Irrelevant Giscard: the Anti-Turkish Euro-Myopic

By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

The debate was already long and passionate, regrouping former prime ministers like Michel Rocard, and involving scholars like Erol Manisali, when the former president of France, Valery Giscard d’ Estaing, started first speaking, earlier this year in Athens, about the forthcoming eventual adhesion of Turkey in the European Union. The present article does not advance an argument in favor or against the participation of Turkey in the European Union. It consists only in a historical academic refutation of arguments introduced by past or current politicians in a way to serve their political agenda; as such these arguments consist – at times – in an abhorrent alteration of History that cannot be acceptable anymore in our global world. The article addresses the basic Historical Approach arguments.

Turkey is not responsible for erroneously composed European Constitution.

In an ostensibly biased point of his intervention the former French president refers to the – already elaborated but still waiting electoral endorsement and ultimate ratification – European Constitution. He says:

‘As regards the Parliament, the maximum number of Members has already been set at 750, and it is provided that the breakdown of its membership be divided up among the States in proportion with its population size, with an adjustment in favour of the smaller states, and a maximum number of 96 members per state. If Turkey were to join the European Union, it would account for a little over 15 percent of its population. It
would therefore have 96 members, at a parity with Germany. To make room for these new members, the number of other States' representatives, notably those of Great Britain, France and Italy, would have to be reduced.

As regards the Council of Ministers, the Constitution provides for recourse to a double majority: for a decision to be adopted, it must receive the support of at least 55% of the States, representing at least 65 percent of the Union's population. With its 15%, Turkey becomes a key factor in the decision-making process. It is hard to forget Spain and
Poland's recent opposition to voting by a double majority, even though it was only a matter of being at a disadvantage in terms of a few points. The entry of Turkey would result in a disadvantage of fifteen points!’

What one can easily understand through these points is that the Committee tasked to elaborate the European Constitution did a very bad job! The president of the Committee was precisely the former French president himself, so even worse for him to speak now in this way, since he had the opportunity to come up with a different draft…

What is very clear through these two paragraphs is that the European Constitution is going probably to be – if finally accepted – the first fundamental chart in the World History to be composed without the slightest political vision, the least historical forethought, and the minimal ideological - philosophical farsightedness! This unbelievable situation implies that it just pleased some obscure French bureaucrats to rashly produce a piece of ‘paper’, just presuming that Europe is limited within the present borders of the 25-state European Union, with the ‘convenient’ and ‘affordable’ exception of few extra Balkan states.

The answer to this aberration is that the Constitution is then politically wrong, conceptually false, and historically inconsistent; if accepted, it is going to create a counterfeit Europe, a state that would neglect and reject the real European historical evidence.

Such a state - Mr. Giscard should know - would be predestined to doom…

Political Vision within a Constitution

There cannot be a Constitution without a political vision, a plausibly correct reassessment of the past, and an identification of philosophical – ideological targets. As French, Mr. Giscard should know that the French Revolution was concluded with a Constitution that opened the modern European horizons for Parliamentary Democracy, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. It is not sure at all that the paper prepared by the Giscard committee is about to offer a parallel vision of a multicultural Europe, which is the top demand of the continent’s populations. ‘Communautarisme’ does not appeal to either Giscard or Chirac!

Identification of philosophical – ideological targets within a Constitution

As European, Mr. Giscard should also know that the 1917 October Revolution in Russia was fulfilled with the Constitution of the first Soviet state in the world. That constitution reflected a precise philosophical – ideological background, Marxism – Leninism in this case, as all anterior and posterior constitutions respectively did: the French Third Republic constitution (anti-monarchical, anti-clerical, secular, parliamentary Republic), the constitution of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (the epitome of federal anti-Nazism), and various other fundamental laws. What is the Giscard ideology?

A plausibly correct reassessment of the past within a Constitution

As citizen of the world, Mr. Giscard should in the same way know that the American Revolution – to which so many French contributed – ended up with the Constitution of the first anti-Colonial Democracy in the world. That Constitution consisted in an adequate reassessment of the Colonial History to which it did put an end in the then nascent USA. In addition, it expressed a major rebuttal of the Dark Ages, shifting towards the revivification of the democratic aspects of the Classical, Greco-Roman world. What is Giscard’s possible conception of European History?

Giscard’s false and waned spectrum Greco-Roman Europe

It would be very useful to report his own words that unveil a dwindled and waned spectrum of Greco-Roman Europe, which testifies to the fact he did not learn any lesson from the History. Thus spoke Giscard:

‘Europeans need to strengthen their sense of identity. "European patriotism" can only begin to exist when European citizens become conscious of belonging to a common whole.

The European Convention sought to better define the basic foundation of this common whole: the cultural contributions of ancient Greece and Rome, the religious heritage which permeates European life, the creative impetus of the Renaissance, the philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment, the input of rational and scientific thought’.

Through these few words, we understand that Giscard’s Committee realized very well the need for a historical reassessment, but failed to opt for the correct one! If we leave aside the later parts startng with Renaissance, we are met with a nefarious picture of a faded blossom, a shrunk continent, a shriveled world.

The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians are missing!

Why Europe is limited in the cultural contributions of Greece and Rome only?
The Phoenicians and the Carthaginians, who settled and developed great civilizations in Sicily, Sardinia, the Iberian coast, and the Aegean Sea, are a seminal part of the European History too. It is well known that Phoenicians introduced in their colonies a direct democratic, representative political system, and it is also known that Phoenicians introduced it in Athens.

Where are the Scythians, the Cimmerians, and the Celts?

The Scythians, the Cimmerians, and the Celts are part of the European identity too; how can we delete Stonehedge, the dolmens and the menhirs of France, and the basic ethnic and racial background of the peoples of today’s North-Western Europe? Does Vircingetorix mean nothing to Giscard?

Ancient Greeks dwelled on both, European and Asiatic territories.

An idealized and inexistent form of Ancient Greece and Rome cannot serve as model either to modern Europe or to anybody else. What was Ancient Greece? A number of various peoples, namely the Achaians, the Aeolians, the Ionians, and the Dorians, never unified, and always in strife with each other, and with the non Greek Pelasgians. Although they did not expand in the northern parts of present day Greece, since that territory belonged to the Macedonians, another people with different language, Ionians, Aeolians, and Dorians dwelled on both, European and Asiatic territories.

Through Giscard’s approach, if we exempt Turkey from any sort of European character, Carian Herodotus, and almost all the Pre-Socratic philosophers, Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, and the like, were elements of Asiatic culture. Great!

Then, last but not least, Homer belongs to the Asiatic territory of Turkey, so Giscard will drive him out of Europe, in the same way Achaians drove the Pelasgians out of Troy!

Either Turkey belongs to Europe or Homer is rejected by the counterfeit Europe of Giscard’s band…

Rome’s Origins are Asiatic too!

And how it comes that Trojans are not considered as European when at home, in NW Turkey, and are Europeans, when they travel to Rome like Aeneias? Has Giscard heard of Aeneid? Virgil?

Of course, all this is just the ostentatious, upper part of the iceberg! The most important follows.

If Giscard neglects Turkey, Alexander the Great rejected Europe!

How can one consider Alexander II of Macedonia, rejected by the Athenians and the famous orator Demosthenes, as a ‘European’ without taking his model into proper account? Alexander did not see the Adriatic coast of Illyria, did not set foot on the Greek islands of the Ionian Sea, and did not go even 1 km beyond the western borders of Macedonia, whereas his military expeditions and invasions drove him more than 4000 km away in the East, on rather Asiatic territory!

For Alexander, Egypt (Africa) was more important than the Greek cities – colonies of the Black Sea. Syria and Judea were more valuable to him than Iberia. Even more so, Persia was more precious for Alexander than the Italian peninsula. For Alexander, apparently Amun - Ra was far more sublime than Jupiter and the Celtic gods. Furthermore, Bactria, Sogdiana, Transoxiana, in Central Asia, Arachosia, Gedrosia, Pentapotamia, in Eastern Iran and Pakistan, were the circumferences he wished to unify under his scepter – not the Scandinavian peninsula, the Alps, and the plains of Scythia/Russia. The border was not in the Azores or the Faeroes, but in the North of India, whereas the epicenter, the capital of Alexander’s vast empire was at Babylon, Mesopotamia! What a blow for … Europe!

As a consequence, Alexander the Great, the embodiment of Military Virtue for Julius Caesar, becomes now a non-European!

Speaking about proportions of a country’s provinces located on different continents!

Before advancing in this argumentation, it would be very illuminating to focus on a related subject: the proportions of a state’s provinces located on different continents. A dear argument for Mr. Giscard! Read his words:

‘While it is true that Turkey still possesses a small European enclave, this portion
only represents 5% of its territory and 8% of its population. The rest of the country is located in Asia’.

Valery Giscard d’ Estaing is probably the stupidest man alive!

If Turkey’s European provinces represent 5% of the entire country’s territory, then Alexander’s European terrain is less than 3% of the total surface of his vast empire. In this calculation, we did not total modern states’ territories, but we just estimated the totality of the space invaded by Alexander II. So, what can such a ludicrous approach prove? Nothing. And it is so for any quantitative approach to which Mr. Giscard seem always to dedicate the bulk of his efforts.

More than half of the Roman Empire’s territory was located outside Europe!

The same concerns the Roman Empire! More than half of its territory was outside Europe, involving Africa, Numidia, Egypt, Syria Coele, Syria Palestinia, and - of course - most of modern Turkey’s territory! But this is only indicative of a great expansion, and it tells us nothing about Culture.

Determinant Oriental Impact on Giscard’s Greco-Roman World

Since a person like Giscard has been accepted as Member of the Institut de France, the erroneously venerated French Academy, what we would further suggest the demented former president of France is to ask his colleague in the Institut de France, Jean Leclant, the Egyptologist and Permanent Secretary of the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, how many sites of Egyptian Culture, Religion, Ideology, Cult and Philosophy have been excavated on European soil, in Greece, in Italy, throughout the Balkans, the German and the Russians plains, let alone Gaul, Britain and Iberia.

The foundations of Giscard’s conception of the Classical Antiquity, and of the Greek and Roman civilizations are obsolete and inane. The Greek philosophers were the humble students of their grandmasters at the temples of Egypt, Babylonia and Persia. Without the great Oriental civilizations, and without the work of transferring the Lights of Civilization to the Aegean world, Greece would have a been left a barbaric realm absorbed by the polytheistic and idolatrous priests, whom the Pre-Socratic philosophers opposed virulently. Perhaps it is not interesting for Mr. Giscard, but many should wonder why we have been left with so few words saved out of the voluminous and copious compositions of the Pre-Socratic philosophers. The answer is that they have been persecuted by local barbaric and murderous polytheistic priests, who had it easy to burn the works of ingenious intellectuals like Thales and Anaximenes.

All the basic concepts initiated within the Greek world by the Pre-Socratic philosophers, Hesiod, Homer, and Plato are of combined – Hittite Anatolian, Phoenician, Egyptian, and Assyrian / Babylonian – Oriental background.

The Hellenistic, – properly speaking – Orientalist, period of interactions

The later interaction of Macedonians and Greeks with various other peoples within the empire of Alexander the Great, and throughout the countries of his successors, brought about an inundation of Oriental cults, philosophies, ideologies, concepts, religions, and cults that changed the face of the ‘Greek’ world. The procedure was accentuated during the Roman times! Modern scholarship focused already on this, and I am sure that Jean Leclant will probably suggest informative readings to Mr. Giscard, choosing perhaps some of the – no less than 150 – volumes of the monumental and updated series ‘Etudes Preliminaires sur les Religions Orientales dans l’ Emnpire Romain’ (Preliminary Studies on the Oriental Religions within the Roman Empire).

The first stage consisted in the establishment of religious – philosophical – ideological systems of common, Greek and Oriental, background. Serapism, Hermetism, Chaldaism, various Gnosticisms and Ostanism are quite indicative in this regard.

Oriental Culture permeating the Roman Empire; Europe is Orient!

During the next phase, we encounter a plethora of temples of Osiris, Isis, Horus, Anubis (Egyptian gods), a multitude of sanctuaries of Mithra and Anahita (Persian gods), a great number of shrines of Cybele (Anatolian goddess of Sumerian origin), and an abundance of holy places of Adonis, Atargatis, and Astarte (Phoenician god and goddesses, the latter of Babylonian – Sumerian background) throughout the European territory of the Roman Empire. The two most influential systems, Isidism and Mithraism, expelled the old, local, European gods, and decisively ostracized them far from the hearts and the minds of the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, and all the other native European peoples. A good study of some voluminous tomes of the famous and venerated series Aufstieg und Niedergang der Roemischen Welt (Rise and Fall of the Roman World) would convince Mr. Giscard about the real face of Europe, as well as about the Oriental origins of ‘the cultural contributions of Greece and Rome’. The ideal, archetypal empire for the ‘European’ Roman Empire was Assyria, and this is not Europe, Mr. Giscard!

The Oriental cataclysmic impact did cover all aspects of everyday life during the Roman Imperial times. A minor effort for Mr. Giscard would be to study the excellent book of the French scholar Paul Faure, a Hellenist, not Orientalist! In his ‘Parfums et Aromates de l’ Antiquite’ (Fayard, Paris, 1987), the French archeologist draws a magnificent picture of the unprecedented changes that occurred in the Greco-Roman world because of the introduction of Oriental ways of life, and lifestyles, most notably the use of perfumes, spices, incense, as well as of other aromatic fragrances. It is essential to offer some examples of hidden literature in order to break down the silly Giscard version of Greco-Roman History.

In the year 287 BCE, King Seleucos of Syria, one of Alexander’s Diadochs (successors), sent to the temple of Apollo at Miletus (so on Turkish territory) 360 kg. of incense, 36 kg. of myrrh, and no less than 1200 kg. of cassia! Theophrastus (On Plants, ch. 9) depicts similar circumstances. And Nero spent no less than several millions of sestertii for the aromatic needs of a funeral (Tacit, Annals, XVI, 6)! At the times of Vespasian, an enumeration of aromatic fragrances in Rome would come up with no less than 60 different types (Pliny, Historia Naturalis, XII, 35 – 135). This lifestyle expanded so much that caused a certain reaction by Plautus (Mostellaria, I, III, 273), who stipulated that Mulier recte olet ubi nihil olet (the woman smells properly, when she does not smell at all). All this relates to Assarhaddon, to Thutmosis, to Hiram of Tyre, to the Queen of Sheba, to Cambyses, but certainly not to Numa Pomiplius, Epameinondas, and Pericles.

The Origin of the Current European Religions is Not European!

It was certainly wise not to mention any specific religion in the European Constitution; this would automatically imply another dimension of Oriental influences over Europe. It would bring the epicenter of Europe at … Jerusalem, far beyond Turkey!

But to what religious system(s) does the enigmatic notion of ‘the religious heritage which permeates European life’ refer? And to what extent Europe is ‘Europe’, if all the existing variants of ‘the religious heritage which permeates European life’ are of Asiatic origin, be they Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and/or Hinduism?

If the existing variants of ‘the religious heritage which permeates European life’ are of Asiatic origin, how ‘Turkey did not share any part of this heritage’? Here ends every possibility of elementary historical argumentation, and the political motifs become flagrant!

Modern Heirs of Ancient Cultures – Politics, Culture and History

However, behind this prejudiced and dogmatic statement of Giscard’s is hidden a very obnoxious approach to historical interpretation. There are some basic points of Human Cultural Heritage and World History that are known to everyone. However, the ominous Taliban of Afghanistan seemed to disregard them, and so does Giscard! It is essential therefore to restate them.

All the monuments erected, the artifacts produced, the ideas conceived, the theories elaborated, and the literary works composed in a place are Common Heritage of the Mankind; they belong to all of us.

Every country is bound to best preserve, study and propagate every historical testimony excavated on its territory.

Every government shapes the local culture best, when acting as a depository of the Historical evolution, and establishing the proper cultural link between the Present and the Past.

There cannot be selective tendencies in this regard, since this would lead to an early stage of cultural discrimination. To give an example, the Spanish government must be totally committed to best preserve, study and propagate historical testimonies excavated in Spain, whatever the monuments’ identity and character may be, Phoenician, Roman, Gothic, Islamic, Jewish, Christian.

Historical – Cultural Discrimination as attested in the Bamian disaster in Afghanistan (where the cannibalistic Taliban destroyed colossal statues of Buddha under the pretext of fighting against idols – as they misinterpreted within their version of erroneous Islam) is not acceptable anymore in our global, multicultural world. It was not acceptable in Afghanistan; it cannot be acceptable in Europe.

Modern Turkey is a depository and promoter of the Greek Antiquity.

A better observation would have led the opinionated and intolerant Mr. Giscard to a deeper understanding. Ever since its inception, modern Turkey has advanced a lot in terms of cultural policies and political rights. Women voted and were elected in Turkey four (4) years before they were allowed to do so in France! More than many other European countries Turkish Cultural policies followed an all-encompassing model whereby the Hittite Epics Illuyankas and Ullikummi, the Assyrian – Babylonian Enuma Elish (the earliest text about the Creation), Homer, Herodotus, the Annals of the Sargonid Emperors of Assyria, the Urartu inscriptions, the Ionian philosophers, Zoroaster, the Commagene Mithraism, John’s Revelation, the Christian Cappadocian milieu, the Gnosticisms of the Late Antiquity, the Nestorians and the Monophysites of Upper Mesopotamia (Tur Abdin), the Sabians of Sumatar, the Abrahamic tradition of Harran, the Eastern Roman Empire, the Quarel of the Icons, the Manicheists, the various Muslim and Turkic religious and ethnic groups, all mysticisms from Apollonius of Tyana, to Jelaleddin Rumi, and from Basil of Caesarea to the welcomed Sephardim of Spain - with certainly great focus on the Ottoman Empire - are equally present in a unique multicultural(ist) panorama. Does Mr. Giscard know that there is a Sumerbank in Turkey?

The result of this approach to History and of the implementation of the aforementioned cultural policies makes of modern Turkey the natural depository of the Classical, Greco-Roman world. Turkey represents today the historical past of the Greek world, the ‘Greek culture’ according to Mr. Giscard, to the same extent as Greece does.

If Pericles was born on territory that belongs to modern Greece, Herodotus was born on modern Turkish soil. If Plato ‘goes’ to Greece, Homer ‘belongs’ to Turkey. Where does Apollo dwell? In his temple at Delphi (Greece) or in his sanctuary at Sardes (Turkey)? Where can one find more representative monuments of the Ancient Greek world? In Athens (Greece) or in Ephesus (Turkey)?

Modern Turkey is a depository and promoter of the Roman Antiquity.

If we come to the Roman World, then the strongest challenge to Italy – as depository of the Roman Culture according to Mr. Giscard – is not Greece, neither France or Spain, but Turkey. Istanbul, still called by Greeks ‘Constantinople’, remains Nova Roma forever. The modern European North that consists in the dynamo of the European economy was the periphery of the Roman world (France, Britain, Germany) or was always out of the Roman borders (Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland, Ireland, Baltic counties).

But there is much more to say to this ignorant, Taliban-like, Mr. Giscard!

Giscard criminally deletes Islamic - Jewish Andalusia from European History.

His viciously biased History of Europe obliterates critical periods of European History in which developments occurred that later contributed greatly to the formation of European Culture. Going beyond the Antiquity and the Late Antiquity, we have to remark the valuable and multifaceted contribution of Islam in the cultural development of Modern Europe. This can be focalized mainly in two areas and two different periods partly overlapping.

The first is Muslim Andalusia, the great Umayyad times that lasted from the beginning of the 8th century to the end of the 15th century. Without the Knowledge, the Science, the Wisdom, the Philosophical debates, and the Art of the Iberian Islam and Judaism, Europe would be the hidebound misery and pestilence of the Frankish barbarism. The Iberian peninsula from where Andalusian Civilization enthralled the four corners of the then known world is not a small part of Europe, even for those speaking in quantitative terms. Without incorporating this entire milieu into his ‘Europe’, Mr. Giscard rather hints at an eventual exclusion of Spain or Portugal from the back room of the European decision making. Well, already he expressed his displeasure about the Spaniards fighting for their rights of proper representativity (‘It is hard to forget Spain and Poland's recent opposition to voting by a double majority, even though it was only a matter of being at a disadvantage in terms of a few points’).

In brief, we have no reason to believe that Mr. Giscard’s ‘philosophy of the Age of Enlightenment’ is more determinant a factor for the formation of Modern Europe than Iberian Islamic and Jewish Andalusia.

Giscard denies the genuinely European identity of the Ottoman Empire.

Then comes the second period that has been obliterated by the obnoxious and chauvinist Mr. Giscard. The Ottoman Europe.

It has to be reminded to that schizophrenically partial, bogus-historian of Giscard that only modern Russia and the Roman Empire controlled on European soil so large territory as that ruled by the Ottoman Empire! If we do not take into account the deplorable moments of Hitler and Napoleon, never did a country, even the Eastern Roman Empire or Alexander the Great, control so vast a portion of European territory! For several centuries, from the gates of Venice and the doors of Vienna to the southern plains of Ukraine, encompassing the entire Balkan peninsula, Crimea and the Transcaucasia, the Ottoman Empire diffused culture and science, philosophy and art, literature and trade throughout an area larger than 1.5 m km2 – all on European soil!

As specialized Sovietologist, Mrs. Helene Carrere d’ Encausse, Permanent Secretary of the Serie Immortels of the French Academy, could perhaps become the mentor to the – neophyte in the academic environment – Mr. Giscard, and give him a lesson or two in this regard, making clear to him that the entire Black Sea was for centuries an Ottoman lake. We do not need to refer here to the fact that, while occupying so vast European territory, the Ottoman Caliphate controlled even larger space in Asia and in Africa, bordering with the rest of Europe in the Western Mediterranean.

Without the Ottoman Empire, there would not be Modern Europe.

But we have to stress the nature of the Infinite Empire as the Culture and Civilization channel par excellence. It is very questionable whether Copernicus and Galileo would have ever become known through their researches and conclusions without the Latin translations of the works of top mathematicians and astronomers like Ulugh Beg. No, Mr. Giscard must not worry! We do not intend to consider Ulugh Beg, copious author and erudite scholar of Samarqand, as a European intellectual! But without this Asiatic cerebral, and without the unprecedented role played by the Ottoman Empire in bringing the Lights of Civilization to uneducated and obscurantist Europe, there would never be a Renaissance in Europe!

So, Giscard must realize that modern Turkey – as depository of the Ottoman Cultural Heritage – is the heir of a leading European contributor to the phenomenon of Renaissance and all that ensued. As such Turkey has indeed a great role in Europe. And what will be Giscard’s key to ultimate understanding is the real History of Europe. A subject totally overlooked before and during the works of the Giscard infamous Committee the members of which thought that they can conceive and write down a constitution for a country the history of which they still do not know, although the country is supposedly theirs!

And how can one know Europe, if one ignores Hermann of Carantania?

Or Slovenia is not Europe either?