Adampol (aka Polonezkoy) an moribund ethnographic zoo in Turkey and Nazim Hikmet vs. Ataturk's police state

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Mar 3, 2012 at 08:10

>You can visit Polonez Koy,polish village in Turkish,near Istanbul,a pleasant resort.<

The example of Adampol ( the name forcibly changed to 'Polonezkoy' by Kemal as it sounded to Greek ;) you quote proves exactly the opposite to your big-mouthed claim! I have already exposed this Turkish lie while dealing with another brainwashed Turk like you. You Turks are all alike a thoughtless mob. See here . In case you're too lazy to go there the story behind this dying ethnographic zoo is as follows :

The Turk I referred to said :

>4-Please read the story of POLONEZKÖY in istanbul .Yes it is a live polon city in istanbul.!!<

To which I replied :

" Rather an ethnographic zoo , I'd say, to attract the mass tourist and get some political and propaganda advantages from. The Turks like showing off before the naive world how 'multicultural' and 'modern' they are. They like impressing ignorant foreign vistors from both the West and the East. So everybody gets what he wants to see. The Moslems from dar al-Islam see a totally islamized Turkey. The Westerners are told about their favourites - scularism and cultural variety as exemplified by a few ethnographic zoos here and there. Zoos, contrary to the real care for species variety don't cost much, change nothing in the Turkish monoculture but make many powerful people deflect their attention from the real problems of cultural poverty, monotony and intellectual conformism of Turks due to the compund and deadly impact of Kemalism and Islam.

In short, examples like that of Polonezköy remind me of someone showing a pair of polar bears in an African zoo and trying to persuade the visitors that polar bears belong to the natural fauna of Africa.

Turks advertize cunningly places like Polonezköy and this is not the only ethnic zoo they have had for that purpose. Until 1962 they had a Russian village Kazakköy near Lake Mainos (not far from Banderma). Now thanks to the 1939 French-Turkish treaty concerning Alexanfrette they have even one Armenian village - Vakıflı Köyü. What a wealth of cultures ! Why not use this as another brilliant argument against Turkey's involvement in the "so called" Armenian genocide ?

When one reads the Turkish advertisement site on Polonezköy you have submitted all looks so fine and happy. Paradise-like nature, smiling faces, "great" history. One is even tempted to shout "Ne mutlu lehim diyene"!!!... It's only when one looks closer at that 'idyll' of a 'Polish city" in Instanbul that things stop looking so optimistic and rosy. 1000 people with mostly Turkish names and hardly a hundred Polish persons. Out of that dwindling number only c. 40 are able to speak Polish and admit their Polish origin , in private conversations complaining that the era of Polish Polonezköy is coming rapidly to an end. Turkification has made tremendous progress. Both administrative measures and economic necessity sped it up. The very name of the village 'Adampol' (from the founder of the village Prince Adam Czartoryski) was forcibly changed to Polonezköy. The inhabitants were forced in 1938 to accept Turkish citizenship or face dire consequences including expulsion. And many migrated indeed so that in the 60-ies only 35 persons lived there. The right to own their land was given to them only around 1968. But soon the land was bought up by very richTurks who are now the overwhelming majority in the village where also the Indian consul has his estate. So a mosque was built in due course in Polonezköy and Islam is the dominating religion in this allegedly 'Polish' village. In the Polish restaurants pork has been recently banned "Because we don't want to scare off our Turkish customers" - a son of the owner confessed. One remembers that pigs were once kept there - as is usual in Poland - but no one does it any longer not to anger potent Moslem neighbours. Prosperity came when the bridges across the Bosphorus and a road to the village were built and rich Turks appeared in the vicinity constructing bungalows and palaces. Prices went up dramatically and are exorbitant. Despite the obvious fact that Poles are a tiny minority here " Polishness" of Polonezköy is being boastfully advertised and sold abroad to uncritical public to attract more and more tourists and improve Turkish dismal image as the classical and grim oppressor of minorities."

I also addressed another popular outrageous lie you spread about the Ottoman system in a comment "Wounds which a mentally sterile Asiatic horde inflicted on Chritsian civilization still bleed after 500 years" which alas hasn't been published yet, even though other comments of mine, even later, have.

> Our great poet Nazim Hikmets ancestor was one such Polish patriot who had found asylum in the ottoman lands<

Should I be more stunned by your ignorance or bragging? What you call 'our great poet" was a great enemy of Kemalist Turkey in which he spent 17 years in different dungeons. He was sentenced by 10 different courts of justice -starting with the notorious "courts of independence" - under charges of "treason", "subversive activities", "belonging to illegal organizations","attempts to overthrow the constitutional system of Turkey" etc. etc. He was not allowed to work in his profession. His books were regularly confiscated and censored, his newspapers closed down by Kemalist authorities! He defended in his poems the cause of the Kurdish struggle against Kemalist hangmen. He was deprived of the Turkish citizenship, his books were put on index or and people who read or spread them were persecuted, imprisoned and the very mention of him was a criminal offence !

He was a great communist and a member not only of the banned Communist Party of Turkey but also of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. While Turkey banned and jailed him, Russia gave him freedom and hope. He translated Lenin and Tolstoy into Turkish. He befriended the most outstanding Russian and Western intellectuals. After losing his Turkish citizenship he received Polish citizenship under the name Bożecki. He is buried in Moscow in the Novodeviche Cemetery as an honored personality with many Soviet and international awards and not a single Turkish one ! What he experienced In Kemalist Turkey - the land of imams, militarists, nasty opportunists and thugs - was spying, prison, persecution and humiliation!

Nowadays Turkey may have restored his citizenship and called him "our great poet". But she forgets to mention that he was as intransigently hostile to the oppressive Kemalist police state as he would be to its malignant mutation of today and that in today's Turkey not a different fate would await him as under Ataturk - harassment, provocations, humiliations,long prison sentences under similar charges as in the 20-ies and 30-ies, and probably a hired murderer to avoid the embarrassments and scandals of Hikmet's life and activities in exile !

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