aurguplu Posted August 21, 2002 Report Share Posted August 21, 2002 quote:Originally posted by hagarag: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.this is not untrue. i have been jostled, but no hard feelings. after all, life is a challenge, and since we are a bunch of barbarians , i do not subscribe to "turning the other cheek", but hit back when i am hit. and since i am a bit of a sturdy guy both physically and argumentatively, i tend to have things my way. people attack you the more for it if you show the slightest sign of weakness in holding your own. cheers, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurguplu Posted August 21, 2002 Report Share Posted August 21, 2002 quote:Originally posted by nairi: quote:Originally posted by aurguplu: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,We were Turkey's subjects, not Germany's. You could have stopped the Germans from helping you plan and execute a genocide.nairi i am not shrinking from our responsibility. i am merely pointing out that these guys share some of the guilt with us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurguplu Posted August 21, 2002 Report Share Posted August 21, 2002 steve, you had touched a sensitive subject, but not the one you are thinking about. i guess no human society is completely free from some kind of racial prejudice. what i was referring to was institutionalised racism in the society's structure (as opposed to the state structures that have it). as a turk in europe i have had first hand experience of european racism (most of it in britain) even though my looks are european, i think i pretty well know how a racist mind works, an therefore i claim that the same thing is not prevalent in turkey. i regret one thing, though, i would agree with you that some form of racism is there and is on the increase, but that form is the one we have imported from the west via the movies, comic strips etc, and a mutated form of it has unfortunately been applied to kurds, maybe to the greeks and armenians (we had something against the arabs before that). it is something i deplore, but i can see the mechanics of it: the turks who experience racism in europe give it back to non-turks at least partly to eliminate their inferiority complex. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurguplu Posted August 21, 2002 Report Share Posted August 21, 2002 to everyone i see a gradual deterioration of my typing abilities in the postings, sorry. it's eithe that compaq keyboard which belongs to the garbage can or my mongol genetics which produced the fingers i have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
khodja Posted August 21, 2002 Author Report Share Posted August 21, 2002 Ali, When I have explained to some on this forum that my IBM keyboard is the cause of my spelling mistakes, they have dismissed it and implied that I am a mental midget. The cause of their ennui emanates from statements of such as my next sentence. Ali, if you have Mongol blood and therefore Mongol fingers, just look around any Armenian function and you will see the vestiges of the soldiers of Genghiz Khan. Deal with Armenians and you will find that many have the disposition of Genghiz Khan as well. The Armenian mythmakers of the 19th century dismissed any Eastern Armenian heritage, in order to comply with Western European beliefs. In truth Armenians are as much a mixture of East and West, genetically and culturally, as are the Turks. This is precisely why we can't get along. Each kettle calling the other black. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bellthecat Posted August 21, 2002 Report Share Posted August 21, 2002 quote:Originally posted by 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.Thanks Ali. All I wanted was for you to admit that there WERE racial stereotypes in Turkey, since you initialy had said there were not. quote:2. the turkish word for negro is zenci. but here, i have never heard zenci used in a derogatory context.I never said it was - after all, "negro" is not a derogatory word. quote:i had heard one or two times "arap" used in that context, but that's about it.What I was trying to say was that "Arap" used in that context has the same meaning as "nigger" in English, because Turks thought of Arabs in the same way as Europeans thought of black Africans. quote: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?Those MHP guys were not conciously using "Armenian" as a racist term! I'll try to explain - I'm trying to think of a similar usage - let's say it is like thinking "well, everyone from Crete is stupid, so lets call anyone who is stupid a cretin". (That is not a true analogy because the word "cretin" has a different origin - but I hope you get my point! Maybe Lesbos/lesbian is a better example). So, they were calling the PKK "Armenians" because Turkish state propaganda said the PKK were just a bunch of traitorous murderers who deserved nothing but death, and the section of Turkish society which these MHP guys belonged to believed all Armenians to have been just a bunch of traitorous murderers who deserved nothing but death. So for them to call the PKK "Armenians" was (given their beliefs) a natural and logical link to make. I doubt whether in making it they even considered that there was a real county called Armenia, filled with real Armenians. Actually, of the 3 persons I heard using "Armenian" in this way, only two were MHP people: a Turkish taxi driver in Erzurum and a Turkish store keeper in Erzincan. The third person was a Kurdish man working in a carpet shop in Erzurum. quote: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?Correct me if I'm wrong, Ali, but I don't think a member of the national front is deputy Prime Minister of Britain! The leader of the MHP is deputy Prime Minister of Turkey. If that is not representing Turkey then what is it? quote:besides, that story about the pkk that i told you about is true.Yes, I remember reading similar stories a few years ago - but I bet they originated as black propaganda produced by the Turkish state, similar to that well-known photo purporting to be an Armenian priest talking to PKK leaders. quote: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,[/QB]I got it from a book of Turkish proverbs! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arpa Posted August 21, 2002 Report Share Posted August 21, 2002 The Arabs are not so innocent in that respect either. They have many derogatory terms towards other people. 'Ajami means Persian in the Arabic, it has many degrading implications, among which uncivilized, savge. Although at the present they themselves only use it in the pure sense, i.e. to mean Persian, in the Turkish it is still used in not so complomentary sense. Ali will tell us all the nuances of "acemi".In the meantime, add one more to the list.Arab, Arab pis Arab. Goynu bitli pis Arab. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aurguplu Posted August 22, 2002 Report Share Posted August 22, 2002 arpa, acemi in turkish means someone who is either a novice at something, or not very good at whatever it does. like "acemi doktor hastayı öldürür" (i made that up). this is the only current usage that i can think of, and it is a great injustice to a nation that is expert at so many arts! cheers, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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