Doesn't Turkey use the Euro? Incidentally, does a country have to be an EU member to be legally allowed to adapt the Euro as its national currency?

Posted by: Infidel Pride at June 7, 2006 11:17 PM

They surely must know that Erdogan, and the popularity of that disgusting movie, and the bestsellerdom of "Mein Kampf," and the refusal of Turkey to permit the use by the Americans of their own base to enter Iraq with a fourth division from the north (which would have made everything much easier), and the behavior of Muslims, especially the maghrebins in France, the Moroccans and Turks in Germany and Holland, the Kurds and Arabs in Norway and Sweden, the Pakistanis in England, have ended forever whatever slim chance Turkey might have had to enter the European Community.

How Sabanci and the other businessmen deal with that impending rejection, and how they are joined by the one-quarter of Turkey's population that can be said to be secular, the beneficiaries who have been insufficiently attentive to protecting the Kemalist inheritance, in laying the blame squarely on the
Muslims -- that is, the True Believers -- or whether they foolishly allow Erdogan or his followers to use that rejection to whip up resentment and even grater hatred of the "Christian club" (an idiotic description of the E.U. by Erdogan, whose own country of course does belong to a religiously-based grouping of countries -- the O.I.C. -- but apparently feels that that is beyond discussion or criticism).

Turkey has nowhere to go if it wants to continue toward something like the modern world. The Cold War is over. No more spy station at Sinop. No more need for bases that cannot be used against Muslim countries -- which from now on out, are the only places that the Americans and the rest of NATO will be acting against. Bulgaria, Rumania, and other sites are available -- perhaps even Armenia. So Turkish generals and secularists had better decide -- do they choose America, or do they wish to sink into the Arab swamp of Islam, and more Islam, and undo what Ataturk wrought?

Their choice. Their common sense -- or lack of it.

Posted by: Hugh at June 7, 2006 11:21 PM

Translation from the Turkish:

"Ssshhh!

Mustn't completely wake up the rousing infidels!

Everybody, quick! Wrap cotton towels around your hobnail boots!

Turn down the bullhorns at the mosques.

We're disturbing their sentries too soon!

Ummah, put a sock in it!

Sssshhh!"

(Can't have the well-too-do kaffir Europeans going to other tourist traps rather than those in Turkey... and blindly funding the jihad.)

Posted by: profitsbeard at June 7, 2006 11:33 PM

Infidel Pride Turkey uses the lira not the euro.
A country not only has to be in the EU to use the euro its economy has to be deemed stable and developed enough to use it. the ten new countries still don't use the euro. But most should be eligible in a few years. Denmark, Sweden, and the UK have chosen not too.

The turks just finished knocking of six zeros off the lira last year. I predicted in a few years the zeros would be back. It looks like I will be write. hehe

Posted by: pissedoffcanadian at June 8, 2006 2:23 AM

Turkey only survives on handouts from the US and the EU.

Erdogan himself did jail-time for doing what Mohammedans do best: Trying to wreck havoc to establish more Islam: As if Turkey was not sufficiently Islamic (99%)

They wiped out every other religion that previously existed and sent their army in to take northern Cyprus, for which they (Turks) were never held accountable.

Many hotels have been built around the coast and tourism is highly subsidized by the EU, but mostly by Germany, who seems to have some special interest because they have most of the Turks in Europe.

Yes, there is a 'secular' elite in Turkey, but when you get to know them, they are still fiercely hateful of Israel and Jews and call for genocide (although they probably never met a single one) and all believe that there is 'nothing wrong' with Islam.

Nothing is quite right with Turkey. Let them succumb to Arab Imperialism or be prepared for conquest and take back Constantinople!

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at June 8, 2006 4:37 AM

Sheik, maybe true of the '25 %' of secular quarter, but there is a tiny subset of the true elite who deal with Israel and Jews in Turkey. The Turkish military has decent relations with Israel, but this is just aging leaders, who grew up in an different Turkey of the 50's, where the leaders actually helped the US, and the Kemalist influence was still a factor. Actually, the one thing that could save Turkey, might be another Kemal, in this case a right wing general who runs things with an iron fist for 15-20 years of total monitering/dampening of Islamic activity, elimination of green money from abroad, cutting out the religious schools, strict elimination of the veil in public life(it's creeping back in). Sadly, one cannot predict this will happen, most likely the creeping Islamic influence will build. No doubt the 25 % of the secular crowd will not breed as much as the conservative crowd, so their influence in waning. I very much like Hugh's plan or idea of moving bases, listening posts to friendly Christian enclaves like Armenia. Perhaps this is the best poetic justic of all. Then cap it off by an Armenian Holocaust Day at the White House, making sure the Turks get the video footage piped into their homes. The Religion of Peace my grit.

Posted by: biorabbi at June 8, 2006 9:38 AM

In a Turkish blog I was looking at, it mentioned that many Europeans were using the term 'Malaysiazaation' to describe what is happening in Turkey. Could anyone please clue me in as to how Turkey could be said to be becoming like Malaysia?
The blog is at:

http://tork.blogspot.com/

Posted by: wallyUK at June 8, 2006 1:45 PM

The only thing I can think of that might make turkey more like southeast asia is it might be the new hot spot for foreign brides. Turkish women are desperate to meet anyone who isn't turkish. Maybe thats what they mean by Malaysiazation.

Posted by: pissedoffcanadian at June 8, 2006 3:33 PM

"Malaysiazaation"
-- from a posting above

This is likely a reference to the creeping islamization of official policies in Malaysia which, a few decades ago, was a far more secular place, but has seen a steady rise in the percentage of the population that is counted as Muslim, and beginning with the disguised Jizyah of the Bumiputra system (which forces Chinese and Hindus and indeed all non-Muslims to support economically the less entrepreneurial and industrious Muslims, in education and in business). Mahathir, despite his extraordinary Islamic viciousness (see his speech to the O.I.C. which the delegates applauded and which Hamid Karzai found "splendid" and "wonderful"), in Malaysian terms was considered less openly a promoter of Islam. That's how bad things have gotten in Malaysia.

And that is what, I suspect, secular Turks mean when they refer to another non-Arab Muslim country which has been prescribing itself heavier and heavier doses of Islam -- exactly what the intelligent doctor would never have ordered. After a certain point, the patient suffers dementia praecox -- look at the Muslim states, the real thing -- and recovery is almost unheard of.

Posted by: Hugh at June 9, 2006 1:12 AM