Welcome
Login:   Pass:     Register - Forgot Password - Resend Activation

Turkish Class Forums / Turkey

Turkey

Add reply to this discussion
Moderators: libralady, sonunda
News :Sarkozy´s day trip irks EU candidate Turkey
1.       tunci
7149 posts
 25 Feb 2011 Fri 11:06 pm

  • Sarkozy´s day trip irks EU candidate Turkey
  • Breaking News
  • Published : 25.02.2011 12:53
    Updated : 25.02.2011 12:59

Turkey complained on Thursday of getting short shrift from France´s President Nicolas Sarkozy, a day before he was due to arrive for talks that were unlikely to touch on what matters most to Ankara, namely EU membership.

Sarkozy, who has voiced opposition in the past to Muslim Turkey´s bid to join the European Union, was due to visit Ankara on Friday in his capacity as current president of the Group of 20 forum, rather than on a state visit.

The visit was only scheduled to last a few hours, and officials including Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan voiced disappointment that Sarkozy had not made more time for them.

"I would like to speak frankly. We would have liked to welcome the President of the French Republic, but on Friday he is not coming as president of the French Republic, but as chairman of the G20," Erdogan stated.

"So, I think this is not a visit that corresponds to the height of the friendship between France and Turkey," he said. "Turkey and Turkish-French relations deserve more than that."

Erdogan went on to point out that both he and President Abdullah Gul had made official visits to France, whereas Sarkozy had not visited Turkey during his time in office.

Gul told the French daily Le Figaro in January that Sarkozy has "an image of Turkey that does not correspond with reality."

Erdogan and Gul were due to meet separately with Sarkozy, to discuss the G20 agenda, and foreign policy issues, ranging from the Middle East peace process, stalled peace talks between Syria and Israel, the change in government in Lebanon and the big powers´ negotiations over Iran´s nuclear program.

Turkey would like to win support to get fresh momentum behind its bid for EU membership, but French officials told reporters in Paris that this did not appear to be a key focus of the visit, given an impasse due to disputes over Cyprus.

 I think this French Man  has lack of vision.He has unrecoverable prejudices about Turkey and Turks. He should first look at his own country"s records on human rights in Morocco,Algeria and other African countries.

 

2.       si++
3785 posts
 27 Feb 2011 Sun 10:26 am

Cengiz  Aktar wrote a coumn about his visit:

Some excerpts from: here

 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy was in the Turkish capital Ankara for an unofficial 300-minute visit Friday.

As the G-8 and G-20 term president, the French leader shared views with Turkey on the state of the world’s economy. In reality, term presidents are not obliged to visit all member countries at the highest level.

In the past, Sarkozy had rolled up his sleeves behind doors to remove six countries, including Turkey, from the G-20 but hit the buffers during the Pittsburgh Summit of the group.

To be honest, the visit was nothing but an excuse to patch-up French-Turkish relations that have suffered primarily because of Sarkozy’s attitude. As fresh proof, let me note that several French newspapers extensively recalled how the president was and still is against Turkey’s EU membership when they were covering the visit. Who is fooling whom in the end?  

Indeed, bilateral relations are far from balmy. This is so despite the remarkable efforts of outgoing French Ambassador Bernard Emié, who will head to London for his new appointment within days.

Sarkozy assumed his anti-Turkey approach long before he was elected president in place of President Jacques Chirac, who had a positive attitude toward Turkey’s EU bid. Sarkozy maintained his position during his presidential tenure and officially announced already in 2007 his intention to unilaterally veto five negotiation chapters with the EU because they are directly linked to full membership.

 

 

Sarkozy always refrained from visiting Turkey. Although his mother’s side comes from Ottoman Salonica, the French leader has always hated voicing this. Last April, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a statement to French daily Le Figaro in which he said he would invite Sarkozy to visit contemporary Turkey, adding that if that happened, Sarkozy would see how much Turkey had developed in some areas compared to many EU countries.

The prime minister was right but it seems some French statesmen are not ready to abandon the old clichés about Turkey. The last official visit from a French leader was by François Mitterrand toward the end of his tenure – 19 years ago. Two previous official visits by top representatives were by Charles de Gaulle in 1968 and Empress Eugénie in 1869! I think there is no other country that France looks so down upon.

 

Sarkozy, Arab politics and Turkey

While anti-Islam is used as election gimmick in France, we have observed French policies toward the Maghreb countries – which are based on the fear of Islam – failing one by one. Developments in Tunisia, France’s backyard, and possible similar events in Morocco show that policies based on sheer political and economic interests as arranged with authoritarian regimes are close to the end. From now on, instead of these authoritarian-yet-passive regimes, new actors will emerge and take the stage in the Middle East. And they should receive their due.

These new kinds of actors first made an entrance in Turkey and are rapidly increasing in the neighborhood. Sarkozy’s France hasn’t been able to perceive the development just by looking at Turkey. On the contrary, it continued to look at Turkey through an Orientalist worldview, failing to grasp that Turkey could become an equal partner. If it had, it wouldn’t have acted as it does today on Turkey’s EU bid. Even the brand-new search for “how Turks could set a model for Arabs” is, in the final analysis, the way to express uneasiness with what is happening there, not a new policy line. Because the bottom line consists of an incurable perception of the “other,” which takes the shape of Arabophobia, Islamophobia, Persophobia, and Turcophobia.

Although there are more “beautiful days” ahead of the anti-Islam discourse in France, as well as elsewhere in Europe, it is not difficult to spot that the obsession and ignorance vis-à-vis Islam is a sign of ethical decline. The hopeless search for the so-called pure French or European identity, which doesn’t mean anything in reality (just like pure Turkish identity), is the best example of such decline. May God help them; what else we can say!

Add reply to this discussion




Turkish Dictionary
Turkish Chat
Open mini chat
New in Forums
Why yer gördüm but yeri geziyorum
HaydiDeer: Thank you very much, makes perfect sense!
Etmeyi vs etmek
HaydiDeer: Thank you very much!
Görülmez vs görünmiyor
HaydiDeer: Thank you very much, very well explained!
Içeri and içeriye
HaydiDeer: Thank you very much for the detailed ...
Present continous tense
HaydiDeer: Got it, thank you!
Hic vs herhangi, degil vs yok
HaydiDeer: Thank you very much!
Rize Artvin Airport Transfer - Rize Tours
rizetours: Dear Guest; In order to make your Black Sea trip more enjoyable, our c...
What does \"kabul ettiğini\" mean?
HaydiDeer: Thank you very much for the detailed ...
Kimse vs biri (anyone)
HaydiDeer: Thank you!
Random Pictures of Turkey
Most liked
Major Vowel Harmony

Turkish lesson by admin
Level: beginner
Introduction

Turkish lesson by admin
Level: beginner