New Word: "Turcophile"

I rather like Dan Hannan's latest post about how shockingly bad the treatment of Turkey has been - and still is - by the EU (in reality, when it comes to Turkey, the semi-racist France and the fully racist Germany). This probably telegraphs my ignorance, but he also taught me a new word: "Turcophile". I like this word and I'm going to use it in polite conversation from now on. I also like the concept it denotes: admiration for Turkey and Turkish people. And, it seems, I'm not the only one. David Cameron is a Turcophile too. But that was always to be expected, says Hannan, for he is a hard line traditionalist Tory at heart and always has been. Yet there is a lot more to his Turcophilia (?) than mere nostalgia and tradition, and a lot more at stake should the EU (Germany) be permitted to ostracise Turkey any longer. As Hannan says:

I have argued before that David Cameron is a remarkably traditional Tory, and his attitude to Turkey is as traditional as they come. His – my – party has been Turcophile since Derby’s leadership a century and a half ago. (So, come to that, has The Daily Telegraph, which broke with Gladstone over his anti-Ottoman policy in 1877, and has been Tory ever since.) Cameron’s reasons for backing Ankara’s EU membership bid are solidly Conservative: Turkey guarded Europe’s flank against the Bolshevists for three generations, and may one day be called on to do the same against the jihadis. In the circumstances, the PM believes, Turks are being treated ungratefully by their allies.

To me, the "guardians of the flank against the jihadis" argument for halting Turkey's shabby treatment by German politicians in particular is bullet proof. But what about EU membership? Well, it seems to me that the EU is slightly worse at foreign policy than the last Labour government - utterly appalling in other words. Who'd want to be associated with an organisation that appears to be quite adept at upsetting all of the people all of the time while simultaneously being completely unable actually to do anything, anywhere, ever. Furthermore, if you accept the real motives behind the EU's passive-aggressive bureaucratic obstructionism over Turkish membership are ones of national self-interest on the parts of the usual suspects, then you realise that this translates as outright hostility in terms of international relations, whether it comes via Brussels or not. Why on earth would Turkey want to be a part of any of that? (Why on earth do we, for heaven's sake!).

As Hannan says:

For what it’s worth, if I were Turkish, I would be against EU membership. Turkey is a dynamic country with – in marked contrast to the EU – a young population. The last thing it needs is the 48-hour week, the Common Agricultural Policy, the euro and the rest of the apparatus of Brussels corporatism. Why tie yourself to a shrinking part of the world economy; when you have teeming new markets to your east? Why submit to rule by people who barely trouble to disguise their contempt for you?

Good question. He answers it, too.

There is a difference, though, between choosing not to join and being told that you’re not good enough to join. Turks are as entitled to their pride as any other people. The way they have been messed around can hardly fail to make them despise the EU. Which, in the broader sweep of history, is likely to hurt the EU more than it does Turkey.

Now, you know as well as I do that Hannan is a smart dude. He's not just talking about Turkey, is he? (Or was that obvious?) He's talking about us, too. The reason why up to 70% of the UK's adult population if not despises then mistrusts the EU is because they feel the cold blast of its contempt for their beliefs, traditions, sense of independence, history, national identity and sovereignty every day. That's why I'm pretty certain Hannan is on to something here, and so is Cameron. By championing Turkey, and wearing his Turcophile tendencies on his sleeve, he can appeal to people's in-built Euroscepticism at home, temper the coaltion's Europhiliac tendencies and highlight Brussel's in-built Angloscepticism. All at a single stroke.

If this is true then it's a foreign policy stroke of genius. Or maybe it just seems that way after years of Labour verbal incontinence on just about any international relations topic you care to think of, and total incompetence in actually doing anything, or total dishonesty and betrayal in the case of the EU.

Maybe, for a change, this new Turcophilia is just the right policy. How refreshing.

I think I'll have a large donar for lunch.

Food And Cheer

Dan Hannan has written a delightful post on his DT blog today, concerning Hobbits - or, rather, The Hobbit. He's been reading it to his young son and has found that Tolkien's verse and prose often far transcend the ordinary, but, strangely, we always seem to dismiss the whole, wonderful tale as a mere (admittedly magically escapist and fond) artifact of childhood. But it's so much more than that. Hannan explains how:

Tolkien understood the power of incantation: the way in which, as Philip Pullman puts it, reciting a fine poem makes you feel as if you were voicing words of power, chanting a spell. The story is filled with songs which follow the strict rules on metre and alliteration of the Old English verses which Tolkien loved, and whose force cannot be properly felt unless the lines are vocalised:

The dwarves of yore made mighty spells
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep where dark things sleep
In hollow halls beneath the fells.

The prose, too, is studded with old Saxon words, and there is rhythm in even the most fast-moving passages. Try reading aloud the description of the fall of Smaug:

The great bow twanged. The black arrow sped straight from the string, straight for the hollow by the left breast where the foreleg was flung wide. In it smote and vanished, barb, shaft and feather, so fierce was its flight. With a shriek that deafened men, felled trees and split stone, Smaug shot spouting into the air, turned over and crashed down from on high in ruin. Full on the town he fell. His last throes splintered it to sparks and gledes. The lake roared in. A vast steam leapt up, white in the sudden dark under the moon. There was a hiss, a gushing whirl, and then silence.

Barely remember it as I do - I must have been no more than twelve years old the last time I read it (although, I did enjoy the ZX Spectrum game, too, I can just about recall!) - it really is gratifying to have Hannan revisiting and revealing it so well here to me-as-adult. And I'm grateful for it.

But what's more thoughtful and telling is not so much his appeal to grown-ups to give the story due credit as a piece of serious literature, but his invitation to understand its moral dimension, if it has one. Hannan, with some perspicacity in my opinion, identifies it and explains his discovery thus:

The only moral we can safely draw from the whole business is the one spoken by Thorin on his death-bed: “If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world”. Amen to that.

Given the behaviour of our perfidious, venal political classes, the woeful economic incompetence of our dear leader and his crew of merry morons, the 1.5 trillion pounds-worth of personal debt we've managed to accumulate as a society and the astonishing greed and stupidity of the world's money men, I could hardly imagine a more appropriate and timely sentiment. So, well done Dan Hannan but, as the debt default threat looms ever larger on the horizon, we may need to remember that it's no empty one: sooner or later, all of us are going to have to alter our priorities radically, and start to appreciate the simple things in life once again.

Suits me. Ramble on, people :)

Dan Hannan: Brown GO!

Dan Hannan At His Best

Brilliant.

White Wash?

My dog










Great comments under Mike White's appallingly self-satisfied hatchet piece on Dan Hannan in the Grauniad.

Here's a good example:

It's interesting how the left have chosen to deal with the lighting conductor impact of Dan Hannan's speech.
They seek to betlittle ( only an unknown Tory Euro MEP but now famous ), the smear ( Tory boy, Oxford Union type - like many public school educated Labour people - see Harman and Blair), to misrepresent ( only a few people looked ), to use ploys to hide from any criticism ( Well Tom Watson did this on his blog ), to misrepresent what was said and try and spin the facts ( see Labourpist by Dolly ).
The speech was fantastic. Many people, millions of people, have been dying to tell Brown what Dan did.
The BBC/Guardian establishments reaction is predictable, depressing spin wanting to put the population back on the prozac of articles such yours.

From a chap called 'ManinAshed'.
Well done that man (in a shed).