5 years for a Turk to learn .

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Dec 10, 2009 at 14:29

Hi, Michael!

You write to Havas with whom I've recently had a highly dubious pleasure to chat

> So I would like to hear you ONLY, OK? ONLY after five years...<

I am afraid you largely overestimate his ability to learn and adapt his behaviour to objective knowledge. It's something a Turk is hardly capable of. Neither Kemal nor his Ottoman predecessors designed a Turk to work this rational way. Quite the opposite! First, most of the books mentioned by you seem to be unavailable in any public Turkish library.Turkey is a police state with rigid and extensive censorship that persecutes un-PC books and authors, criminalizes dissident opinions. And Turks are all nasty conformists. Second, no one can outwit history.There is too much Ottoman mindset, longings and habits in every Turk to believe in a miracle called Turkish Enlightenment. It's worthwhile to remember what von Trietschke wrote on the vicious Turkish ways and their 'achievements' : (Turkey and the Great Nations p. 20/ 21) :

" But where are the traces of the civilizing work of the Turks themselves? What remained in Hungary
after the long one hundred and fifty years during which the Pashas dwelt on the Koenigsburg at Buda? A few crude mutilations of beautiful Christian churches and the warm baths of Ofen. What now reminds one of the domination of the Crescent in Greece? Hardly anything but the ruins of destroyed Christian
habitations. The ruination of the system of government did not consist in the brutal outrages of
individual magnates because the impaling and drowning in sacks, the violating and pillaging, and
similar amusements customary to the country, did not, according to Oriental standard, happen too
frequently but in that indescribable intellectual laziness, in that profound slumber of the soul,
which was always peculiar to the Osmans even in the days of their warlike greatness, and caused
them to appear as barbarians even in the eyes of the Arabs. Just as the Turk truly loves only\
three vocations, the career of a soldier, an official, or a priest, his State has never shown any understanding of art or science or commerce."

So even if you gave a Turk 50 years to learn the most rudimentary things about himself and his dysfunctional country and ghoulish history, you should never be too optimistic about the results. Turkey stands and falls with ignorance and self-delusions of its subjects and terror against those that dare expose it.

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