Mamma li Turchi!

[Armanen]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

If you read what I said above, it didn't help Armenia when they were Christian. So would it make any difference what religion they follow? If they want to convert to Islam they can, and from the looks of it some nations in Europe are adopting Islamic law.

I didn't see your last post when I was typing mine. I agree with what you said, and I do not for a second trust the western Europeans or any other nation for that matter. Like Merv said, the french and british were more afraid of Christian Russia than muslim ottoman turkey. It is high time these people got a taste of what the turks are all about, for hundreds of years it was the blood of Armenians that kept the turks at bay, which allowed western europe to prosper. It would be interesting to see what would have happened to the western europeans if Armenia and Byzantine had not put up half the fight which they did against the seljuks & ottomans. I'd be willing to bet that the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution and Industrial Revolution would not have occurred. In essence the modern world would be much different. Instead of Europe remaining Christian with only the albanians and bosnians -converted Serbs and Croatians-, much of Europe would have become muslim.

[hipeter924]

Re: Mamma li Turchi!

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.

If you read what I said above, it didn't help Armenia when they were Christian. So would it make any difference what religion they follow? If they want to convert to Islam they can, and from the looks of it some nations in Europe are adopting Islamic law.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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!

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.