Turkey is Typing…Favorite Posts of the Week

Today feels like a random day, so you will get a random posting with all of the Turkish posts this week that tickled my fancy.

The Cause of the Holocaust

Me and Others writes this week about how the fabled quote from Hitler “After all, who remembers the Armenians” is used over and over as a justification of the Jewish Holocaust during World War II, and how it has been used by Armenian activists to vilify the Turks. Of course, there could be other causes…such as a Jewish prostitute:

but i have some bad news for those who want to blame the bad turks for the nazi crimes. here is an article for you which says “hitlers holocaust might have stemmed from syphillis from a jewish prostitute.” so it must be not the turks but a jewish prostitude who is behind the most evil crimes of the modern times.

honestly, i dont believe either of the theories have anything to do with the realities. such a big evildoing cannot be simply explained by one single culprit reason. there are library full of documents trying to investigate and fully understand the holocaust, and just simply blaming the turks or a misfortunate jewish girl, or even hitler himself will not do it.

Curse of the Turk

Two more posts this week about Turkishness. One from Hans at Internations Musings detailing the Curse of Turan:

The Curse of Turan (Hungarian: Turáni átok) is a popular belief that Hungarians have been under the influence of a malicious spell for many centuries. The “curse” manifests itself as inner strife, pessimism, misfortune and several historic catastrophes. The first disaster was the invasion by the Mongols, and the second the invasion by the Ottomans, Battle of Mohács in 1526.

The second post is more about the curse of fame….or rather how to obtain it as Talk Turkey illustrates:

I write this post as a response to the Turkish girl who keeps emailing me about becoming a star in Hollywood. You don't become a star, you start out as one, unless of course your ‘star’ alignment happens to be in the right place at the right time. Try the Turkish market first. I am sure they'll eat you alive as an American Turk discovering her roots. Great story line as the gullible gal falling victim to the preying men and her battle to overcome the emotions of girl meets boy, boy marries girl, and girl finds out he is a Kurd? Some ethnic intricacies played out.

Clash of Culture

Spooky Sense by Garfucius writes of the treatment by Turkish officials of archaeological finds:

culturicide? just a couple days ago, an ancient harbor was reported discovered during the construction of a tunnel for the subterranean train in yenikapı, with remains of byzantine boats and other archaeological artifacts. true to type, the finds will be collected and taken to the museum and the construction of the tunnel will continue as planned, apparently, over the ruins of the antique harbor.

Carpetblogger writes about the trials of Turkish bureaucracy-a wonderful primer for trying to survive it in Turkey- and about the trials of getting your carpets cleaned:

The likelihood an elective activity like carpetwashing gets done is inversely proportional to the number of linguistic and logistical obstacles that stand in its way. Not only must I identify a qualified carpet cleaning professional, that person has to come get the carpets. Furthermore, moving stinky carpets around is a royal pain in the ass any time of the year, more so when it is 100 degrees and you are on your own. These are all significant obstacles.

On the other hand, I have carpetdogs, so my carpets are pretty damn dirty. Smelly too. That workhorse 6′ x 5′ Dagestan sumac that was in the dining room in Baku and Kyiv absorbed prodigious amounts of food and alcohol from Sunday dinners and parties. These factors make carpetwashing less elective and more imperative.

Most importantly, however, if you're moving into a new apartment with Ottoman-era wood floors that appear to be designed for your favorite carpets (or, looking at it another way, if you made your second real estate purchase based on how good your carpets will look), you cannot have dirty carpets.

So what to do?

One thing you'll notice about Istanbul is that there are a lot of carwashes. Because Turks are enterprising, rare is the carwash that is only used for washing cars. For example, because they can be hosed down, carwashes are ideal places for a bayram sacrifice — a ritual slaughter of sheep and cows and a right bloody mess. More frequently, however, carwash guys are as likely to be aiming their high pressure hoses and soap brushes at carpets hanging from wires as Anadolu sedans.

Guide to Turkish Blogs

Dear Murat from Amerikan Turk has given another guide to the Turkish blogs…I recommend just following the link over there and seeing it for yourself. He does a much better job than I.

And Lastly, My Newest Addiction

Chronicles of a Turkish Girl is my newest soap opera and it should be yours too (in fact it might outweigh my addiction to Lonelygirl15…it's that good). This month she confesses to being interested in Christianity just to date her “smoking hot” abs instructor:

Yup, pretty soon I was going to church with him where I looked like a fish out of water. I couldn't follow which page they were on in the Bible during the sermons, but it didn't matter; I was sitting next to this hot guy. Shallow would be the perfect word to describe me. As I sat in a house of worship with him, my mind was having the most impure thoughts you can possibly imagine.

It wasn't long before I realized that his sole interest in me was to convert me. After awhile, I got tired of hearing about how much Jesus loves me. He also went onto to say that he could never be with a woman who did not not accept Jesus as the son of God. This “relationship” was going nowhere fast. I needed to end it and tell him that I would not convert AND that I do not subscribe to any organized religion.

5 comments

  • The International community and press are turning a blind eye to Turkey’s continuing bombardment of Kurdistan, as is it seems, Global Voices.

    Big events are happening in Turkey at the moment which are not reflected here.

    Surely this should be a forum for issues/voices that do not get the coverage in the mainstream media.

    Anybody who wishes to keep uptodate with fast moving political events in Turkey may do so at my blog:

    http://hevallo.blogspot.com

  • Kaan

    Re: The Cause of the Holocaust
    It always amazes how people could buy such tripe about Armenian massacres leading to the Jewish Holocaust. It’s insulting especially given that thousands of Armenians fought as Aryans with the Nazi SS forces in the Caucusus.

    Re: Curse of the Turk
    Ha, ha – that is funny:)

    Re: Clash of Culture
    Yes ancient ruins should to the greatest extent possible, be protected. But anyone who has ever been to Turkey knows that not only is it a poor country, it also suffers from ABR syndrome – Another Bloody Ruin. A balance must be sought between development and ruins, and increasingly smart developers realize the benefit of doing so.

  • Mental Notes from a Feisty Turkish Girl

  • Oh yes, turks blames armenians that they were nazis, what a propaganda!! Firstly Turkey abstracted in 1943 from the 20 000 turkish-jews, who lived in europe, their turkish citizenship, so Hitler was able to put them into the KZ in Buchenheim and secondly turkey and Nazi-Germany agreed, that turkey will turn the last turkish jews over to nazi-germany. But this never happened, because germany lose the war in 1945.

    The original agreement-paper is exposed in germany in “Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz”.

    The so called turkish heroism behalf jews in WW 2 is nothing more than PROPAGANDA and a big LIE!!!

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