None of these countries think of themselves as asian except a handful. It's an outdated term. 

It is like Mexico in North America, only a bit more extreme (being that ME culture and people have little in common with the rest of Asia). Most Mexicans would consider themselves Latin Americans, even though Mexico is geographically in North America. Same with ME. I don't consider myself half-asian even though I am half-middle eastern

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_East

It isn't called the "near-east" anymore. Otherwise, the balkans could also be part of it. Also, Turkey is part of the Middle East as well.

I think people are confusing ethnicity to a countries geographical location.

There are countries in Asia/Pacific for instance that do not have an Asian population.

High school stuff:

Asia is often divided into culturally and geographically similar regions. Although definitions, names, and borders can vary, generally the regions of Asia include West Asia (which is part of the Middle East), the Caucasus (sometimes also considered as part of the Middle East), Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia (also called the Indian Subcontinent), and Southeast Asia. West Asia is sometimes referred to as the Middle East, with is actually a misnomer since the cultural region we define as the Middle East often included countries outside of Asia, such as Egypt in Africa and Cyprus in Europe. West Asia specifically includes the countries within the region of Asia bordered by the Mediterranean and Red Seas to the West and the Persian Gulf, the Gulfs of Aden and Oman, and the Arabian Sea to the South. Countries within West Asia include Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/as.htm

The Problem with the Philippines is that there is a very porous sea border, especially to the south. What compounds matters is that historically, the people of what used to be the Sulu sultanate were linked more closely to what is now Malaysia, than to the rest of the Philippines. This means that you can't really rely on ethnic nationalism (mind you, successfully utlized by Kemalists in Turkey) to suppress religious extremism.

I'm pretty disappointed that the thread devolved into a fight over semantics regarding countries that aren't even close to the Philippines or people virtue-signalling about "muh Duterte kills drug addicts" or trashing the Philippines as a whole.

I'm at least hoping that the army can get its act together and that Duterte is a lot better than Noynoy over handling of sensitive military operations.

It's always been like this bro, this is not the first time this happened, the Zamboanga siege was bigger and worse but no one cared about that either.

Now we even get a "fuck you" while the terrorist group has innocent people hostaged, freed prisoners from the city jail, burn whatever they fancy and beheaded a cop. I have no idea how a fellow human being can say that to an entire people because he hates one guy.

it's like hating all muslims because of ISIS.

wsell, someone did open the door saying "Asians" don't play around when it comes to terrorism. So that was a non-Philippines specific statement. Now if the statement had simply been "Filippinos don't play around with terrorism" things might not have spiralled. But given the Muslim seperatist history of the Philippines it's arguable that Filippinos don't play around with this sort of thing.

Not sure Duterte and "sensitive" really go together. Kind of like Trump and natural sun tan don't go together. So I wouldn't hold your breath on that.

It spiralled because of some people acting in an asisinine way got hung up on semantics. Anyone could tell I was talking about Asians (chinese, japanese, koreans, filippinos) and not the continent. It's like a couple of adults are talking, a kid comes along and overhears a part of the conversation but tries to correct one of them on something that has jack shit to do with what they were talking about. 

I actually know this one! Encountered it while studying the Hittites lol

Anyway, something akin to "asia" has been used for ages. The Greeks believed the world consisted of Europe, Asia, and Africa, but the name "Asia" used to primarily refer to western Anatolia (Turkey) near the Aegean Coast. In fact, the Romans had a province there that they named "Asia".

What's interesting is that this may date back over a thousand years longer to the Bronze Age, as a region the Hittites referred to as "Assuwa" was also described as being on the western coast of Turkey.

Given the western world pretty much has its origins in the Greeks, it should come as little surprise that everything east of their Aegean came to be called "Asia" as that was the neighboring region they were most familiar with (and actually living in) initially, and it gradually became both specific to one area and utilized as a blanket term for everything to the east. The Greeks viewed the world as being composed of three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa), so everything east of the Bosporus/Black Sea/Red Sea & Sinai Peninsula came to be covered by that blanket term.

Anyway, in the modern world when people speak simply of "Asians", they almost always are referring to everything east of India/Bangladesh and South of Russia, which is further subdivided between China and Southeast Asia (formerly called Indochina). It has, in a sense, come to replace the older word "Oriental" that has come to be viewed as being offensive, as "Asians" covers far too many populations to be used to refer to any specific group.

For everything "middle east", english speaking people generally refer either to the Levant region (All those countries along the eastern Mediterranean coast) and the "Middle East", which generally encompasses everything between the Levant and India but south of the Himalayas as well as the entire Arabian Peninsula. Finally, those nations east of the Caspian Sea but north(ish) of the Himalayas are usually called "Central Asia".

Finally, Russia is.... uhh.... no one has really figured that one out yet :)