support unforunately cannot be supported at the expense of Europe. That side will have to do what it can, without forcing the problem of Islam even more into the unwilling European lap. That's over. That will not happen.

What must now happen is for those secular and articulate Turks to figure out how to make sure the blame is put on Muslims themselves, beginning with those easy-for-Turks-to-despise Arabs who "have given Islam such a bad name." In other words, the rejection of Turkey by the E.U. must be used not by the Islamic parties to win more favor from Turks deliberately encouraged to resent a non-existent "Christian club," but rather mad at non-Turkish Muslims, or too-fervent Muslims within Turkey, who scared the E.U. members into what is, under the circumstances, quite justifiable opposition to Turkey's admission.

Prepare for this rejection. Use it to promote secularism, and to cause resentment in Turkey against other, more primitive, more fanatical, Muslims. This can be done.

Posted by: Hugh at November 2, 2005 6:24 PM

Re: "As a secular country, Turkey provides Europe with lessons for how to deal with—and perhaps even modernize—Islam"

This is a strange statement given how Turkey appears to be now reverting back to a fundamental Islam. Never let the facts get in the way I suppose.
Posted by: johnb

The only way Islam can change is if the change comes from within, change can not be thrust on it. Islam cannot be wiped off the face of the earth, and it is a fact that the more one pushes against something, like a chinese finger puzzle, the more the adherents dig in and revert to fundamentalism.

The world itself is on the cusp of a new dark age, a reversion to fundamentalism, a reaction to change, men feel that their own personal power is under assault, and they seek to return to the past, which they mistakingly glorify, or which is glorified by the myths that men create to justify their present state.

The life blood of Christianity was it's martyr's, as evidenced by the Church's litany and calendar of saints, the foundation of the faith is built on persecution (real or mythical), and so it is with Islam, especially Shi'a Islam.

(The persecution of Christians by the pagan Romans is well known, but less well known is that the church persecuted rival sects, Leo the Great had Manicheans fed to the lions, the Church massacred the Marcionites in Spain and Italy, and the Albigensian/Cathars in the Langue d'Oc region of France. Persecution works, but only if it is final, total and complete..and leaves no stone standing).

It is the persecution of Jews that give a unique and solidifying identity to them.

And Islam today is retrenching, fortifying it's walls and bulwarks by creating it's own myth of persecution and the harder it is pressed, the more it will fall in on itself, retrench and harden.

While it is true that Islam is the big persecutor of all times, it's mythology is based on persecution. According to Muslim mythology Mohammad was persecuted in Mecca and thus migrated to Yathrib, the occasion being the start of the Muslim calendar, and according to Muslim self justifying mythology, all of it's bloody deeds, from the murders of Asma and Abu Afak to the massacre of Jews in Medina and Khaybar were a consequence of persecution.

That's the way the social organism works.

Can Christianity prevail in the Battle for God, especially where it's antagonists lust for and seek martyrdom, and delight in deprivation and suffering?

Can the west prevail, when facing it is not only the billions of Muslims, but the billions of Asians, and third world peoples who have nothing to live for, nothing to lose, and thus no reason to fear death and destitution.

Posted by: Nariz at November 2, 2005 6:30 PM

To Nariz,

Intellectual elites are powerful
in the arena of ideas
that define who we all think we are,
hence the power of multiculturism
and political correctness
that we yammer on and on about. . .

capitalism, communism, socialism,
these ideas changed history,
started wars, have made and broken nations.
Evil comes in many flavors.

And,
how can islam change?
Can the words of allah change?
If islam is the final
and last way of living for all humanity,
according to that which knows everything,
and it is the most perfect of all ways,
then there can be no new ideas in it.

If this is so, then it can't change
because change has to come from new ideas
and there can be no new ideas
in islam, in the koran, the hadiths,
they are frozen in time,
with their dual ethics
and arab barbarism,
llike flies frozen in amber.

You are right, islam cannot
be wiped off the face of the earth,
but muslims can slough it off
like the snake sheds its skin,
can regain the honor they so desire
by simply joining the family of man,
by letting go of anger and hatred,
by loving humanity, gaining wisdom
istead of proudly proclaiming their ignorance.

Posted by: the poetess at November 2, 2005 7:44 PM

Let me repeat it once again: " Turkey is not a secular Muslim country."

Perhaps there are many Turks who like to present themselves as secular to the west for their own secondary gain, namely, entrance into the European Union.

But let us not be duped.

The Erdogan administration is not secular minded and neither are the majority of Turks.

Posted by: Johnathan at November 3, 2005 2:04 AM

Nariz:

Not all "third worlders" are nihilists, just the Marxist or Islamist influenced ones.

Posted by: waterdragon52 at November 3, 2005 10:21 AM