69 million page views

The Turks

Reader comment on item: [Turkey-Israel and] The Real "New Middle East"
in response to reader comment: a former muslim from Turkey loves Turkey but asks you to be careful of feeding a young wolf....

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Jan 18, 2009 at 07:36

Thank you B and indeed very interesting analysis.

You must pardon me but I always felt that the Turks must be the most confused people in the world. Here we have a country that was built on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire. I suspect that those Turks that came from central Asia are a minority and present day so called pious Turks are no more than the decendants of the Greeks and the Armenians and the Syrians that were brutalized by the Turks and their agents the Janissaries. Those Turks that invaded the Byzantine Empire opted for an Arab religion further distancing themselves from their ethnic and religious and linguistic roots. I cannot prove it but I really do beleive that part of the confusion of the Turks stems from the fact that they are very insecure about who they are and they become very defensive when confornted with their bloody past.

I always wondered why did the Turks convert to islam and why did many of their vicitms be it Armenians or Greeks or Syrians convert to islam and abandoned their own languages be it Greek or Armenian or Syriac when we should have excepted to see the Turkish invaders converting to Christianity and become Greek or Armenian or even Syriac speakers but I would leave the answer to such question to those historians that study the history of Turkey

It is interesting to see that the Turkish state now is after the Kurds. The Kurds in Turkey helped the Ottomans in their crime of Genocide against the Armenians and the Syrians (read this as Christians) but now the Turks are turning against their own old allies

What is most amazing is that the Turks did not leave any legacy of their years of imperialism when they occupied the Levant and Egypt. The people of the Middle East never indentified themselves with either Turkey or with the Turkish language in the same manner that they embraced the Arabs that invaded the Middle East in 633CE and adopted their language and religion Islam as their own after all if you speak the language of Allah and follow the religion of Allah why would you wish to even learn Turkish or believe that those Turks that do not even speak any Arabic can represent you. And indeed the prople of the Middle east were happy to see the Turks defeated and pushed back to where they came from and no one shed any tears, Islamists included and the likes of Hasan el-Bana, about the Turkish Khalifa being out of a job

Again I suspect that self hate might be part of the reason for such crimes as the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of more than 1M Greeks from Asia minor in 1922 and the massacre of the Greeks and Armenians in Constantinople in 1963

As for the friendship of the Turks with israel I suspect that the Truks believed that the "Jewish lobby" in the US would help them to buy arms and give them some legitimacy in the West and may be put the good word so they can join the EU

Now as per NPR it seems that Tukrey is demanding that Israel be expelled from the UN because of their recent attack on Gaza in self defense! Now compare this with the bloody past of Turkey and I incldue here the Armenian Genocide that Turkey still does not acknowledge and if a nation should be kicked out of the UN then it must be Turkey.

As for the EU: If Turkey is to join the EU then I suspect that the vicitms of the Turks, Armenians and Greeks, will line up demanding to address the past crimes of the Turks against them and the Turks will have to face their past crimes once and for all

Thank you again

Submitting....

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".

Submit a comment on this item

<< Previous Comment      Next Comment >>

Reader comments (16) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
Turkey - Changing sides [65 words]Jaws7Nov 14, 2011 02:27190902
What shall we call the soup that´s cooking with so many ingredients? [139 words]Isaac HaskiyaJun 17, 2009 09:07157527
Israel-Turkey alliance was sold as geopoltical fruit of the Oslo Accords [37 words]Pez DispenserJun 10, 2009 17:56157155
Israel verses Turks and Syrians [126 words]Tess mcNamara (Australian and passionate Zionist)May 12, 2009 09:12155282
Turkey changing sides [209 words]Debanjan BanerjeeMay 11, 2009 21:19155255
Turkey's Strategic Position [151 words]Doug CharackyMay 25, 2009 20:27155255
Axis of Islamist antisemitism [111 words]yuval Brandstetter MDJan 20, 2009 01:37148487
turkey is changing sides because of Bush politics [371 words]havasJan 19, 2009 16:17148438
Re Turkey switches sides [228 words]Tess McNamaraJan 19, 2009 02:11148392
The other face of Turkey [60 words]UgriJan 18, 2009 01:32148325
Bird's eye on the in-field and a glance at the outfield [591 words]Frank AdamJul 19, 2007 05:26104044
a former muslim from Turkey loves Turkey but asks you to be careful of feeding a young wolf.... [1102 words]BOct 4, 2006 11:1058899
The Turks [643 words]dhimmi no moreJan 18, 2009 07:3658899
YOU ARE NOT A TURK [8 words]havasJan 19, 2009 15:3758899
Khoj-Ahmed Noukhaev [129 words]Mark SedgwickDec 13, 2005 03:0129853
Very Interesting [26 words]DeniseMar 3, 2003 22:187026

Follow Daniel Pipes

Facebook   Twitter   RSS   Join Mailing List

All materials by Daniel Pipes on this site: © 1968-2024 Daniel Pipes. daniel.pipes@gmail.com and @DanielPipes

Support Daniel Pipes' work with a tax-deductible donation to the Middle East Forum.Daniel J. Pipes

(The MEF is a publicly supported, nonprofit organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Contributions are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Tax-ID 23-774-9796, approved Apr. 27, 1998.

For more information, view our IRS letter of determination.)