The image of the Turk as the villain of Europe persists.
I can understand that with the governments like of Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, you can't introduce measures to erase racism in the fabric of these societies.
However, it is still sad to see that centuries-old racist stereotypes about Turks are entrenched in the subconscious of many European nations so deep that they remain normal even in our age.
Recently, a Greek pensioner sued a Swedish dairy to stop them using his image to brand a Turkish yogurt carton.
Surprisingly, he defended that being portrayed as a Turk is "the biggest insult" and he managed to get a significant amount of compensation with such a racist argument.
Neither the Swedish company nor a Swedish authorty told the Greek pensioner that being a Turk is not an insult.
Ironically, the surname of the Greek pensioner (Karatsoglu) is originally Turkish.
In these circumstances, how can you democratize and humanize the EU and its peoples by decisively leaving the Muslim-majority states in the cold while preparing to accept countries like Serbia, which committed a genocide against Muslims recently, as a new member?
Let's finish with a passage from a fresh article of The Economist:
"Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander at Srebrenica, remains at large, wanted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in The Hague on charges of genocide. When he led his troops into Srebrenica in 1995 he exulted that he had liberated the town from the 'Turks', a derogatory term for Bosniaks."
If you ask me, the biggest insult against Turks is the fact that the European Union keeps them in suspense for decades by applying really racist double-standards.
