Really looking forward to see how the EU respond here with Turkey vs, say, China or Google or FB. It's just interesting to me how values change depending on whom you're talking to.
It's telling that only an outgoing US administration decided to -weakly- sanction Turkey over the Russian missile fiasco.
The European Union looks more and more like a banking cartel than a federation of nation states. Germany and Spain, that vehemently opposed sanctions in the last eurogroup, are doing good business selling weapons to Turkey. Weapons, that are then used by Turkey to openly threaten Greece and Cyprus. There was a slight concession in 2019, with a temporary stop on new contracts being awarded, but that obviously did not affect existing ones.
Is there any country that makes weapons that doesn't sell them for a hefty profit? Hell, in the past decade the Americans have funded the death of their own troops by selling rocket launchers and bombs to the Saudis that are resold/handed out and used in Afghanistan and Iraq.
I recommend the 1980's "Deal of the Century" with Chevy Chase and Gregory Hines. It's a black comedy about the insanity of countries selling weapons to their own enemies.
Turkey's S-400 system was both contracted for and delivered during the Trump administration. We'll see what the US does or doesn't do when the president isn't the weakest since Harrison.
> Speaking to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa), [German Foreign Minister] Maas said: “I do not find the demand of an arms embargo against Turkey strategically correct. It is not easy to do this against a NATO partner. We saw that NATO ally Turkey easily bought missiles from Russia because it could not buy from the U.S.”
> At a summit on Friday, EU leaders agreed to prepare limited sanctions on Turkish individuals over a row with Greece and Cyprus about offshore energy exploration, but postponed discussions on any harsher steps until March.
I'm sorry, but with my (admittedly broad and _shallow_) view of religious history, trying to see human relations through the filter of religion seems at least as fluid and relative as politics.
So much individual human mucking about with what could be basic universal principles. On one end, people who say that "this version of this written word is God's literal truth" when their version has a known history of edits, blatant rewrites, and translation errors. On the other end, recently started religions (Jainism is the first but not by far the only) that are at least as valid in their core principles but have their own dogma and assumptions.
Throw in Quakers etc who believe in a direct personal relationship with their God, and I can't see any consistency except "believe in us, and convince your friends! Their soul is in peril if they aren't with us!"
That's another recent event that went totally uncovered by USA news media firms. They thought some confused Americans might object to military aid that encourages Muslims to attack Christians.
> Americans might object to military aid that encourages Muslims to attack Christians
Baku is far from a strategic rival to the United States. It’s not an ally either, more non-aligned. Transcaucasian geopolitics—-in reality, most geopolitics—-are not a daily priority for most Americans in a badly-managed pandemic.
Baku is certainly too far away to be a "strategic" anything. One would have hoped that the requirement for military aid would have been a bit more stringent than that! However, they got the arms used in their continued efforts to squeeze the Armenians from USA via Turkey.
Foreign wars playing on USA TV is a double-edged sword. Yes, we should be more aware of how our actions harm those in other nations. But, no, it isn't a good thing for the news firms to make us more worried about remote events, since that fear is itself the most common pretext to additional disastrous violence.
Why aren't neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran, Ethiopia, etc. taking in 100% of the refugees? Can someone shed some light about refugee situation around NATO/EU? While humanitarian aspects must be taken care of, I only see refugee situation in Germany as a negative thing. It brings nothing to the country, and in fact brings other nonsense such as religious fundamentalism. These people are not going to assimilate into German culture.
Edit: I know you’re downvoting based on political stance. Would be great if we can engage in a discussion. Could you share your thoughts please?
They don't want to, and disregard the human rights of large numbers of people already in the country.
> Ethiopia
Can't afford to.
There is no solution without ending the war, and there's no solution to that without addressing the forces keeping it going. It's like many of the Cold War conflicts, a proxy for wars not being fought with Russia.
> They don't want to, and disregard the human rights of large numbers of people already in the country.
I see, thanks. Is there any sanctions, diplomatic pressure that can be applied?
I am just trying to put myself into the shoes of the average German who doesn't give a shit about geopolitical state of the world - they see a bunch of refugees with zero skills, language barrier and strong embedded religious fundamentalist views taking over. How is this difficult to see?
This feels unfair to Germans and Europeans in general because of some conflict thousands of miles afar. I can understand small numbers of refugees being taken in, I support rebuilding and financing such tasks in their home countries, but jeez...
> This feels unfair to Germans and Europeans in general because of some conflict thousands of miles afar
If you were to talk to the refugees themselves, you'd probably find that they thought losing everything they couldn't carry and being stuck in a country where they can't speak the language, have no status, no recognition of qualifications, no right to work, and yet no safe way to return either isn't particularly fair.
> taking over
Could you elaborate on to what extent they are taking over? What political and military offices they hold, what property they own etc?
I can see how they would feel that way and I think part of the problem would be exactly that - they will not be able to assimilate ever.
> taking over
Culture. Dilution of values. Fundamentalism which is so entrenched the religion (I suspect, high 90s % of strongly religious demographics, primarily Islam).
Long term, I see even worse divergence of national unity - these people are now speaking the language, but their own German dialect, their kids are raising with local kids, etc. I personally do not see Germans share most of middle-eastern/islamic values. You cannot forcefully assimilate 2 different polarizing cultures, it is a time bomb of cultural divide. No matter how humanitarian your views are, there is no going away from this fact.
I think the best solution is to provide aid - military, financial, food/medicine to these impoverished countries instead of taking refugees.
Edit: I can't respond to your comment below, but I basically have fundamental disagreement about aligning Holocaust with Syrian refugee crisis. You're trying to shoehorn a narrative from the perspective of the lawmakers, I am asking simple questions about assimilation and integration. We're talking past each other? Anyways, I learned a few things from your opinions about the history of these archaic refugee laws. IMO they should be with the neighbors, not transcontinental. Thanks for the discussion.
Different values that diverge from German national unity? Impossibility of integration? Maybe you'd like them marked out somehow? Discouraged from owning property or business? Put on a train to ... somewhere? From which they don't come back?
Bluntly, Europe's laws on refugees date from the time when millions had to flee Germany, and the "military aid" was incinerating Dresden. The options are integration or extermination, and sending people back to Syria where they will quite likely be killed counts in the extermination column. Germany has decided to try the not getting millions killed option for a bit.
The pan-Islamic world is often nationalist before it is Islamic, or even tribal/racist at a level below the nation.
It's also non-free countries. The Saudi royal family will go so far as to murder journalists in other countries to preserve their power. Letting a couple of million syrians die is nothing to them, and they're happily smashing up Yemen at the moment.
If we go to the extent of accepting refugees from their neighbors, may be we should also look at sanctioning these evil nations to the point where they feel the same pain as the nations under crisis.
If France has war going on, we expect the neighbors Spain/Switzerland/Germany/Italy to help with the refugee situation. There should be no reason to send the French people to Indonesia even if Indonesia is the richest nation in the world. Local dynamics should be accounted for.
> France has war going on, we expect the neighbors Spain/Switzerland/Germany/Italy
Per Wikipedia:
> "Switzerland was easy to reach for refugees from the Nazis. Switzerland's refugee laws, especially with respect to Jews fleeing Germany, were strict and have caused controversy since the end of World War II. From 1933 until 1944 asylum for refugees could only be granted to those who were under personal threat owing to their political activities only; it did not include those who were under threat due to race, religion or ethnicity.[33] On the basis of this definition, Switzerland granted asylum to only 644 people between 1933 and 1945; of these, 252 cases were admitted during the war.[33] All other refugees were admitted by the individual cantons and were granted different permits, including a "tolerance permit" that allowed them to live in the canton but not to work. Over the course of the war, Switzerland interned 300,000 refugees.[34] Of these, 104,000 were foreign troops interned according to the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers outlined in the Hague Conventions. The rest were foreign civilians and were either interned or granted tolerance or residence permits by the cantonal authorities. Refugees were not allowed to hold jobs. Of the refugees, 60,000 were civilians escaping persecution by the Nazis. Of these 60,000, 27,000 were Jews.[33] Between 10,000 and 24,000 Jewish civilian refugees were refused entry"
Europe's relatively humanitarian laws about refugees are based in the knowledge of how many countries barred entry to Jews who were subsequently exterminated in the gas chambers.
Yes, but given past issues, the German government response is most likely to push/penalize Youtube into no longer helping Erdogan while ignoring any direct confrontation. Yet another YouTube ban in Turkey should work for almost everyone.
What values are you speaking of? Censorship is and has been alive and well in germany for a long time. You can even say germany has no conception of free speech, they just mimic it.
Germany is the inspiration of censorship around the world.
