Global Voices Online, MA
Turkey is Typing¦Favorite Posts of the Week
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 @ 01:43 UTC
by Deborah Ann Dilley
Countries:Turkey
Topics: Arts & Culture, History, Entertainment
Today’s Turkey is Typing takes us through my list of favorite postings
this week: from prostitution as a cause of the holocaust, a curse or
two, culturicide, bureaucracy and carpet cleaning, a new edition of
the guide to Turkish blogs….and a startling omission about what
someone would do for love of a ‘smoking hot’ bod.
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 6² x 5² 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.
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