Ottomans to Modern Turkey

[Kharpert]

There is a popular claim on these forums that Ottoman Turkey is completely unrelated to Modern Turkey. Such is not the case. Indeed, they are by no means identical to each other, and one could argue they are completely different. But in spite of all this, it remains true that Modern Turkey is descended from Ottoman Turkey, in several aspects. Ergo, Modern Turkey cannot ignore its immediate past in the 20th century; it has to address them somehow.

Modern Turkey is the creation of Mustafa Kemal.

Simply put, Modern Turkey descended from the reforms of Mustafa Kemal (1881-1938), who has been considered the father of the revolutionized Turkey. His reforms are what define most of Turkey today. Mustafa Kemal was also a member of the Young Turks, the government responsible for the planning of the Armenian Genocide. Kemal instigated some very helpful reforms, but there was one thing on his agenda not addressed: Turkish racial purity. His government once boasted a 99.7% Turkish racial purity (which he achieved by killing half the Kurds and renaming the other half "Mountain Turks".) I don't accuse Turkey of continuing this policy, they just deny that such an objective was ever on thier historical agenda.

Turkey has certainly progressed since the Ottoman empire, but Turkey has a responsibility for its actions. The German government today is definitely not dominated by Nazis, but they still carry the responsibility of offering reparations to Jews. Whether it was the action of a past authority or not, Turkey cannot completely ignore its past as irrelevant. It needs to address its past, debate the truth of the history, and take action accordingly, not bury its past in a history book.

[neutral]

Kemal instigated some very helpful reforms, but there was one thing on his agenda not addressed: Turkish racial purity. His government once boasted a 99.7% Turkish racial purity (which he achieved by killing half the Kurds and renaming the other half "Mountain Turks".) I don't accuse Turkey of continuing this policy, they just deny that such an objective was ever on thier historical agenda.

Why must you LIE no kurd has even ever made the claim that half of them have been killed. There is absolutely not a single shred of evidence to suggest this 'event' ever happened. It appears that you are just spreading lies about Turkey.

I have to say that your actions are irresponsible, disgraceful and I'm glad to say exposed.

[Kharpert]

Perhaps you misunderstood. To stem the flow of Kurdish nationalism, Ataturk banned Kurdish language and publications. There were considerable hangings of Kurds, but it certainly doesn't account for the figures. However, 700,000 Kurds were evacuated by Kemalists in the winter, of which about 400,000 perished. Thus, half killed, half renamed Mountain Turks.

Enjoy this PBS article

[neutral]

Perhaps you misunderstood. To stem the flow of Kurdish nationalism, Ataturk banned Kurdish language and publications. There were considerable hangings of Kurds, but it certainly doesn't account for the figures. However, 700,000 Kurds were evacuated by Kemalists in the winter, of which about 400,000 perished. Thus, half killed, half renamed Mountain Turks.

Enjoy this PBS article

OK I accept that.

But this is crazy.

[neutral]

Kharpert next time I suggest you dont use misleading sentences. I mean if I hadn't spotted that people might have thought you meant half of all Kurds.

[Kharpert]

I apologize. I'll be more clear next time.

[Kemalist]

And i want to add that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's one of the adopted son was Kurdish. Kurds and Turks created Turkey together. The powers which seperated Turks and Armenians is trying to do the same with Kurds.

[Kharpert]

What power would that be?

[Gavur]

Mustafa Kemal Atajoke

http://www.armeniancafe.com/?ArmeniaDiaspora.com Azgaser
A complementary approach was found fortuitously the following year. Mustafa Kemal was shown a paper sent in by a Dr Hermann Kvergic of Vienna who argued that all languages derived from exclamations made by primitive man as he contemplated nature, and that the originals sounds so uttered were embedded in Turkish. With Mustafa Kemal's enthusiastic support, thus unprovable hypothesis was developed into the Sun-Language Theory (Gunes Dili Teorisi), named thus because 'it is among us Turks that, in the journey of history, the inspiration of the Sun has left its most abundant marks. The Turkish race found its culture in a place where the Sun was most beneficent. When the Turks were forced to move out of their first homeland, the Sun served as their guide along their paths of migration'.

The Sun-Language Theory, like the Turkish history thesis, was a wayward product of rationalism: of nineteenth-century theories about 'the great migration of peoples', applied first to the Indo-Europeans and now transposed to the Turks; of animism as the origin of religion ('The Turk worships only nature', Mustafa Kemal told a German journalist in 1929); of the Marxist theory (developed by Nikolay Marr, who visited Turkey) that language was part of the 'superstructure' determined by the economic 'infrastructure' of society. Mustafa Kemal's wishful thinking shaped the conclusion that the Turks, as Sun-worshippers par excellence, were also the originators of language. It was a convenient conclusion. If all languages derived from Turkish, the Turks were only getting their own back when they borrowed words from other languages, and, particularly, from the languages of civilized Western peoples. Sycophants fell over each other in their enthusiasm for the Sun-Language Theory. Mustafa Kemal was convinced, and ordered that the theory should be taught at the new university in Ankara. He told a young French financial expert, Hervé Alphand, that his name was Turkish as it comprised the words alp (champion), and han (or khan, a ruler). In confirmation, Mustafa Kemal felt Alphand's skull: it was, he decided, brachycephalic, the characteristic skull-shape of the Turkish race.

At the third congress of the Turkish Language Society, in 1936, foreign linguists damned the Sun-Language Theory with their silence. But Mustafa Kemal was not deflected, and he pursued to the end of his life the campaign to derive from Turkish roots foreign words which had entered the language. The Sun-Language Theory is remembered today by an absurd example: the derivation of the name of the river Amazon from the Turkish words ama ('but' - the word is in fact of Arabic origin) and uzun ('long'), on the grounds that the first migrants to South America, who were, of course, Turkish-speaking, exclaimed on seeing the river, 'But (isn't it) long!' A library attendant, whose job it was to dust the shelves, was allowed to publish his contribution to Turkish etymology. One of Ataturk's linguistic advisers was to say in his memoirs that this was a joke. In fact the whole of the the Sun-Language Theory became a joke, and it was laid to rest quietly when Ataturk died.

Andrew Mango: Ataturk - The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey. Part V: Unrivalled Ruler. Chapter 27: Last Battles. p. 495-496.afe.com/?ArmeniaDiaspora.com
Azgaser

[Kharpert]

Wow!