Posted by: Peace Train | April 7, 2009, 8:36 am 8:36 am
Slow and easy……..persistance. This is how you rebuild anything, including rebuilding our relationships around the World. Thank you, Mr. President.
Posted by: sngeorgia | April 7, 2009, 9:09 am 9:09 am
xyz, now you know how it feels to be a Republican!
Posted by: jordan | April 7, 2009, 9:27 am 9:27 am
@ Peace Train:
A Four Lads reference! How old are you?
Posted by: Biff Hooper | April 7, 2009, 9:36 am 9:36 am
America’s new boy king, Barack Obama, has brought his charm offensive to Turkey. Wasn’t it just a few days ago that he was posing for cameras at the G20 and offering half-baked ideas about rogue capitalism and stimulus packages, European cooperation and more NATO troops for Afghanistan? With great fanfare, and many more photo-ops he rejoiced that, unlike his first magical mystery tour to Pakistan in 1981, he could enter an Islamic country with an American passport.
It’s easy to see why, like Bush before him, Obama is currying favor with the Turks. The military and the oil men want him to. Israel wants him to. And why shouldn’t he smooth over the rift.
Turkey can be an interlocutor among Egypt, Hamas, Syria, Israel, Palestine. Then, there’s pesky Iran. Operation pincher. Iran between the nutcrackers of Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan. How long will it be before someone insists there, too, are weapons of mass destruction.
What does King Obama offer Turkey in exchange for her delights? Entry into the European Union. Obama has offered Turkey, in his churlishly arrogant way, Europe’s hand in marriage; whether the Europeans like it or not. Europe has strongly intimated that it does not want a shotgun marriage. Turkey is not Western enough and certainly not Christian. Being tacitly secular, for a former Islamic state, is not enough. Europe is full to the gills with undigested Muslims. Why doesn’t Obama offer the Turks American citizenship?
One other pesky problem: the Armenian genocide, which the Turks deny and the Armenians and the rest of the world avow. During the campaign for the presidency, Obama’s website stated the the Armenian genocide was an “admitted fact”. A House resolution is slated, yet again, to deal with the question of the massacres that cost 1.5 million Armenian lives during WWI. But it is currently being reported that “no one can predict” what the little king’s expedient stance will be now that he as been elected.
Posted by: NOW WHAT | April 7, 2009, 9:41 am 9:41 am
One of many Obama achievements during his trip: From a Turkey website:
ISTANBUL-One word: Approachable.
US President Barack Obama speaks with Turkish university students and answers their questions in an intimate town hall-style meeting during his second day in Istanbul. ’This attitude is something a Turk is not used to,’ one student says
Answering questions from Turkish university students at the historic Tophane-i Amire Hall in Istanbul at a session titled “Live and Online Discussion with President Obama” yesterday, Obama did nothing but solidify that image.
At the end of the session, Obama took time to shake hands with the majority of the students, a scene a million miles from the previous U.S. president’s visit to Turkey. A few seconds before George W. Bush was shaking hands with the guests at the Galatasaray University in June 2004, his bodyguards were checking their palms for weapons.
Obama was not only different than Bush, but also different from most politicians the students knew. “This attitude is not something a Turk is used to,” said Denizcan Demirkılıç, who studies law at the Bahçeşehir University. “How many of the students in this hall ever got to sit this close to a politician? You can stand 30 or 40 centimeters from the president of one of the greatest countries of the world, you ask him questions and shake hands with him. Our politicians have a lot to learn from that.”
He may not have the power to change the world overnight, but Obama proved that he could overturn the American image in Turkish minds in a very short time. At the beginning of the Q&A, he even requested that the session end before the midday call to prayer. Karadeniz Technical University student Abdülmecit Ergün was positive about Obama’s attitude. “It was very sympathetic of him to answer our questions,” he said.
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Not Constantinople.
Posted by: Peace Train | April 7, 2009, 8:36 am 8:36 am
Slow and easy……..persistance. This is how you rebuild anything, including rebuilding our relationships around the World. Thank you, Mr. President.
Posted by: sngeorgia | April 7, 2009, 9:09 am 9:09 am
xyz, now you know how it feels to be a Republican!
Posted by: jordan | April 7, 2009, 9:27 am 9:27 am
@ Peace Train:
A Four Lads reference! How old are you?
Posted by: Biff Hooper | April 7, 2009, 9:36 am 9:36 am
America’s new boy king, Barack Obama, has brought his charm offensive to Turkey. Wasn’t it just a few days ago that he was posing for cameras at the G20 and offering half-baked ideas about rogue capitalism and stimulus packages, European cooperation and more NATO troops for Afghanistan? With great fanfare, and many more photo-ops he rejoiced that, unlike his first magical mystery tour to Pakistan in 1981, he could enter an Islamic country with an American passport.
It’s easy to see why, like Bush before him, Obama is currying favor with the Turks. The military and the oil men want him to. Israel wants him to. And why shouldn’t he smooth over the rift.
Turkey can be an interlocutor among Egypt, Hamas, Syria, Israel, Palestine. Then, there’s pesky Iran. Operation pincher. Iran between the nutcrackers of Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan. How long will it be before someone insists there, too, are weapons of mass destruction.
What does King Obama offer Turkey in exchange for her delights? Entry into the European Union. Obama has offered Turkey, in his churlishly arrogant way, Europe’s hand in marriage; whether the Europeans like it or not. Europe has strongly intimated that it does not want a shotgun marriage. Turkey is not Western enough and certainly not Christian. Being tacitly secular, for a former Islamic state, is not enough. Europe is full to the gills with undigested Muslims. Why doesn’t Obama offer the Turks American citizenship?
One other pesky problem: the Armenian genocide, which the Turks deny and the Armenians and the rest of the world avow. During the campaign for the presidency, Obama’s website stated the the Armenian genocide was an “admitted fact”. A House resolution is slated, yet again, to deal with the question of the massacres that cost 1.5 million Armenian lives during WWI. But it is currently being reported that “no one can predict” what the little king’s expedient stance will be now that he as been elected.
Posted by: NOW WHAT | April 7, 2009, 9:41 am 9:41 am
One of many Obama achievements during his trip: From a Turkey website:
ISTANBUL-One word: Approachable.
US President Barack Obama speaks with Turkish university students and answers their questions in an intimate town hall-style meeting during his second day in Istanbul. ’This attitude is something a Turk is not used to,’ one student says
Answering questions from Turkish university students at the historic Tophane-i Amire Hall in Istanbul at a session titled “Live and Online Discussion with President Obama” yesterday, Obama did nothing but solidify that image.
At the end of the session, Obama took time to shake hands with the majority of the students, a scene a million miles from the previous U.S. president’s visit to Turkey. A few seconds before George W. Bush was shaking hands with the guests at the Galatasaray University in June 2004, his bodyguards were checking their palms for weapons.
Obama was not only different than Bush, but also different from most politicians the students knew. “This attitude is not something a Turk is used to,” said Denizcan Demirkılıç, who studies law at the Bahçeşehir University. “How many of the students in this hall ever got to sit this close to a politician? You can stand 30 or 40 centimeters from the president of one of the greatest countries of the world, you ask him questions and shake hands with him. Our politicians have a lot to learn from that.”
He may not have the power to change the world overnight, but Obama proved that he could overturn the American image in Turkish minds in a very short time. At the beginning of the Q&A, he even requested that the session end before the midday call to prayer. Karadeniz Technical University student Abdülmecit Ergün was positive about Obama’s attitude. “It was very sympathetic of him to answer our questions,” he said.
Posted by: Julie | April 8, 2009, 6:57 am 6:57 am