Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that "if EU is not a Christian Club, it should admit Turkey."
“When EU admits Turkey, then EU won`t be a Christian Club, but an address where civilizations meet. If this is not the case, you can’t claim that EU is not a Christian Club,“ told Erdogan at a seminar organized by Turkey`s Religious Affairs Directorate. [Source]
If the EU was a Christian Club it wouldn’t have included most of Europe. Europe is so Christian that today Spain legalized same-sex marriage.
5 comments
If Turkey is admitted to the EU will they allow religious freedom for these Christians they are lecturing? For a supposedly secular state, Christian denominations can’t build churches, schools, can’t prosetlyze or anything else without govt. permission. Will Turkey also finally admit to the genocide of a million plus Christian Armenians? I don’t think they’ll do either, both of which the EU has explicitly (in the first case of religious freedom) and informally (in the case of the Armenians) recognized in all its member states.
How ’bout giving back the Hagia Sophia to the Orthodox as a gesture of Turkish goodwill?
Why on Earth didn’t the British give back the European parts of Turkey back to Greece when they were carving up the remnants of the Ottoman empire after WWI?
Stupid stupid stupid.
Billy,
Answer to Q1: Ataturk made the Hagia Sophia the “museum” it is now. Most Turks want it to be a mosque again (aargh!).
Answer to Q2: Fear of Russian influence in the region. The British tend to put political self-interest before Christ. Also, one of Woodrow Wilson’s famous Points was that Turkey should have some land in Europe.
Turkey should join. Let the Turks come and burn everything those damn Europeans stand for. It would be good to see Zapatero, Schroeder and Chirac quail when there is no King Jan to save them.
Billy,
We would have to mention also about how Turkey (Iraq, Iran) treats the Kurds with velvet gloves.
As another measure of good faith and goodwill, maybe the Italians should take all of the plunder from the Crusade from San Marco cathedral in Venice and give it back to Hagia Sophia and Istanbul, Turkey.
and as long as EU goodwill is abounding, the British can take the altar of Zeus from the British Museum and return it to Bergama (Pergamum) Turkey and they can give back to the Greeks the treasures they cut up and hauled away from the Acropolis.
funny, how when suggestions of goodwill and national treasure / national pride get too close to home, the sweater of avarice feels just too comfortable to take off.