Is Turkey a Western country ?

Thank you very much Woden for telling the truth I applaud you for your fairness. I was just going to say the same thing, that the Christians have no right in preaching intolerance, barbarism, etc. done by Muslims or Turks to their Christian minorities as the Christians have done much worse to their Muslim minorities. I`m a Muslim and it does not say in Islam to kill, force to convert or prejudice against anyone and are taught to respect Christians and Jews as they believe in God as well. In fact the Islamic empires are well known for their tolerance towards Jews and Christians of course there have been incidents at certain times but what empire hasn`t had these rebellions and conflicts with their minorities. Christians on the other hand starting with the Spanish Inquisition, the heretic and witch hunts and orders issued by the Pope as well as the Crusades done against the Muslims, up to British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and other Europeans behaviour towards their colonized areas in Africa, South and North America, Australia and New Zealand, South and Southeast Asia, Middle East, etc. etc. So I advice people to please look at the actions of the Christians and not act racist, ignorant and one-sided towards Muslims.
 
Woden said:
Get over it, the Catholics enslaved entire nations in south America, entire civilizations disappeared. Popes issued papal bulls giving permission for the Catholics to enslave "all pagans alien to the faith of christ". The natives were more or less wiped out by the Protestants in the north.

The Saxons in north Germany were wiped out by Charlemagne, "Charles the Great". The christians destroyed all knowledge of Odinism and we would know nothing about it if some few texts had not survived in remote Iceland.

I could go on and on about the crimes of christians against humanity, the Inquisitions, the crusades, the witch and heretic burnings -- in fact it can be argued that the very religion is a crime against humanity that banishes all free thought and normal intuition -- so please dont even get started on this nonsense of accusations based on the past!
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I agree but these crimes in the name of monotheism must be denounced on both sides Islam and Christianity But muslim countries or people never acknowledge their crimes and use your words to reinforce their own. The Europeans have done with the religious Intolerence they have changed, but Muslim countries are still the mentality they had in the past they blend the spiritual and the temporal . "Islamic states" is a nonsense for clear-sighted . Objectively look at this and the current state of Islam and Christianity . Europeans were the first to condemn, I would see the same behavior in other people.
 
I agree with Willy. Turkyusuf, condemn Muslim crimes, wars, genocides like we condemn Christian ones. Then we can talk on equal footing.
 
willy said:
I agree but these crimes in the name of monotheism must be denounced on both sides Islam and Christianity But muslim countries or people never acknowledge their crimes and use your words to reinforce their own.
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If you scroll up you will see that Ulubatli @ #52, aaltunn @ #53 and TurkYusuf1 @ #61 all condemn atrocities that have been committed by muslims.

aaltunn:

ottoman forces plunder fight ...etc yes that's true.... every culture did that those times...
judge me but a little more justice please...
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He is asking you to judge justly.

First one has to completely lay aside all bias and a sectarian polemical spirit. Then one will seek to see things as they really are and with balance and perspective rather than tendentiously try to score points.

One could mention the Thirty Years War for example, in which perhaps two-thirds of the German people were wiped out as the Roman Catholic and Protestant armies from across Europe rampaged against each other within German borders. 90% of the German population was wiped out in some parts of Germany. Entire classes disappeared from Germany leaving mainly only the upper nobility and some of the peasants alive. (From a genetic perspective this extreme depopulation has been suggested as the context for a migration of Slavs into eastern and southern Germany.) It took Germany two centuries to even begin to recover and to seek its national unity, something that its christian neighbours were always happy to deny them.
 
willy said:
This is not correct that St. Sophia in 1453, immediately after the capture of Constantinople, was converted into a mosque Ayasofya this does not show tolerance and respect for Christians !
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The analogue that springs to mind is the destruction of Thor's Oak, which was one of the most sacred sites to the pagan Germanic tribes and the main place of the veneration of Thor. St. Boniface cut it down to show that Thor would not retaliate and to 'prove' the superiority of christianity. This act of destruction marks the beginning of the conversion of the non-Frankish tribes of northern Germany to christianity.

If black metal kids in Scandinavia put the ancient churches to the same test then they are branded as evil and mindless criminals but Boniface is officially celebrated as a great 'saint' by the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Lutheran Church and the Anglican Communion. The scene is still often depicted with approval in religious images.

In 723, St Boniface, Apostle of the Germans arrived in the area in his quest to convert the northern Germanic tribes to Christianity, using as his base the Frankish fortified settlement of Büraburg on the opposite side of the Eder river. He had the oak felled in an attempt to convey the superiority of the Christian God over Thor and the native Germanic religion. According to surviving texts, when Thor did not respond by hurling a lightning bolt at him, the assembled local people agreed to be baptized.
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This is not really the problem Odin and Thor are my friends
 
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First of all, do you mean Western compared to Oriental??? Hmmmm, I suspect that this is a hint for its entrance to the EU...(if I m wrong, I apologize)

If this is the question, my answer is this: Turkey is Western enough to stand beside the countries of NATO (all "Western"), but not "Western" enough for the EU???
 
Beefree said:
First of all, do you mean Western compared to Oriental??? Hmmmm, I suspect that this is a hint for its entrance to the EU...(if I m wrong, I apologize)

If this is the question, my answer is this: Turkey is Western enough to stand beside the countries of NATO (all "Western"), but not "Western" enough for the EU???
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oh, I forgot to say something else. What do the crimes of the past have to do with the topic of Turkey being western?:innocent::unsure:
 
Turkey is not western. There is no arguing that. The western looking Turkish are mostly descendants of Greeks or people from the Balkans that were captured during the Ottoman empire and became Janissaries (kids that were stolen from their families and sent to Turkey to become soldiers) or people who were converted to Islam to avoid taxes and have equal treatment to the Turkish in the Ottoman empire. They are also descendants of the people who used to live in the Aegean coast during the Byzantine Empire.

The claim that Greeks and Turkish lived peacefully in the empire is wrong. People were not open minded back then and just the fact that they had different religion was enough to make them hate each other.
There are tons of old documents in Crete about people in Rethymno for example who were forced to convert to Islam and later in their wills they would leave all their money and land to, guess what, the Orthodox church, not to the Muslims. The same applies in other parts of Greece too.

Why do you think the Greek Orthodox Church is so rich and powerful nowadays? The Church has money and land people can't even begin to imagine. This is because Greeks would donate their fortunes to the Church to avoid losing it to the Turkish or to avoid paying heavy taxes.
Today everyone pays taxes too but no one considers donating their house and land to the Church to avoid the taxes. If someone reaches a point that he has no choice but to do such a thing it means that the taxes are extremely heavy. So please I don't want to read how kind the Turkish were to the Greeks and that they were treated like kings...

This is false and insulting to a nation that struggled for almost 400years.

If Greeks were treated like Turkish they wouldn't donate their lands and money to the church.
If Greeks were treated like kings they wouldn't try to free themselves at 1821.
If Greeks were loved by the Turks, Greek women wouldn't commit suicide to avoid getting raped, or to avoid giving birth to Turkish kids after being raped.


The mixture between Turks and Greeks, in Greek lands was minimal. It mostly happened in the current Turkish territories.

It is the Turkish who look like Greeks, the so called western-looking Turkish, and not the Greeks who look like Turkish.
Please stop "buying" the Skopjan propaganda that wants the modern Greeks mixed with Turks so that they can claim the Great Alexander as Skopjan, this is another topic and I don't want to talk about it in this thread.

Modern Turkey is a mixture of Asians with some Europeans. There are Turkish who look Mongoloid, some who look like Europeans and many who look mixed. Overall though Turkey is not Western. It is a nation where Islam is more important than laws, ruled by the army, without respect to women and with zero respect to other religions and minorities.
 
I agree with Marianne Turkey is not European this area is the result of an islamic invasion many crimes and Armenian Genocide never recognized by Turkish .
 
Defenition?

Seems people are arguing about different things.

What is your definition of a "western country"? Are you talking geography, political, economic, cultural, history, genetics or all of these?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world

Interesting point from the source above:

"There is debate among some as to whether Eastern Europe is in a category of its own. Culturally Eastern Europe is usually more or less accepted into the 'West', mainly because of its geographic location in what is mostly Europe (and cultural ties). However, it does not fill the traditional economic and living-standard criteria typically associated with "The West"."

Does economic performance determine your "western status", if so would a poorer country like Portugal be in questions as a western country?

"When referring to current events, the term "Western World" often includes developed countries in Asia, such as Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, that have strong economic, political and military ties to Western Europe, NATO or the United States."

Again this is somthing different to what you are reffering to so defining what you regard to be the criteria of a "western country" has to come first.

I don't see how anyone can express their answer if they are unclear as to the meaning of the question.
 
In my opinion, economics has nothing to do to consider a country to be European. First of all, there is a geographic definition of Europe, and Turkey is not part of it. But also there is a cultural definition (Christianism, languages, traditions, historical ties, cultural ties, etc ) and also an ethnical definition (one can see the European genetical relationship based on SNP's studies, ancestry studies,etc ) in which clearly Turkey falls outside of the european cluster.
 
Being "European" or "Western" really has nothing to do with economics. Culture, type of ethnicity, genetics and commonly shared aspects of history, values and norms are the critical determining factors, as mentioned above

In Western Europe (western regions outside the Orthodox zone - a separate geographic and cultural category) there are no indigent countries per say, just relatively more wealthy and relatively less wealthy. For Eastern Europe, the economic contrasts are a bit more pronounced, e.g., compare the Czech Republic or Slovakia with Romania.
 
Marianne said:
Turkey is not western. There is no arguing that. The western looking Turkish are mostly descendants of Greeks or people from the Balkans that were captured during the Ottoman empire and became Janissaries (kids that were stolen from their families and sent to Turkey to become soldiers) or people who were converted to Islam to avoid taxes and have equal treatment to the Turkish in the Ottoman empire. They are also descendants of the people who used to live in the Aegean coast during the Byzantine Empire.

The claim that Greeks and Turkish lived peacefully in the empire is wrong. People were not open minded back then and just the fact that they had different religion was enough to make them hate each other.
There are tons of old documents in Crete about people in Rethymno for example who were forced to convert to Islam and later in their wills they would leave all their money and land to, guess what, the Orthodox church, not to the Muslims. The same applies in other parts of Greece too.

Why do you think the Greek Orthodox Church is so rich and powerful nowadays? The Church has money and land people can't even begin to imagine. This is because Greeks would donate their fortunes to the Church to avoid losing it to the Turkish or to avoid paying heavy taxes.
Today everyone pays taxes too but no one considers donating their house and land to the Church to avoid the taxes. If someone reaches a point that he has no choice but to do such a thing it means that the taxes are extremely heavy. So please I don't want to read how kind the Turkish were to the Greeks and that they were treated like kings...

This is false and insulting to a nation that struggled for almost 400years.

If Greeks were treated like Turkish they wouldn't donate their lands and money to the church.
If Greeks were treated like kings they wouldn't try to free themselves at 1821.
If Greeks were loved by the Turks, Greek women wouldn't commit suicide to avoid getting raped, or to avoid giving birth to Turkish kids after being raped.


The mixture between Turks and Greeks, in Greek lands was minimal. It mostly happened in the current Turkish territories.

It is the Turkish who look like Greeks, the so called western-looking Turkish, and not the Greeks who look like Turkish.
Please stop "buying" the Skopjan propaganda that wants the modern Greeks mixed with Turks so that they can claim the Great Alexander as Skopjan, this is another topic and I don't want to talk about it in this thread.

Modern Turkey is a mixture of Asians with some Europeans. There are Turkish who look Mongoloid, some who look like Europeans and many who look mixed. Overall though Turkey is not Western. It is a nation where Islam is more important than laws, ruled by the army, without respect to women and with zero respect to other religions and minorities.
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You mention the Turks treating the Greeks badly, oppressing them, forcefully converting them, raping their women and mixing with them and so on and so on, what about the crimes and injustices that the Greeks did to the Turks during the last 150 or so years of the Ottoman Empire, even before there were some instances, especially in WWI and the Turkish War of Independence, many Greeks savagely killed, tortured, burned, destroyed, raped, pillaged, looted and so on to the Turkish nation and its land, in fact the Greeks resented being defeated and pushed out of Anatolia during the Independence War so much that on their way out of Turkey and back to Greece, they burned Izmir or Symyrna whatever u wanna call it to the ground and the Turkish revolutionaries led by Kemal Ataturk entered the ruins of a once beautiful city. Please people stop being ignorant and acknowledge that people like Greeks or Armenians committed just as many atrocities and injustices to the Turks as the Turks did to them. Now I'm not trying to defend Turkey or Ottoman Empire's actions, they obviously made lots of mistakes and did many bad things but it's not like the Greeks or Armenians were "innocent", in fact I hate it when I hear things like the Armenian genocide when people don't realize or choose to ignore that this action was not done in the way it is portrayed or done out of spite or just as an act of brutality and barbarism. The Armenians backstabbed the Turks and fought against them with the Russians in and after WWI, and there are documents that prove that there were local Armenian gangs in Eastern Turkey that killed, tortured, raped people (especially pregnant women whose bellies were ripped out and were brutally raped and murdered), destroyed and burned properties while the Turkish army was busy fighting the British, French, Greeks and Italians in the Central and Western parts of Turkey, so when they returned and saw what had happened, they naturally sought revenge, killed the ones that were caught on sight, and sent the rest and deported them out of Turkey into parts of Middle East (mainly Syria and Lebanon), back to Armenia, Russia and the rest of Soviet Union, etc. In fact both Greeks and Armenians both had important governmental positions some higher than Muslim or Turkish ones, so they weren't always treated fairly during Ottoman rule but they possessed significant power and influence in the policies for their minorities and so on. Stop pointing the finger at Turks and acknowledge crimes committed by other people as well, if u don't know do some research or don't but don't make ignorant hateful comments please.
 
Let's cut to the chase; is Turkey a MAJORITY Western country? Yes, or no.
 
Turkey is as majority Western as Morocco or Tunisia are.
 
Woden said:
Get over it, the Catholics enslaved entire nations in south America, entire civilizations disappeared. Popes issued papal bulls giving permission for the Catholics to enslave "all pagans alien to the faith of christ". The natives were more or less wiped out by the Protestants in the north.

The Saxons in north Germany were wiped out by Charlemagne, "Charles the Great". The christians destroyed all knowledge of Odinism and we would know nothing about it if some few texts had not survived in remote Iceland.

I could go on and on about the crimes of christians against humanity, the Inquisitions, the crusades, the witch and heretic burnings -- in fact it can be argued that the very religion is a crime against humanity that banishes all free thought and normal intuition -- so please dont even get started on this nonsense of accusations based on the past!
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Agreed. But there's a great difference. The Catholic Church have apologized several times for some of those historical events... I've never seen a muslim authority doing autocriticism about Islam and its imperialistic ways through History, on the contrary...
 
Joro said:
Turkey is as majority Western as Morocco or Tunisia are.
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Neither country is considered "Western" culturally or genetically.
 
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