60 million Turkish citizens can't even get along with the the 10 million Kurds in their own country...or even with eachother in Brussels come to think of it. So what makes Jack Straw that the Turks will get along with their other historic enemies in Europe any better? This is stupidity pure and simple.

Posted by: irish_infidel at November 24, 2007 2:53 AM

Jack Straw is everything that's wrong with Europe today.

If Churchill was around today he would personally see to it that Straw is tarred and feathered and hanged for treason.

There are no words. There is no end to naivity, ignorance and stupidity. Straw has it all.

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at November 24, 2007 3:50 AM

Thanks, but no thanks. We might as well jump off a sky-scraper to test the chances of survival.

He is free to do the sky-scraper test. I won't join in.

Posted by: FreeSpeech at November 24, 2007 4:05 AM

Every month or so in Turkey someone throws a molotov cocktail into a church or beats a priest. Not long ago three Christians were tortured and killed. Mein Kampf, according to news reports, sold over 100,000 copies in Turkey until Germany finally prevailed on Turkey to ban the book. Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, refused to condemn Valley of the Wolves, that huge Turkish hit of a movie in which American soldiers are portrayed as murdering innocent Iraqis so that, with the knowing cooperation of a Jewish doctor, the Americans can harvest the victims' organs for profit in the medical market. The prime minister's wife was reportedly so moved with praise for the movie that she was in tears. Meanwhile, Freedom House, which sometimes is too generous in its evaluation of Muslim states (at any rate Indonesia) rates Turkey only "partly free."

Turkey is a long long way from the point where it should be admitted to the EU.

Posted by: traeh at November 24, 2007 4:31 AM

Jack Straw wants to prove that the West and Islam can live peacefully together. But, hey, didn't he just state that Turkey is a secular state? Doesn't he mean "the West and secularists" can live peacefully together?

But that wouldn't make sense, would it, because what that essentially means is "to prove that secular Europeans and secular Turks can live peacefully side-by-side"? If we are all secularists, then where's the problem?

He must have meant "to prove that Judeo-Christian Europeans and Turkish secularists" can live peacefully side-by-side. But no, he wouldn't be allowed to characterize Europeans that way, by their dominant culture/religion. Muslims are allowed to so characterize Europeans, in what usually is a denigrating way, but Europeans aren't allowed to self-label that way, even when their very culture is at stake.

Jack Straw's equation isn't balanced.

What he really meant to say was, "to prove that Judeo/Christian Europeans and Muslim Turks can live peacefully side-by-side."

This is just another example of the reluctance to name the problem clearly and the granting to Islam a respected standing, a deference, that other religions are denied.

Posted by: Jen at November 24, 2007 7:55 AM

ignoring all those honor killings, for which, in Turkey, the murderers are only given token sentences. Just like he ignores them in our own asian population.

I know, here's a great suggestion, why not make it illegal to denigrate Turkey in UK law, then they'll be even happier.

It makes me weep, it really does.

Posted by: Ian at November 24, 2007 8:23 AM

It might be interesting to admit Turkey to the EU. Then 4 or 5 million Europeans could move to Turkey. Most of them could live on the dole; they could demand special privileges because of their religious sensibilities; they could demand special lunch menus featuring pork products in the schools; they could set up no-go zones in Istanbul, Ankara, and other major cities; they could rape thousands of Turkish girls and burn thousands of Turks' cars. In short, they could behave like the Moslems in Europe. And I'm sure the Turkish authorities, being good Eurocrats, would grin and bear it, and remind the Turkish population how wonderful diversity was, and that one must be respectful of other traditions, and use considerable force to suppress any "backlash" or criticism from traditional Turks. What? You say that wouldn't happen; that the Turks would massacre the "guests" by the hundreds of thousands, while the Turkish authorities stood by and did nothing. Don't be silly.

Posted by: ebonystone at November 24, 2007 9:26 AM

Why do people like Jack Straw utter such nonsense which flies in the face of reality? What is the origin, in our Western culture, of this line of thinking and teaching which chooses political correctness over facing up to stark truths?

I have suggestions, but no answers.

First, there is the demographic implosion of the West accompanied by a continuation of a long history of unchecked population growth in Muslim countries, where birth control is forbidden. This has led to a shortage of laborers in the Western countries, and a shortage of students in the universities. This, in turn has led the business elites and the educational elites to see the importation of labor and students as necessary to the interests of the industries and universities they represent. This, in turn, has led these elites to preach multi-culturalism to the population, and to attempt whatever social engineering is necessary so that the influx of labor and students will be accepted by the natives.

In the process of this social engineering, the elites are arrogant enough to believe that if they make a pronouncement, it will become true. So, if they stand up and say that Muslim Turks and European Christians and Jews can live together side by side in peace if only the Europeans would put aside their Islamophobic prejudices, that will come true, and if it does not they just need to do some more social engineering until it does.

Once committed to multi-culturalism, the elites have a hard time to leave that path, because the Muslims are already in-country. If people do not seem to be getting along (i.e. if Muslims are fostering violence against the host culture), the business, educational, and government elites need to keep preaching tolerance, even if the natives are being told to tolerate the intolerance of others. There will be peace as long as nobody says anything to offend the Muslims.

If you are a student in a school or university, you are brain-washed with these ideas from early on, and are not equipped with the mental skills to think for yourself.

The solution to all of this is to cut off immigration, deport those that make trouble, and teach youth that their culture does have value and should be preserved (rather than trashed to make room for anything but their own culture). When immigration was slowed in the early 1900-s until the 1960's in the United States, native birth rates rose in response to increasing demand for domestic labor and increasing wage scales.

I do not pretend to know the answers here, but I am asking questions and throwing out some ideas. We need to be trying to figure out how things got off the tracks, and how to get them back on, or nothing will get better.

Posted by: Karl at November 24, 2007 9:38 AM

Turkey and the Muslims need to do the proving.

As Turkey continues its slide into the abyss of Islam it seems to me that it's the Muslims of the world who need to prove that they are able to coexist with others -- NOT the West.

In the 20th and 21st centuries the West has proven its capacity (sometimes through great struggle, and not always with perfection) to live as a pluralistic society. There have been battles, sometimes bloody both of a secular political nature and religious ones which have blemished our record, but for the most part, whereas the West has expanded its notion of itself -- and absorbed tremendous and historic human diversity into itself, the Muslim world has become more homogenous in its devotion to Islam.

During the last two centuries, nearly every Muslim nation on earth has ethnically cleansed their nations of "kaffir" and "infidels" until, if you check, you'll find that Muslim nations are largely nations with populations approaching 100% Muslim citizens... Compare that to any Western nation where dozens upon dozens of faiths are practiced across the spectrum.

We have nothing to prove our bona fides in this regard.

Islam has done nothing to prove its bona fides in this regard.

Posted by: jsla at November 24, 2007 10:59 AM

We import thousands of muslims a year through the marriage loophole into this country. Can you imagine what will happen if Turkey is allowed to enter the EU with no travel restrictions? With Turkeys borders with the rest of the middle east we would be swamped in months by muslims intent on coming here to further the UK's islamisation.

Why the politicians are helping the islamisation of the west is something people need to take a very close look at. We seem to have been infiltrated at the very highest level of government.

In the UK we now live in a country that has lost its democracy with the Labour government ignoring the wishes of the majority of the population and imposing the desires of a very small group of likeminded thinkers (the cabinet) on everyone.

That's called a dictatorship.

Posted by: DaveMate at November 24, 2007 11:11 AM

Greetings:

One of my favorite management techniques is what I refer to as "staged implementation." What the technique involves is basically a small scale initial attempt to test the idea prior to full scale application.

I'm thinking Kosovo may be Turkey's test case.

Rots of Ruck

Posted by: 11B40 at November 24, 2007 12:38 PM

The Brits need to lose this guy, Mr. Straw in a big hurry. Straw's latest Islamic utterance is the utmost in absurdity (the latest in a career seemingly made up of such inexplicably ignorant, self-effacing, and moronic-to-the-hilt utterances concerning Islam, a topic about which this man knows absolutely less than nothing) and really is --or should be-- the last "straw."

Posted by: pythagoras at November 24, 2007 2:36 PM

and to resurrect a bloody past long since buried.

As long ago as ... well, at least since the suicide bombings in Rawalpindi this morning, or the other six Islamic terrorism incidents since yesterday, not including that one in the practically prehistoric times of Islamic terrorism, last month in Pakistan, in which a bomb was strapped to an infant. On second thoughts, Jack Straw's bloody past appears to be the bloody present. And apparently he is unaware that all of this bloody murder is occurring along, in the words of Harvard historian Samuel Huntington, all the bloody borders of Islam.

Posted by: SaracensAtTheGates at November 24, 2007 5:00 PM

What if 60 million Turks moved to Britain the next year?

(Of their total population of 66,000,000 people.)

Sheer demographics would then render England Muslim, since there are fewer than this number of native Brits (59,500,000) there now.

(Obviously, no one from the West would bother moving to Turkey to take the place of the emigrees in a strategic counter-move, since the place is a Third World mess, thus Turkey, also, would be Muslim.)

Islam is anti-secular, anti-Human Rights and anti-freedom of thought/speech/behavior/conscience/religion.

Inviting it to become part of the EU would be like grafting a dead, diseased limb onto a healthy body.

The necrotic limb wouldn't be any worse off than it was.

Only the host would suffer.

Good luck with that plan, Strawman.

Cuckoos eggs look pretty, too.

Posted by: profitsbeard at November 24, 2007 5:45 PM

From the sheik above-

"Jack Straw is everything that's wrong with Europe today.

If Churchill was around today he would personally see to it that Straw is tarred and feathered and hanged for treason.

There are no words. There is no end to nativity, ignorance and stupidity. Straw has it all."

Right On Sheik! Could not have said it better. The Peter Principle is something like - bureaucrats rise to their level of uselessness. Jack is there! Time to start a garden, Jack and leave the world alone.

Posted by: Jimmy Bones at November 24, 2007 8:49 PM

Why should the West prove anything?

Why is Straw still in power? Throw the bums out.

Posted by: A_Plague_on_Both_Houses at November 25, 2007 8:16 AM

The moment that Turkey joins the EU, that's when the civil war will begin.

Posted by: Voltaire at November 25, 2007 7:57 PM

The tear-invoking "valley of the wolves" should make islamists cry. Cry that the only plausible thing worth stealing from them is their organs. There is a cruel irony in how propaganda turns against it's authors.

As for globalization/demographics etc. - may be our way out is again in an industrial revolution. This time a new one, with more and more unmanned systems in everyday life. There is a hypothesis that knowledge and de-population of Europe caused the previous industrial revolution, maybe it is time for a second one. If this is combined with the centuries-old tradition to work for life, demographics may not need the fifth column of saud in our lands.

Posted by: Excommie at November 26, 2007 11:49 AM