But the more interesting post is to point out that if you allow racists the power to destroy an entire line of argumentation for all purposes forever by using it, you are ceding to them enormous power to control the discourse, even accidentally, by completely determining the bounds of acceptable debate.
Racism is bad, but the way we treat it as radioactive waste nowadays has itself become a danger to society. It's merely bad. It is not the One True Sin, it is not the cause of all life's problems, it is not the One Temptation in life that if resisted means we can stop worrying about our moral status, it is not something that permanently twists everything it touches into an eternerally-unredeemable black goo, even ye unto a dozen generations. It's merely a bad thing that hurts people. Giving it the power to be those other things is an error too.
So, yes, it is perfectly valid to address the question of "incompatible cultures and values". Of course, it does require one to admit that cultures have values that can differ from one another, which is, admittedly, a door that once you walk through does suddenly make a lot of the prepackaged really "nice" answers in current discourse suddenly obviously too oversimplified to be useful for any purpose, but such is reality.
I also wouldn't be welcoming a country that refuses to acknowledge the full independence of another EU member state (Cyprus).
If you want to play the racism/xenophobia card and pretend that these are not the big issues we have against Turkey in EU go ahead, but I can't tell you that you are not convincing anyone.
Really? Because Cyprus would:
>Cyprus is in favor of Turkey's Accession to the EU with the hope it will facilitate a viable and just solution of the Cyprus Problem. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Cyprus#Tu...)
The current situation is just Erdogan having his revenge on Europe for dropping Turkey.
Not to mention the PKK would obviously help end ISIS.
Even Iraqi Kurds trying to ban PKK because they know what's going on in that organization. Even Kurds in turkey are not happy with PKK. They want a reform , but most of them wants stay in turkey, while the "being Turkish citizen definition changed".Look at how popular HDP is in Kurdish areas in Turkey.
You have no clue what are you talking about. for further reference , please read/listen to Henri Barkey from Woodrow Wilson which is well respected political scientist.
This is pure nonsense.
Are you kidding me?
do you have any idea what you are talking about?
You have no clue what are you talking about.
wasting people times in HN
Hard politics isn't a great fit for HN to begin with, but if you're going to contribute to such discussions as inevitably arise, it's important to follow these rules—particularly when others are being wrong and provocative.
(None of this is a comment on your politics, only on how you're presenting them. The same applies to all HN users.)
- "How could Isis be eliminated? In the region, everyone knows. All it would really take would be to unleash the largely Kurdish forces of the YPG (Democratic Union party) in Syria, and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ party) guerillas in Iraq and Turkey. These are, currently, the main forces actually fighting Isis on the ground. They have proved extraordinarily militarily effective and oppose every aspect of Isis’s reactionary ideology." (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/18/turkey-...)
- Erdogan went apeshit after HDP deprived him his parliament majority: "The cynicism behind Erdogan’s calculation to launch a full-scale war against the PKK is stunning." (http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/09/21/erdogans-deadly-ambition...)
- “'Kurdish people are fighting for our rights, and Turkey is trying to finish us off,' says 53-year-old Ramazon Sakci as he stands in the garden of his home, which is riddled with bullet holes.” (http://www.thenation.com/article/turkey-is-fighting-a-dirty-...)
Where the terms "multicultural" and "religiously tolerant" apparently mean something quite a bit different from today (just like Athenian democracy from ours, for example).
I know this is a taboo subject, but we should stop acting as if religion was a racial attribute. It's not. Religions are opinions, and people will have to accept that others will take those opinions into account when it comes to forming a political union.
The difficult thing is that only individuals can hold opinions but only countries can join the EU. So we are forced by the very nature of this decision to make a summary judgement that ignores individual opinions and therefore will be very unfair to some.
This is something I am personally struggling with when it comes to Turkish EU membership.