I've spent time both in Athens and in Istanbul. Neither of them are European nowadays. Unorganized dirty jungles... Istanbul has a difference though, it's an unorganized mega jungle.
Didn't downvote, but if you write something like that, provide examples. It doesn't really address the parent comment, either. If they're both dirty jungles, what does that say about whether Istanbul is more or less European than Athens? Wouldn't the culture have something to do with that, also?
You made a racist statement. "Unorganized dirty jungles" of Asia in contrast to, presumably, tip-top, spotlessly clean, perfectly organized European cities...
I think Erdogan sees China as a model for the future, as a provider of cheap labor. So, Turkey doesn't need to intellectually integrate with the rest of the world.
He has got 15 million registered members for his party. mostly men not having any higher-education, minimum-wage government contract based workers. This way they feel like they are a part of a some bigger movement.
Obama is a big time supporter of Erdogan. During gezipark protests, he even silenced his embassador after his pro-democratic statements -- they deleted the public tweets, etc.
US government is one of the few reasons that Erdogan's regime is still illegitimate, because the opposition against them is minimal in the Western media.
Turks doesn't have fanaticism towards domestic good. It's a central communication channel that is known to run by people who seems to be fair, them being American is obviously not relevant to them.
I agree. My post was rather tongue-in-cheek actually.
Call me cynical, but it just sometimes strikes me as odd how so many people around the world now rely on a company designed to make money by selling your information to communicate with the rest of the world. Especially in today's post-Snowden-revelations world. It's 'free', but that's how you 'pay'.
It turns out it's a simple DNS block which setting to Google's DNS is fixing for people.
Istanbul is modern? Sorry but Istanbul is a shithole when compared to some of the other Turkish western coast cities. What makes it interesting in the global scale is the level of its diversity.
I did say it was "more modern". I lived there for 22 years as a minority and have been treated like an animal in the zoo, and don't think I'll ever live in Turkey again.
