Turkish Forum

Category: News

  • Do Greeks living in Turkey form a community?

    Do Greeks living in Turkey form a community?

    Yes, mainly in Istanbul, albeit a small one as compared to Ottoman Days. This is sad and we are perhaps the main cause for this. Based on the fact that all the diverse peoples who made up the population of Istanbul, having lived together for 500 years, would be able to conform to the concept of “one nation, one flag, all citizens are equal Turks”. Wishful thinking, obviously. All the old mutual differences were suddenly brought to the surface when the ”one nation” concept was interpreted as “them and us” by all. Were Turks lilywhite in this misunderstanding ? Hardly. Were our Rums lilywhite ? Hardly.

    Today, I believe the population is around the 2,500 mark which is very small indeed compared to my childhood. I grew up in a village on the Bosphorus of about 1300 people, of which roughly 600 were Rum, 200 were Armenian, 100 were Jewish and the rest a mixture of Turks, Albanians, Bulgarians, emigre Russians and so forth. In 1944, in my early teens, my first love was a Rum teen girl called Anula. Nobody saw anything odd in this and frankly, I remember and miss her as if it were yesterday that all of us were swimming off of my boat in the Bosphorus. The sad thing is an old friend who continued to live there died recently and there was not enough Rum people to form a cortege from the church to the grave yard according to Orthodox custom. The old boys telegraph came into play and 3 Rums, one Armenian, and 8 Turks gathered to see Dimitri off with the proper priest, candles, crosses and so forth. I have never felt as sad as I did that day, not even when my parents passed away. I thought our Rum friends should know how I felt and my generation will soon fade and the Z generation will never understand what we had.

    Istanbulda bir Rum dugunu 1908
    Wedding Ceremony, Istanbul, 1908

    Salih Atalay

  • Turkification of Anatolia

    Turkification of Anatolia

    Kings and Generals’ historical animated documentary series on the history of Ancient Civilizations and Nomadic Cultures continues with a video on the Seljuk Turkification of Anatolia – the period that started in the XI century with the battle of Manzikert and was largely concluded by the XV century when the Ottomans rose to power, as the Seljuks and other Turkic peoples entered Anatolia, slowly pushing the Greeks and other locals to the coastal regions, slowly weakening the Eastern Roman Empire.

  • Istanbul earthquake – Risk and early warning

    Istanbul earthquake – Risk and early warning

    In the early hours of 06 February 2023, south eastern Turkey and northern areas of Syria were hit by a powerful and destructive quake. A second one followed only hours later, as well as a series of after shocks. Far away to the west, Istanbul was unaffected; but Turkey’s largest metropolis, lies close to the North Anatolian Fault Zone, one of the most active in the world. Seismologists say the city could be hit at anytime as this documentary, shot in 2019, illustrates.

    Marco Bohnhoff is from the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. We accompany him and his team on their way to the Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara just to the south of Istanbul. With the help of several measuring stations, the scientist wants to develop a new type of early warning system for earthquakes in the region. In a best case scenario, it would send warning signals hours or even days in advance. The Anatolian and Eurasian tectonic plates meet directly below the Sea of Marmara, making the risk of earthquakes particularly high. In the case of a big tremor, Turkish disaster management authorities forecast at least 80,000 deaths. In the last few years, the city has been trying to become more earthquake-resistant, for example by tightening building regulations. However, the Chamber of Civil Engineers is skeptical, with chairman Cemal Gökce stressing: Not everything that is new is earthquake-proof. Seismologists such as Marco Bohnhoff, as well as disaster prevention experts and engineers, are working flat out to prepare Istanbul for future natural disasters by constructing special buildings and improving forecasting.

    [This documentary was filmed in 2019.]

  • ITU Volunteering Club In-kind Aid Support

    ITU Volunteering Club In-kind Aid Support

    Dear ITU members,

    As ITU Volunteering Club, our in-kind and cash aid efforts for the earthquake victims continue in cooperation with public institutions and organizations.

    You can donate to the account number below in order to overcome the disaster in our country together, to support and contribute to our relief efforts. Your donations will be converted into in-kind aid (dried food, winter clothes and water, etc.) and delivered to the earthquake victim families. 

    İTÜ Strateji Geliştirme Daire Başkanlığı

    IBAN: TR06 0001 5001 5800 7296 1554 37

    Explanation: İTÜ Gönüllülük Kulübü Şartlı Bağış

    ITU RECTORATE

  • Would Turkey involve in the WW2 If Ataturk had not died?

    Would Turkey involve in the WW2 If Ataturk had not died?

    If Turkey’s war hero and President Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, having defeated ANZAC and Greek-British armies, had not died in 1938, a year before WW2 broke out, would Turkey have entered the war supporting Hitler and would it have changed the outcome of the WW2?

    • “The current state of the world does not look bright at all. Every country strives to raise its youth with a different ideology. Italy clings to its fascist ideology. Mussolini, the dictator of this country, keeps shouting that he lives on the bayonets of eight million fascist youth. By dressing its youth in blackshirts, Mussolini is trying to instill in these conditioned youth to re-establish the Roman Empire, which has already sunk into history.

    The Nazism that Hitler is creating in Germany is another great and dangerous analog of fascism. Hitler is a racist. Please note, I am not saying ‘nationalist’, but ‘racist’. He is a madman who sees the Germans as the supreme race. While trying to drag all German youth after him, he instilled this ideal in them… Let me just add that neither fascism nor Nazism has an end. Maybe I won’t live to see this… But the end of fascism is war, it has to lose at the front. And I see no possibility for either fascism or Nazism to survive at the end of this war.”

    (Sabiha Gökçen, Atatürk’ün İzinde Bir Ömür Böyle Geçti, 1937 Memories, p.155)

    • “Unless a nation’s life faces peril, war is murder.”

    (Adana Çifçileriyle Konuşma, March 16, 1923)

    • “Atatürk had come to Istanbul for the treatment of his teeth; he would rest during the treatment at Dolmabahçe Palace and would not accept any visit. However, on the morning of December 3, after lunch, he left the palace and took the way to Taksim to watch the movie All Quiet on the Western Front, prepared for him by Beyoğlu Cinema.

    At the end of the movie, the leading soldier is killed by a stray bullet, but the incident is recorded in the daily report as ‘All quiet on the western front’. Just at this moment, my father (Cemal Işıksel) pressed the shutter button when he saw that Atatürk’s eyes brimmed with tears and his face became as if he was reliving the horrors of war.

    Ataturk watched All Quiet on the Western Front

    When the film was over, Atatürk turned to Şükrü Kaya, the Director of Internal Affairs, and stated that the film was the most realistic document about the war and that it can be ‘inconvenient for the Turkish people who had just come out of the bloody war’.”

    (Deniz Işıksel, Atatürk’ü Yaşayanlar, 1930 Memories, p.85)

    Atatürk had already predicted that World War II would break out and that fascism would have to lose at the front. He was also conscious enough to even consider the psychology of the people who had been fighting for many years and was determined to spend Anatolia’s resources on reforms and industrialization. Therefore, if he had been alive in World War II, he would have taken political steps against a leader he called a “fascist madman”, but he would probably not have been involved in the war.

    His life was spent at the front, witnessing the real brutality of war with his own eyes, not with video games. and that’s why he said:

    Peace at home, peace in the world!

  • Facts not reported by the media re Turkiye earthquake

    Facts not reported by the media re Turkiye earthquake

    To the attention of all reporting journalists:

    AKP tries to politicise the aid efforts rather than ensuring that it is delivered speedily!
    Accounts given below are by volunteers.

    These are scandalous incidents from yesterday:

    1: Adana . The local council got together food aid. The local AKP governor attempted to stop the food shipments by insisting that AKP logos were put on the boxes.
    This was refused and the crowd sent the “AKP “ officials packing.

    Also AKP officials insisted that the food aid (tents serving soup for 5000 people) provided by the Municipal Authority can not be distributed unless the tents have signs of Adana Belediye WERE REMOVED and replaced by State logos!

    2: Bodrum: identical as Adana:
    The Mayor got together huge amounts of aid for the earthquake zone. AKP officials tried to stop it from being delivered.

    The foreign media seemingly are unaware of these facts as the media is usually controlled by the President. It is a well known fact that the Government does not like non AKP controlled Municipal administrations and tries to curtail their activities for fear of losing votes!

    This inhumane and politically designed interference into the aid effort by volunteers with the organisation of local administration needs to be urgently reported by all international media.

    Betula Nelson
    London