Istanbul is as European as Shanghai is American. Turkey is not part of Europe. Whereas other metropolitan areas that are _very_ European are simply left out: Moscow, St Petersburg & Belgrade.
Istanbul is as much European as Paris, London or Berlin. Its western side is located in the Balkans which last time I checked is still in Europe.
Get over the Istanbul/Constantinople debate already. It's been settled some 500 years ago. The Eastern Orthodox Church has never been part of the collective psyche of ًWestern Europe and this sudden concern and activism about this issue is not fooling anyone.
How do you define European, anyway? Is Moscow a European city? How about Tbilisi? Tel Aviv feels pretty European to me as well.
I realize it's not PC to talk about these thing in the open, but Europeans do share some form of common cultural heritage that unites them - they're all part of the West and Western Civilization and all that implies.
Historically, Istanbul was always part of "The Orient" - it's where Europe ended.
I'm from Eastern Europe originally, which has a complex relationship with Turkey - Ottoman Empire and all that. Most people I know do not think Turkey is part of Europe, nor that it should be ever let in. And that position is considered "soft" compared to how the Greeks feel about it - whoooooo boy.
> Historically, Istanbul was always part of "The Orient" - it's where Europe ended.
That is factually wrong in so many ways.
To start with, the archipelagos and coasts between today-Greece and today-Turkey shared a common history right about the time "western civilization" is commonly supposed to be born.
Then the Roman Empire happened and Constantinople became central to the whole enterprise, in many ways more Roman than Rome, to the point of surviving almost unscathed the fall of its Western counterpart in a myriad of tribal wars. In the meantime, one guy born in today-Turkey went on to become St. Paul and basically rewrite the Christian gospel as he saw fit.
Istanbul "left Europe" only when the Ottoman conquest happened; and the Ottomans themselves quickly rebranded Constantinople as their capital, openly stating that they were the true heirs of the fallen Roman Empire. Even at this time, with the follow-up of crusading and so on, Venetian ships were busy building cultural and economic bridges between today-Turkey and today-Italy. Despite the friction of Islam and Christianity, Mediterranean traders went along better than either side ever did with their barbarous Northern counterparts.
The fracture that Islamization brought never quite healed, and you can argue about Turkey being "different" from mainland Europe ever since the Ottomans; but you simply cannot say that it's "always" been like that, there is just no factual basis for that statement.
Regarding the views of this or that population about Turkey, they are not unique. Someone was busy this morning on HN arguing that the French don't think the UK belongs in Europe. I know plenty of Swedish people who don't think Finland is Europe, let alone Russia. Personally, the low level of civility demonstrated at various points by several politicians in Hungary, Poland and so on, could very well mean they are not Europeans either. That is not the point. You build the future by looking ahead, not by looking back.
"European" is a myth. It doesn't mean anything. It means what is convenient politically and economically. Sweden and Spain don't have that much in common. If Silicon Valley were in Turkey, you'd love to call them European.
> If Silicon Valley were in Turkey, you'd love to call them European
The Bay Area isn't even considered American by Americans. They call us anti-American with our heathen, libertarian ways and alien sanctuary laws. And yet here were are, paying American taxes and anxiously following the presidential primaries.
Turkey could never have something like Silicon Valley. Islamic culture is far too repressive for something like that to organically grow; SV was the product of a culture which rewarded individualism and free thinking, which is the antithesis of Islamic culture.
There's a reason SV is located in California, and not Alabama or Mississippi, let alone the middle east.
Turkey is NOT European, and it's not about geography so much as it's about culture. Spain is far more similar to Sweden than it is Turkey.
Now, if Istanbul declared independence from the rest of the country which elected Erdogan, then maybe you could argue that it deserves to be in the EU as much as other places like Kosovo or Serbia. But Turkey as a whole belongs in the EU about as much as Iraq or Saudi Arabia.
> SV was the product of a culture which rewarded individualism and free thinking, which is the antithesis of Islamic culture.
Its may be the antithesis of the reactionary Islamism which is currently ascendant in much of the Islamic world, but that's something of contrary to the historical culture of many parts of the Islamic world (whether there is such a thing as a historical "Islamic culture" rather than the very diverse cultures of various regions where Islam has been found is a different debate.)
Not that Silicon Valley was really the product of a culture that rewarded individualism and free thinking. Its the product of a focus on defense and related national prestige investments, and a culture that reward success. Neither of which is foreign to any part of the Islamic world. (To the extent that a culture of individualism that rewarded free thinking evolved in the region, it was a product of the focus on success as the tech hub developed, not the reason the tech hub developed.)
> There's a reason SV is located in California, and not Alabama or Mississippi, let alone the middle east.
Yeah, and its mostly because of the military-industrial complex, not local culture (the technology firms gathered around the nucleus of Moffet Field NAS, which, when certain naval operations moved out, made it an attractive place for NACA -- which became NASA -- to locate operations, which continued attracting tech firms.)
Joining the EU does not make it a part of Europe. Turkey is used as the definition of where Europe ends. While Istanbul is an exception, being a transcontinental city.
Well that adds up, Middle East ends with Turkey, where after Europe it begins. Now we could debate which "border" is inclusive in respect to Turkey.
The pragmatic answer would be, after looking at the map, to put Turkey to the ME side.
If you don't agree to the pragmatic argument and take Turkey to the European side, you don't really have an answer yet. It'd just modify the question slightly: Suppose you "include" Turkey to "Europe", now what borders should we use for Turkey?
The current border that arbitrarily cuts across the map? They're mostly the result of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923).
That's akin to saying: we reject the current (arbitrary) definition of Europe (mostly a consensus among "Europeans"), in favor for an arbitrary definition made by the Europe's "big boys" to chill a bit after WWI.
Also I wouldn't call Turkey's current borders completely uncontroversial, a big part of eastern Turkey could as well be part again of a future resurrected Kurdistan. Would you then include the Kurdish parts also to Europe? So you'll end up anyways to draw borders around cultural or ethnical "regions".
Thus to get back to my original point, given that we still subscribe to the line-drawing-game, I'd suggest to draw it before Turkey and call it a day.
