By Ted Belman
Of course you know that Germany and the Ottoman Empire were allies in WWI. With their defeat they were both cut down to size and in the case of the latter, Turkey was all that was left.
But did you know that Germany’s historic Middle East policy had always given primacy to German relations with Turkey.
Yet these relations are dicey due to the backlash in the EU to accepting Turkey for membership and the current debate in Germany regarding immigration. Paul Williams writing in Family Security Matters on 22 September 2010 reports
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“Our country is going to carry on changing, and integration is also a task for the society taking up the task of dealing with immigrants,” Ms. Merkel told the daily newspaper. “For years we’ve been deceiving ourselves about this. Mosques, for example, are going to be a more prominent part of our cities than they were before.”
Germany, with a population of 4-5 million Muslims, has been divided in recent weeks by a debate over remarks by the Bundesbank’s Thilo Sarrazin, who argued Turkish and Arab immigrants were failing to integrate and were swamping Germany with a higher birth rate.
In Dec 2010, Financial Times published, Turkey and Germany: a close relationship differed in the number of Muslims in Germany.
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In 2008, Turkey exported $13bn-worth of goods to Germany – 10 per cent of all its exports – while Turkish imports from Germany were even higher at $18.7bn. Only Russia – source of large quantities of oil and gas for energy-poor Turkey – was a more important supplier.
Fifty years of substantial migration from Turkey to Germany have also helped build a thriving social and economic relationship between Europe’s two most populous countries. Turks are Germany’s most important immigrant group, making up roughly 3m of the population. But contacts are in both directions: more than 4m Germans visit Turkey each year.
Trade and personal contact brings more substantial investment relationships. According to the Cologne-based Turkish-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry, more than 3,700 German companies have been established in Turkey – two-thirds of them in the past six years. Germany is the biggest foreign investor in Turkey.
Now that Turkey is flexing her muscles, where does Germany stand?
But first we must look at Germany’s historic Balkans policy. Because Germany had no nautical access to the Mediterranean, she looked to have have access to the Middle East and beyond to the Far East via a land bridge through the Balkans. Prior to WWI she built the Berlin to Bagdad Railroad. In both WWI and WWII she invaded Serbia believing that a larger Serbia would stand in the way of a German axis with Turkey. During WWI Germany promoted Croat and Bosnia Muslim autonomy and urged both groups to slaughter Serbs and Jews.
During the 1990’s Germany stood alone in its promotion of the breakup of Yugoslavia. She went so far as to provide missiles to Croat and Slovenia separatists to fight Yugoslavia. From 1992 and on Germany urged the US to support Bosnia’s Muslim Izetbegovic government by bombing Serbs in Bosnia and Belgrade. And America complied, as a humanitarian intervention, of course.
Given this historical background, it’s important to be on the watch for German support of Turkey, perhaps with American complicity, in her hegemonistic ambitions. And do not forget that German is Iran’s largest trading partner and has been largely protecting her from serious sanctions and from military attack, preferring diplomacy.
Where does the US stand in all this?
Excellent comment BlandOatmeal. I just posted a similar conclusion to yours as to what lies in the future. In the final analysis there is just one caveat that may also play a part and that is “nationalism” or translating that into human behaviour, “territorialism”– Lorenz’s concept of this innate human quality that we share with many other aggressive species is also a powerful bond in societies and if wielded effectively by a rising demagogue can upset a lot of applecarts.
BlandOatmeal…your piece is interesting and I agree that the secular faction is on the decline in America as well as in most parts of the globe. As economic times get more challenging, you will see more religion among the people….that is historical. Great piece.
I’ll bite:
What War?
Why?
Who wins?
Who Loses?
What is the aftermath results?
Should I move to Micronesia or just build a deep Nuke bomb shelter and stock it for 100 years?
“They want to take you to war. DO SOMETHING”.
US Builds 13 Secret Bases for War with Russia WW3
Tommy Schnumacher – CJAD Radio – September 09 2011
I’ve been spam-botted twice.
Dave is correct, that this is “amoral” politics. It is true that Turkey and Germany were allies in WWI. The Turkey of those days was an Islamic Caliphate, and Germany was something of a dictatorship, run by its chancellor. Both countries reformed along secular lines after WWI. In Turkey, as Arutz7’s Jay Shapiro recently pointed out, the reforms extended only to the cities; whereas in Germany, they transformed the formerly Lutheran north of Germany into an Atheist and Socialist country. It was here that Hitler, a Catholic-turned-Atheist, found his base of support. After WWII, northern Germany was divided between the Communists under the Russians in the East, and the Social Democrats in the west.
In Germany today, “religious” largely corresponds to “Catholic”, as is the case in much of Europe; mainstream Protestantism in Europe has become Secular Atheism; and there is a political balance in Germany between those two forces. In Turkey, however, there was never a balance: The Islamic countryside lives in a different world from the Secular cities; and because the Moslems have outbred the Seculars, Erdogan’s Turkey is NOT the Turkey that was sympathetic with the Social Democrats. The Turkish immigrants to Germany are not Seculars, becuase they come from the poor, overpopulated countryside. They are religious and nationalist, much like the German Catholics; except that they are Turkish and Islamic nationalists instead of German and Catholic: The Secular middle is disappearing.
So much for ties of “shared values”. Secular Germans share values with Secular Turks; but both are becoming minorities in their respective countries. The ties that bind Germany and Turkey (and Eastern Europe, Iraq and Iran) are simply geographical: Germany’s chief competitors, Britain and France, connect to the rest of the world over the oceans, through a network built up in colonial times. Germany’s “niche market”, on the other hand, is down the Danube and across the Euxene. As long as Secular, Internationalist governments were in control on both ends, religion was not a hindrance; but now, increasingly, it is.
There are some parallel trends happening in Israel, by the way: Secularism was the glue that held together the modern state for decades; but now they seem to be slipping and the religious are in the ascendant. There is a new alliance forming between increasingly religious Israel and increasingly religious Christian and Hindu countries such as the US, Greece, India, Russia and China.
There are some who would question my calling the US an “increasingly” religious country, seeing that more and more people count themselves as “others or none”, and even “atheist”. I believe the movement is in the other direction, though: The nominal atheism and secularism we are seeing in polls and census figures is the result of decades of determined indoctrination by secularists in our presumably “mainstream Protestant” education system (In the US, as in Europe, Mainstream Protestants have largely converted to Atheism). Catholics and Baptists, however, were not so affected by this onslaught, as they tended to have more control over the education of their children in their formative years. In recent decades, dead Secularism has been losing its grip on the young people, who are seeking truth in religion — either in true religion, or in cults such as the Wiccans.
The election of Obama was possibly the high-water mark for Atheist Secularism in America. Those are the people who are allied with the Anti-Religious Leftists in Israel, who are also beginning to decline. That doesn’t mean we’ve heard the last from the Atheists. On the contrary, they are still increasing in places of power, among the ruling elites, and will surely make a full-court press to forcibly grab, in the battlefield and Big Brother media, what they are losing in the hearts and souls of ordinary people. There is a war coming, a big one.
That’s my analysis on what’s happening in Germany and Turkey, as well as in the US and Israel and other places. The situation is dynamic, and doesn’t cleanly run along historic lines. The main thing that creates what historical connections there are, is geography, which doesn’t change much.
A history professor that I know has just written a book yet to be published in which he strives to make the point that Germany is making its third attempt to rule the world. He also shows that George Soros is their agent in this endeavor. He gave me a copy of the book.
Incredible amoral geopolitics by Germany and the US against the Serbian people.turkishGerman unity will resultnow in thethe reemergence of the 4th nazi reich this century. Beware