DEBATE
The comment that appeared in Dagbladet on October 25, entitled “Europe’s sick man”, overwhelmed me in its wording and revealed a hasty picture of old-fashioned hatred and racism against Turkey.
PARODY: However, arrogance can not explain the parody of facts committed in the caption “Ursula Von Der Leyen was not given a separate chair when she was to meet Turkish President Recep Erdoğan”. That seating arrangement was approved by the protocol officers of EU Council President Charles Michel (center), writes the author of the article. Here from the current incident. Photo: AFP / Turkish Presidential Service
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External comments: This is a debate article. Analysis and position are the writer’s own.
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Published
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Fazli Corman. Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB
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I thought orientalism from the 18th and 19th centuries was already dead. How fast was the author not able to highlight this and a half century old slander, which is rich in illuminating self-centered European arrogance just because of an “opportunity” for Turkey to expel the Norwegian ambassador among the ten ambassadors who joined for to speak for a case in a Turkish court.
Europe’s sick man
And it was only an opportunity that was fortunately averted later after another remark from the ten that referred to an obligation to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. But the ugly “comment” remained in my mind as a reminder of how thin the gloss can be that our European partners want us to believe in in their civilized tolerance of criticism or action on equal, sovereign terms.
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Instead of to try to analyze what was the background and the underlying causes of this crisis, there were many in the Norwegian media who initiated busy explanations that Turkey did this due to economic difficulties or domestic challenges, etc. Can you for once be so kind and try to get rid of this arrogant attitude and make an effort to look at how these issues look from “our” perspective?
A sick ski nation needs medicine
That was right the “sick mentality of Europe” that wreaked havoc throughout the world for almost two centuries. This attitude of eerie naming of a neighbor was a “pretext” used to convey destructive colonial desires that the world had to endure in the form of two world wars.
How come a Norwegian commentator so easily brings this type of sick mentality to today’s discussions is something I find very disturbing. Therefore, I will not even ask why he uses the inappropriate description of “regime critic” in his comment, as it fits well into such a rudely ignorant approach.
Even that arrogance can not, however, explain the parody of facts committed in the caption that reads “Ursula Von Der Leyen was not given a separate chair when she was to meet Turkish President Recep Erdoğan”. Good luck if that was what was left in your memory of the unfortunate incident, but I will soon write here that “EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen was not left without a chair by us”.
Ursula is a star
We have many chairs available and we are known for taking good care of our guests. That seating arrangement was approved by the protocol officers of the EU Council President Charles Michel, so it was President Michel’s team that put President Von der Leyen in the “ehm” situation, not the Turkish presidential protocol.
It also had nothing to do with the gender of these two “presidents” in Europe, but had everything to do with the power struggle between these two offices. We Turks were only victims in this episode, but could not make our point, as it was more convenient to quickly accuse us.
All of the above is, by the way, several hundred years old accumulation of European egocentrism that from time to time rises to the surface by accident.
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