Eu & Turkey: ready for a wedding?

At the beginning of February, during a visit in Italy, Erdogan claimed again the will for Turkey to enter in the European Union.

The relation between Europe and Turkey are becoming every year worse, especially since the mid-2016 failed coup attempt against Erdogan. And it is the news of few hours ago that the European Union threatened to cancel a summit with Turkey next month because of Turkish tensions with Cyprus over energy exploration (here more info).

Officially the position Brussels is very clear. The negotiation for the enlargement to Turkey is frozen till there will be a visible progress in the fields of human rights and independence of the justice.

But the situation within the Eu governments is much more complex.

From one side, Erdogan is necessary to contain the immigration from Syria. Moreover, Ankara is fundamental for the stabilization of the area.

On the other side, the Turkish government is far away from the principles of a democracy (rights, justice, freedom of expression,...). 

But even if Turkey was a democratic country - and this is my question - would Eu really allow Ankara to enter in the European? What about the building of a European Federation: would this be still possible after the enlargement to a huge and powerful country like Turkey? And which kind of integration could be possible?

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What a destiny for the Terzani's Turtle...

Have you ever heard about Tiziano Terzani?

For many of us Terzani represents the determination to follow your dreams and the freedom of discovering and traveling around the World.

He graduated in one of the most prestigious university in Italy (the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies) and he got an excellent job in Olivetti. But he decided that this was not his destiny and after having left his job, he studied Chinese and moved to China with his family in the 70s.

Terzani and his family in Turtle House

He lived in many countries later on. Among them, he lived for some years in Thailand, in a house in an international neighborhood in Bankok: Turtle House (so called for the turtle which lived in the lake over there).

I had the pleasure to visit Bangkok and Turtle House in November. As the house was mentioned in a very famous book (Un indovino mi disse, 1995), I was curious to visit it and the guardian allowed me to see all the rooms of the house.

Turtle House is a real oasis in an area of Bangkok very gray and surrounded by Skyscrapers. 

Unfortunately few days ago it has been announced that the house will be demolished and another skyscraper will be build up.

The Societa' Dante Alighieri (a cultural organization to promote Italian language abroad) tried to convert the House in a cultural center but without success.

For all of us who read Terzani's books and who dreamed about the places he visited, this is a very sad news. 

When I was in Thailand I had also the possibility to visit the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok (that is now a museum) and it is really a pity not to see something similar also for Terzani's house.

Anyway, I think that Turtle House will stay always in our memories, as Tiziano life.

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Korea united? Just temporary for the Olympic Games

The 38th parallel that devides in two separate states Korea since the end of the World War II in 1945, is one of the most militarized and most sensitive area in the World. 

It has represented for decades one of the expression of the Cold War and it is now the line that divides the rich and capitalistic South by the "communist", dictatorship North.

The current Winter Olympic Games in South Korea, started few days ago, have seen the temporary reconciliation of the two Korea with a unified team under a new white flag. 

Moreover, we have seen the historical handshake between Moon Jae-in, the President of South Korean and Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un.

handshake between the Moon Jae-in, President of South Korean and Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un

I am not going to write that sport unifies people, or that the spirit of the Olympic Games wins over the divisions. This is a huge (probably the most important) sport event in the World and it attracts a lot of sponsors and investments. Business is business.

But still, North Korea is one of the most cryptic country in the World. And looking at people from that country, especially the sister of their dictator, participating in the most capitalistic event on the Planet, it is something that must be highlighted.

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Poland's Holocaust law and the ghosts from the past

The news has been spread everywhere in Europe and not only: Poland’s Senate approved a highly controversial bill on Thursday that bans any Holocaust accusations against Poles as well as descriptions of Nazi death camps as Polish (source The Washington Post). If President Duda will approve it, the law will become effective with a penalty for the transgressors up to three years in jail.

It is a little bit difficult to understand why this law was issued.

During the II WW, six millions of poles died (the half were Jewish). Poland is the first country for number of Righteous Among the Nations (an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis): 6706. 

It is also true that some Poles helped Nazis during the occupation and the war like in the case of the Jedwabne pogrom, where 340 Polish Jews were killed by a group of Polish inhabitants of the town with the complicity of the Nazis.

US and Israel stated that this law is against the freedom of speech and also against the responsibilities of Poles during the II World War.

What I see is that it looks hard for all the countries take their own responsibility on the shame on the Holocaust and on the caused that originated the war. 

In a very interesting book - Origins Of The Second World War - the author, A.J.P. Taylor, in the Sixties was claiming how not only Germany was the cause of the war, but many other events under the responsibility of all the European Countries, UK and France of course, but also Poland and Czechoslovakia for instance.

Auschwitz was a Nazi camp and even if it is within the Polish border, it was created by the Germans during their occupation. But this doesn't mean deny the responsibility of everybody in what happened. 

An interesting article by Jonathan Freedland published on The Gardian explains well the Polish problem:

It’s not hard to see why this has happened. Polish nationalists want Poles to have been the untainted victims of Nazism: it’s hard to admit that too many were willing assistants to genocide. Like almost every nation occupied by the Nazis, and unlike Germany itself, Poland has not yet made a clear-eyed reckoning with its past. It has not fully wrestled with the fact that a Jewish community that once made up 10% of its population, and which was the largest in Europe, has gone, murdered en masse in just over three years. “Poland is not at peace with its Jewish ghosts,” says [Konstanty] Gebert. “These are phantom limbs. You amputate the limb and it still hurts.”

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