Author: Aylin D. Miller

Origins of Ak & Kara

In Turkish, what’s the difference between ak/kara and siyah/beyaz? What is their origin? How can they be used?

Siyah (black),

Beyaz (white),

Mavi (Blue),

are not original Turkish words.

Turkish originals were/are:

Black: Kara

White: Ak

Blue: Gök

Foreign loanwords exclusively used to mean colors, nothing else.

Turkish words can be used as adjectives, to define color, but also to give meaning other than colors.

“Black Friday” can be translated only as “Kara Cuma”, but not “Siyah Cuma”.

Because the “black” in “Black Friday” is not related with color.

Original Turkish words have deep meanings, probably loanwords also have deep meanings in their respective languages, but they are exclusively used for colors in Turkish.

Turkish original words have deeper meaning and meaningful connection with other words.

*

For example:

Blue: Gök

Gök also means Sky, because sky is blue. Gök also means “heavens”, because “skies” are “heavens”.

(Even I can claim that, in Western and especially in Hollywood film culture it is believed that “dead people goes to heaven as stars” has its roots in Turkic/Hunnic culture. Because in Turkic belief , “uçmak” (to fly away) is used, to say somebody is passed away. You can fly into sky, not into ground. I don’t know if there is not such belief in Semitic/Indian/Aryan/Greek culture. There is “underworld” in these cultures)

*

Green: Yeşil

The word for “Green” in Turkish (YEŞİL) is a miraculous word. If linguists and scientists tried to devise/produce a word, which connects “Green”, “Water”, “Life”, “to Live” “Greenary” “Spring/Summer” and “Age (length of “life”)”, they could not devise a better word.

Old form of YEŞİL: YAŞIL (Green)

(Following this pattern: Replacing the original back vowels with front vowels

Çak-ıç => Çek-iç “hammer”

Yaş-ıl => Yeş-il “green”)

Yaş: means “moisturized”/”watered”/”watery”/”wet”.

Green is YAŞIL/YEŞİL, literal meaning “watery, watered, with water”

Can we think of a “natural green” without water? Absolutely no.

Can we think of life, without water? Absolutely no.

In Turkish, the words for “Water (YAŞ/SU)”, “Green (YEŞİL)” and “Life (YAŞAM)” has same root.

YAŞA-MAK and YAŞAM: to Live and Life. These words also comes from “water” and therefore related with YEŞİL/green. How meaningful and wonderful connection. Without water, no life can exist. Without water we cannot live, we cannot “stay green/alive”. Any space exploration today looking for life in other planets directly looks for the existence of water. Therefore water-life-green connection in Turkish looks so miraculous.

And then comes, “age/yaş” (lenght of LIFE). In Turkish, this word also related with “Water (YAŞ/SU)”, “Green (YEŞİL)” and “Life (YAŞAM)” . In Anatolian Turkish, the connection between “Age/yaş” and “green” is forgotten.

However, age/yaş and green/yeşil is closely related in other Turkish/Turkic languages.

We ask this question to learn the age of something :

“How old are you” (Kaç yaşındasın) ?

In some Turkic languages, question is asked this way, the original way:

“How many green (season) have you seen? (Kaç yaş/yaz gördün?)”

In the ancient Turkic culture the age of something/someone was calculated based on how many times they had seen “green season”, which is “yaz”.

So we see, colors reveal lots of things in original language.Green (yeşil) in Turkish is not just a color name, but it has deep connection with water (su, yaş, ıslak/sulak), life (yaşam, greenary), age (yaş) and summer (yaz). They have same root in Turkish.

Think of a desert. When you see an oasis, a “green (yeşil)” area in the desert, you automatically know that there is “water (yaş/su)” in that place, and there is “life (yaşam)” in that place.

I am not aware of any other language, in which all these words “Water (YAŞ/SU)”, “Green (YEŞİL)” and “to live (YAŞA-MAK), “Life (YAŞAM)”, “Summer (YAZ)”, and “age -length of life (YAŞ)” are all related to each other.

—-

Note-1: Turkish proper name “Yaşar”, if written with today’s Anatolian Turkish phonology, would be written as “Yeşer”, because of the vowel shift like in yaşıl to yeşil. Because the name Yaşar was given to scrawny, weak babies as a desire/praying by parents for the baby “to live,to get green”.

Note-2: Word for summer (yaz) also meant “spring” in old Turkish. “Bahar” is a Persian loanword. Probably Ancient Turkics were living in colder regions of the world and they only had 2 seasons, “yaz/summer/green season and kış/winter/non-green season, not 4 seasons)

The connection between “yaş” and “yaz”: In Northern Branch of Turkic languages, Kıpçak/Kipchak (Kazakh, Kyrgyz) some sound shifts happened. Therefore some basic pronunciation difference arose with Southern and Western (Chaghatay and Oghuz) Turkish. However, there were not strict lines between these dialects. Words with new meaning/concepts are borrowed from each other along with new pronounciation)

Western : Kipchak

Baş: bas

Yaş: yas/yaz

Kış: kıs

Beş: bes

Yüz: jüz (this one lives in Anatolia only in informal pronounciation of numbers ending in ş/ç letters, beş-jüz:500, üç-cüz:300)

Saç: saş

Mehmet Uçar

March 13, 2023
Atatürk and Modern Turkiye

Dear Friends,

Those of you who may be interested in about foundation of Republic of Turkey and her founder, I found this link quite a good one.

Please clink on the link below.

Regretfully, the closing part is shadowed with the tall Armenian lie!

There has never been the number of Armenians claimed to have lost their lives as the very well kept consensus and the Ottoman registry office rules out these lies!

There are more than enough documentation and publication from the US, GB, French and German archives!

Mustafa Atac

March 5, 2023
US F-35 shows off its insane vertical takeoff capability

US F-35 shows off its insane vertical takeoff capability

F-35B

Can land vertically like a helicopter and take-off in very short distances. This allows it to operate from austere, short-field bases and a range of air-capable ships. The F-35B is operated by the United States Marine Corps, the United Kingdom, and the Italian Air Force.

March 2, 2023
Why does Turkey have a variety of tanks?

Why does Turkey have a variety of tanks? What is the purpose of each type of tank?

Turkey has such a vast array of Cold War (and later eras as well) tanks because they figured out that upgrading existing machines is cheaper than buying new ones. Their M48s, M60s, and Leopard 1s are certainly not the best tanks in the world by any means, however they work just fine in supporting infantry on the low intensity battlefields of the Middle East.

The M48 Pattons of the Turkish army are upgraded with night vision equipment, an improved engine, and a better fire control system. Some are equipped with ERA, I believe.

The Leopard 1A5s of the Turkish Army also have an improved FCS, but no armor upgrades to speak of (unlike Canadian Leo 1s, which had composite armor upgrades).

The M60s of the Turkish Army are unrecognizable from their original form. This is what they looked like when Turkey bought them

This is what they look like now.

The M60 Sabra has a 120mm gun, ERA, composite armor inserts, improved optics and FCS, more powerful engine, and an internal mortar for some reason!

Expensive upgrade, but cheaper than buying new tanks. That being said, Turkey is developing its own tanks, like the Altay, which will be their most modern MBT. When the Altay enters service, the Leopard 2A4s and M60s will replace the M48s and Leo 1s as the second string tanks of the Turkish army (most likely).

Ryan Perry

February 26, 2023
Ruins of Turkey

The British travel writer Mark Sykes (of Sykes-Picot), a great fan of the Turks, spent years travelling through the hinterland of Turkey in Asia. Here is a piece he wrote a century ago on the public works on the road from Diyarbekir to Mardin, in what is now southern Turkey.

The road is a good example of the impressionist style of engineering, in which the (Turkish Government’s long distance roads) excel. The artistic way in which a bridge is suggested by five stones in the middle of a river, the subtle insinuation of a made road by ten yards of pavement in the centre of a boundless plain, the carefully considered gradients which exist on the gentle slopes and are conspicuous by their absence on the steep hills cannot fail to fill the observer with admiration for the ingeniousness of the designers and workmen.

(end of sarcasm:) The inhabitants (of Mardin) are among the cleverest masons in Turkey: every house of consequence is not only well built, but nobly designed and delicately ornamented, the architects being common workmen, uneducated and poor… It is strange that an ignorant peasant should be able to conceive original plans, and intuitively to know the exact amount of ornamentation required to beautify without overloading. Yet the artistic masons of Mardin by no means fulfil the Ruskin ideal, for on being questioned they stated that they not only detested the work, but would willingly undertake any other kind of business if they could.

(in the Jezira:) We passed several ruined villages, and it would be as well here to notice that ruined villages in Turkey in Asia do not necessarily mean a state of things worse than when those villages were inhabited. Murray’s ‘Handbook to Syria’ (1858) says, with a throb in its voice, ‘Syria is a land of ruins, and its ruins are increasing every day.’ Of course they are; but the handbook does not explain that people in Turkey, especially Kurd and Arab, in whom the nomadic instinct still remains, will move off on the very slightest pretext and build another collection of huts two miles farther on… in Syria every stone has an interest, every hill has been trodden into paths, man has left his marks on every rock; the very caverns are inhabited by troglodytes; and every stage of early society is to be seen—the cave-dweller, the villager, the townsman… The road from Damascus to Aleppo has seen nations rise and fall, vanish, revive, and die out; many have trodden its dusty paths, and there are more to come.

February 24, 2023
SWEDEN and PKK/YPG Terrorist Organization

Sweden harshly reacted to Turkey’s Operation Olive Branch which targeted the terrorist orga- nization in 2018. In this context, former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström canceled an official visit to Turkey.

PKK/YPG supporters can freely conduct their activities and carry out terrorist propaganda in Sweden without encountering any restrictions. PKK/YPG sympathizers wave PKK/YPG flags ex- plicitly without any intervention by local security forces. Moreover, PKK/YPG members can even meet the country’s Foreign Minister.

The Swedish government provide massive state of the art technology arms to the terrorist group. These weapons are used in terrorist attacks against Turkish security forces.

Sweden, refusing to extradite PKK/YPG members, also safeguard members of Fethullah Terrorist Organization (FETO) being harbored in the country.
Concrete Evidence Regarding the Relations Between the Swedish Government and the PKK/YPG Terrorist Organization

Concrete Evidence Regarding the Relations Between the Swedish Government and the PKK/YPG Terrorist Organization

SWEDISH DEFENSE MINISTER Peter Hultqvist met with Mazloum Kobani, one of the so-called commanders of the PKK/YPG. After the meeting, Kobani made a statement expressing that Sweden will closely cooperate with the terrorist organization.

SWEDISH FOREIGN MINISTER ANN LINDE met with PKK/YPG members many times and declared some of such meetings on social media explicitly. The Turkish Foreign Ministry reacted to these meetings repeatedly, yet the Swedish side refused to cooperate.

THE PKK/YPG RECEIVES MASSIVE ANTI-TANK weapon support from Sweden. Hence, the terrorist organization has a huge amount of AT4s, a Swedish Saab production anti-tank weapon, in its hands. During the operations conducted in rural Hakkari in southeastern Turkey in September 2021, and Operation Claw and Tiger which started on 17 June 2021, scores of AT4S were captured in caves and shelters of the terrorist organization by Turkish security forces.

ORSAM

As a region that shares deep-rooted historical, cultural and neighborhood ties with Turkey, the Middle East and North Africa region is going through a process of serious political and social changes. Therefore, it became necessary to follow these complex and dynamic developments as well as to interpret them. The Center for Middle Eastern Studies (ORSAM) was established in January 2009 to inform the general public and the foreign policy community on the Middle East. ORSAM is a nonpartisan and non-profit research center based in Ankara.

ORSAM provides information on Middle Eastern affairs and exposes the Turkish academia and political circles to the perspectives of researchers from the region. ORSAM, by facilitating the visits of Middle Eastern statesmen, bureaucrats, academics, strategists, businessmen, journalists, and NGO representatives to Turkey, seeks to ensure their knowledge and ideas are shared with the Turkish and international community. To that end, ORSAM carries out research on social, economic and political developments in the Middle East and shares these with the public. Striving for a healthier understanding and analysis of international politics and the Middle Eastern affairs, ORSAM produces stimulating and policy-relevant information for the general public and decision-makers.

For that purpose, ORSAM offers projections that suggest alternative perspective on regional issues as well as analyzing regional developments. In order to provide comprehensive and solution-oriented analyses, ORSAM takes advantage of geographical proximity to pressings issues and hands-on research by competent researchers and intellectuals from diverse disciplines. ORSAM has a strong publishing line that transmits meticulous analyses of regional developments and trends to relevant audiences. Our center that is also in the process of re-organization is expanding its cadre and areas of research focuses on publication and teaching activities such as seminars on Middle East affairs and Arabic courses.

February 24, 2023