Schaerbeeck looting

Wandered down to my local Turkish corner shop last night to pick up that local staple, the spit-roast chicken, and witnessed what I can only describe as a looting. Mehmet, the storekeeper came out to unhook the fowl from the roaster, and as he was concentrating on his efforts to serve me a small fleet of six gypsy women slipped into the shop.

Each was about five foot tall and four foot wide and swathed in velvet drapes, sequined scarves and those elderly dun coloured coats. Mehmet looked up, made a noise of apology and shot back into the shop. I followed him in to see an extraordinary scene.

Mehmet’s 15 year old son had been cornered by two of the women who were rattling imprecations and complaints at him; whilst the other four had split up. Each pair worked as a team as one had a large grey-pink plastic washing bowls, already overflowing like gutter cornucopia, whilst the other shoveled in tins, and plastic oddments.

Mehmet stood, blocking the door and called out,

“So you are going to pay for all that?”

Instantly the four without bowls turned on him and crowding him poured forth a torrent of invective. Meanwhile the two with bowls dumped the spoils on the floor behind a great heap of figs and dates and, as if at a command all six swept out of the shop acting in concert like a Spithead review.

As Mehmet stood their breathing deeply I noted that the whole thing had taken less than two minutes.

Interestingly, when he had caught his breath and calmed down his son he blamed EU enlargement for the problem. “When it was just France, Germany, Belgium Holland, there were no problems, but now it happens all the time”, he told me. “We should never have let the Bulgarians and Romanians in, all those Roma, its impossible to run a business these days”.

Public Interest Notice

Can I suggest that you do not go to St Joost or Schaerbeek tomorrow? This is for the simple reason that, from information I have received from local shopkeepers and cafe owners there is a major demonstration planned for the morning. Not only is the Turkish community planning to put upwards of 10,000 people on the streets, but so is the local Kurdish community. Both of these planned demonstrations have been banned by the police, but in the light of the rioting here over the last week, I wouldn't put much confidence in the manifestation not going ahead.


This picture should give you an idea of how the area is getting pretty tense. The flags are not for fun, and the streets are oddly quiet.

What is not completely apparent is that many of the Turkish flags being flown (this photograph was taken this morning at the end of my street) have the head of Kemal Attaturk superimposed upon the crescent and star.

In this quarter one often sees Turkish flags flying, particularly when Galatasaray or Besitkas are playing but these are new. I have never seen these flags before, they are all the same and brand new. They of course show show support for the Kemalist constitution and are nationalist rather than Islamist.

There are strong suggestions that the Turkish community are in part being directed by the Turkish authorities, who are displaying a show of force at the heart of the EU. They are not happy about the way in which the EU has been stringing them along over accession, they are not happy about suggestions that the EU might recognise the Armenian massacres as a genocide and they are not happy about the response of the EU to the PKK incursions into Turkish territory in the last weeks.

Brussels, the rumours are saying, is to learn about the power and discipline of the Turkish people.