kemalism

Thursday, August 19, 2010
************************************
KEMALISM AND ITS FALLACIES
*************************************
The absence of the fez does not absolve the crimes committed with the presence of the fez.
Imagine the following scenario if you can:
A cold-blooded killer is arrested, tried, and pronounced guilty by a jury of his peers. When asked by the judge if he has anything to say, he replies: “How can I be guilty, your Honor, if after shooting my victim I threw my hat in the nearest trash can?”
*
The difference between East and West is that in the West reason and common sense enjoy more prestige than in the East.
The East: that's a place where after abolishing a hat they proceed to abolish not only reality but also reason itself.
*
Kemal was an alcoholic who sodomized boys and had sex with girls -- not exactly unheard of practices among his predecessors, the sultans.
Lies! Enemy propaganda! Calumnies!
But if true, in what way was he different from Catholic priests?
*
Genocide? What genocide?
It was a military victory.
Deportations and atrocities?
Collateral damage. All wars have them.
*
Armenians cannot be objective about Turks, granted.
Neither can Turks be objective about Armenians, themselves, and Kemal.
Some Catholic priests behaved like swine, true.
But as far as i know none of them is considered a role model to future generations. Their pictures don't hang in classrooms and government offices.
No monuments have been erected to them in public squares.
None of them rewrote history.
None of them ever dared to think that by discarding their biretta or, for that matter, their cassock, they could declare themselves beyond the reach of the law.
None of them entertained the absurd notion that discarding a ridiculous item from one's wardrobe had the magic power of changing one's moral values, character, and identity.
None of them would dream of calling Kurds “mountain Turks,” Armenians “Christian Turks,” and Hittites “proto-Turks.”
None of them has ever been called or will ever be recognized as the “father” of a nation.
#
Friday, August 20, 2010
************************************
ON CRITICISM AND PROPAGANDA
***********************************************
Between propaganda that flatters and criticism that exposes contradictions, the unthinking masses will always choose propaganda.
*
The Nazis asserted racial superiority to cover up their moral inferiority.
In propaganda always search for the failing that it attempts to hide.
The propaganda of the brainless will assert superior intelligence, and the propaganda of the barbarian a superior brand of civilization.
*
Our convictions are formed more by the heart and less by the head.
Prejudices are all guts and no brain.
*
Armenians and Turks spend too much time criticizing others and very little time criticizing themselves. Narcissism is in, objective judgment out. Hence one thousand speechifiers and not a single philosopher.
*
If we don't understand one another it may be because we don't understand ourselves; and the more exposed we are to propaganda the less we understand ourselves.
*
Propaganda raises a wall between us and reality. Its unspoken goal is to convince us that the aim of life is to kill and die in defense of charlatans who place their own powers and privileges above our own life and limbs.
#
Saturday, August 21, 2010
************************************
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
***********************************************
When I was young I thought I had all the answers.
I know now that I don't even have the questions.
*
Fanatics would rather shoot the messenger
than understand the message.
*
To divide is bad enough,
but to divide in the name of a religion
that asserts “all men are brothers”
is the height of perversion.
*
It is not that I no longer believe in what politicians say,
I question the sanity of those who do.
*
Some of our patriots should be reminded once in a while
that patriotism and civility are not mutually exclusive concepts.
*
To speak the truth means to contradict
one Big Lie,
a hundred small lies,
and a thousand liars.
*
What is censorship
if not fear of being exposed
as a fool, a dupe, and a liar?
#