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Thank you, when I say roughly the same things here in Turkey I'm regarded as an Islamist 🙂 It's been tough and I don't think we're anywhere near to the end. We've never experienced the industrial revolution and we also didn't experience the enlightment properly. We went from subjects of the Sultan who owe their very existence to God then the Sultan to a nation state almost over night. That's why it's always been too easy to manipulate the general population in Turkey. Educated population is low and its not divided equally in the country. The east and the west is like two different centuries let alone countries. It's similar to the Italians where the North creates the wealth and the south creates the babies, only much more pronounced. I believe if we had not been able to hold onto to the east of the country during our War of Independance, we would be one of the heavyweights of the EU right now. Istanbul alone as a city creates more wealth than most small eastern european states and has more population than all of Greece. But more than half of what we produce goes down the drain in the east. But because of the strongly nationalistic nature of the country it considered treason to even suggest these things.On the religious side the problem was always there but now it has come out into the open. There is still a minority which longs for the days of Sheria and the Islamic way of life. Altough they are marginal they still scare us because of their volatile nature (hence I can understand the west's ease in being scared of the Islamonuts). But majority of the population is "muslim" if you ask them but most only go to mosques on religous holiday, if even that, drink alcohol but don't eat pork for some reason ;D , and are more scared than the Islamists then you will ever be. So we'd definitly have a full blown civil war before the country regresses back to an Islamic state. Personally altough I agree with the Islamophobes that religion is not something we need, I don't agree with their methods of creating a "militant democracy". That term was coined by the former Attorney General who thought that democracies must be aggresive, even militant against those they percieve as threats. I have never seen an idea or a thought being cencored, beaten, silenced or otherwise cohersed into submission indefinatly. You can do this for a limited amount of time, for as long as you have the muscle, but after that there will be consequences. If we somehow succed with this AKP experiment and stay within the bounds of reason and democracy I believe the consequences will be limited in depth and violance. And we can move on as a better democracy, but if there is another Coup D'etat or the CHP comes to power in a way which is percieved as undemocratically by the general population the repurcussions will be deeper. Altough they won't be today, they will hurt more. At least that's my two cents.
What's up with this? Release of Turkey generals eases tensions for now I did not realize tensions between the military and civilian government had gotten so bad in Turkey. I am curios as to what the man on the street thinks about the Turkish Military's role as the gaurdian of secularism?
I guess the question is directed at me but it's a very complex question to answer that needs a lot of background info so bear with me. For about 10 years now, we're being governed by the AKP, which was a spin-off of the Welfare party who was a very conservatively pro-islamist party. However AKP officials have always denied that they were the same party as the old one, saying that they were more in line with the "christian-democrat" tradition of Germany. In the past 10 years I can't say that they have shown anything to the contrary. Turkish politics is a peculiar animal, what the rest of the western world calls left is right what you call right is left over here. For example the social democrat - CHP - is known as leftist in Turkey. However they pride themselves on being nationalists and are the most hardliners in disputes such as the kurdish problem, cyprus, armenia, greece (all foreign policy) and are fundementally secular. As I've mentioned before I'm not a religious man by any stretch of the imagination but these guys really take it to a different level. They are the political wing of the "Kemalist" camp. The military is and has always been very staunchly Kemalist. The military percieves themselves as the protector of the republic which is fine but they also percieve all other political partys (except CHP) as being threats to the republic. The CHP mostly reminds me of the Shah in Iran, looks western but it is as middle eastern and anti democratic as possible.That's the main reason why we've had coup d'etats, near coup d'etat's or post-modern syber coup d'etats every ten years or so. Personally I'm a great believer in liberal democracy, therefore I'm very supportive of this civilan governments efforts to change the Turkish culture of having the military as a political entity, irrespective of their background or any misgivings I have about them. I don't believe that they will turn us into an Islamic state, like the military would like us to believe. I truly think that these are devout muslims who have realised that individual liberties that can only be attainable if we progress to be a nation of civil liberties will let them live their faith as well as us live our own personal choices. Interesting note; most of the non muslim populace supports the so-called "Islamic" AKP rather than the CHP. It's time that the Turkish people realise that oppression can came wearing a suit and tie just as easily as it can come wearing a burka. It's funny but it's true the symbol of civil liberties in Turkey is the headscarf. As I said we're a peculiar country where everything seems as though you're in an inverted universe.
Why is it that Turkey wishes to join Europe? Is it due to because they are muslim country and part of the middle east and that their ancestors were the HUNS which orginated from Mongolia and China that they are being labeled as Asia?
I'm having a really hard time following your train of thought.Why Turkey would like to join the EU is a question which needs a detailed response. But none of the reasons have anything to do with us having Huns as our ancestors. If you say the nation cannot be both, I will ask you to define what you understand/mean from the terms european and asian?Relatively speaking we (I'm a Turk BTW) are more asian than europeans and more european than asians. But we are neither 100% european nor 100% asian. Our language is Altaic (asian) our societys predominant customs and code of laws are european, our religion is asian (but how you classify this is another matter), but our secularism is european.
Religion is a sticky subject to begin with. If you have faith in one it is kind of difficult to agree with the premise of the question on this thread. I would guess the only person who would say yes to the original question is an atheist or of a non-Muslim/Jewish/Christian faith.
I agree, the only way you can say they are the same is if you seperate the concept of God from all religous doctrine. Come to think of it even then it would be the individuals understanding of what and who God is so again they can not be the same.These are alternatives to each other, they all say that they are the "one true faith". So even if conceptually they might be similar theoretically they cannot be the same. It would be contradiction to say that God/Allah/Yahweh are the one true God and then say that they are the same. But linguistically they are the same concept. Allah is not the muslim God. It is literally the singular form of the word Gods in Arabic.
You know I'm going to run right out and get that book Ivkhan............once it shows up here in America deal?
Sofia is just about a 4-5 hour drive from Istanbul, so I'll go and get the book this weekend. If anyone else wants one I can send them a copy, and maybe ivkhan would be nice enough to sign our copies...Oh and to get back on topic; we're also not bad in the beer brewing business. You should give Efes Pilsen a try if you ever get the chance.
But nobody brews beer like the Germans. ;D There are so many different kinds too. My local getrankemarkt must have 30-40 different brands and kinds of beer. I haven't even tried all of those yet.
I beg to differ. Germans are good but the Belgians and the Checzks(sp?) are better.The best beer I've had are the trappist beers by far.
The fact that - genocide - was not created at the time of the event being studied, makes it irrelevant ?Authoritarianism didn't exist during Roman times but it is used to qualify the political system of the Empire. Let's forgive them, they didn't know how to call what they were doing ??
The analogy doesn't quite fit. Authoritarianism is not a crime, but genocide is. And one of the most basic principles of criminal law is that laws cannot be retroactive. Meaning a person cannot be punished for acts that were not considered to be criminal at the time of the commitment of the act.Of course I'm stating this is only in connection with the timing of the issue my comments regarding the merits are above. I don't believe that the acts should be considered as genocide even if the relevant texts were enacted prior to 1915.
Just depends on which camp you are in... I'm part Greek with no great love of the Turks. :-[
I can respect that. Mind you I don't agree with it but I understand it.We haven't had the best of mutual history but it wasn't all one sided as the Greeks usually claim. I freely admit that it took me years to get over my prejudices of you guys. Both our govenments have done a lot to feed the mutual animosity but not enough to engage the other party. Oh well we're not going to solve Greco-Turkish problems over the internet 🙂My point of view is actually very close to Scout's. As I said I also have some Armenian in my family tree and have no animosity towards them whatsoever. I just simply don't believe that what took place can be called a genocide for the reasons stated above.
…don't change the death toll.
Yes, but the question we were arguing was which one of the many different death tolls?ShotGOD; wow, seriously?
One has to wonder if there would have been war without the assassination, from what I'm reading I think there still would have been war.
I don't think there's any doubt that there would've been a War nonetheless. It wasn't like there was some kind of a tranquility period before the war, the Crimean War was only a few decades before. There was unrest in the Balkans, the Alsace-Lorraine, the colonies in Africa, the middle east. You name it there was a conflict brewing. The Empires were dissolving into nation states and that's almost never without any bloodshed.
You have to consider though in places like greece, rome and istanbul almost anywhere you dig to build something you find artifacts. In Turkey, Turkish law prohibits construction companies from continuing excavation once they've encountered an artifact. That's why the constructors usually try to finish the excavation as soon as possible and sometimes even at night.
Greece was great. The water was beautiful, weather was great, and the beer is also good. They have a Lager beer in Greece called Mythis that is excellent. Unfortunately, I did not get to any ancient sites or Athens. I tried to go to a 5th century B.C. temple to Apollo but it was just an empty lot sandwiched between two beach shops. One of the shop guys told me that all the remaining traces of the Temple were carted off about 20 years and taken to the Archaeological Museum in Corfu Town that I di not manage to get to while I was there. I did see two excellent Venetian harbor forts though. they wre excellent example of Trace Italienne military architecture. They also had the Lion of St Mark all over them, no doubting which empire built them.
As long as we've hijacked the hell out of the thread I was also on vacation last week in Tunisia. The sun and the sea was great but Carthage was a disappointnment I must say. I couldn't get to El Jem but went to the Carthage Museum and Terms D'Antonin in Tunis. The terms was great, it must have been a beutiful complex overlooking the harbor in its day. But the Museum was very very small. There were only a very limited number of artifacts from the punic, roman, christain and islamic periods. I'll put up some pictures when I get around to it.Oh and by the way Tunisian wine was good (altough I am by no strech of the imagination a connaiseur) but the beer not so much.
My guess would be that we have had more interaction with the middle eastern cuisine. Other than that I have no idea it was just an observation, and not one that I thoght was particularly interesting. Why do you think it's interesting?
Nkuler, I wondered whether there were religious/fastings directives, or was there more of an an abundance due to better grazing for the animals in Turkey. As you say the contact with middle east traders via the Black Sea could have meant breeding opportunities to produce more diverse blood lines and more healthy animals. The countries of the Mediterranean also have the many friut bearing trees and Turkey produces a huge amount of figs, although not everywhere in the country.(correct?) Often resources are sold to European and other markets before they are distributed country wide.
It's cultural not religous.We're very lucky in that respect. Because there are almost all kinds of micro-climates in the country mediterranan in the south and west, plateaus in the middle, grazing fields and mountains in the east, and a rainy part in the north almost all kinds of fruits and vegetables can be grown at home. From kiwis to pistachios. As you said I believe we're amongst the top three in production of figs, hazelnuts, olives and olive oil. We also eat a lot of fruit but in our culture fruits and vegetables are never considered a main course. There needs to be some kind of meat whether it be red-meat, chicken or fish dor a meal to be complete. That's what I was alluding to. I guess not very successfully.
