Actually since Mohammed wasn’t born until 470 BCE, and didn’t even start to invent Islam for forty years, to claim that Mohammedans have lived in Jerusalem for thousands of years is poppycock.
At the very least get historical facts correct.
No major Christian presence there? You really do need to buy your text books from a better source.
Yes I may have sounded ignorant myself when I said that but it just pisses me off how the murderous Catholic Church conducted its Crusades against Muslims using their religious background in the city as an excuse.
The Catholic Church in the form of Pope Urban the second initiated the first of the crusades with his call for Christians to re-take Jerusalem in 1095.
Jerusalem, the once and always capital city of Jewish people, was a hugely important city to Christians and Jews alike. To have our most holy of cities stolen and occupied by an invading force who were now rapeing and pillaging across our lands was simply unacceptable to the people at that time.
The cause celebre for the first of the Crusades was to re-take Jerusalem from what Christians see as a ‘religion’ that is heretical to the point of being the forces of the anti-Christ incarnate.
(and if the Book of Revelations is read, along with some of the sayings of Christ there is more than good justification for such being their belief)
What should not be overlooked is that the popularity for the Crusades was they were a means of focusing the fight back against the invasion of Europe by Muslims who were imposing Islam where it was not wanted, not needed, and generally greatly hated.
Nonsense.
It is essential that the EU commission and Parliament ignore any economic, military, political and diplomatic pressure, and heed the will of then majority of the people of the EU. This is one case where an EU wide referendum is essential because most people really do see it as being a “bridge too far” to bring Turkey into the EU.
Turkey has NOTHING that we want or need.
Actually the presence of Muslims in Jerusalem predates Prophet Muhammad and his message of Islam. First of all Muhammad was born in 570 not 470 and ur the one telling me to get my facts straight. Second call Muslims Mohemmadans, do I call u Christians Jesuits? , read this I'll copy and paste what the internet says so it's more clear and u won't claim I'm making it up:
"
Jerusalem in Islam refers to the status of
Jerusalem in the Muslim religious tradition. The
al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem is considered the
third holiest site in Islam, after the mosques of
al-Haram and
al-Nabawi.
[1]
- It is strongly associated with people regarded as Prophets of Islam - in particular, David, Solomon, and Jesus;
- It was the first qibla (direction of prayer) in Islam, before the Kaaba in Mecca;
- Muhammad is believed to have been taken by the miraculous steed Buraq to visit Jerusalem, where he prayed, and then to visit heaven, in a single night in the year 620. The Qur'anic verse (17:1) is interpreted by all widely used tafsirs (commentaries) as referring to this journey, with the term "the farthest Mosque" (al-masjid al-Aqsa) referring to the Noble Sanctuary in Jerusalem, where the mosque stands:
The name "Jerusalem" is a compound of two Semitic roots,
"s-l-m" meaning wholeness, peace,
[17] harmony or completeness, and "y-r-h" meaning to show, direct, instruct, or teach. Jerusalem means "Teaching of Peace", or "Whole or Complete Instruction".[
citation needed] A city called
Rušalimum or
Urušalimum appears in ancient
Egyptian records as one of the first references to Jerusalem.
[18] These Egyptian forms are thought to derive from the local name attested in the Amarna letters, e.g.: in EA 287 (where it takes several forms)
Urusalim.
[19][20] The form
Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) first appears in the book of Joshua. This form has the appearance of a
portmanteau (blend) of
yerusha (heritage) and the original name
Shalem and is not a simple phonetic evolution of the form in the Amarna letters. Some believe there is a connection to
Shalim, the beneficent deity known from
Ugaritic myths as the personification of dusk.
[21] Another suggested etymology is
Jerū-šālēm, the first part of which possibly means "settlement" or "fortress" (thence "The Abode of Shalim").
[22]
Typically the ending
-im indicates the plural in Hebrew grammar and
-ayim the dual thus leading to the suggestion that the name refers to the fact that the city sits on two hills.
[23][24] However the pronunciation of the last syllable as
-ayim appears to be a late development, which had not yet appeared at the time of the
Septuagint. In Greek and Latin it is transliterated
Hierosolyma (Ιερουσαλήμ). To the Arabs, Jerusalem is
al-Quds ("The Holy"). "Zion" initially referred to part of the city, but later came to signify the city as a whole. Under King David, it was known as
Ir David (the City of David).
[25]
Ceramic evidence indicates the occupation of
Ophel, within present-day Jerusalem, as far back as the
Copper Age, c.
4th millennium BCE,
[5][26] with evidence of a permanent settlement during the early
Bronze Age, c. 3000–2800 BCE.
[26][27] The
Execration Texts (
c. 19th century BCE), which refer to a city called
Roshlamem or
Rosh-ramen[26] and the
Amarna letters (c. 14th century BCE) may be the earliest mention of the city.
[28][29] Some archaeologists, including
Kathleen Kenyon, believe Jerusalem
[30] as a city was founded by
West Semitic people with organized settlements from around
2600 BCE. According to Jewish tradition the city was founded by
Shem and
Eber, ancestors of
Abraham. In the
biblical account, when first mentioned, Jerusalem (known as "Salem") is ruled by
Melchizedek, an ally of Abraham (identified with Shem in legend). Later, in the time of Joshua, Jerusalem was in territory allocated to the
tribe of Benjamin (
Joshua 18:28) but it continued to be under the independent control of the
Jebusites until it was conquered by
David and made into the capital of the united
Kingdom of Israel (c. 1000s BCE).
[31][32][v] Recent excavations of a
large stone structure are interpreted by some archaeologists as lending credence to the biblical narrative.
[33]
According to Hebrew scripture, King David reigned until 970 BCE. He was succeeded by his son
Solomon,
[34] who built the
Holy Temple on
Mount Moriah.
Solomon's Temple (later known as the
First Temple), went on to play a pivotal role in
Jewish history as the repository of the
Ark of the Covenant.
[35] For over 450 years, until the
Babylonian conquest in 587 BCE, Jerusalem was the political capital of firstly the united
Kingdom of Israel and then the
Kingdom of Judah and the Temple was the religious center of the Israelites.
[36] This period is known in history as the
First Temple Period.
[37] Upon Solomon's death (c. 930 BCE), the
ten northern tribes split off to form the
Kingdom of Israel. Under the leadership of the House of David and Solomon, Jerusalem remained the capital of the
Kingdom of Judah.
[38]
When the
Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, Jerusalem was strengthened by a great influx of refugees from the northern kingdom. The First Temple period ended around 586 BCE, as the Babylonians conquered Judah and Jerusalem, and laid waste to Solomon's Temple.
[37] In 538 BCE, after fifty years of
Babylonian captivity,
Persian King Cyrus the Great invited the Jews to return to Judah to rebuild the Temple.
[39] Construction of the
Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE, during the reign of
Darius the Great, seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple.
[40][41] Later, in ~445 BCE, King
Artaxerxes I of Persia issued a decree allowing the city and the walls to be rebuilt.
[42] Jerusalem resumed its role as capital of Judah and center of Jewish worship. When Macedonian ruler
Alexander the Great conquered the
Persian Empire, Jerusalem and
Judea fell under Macedonian control, eventually falling to the
Ptolemaic dynasty under
Ptolemy I. In 198 BCE,
Ptolemy V lost Jerusalem and
Judea to the
Seleucids under
Antiochus III. The
Seleucid attempt to recast Jerusalem as a
Hellenized polis came to a head in 168 BCE with the successful
Maccabean revolt of
Mattathias the
High Priest and his five sons against
Antiochus Epiphanes, and their establishment of the
Hasmonean Kingdom in 152 BCE with Jerusalem again as its capital.
[43]
Jerusalem is considered Islam's third holiest city after
Mecca and
Medina. Among Muslims of an earlier era it was referred to as
Bayt al-Maqdes; later it became known as
al-Quds al-Sharif. In 638 the
Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem.
[54] With the
Arab conquest, Jews were allowed back into the city.
[55] The
Rashidun caliph
Umar ibn al-Khattab signed a treaty with
Monophysite Christian Patriarch
Sophronius, assuring him that Jerusalem's Christian holy places and population would be protected under Muslim rule.
[56] Umar refused to pray in the church, so that the descendant Muslims would not request converting the church to a mosque. He prayed outside the church, where the Mosque of Umar (Omar) stands till the present time. According to the Gaullic bishop
Arculf, who lived in Jerusalem from 679 to 688, the
Mosque of Umar was a rectangular wooden structure built over ruins which could accommodate 3,000 worshipers.
[57] When the Muslims went to Bayt Al-Maqdes for the first time, They searched for the site of the Far Away Holy Mosque (Al-Masjed Al-Aqsa) that was mentioned in Quran and Hadith according to Islamic beliefs. They found the site full of rubbish, they cleaned it and started using it for prayers thereafter. The
Umayyad caliph
Abd al-Malik commissioned the construction of the
Dome of the Rock in the late 7th century.
[58] The 10th century historian
al-Muqaddasi writes that Abd al-Malik built the shrine in order to compete in grandeur with Jerusalem's monumental churches.
[57] Over the next four hundred years Jerusalem's prominence diminished as Arab powers in the region jockeyed for control.
[59]
In 1099, The
Fatimid ruler expelled the native Christian population before Jerusalem was
conquered by the
Crusaders, who massacred most of its Muslim and Jewish inhabitants when they took the solidly defended city by assault, after a period of siege; later the Crusaders created the
Kingdom of Jerusalem. By early June 1099 Jerusalem’s population had declined from 70,000 to less than 30,000.
[60]
In 1187, the city was wrested from the Crusaders by
Saladin who permitted Jews and Muslims to return and settle in the city.
[61] Under the
Ayyubid dynasty of Saladin, a period of huge investment began in the construction of houses, markets, public bathes, and pilgrim hostels as well as the establishment of religious endowments. However, for most of the 13th century, Jerusalem declined to the status of a village due to city's fall of strategic value and Ayyubid internecine struggles.
[62]
In 1244, Jerusalem was sacked by the
Khwarezmian Tartars, who decimated the city's Christian population and drove out the Jews.
[63] The Khwarezmian Tartars were driven out by the Ayyubids in 1247. From 1250 to 1517, Jerusalem was ruled by the
Mamluks. During this period of time many clashes occurred between the Mamluks on one side and the crusaders and the
Mongols on the other side. The area also suffered from many earthquakes and
black plague.
"
Hahahhaah lol and the Christian Crusaders were bringing flowers and treating people with great respect like angels right u delusional ****.
And who`s opinion is that yours. How do u think the local population felt about brutal Christian Crusaders killing and pillaging anything and anyone not Christian or related to Christianity. There were many Muslims there not just Jews and Christians stop being ignorant.
"Proponents of Turkey's membership argue that it is a key
regional power[30][31] with
a large economy and
the second largest military force of NATO[32][33] that will enhance the EU's position as a global geostrategic player; given Turkey's geographic location and economic, political, cultural and historic ties in regions with large natural resources that are at the immediate vicinity of the EU's geopolitical sphere of influence; such as the
East Mediterranean and
Black Sea coasts, the
Middle East, the
Caspian Sea basin and
Central Asia.
[34][35] According to the
Swedish foreign minister,
Carl Bildt, "the accession of Turkey would give the EU a decisive role for stability in the eastern part of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, which is clearly in the strategic interest of Europe."
[36] One of Turkey's key supporters for its bid to join the EU is the
United Kingdom.
[37]Turkey has the world's
15th largest GDP-PPP[41] and
17th largest Nominal GDP.
[42] The country is a founding member of the
OECD and the
G-20 major economies."
"Turkey has a
secular constitution, with no official state religion.
[60] Nominally, though, 99% of the Turkish population is
Muslim[61][62] of whom over 70% belong to the
Sunni branch of Islam. A sizeable minority, about over 25% of the Muslim population, is affiliated with the
Shi'a Alevi branch.
[63] The
Christians (Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Gregorian, Syriac, Protestant) and
Jews (Sephardic, Ashkenazi) were formerly sizable religious minorities in the country. Turkey would be the first Muslim-majority country to join the European Union, although
Albania,
Bosnia and Herzegovina and
Kosovo are also Muslim-majority, and have been recognized as potential candidate countries.
[64] Official population census polls in Turkey do not include information regarding a person's religious belief or ethnic background due to the regulations set by the Turkish constitution, which defines all citizens of the Republic of Turkey as Turkish in terms of nationality, regardless of faith or race.
[65]
There is a strong tradition of
secularism in Turkey. The state has no official religion nor promotes any, and actively monitors the area between the religions.
[66] The constitution recognizes the
freedom of religion for individuals, whereas religious communities are placed under the protection of the state; but the constitution explicitly states that they cannot become involved in the political process (by forming a religious party, for instance) or establish faith-based schools. No party can claim that it represents a form of religious belief; nevertheless, religious sensibilities are generally represented through conservative parties.
[66] Turkey prohibits by law the wearing of
religious headcover and theo-political symbolic garments for both sexes in government buildings, schools, and universities;
[67] the law was upheld by the Grand Chamber of the
European Court of Human Rights as "legitimate" in the
Leyla Şahin v. Turkey case on 10 November 2005.
[68]"
Danish-Turkish relations:
- The relations date back 250 years and actually started in the field of trade in 18th century. On 14 October 1756, an Agreement of Friendship and Trade was signed by the Sultan Osman III and the King Frederick V. In 1758, Denmark has appointed an extraordinary representative to the Ottoman Empire.
- Today, Denmark has an embassy in Ankara and an honorary consulate in Istanbul.[6]
- Turkey has an embassy in Copenhagen.[7]
Finnish-Turkish relations:
- Turkey recognized the independence of Finland on February 21, 1918.
- Finland has an embassy in Ankara and an honorary consulate general in Istanbul and other honorary consulates in Belek, Bodrum and Izmir.[8]
- Turkey has an embassy in Helsinki.[9]
German-Turkish relations:
Based on good Turkish-German relations from the 19th century onwards, Germany promoted a Turkish immigration to Germany. However, large scale didn't occur until the 20th century. Germany suffered an acute labor shortage after
World War II and, in
1961, the
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) officially invited
Turkish workers to Germany to fill in this void, particularly to work in the factories that helped fuel Germany's economic miracle. The German authorities named these people
Gastarbeiter (
German for
guest workers). Most Turks in Germany trace their ancestry to Central and Eastern
Anatolia. Today, Turks are Germany's largest ethnic minority and form most of Germany's Muslim minority
Italian-Turkish relations:
Italy has an embassy in
Ankara, a general consulate in
Istanbul, a consulate
İzmir and 3 honorary consulates in * Turkey has an embassy in
Rome and a general consulate in
Milan.
[14]
Portuguese-Turkish relations:
Turkey's 161 years of political relations with Portugal date back to the
Ottoman period when Viscount de Seixal was appointed as an envoy to
Istanbul. Diplomatic relations ceased during
World War I and were re-established in the
Republican period in 1926. A resident embassy was established in 1957. Portugal has an embassy in
Ankara.
[16] Turkey has an embassy in
Lisbon. Both countries are full members of
NATO.
Swedish-Turkish relations:
Turkey-United Kingdom relations:
Both countries currently maintain relations via the British Embassy in
Ankara[23] and the Turkish Embassy in
London.
[24]
Turkey and the United Kingdom maintain strong
bilateral relations.
[25] The
President of Turkey Cevdet Sunay paid a
state visit to the United Kingdom in November 1967.
[26] The
President of Turkey Kenan Evren paid a state visit to the United Kingdom in July 1988.
[26] HM Queen
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom paid state visits to Turkey in October 1971, and in May 2008.
[27] Britain and Turkey are both members of the
G20, and Britain supports the
accession of Turkey to the European Union.
This is an article I found online on Turkey:
`This blog mostly has discussed the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China) as the main rising powers of the world. One often overlooked rising power is Turkey. Turkey has been an important bridge between the East and West for centuries (as the modern Turkish state and previous national and imperial incarnations). In the 21st century, Turkey has proved valuable as an interlocutor, serving as a value-add to both the West and to its more anti-West neighbors.
Most recently, Turkey, as a third party, brokered indirect talks between Syrian and Israeli officials, seeking for a peace deal. The talks have stalled, and the new Israeli government led by conservative Binyamin Netanyahu is unlikely to want to rekindle them, at least in the open. What is interesting is that Israelis and the international community seem to have nearly forgotten Turkey’s strong words for Israel over its Gaza war and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s walk-out from the World Economic Forum’s Davos summit following an altercation with Israeli President Shimon Peres. Even when Turkey has not been host to talks, it has
served as a consultant to negotiations, as is the case for Egypt during Hamas-Israel peace efforts and Palestinian reconciliation attempts. Indeed, some have even referred to Turkey’s “
obsession” with mediation.
The Obama administration has been quick to capitalize on a positive relationship with Ankara. US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton’s visit to Turkey this past weekend was friendly and encouraging, and even resulted in the discussion of Turkish-brokered talks between the US and Iran. Although the talks remain simply a possibility, it is apparent that both Tehran and Washington
have reached out to Turkey to be the interlocutor. Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan put it most succinctly when speaking about negotiations run by Ankara:
“The term mediation is used at times. This will only be realized if a concrete request is made by both sides. We could contribute to the furthering of relations between the two nations to a positive level.” Read more
here.
If Turkey does succeed in bringing the US and Iran to the table, it will have accomplished a great deal. Nevertheless, it will still have a lot left to accomplish.`