[thirdsun]

As a german I really have to wonder what's wrong with our government if we continue to cozy up to Erdogan's turkey.

I really don't think having turkey as a migration buffer is worth paying the price of making the european union look like a club you can buy your way into regardless of ethics. What's the use of values if we're starting to ignore them so easily?

[matt4077]

It just goes to show that politics is really really hard. You never get to hear about the decisions that are easy. If it's reported in the media, it's almost by definition an issue with multiple viable options (or, in this case, only bad choices).

Having seen a bit of German politics from the inside, I can assure you that everyone grapples with choices like this. I've witnessed ministers of finance changing their opinion on life-or-death (for Greece) matters three times in a day. Not because they lack conviction or idealism, but because they have a set of believes that are sometimes conflicting. Plus lack of sleep, incomplete information etc.

I wish more of that process could be shown on TV, but politicians who actually voice these ambiguities are unfortunately seen as weak and thus at some point a decision is made internally and is then communicated with absolute confidence publicly.

Regarding Turkey: rest assured, they're never going to be an EU member if things don't change dramatically. Medium-term, Turkey does actually belong in the EU: it's got enormous economic potential, could be a bridge to the middle east etc. Maybe that should have actually happened in the 1995-2008 timeframe and we'd have a different Turkey today. But EU leaders closed the door back then, possibly b/c Turkey was too poor, probably also because there's always one EU head of state who's a fucking racist.

[antientropic]

We should count ourselves lucky Turkey didn't join the EU in 1995-2008. I'd rather have an authoritarian Turkey outside of the EU than inside. We have enough trouble with the likes of Orban and Kaczynski already.

And I don't follow the arguments for Turkey joining. Yes, it may have enormous potential; but nobody would say Mexico should join the US just because it has potential.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "We should count ourselves lucky Turkey didn't join the EU in 1995-2008. I'd rather have an authoritarian Turkey outside of the EU than inside."

On the other hand wouldn't they be subject to certain laws to prevent or reduce the authoritarianism if they were part of the EU?

[nickik]

The EU was designed with lots of hops that a country had to jump threw but because for political (even idiological reason) those things always gets ignored if they are in the way of the larger planes. Greece for example should never ever have been able to join the EU given the rules that existed and we can see how that turned out.

The EU simply has very little oversight of internal politcs of countries and because there is no way you can be kicked out, once you are in, you can do pretty much as you want. That is, as long as you don't need massiv amounts of financial aid.

[return0]

The EU is not the eurozone. Greece entered the EEC in 1981. Get your facts straight and please spell check.

[Tomte]

Poland is steering a very problematic course, but who cares when we don't even act on Hungary, which is much closer to a dictatorship than Turkey.

[Natanael_L]

Good luck enforcing it

[k-mcgrady]

Remove privileges. No democracy? Fine, no freedom of movement. Turkey would need the EU a hell of a lot more than it needs Turkey. Of course I'm not sure whether legally they can agree to sanctions like I suggested.

[Ntrails]

When I have political discourse with people the aspect that makes me the most irritable is the implication that it's simple. Politicians are corrupt, stupid, or both - and if they'd just do "x" everything would be better.

Even when politicians do the right things (get a panel of experts to write a detailed report, and then try to act on the findings) - headlines contain only the barest hint of the depth of the analysis and the findings are chastised by various ill informed commentators who don't even bother to read the damned reasoning.

I actually feel sorry for those trying to govern.

[macintux]

Trump makes it sound so simple.

[cnlevy]

It only because he hasn't governed yet. Wait until, say, a year after he has become president, and made some mistakes he had to pay for ...

[Htsthbjig]

It is interesting that you insult everyone that disagrees with you: "Fucking racist".

It looks like you are so unsure about your own arguments that you need insulting them to feel better.

The main reason EU closed the door to Turkey had nothing to do with race(their race is the same of Europeans'), and everything to do with culture and religion, specially religion.

You could disagree with them and their arguments, but insulting them is not ok.

Turkey is a Muslim country. People like Erdogan don't like Western values, he is very clear about that, they prefer a Muslim theocracy in which every part of life is controlled by this (non sense) book written 1500 years ago.

To think seriously about the consequences of letting a hundred million Muslims entering Europe is not racist, it is the politicians' job.

[sydneysider]

Blaming this on 'racism' is a poor argument. Maybe it has something to do with the incompatible cultures and values.

[Cenk]

"incompatible cultures and values" are almost exactly the words these racists have always used to keep Turkey out. Britain, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia are all compatible, but Turkey is a step too far?

[jerf]

The easy post would be to point out that "racists once made that argument" is basically a slightly cloaked ad hominem attack trying to accuse your opponent of racism, without doing it clearly in a way that could be denied.

But the more interesting post is to point out that if you allow racists the power to destroy an entire line of argumentation for all purposes forever by using it, you are ceding to them enormous power to control the discourse, even accidentally, by completely determining the bounds of acceptable debate.

Racism is bad, but the way we treat it as radioactive waste nowadays has itself become a danger to society. It's merely bad. It is not the One True Sin, it is not the cause of all life's problems, it is not the One Temptation in life that if resisted means we can stop worrying about our moral status, it is not something that permanently twists everything it touches into an eternerally-unredeemable black goo, even ye unto a dozen generations. It's merely a bad thing that hurts people. Giving it the power to be those other things is an error too.

So, yes, it is perfectly valid to address the question of "incompatible cultures and values". Of course, it does require one to admit that cultures have values that can differ from one another, which is, admittedly, a door that once you walk through does suddenly make a lot of the prepackaged really "nice" answers in current discourse suddenly obviously too oversimplified to be useful for any purpose, but such is reality.

[tim333]

In Germany Holocaust denial is illegal and you can get imprisoned for it. In Turkey it is required to deny the Armenian Genocide where the Turks killed a million or so Armenians, an act the word genocide was invented to describe. In Turkey you can get imprisoned for saying it happened. That's a fairly major incompatibility to deal with.

[ousta]

you can deny holocaust in many european countries...

[morgante]

But you can't get arrested for saying it happened in any European countries.

[Crespyl]

Those countries do not have a state-enforced opposition to historical facts.

[jbmorgado]

I, for one wouldn't be welcoming a country in EU that is now committing genocide against the Kurds for almost 3 generations.

I also wouldn't be welcoming a country that refuses to acknowledge the full independence of another EU member state (Cyprus).

If you want to play the racism/xenophobia card and pretend that these are not the big issues we have against Turkey in EU go ahead, but I can't tell you that you are not convincing anyone.

[Cenk]

>I also wouldn't be welcoming a country that refuses to acknowledge the full independence of another EU member state (Cyprus).

Really? Because Cyprus would:

>Cyprus is in favor of Turkey's Accession to the EU with the hope it will facilitate a viable and just solution of the Cyprus Problem. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Cyprus#Tu...)

[mschuster91]

Nah, it was the German govm'ts fear of public backlash due to the fucked-up integration of Turkish immigrants. Public opinion in Germany was not Turkey-welcoming at the time.

The current situation is just Erdogan having his revenge on Europe for dropping Turkey.

[calibraxis]

If EU were decent, they'd delist Erdogan's enemy the PKK from the terrorist list. The PKK could teach the EU how to improve European society: (http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/30/opinions/rojava-kurds-syri...)

Not to mention the PKK would obviously help end ISIS.

[0xFFC]

This is pure nonsense. Are you kidding me ? do you have any idea what you are talking about ?

Even Iraqi Kurds trying to ban PKK because they know what's going on in that organization. Even Kurds in turkey are not happy with PKK. They want a reform , but most of them wants stay in turkey, while the "being Turkish citizen definition changed".Look at how popular HDP is in Kurdish areas in Turkey.

You have no clue what are you talking about. for further reference , please read/listen to Henri Barkey from Woodrow Wilson which is well respected political scientist.

[dang]

This comment, and others that you've posted (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11399333) break the HN guidelines badly by calling names and being personally rude. We ban accounts that do those things, so please don't do them. In particular, please edit phrases like the following out of your posts to HN:

  This is pure nonsense.

  Are you kidding me?

  do you have any idea what you are talking about?

  You have no clue what are you talking about. 
 
  wasting people times in HN

Notice how much more substantive your current comment becomes if you take out all these rude bits? That's what we're going for here.

Hard politics isn't a great fit for HN to begin with, but if you're going to contribute to such discussions as inevitably arise, it's important to follow these rules—particularly when others are being wrong and provocative.

(None of this is a comment on your politics, only on how you're presenting them. The same applies to all HN users.)

[0xFFC]

Thanks for notifying, but I don't have editing option on those comment. I would be glad to edit them but I don't have option to do (I don't know why).

[calibraxis]

Rather than mislead everyone, why not quote what exactly you disagree with, and offer evidence?

- "How could Isis be eliminated? In the region, everyone knows. All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria, and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ party) guerillas in Iraq and Turkey. These are, currently, the main forces actually fighting Isis on the ground. They have proved extraordinarily militarily effective and oppose every aspect of Isis’s reactionary ideology." (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/18/turkey-...)

- Erdogan went apeshit after HDP deprived him his parliament majority: "The cynicism behind Erdogan’s calculation to launch a full-scale war against the PKK is stunning." (http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/21/erdogans-deadly-ambition...)

- “'Kurdish people are fighting for our rights, and Turkey is trying to finish us off,' says 53-year-old Ramazon Sakci as he stands in the garden of his home, which is riddled with bullet holes.” (http://www.thenation.com/article/turkey-is-fighting-a-dirty-...)

[dang]

> Rather than mislead everyone

That's a form of personal attack which is inevitably provocative of a much worse thread. Please edit such rudeness out of your posts here. Your question would have been fine, and less self-undermining, had you done so.

[0xFFC]

You don't have clue what you are talking about.Read and listen to serious scholors instead of wasting people times in HN.

[return0]

Turkey, unlike most of the middle east in the news, descends from a multicultural, religiously tolerant empire (Ottoman). The culture is not far different from Greek. There is a regression to islamism with erdogan, but i don't think that's a permanent thing now. There is definitely some racism here.

[jakub_h]

> "descends from a multicultural, religiously tolerant empire (Ottoman)"

Where the terms "multicultural" and "religiously tolerant" apparently mean something quite a bit different from today (just like Athenian democracy from ours, for example).

[return0]

I don't think they are that different. Even romans had multiculturalism. Tolerance was not invented in the modern West.

[jakub_h]

Well, Romans, from what I can tell, had better multiculturalism than Ottomans centuries later. They did not split the society into religion-based classes. So "the West" was quite a bit more progressive centuries earlier in some ways.

[fauigerzigerk]

No, I don't think it's racism. It's islamophobia, specifically a hostility towards the conservative trends within Islam that have become so much more dominant than they used to be. And faith based hostility absolutely goes both ways.

I know this is a taboo subject, but we should stop acting as if religion was a racial attribute. It's not. Religions are opinions, and people will have to accept that others will take those opinions into account when it comes to forming a political union.

The difficult thing is that only individuals can hold opinions but only countries can join the EU. So we are forced by the very nature of this decision to make a summary judgement that ignores individual opinions and therefore will be very unfair to some.

This is something I am personally struggling with when it comes to Turkish EU membership.

[return0]

A major reason is that Turkey has invaded and occupied part of an EU member (Cyprus). Granted, this issue may be solved soon, but many EU politicians hide behind issues like this to avoid stating the major issue: avoiding mass influx of turkish citizens to EU countries. Most european countries are not ready for this (Turkey has population similar to germany) and turkey has large young population.

[tomp]

For all intents and purposes, Turks are white (i.e. the same race as the rest of Europe).

The issue, however, is religion. EU has enough problems as is with religion (less than the US, and less than it used to have, but still), but still people are wary.

Although IIRC Turkey used to be less religious than it is now, under Erdogan.

[treehau5]

The "race" of Europe, if you could categorize it into such broad terms, would be better suited as "Western", "Eastern", and "Mediterranean", but even that isn't apt.

For most Turks, you couldn't tell the difference between them and Iranians, IMO. Nonetheless, you can definitely tell them apart from a Western white European, a Eastern Slavic-Rus European, and a Mediterranean European.

[eternalban]

Permit this Iranian born to disagree. Turks are generally paler, and have hard eyes.

Armenians, due to historic ties going back thousands of years, look far more Iranian.

[treehau5]

Duly noted.

[tomp]

Plenty of Greeks, southern Italians and Spaniards are darker than e.g. Erdogan (I don't really know many Turks, he's just an example from TV).

[treehau5]

(Sorry if I am reading too deep into this) There are Mediterranean Greeks, Italian, and Spainards, and there are "White" Greeks, Italian, and Spaniards.

(Pardon the invocation of Godwin's law here) When Hitler envisioned his Aryan race, a source of influence was the classical "Athenian Greek." (Another random tidbit, as the story goes, he had such respect for the Greeks, it was with great reluctance that he invaded /greekpride ) Many Greeks still have Blonde hair, blue eyes, and hardly any hair, like my mother and her side of the family. Compare that to my father, who is from an island in Greece, we are basically darker than most Arabs you meet (and indeed thats how I came out. I am more easily passed as an Arab, specifically an Egyptian at times)

(To continue on my random tirade, sorry) If you basically draw an oval around the Mediterranean, from the Greek Islands, Sicily, to parts of Morroco, and such, you could basically pick a few people at random and we would all look related like brothers or cousins to most Americans.

And yes I am one of those crazy people who advocates Mediterranean as a different race than "White." All my life filling out forms, and applications, and throughout schooling, I had to mark down "White" and feel as if I was fraudulent. I am not sure what exactly the US uses as its criteria for a "race" but we are as different from a Anglo-Saxon, Western European type as Native Americans are. We have our distinct features (usually big noses, pronounced foreheads, and lots of hair!), share common values, and even have our own diseases!(see Mediterranean blood disease)

[pluma]

Racism in Germany is not the same as racism in the US or necessarily other parts of the EU.

"Südländer" ("people from Southern countries") are effectively treated as an ethnic group, although this includes Italians and Spaniards alongside Turks (but in some cases also Arabs and other non-"whites"). There's also the racist slur "Ölauge" ("oil-eye"), which while ostensibly about eye colour is typically used to refer to "Südländer"s.

There are also "Osteuropäer" ("Eastern Europeans"), which effectively refers to Slavs but also "Deutschrussen" (i.e. descendants of German settlers in Eastern Europe who migrated back to Germany recently but are culturally distinct from "native" Germans).

I do agree however that "racism" in Germany tends to be less about specific "foreign" ethnicities (as in the US) but more about nationality (or nationality of the parents/ancestors) -- there's no denying that well-adjusted black Germans face discrimination in Germany but so do less well-adjusted Italians. It's more of a blanket ethno-nationalism than the typical racism you hear about on the anglophone interwebs.

It's not really surprising if you think about the historical roots: while Germany has a colonial history and thus isn't a stranger to mistreating brown people, our history is overshadowed by the Third Reich and its ideals about nationalism and racial purity (blonde, blue-eyed "Aryans" being distinct from mere "whites"). The US OTOH had an entire civil war about slave ownership and even then carried on a long tradition of racial apartheid.

[pessimizer]

US racism used to be more variegated like this, but more and more ethnicities got folded into "whiteness" over time (and along with the rise in the fear of blackness.)

White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race by Ian Haney Lopez covers the legal history of whiteness in the US.

[pluma]

That's not entirely what I was referring to, though. The race construct (for an example with horrible consequences look up the history of the ethnic tensions that let to the Rwanda genocide) seems to be largely based on colonialism.

German racism tends to be based largely on anti-immigrant nationalism and xenophobia. It's closer to American racism towards Latinas/-os (and people who fall in the same mental category) than to American racism towards black people.

But maybe we do have the kind of racism black people experience in the US and we're just culturally less aware of it because our ethnic demographics are different.

Without delving too deeply into armchair sociology I think that two major events defining our biases are 1) the attitude towards (predominantly Turkish) immigrants in the third quarter of the last century and 2) the immigration of Russian Germans after WW2.

The Turkish immigrants were greeted as "guest workers" during the post-war boom of our economy and at the time largely filled the kind of badly paid low prestige jobs that became available en masse as our industry grew. Because we only considered them temporary we never acknowledged them as German and were utterly surprised that they would decide to stay and live in "our" country.

The "German Russians", as I described earlier, were (for the most part) ethnically and culturally German settlers who had of course culturally diverged over the course of a century or so before they migrated back to Germany in the aftermath of WW2 and the post-war tensions between Russia and Germany. They were Germans to the Russians but Russians to the Germans they came home to.

All in all it's a huge mess based on a decades long attitude to immigration that could be at best described as sticking your head in the sand and hoping the migrants just go away again rather than adapting them into our culture or even allowing each other to influence each others' cultures to find a common ground.

But looking at the poverty-stricken immigrant districts around Paris and Brussels I guess we didn't do that badly. Though that relief likely won't help anyone looking even remotely foreign if our ethno-nationalism gets any stronger (for a nightmarish outlook consider the recent election results of the AfD, the German nationalist party).

[tomp]

I'm guessing a better word for this would be "xenophobia".

[pluma]

Okay, a semantics argument.

There's one concept most people (especially those who haven't studied sociology) call "racism". It's a mechanism that used to be very useful for our survival 40k-odd years ago when people who looked different were likely not from our tribe and likely hostile to us or at least had no allegiance to our tribe and could thus not be trusted. They're different, they don't know us, we don't know them, they might hit us over the head with a rock, we should be cautious or even chase them away. In a modern society this instinct is still present but obviously far less helpful and tends to make things difficult for us.

The other concept is also called "racism", although I'd prefer to call it "Racism" (with a capital R). This is what feminists try to talk about when they tell people they're "racists". It's not necessarily about the actions or thoughts of any individual and certainly not about mere acknowledgement of the differences between two cultural or ethnic groups of people. It's about the systemic effect (lowercase r) racism can have in a society, making life hard for people in groups that are already disadvantaged and preventing them from achieving equality.

You could argue that the "technical term" for the former type of racism is actually xenophobia. You could argue that academia gets to define semantics and everybody else please should stop using the terms incorrectly thank you very much. But it's more productive to acknowledge that widely used terms have well-established meanings in colloquial English and communication can ultimately only work if the majority can agree on what they are talking about.

[tomp]

I disagree. Feminists intentionally use a word, loaded with so much (negative) emotion as "racist" specifically for its emotional impact. Another example of this is when left-leaning media writes "anti-abortion and pro-choice" while right-leaning media writes "pro-life and pro-abortion".

Their purpose is not to win arguments with logic. They try to win the spectators over using emotion. They use "racist" to smear their opponents, for allegedly being discriminatory, but they're just the same themselves - they just target other underprivileged groups (e.g. nerds, poor conservatives, ...).

This is elaborated in this post: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

[sydneysider]

wheres the phobia?

[jakub_h]

In the same place where there's a horse in a seahorse.

[venomsnake]

It was always as religious. Just the army and the secular order it imposed prevented the religious people from rising trough the society ranks.

Which of course fueled Erdogan support ...

[gkya]

Well, the religion and religiousness are very complex concepts in Turkey. We (in this case you, the westerners) tend to treat the other as a homogeneous entity, with prejudices based on the extremes (like treating the Catholic curch as an organisation of paedophilia because some members are guilty of it).

Erdogan and AKP do not have that much of actual support, but the conjecture helps them. An oppositional government can only be forced with these: The secular CHP with about 25 percent support, the nationalist-racist MHP, with about 15-20 percent support, and with the kurdish-nationalist, leftist HDP. Last summer the outcome of the elections allowed these to form a government, but MHP, on the night of the ballot declared that under no circumstances would they have an accord with HDP. And somehow, the sleepy, cease-firing PKK started tumultising southeast again, out of nowhere, and people voted for AKP instead of a crisis in which we live with temporary minority governments or with no actual government at all.

[c06n]

> Medium-term, Turkey does actually belong in the EU

German here, I completely agree. I don't necessarily think Turkey would be a good fit for the EU, quite the opposite. But I do believe in the near future Europe will have to solve problems on a large scale that Turkey poses to a way lesser extent. If we cannot handle the Turkey situation, I don't see what future the European way of life (whatever that is supposed to be) has 100 years from now, in an ever changing world.

[egeozcan]

I'm a Turkish expat (read: immigrant) working in Germany as a software engineer since 7 years.

This situation disturbs me two folds: 1) For the reasons you mentioned already, 2) The power gained through this dirty game being used to suppress the already heavily weakened opposition further in my once democratic country (However, I feel more attached to Germany, to be honest).

[Udo]

> However, I feel more attached to Germany, to be honest

As a fellow German, it's encouraging to hear that immigrants sometimes still feel they can identify with Germany as their new country, despite all the obvious hurdles.

My ex girlfriend's parents moved back to Turkey recently after spending pretty much their entire working lives in Germany, which got me thinking a lot. They said their primary reasons were that they could do more with their retirement money in Turkey and that the weather is nicer - but at the end of the day it means a liberal, secular couple felt like they would be better off moving into a country with a failing democracy, increasing religious fundamentalism, with a wannabe Putin in charge, as opposed to staying where they spent most of their lives.

[egeozcan]

I never felt unwelcome, but I think there are some incompatibilities between German and Turkish cultures (and I would rather not generalize them as Western vs Eastern) which one needs to overcome before feeling totally comfortable. Another reason could be overzealous repetition of the word "integration" making the same effect on immigrants that the word "rule" makes on teenagers.

Also, I wouldn't discount monetary, climatic and religious reasons so easily. I'm a theological noncognitivist and have thankfully no serious financial issues but sometimes I think about moving to somewhere with a nicer weather - especially in those depressing-weather days =) The best candidate would be then Spain but well, I really like it here.

[cm3]

That's because Turks are treated in Germany the same way Moroccans are in Netherlands. Both parties are to blame, but no matter what a Turk does, it will at least be another 50 years before they're accepted as Germans. Just look at the German media. When somebody with a migration background would get some award, they're quick to point out (s)he is from Germany, hiding the background. But when (s)he does something people disagree with, they're easy to isolate the person as someone with a migration background. I've always seen this as a way of the German Germans (aka Christians and Jews) to feel better, being able to separate those people's behavior from their German German behavior. This basically goes back to the defeat in Vienna, basically. The mistake most of non-Turkish German population does is to conflate descendants of Turkish immigrants with Turks from current day Turkey. It's almost like comparing an African-American from Georgia with someone from Nigeria.

So, I can totally understand why the parents would want to move to Turkey for their retirement. And to be fair, there are many English and German retired couples who move to Turkey just as they do to Spain or France.

[Udo]

> That's because Turks are treated in Germany the same way Moroccans are in Netherlands.

I think the experience of this particular group-based conflict varies wildly depending on life circumstances. In particular, living in a nice neighbourhood and purposefully modelling their lives on middle class Germans, my ex' parents didn't see a lot of conflict or direct hostility. But I can still see how they may have felt isolated or unwelcome in a thousand little ways that simply added up over time.

To make it extra clear, in case that didn't come across in my original comment: I totally understand why they're doing this. They probably felt alienated and badly integrated. Heck, I'm a native-born German and I feel culturally alienated too, even though my cultural perspective is entirely different than theirs. If I think Germany is a cold place in general, that impression must be even more amplified from an immigrant's perspective.

[cm3]

To expand on this, it's exactly a thousand little ways that add up. In your day to day business, like an an African American, there is no visible discrimination, but in any case of disagreement one party quickly pulls the you're-from-the-other-tribe card. Goes for both sides. I stood by when a Turkish friend got accused by a German-German to be a sleazy Turk who lives off the state (which he clearly does not), just because he was trying to reach consensus in a conflict. I don't know if I could have stayed calm if it had been me being singled out as a lesser German citizen. In essence, a thousand little and unremarkable experiences do add up, and this is a major reason why the youth would seek refuge in groups that accept them fully but like Neo-Nazi campfire events it's mostly Rattenfaengertum.

I like to think it's all because of missing proper education (not mis-education), which has to start with the parents.

[cm3]

Rattenfaengertum is a word which can be summed up with Pied Piper, if you know the story. Sorry to English readers who had been wondering. Ratte = rat, fangen = to catch, tum = utility suffixed almost like dom but more as in ness like somethingness.

[egeozcan]

I'm really positively surprised how observant you are to these issues. Thank you for your insight, especially great to hear from a German.

[cm3]

Heck, I would be scared if I had to deal with Munich police. So, even for German-Germans it's not the same in each part of Germany.

[microtonal]

That's because Turks are treated in Germany the same way Moroccans are in Netherlands.

But I fully agree with your observation. But I think there is hope. For instance, the mayor of the second-largest Dutch city (Rotterdam) is a Moroccan immigrant. Such people are role models for people with an immigrant background (you can make it in The Netherlands) and a Dutch background (in terms of acceptance).

[tremon]

Rotterdam is actually the largest Dutch city, though second in rank (Amsterdam is the capital, but it's smaller than Rotterdam).

[cm3]

The ironic part of Netherlands or France is that they had been major colonial players, and in the case of France, are now not accepting people from places that were made to be part of the French Empire as real French is baffling on first sight. But then again people from Bretagne distance themselves from those in Paris, and let's not mention Corsica :-).

The only way to counter all of it are cold hard scientific truths, not sentiments out of existential scares due to too many "others" being around.

I've always wondered how the Brits managed to integrate people of African heritage so well. Maybe it's just that they're for the most part Christians. But that would be too simple an explanation me thinks.

[microtonal]

Wikipedia numbers:

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam : 834.119 inhabitants

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotterdam : 630.383 inhabitants

Maybe you are confused with The Hague, which is smaller than both, but the seat of the parliament and government? (Or perhaps you are looking at the surface area, which is not really interesting in this context.)

[m00dy]

>That's because Turks are treated in Germany the same way Moroccans are in Netherlands.

I don't know anything about Germany nor Morocco. I am a Turk. I lived in Spain, Finland one year each and I'm now in Sweden. I felt that treatment against Turks in Finland. No matter what you do, if you say something about your origin, make sure yourself that something is going to be bad. Spain was awesome and I was totally accepted and respected by the society but NO IT jobs. So, I had to move to Sweden. From what I have observed so far, Sweden has a big immigration problem. I'm sure they will solve this somehow. But, the best I love about Sweden is that they are more open to foreign culture or people with foreign background comparing to Finland. They can also notice the difference between a kebab guy and a computer scientist. I'm not saying kebab business is low level job. It is more about mind-set.

[cm3]

What I've heard from Swedes during my last visit, when I wondered about the beggars sleeping in front of building in the city is that it's a taboo that people do not like talking about. I hope this is not the case and you're right that they're open in that regard.

[dracht]

>That's because Turks are treated in Germany the same way Moroccans are in Netherlands.

Despite being here for decades they have made no effort to assimilate, in contrast to some other groups. 40% (!) of Moroccan youths has a criminal record. They speak poor Dutch. They don't consider themselves Dutch. Let us not pretend the effect was the cause.

[egeozcan]

So you are suggesting that they have it in their genes? Such a wonderful way to approach immigrants. /s

Also, same arguments have been brought up against Turkish, Romanian and many other large group of immigrant in other countries. It also has a name: Racism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...

[dracht]

>So you are suggesting that they have it in their genes?

Don't put words in my mouth, I said no such thing. You offered no rebuttal to what I said, only slander. Explain to me why Moroccan immigrants have not assimilated and why they are so grossly overrepresented when it comes to crime. To say this is all the result of the natives being racist towards Moroccans in particular, that they are forced into this bad behaviour by us, is absolutely ridiculous. They are problematic in France, Belgium and other countries as well. Any negative views towards them are the result of their own actions rather than some grand conspiracy to keep them down.

[roel_v]

"in my once democratic country"

The ironic thing is that a few years ago, when the generals still kept the government in check to ensure the secular nature of the Turkish state, the streak in the European left was "Turkey is not democratic because the military has too much power", and the 2002 reforms were heralded as a major improvement. Something about a frying pan and a fire comes to mind...

[egeozcan]

I actually thought about putting democratic in quotes but then decided that could steer the discussion further off topic. Rest assured that the irony is not lost on me.

[wayn3]

It's really weird to think of you as an expat, because we are used to thinking of the turkish in ways that are improper.

Most expats are expats because the grass was greener where they went. Why are some of us expats while others are merely "immigrants"?

Just using that word makes it seem filthy for people from the middle east to come to europe. How are they different from europeans leaving their countries behind? Language is powerful.

Do you feel welcome in germany? Just curious.

[egeozcan]

> Do you feel welcome in Germany? Just curious.

Yes. After living even in a "conservative" town, I feel more welcome than I feel in the city I was born - Istanbul. In my first 5 years, I usually had to ask people to speak to me in German, they usually switched to English to make me more comfortable. Sure, I can give many examples of racism but the great thing about Germany is that racists aren't significant threats to my rights as a resident. Also, I think back in Turkey, there were many more cases of racism - it's just that they don't get any attention among "bigger problems" (what being a bigger problem is another topic I'd rather not dig into). After all, I'm happy that here people are ready to discuss such things.

> Why are some of us expats while others are merely "immigrants"?

I would guess if you came here to advance your career, then you are eligible to be an expat. Of course I'm kidding. I think many people, for not-so-evil-but-still-a-bit-disturbing reasons, would not like to be called an immigrant. I actually do not care and am happy with the word.

[jacquesm]

The difference between an 'expat' and an 'immigrant' is that an expat made their choice from a position of strength and an immigrant made their choice from a position of weakness.

That's really all there is to it, everything else is exactly the same. Though usually people from wealthy countries would not like to be known as 'immigrants', they are expats, of course.

[wayn3]

Yea, but that's just definition. In reality, we call people we consider undesirable "immigrant". Everyone else gets to be an expat.

I wouldn't call refugees expats, but their intentions aren't any different. They just do what's in their best interest.

[melvinmt]

It's all relative - I've moved to the US from NL (relatively wealthy I'd say) and I have never considered myself an expat. I'm an immigrant.

[tim333]

A lot of the cozying up is for military reasons I think. Turkey is part of NATO and has 612,900 active personnel against 180,676 from Germany and 205,851 from the UK and also a strategic position bordering Syria, Iraq and Iran so we're kind of forced to be a bit friendly in spite of Erdogan's failings.

[cm3]

Keep in mind that Turkey has often and for long stretches been a buffer/ally between the west and middle and far east. Right before the French and English invaded Turkey in WW1, it was used as a friendly buffer state. So, it's not some place that can be ignored easily.

The fear of Turks in Europe solidified after the defeat in Vienna and left a deep mark that predisposed the idea of Europe as a Christian club. Go look around statues and stuff in Vienna to see what I mean. I have Turkish friends in Germany who, given the treatment, experience being called a Turk as a racial slur. In some sense it's good that so many real arabs are in Germany right now, which should show the broader population the difference between Anatolians and Middle-Easterners. The Turkish population is of quite a mixed ethnic background, even today. This is normal for a place that's not tiny and partly due to cross-pollination too.

The way the EU has evolved is highly questionable and the memberships of many are even more dubious to say the least, so there are much deeper problems than whether another place like the UK, just with almost no Christianity, should get laxer trade agreements or not. Think about why some very central European Christian countries don't use the EURO or in the case of Iceland aren't even fully in the EU but could have been.

[jbmorgado]

Sorry, but you are wrong.

Turkey was the hearth of the Ottoman empire with whom most of Europe had been at intermittent war for centuries until it was dissolved already after WWI (in fact, because of the outcome of WWI).

They were certainly not a friend and the main historical current is that the rulers of Europe accepted the dangers of the existence of the very powerful Austo-Hungarian empire exactly so that they would act as a military barrier between the Ottoman empire and Europe, otherwise the other European kingdoms would never accept the Austro-Hungarians to have such power inside Europe.

[cm3]

Of course they were at war and did things that were deemed acceptable for the time. Today we do other things that you and me might see as acceptable but our grandchildren will view as atrocities. That's humanity.

What I meant is that after the defeat in Vienna the fate was sealed and it put the final nail into the box for votes of acceptance into the Euro club. It wasn't as clear before. The UK doesn't fear Turks because they didn't have the experience Hungary and Austria had for example.

WW1 and WW2 are both the result of mainly one mis-educated and ill-suited German ruler as the main initiator of the conflict(s), funny enough. WW1 it was the relative of the English king who was just plain stupid and thought war is better than economic dominance and didn't wait a couple days longer for some Austrian correspondence I forgot the details about or it would have been avoided in that year at least.

WW2 was funny enough initiated by Austria, who have always wanted to rejoin Germany.

The way I see it it's a family of monarchies across Europe and Russia who had their quarrels and caused the world devastating losses.

[Htsthbjig]

Go look around statues in Ankara or Istanbul to see what you mean?

Turkey was a Muslim Empire, or as you say, club. They took Christians and enslaved them or made them fought their wars with exclusive privileges only to Muslims.

Let's not forget history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide

Christians were expelled from Turkey or simply exterminated not that long ago. There is people alive that remembers it. From 1 person in five being Christian to 2 in a hundred.

UK has almost no Christianity? Ohhh, dear, everything in UK is Christian. I have lived in UK and in a non Christian country(China, Japan or Korea)to know.

[cm3]

I'm sorry you somehow think I was defending atrocities. I didn't mention any of it, and if we wanted to discuss that we'd surely come up with past and present genocides in all parts of the world that haven't been accepted as such and apologized for. Yes, Turkey is one, and there are many others. If your grandpa did something terrible, and there's proof, just own it and distance yourself from it. Nobody walks around in Germany and accuses the population to be Nazis, but it's hard because I know many Germans who feel like they're still having to apologize and defend themselves for WW2.

While it's important to process past atrocities, we need to prevent current ones, and I'd include many state sponsored activities of major forces in the world in the list atrocities. Modern genocide may look vastly different than a mass shooting. This is something where we can (without a time machine) make a difference.

And the thing with genocide is that some countries get away with denying some occurrences and only a select few are getting accused of it vocally. If all atrocities in all places were treated the same way, we might have better chances of processing them officially. I mean these aren't crimes where you can make a deal with the DA and remove some items off the list.

> UK has almost no Christianity?

I meant "a UK without Christianity".

[return0]

It's still a long way for turkey to join the EU. You don't want to alienate the turks against the EU however. It's one of the few relatively peaceful muslim countries in the region and still very much looking westernwards. Erdogan is also alienating his own people so hopefully he won't be there for long.

[Inthenameofmine]

It might have something to do with all those German-Turkish corporate joint ventures in the Balkans. I can't remember a 6 figure corruption scandale in Kosovo and Albania that did not have a German-Turkish corporation involved.

[venomsnake]

Turkey cannot be really migration buffer.

But for Germans - i think that the internalized guilt that was whipped into the German society after WWII just prevents them from thinking - EU and his people/interests first, Germany first or criticizing foreigners.

We all will pay dearly for supporting "religious freedom" Erdogan against his army in the early 00s

[newjersey]

I can't disagree with you at all. The rise of religion in government does us no good. However, we have to face reality as it exists. There'd be someone else if not him. Turkish people are clearly religious Muslims. While it would be nice to have a secular army in control of Turkey, we know the situation wouldn't be viable long term. I for one am glad when politicians take roads sustainably in the long term rather than a band aid until the next election.

As much as we all hate the growth of Islam, we can't really do much about it. If we suppress the Islamic populists for too long, we risk creating more caliphates around the world.

[venomsnake]

The army upheld the secular character of Turkey for nearly a century. That is long term-ish enough. And they would have deposed Erdogan again in 2004 (I think), when it was clear he had no respect for the secular values of Ataturk. But the coup failed due to a preemptive strike.

It was Kemal Ataturk himself that set up the things that way.

[tiatia]

What do you expect from a government run by to former East German state security members (IMs)? IM "Erika" and IM "Raupe"

Erdogan is an idiot. He overplayed his cards and does not realize it. I hope Turkey stays out of the EU forever.

[tiatia]

Why is this getting downvoted?

https://www.google.com/search?q=IM+Raupe#q=IM+Raupe+gauck

https://www.google.com/search?q=IM+Raupe#q=IM+erika+merkel

There is one famous picture, showing Merkel at a very young age in the outskirts of Berlin in front of a house of a dissident that was under observation. WTF was she doing there? And why did she forbid any further publication of this picture, after is was shown by a Magazine from Switzerland?

I saw this picture myself and it is not available anymore in the internet.

[tiatia]

Google translate:

The case Havemann

A concrete clue look at the Merkel-critics for their presumption that it does not take quite as accurate the Chancellor in describing their past with the truth. It concerns Robert Havemann, a famous regime-critic who had to live under house arrest in the GDR since 1976 and was under permanent Stasi observation. The authors of a television documentary for WDR met in 2005 at the Search for a film about the Stasi secret to the Act of Robert Havemann - and in there was a controversial detail: a photo of Angela Merkel. The picture was in a series of Stasi shots that people showed who were staying around the plot of Robert Havemann over the years or those visited. What did Angela Merkel there? Was she the officers conducting the observation? Visited them the critics of a harmless reason? Not likely, because the access to the house only selected people were allowed. Visited they him so in an official capacity to pump him? From Merkel herself there to little enlightening. She was taken by a fellow student from the Havemann Family with the plot. That was all, no further comments. Spicy is in this context, however, a fact that is occupied. During her time in the Academy of Sciences she shared an office with Havemann's son, also worked as a physicist. Just a coincidence? Angela Merkel claimed that it had practically to do with Havemann Junior hardly anything. Merkel prevented publication

Assuming the already discussed WDR documentary "In the Eye of the power the images of the Stasi" in any case wanted to disclose the relevant Merkel photo, but got from the Chancellor office a rejection. For "reasons of protection of their privacy" permission was refused. In the film, then the photo of Merkel has shown herself but defaced. In some Swiss magazines, however, the controversial photo was published. There you suspect the Chancellor in numerous articles then, more practically, to have been active as a Stasi informant. A claim that would establish the authors of the WDR-Reportage otherwise not in their documentation. For this process to derive a spying activities Merkel, is quite wrong and untrustworthy, the author wrote Holger Kulick to the makers of the "Chronicle Berlin", had constructed such a relationship. Indeed, Merkel did Posted therefore not agreed to, because they do not want to fall in the back her political mentor Helmut Kohl, who at the time publicly against it struggled to publish his Stasi file. But is this statement? Is that really the only reason? Here alone is Angela Merkel's words.