TURKISH GOVT. INCREASING MIND CONTROL

[khodja]

The Turkish government will be building a museum in Turkey to counteract Armenian Genocide claims and will be increasing internet dissemination of selected Ottoman archival information. They are directing the museum's work toward their own people, who are slowly realizing that their government has been lying to them all these decades. Other disinformation is to be directed toward visitors to Turkey. Since they are allowing all our historic sites to crumble into dust, eventually they will not have to mention the Armenian presence at all. They know that they are on a slippery slope. The old methods are not working anymore. Only by continuing to brainwash their own people can they maintain their credibility. In the nations of the West, their line is no longer being bought.

[-e-]

think what would happen to the poor turks who would one day be confronted with the reality in a place outside of turkey. how much these poor creatures will suffer when they find out that they were lied and made fun of by their own government.

[aurguplu]

many turks have, eduard. i for one. turks have always been suspicious of the official stories, those that told us that the last sultan sold the country, that the kurds are mountain turks, that we were all so wonderful with subject peoples that they wouldn't rebel unless provoked by the west, that anatolia had been inhabited by turks since 2000 bc etc. so many of us have acquired foreign languages and have been to the west (there are over three million turks abroad) that educated people who care about such stuff don't buy the government line anymore.

 

besides, it is our common experience that we all had armenian neighbours, who are almost all gone now. of course we ask the question of what happened to them, and the govrenment line is not convincing.

 

so i suggest you don't be so anxious about turks getting so shocked by the reality when they face it. in fact you would be surprised (both turks and armenians who engaged in this exercise frequently are) at how similar individual turkish and armenian accounts can be. there is of course greater material on the turkish side referring to the sufferings of turks, as vice versa on the armenian side, but turks do not deny the killings themselves (at least the local people don't). they oppose the notion of genocide of which i observe they have little idea of. they know that they are being accused of a genocide, which, though they do not fully understand, realise is something "very, very bad", and since they cannot - or do not want to - conceive that their nation can do something very, very bad, they oppose it. there are also two other factors: 1) armenians did some pretty horrible things too, especially but not only immediately after the deportations, and there are a lot of survivors of these events, now very old though. 2) another factor is the unclear stance of the armenians regarding the separation of the genocide issue from the land claims. we hear one line today, another the next day, and we are confused about your position re this (i.e. whether you want half of our country and throw us back into central asia).

 

as far as i can see there is increasing awareness in turkey that the truth re AG claims is somewhere between our version of the story and yours. and i have been suspecting for a few years now that the state is consciously preparing the public opinion psychologically (this needs to be done) for an eventual recognition of the genocide. this will take some time, but strides are being taken, and the ball has started rolling now, so there is no turning the clock back.

 

so in brief i am cautiously optimistic for the future.

[khodja]

Hopefully the Turkish government will realize that coming clean about what happened is in their long term interests. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Same goes for those Armenians who want to gloss over the Armenian provocations.

 

As far as brainwashing goes, this is universal to world governments and corporations. American children in the 1950's were taught that Native Americans were brutual savages hell-bent on scalping little European children, thereby obfuscating the true history. The Japanese government still glosses over the Rape of Nanking, where Japanese troops brutally massacred thousands of innocent Chinese civilians for no apparent reason. American pharmaceutical companies falsify drug reviews and bribe FDA officials to get potentially harmful drugs approved. The teaching of Christ have been so distorted by the Christian Churches, including the Armenian Church that they no longer resemble the core teachings of Christ (e.g. priests conducting massive molestation of children). American corporations have been "cooking the books" to give false information to their stockholders. It is only when these entities are brought to task that they come clean. Turkey is beginning to realize that covering up the Genocide is harming them financially. The equation has changed since the demise of the Soviet Union.

[nairi]

This is my point Ali. First you admit that the genocide happened, and then you blame Turkey's reluctance to recognize it on Armenians. Typical modern Turkish genocide denier. No more, no less.

[Rubo]

Nairi jan

I am probably wrong but I believe if a solution to a serious problem like AG , can not be achieved fraternally then we should approach it from a deferent vestal point of view such as economy and greater cultural exchanges. Hopefully in time the gradual thawing process will create much more conducive environment to discuss our gravest issues. If a problem is not solvable now ,perhaps we should freeze it for time being until better opportune time.

Regards

[Rubo]

Nairi jan I think you are little too harsh on Ali. He simply is presenting the mindset of a people whose ethnic kin’s sufferings also does resonate pain. We can’t say your pain is less then mine. I actually wished we had thousands of Turks like Ali who can say Armenian Genocide without hesitation. Although Ali cannot agree with everything we got to say likewise we perhaps are also subjected to our own brand of brainwashing. The bottom line is that we as Armenians got to stop thinking like a victim and carry that mentality indefinitely.

[nairi]

Rubo jan,

 

I'm trying to show Ali his own contradictions and his own mindset. I don't wish it was like this either and I certainly don't wish this situation for my children. My dad's generation is still sweating itself to normalize ties with Turkey. That sweat has already been passed on to my generation and I don't want it to be forced on my children. It's time this STOPPED! Turkey is a HUGE threat to Armenia and Armenians. The world knows it and Turkey knows it. But Ali is minimizing it. He's finding excuses so that his country doesn't need to recognize the genocide and normalize ties. He knows that if it isn't about land claims, then it's about compensation, and if isn't about compensation, it's about historical monuments. It's a vicious circle that Turkey has created for Armenians and either Ali is a part of that conspiracy or he has fallen for it. Either way, he should realize that it is TURKEY that poses a real threat, NOT Armenian land claims or genocide recognition.

 

If what I say is wrong, then how come Turkish organizations and dissenters that plead for recognition of the Genocide agree with me? In fact these are more their arguments than mine.

[aurguplu]

rubo

 

i have stopped communicating with nairi in view of her unacceptable attitude, but of course the topic under discussion needs addressing:

 

turkey realises that it is fighting a losing battle in the genocide issue. it is obvious to any impartial third party who studies the issue from both sources that it was one. turkey is still scoring though, not on the merit of her arguments, but on the merit of her political/military/economical role in the region. it is simply more important in every one of these respects than armenia is.

 

why does turkey deny the genocide? there is a set of reasons:

 

1) the armenians compare the AG with the jewish holocaust , which is inaccurate in two accounts: there was no separatist or any other subversive jewish activity in germany, plus the conflict in turkey was land-based, not race-based like in germany.

 

2) even though grossly exaggerated by later propaganda, the turkish line that armenians also killed turks, and way before the genocide of 1915 and even before the hamidian massacres of the 1890s, is basically true. and since these are (especially the latter) recent events, we do not have to resort either to government propaganda or to academic research to prove or disprove them; some survivors of it are still alive, some with mutilated bodies. we have our memories just as you have yours. we see in the international arena that your memories are given credence and ours ignored (after all, what is the "international arena" other than christendom"?), which in our eyes at least turns your version of the events into simple worthless propaganda.

 

3) the west ascended to supremacy in the last 500 years, before that it was the medieval middle east of the world. her well-documented ascent cannot be ascribed to civilised behaviour by any stretch of the imagination: slavery, world colonisation, the annihilation of the natives of america and australia, and the sucking off of the resources of these places which still goes on. and these people are now teaching us muslims in general and turks in particular civilised behaviour.

 

this is an especially important point in all discussions pertaining to rifts between muslims and christians, of which that between us is only one: the west successfully COMPLETED the destruction of the natives wherever they went, and then settled there. in the one area where it didn't (africa) the process of it being thrown out is still not complete. the usa came into being in broadly the same fashion as the turkish empires in anatolia, with one significant difference: the anatolian natives survived in bulk, with their language, culture, economy, even to a large degree their former status, intact, for almost a thousand years after the battle of manzikert (1071 ad), whereas the american natives have practically been destroyed within less than two centuries. this gives the hardliners the following argument, the cold truth of which unfortunately cannot be denied:

 

"we allowed our conquered nations live, propagate their culture and multipy, even attain positions of power in our empire, and then they turned against us in our darkest hour, and we had to kill them in order to survive. the west, on the other hand, set out to kill the natives of its conquered territories almost immediately after the conquest according to a well worked-out plan in a systematic fashion, and eliminated that danger. our natives were used against us, their natives can never be, because there are not enough of them left. we should either have assimilated our natives into our culture by the sword, the way we had done in some provinces, or kill them off way before when everybody was doing the same everywhere. it wouldn't have been an issue now."

 

i have heard this (in different versions) from many hardliners, and the cold truth in it is evident. i have not been able to come up with any other argument than those based on humanity, which of course cuts no ice.

 

4) the armenian revolutionaries in the 19th century did have an argument that if the turks could be incited to kill enough number of armenian christians to provoke the christian west into action, they could get a piece of land with their help, just as was the case with the greeks and the balkan slavs. they had not envisaged that the killings would be on that scale, though, and also that the west would abandon them once the destruction of the ottoman empire was complete. this is pecisely what happened. i have mentioned this argument several times in this forum, and it has not met with any refusal so far. nothing diminishes turkish guilt in the genocide, but turks are not the only ones guilty, and some of the guilt rests with those armenians who gambled with their nation's blood. we do not see the same fury leashed on to us being leashed on to them.

 

5) the turks were not the only people who wanted to see the armenians go. the russians were always very wary of you, and your experience with them, save the genocide, is marginally better than that with us, as many of you do not deny. the germans, who were almost certainly the brains behind the genocide, also wanted you to go, because you stood in their way further south, and were unreliable allies at best: no-one was sure you were on his side. only now do we see germans being explicitly mentioned in the context of AG as one of the guilty parties.

 

6) the archival material relating to AG is dispersed and is not available to researchers in full. turkey keeps its archives closed/blocked/difficult to access, true, but so does russia, germany until recently, britain, france, usa, and last but not least, armenia. since much material relating to the period 1914-1919 was physically removed from the imperial archives in istanbul during the armistice in 1920 and was transported to these places, we want to see all of them made available so that we see the skeletons in everyone's cupboard, not just ours.

 

these are the "academic" reasons to deny, or postpone the acceptance of, the AG. but there are several others that are not academic. these are:

 

1) the reparations business. an enormous amount of armenian wealth was confiscated during the genocide, and any recognition of the AG would of course be an empty gesture without the payment of reparations, for life and property alike. since about one million people were affected, even if you pay USD 1,000 pe head (which will definiely be more than that), you come up with a minimum figure of USD 1 billion (and we know that it is larger than that by several orders of magnitude), which will be a very severe strain on turkish economy.

 

2) the land claims. this is far more serious, and indeed the single most important issue in the whole business. as we have seen, there is a very strong argument that armenian revolutionaries envisaged sacrificing their people to get their land, which the armenians themselves do not deny, and the overwhelming majority of turks see the genocide claims mainly as a tool to pursue these land claims to conclusion. this is the reason why turkey denies the genocide, and until recently, deliberately destroyed or allowed to decay all evidence of armenian presence in anatolia, as well as denying a place to armenians in anatolia in history books.

 

the turks do not target the armenians because they are armenians or christians (and that is one argument that they have against the killings being a genocide). there was no traditional hatred of the armenians, not at least until the arrival of balkan muslim and central asian refugees in the 19th century, the way there was anti-semitism in europe since the beginning of christianity. we have no anti-armenian folk literature that has to be weeded out to make it look respectable (that has to be done with all european literature re the jews, for instance). there are no racial armenian stereotypes in turkish folklore (other than a general notion that you are a trading and artistically gifted nation) the way there are jewish stereotypes in european folklore. there are no stories like "armenians eat muslim children for passover" in turkey. there is not a single abusive term that designates "armenian" in turkish that i know (and i am a linguist). there is no "yid". and we want this to be understood (and we see it isn't). what we want is to see the land claims (by this i mean actual secession of east anatolia to be handed over to armenia) dropped from the armenian agenda, and not only that of the ROA. once this is done, i think the denialist policy of turkey will be wrapped up very quickly indeed: more and more turks themselves come to realise that their own version of the events fits the commonly accepted definition of the genocide fairly well, and there is a term in turkish "ermeni kıyımı". where did it come from, and why do we of all people have it? people ask these questions, you know?

[nairi]

Rubo jan,

 

Last year, a duet concert with Djivan Gasparian and Erkan Ogut in Holland was canceled due to Turkish pressure.

 

In 1998, Djorkaeff was banned from the French team on a cordial invitation by Turkey to play a friendly match against the new world champions.

 

Turkey has so far never officially invited Charles Aznavour.

 

Turkey is blockading Armenia and does not want diplomatic relations with it.

 

How can we exchange cultural or economic matters when Turkey is so strongly against it?

 

Rubo jan, keep in mind that Turkey's long-term plan is for Armenians to drop the genocide claims. We, as Armenians, cannot afford to ignore or minimize our foreign policy towards Turkey and Azerbaijan (esp. now that Bahceli has grown to such power). Oozenank choozenank, in order to achieve what you described, we need normalized ties with Turkey.

 

Also remember that there are Turks with whom we have normalized ties and are cooperating for a better and less hostile environment in the Caucasus. We are not only working for Armenia and Armenians, we are also working for all the Turks who have either exiled themselves or are in Turkish prisons as a result of political activities.

 

It's not that you are wrong, it's just that it isn't realistic. Not for now anyway.

 

Nairi

[Rubo]

Dear Ali,

I suspect that you are correct on your ascertains that Armenian revolutionaries provocations were intended to get the allies involved on our behalf thus regain our independence.

I also do believe that Hamidian Massacres set an ugly precedence to young Turks that Armenian problems can be addressed by eliminating the source, the Armenians. I believe something deeper is at play here that which simply transcends the Turks into the realm of human animism, which does manifest itself in times of extreme stress. Knowing what happened to Jews in Germany confirms this even more since Germans were highly cultured produced some of the best music and philosophers therefore barbarian Turks are also product of our own brand of stereotypes. It is noteworthy to mention that Armenians prospered much more under Ottoman rule then under Byzantine rule. We should not dismiss this but understand that Armenians did achieve considerable status in Ottoman Turkey and this could not happened under “barbarians”. I do not want to get into details of Armenian genocide since the picture is not complete on both directions therefore Ali should not have to defend his position and we do not have to assert ours. Ali in respect to Nairi I think you should keep the doors open for communication. If we do not air out our frustrations and grievances then we would not get anywhere.

 

Nairi jan

 

I believe good intentions produce good results. If we continue chastising Turkey indefinitely without any real results then we should change our outlook. There were some cultural exchanges between Turkish and Armenian journalists and Armenian classical orchestra was received very well there with standing ovations. I am sure there are many more examples but there needs to be much more done. Situation is very similar between Jews and Palestinians and without reduced hostilities nothing would bare fruit. The Armenian genocide is not an easy issue to tackle therefore I am in the frame mind that its value to our future should be assessed objectively and not emotionally.

Regards

[nairi]

Rubo jan,

 

When one country wants to dominate over another, nothing one does makes a difference. We could be friends with all the Turks in the world, but if Turkey is not willing to give up its lust for dominance, we are doomed regardless. As simple as that.

 

I agree that Turkey realizes it's on the losing side, however it is regaining its power faster than ever. Just look at the developments around you. ATAA didn't fall from the sky. Bahceli is NOT innocent and powerless. Turkish embassies have not become more flexible. Political prisoners in Turkey are not decreasing in numbers (here I wonder why Ali is not in prison). Like it or not, Turkey IS increasing, evolving and mastering its mind control strategies.

 

As long as Turks are made to believe that ARF is more dangerous that the Grey Wolves, Bahceli, ATAA and every other nationalist Turkish organization in the world (and there are MANY), there is nothing Armenians can say or do that will change their prejudice.

 

I won't say more, except: why don't you ask Ali to quit chastising and provoking Armenians?

 

Nairi

[aurguplu]

dear rubo,

 

i agree with most of what you say. i think one of the greatest mistakes armenians do is to portray their killers as "barbarians". here we must make relevant definitions of the concepts "barbarian" and "civilised". barbarian originally meant (in greek) someone who could not speak, who could only say bar, bar. then it was extended to mean everyone else. since all human cultures need an "other" to stress their good points (as opposed to their bad points), all cultures, especially the civilised ones, have the notion "barbarian". i take civilisation to mean cities, literate culture, monumental architecture, arts, music, philosophy, science, complex government etc. it is a very serious mistake to call a nation who fits this description "barbarian". "barbarian" most probably fits the description of the vikings, the huns, the vandals, genghis' mongols, non-settled africans, the celts and germans in caesar's time, and us when we were roaming about on horseback in central asia and not yet settled. the adjective to use there is "criminal", "atrocious" etc., but not "barbarian". "barbarian" implies reckless fits of anger with little foreplanning and afterthought. a bit haphazard, really. it appears that neither the jewish holocaust, nor the armenian genocide were haphazard. they were planned, institutionalised, and carefully executed. it takes a civilisation to do that. it is not at all surprising that it was the germans who killed the jews systematically, for apart from the will to kill them, they were perhaps the one nation with the necessary organisational, technical and intellectual capacity to identify the enemy, collect them, transport them, use them against themselves, kill them, and use their bodies to kill more of them, and justify the whole thing with racial, biological, cultural, economic, political and military theories! the armenian genocide was nowhere near this complex, but it was still an organised affair. barbarians can't do that. people with complex civilisational structures can. this was not a "barbaric" crime. it was a "civilised" one.

 

i am sorry if i hurt anyone's definition of civilisation, but unfortunately it is not - not yet - what we wish it would be. it is what it is.

 

re nairi: i have not yet received an apology from her regarding her conduct under the other thread. i keep the door open, but she'll have to do the walking if she feels so inclined, i am afraid.

[bellthecat]

Dear Ali

 

All those "reasons" you list for Turkey denying the Armenian genocide are simply not valid.

 

The only reason Turkey denies the genocide is because Turkey has always denied the genocide. Turkey was denying the genocide as far back as 1915!! With such an overwhelming history of denialist statements and publications by the Turkish state and its representatives it is nearly impossible now for that state to start saying they were all lies.

 

And it will continue to be impossible until the current ruling elites and establishments in Turkey lose their influences. This will probably never happen - unless Turkey joins the EU (and that is unlikely to happen).

 

All the "reasons" you cite are not real reasons. They are just the "filler" material that Turkey has to use to fill all their propaganda statements and literature.

 

And you can be sure more "reasons" are being concocted all the time. Take the curious theory presented (invented?) by one Erol Goka in the first issue of the Turkish propaganda periodical "Armenian Studies". He says that the Armenian genocide is mostly an invention of "western Christian countries" who are guilty about the Jewish holocaust and want to absolve their guilt by inventing another genocide to show they did not create the concept of genocide but "learnt it from the Turks".

[bellthecat]

Come on Ali! Human stereotypes are the basis of almost all Turkish humour, which is why I can laugh at it even though I don't understand most of the words.

 

More seriously, PKK suporters were called "Armenians" by Turks not because they thought they were etnically Armenian but because "Armenian" was an abusive term to call someone. Like your "arap" (Arab) equivalent for the English word "nigger".

 

And there is loads of anti Armenian (and Greek) literature produced, intended for the uneducated masses (home produced films, comic strips, etc.).

[nairi]

Dear Ali,

 

I know the Genocide was more complex than many Armenians like to make it. And I'm sorry for offending and pushing you the way I did.

 

I also sincerely apologize for all the innocent Turks who died during the Genocide or right after at the hands of Armenian vengeance. At the same time, I am very grateful for all our brave Turkish friends who saved so many of us during the most dangerous years.

 

I truly hope you can forgive me.

 

Sincerely yours,

 

Nairi

[nairi]

And "giavour".

 

Nairi

[aurguplu]

apology accepted. if i have offended, i offer mine as well.

 

we are trying to end a blood feud here, and dealing with high tempers on both sides occasionally is part of the business, i am afraid. we have to get used to it.

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

steve,

 

go learn some turkish before you say something like that, especially to a native turkish speaker who has been trained as a historian of the turkish language!

 

now your points: human sterotypes are the basis of much humour. after all, humour is cruel and uses sterotypes everywhere.

 

in turkish humuor, though, we don't have that sort of thing except the trash the the government pushes and even that is not at all taken on by the turks.

 

there is a ton of anti-greek, anti-armenian and anti this and that literature, but a lot of it is state sponsored/financed, instigated etc., because turks left on their own just don't have the cultural baggage to produce that kind of stuff. besides, the public doesn't approve of it, and several journaliss were publicly criticised for that sort of thing in their own newspapers and were made to apologise (bedri koraman was one, for instance).

 

and back to my original point, there is not a single term that i know that is - or has been - in use as a swearword for armenian. not even those who hate the armenians' guts have any other word for them other than "ermeni". there is no "nigger" in turkish relating to the armenians. very occasionally "rum" is used - and erroneously, may i add - as a derogatory term for the greeks, but since the greeks themselves used/use it for themselves, as a derogatory term it really cuts no ie, i am afraid!

 

the pkk supporters were called "armenian" not beacuse the term has abusive connotations in itself (but i get your point, to call the muslim kurds who had fought/killed armenians just nne decades ago armenians might offend them), but there were bodies of pkk members retrieved from the battlefield who had not been circumscised. as there are quite a few villages in the east who are turkish/kurdish on the surface now but are armenian in origin (and as the surrounding population knows all about it) and still speak armenian in private (and are widely believed to practice christianity), there may well be a very big grain of truth in some of it. plus do not forget that the pkk carried out joint operations against turkey with asala and other armenian groups outside turkey (and neither side denied it), and were on several occasions reported to have carried out such operations in eastern turkey (the authenticity of this i do not know, but it is of course possible). so there may very well be a grain of truth in calling at least some of these guys "armenians". i myself have seen quite a few kurdish - and turkish - pkk symphatisers who, when the conversation deepened and mutual trust established, confessed that their grandmother/grandfather was armenian. armenian grandparents are quite common in that part of turkey.

 

regarding the "arap" business: first of all, we call blacks arabs because we are a profoundly uneducated lot: your average turk cannot really tell the difference between an arab and an african, to him they are all darker even than us, they have a vague notion that there are also persians who are not arabs (to know that persians and arabs are not the same was a mark of education in my youth), and we do have as a nation the sort of prejudices that every imperial nation has: there was an irishman, a scotsman, a welshman, and an englishman type of thing.

 

the term "arap" is never used in a derogatory context, in fact we had a very popular singer esmeray who recently passed away who was the masses' beloved "arap bacı".

 

we have many things wrong with our nation, but racism european-style is not one of them, i am afraid.

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

steve,

 

1. the reasons that i have posted above are valid, as far as turks are concerned. and since i am posting them as someone who openly recognises the genocide, you may well believe that they have a least a grain of truth in it.

 

the line "turkey is denying the genocide because it has always done it" is a real non-sequitur. it's like saying the world is sitting on the back of a tortoise: when you ask what the tortoise is sitting on, you get the answer: "very clever, young man, but it's turtles all the way down".

 

of course turkey was denying the genocide as far back as 1915: this was the time they were doing it! what did you expect, talat to hold a press conference and say "listen, we are killing off the armenian nation. don't bother us now, we are busy"?

 

besides, turkey is easing the ban on genocide-related material flowing and freely circulating in turkey. it is of course producing its material on the same old lines, but the ultimate effect of this is to make people more aware of, and what is more, more inquisitive about, the whole issue, and being here, i am witnessing it on a weekly basis (during the week i just work too long hours to notice anything else).

 

and i tell you one thing: turkey is giving a clear, if not loudly pronounced message to the armenian community: we want to end the blood feud, but not at the expense of our territorial integrity (and please no more protests that roa doesn't have land claims, and the diaspora doesn't matter. the diaspora does, and they matter. to us if not to you.). understand our sensitivities and let's solve this problem.

 

and as far as the line of erol göka, it is not recent, it is at the very least twenty years old, i had heard it when i was a child, and had believed it then. by the way, even though the genocide is a fact, western - especially german - sensitivities regarding it may indeed have something to do with this. imagine: if the ag weren't there, they would be the inventors of genocide. and as we know very well, they may well be the inventors of it, since they were involved in the ag as well.

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

re "gavur" (turkish spelling)

 

yes, i had missed that one. i'm not proud of it myself (i very innocently used the term "gavuristan" referring to europe, not meaning anything bad, until my ex-fiancé banned it), but believe it or not, i know of turkish armenians who use the term "gavur" in reference to the europeans, especially in conversations with us. in turkey the use of the term (apart from being disapproved of on grounds of political correctness) is gradually shifting in use from "infidel" to "european" or actually "anyone who doesn't like us: the uk is a "dost" if it supports our eu aspirations, and germany "gavur" if it doesn't.

 

cheers,

[khodja]

For an Armenian to understand Armenian vengeance, one would have had to taste it themselves. I have tasted Armenian vengeance and I am an Armenian (if 7/8 Armenian qualifies as such). To undertand Turkish vengeance, one would have had to have tasted it themselves. I suspect that Ali, despite his family's prominence has been "jostled" by Turks due to his Oxford European perpectives.

[nairi]

We were Turkey's subjects, not Germany's. You could have stopped the Germans from helping you plan and execute a genocide.

[bellthecat]

However, British humour is mostly based on an ordinary person running into amusing situations. In Turkey it is an amusing (as a result of his/her stereotypical atitudes) person interacting with normal situations. I'm not saying one is better (or funnier!) than the other - merely pointing out that your statement that there are no stereotypes in Turkey is wrong. The racial origin of those stereotypes may not be openly stated (since everyone in Turkey is officially a "Turk") but everyone knows they are meant to be Kurds, or Laz, or Georgian, etc.

 

I was referring to privately produced stuff, comic stips in newspapers, etc, and especially Turkish home-produced films from the 70s and 80s.

 

Which reminds me, just a few weeks ago I was watching a Turkish music video in which the singer (sorry - I can't remember his name but he is very popular in Turkey) is dressed up as a caracature of a Byzantine emperor (complete with cross shaped jewelery made of sausages, etc, and containing many caracatures of Christian imagery that could be considered very insulting). I hope he was just sending up those amateurish Turkish films (there was a scene on some battlements when a jet fighter incongruously flew past).

 

You are ignorant of the truth here, maybe because you have not witnessed it at first hand. On several occasions (twice in Erzurum and once in Erzincan) I have come across Turkish fascists (they were MHP supporters who were happy to be called fascists, by the way) who refered to the PKK as Armenians for precisely the reason that I described. They were not (and they clearly explained that to me when I questioned their use of the word) refering to a real Armenian identity. The PKK are "Armenians" because they ACT like Armenians: Armenians (in MHP propaganda) killed defenseless women and children for no reason, lied all the time, were traitors to Turkey, and got what they deserved.

 

Again, this is simply not true - I cannot understand why you are denying that to call someone an Arab in Turkey can be intended as an insult and is the equivalent of "nigger". It may not be in general usage now (neither is "nigger", after all) but it was used in the recent past in that way. Didn't you say you liven in Antakya for a while - you must have seen there the racism some Turks display against Arabs.

 

The Turkish word for negro is Zenci.

 

Would that be like "Kirk Arabın aklı bir incir çekirdeğini doldurmaz".

 

Hmm ....I have obviously touched a sensitive subject here!

[aurguplu]

steve,

 

1. there are turkish stereotypes, o.k., but many strereotypes that you refer to, especially the "laz" stuff, are used by the laz themselves. we have an entire literature of laz jokes, just as there are frisian jokes in germany, breton jokes in france etc. i have a ton of karadenizli friends, quite a few of them laz, (all karadeniz is usually referred as laz whereas the real laz are concentrated in a few places) and i know most of my laz jokes from them.

 

2. the turkish word for negro is zenci. but here, i have never heard zenci used in a derogatory context. i had heard one or two times "arap" used in that context, but that's about it. also, referring to blacks these days "siyah" or "siyahi" or "afrikalı" is more common. i observe "zenci" is gradually falling out of usage. we have quite a few black sportsmen from africa, brazil etc., and they are referred to as "siyah/siyahi, afrikalı" but not "zenci". i had heard on one occasion one of those "popular" turkish singers, of whom there are a dime a dozen, whose boyfriend was one of those sportsmen, and when it hid the tabloid lines that another singer had eyes on him, she said "arabımı kimseye kaptırmam", but it is pretty obvious that there was no racism involved here!

 

3. i take your word for your experience wit the mhp guys over there re the use of the word "armenian". i have heard precisely the same from an american racist guy when i was a student at oxford, who used the term "arabs" and "iranians" in precisely the same fashion. am i to deduce from that that "arab" and "iranian" are swearwords in american english? besides as a turk i would not agree that the mhp can be representative of my nation in any way. would you like the national front guys taken to be repesentatives of britain?

 

besides, that story about the pkk that i told you about is true.

 

4. "kırk arabın aklı bir incir çekirdeğini doldurmaz" i had first heard this in its entirety guess where: at oxford from my tutor! it is true that as a nation if we are racist about anyone, these are the arabs (i am not sure that here the word was used to mean "black" rather than "arab").

 

cheers,