I've been doing business in Turkey for over twenty years, they currently supply 80% of all the goods I make and I spend a lot of time in Istanbul. My agent for the past ten years has been a woman, many of the senior factory staff are women, you rarely ever see anyone in a burka, you'll find more repression of women in Bradford, than you will in Istanbul. It's no Saudi Arabia and Patty was nowhere near the truth.
As Julian is none of those, at least as far as we know, then his experience is correct as he stated he has always found them friendly in Turkey. As did my mother when she went, quite a few people at work and a couple of people I know who have live there for over 10 years. How did you find them on your visits?
I'm going there on holiday for the 10th time in June. It's a massive country which I think people don't realise, so there's a bit near Syria which is probably a bit spicy but it's about 15 hours from where tourists visit; and even further from Istanbul. Like you say it's really not Burka country and they're specifically welcoming of different religions. I know some Kurds there who've made a decent living from the tourism industry and it's pretty Westernised in that sense. Shame that the bloke in charge is a proper loon and that the treatment of Kurds in general has been as issue for some time. As a side note, I might be on some kind of list now having just Google mapped the distance from the resort we're visiting to the Syrian border.
You're definitely on a watch-list now, expect a late night visit from MI5 any day now... The bloke in charge is indeed a loon and there's a lot of things done wrong there, repression of women just isn't one of them.
I'd rather take people as I find them Barchull. I find it a much better option than the attitude of , ****ing hate Germans,****ing hate French etc etc. And you generally find that they quite like us if you can make an effort with them.
Which is what I was saying. Judge as you find through your own experiences. Perhaps anarchists base their opinions on Wikipedia and other such sources?
I've been to Turkey once as a kid. They had a weird obsession with my sister's blonde hair which almost caused my dad to kick off. I was talking about their general hostile attitude towards Kurds, which is also present amongst the diaspora here in Hull and elsewhere in Germany. Oh, and their genocide attempt against Armenians, which they don't admit was a genocide attempt.
"They, their, their, they". It's a country of 78 million people. If someone was to make comments about certain other races using such pronouns in such a sweeping sense I'm sure you'd cry racist.
Depends. If you said most Germans in 1935 were anti-semitic, I'd agree with that, as would most historians. Not all Germans in 1935 were anti-semitic. If you said a majority of Russians express homophobic attitudes, I'd agree, though not all Russians are homophobic. Turks in Turkey and in the diaspora generally have a negative opinion of Kurds, though not all Turks do. The point was about the country's piss-poor human rights record against ethnic minorities, especially Kurds.
To say "They had a weird obsession with my sister's blonde hair" based on what could only have been a very small number of weirdos you evidently came across seemed wrong to me. But 'creepy Turks' is one of those racial stereotypes which is for some reason allowed. Like sheep shaggers in Wales and money-grabbing jews.
Oh, fair enough. I admit I misspoke and shouldn't have used 'they'. The 'creepy Turk' stereotype is wrong. Could've been worse though, PLT. We could've been in the Congo with all those 'aggressive' Africans.
I get misquoted on that all the bloody time. I never said anything about aggression or violence but others seemed to take that from it which is telling.
Chinese have a strange fascination with Westerners in out of the way places as they don't encounter many of them. Same with many Turks and girls with blonde hair, An Egyptian once asked my uncle when they were on holiday in Hamburg years ago what he would accept for my 14 year old at the time, abd admittedly well developed, cousin. That caused a kick off . He was probably the only teetotaller who ever got thrown out of the place they were in.
My mate when to Tunisia with his mam, dad and sister and a guy in a marketplace offered to give his dad two donkeys for the sister. His dad replied 'How the **** am I supposed to get donkeys on a plane back to England?'.
I went to Turkey once. i didnt speak to all of them but i hated it there and i ****ing didnt like them as a people. Rude ignorant and abusive to women, They can **** off My view on it
