Turkish EU Entry Would Be End of Europe-Giscard

reuters.com ^ | November 08, 2002 07:34 AM ET | Reuters

[Dog Gone]

There sure a lot of cathedrals there for an Islamic country.

[muawiyah]

The Barbaray Pirates were substantially independent of the authority of the Port, and the combat with Tripoli really wasn't all that big a deal. In the end Jefferson paid off the Tripolitanians to keep them out of the hair of Amerian ships going to and from Turkey (among other places).

WWI did find the US and Turkey on opposite sides. This was not so much the fault of the Turks as it was Woorow Wilson. We should have early on come to some sort of accommodation with the Germans to protect our neutrality. Instead Wilson allowed the UK to load wargoods on passenger ships in New York harbor.

We have subsequently patched things up with the Turks.

[muawiyah]

BTW, Europe itself is substantially Islamic, and it's only a peninsula of Asia, not much different from India, really, except they believe their toilets work!

[muawiyah]

The "West" pretty nearly started in Turkey. The imposition of the Turkish "trade language" did not alter the fundamental character of the nation, and if truth be told, the folks in the hinterlands probably never were very good Orthodox Catholics anyway.

[TopQuark]

The French, (like it or not) hold the title of America's oldest allies. As judged by the standard you proposed --- the absence of warfaer between the two.

The French who left NATO at the height of the Cold War and who refused an overfly by our planes in the attack on Lybia are hardly an ally and have not been one for a long, long time. The Turks, however, have been there for us at practicly every turn for decades.

[Destro]

Empty cathedrals turned into museums and tourist attractions for the most part. Their is no Christians left in Anatolia, only an aging native population in Istanbul.

[Destro]

Your second statement was right which makes proves your earlier statement The Turks are just about our oldest allies in this world. was historical nonsense.

[Destro]

In terms of the span of history, not much time.

[Destro]

In terms of the span of history, not much time. Also, common allies in war, War of Indepencence, 1812, WW1 and WW2 (Free French anyway), culture (read Jefferson-visit Statue of Liberty).

[Destro]

Either convert or get your head cut off by an Asiatic Turko. The chronicles of the Crusaders tell of the burned and empty cities they passed by as proof that those Christians were pretty much killed off when the Turks came in. Mongolian depopulation tactics.

[muawiyah]

When my uncle landed at Oran he was fired upon by "Free French".

For the most part the French in WWII were busy supporting their end of the Third Reich.

[Phillip Augustus]

Substantially? It's less than 3% Islamic by most counts, and wouldn't be even that but for ludicrous immigration policies.

[Phillip Augustus]

In any clash of civilizations, the French will be with us; I am not so sure about the Turks. Besides, I am not real high on the Armenian Holocaust, nor their brutal treatment of Billy Hayes (see, Midnight Express), an American citizen in a Turkish prison. Turkey is no part of Western Civilization.

[muawiyah]

The First Crusade was mounted on behalf of pilgrims who had been kept out of the Holy Land by the Seljuk Turks.

The Crusaders opened the place up for pilgrims - Christian, Moslem and Jewish. They also had an interesting agreement with the ruler of Egypt at that time who had lost substantial revenues due to the loss of the pilgrims crossing through his lands.

The Seljuk leadership was not very Mongolian. All of the leaders, e.g. DuKok, Kerbaugha, etc. had Celtic, that is, Gallician names, which meant they were as authentically Anatolian as anyone else - certainly moreso than the Greeks!

[Phillip Augustus]

Should have been more clear, I am not real high on the Turk role in the Armenian Holocaust.

[muawiyah]

Go ahead and be bothered by the Armenian holocaust. There's not a person alive today who had anything to do with it. Nazi war criminals still walk the streets. In fact, it's not too long ago that Bill Clinton stole Kosovo from the Serbs to give to the Albanians who had been such ardent supporters of the Nazis during WWII.

You know, sometimes stuff happens and a century later everybody's dead anyway.

[shrinkermd]

Turkey now has 20.92 births/1,000 population (1999 est.) Death rate: 5.27 deaths/1,000 population (1999 est.) Net migration rate: 0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (1999 est.)

Their birth rate is about four times their death rate. I can see why the Europeans fear a dominant Turkey just on the basis of population alone. It already has a population of 65 million in a Country about the size of Texas. Those excess people (only 32% of the land arable) are going to go someplace.

As I recall UK is about the size of Oregon with 60 million people. France has about the same population in a country which is twice the size of Colorado. Germany is slightly smaller than Montana and has 84 million people.

All of the present EU countries have birth rates less than replacement of the population. They also have a surplus of the aged in contrast to the Moslem countries who have a surplus of men of military age. All the European countries are densely populated without much hope of significant increases in men of military age.

All told, regardless of the charges of prejudice and not being PC, there is great room for concern on the part of the European nation states. History shows that there is a high correlation between the percentage of the population of military age and inclination to go to war. There was a population explosion in some European countries between 1860 and 1910 with a resulting increase in fraticidal wars.

[Phillip Augustus]

"Go ahead and be bothered by the Armenian Holocaust. There's not a person alive today who had anything to do with it".

I hardly think that the Jewish Holocaust will dismissed so cavalierly when the last Nazi is finally pushing daisies.

"Bill Clinton stole Kosovo from the Serbs..."

After being frantically brow-beaten and pressured by (among others)...Turks.

[Destro]

You really don't know history. Those were Vichy French at Oran.

[Destro]

The Seljuk Turks were vassal peoples to the Mongols. They used Mongolian depopulation tactics in Anatolia, including what Celts were left as Celts in Gaulitia. The Turkish belongs to the Altaic branch of the Ural-Altaic family of languages, and thus is closely related to Mongolian, Manchu-Tungus, Korean, and perhaps Japanese. No Turk had a Celtic name and either had native Turkish names or Muslim names.

Trying to make the Turks "European" by linking them to the extinct Indo-European speaking peoples of Anatolia is wishful thinking.