Turkey is an enormous present on Europe’s doorstep. Speaker: Professor Norman Stone
Arguing against the motion ‘Let’s keep Turkey out of Europe’, Norman Stone asserts that Turkey’s history mirrors that of Spain, now one of Europe’s greatest success stories. The EU has a crucial opportunity to influence Turkey, to shape it, and create an entirely new civilisation. Europe should mean something for Turkey the way it held promise for post-Second World War populations. Turkey is an enormous present on Europe’s doorstep.
Contribution by Mr Yusuf Cinar and Mr Nizam Bulut, Ireland
Turkey will make Europe a better model and actor (Video). Speaker: Dominique Moisi
Arguing against the motion ‘Let’s keep Turkey out of Europe’, Dominique Moisi says he regards the debate over Turkey as part of the battle between hope and fear. Europe’s dissolution is much more unlikely than proponents of the motion make it out to be. Europe’s role in the international system is as a model and an actor; Turkey’s inclusion would make it a better model and a more powerful actor. He argues that this is Europe’s great opportunity to show the rest of the world that it does not believe in a clash of civilisations between Islam and modernity, democracy and secularism. Finally, he believes that one of Europe’s key weaknesses in the years to come will be its demography, an ageing population lacking energy. Citing the success of earlier enlargement into Eastern and Central Europe, he says that Turkey will easily provide citizens hungry for progress and economic triumph that are lacking in today’s Europe. Europe needs new blood.
Gordon Brown campaigning in north London yesterday
Fighting talk from Brown as he rallies the party faithful in Kirkcaldy and Hendon
Martin Fletcher
The words were almost Churchillian. “We will fight for every vote in every seat every hour between now and the close of polls,” Gordon Brown promised the party faithful in his Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath constituency on Friday.
“We fight with strength in our soul and confidence in our cause because we are the people’s party — not simply a party in Britain but the party of Britain.”
It gave the impression that the Prime Minister would be barnstorming around the country. Aides reinforced that idea: “We are going to win this campaign people to people, door to door, street to street,” said one. The reality is more prosaic. Mr Brown may be the underdog, but his campaign to date has been distinctly low key. He does not have a campaign bus. He has yet to address a meeting open to the general public.
On Saturday he made several appearances, but all except one were in his own constituency, where he has a rock-solid 18,216 majority and is sure of a warm reception.
His campaign event yesterday was in Hendon, northwest London, where he met precisely six voters, at least three of whom were Labour supporters. Mr Brown arrived just before 3pm, his Jaguar coming face to face with an unsuspecting learner driver as it entered Fortune Avenue.
He joined a young couple named Richard Belle and Cheryl Revill — both Labour supporters — in their flat on the fourth floor of a new block. The four other guests included Ms Revill’s father, a Labour Party member, and were chosen with the help of Andrew Dismore, the local Labour MP. The group of three men and three women included three from ethnic minorities — a model of political correctness.
Mr Brown chatted for 20 minutes about how Labour’s affordable housing policies had helped Mr Belle and Ms Revill to buy their first home. He spoke about schooling, Bollywood and citizenship. He cracked jokes, mentioned his children and poked fun at his inability to use a mouse.
Then he returned to Downing Street to work on today’s manifesto speech and, doubtless, catch up on the fortunes of his beloved Raith Rovers in the Scottish Cup semi-final.
Aides say that these intimate meetings help him to highlight specific Labour policies and “create a buzz” in marginal constituencies.
The big prize, however, is the television news clip of a Prime Minister not known for his common touch, listening to “ordinary people” in their homes. And as long as the audience is sympathetic, Mr Brown is very good at it.
He is not alone in resorting to tightly controlled events. All the party leaders do it. Today’s elections are won on television, the internet and Twitter.
Not all of Fortune Avenue was won over yesterday. Darshna Yagnik, 38, a university lecturer, said: “It’s all to make himself look like a people’s person but he’s not.”
he Muslim organisation that claimed responsibility for unseating “pro-war, pro-Israel” Labour MP Lorna Fitzsimons from her Rochdale constituency at the last election has launched its campaign for the 2010 election.
The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, which has an openly anti-Zionist agenda, has said it will target MPs and candidates known to support Israel and those they have identified as “Islamophobic”. It claims that 82 constituencies now have a Muslim population larger than the incumbent’s majority.
MPAC will concentrate its resources on the Oldham seat of Immigration Minister Phil Woolas, who recently raised concerns about the prevalence of marriage between cousins in the Muslim community.
“Muslim voters can no longer be taken for granted by Labour, as a new politicised generation are becoming swing voters who demand action, on issues from Palestine to anti-terror laws,” said Rukiya Dadhiwala, MPAC’s campaign co-ordinator.
The organisation has also warned Muslim voters in Hendon to vote for anyone but sitting Labour MP Andrew Dismore, who is considered an arch-Zionist.
It claims 2,000 leaflets attacking the Labour candidate were distributed outside Hendon mosque at Friday prayers.
However, his opponents, Conservative Matthew Offord and Lib Dem Matthew Harris are also both strong supporters of Israel. “They may be Zionists, but they are not as bad as he is,” said spokesman Tahir Shah.
I should remind you here that ‘our gallant ally’ , U.K. , had conquered and subdued Namibia and Tanganyika by methods even more barbarous than those of the British in taking their own African empire. These were foolish times of course, and only an idiot today would look back to the bloodshed of these years with pride.
I am happy to say that in Ireland, we have put the 1916 Rising well behind us, and we refer to it merely as an example of the sorry lunacy that can seize the souls of otherwise good men, when madness becomes fashionable. So, at least some of the seeds of the 1916 Rising were sown in the Dardanelles. It was a cruel paradox that the first regiment to arrive from Britain to put down the Rising were the Sherwood Foresters — who, if you remember, had been used to ‘secure’ the Turkish battleships, the seizure of which had helped propel the Ottomans to war in the first place.
Yes, in the loathsome figure of Winston Churchill — an imperialistic war-monger and egotistical bully — the Turkish and Irish peoples are united by a common and imperishable loathing.’
Now, through some inexplicable oversight, the Department of Foreign Affairs did not give this speech of mine for the President to make at Gallipoli. Why not? The British tabloid headlines the next day would have been the purest joy to read.
And as for the President’s comments about Turkey’s proposed membership of the EU, which have clearly vexed many of you, more at
Unless we admit Turkey, says Mr Erdogan, the EU will “end up a Christian club”. Well, is that so very bad? Didn’t Christians invent just about everything for the last 400 years? And how would Europe remain recognisably European (or even Christian) after a mass-movement of Anatolian Muslims into our cities?
For one thing that Ryanair has taught us is the overnight mobility of populations. And Turkish immigration will probably not consist of cosmopolitan elites but of peasants and their imams from Anatolia, accompanied by their burkas, naquibs and madrasas.
And if you wonder about the outcome, wonder no more: simply go to Bradford and Blackburn and ask them about the boundless delights of mass-Islamic immigration. Go on. Ask them.
kmyers@independent.ie
myers hakkinda bilgi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Myers
