BERLIN — The German Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a symbolic but fraught resolution on Thursday declaring the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in 1915 a genocide, escalating tensions with Turkey at a diplomatically delicate juncture.
man, fuck Erdogan. not only is he shit to his own people, he is simultaneously trying to erase the "dream of Ataturk" by bringing more muslim focus to turkey (eliminating its purposeful religious neutrality) while also strengthening his call-backs to the Ottoman empire by denying the Armenian genocide. hot garbage.
well, I never said I liked him. edited^^ misread you. the point I'm trying to get across is that he, like basically all politicians, is trying to use monoliths of national history for his won ends while denying them when they are inconvenient or don't fit his desires. He's just doing an overly obvious and bad job of it. He's continuing the denial of the Armenian genocide not just because that's the party line in Turkey, but also because it shows him as a defender of Turkey on the world stage to his constituents. At the same time, He's doing things that are the opposite of the reforms that the same Ataturk was a part of because they don't fit his desires (eg secularism). He's trying to play both sides of the myth, both "Ataturk did nothing wrong" and "Ataturk was wrong about this". It's like he's not even trying to hide the man behind the curtain.
yeah, sorry. I was unclear there. I do mean Erdogan. ... is that Gwen Stefani sitting next to Owen Wilson?
also, speaking of memes, I just found out that 8675309 is prime.
that somehow makes it even better that you didn't make it.
I wonder if they would have done this if he didn't embarrass them by insisting that that comedian be prosecuted for that silly poem a few months back. US should but never will adopt a similar resolution. Our airbase in Turkey is waaaaaay too important to care about some trivial detail like genocide.
I think the current policy wonks holding the reins are in a "more flies with honey" state of mind when it comes to foreign policy. I mean, Cuba and Iran. The other thing is that Europe has reason to need to deal with Turkey - Syrian refugees aren't coming to the US unless they're either damn lucky or damn cosmopolitan. AND they're shooting down the Russians. I'm not as up on Turkey as I should be but I think pressuring Erdogan has Turkey ending up with somebody worse. It's like, Khatami wasn't great but boy howdy did you want him back once you were dealing with Ahmadinejad. Considering how badly Turkey wants into the EU, this might actually be a spectacle that the United States can watch and tweak from the sidelines.
Yes there's an interesting dynamic, because the European project is a direct result of Europe trying to deal with its violent, racist, despotic past. Perhaps Germany thinks that Turkey should do the same as a precondition to full membership. That seems unlikely to happen, especially since the fall of the Iron Curtain, EU has been will to let in pretty much anyone who wants in, regardless of their revisionist histories (see, e.g. Viktor Orban). Seems like at some point the EU pivoted to make the project more about access to cheap labor than about cooperation and peace (about the time the Eurozone became a thing; coincidence?).