Obama backs Turkey EU accession

[RabiaMuweis]

Mr Obama said Western nations should engage with the Muslim world.
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US President Barack Obama has arrived in Turkey on a two-day visit, after giving his support to Ankara's efforts to join the European Union. He said Turkey's accession to the EU would send an important signal to the Muslim world and firmly anchor the country in Europe.

But French President Nicolas Sarkozy said it was up to the EU itself to decide who joined the bloc. Correspondents say security is extremely tight for Mr Obama's visit. Snipers and riot police have been deployed and military aircraft are patrolling a no-fly zone over Ankara, AP news agency reported. Almost 9,000 police will be deployed for Mr Obama's visit to Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, which begins late on Monday. Several small groups have been holding anti-US demonstrations in both cities, the AP said.

The visit is Mr Obama's first to a majority Muslim country as president, and only his second purely bilateral visit after Canada. The BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Ankara says the fact that he chose to come to Turkey so early has been welcomed as a sign that he wants to re-engage with it.

Public support for the US dropped to a record low during the Bush administration, fuelled mostly by fierce opposition to the invasion of Iraq, she says.
www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3817090

Read more: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7984762.stm

[pieter]

It seems to me that the present American government is more progressive than the
European governments. In Europe there is a stounch resistance against Turkey
entering the EU. Reasons are the fear about the balance in Europe, many people
fear the influx of Turks in Europe. Turkish immigrants are less problematic than
the closed group of Maroccans, but also the Turks live in Turkish getho's, and
are less integrated than other groups. Only the younger Turks and Maroccans
speak European languages, but their parents and newcommers have big
difficulties with the European languages, societies and cultures.

That is the view of many European governments and people, and the French
government said it well. It is Europe and the EU who will decide about Turkey,
not the USA! From the other hand Turky is a Modern, secular, Western Muslim
country. The people in the cities are like the other Mediteranian people of
Lebanon, Italy and Spain. The problem with the immigrants is that they come
not from the cities, but from backward, underdevelopped regions such as
Anatolia. I have heard it from Turks in the Netherlands themselves.

They said: "Don't think that the Turks you see here are the same Modern
Turks you see in Izmir, Ankara or Istanbul, these are primitive people".

This description above here counts for both Turks and Kurds, because they come
from the same regions. Modern, developped Turks form Western-Turkey and it's
cities fear that we think that these immigrants represent Turkey. They say these people don't represent, Modern, secular Turkey, the Turkey of their Ataturk.

Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustafa_Kemal_Atat%C3%BCrk

Pieter

[RabiaMuweis]

We have heard the excuses politicians in Europe rejected Turkey accession to the European Union But does this also concerns the general public in Aruba? .

[pieter]

Rabia,

There is a difference between our former colonies, with whom we have ties and which people speak Dutch (or French, English, Spanish or Portugese in the other European colonisators cases) fluently, have had Dutch in their schools in the Dutch or Surinamese education, and got Dutch geography lessons, learned about the Dutch monarchy and democracy in their schools and had Dutch people around them who lived in their countries, the colonial authorities and their new local leaders who had studied, lived and worked in the Netherlands.

But yes, the next group of troublemakers in the Netherlands after the Maroccans are the Antillian problem group, who cause violence, drugs crime, gang formations, vandalism and intimidation of other people. But most of these people come from Curaçao.

People of Aruba are more quiet and fairly succesful in the Netherlands, like the
Surinamese people! Aruba is a popular destination for Dutch, American and other tourists.

The Island has a status apart, which means that it has authonomy within the Dutch Kingdom.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aruba
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura%C3%A7ao

[pieter]

Rabia,

Beneath it all it goes down to one thing, the centuries, nearly thousand years of tensions between Christian Europe and the Islamic Ottoman empire (Turkey). If you look at the Balkans, with the tensions between Greece and Turkey. The hatred between the Turks and the Greeks were nearly bigger than the animosity between the Israeli's and the Palestinians.

The Serbs called the Yugoslavian muslims, the Bosniaks, Turks, in a degratory way.
Slav Muslims live Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Sandžak region of Serbia and
Montenegro, with a smaller autochthonous population also present in Croatia,
Kosovo and the Republic of Macedonia. There are around 2 million Bosniaks living in the Balkans today.
Once spread throughout the regions they inhabited, various instances of ethnic
cleansing and genocide have had a tremendous effect on the territorial distribution
of their population. Partially due to this, a notable Bosniak diaspora exists in a
number of countries, including Australia, Austria, Germany, Sweden, Turkey and
the United States. Both within the region and the outside world, Bosniaks are
often noted for their unique culture, which has been influenced by both eastern
and western civilizations and schools of thought over the course of their history.

Rabia, don't think that there is only discrimination and resentment against Muslim
migrants here, Rumanians, Bulgarians and in some cases Poles, Serbs and
Croatians face the same discrimination in Europe! And the dark skinned people of Africa, Pakistan and India even face a more harsh discrimination, because they are dark skinned and face racism! These people are Christians, Hindu's and Muslims,
but are discriminated due to their etnicity not due to their religion.
There are strict laws that prohibit religious, ethnic and racial discrimination.

It has to do with the geographical and historical development of Europe in ethnic
regions, tribes, kingdoms and empires (such as the Habsburg empire, the British
empire and the Russian empire). The regions and tribes developped into kingdoms,
countries, and cultural language groups, the Germanistic group in the North-West
and the North (Great-Brittain, Germany, The Netherlands, the Flemish part of
Belgium - which was Dutch before 1830-, Luxemburg, Austria, the German
speaking part of Switserland, and the Scandinavian countries -inclusive Iceland
and Greenland); the latin or Roman countries in the South, Middle and Central/East Europe (France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Italian and French and retroromanian parts of Switserland), and the Slav peoples devided in the West Slavic (including Czechs, Kashubians, Moravians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks and Sorbs), East Slavic (Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn and Ukranian), and South Slavic (including Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenes) peoples.

In the Slav world there were always tensions between Catholic Slavs who were oriented on Rome (the Pope, and the West so to speak) and the Orthodox-christian slavs, who were directed at Bysantium (present day Turkey, the Greek Bysantine empire in the Middle ages). Serbia, Greece and Russia for instance share the Orthodox-christian identity and in the balkan wars of the ninetees Serbia got moral and political support from Russia and Greece. Bulgary, Macedonia, Urkraine, Rumania and other countries are Orthodox christian too!

Greece was in conflict with Macedonia in the Ninetees, because Greece fears that the recignition of the Macedonian republic will cause a threat to Greek Macedonia, that it will claim independance of autonomy in the future, because Macedonia is Orthodoxlike the Greek Macedonia. Compare Europe to a Middle-east with Arabia, Persia, Kurdistan, Turkey, an ethnic Jewish Israel and Armenia as differant ethnic states of equal seize in the same region. That is not the case, because the Arabs form the majority, but think about a Middle east with 1/6th Arabs, 1/6 Turks, 1/6 Jews, 1/6th Kurds, 1/6th Armenian and 1/6 th farsi speaking Persians!
In this kind of Middle-east, you would have a sort of European situation in which
no people or region has the real power, because the nations, cultures and peoples
are to strong to be occupied or dominated. Napoleon failed in occupying Europe,
The Roman empire failed, the Germans only managed to occupy Europe for
five years. Today we see archrivals and enemies such as Germany and France
being partners and forming a strong axis. We see that the former enemies England
and France are allies. We see that Poland and Germany are in the same European
Union and NATO, and that the boarders between these two former enemies are
open and that they have strong trade, political-diplomatic and cultural ties.

Although Europe is secularised, you should not forget history and the deeper lying
innerfears of the Europeans of a New Ottoman influence and the Islamization of their Christian cultural continent. Don't forget that like in your Islamic middle east everything here in Europe is impregnated or soaked in Christian symbolism, hidden spiritualism (gnostic teaching), meaning, expressions, ethics, values, words, verbs, expressions and etc. Look at the buildings (churches, cathedrals, monastries, Gothic palaces of Bishops and etc), the scupltures, the paintings, the religious signs along the roads in Europe.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifix / en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_cross
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(art) / en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Madonna

Interesting is the Islamic view of Mary: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Mary_in_Islam

Our language is deeply influenced by the bible, because the Christian bible with the old and the new testament was in many countries and regions the first book that was translated in the peoples language of the place where the book was read. For more than a thousand years Europe was a deeply religious Christian continent, and in many countries and places it stil is!

Many people have forgotten about the Moores influence on Europe in Mideaval Spain, when Islam was in it's enlightened fase and the occupations of Non-Islamic lands brought civilization to those places. Later this Moorish Spain was invaded and attacked by both Islamic enemies as European christians.

The Moorish Spain had a high civilization and religious tolerance towards non-muslim faiths, Christianity and Judaism. Next to the Islamic scholars at the Sultan's palace Jewish and christian scientists worked in cooperation.
The great Jewish philosopher Maimonides came from that Islamic Spain.

After the Islamic Spain was conquered by the combined Spanish-Portugese forces
the Inquisition opressed and erased everything Islamic and Jewish! Only the buildings and architecture remained. Some mosques became churches!

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Andalus

Pieter

[pieter]

Muslim Iberia

In the 8th century, nearly all of the Iberian Peninsula was conquered (711-718) by Muslim armies (see Moors) from North Africa. These conquests were part of the expansion of the Umayyad Islamic Empire. Only a number of areas in the north of the Iberian Peninsula managed to resist the initial invasion and they were the starters of the Reconquista. These areas roughly corresponding to modern Asturias, Cantabria, Navarre and northern Aragon.

Under Islam, Christians and Jews were recognised as "peoples of the book", and were free to practice their religion, but faced a number of mandatory discriminations and penalties as dhimmis. Conversion to Islam proceeded at a steadily increasing pace. Following the mass conversions in the 10th and 11th centuries it is believed that Muslims came to outnumber Christians in the remaining Muslim controlled areas. The muladies (Muslims of ethnic Iberian origin) comprised the majority of the population of Al-Andalus by the end of the 10th century.

The Muslim community in the Iberian peninsula was itself diverse and beset by social tensions. The Berber people of North Africa, who had provided the bulk of the invading armies, clashed with the Arab leadership from the Middle East. Over time, large Moorish populations became established, especially in the Guadalquivir River valley, the coastal plain of Valencia, and (towards the end of this period) in the mountainous region of Granada.

Córdoba, the capital of the caliphate, was the largest, richest and most sophisticated city of medieval western Europe. Mediterranean trade and cultural exchange flourished. Muslims imported a rich intellectual tradition from the Middle East and North Africa. Muslim and Jewish scholars played an important part in reviving and expanding classical Greek learning in Western Europe. The Romanized cultures of the Iberian peninsula interacted with Muslim and Jewish cultures in complex ways, thus giving the region a distinctive culture. Outside the cities, where the vast majority lived, the land ownership system from Roman times remained largely intact as Muslim leaders rarely dispossessed landowners, and the introduction of new crops and techniques led to a remarkable expansion of agriculture.

However, by the 11th century, Muslim holdings had fractured into rival Taifa kingdoms, allowing the small Christian states the opportunity to greatly enlarge their territories and consolidate their positions. The arrival of the North African Muslim ruling sects of the Almoravids and the Almohads restored unity upon Muslim holdings, with a stricter, less tolerant application of Islam, but ultimately, after some successes in invading the north, proved unable to resist the increasing military strength of the Christian states.

Fall of Muslim rule and unification

The Reconquista ("Reconquest") is the centuries-long period of expansion of Spain's Christian kingdoms; Reconquista is viewed as beginning with the battle of Covadonga in 722 and being concurrent with the period of Muslim rule on the Iberian peninsula. The Christian army's victory over the Muslim forces led to the creation of the Christian Kingdom of Asturias along the northern coastal mountains. Muslim armies had also moved north of the Pyrenees, but they were defeated at the Battle of Poitiers in France. Subsequently, they retreated to more secure positions south of the Pyrenees with a frontier marked by the Ebro and Duero rivers in Spain. As early as 739 Muslim forces were driven from Galicia, which was to host one of medieval Europe's holiest sites, Santiago de Compostela. A little later Frankish forces established Christian counties south of the Pyrenees; these areas were to grow into kingdoms, in the north-east and the western part of the Pyrenees. These territories included Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia.

The breakup of Al-Andalus into the competing Taifa kingdoms helped the expanding Christian kingdoms. The capture of Toledo in 1085 was soon followed by the completion of the Christian powers reconquest of Spain's northern half. After a Muslim resurgence in the 12th century, the great Moorish strongholds in the south fell to Christian Spain in the 13th century—Córdoba in 1236 and Seville in 1248—leaving only the Muslim enclave of Granada as a tributary state in the south. Marinid invasions from north Africa in the 13th and 14th centuries failed to re-establish Muslim rule. Also in the 13th century, the kingdom of Aragon, formed by Aragon, Catalonia and Valencia expanded its reach across the Mediterranean to Sicily. Around this time the universities of Palencia (1212/1263) and Salamanca (1218/1254) were established; among the earliest in Europe. The Black Death of 1348 and 1349 devastated Spain.

In 1469, the crowns of the Christian kingdoms of Castile and Aragon were united by the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand. In 1478 began the final stage of the conquest of Canary Islands and in 1492, these united kingdoms captured Granada, ending the last remnant of a 781-year presence of Islamic rule in Iberia. The Treaty of Granada guaranteed religious tolerance toward Muslims. The year 1492 also marked the arrival in the New World of Christopher Columbus, during a voyage funded by Isabella. That same year, Spain's Jews were ordered to convert to Catholicism or face expulsion from Spanish territories during the Spanish Inquisition. Not long after, Muslims were also expelled under the same conditions.

As Renaissance New Monarchs, Isabella and Ferdinand centralized royal power at the expense of local nobility, and the word España - whose root is the ancient name Hispania - began to be commonly used to designate the whole of the two kingdoms. With their wide-ranging political, legal, religious and military reforms, Spain emerged as the first world power.

Links: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition (English)
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkwizycja_w_Hiszpanii (Polish)