Sunday, 7 February 2010

European or Not European?

The draw for the 2012 "European" football tournament was made:

  • Group A: Germany, Turkey, Austria, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan
  • Group B: Russia, Slovakia, REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, FYR Macedonia, Armenia, Andorra
  • Group C: Italy, Serbia, NORTHERN IRELAND Slovenia, Estonia, Faroe Islands
  • Group D: France, Romania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Belarus, Albania, Luxembourg
  • Group E: Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Moldova, San Marino
  • Group F: Croatia, Greece, Israel, Latvia, Georgia, Malta
  • Group G: ENGLAND, Switzerland, Bulgaria, WALES, Montenegro
  • Group H: Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Cyprus, Iceland
  • Group I: Spain, Czech Republic, SCOTLAND Lithuania, Liechtenstein

...... now ignoring any football questions, and I may be a bit hazy on geography, but are Turkey, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, and Israel really European?

The map of the Caucasus region includes all nearly all these countries.

The map includes Kazakhstan (a Turkic peoples of mainly Muslim faith), and shows that its only connection to Europe is a border with its old master Russia ..... equally it shares a border with China, or a lot of Turkic states with names ending in 'stan'..... which is a sure sign that you are not ethnically or geographically "European".

OK, so what about Azerbaijan? Well, as the map shows it shares a border with Russia, which appears to be its only claim to being European. It's another majority-Turkic and majority-Muslim population country that has no ethnic or cultural ties to Europe.

Israel ...... well no need for a map ...... this simply FIFA's cowardice in allowing Arabs to refuse to play Israel, and not simply expelling them from world football. End result they have helped perpetuate the conflict. But in any event they are not European.

Armenia and Georgia are a little trickier because they have occasionally interacted with European affairs such as the crusades, but geographically they are next to Azerbaijan, so can't really be anymore "European" than them, despite being Christian in a largely Muslim part of the world.

Finally Turkey, a country that as this blog has pointed out before, claims its 'European' status based on less than 10% of its territory being in Europe, and a history of violence, genocide and aggression towards non Muslim and European races.

It appears that in the near future Syria, Pakistan, and Iran will be able to compete in UEFA's idea of what is "Europe".

Its a strange world we now live in.

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3 comments:

  1. Kev Dixon14 February 2010 at 16:36

    No stranger than allowing the involvement of "nations" that are not even countires in their own right. The home nations continue to participate as individual nations, yet not one is a recognised country (at least under the UN rules), and each of those individual countries has there own little history of persecution and ethnic cleansing.

    Lichtenstein has a bypass you know!, Not looking good for a Scottish third place this time!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Peter Perfect14 February 2010 at 19:36

    Well, the little nations of the UK were

    a) Independent once,
    b) Likely to be independent again real soon, and
    b) Invented the game.

    So give it time mate.

    ReplyDelete
  3. No PC16 February 2010 at 21:05

    Not sure I understand your point Kev, we have been one nation for centuries, but as Mr Perfect has said, we invented the game.

    Surely we do class as "European" which is more than many of the nations I refer to in my post.

    ReplyDelete

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