bigOz wrote:alexISS! You are treading on very dangerous ground when you keep talking about the Turks of thrace living a better standard of life than those in Turkey.
Firstly, until recently there had been many talks about the human rights of the Turks in Thrace whose identity in Greece is still denied. The official Greek attitude to the ethnic minorities in Greece that there are none! As far as Greece is concerned they have a "muslim" minority and are often in denial of ethnic Turks who form the majority of occupants in Thrace. I can get you very detailed info on how Turkish minority had/have been persecuted until very recently in Thrace, where there had been very serious human right violations. PLEASE do your own research before asking me to provide you with more info because I've been through this a million times in different forums, and I really do not have the time right now! If you think I am lying I shall provide you with plenty info later on...
Well you're luck then, because I too have dealt extensively with the matter. Apart from my "theoretical" knowledge, I have also had extensive discussions with Turkish minority members on the issue, you can find posts of mine regarding the matter in this very forum. Briefly, the Greek government does recognize three ethnic minorities, the Turkish, Pomak and Roma minorities of Thrace, which combined form the muslim minority. However Turkey regards the whole minority as Turkish just to artificially increase her influence in the area, hence the problems with Greece on the matter. Here is an official link from the Greek foreign ministry that confirms what I say:
http://www.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/en-US/Poli ... THRACE.htmbigOz wrote:Furthermore, income per-ca pita is no indication of the standard of life when comparing two economically different areas such as EU and Turkey. If you have say 20,000 Euros as average income in Greece and perhaps 7000 Euros in Turkey, it does not mean that the people in Greece eat any better! If you consider the cost of living in Greece is between 2 and 3 times more than that in Turkey (more so in most other EU countries), then you can see why the purchasing power of the working people would be almost the same.
The
PPP GDP per capita is an index that is formed after a normalization that takes into consideration the cost of living, as opposed to the
nominal GDP per capita. The first index values for Greece and Turkey respectively are 25,975 and 9,107, while the second index values are 27,610 and 5,408. This means that, if we 'equalize' the cost of living in the two countries, the purchasing power of the average Greek falls to 25,975 and of the average Turk raises to 9,107.
bigOz wrote:As for Greece's economy and your unfair comparison with regards to what is going on in Turkey economically, please note the fol owing:
Greece's economy and mounting debts were in dire straits until it actually joined the EU (as an associate member). OK, so their economy had improved a lot after the transition time when they became actual members, but only with the economic - aid and hand-outs from EU which continue until today! These are the current figures as of 2006, for Turkey and Greece in relation to some interesting figures:
Greece;
External Debt: $301.9 billion
Unemployment Rate: 9%
Turkey;
External Debt: $193.6 billion
Unemployment Rate: 10%
SOURCE: World Fact Book - 2006
As you can see with a population 1/7 size of Turkey, Greece has more than twice the external debt! IN other words the high life standard they lead is on borrowed credit and not because of some economic miracle they are achieving!
I must shoot of for the eday
The external debt is in no way a measure of the well being of people. In the world factbook you will also see that developed countries with less population than Greece have a greater debt, like Portugal(310,800), Denmark(405,000), Belgium(1,053,000) and others.
Regarding the pre-EU economic status of Greece, I have already provided a link in another thread:
"The per capita income (purchasing power terms) of Greece was 65% that of France in 1850, 56% in 1890, 62% in 1938, 70% in 1980 and 79% in 2006 (Paul Bairoch, Europe's GNP 1800-1975, J. of European Economic History, 5, pp. 273-340 (1976); Angus Maddison, Monitoring the World Economy 1820-1992, OECD (1995); Eurostat, including updated data since 1980 and data released in December, 2006)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greece
As you can see, the popular claim that the Greek economy was a mess before 1980 is completely false
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