Carlos

Views of people from Turkey and Holland on statements made by Newsweek journalist Fareed Zakaria, Turkish president Abdullah Gül and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Dutch VPRO documentary ‘Turkije – Het Dilemma van de Democratie’: ‘Turkey – the dilemma of democracy’ that will broadcast on 8th of October. Daily at Sargasso from October 5th until October 12th, at 13.00h (Amsterdam time, 14.00h Istanbul time). This blogging project is part of the Dutch democracy week WijZijnDeBaas (WeAreTheBoss): the Dutch contribution to the International Week for Democracy. More information here.

Is Europe a home for an alliance of civilizations or is it a Christian club?

Recep Tayyip Erdogan,
prime minister of Turkye,
April 16th 2007, in ‘Der Spiegel’

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Emre Kizilkaya | The Istanbulian
turkish journalist, Hürriyet newspaper, blogger.

“The EU has founded as a project of peace after the bloody clash between Britain-France and Germany ended up with disasters of the total war. The cooperation of Anglo-French and Germanic world was being seen then as impossible as today’s project of an Islamo-Christian civilization. Though, nothing is clear yet, because unlike during the foundation of the EU, now the European elite is not aware the importance of multiculturalism and it leaves it to the public. So European peoples are on the verge of deciding it by themselves. As long as the current trend -where the public opinion is manipulated by narrow-minded European conservatives (whom I dubbed as “Eurocons”)- continues, the natural consequence would be the ultimate exclusion of other cultures for sake of a ‘white Europe’ “.

On the 8th of October VPRO Dutch television will broadcast the documentary ‘Turkije – Het Dilemma van de Democratie’: ‘Turkey – the dilemma of democracy’. The documentary will focus on the issue of EU membership for Turkey and the role of islam in a democracy. Here at Sargasso we will discuss statements made in this documentary by Newsweek journalist Fareed Zakaria, Turkish president Abdullah Gül and prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. From October 5th until October 12th, each day at 13.00h (Amsterdam time, 14.00h Istanbul time) we will post one of these statements. With these statements we will post the views on the statement by a Dutch member of the European parliament, a Dutch journalist and producer, a Dutch-Turkish rapper and bloggers from the Turkish blogosphere. All posts of this Dutch-Turkish blogging project can be found here. This blogging project is part of the Dutch democracy week WijZijnDeBaas (WeAreTheBoss): the Dutch contribution to the International Week for Democracy.

The statements will be provided in text and after the broadcasting of the documentary also in short video messages. Although normally on Sargasso we write in Dutch in this case we will be discussing in English, because we feel it’s important non-Dutch (and especially Turkish) bloggers can join in. In this case we also ask our Dutch ‘reaguurders’ (commenters) to discuss in English, for the sake of what the internet is all all about: enabling worldwide communication. Here are some of the blogs from the Turkish blogosphere (turkish and expat) who were contacted and/or contributed to this project: erkansaka.net, istanbulian.blogspot, quirkglobalstrategies, energynewsletterturkey.blogspot, internations.blogspot, arabisto.com, thewhitepath.com, mvdg.wordpress.