Mamma li Turchi!

[Alexandros]

BURAK BEKDIL


Mamma li Turchi!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

BURAK BEKDIL

Every fresh piece of scientific evidence in the shape of “Turkey by the numbers” verifies what anyone with an IQ higher than my cat’s should empirically know: You can push for better laws for European Union accession, but the social engineering in favor of conservatism is swiftly making the Turks unqualified for the club they wish to join.

We already knew that two-thirds of Turks believed EU membership would never happen; and only one-third thought they shared common values with the West. We knew that 50 to 70 percent of Turks refused to have Christian, j_e_w_ish, American or atheist neighbors, depending on the chosen “other.” We also knew that 78 percent of younger Turks wished to live abroad (and we know that in this phrase “abroad” does not mean Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan).

More recently, we learned that 54 percent of Turks either tolerated torture or thought torture must be absolutely legal. And most recently we have learned from research by two professors from Sabancı University, under the framework of the International Social Survey Program, that:

1. There has been a significant increase since 1999 in the number of people who identify themselves as religious.

2. Of the 43 countries surveyed, Turkey, Poland, the Philippines and the United States are among the most religious.

3. Although 89 percent of Turks say they tolerate non-Muslim faiths, only 13 percent had positive views of Christians, 10 percent for j_e_w_s and 7 percent for non-believers.

4. Almost half of them say they would either absolutely or most likely not accept political candidates from different religions.

5. Only 13 percent say they would respect laws contradicting religious (Muslim) teachings.

It’s a pity the pollsters did not ask the Turks about anti-Semitism. The results would have read something like this: Survey X found that only 2 percent of Turks have anti-Semitic sentiment, although it revealed that 92 percent of Turks say they hate j_e_w_s. We don’t hate j_e_w_s unless they are j_e_w_s!

But is self-contradiction not a traditional Turkish pastime? Did Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan not say that he viewed Middle Eastern disputes with a Muslim’s approach? Did he not say that he viewed the plight of Palestinians as a prime minister and as a Muslim? And has he not often accused the EU of being a “Christian club”? It’s up to you to see the merit in the Turkish proverb “Balık baştan kokar” (the fish smells from the head).

Can we really blame the Europeans who would not like to sit in the same club with 35-50 million Turks who would refuse to have Christian, j_e_w_ish and atheist neighbors? With 35 million Turks who would not accept political candidates from non-Muslim religions? Or with 38 million Turks who think torture is fine? Or with 60 million Turks who say they would not respect laws if they contracted Islamic teachings? Or with 46 million Turks who think they don’t share common values with the West? Or with 60 million Turks who don’t have positive views of Christians or 63 million Turks with a negative opinion of j_e_w_s? Is this really what Europe is about?

We all wholeheartedly support the EU’s cliché prescriptions like democratic control of the military, curbing the military’s role in politics, better cultural and political rights for the Kurds, better religious rights for non-Muslim minorities and good neighborly relations with Armenia. But Turkey looks like an unpredictable student trying to memorize textbook sections to please his teachers and get passing marks in final exams but at the same time metamorphosing into a bully who terrorizes most its classmates. And he gets generous pats on the shoulders because he really tries hard to memorize textbook sections.

Saudi Arabia is not a democracy merely because its military has no role in politics, nor is either of Egypt or Jordan a democracy because they treat their non-Muslim minorities well. And Iran certainly would not qualify to join the EU because it has good relations with most of its neighbors.

No doubt, meeting the cliché requirements is fine; that is being — hopefully — done. But the heart of the matter is missed: the social engineering that makes the Turks increasingly conservative both ethnically and religiously.

You can always pass new laws for the better. You can amend laws for the better too. But you cannot easily “make or amend” nations so that they fit well into established civilizations.

Link

[Armanen]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

This was a good article, really detailing why turkey does not belong in the eu and how barbaric their mindset is. On a related note, if turkey were to join the eu I wouldn't be upset either, afterall, the two sides really do deserve each other.

[hipeter924]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

This was a good article, really detailing why turkey does not belong in the eu and how barbaric their mindset is. On a related note, if turkey were to join the eu I wouldn't be upset either, afterall, the two sides really do deserve each other.

Turkey will never likely join the EU as all you need is just one country to veto, and there would always be a country to do that.

[Muhaha]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

This was a good article, really detailing why turkey does not belong in the eu and how barbaric their mindset is. On a related note, if turkey were to join the eu I wouldn't be upset either, afterall, the two sides really do deserve each other.

Why do you think they deserve each other?

[hipeter924]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

Why do you think they deserve each other?

I have to agree, as though there some countries in the EU that are Pro-Turkey and hate Armenia, there are others like Greece (which is close to Serbia) that have been good friends to Armenia in the past, and have suffered greatly at Turkey's hands.

[Merv]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

I have to agree, as though there some countries in the EU that are Pro-Turkey and hate Armenia, there are others like Greece (which is close to Serbia) that have been good friends to Armenia in the past, and have suffered greatly at Turkey's hands.

Greece is the odd man out in "Western Europe." They're sort of honorary members, but Western Europeans have only ever cared for the ancient Greeks and ancient Greece. Historically, they (Westerners) have been at pains to distinguish modern or Byzantine Greeks from ancient Greeks, not only culturally (of course there is a difference), but also racially, dredging up claims that Greeks are "really" Turks, Slavs, Albanians, Vlachs...anything but descendants (even partially) of ancient Greeks. Westerners are also keen to portray ancient Greece as continuing its cultural heritage solely through Western Europe, while ludicrously denying the cultural continuity (if only by the language) that we see in Greece and the Byzantine sphere.

Western Europe has also repeatedly preferred Turkish Muslims to Orthodox Christians - whether Greek, Serb, Russian, Bulgar, Armenian, etc. That is why they propped up the Ottomans for nearly 100 years (practically the entire 19th and early 20th centuries), repeatedly preventing Russia from crushing them, taking Constantinople, liberating the Orthodox peoples of the Balkans and the Middle East. The West fears Russia much more than the Muslims.

The simple fact is that Western Europe arose from Germanic tribes politically reorganizing post-Roman territories and gradually switching from Arianism (or paganism) to Roman Catholicism. The Latin language maintained by the church afforded communication between the territories. At its core, Western Europe is Scandinavia, the Benelux, Germany, France, and the British Isles. Spain and Portugal, although Catholic, are only partially Western since their culture was fundamentally formed by the Moors (although the Visigoths, a Germanic tribe, first organized the post-Roman Hispania). The Italians are another curious hybrid. Many of them were essentially semi-Byzantine - especially the Venetians and those in former Magna Graecia (Sicily and southern Italy). Others were organized by Germanic tribes such as Normans in the south and Lombards and Goths in the north.

The "Greek heritage" of Western civilization was artificially transplanted back into the West by Italians who were rediscovering Latin, and later, Greek literary works. The fall of the Byzantines to the Turks forced many Greeks to move to Italy and helped ignite the Renaissance. But Western (and by that I am speaking of non-Italians, since I consider Italians to be a Byzantine-Germanic-Roman hybrid and not "truly" Western) literature, music, and art fundamentally have nothing to do with the ancient or Byzantine Greeks. The epic literature stems from Germanic romances, not the Iliad or Odyssey; the drama stems from medieval plays, not Aeschylus or Sophocles. The music cromes from Catholic church music and the native dance forms of country people (many of them Germanic or Celtic in origin). The art has very little continuity with that of the ancient or Byzantine Greeks (Western Catholic churches preferred tall spires, sharply broken arches, sculpture and stained glass to the softly curved domes, mosaics, and frescos of the Byzantines).

In contrast, it is precisely the Byzantine sphere that inherited Greek culture. Orthodoxy is one of them. Another is the Greek alphabet or its many mutated forms - Coptic, Armenian, Cyrillic, Glagolithic, Georgian, etc. And a whole slew of art, music, and literary forms rooted in Byzantine Greece.

The Greeks decided, over the centuries, to set aside the ancient Greek culture for something better - Christianity. It's not that the Byzantines couldn't make sculptures or paintings like the ancient Greeks did - it's that their focus completely changed from an art that focuses on physical human beings and realism and pagan mythology, to an art that is supposed to create spiritual contemplation and understanding. The Greeks never forgot Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Sophocles, and Thucydides: they decided that the Bible and the writings of the theologians were worthier knowledge to possess and express than what their ancestors had. Look at this:









This is not the most realistic art. The hair and clothing is not realistic. Proportion and 3D perspective is not observed. It isn't even necessarily the most beautiful art. But there's a spiritual devotion there that I have a hard time seeing in Western art.

So this whole story of Greeks as the founders of Western civilization is nonsense. The West is a product of Germanic and Celtic tribes being civilized by the dying Roman culture and Roman church and in turn inventing their own civilization - rooted in Roman Catholicism, a Latin liturgical language, the Latin alphabet, Latin as a language of science, and feudal city-states founded by various Germanic tribes gradually consolidating into kingdoms. Very little Greek there, obviously. At the core, Greeks really have nothing to do with "Europe" - and by that I mean Western Europeans and the EU - and everything to do with Orthodox Christian Europeans and Middle Easterners.

[Catharsis]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

Very good reflections Merv thanks. I agree about the Germanic and Celtic contribution to Europe, but I think the Roman element is quite apparent (and one can argue is paramount) in formulation of both medieval and later modern Europe (both republican and imperial Roman models were copied and applied in modern Europe). You did note the Roman factor and rightly so, however, where did Romans get a lot of their inspiration from? A lot of it is from Greece (and of course other civilizations like the Etruscans even early Celts who were in close contact with the Italics/Latins). Greece in turn borrowed heavily from earlier civilizations of Anatolia-Armenian Highland-Near East. For example the Greek alphabet that you noted has much earlier origin going back to Phoenicia, which in turn has borrowed from Sumerian pictographs/hieroglyphs. In fact earliest layers of Greek civilization (like the seven layers of Troy) are on the western shores of Anatolia. The crossing of the ancestors of Hellenes into Greece proper and the isles happened later.

[Eddo211]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

Very good reflections Merv thanks. I agree about the Germanic and Celtic contribution to Europe, but I think the Roman element is quite apparent (and one can argue is paramount) in formulation of both medieval and later modern Europe (both republican and imperial Roman models were copied and applied in modern Europe). You did note the Roman factor and rightly so, however, where did Romans get a lot of their inspiration from? A lot of it is from Greece (and of course other civilizations like the Etruscans even early Celts who were in close contact with the Italics/Latins). Greece in turn borrowed heavily from earlier civilizations of Anatolia-Armenian Highland-Near East. For example the Greek alphabet that you noted has much earlier origin going back to Phoenicia, which in turn has borrowed from Sumerian pictographs/hieroglyphs. In fact earliest layers of Greek civilization (like the seven layers of Troy) are on the western shores of Anatolia. The crossing of the ancestors of Hellenes into Greece proper and the isles happened later.

http://www.iatp.am/resource/artcult/rockart/geghama/gr1/14-20.htm

http://www.iatp.am/resource/artcult/rockart/geghama/book-e.htm#a1

Alexandros, thanks for the article..........man you are on top of this.

[hipeter924]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

Well the Greek and Armenian churches didn't discriminate or persecuite people or at least as much as their western Catholic and Protestant counterparts, which if you read their history wiped out the Cathar's, and persecuted scientists like Galileo, intellectuals, and anyone who disagreed with the church and its authority.

The Western churches became brutal and authoritarian, whereas the East simply allowed the easy distribution of knowledge and didn't follow the negative western path of Christianity though I must admit the Byzantine Empire took part in crusades, it has to be remembered that the Catholic Pope sacked and plundered Constantinople (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBx8BDJdzfY) in a great betrayal in one of these crusades, laying the easy foundation for the latter Ottoman conquest of the city.

In addition the Venetians and others were at constant warfare with the Byzantine Empire, and only agreed to peace after a humiliating treaty that gave the Venetians a section of Constantinople, not that it helped because they went back to war with Constantinople anyway, and did virtually nothing to help Constantinople when the Ottoman's were attacking the city, it has to be noted that all the Christians who came from western Europe were basically volunteers and not helped by their governments.

[Armanen]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

Why do you think they deserve each other?

Those nations in the eu, especially the western ones, stopped being 'European' and Christian a long time ago. They have lost their heritage and only pay it lip service. You reap what you sow.