I thought they were (struggling to remain) a secular nation?

Hell, where's America?

I too believed Turkey was in fact quite well known for its secular system of government. More secular indeed than the British state which, absent any recent disestablishmentarianism, is still nominally based around the Sovereign being authorised to rule by God's Representative On Earth i.e. the Archbish of Canterbury.

Or have I been wrong all along ?

the elections handed the reigns of government to a party with deep religious roots. the Turkish army is the only remaining substantial bastion of secularism. a majority of the electorate seems to be headed away from secularism, not towards it.

i hope what we just got from Glenn is sarcasm, otherwise the Reg reader demographic is substantially dumber than i thought it was. i imagine, even if the US managed to somehow join the EU (cut to image of pigs flying over a frozen hell), Texas would still have to be excluded, much like Saudi Arabia.

I think the message is clear, “Russia & Belarus is more Europe than Turkey” shame, I like the Turks, but if the “flood gates” were to be opened, it is not the Turks who would come over in their millions, it will be the Kurds.

Disgraceful. We have been using Euro since its inception, but the coin shows only the southwest corner of the country...

On the new 2-euro coin, the (very very small) part of Turkey that's actually IN Europe is included. Why should the coin include any part of Asia on it?

Obligatory Wikipedia quote:

The Bosporus or Bosphorus, also known as the Istanbul Strait, (Turkish: İstanbul Boğazı) (Greek: Βόσπορος) is a strait that forms the boundary between the European part (Rumelia) of Turkey and its Asian part (Anatolia).

Nobody really cares about this side of the coin: it's always the other side which varies from country to country that is more interesting to look at. And in any case I'm pretty certain 95% of us Europeans don't know where most of Europe is! "The importance of Luxemburg as a port" was (once?) faithfully and unquestioningly copied from a blackboard in Manchester. ;-)

There's a nice website which has a jigsaw map game for the world so you can fill in the gaps in your knowledge. I did pretty well at the Europe one and failed miserably with the US but who cares where Wisconsin is?

America is busy struggling to remain a secular nation. We'll get back to you after the next election.

has turkey been in Europe?

That's the first time I've ever seen the word disestablishmentarianism outside of a daytime TV word quiz.

Now, onto the subject. Who cares that Turkey is out of the new Euro coins? Who wants new Euro coins anyway? It's just a PR exercise designed to welcome our 'new neighbours' (who voted them into the EU in the first place?). A reasonable welcome would have been: "Hi, welcome to the EU. Now, please note that you have joined the EU to make your country more economically stable and secure. Here's some money, don't spend it all at once; and remember, as your own country is now more stable, please don't immediately think about moving to another EU country 'just because they have a great welfare system there'. Your own country needs you. Thanks! And wipe your feet."

Kurds, too right... Who would blame them? If any one people were in need of leaving that place it is them.

God help us if they join the EU, all the democracy and freedom values the EU allegedly stands for will be for nothing as they let that brutal regime continue.

Nice secular place Turkey, and I don't see that changing.

And traditionally, the line between Europe and Asia goes along the Bosphorus, through Istanbul, so only a tiny part of Turkey is in Europe.

Where to draw the line between Europe and Siberia is a bit harder, but generally it's the Urals, so Belarus is in Europe, and so is Moscow.

So? The first euro coin left Norway off the map, did it not, leading to the alarmingly well-endowed Scandinavia depicted here: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/2e_comm.png

Turkey at least is off the edge of the map.

Sweden and England should be excluded...

Sweden is lopped off anyhow - just like Finland, Estonia etc etc

Where the hell are Bulgaria and Romania, if Sweden is on the map?

And Iceland if Norway's there? And Switzerland...

AFRICA anybody??

Great stuff. Put the UK in the centre of the coin when we have not (and hopefully never will) accept the stupid thing

Why would Texas be excluded? You are not being racist against Texans are you? (I know it's not racist as Texans are not a race but I can't spell stateist)

Turkey is secular despite the best efforts of some to drag it back to the twelfth century.

I like how the UK is still on the coin but does not use them.

Well I zoomed in and the part of Turkey that is in Europe is indeed on the coin, just like the part of Russia that is in Europe is on the coin. As the coin portrays EUROPE rather than membership of the EU or the Eurozone I think anyone trying to raise this as a real issue is just rabble rising. Hmmm sratch that where's Iceland? Where the **** is ICELAND?

Nice to see the rudeness provided by Norway, Sweden and Finland is still there (:-)

Someone mentions Texas joining the EU, and everyone is left trying to figure out if it's sarcasm or not.

Where's the ALERT! JOKE! banner when we need it most?

Anyway, just a friendly reminder for everyone else, Texas is not in Europe. Therefore, if you can get your two brain cells to rub together and get some thought action going, you might realize that Glen was indeed being sarcastic.

Or perhaps Register readers are dumber than I thought ;)

Turkey has just voted in an islamic leader.

The Bosphorous (& the Urals) is the border between Europe & Asia

Turkey is NOT European, so should stay out of the EU

Israel aint European either, so why do they play in our footy/singing competitions? They should learn to play nicely with thier neighbours

It always amazes me how many people seem to assume that huge amounts of immigrants are quite happy to give up their homes, lives, friends, families and life-styles in the hope of getting a slightly more westernised style of life. I'm not sure if it's paranoia ("they're going to take my job") or stupidity ("I live like this, therefore everyong else must too").

These same people tend to be the ones that witter on about the "country going to the dogs" and "will the last Briton to leave the country turn out the lights" (but never actually do it themselves [unfortunately]) without any sense of irony (see above).

One of the great benefits for Norway not joining the union was to be omitted from the map on the Euro which had the great side benefit of making sweden look like a limp penis (which is why only part of finland should be included). Norway has specifically voted to stay out and we demand that we can continue to snigger at the swedish.

There's quite a small part of Finland there on the pic, is that the official version?

abe

Has more claims on being European than Israel does, yet Israel competes in the Eurovision thong contest and European football. Let's sort out where Europe begins and ends once and for all - whichever way you slice it, I'm afraid that Turkey is in by force of both history and geography. Should we chuck out France because of their DOMs and TOMs? Or Britain because of Ascension, the Falklands and Bermuda? Chuck Israel out of European organisations first, then we'll talk about Turkey.

It's about Geographical Europe not Political Europe, by the way the comments about new members having to wipe their feet and so on is misinformed at best racist at worst.

Them joining have helped contained inflation in Western Europe, reduced unemployement in Eastern Europe and globally helped growth overall.

The system is working whether you like it or not.

However it would collapse if we were to bring in an additionnal 70 millions people with 20% of our living and no common history whatsoever. Last but not least, I am not sure I want to see Irak, and Iran as EU neighbours.

"Israel aint European either, so why do they play in our footy/singing competitions? They should learn to play nicely with thier neighbours"

So that's the French out too then :-p

Oh, and the Poles would want the Germans out...

And we haven't forgotten about the Spanish Armada, and don't forget about the vikings! All that pillaging will never be forgotten!

This is a nightmare for me, I navigate solely by the maps I find on the back of coinage, how will I find my way round?

Ah, that'll teach you to not adopt the 1 and 2 centime coins then.

As far as I could see in Helsinki, these two non-circulated coins are one of your biggest exports.

The only reason to extend the map eastwards would be to include Cyprus which is now an EU member. If you look at the old design, just EU member states were included. (Including non-Euro states such as the UK was perhaps necessary to make it actually look like a map of Europe, though the resulting appearance of Scandinavia minus Norway is somewhat unfortunate.) I can see that if you add all the new member states in the old manner, it'd be hard because there's too many. To include all EU members with the new style map, you'd have to shrink the actual EU states a lot and include large swathes of Russia, Turkey and non-EU states. The compromise they have seems resonable: Cyprus, North-East Finland, Eastern Bulgaria, and far off places like french Guiana get left off. The inclusion of what I assume is Ceuta and Mililla seems a bit silly and Malta seems to be over enlarged given that the Isle of Wight is bigger.

If Turkey does join (as I hope it one day will), I'm sure they would extend the map eastwards.

Finland aint excluded. I know, I live here, and have a pocketful of coins - €'s with Finland on it.

OK. Maybe you don't know where it is, and have been looking at the site www.suomi.com too much

(Suomi is Finnish for Finland)

Who the hell is this bloke called "Texas", BTW???

-Andy

How nice to see one's name in lights :) I just couldn't easily fit antidisestablishmentarianism into the thread ....

Seriously though, I do have serious objections to admitting Turkey to the EU, but they are based on its human rights practices rather than any insinuations about its poverty or its having a state religion as the UK does. I can't help wishing Lester had chosen this angle to mention instead of jocularly repeating popular racism.

Still, our own human rights record will soon have descended to Turkey's level (some would probably say it's there now) so then we can welcome them with open arms ....

Gosh, I would have thought that something stylized would look a little less like an actual geographical map.

I would think that a stylized map would be more like one big square for the Russian side, next to a smaller square for the western part of Europe, with a small line to represent the dangling bits of Italy, and one stonking big middle finger representing the UK.

THAT would be stylized.

This is a bloody world map with bits obviously missing, nothing less.

I think those arguing whether one half of turkey is in our out of europe (or 10/90 split) is obviosuly spurios!

When rome dominated continential Europe it ommited those fervant modern europeans of Germany, Ireland, scandinavia and Eastern Europe, be included teh middle east and North Africa! - at that time Britain was probably the Roamns equivalant of barabarians at teh gate do we include or exclude!?

the modern Europe or EU is political not really georaphical, therefore whether we include Turkey or Quebec is political, what some people may forget unlike Britian which keeps most of its remaingi colonial vestiges at arms length France Keeps a tight grip on it and treats certainly its caribean territories as though they are part of "poper france" therefore europe already spans the atlantic not beacuse of any British/American deals, but becuase for French soil on boths sides of the pond.

France obviously wants to keep out Turkey fo rreliguos reasons and not wanting to tip the balance of Europe further east and south away from the older NW European Centre of Power. It also probably want to keep money it ints farmers fields than developing the economy of Turkey, while France has an affinitey to its farmers, it should perhaps wake up to the realities of the modern world, in Britain the "prepacked sandwich" market now accounts for a higher part of the economy than farming! - secretly yhe frecn are probabaly still fuming at the Pope for upping sticks and moving from Avignon to Italy!

lets not forget, going back to Rome..... when the Empire split into two it was the West which slipped into darkenss and the east based in Constantinople (instanbul) that retained civilisation and transistioned into the Ottoman empire.

why are they botering to "remap" europe onto beer tokens anyway? they stopped adding "stars" on the flag and have kept it at the natty looking 15 stars on a blue background, why bother adjusting the geographical map. Lets just keep its western bias, otherwise why keep to 15 stars and a blue back ground, do we need an orange strip for the dutch and protastants, a green stripe of islam, a yellow stripe of spain, a red strip for the Caribean Territotoreis of france and aruba (ok a iffy beer link!), maybe an eagle for france and germany?

As for Finland: Well, why bother with the rest of Finland? As any intelligent person knows, Finland doesn't extend north of Kehä III anyway, the rest of it is just untamed wilderness and reindeer.

As for Norway: they're not even in the EU, never mind the Euro! At least the UK is part of the EU.

As for the Euros: the coins and notes of this particular currency were created to satisfy the extremely diverse national opinions of all the member countries - and with such a diverse collection, it would almost be impossible to create something that everyone would be happy with. So they had one of two options: create an amazing design that French, Spanish, Portugese, Germans, Danes, Finns and all the rest would be equally happy with (!), or create something so bland and banal that its utter lack of imagination and general air of unoffensiveness makes you want to retch. Guess which one they chose.

As for Turkey and the rest: I agree that the Urals is the border between Europe and Asia, and while I'm happy that eastern European econimies are able to join the Euro (Estonia and Montenegro included) I think that anything with a "Euro-" prefix should have something to do with Euro...pe. No Turks, thanks very much, and as for the Israelies, as far as I'm concerned, you can keep Eurovision all to yourself.

Personally, I find it very tedious that the arguments of having and using Euros rather than GBP in the UK revolve around us being less "British" or having less "control" over our own economy.

This is such complete rubbish that it's comedy - do the French feel any less French because they use the same coins as their neighbours? Do the Irish drink less guiness because they use the same coins as their beer or wine drinking European partners? No. Both the notes and coins are designed to allow member countries to put their own symbolisms on.

As for "control" over our own economy - who's leg are they trying to pull? The greedy US "banks" have been overselling mortgages on cheap land for years and now that the shit's hit the fan, it's ruining the economy of large parts of the rest of the world. Who's in control here? Similarly, price of property/land vary considerably between different regions of the UK, this won't change at any time just because we start using the same coinage as other member states.

The convenience of not having to continually deal with extortionate money-changers is also a big, big plus point.

As for hoards of foreigners (EU citizens) suddenly turning up in the UK - well it happens right now and aint exactly going to change until we get a government that could find it's own arse without requiring US "help".

Join the EU? It's bad enough when they join internet chat groups! Have you *seen* how they behave??

"I AM TURKCYE WANT SEX" or similar.

Triffic stuff :(

Have a look at the obverse of the 20 Yeni Turk Lirasi:

http://www.turkeytravelplanner.com/details/Money/ytl_notes2.html

Anatolia is all but obscured by Mustafa Kemal's right ear. The globe depicted is pretty well centred on western Europe. Can anyone guess where Turkey thinks its future lies?

"Do the French feel any less French because they use the same coins as their neighbours?"

Case in point: in the UK, there are at least 20 different designs of £1 coin (I know, because for a time I was collecting them, and I have them here). There is a royal crest, a national animal and a national plant for Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales; there's a royal crest for the UK as a whole; there are regional coins for the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, and so on... regions on coins in the UK (all with the Queen on the back, with a couple of exceptions, and I'm not referring to commemorative coins with bridges and the like) are just like regions on coins in the Eurozone - local symbol on one side, collective symbol on the other. Look closely at what's in your wallet if you've never noticed it before.

http://www.24carat.co.uk/poundcoinstypechartframe.html

and (inevitably, but with poorer pictures)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_One_Pound_coin

And speaking of coins, I have some £2 dating from the '80s, and they look a lot better (all gold) than these two-colour monstrosities of the past few years...

...is Scilly.

Turkey isn't on the current euro coins either. So?

My map of europe also cuts off Turkey at Istanbul. I have travelled through all of Turkey and spent some time in various parts of the country. In my experience the western turkish population is a bit poor and backwards, but not more so than greeks or bulgarians. However, you will not find any people more pro-european. Having discussed the issue with a number of turks, they tend to uniformly insist that they are european and are indignant that Turkey is not yet a member of the EU. Any suggestion that this future membership is not inevitable is an affront to their dignity. On the other hand eastern Turkey is quite a different matter. In few places in the world have I seen such backwardness. These people are still at the biblical (old testament) level of development. Plus there is still military occupation by the Turks. These people have no place in a modern 21'st century EU. This is a land of sharia law and islamic prophets (ie fundamentalists). If I had any say I would make it a condition of accepting Turkey into the EU that they let the Kurds form their own state ... Kurdistan (part of Turkey, Iraq and a small bit of Iran). If the Kurds were allowed a vote, thats what they would vote for, I imagine by almost a 100% margin. Like the Afghans, these people live by their daily messages from God (via their many local prophets) and various other superstitions. Incapable of even basic agriculture (Irrigation is a mystery to them ... not needed if 'god' is at your beck and call) and fiercely independent, they are best left well alone. Sadam Hussein's army did not gas fellow arabs, it was recalcitrant Kurds that were gassed at Halabja. Before this it was Churchill who ordered the Kurds to be gassed. I have no doubt the Turks will get around to (having to) gas them in the future. As the Russians found out in Afghanistan ... it is better leave them well alone.

On the topic of the Euro ... I have been patiently waiting for it to be adopted in the UK. I'm sure those 5 tests Gordon Brown set out have been well and truly met by now. It can't happen soon enough if you ask me.

I spotted the new design this weekend and reckon the re-design has added some non-EU countries (I hadn't spotted Turkey was removed) simply so Sweden and Finland wouldn't look so much like cock 'n' balls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2_euro_coins

Oh look, this was pointed out in a 2002 article written by the very same Lester Haines!

http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2002/02/18/euro-cock-up.html

As has been stated, Norway isn't part of the "map" eighter, so it's obviously a "members only" club.

Maybe Norway should take it as a hint that "EU doesn't want you money anymore", and cease sending money into financing the "new EU Members"? Afterall, not being included on the map of Europe is a pretty good statement from EU that they don't want anything to do with us. :)

//Svein

"And in any case I'm pretty certain 95% of us Europeans don't know where most of Europe is!"

(points in a random direction) There it is. Over there. (points in another direction) And there's another bit.

"Turkey has just voted in an islamic leader."

And the US has a fundamentalism Christian leader...

And the UK has the head of their Church as their head of State...

So?

UK's monarch doesn't actually have a say, but acts more as a figurehead and representative.

Everyone knows that Turkey is not getting into EU - although it is not said into their face.

So, ... disestablishment. Look it up.

Well, at least they have also omitted the bit of Finland that Russia nicked and they're still hanging on to ...

Great stuff. Put the UK in the centre of the coin when we have not (and hopefully never will) accept the stupid thing

I think you could settle it by filling the face of the coin with a map of Texas. ;-D

(Speaking as a Texan of course ;) And I was wondering how I was going to contribute to this conversation.

BTW, y'all can put Shrub (the junior Bush) in greater Kurdistan....