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There is a number of reasons why the Turks are
frowned upon in the West that has little to do with historical fact... a
phenomenon that was well explained by Andrew Wheatcroft in his "Lustful
Turk" and "Terrible Turk" chapters from The Ottomans. Of course, much has to
do with the "Muslim" thing, a good reason why Turkey is not accepted
as part of Europe; the Ottoman Turks
were also feared in their day, as a world superpower, an enemy of the
Christian West since the Crusades; this role of bogeyman still lives. This
resentment of Turks made it especially easy for the Armenians to snowball the
West with their "genocide" stories, as have other groups when their
purpose was suited — from Greeks to Assyrians to Kurds. The Serbs tried to
justify their actions to the West (during the Yugoslavian break-up) as
referring to the Bosnians as "Turks." (Translation: the Turks
deserve whatever they get, since everyone knows they are less-than-human.)
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The above was illustrated by Euro-centric historian
Hendrik Willem van Loon, in his "The Story of Mankind" (1921)... a
book where the Turks get the typical short
shrift, with their main talent being for bloodletting. Only European
civilization matters, and note how the Dutch-American bragged about it. In 1421,
European influence was contained only within European borders. By 1921, Europe took
over the world.
Let's examine the white spaces that remained
free of European conquest. To the right, China had been
mostly "conquered" as well at one time, before the Boxer Rebellion. Japan
would be conquered a quarter-century later. There are parts of Southeast Asia that
remain unconquered, like Vietnam.
The only nation (aside from Iran, also looked
upon as a Western nogoodnik) that was a world power still free of Europe's clutches
is the nation of the Turks. Beaten by Europeans, the Turks managed to kick them all
out after WWI, when European imperialists were set to divide all of Turkey between themselves. It is this
impertinence of the Turks that contribute to the significant prejudice and racism
felt against them, to this day.
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Another examination of the Turks'
unpopularity may be found in this Wall
Street Journal Europe report.
"...[W]hy does the left hate Turkey? Because Turkey
flouts the rules. Not international law, to be sure—last time we looked countries still
had a right to defend themselves against attack, and to try people responsible for
murdering thousands of their citizens. Rather, Turkey flouts the kind of politically
correct principles the left would like to establish as the norms of international
behavior."
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