We practically went to war in 1999 to support the Kosovars against the supposedly ethnically cleansing Serbs, guarded Kosovo, recognised Kosovo, subsidised the genesis of a Palestinian state through the EU for years - and now we're voting against Palestine's membership in UNESCO even though our government should have known in advance that this application would succeed?
This sounds devoid of principles to me, to say the least.
By the way; congrats to the Palestinians.
S Ortmann
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Do you know what the German policy on Cyprus is?
ReplyDeleteWell, our government voted for them joining the EU, so I guess that's been settled long ago.
ReplyDeleteThat might have been a backdoor denial of EU membership to Turkey, of course. In theory our governing parties (at least the CDU) were in favour of Turkey joining the EU, but the idea was deeply unpopular in the country as a whole.
An EU member Cyprus does of course put a Turkish EU membership on permanent hold until they get Northern Cyprus.
So our Cyprus policy (if there's any) may in fact be a Turkey-EU policy.
In fact I cannot remember Cyprus making it into German news this year without them allowing ammo dumps to blow up. We seem to be thoroughly disinterested in that island's affairs.
Thanks, that reply on Cyprus was very informative. I was hoping German policy on Cyprus would shed light on this, find a common principle being used, since Cyprus isn't too far away.
ReplyDeleteCyprus is an interesting case, the Turkish north voted for reunification, the Greek south against it and so the border conflict was considered settled before the southern Cypriotes were allowed to join the EU.
ReplyDeleteThe whole thing goes a long way to the narrative of the Persian Wars as being essential for preserving Europe against mindless Asian despotism and ever since the now very Slavic influenced Greeks (because of Byzantine Empire settlement policies) have a hellenophile back-up for the strangest ideas. Looking at Greece and Turkey, both are very similar, except for their religion, and settle close nearby, with Turkey's Western coast being the major population center. The original question gets even more interesting if you try geography. Cyprus is from a geographic point of view not in Europe, so does the EU now admit Christian countries with deep routed Western culture lying outside Europe's traditional boundaries and shun it to Islamic countries in similar positions?
Well, for this the Christeo-Judaic roots of Europe are often mentioned. So it's claimed that there was more Jewish than Muslim influence on European development historically. Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Baleares, Malta, the Balkan and Eastern Europe simply don't count. In my opinion a counterfactual narrative has been developed to justify an injust presence by a fictive past. I don't think it's yet as bad as some decades ago in Germany, but it's still dead wrong.