Turquie

Certain things never change with Europeans. Basically Europeans are bigots, racists, and religious zealots. They pretend to have laicism, applicable only to Christians. If you are not a Christian, you are sub-human. There is no freedom of religion in Europe either.  Russo-Turkish war, Balkan wars, open genocide of Bosnian Moslems by Serbs all point out to the same fact.  They do not want any Moslems in Europe. I am amazed with the recent “progress” Turkey had in trying to join European Union. I used the word progress in quotation marks, because I think that they will always find an excuse not to admit Turkey into the European Union. EU is a Christian club. The only benefit Turkey will have in this endeavor, in my opinion, is to have a more democratic constitution and more liberal laws. I believe that Turkey’s economy will be better, and/or already is, better than many of the European countries in the near future. It probably will be in Turkey’s interest to find other trading partners, especially with the neighboring countries in the Middle East. My ophthalmologist, a Maroni Christian, recently went to Beirut, Lebanon his hometown, for a vacation.  He advised me of the following. “In every store I went to, all the shelves were full of Turkish goods. People love the Turkish Products, because they are reasonably priced and are of excellent quality. In Lebanon they prefer Turkish products to those of European countries. He said that he understood that Turkey has had problems exporting to Europe. He said their problems with Turkish products were not because of the products quality, but is due to European prejudices. He said when Turkey started making trade agreements with Middle Eastern countries, the west started calling it Turkey is turning to east and breaking away from the west. He said that this was totally untrue.”

Being a believer in the fact that history repeats itself, I am going to present some satirical cartoons Europeans had about the Turks. Most of these cartoons are close to hundred years old. The adages, Terrible Turk, Mean Turk, Lusty Turk, Dirty Turk, and hapless Turk can easily be discerned from these cartoons. The satirical political cartoons on post cards are from Sultan Abdulhamid’s period, through World War I. I am hoping that the readers will make up their own minds about the subject. The crusades of so called enlightened Europeans will never end.