Tag: Ataturk

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic and itsfirst President, stands as a towering figure of the 20th Century. Among the great leadersof history, few have achieved so much in so short period, transformed the life of a nationas decisively, and given such profound inspiration to the world at large. The Greatest Leader of ALL Time: ATATURK Soldier, Diplomat, Statesman, Orator, Teacher, Scholar, Genius Proactive Ataturk Community

  • THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY: THE EARNED REPUBLIC

    THE REPUBLIC OF TURKEY: THE EARNED REPUBLIC

    ATATUR~1

    by Stanford J. Shaw

    Lecture given at Koc University, Istanbul, on 4 November 1998 as part of the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish Republic.

    During the tumultuous years that followed immediately after World War I, many independent states were established in Europe and the Middle East. Almost all of these were set up by decree of the Great Powers of Europe and America during and after the Paris Peace Conference. They were gifts by the Powers to the different peoples involved. These gifts, however, had many strings attached. The most important of these was the insistence of the Powers that many of the supposedly independent states that they set up be subjected to their control through a system of Mandates or other supervisory systems. These were justified on the grounds that the newly independent states lacked the ability and experience to govern themselves and that they needed to be trained and educated by what the Powers considered to be their own superior ability and experience before they could finally achieve full independence in the very indefinite future. These mandates were in fact disguised efforts by the Powers to continue or establish colonial control over the states who were being promised their full independence. The results of this arrangement were variable. Most of the supposedly independent states continued under the control of the one Power or another until the end of World War II, and even after they emerged with full independence following the war, they continued to suffer from grave internal difficulties which made the achievements of independence seem illustory indeed.

    There was only one state that was not given its independence by the Powers after World War I. That state was Turkey. The Powers of Europe, and in particular their most powerful member, Great Britain, in fact decided that the Turks lacked the ability to ever govern themselves and that most of the territory in which Turks formed the majority of the population should in fact be turned over to the other peoples so that the Turks would remain a subjected minority in areas where they in fact constituted sizeable majorities. Even in the small section of central Anatolia which, according to
    the Treaty of Svres, was to remain under a presumably independent Turkish state, that state was to be subjected to such control by the Powers that for all practical purpose it would have been no more than another colony in the colonial empires of England and France.

    That this arrangement was not carried out was due, not to any revision of policy by the Powers but rather to the will of the Turkish people who, alone among the subject peoples who emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, fought for an d gained their own independence, an independence which was real because it had been secured by their own effort, not by the grant of the Powers. The Turkish Republic was the only Successor State of the Ottoman Empire, which was formed despite the contrary will of the Powers. The Turkish Republic was the only successor state of the Ottoman Empire that was an earned Republic, a state achieved through he will and action of its people in what amounted tot he first War of National Liberation in the twentieth century. The Turkish War of National Liberation set the pattern which would be followed throughout the later years of the century by many people whom the so-called Great Western Powers sought to subject and control.

    How was this accomplished? And how in the factors of success did the Turkish people point the way for their future and the future of the Republic that they had created? Let us look at a number of factors.

    1.A Very important factor of success was disunity among the Allied Powers that occupied Istanbul and other remnants of the Ottoman Empire following World War I. Great Britain had supplied most of the men and supplies in the occupation, and its commanders therefore dominated the occupation, placing the other Allied commanders in what amounted to subordinate positions, and arranging the occupation in such a way that British economic and political objectives would be achieved at the expense of those its Allies.

    British Prime Minister David Lloyd George supported the establishment of a greater Greece, including Izmir, much of Southwester Anatolia and even Istanbul because of the feeling that Greece could be controlled by Britain and it therefore would serve to preserve British domination of the entire East Mediterranean area even after the formal occupation came to an end. But these promises violated similar promises made to Italy in secret agreements signed during the war which turned Izmir and much of southern Anatolia over to Italy as part of its ambition to establish its own Italian empire in the Eastern Mediterranean. Italy therefore initially vetoed the British efforts to turn these territories over to Greece. When Italy boycotted the Peace Conference for a time due to Allied decisions to turn Trieste and much of the Adriatic coast over to the new Yugoslav state they had created, the Allies took advantage of the Italian absence to authorize the Greek invasion of Anatolia in order to enable it to seize these areas by force and thus deny them to Italy. Italy was allowed to occupy the south Anatolian coast, including Antalya and Adalya, but in response to the loss of Izmir to Greece, it began helping the Turkish War for National Liberation. It turned over its won weapons to the Turkish national army which Ismet Inn was forming near Ankara; it allowed Turkish agents to got to Italy and use Italy as a base to buy airplanes and other weapons, to ship them in Italian boats to Antalya, and to transport them through the Italian zone of occupation to the newly formed Turkish national army. It also received in its zone of occupation thousands of Turkish refugees from both the Greek invasion and the French occupation of Southeastern Anatolia, giving them food, housing and medical assistance and then sending them back to join the growing Turkish resistance.

    France also began to quarrel with Britain over the results of the occupation. The French commanders in Istanbul increasingly resented British domination and began to turn information regarding British and Greek military movements over to Turkish nationalist agents. In the east, while France initially sought to secure its own colonial ambitions by occupying Cukurova as well as Syria, it resented the fact that Britain had forced it to give up the rich oil fields of Musul and Kerkuk which had been promised to it during the war. France also was embarrassed by the behavior of the Armenian Legion that it brought with to occupy Cukurova. The Legion began massacring large numbers of Turks throughout the area. France therefore deserted the Alliance by signing the separate peace treaty of Ankara with the Turkish nationalist government. Even more important, as it evacuated Cukurova, it turned almost all its cannons, weapons and ammunition over to the Turkish nationalists, who quickly shipped them across Anatolia to the growing Turkish national army.
    Then there was Russia, which at the time was embroiled in a civil war fought between the Bolsheviks led by Lenin and Stalin and the so-called White forces, which sought to restore the Czarist of the past. The Bolsheviks had renounced its claim to the territories of Istanbul and Eastern Anatolia, which had been promised, to Russia by the wartime agreements among the Allies, but they still maintained a long-range objective of gaining control, not only of Istanbul but also much of Turkey, by turning the Turkish national movement into a Communist revolution. They wanted to transform the new Turkish State into a Communist satellite and make it the spearhead for spreading communism among all the peoples of the East who had been or were being colonized by the colonial powers as part of the peace settlement. They also had a short range objective of stopping the flow of arms and men which the British and the Greeks were sending through Istanbul and the Black Sea to support the White armies in their struggles against the Bolsheviks. I might point out in this respect that the British arms were accompanied by large numbers of Greek soldiers sent to show Greek support for its Orthodox cousin Russia, and that these were used by the White army to massacre thousands of Jews as well as Russian Christians who supported the Bolsheviks in Southern Russia. Thousands of people were killed, and thousands more were forced to flee across the Black Sea to Turkey, including in the end the commanders and last remnants of the White armies. In any case, both to stop the flow of western arms to the Whites, and to communize the new Turkish national movement, the Bolsheviks sent large quantities of arms to the Turkish national army. The newly established Armenian Republic refused to allow these arms to pass through its territory by land, so for the most part they were sent through the Black Sea, mainly to Trabzon, from which they were sent overland to the Turkish national army.

    Of course, Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish nationalists were happy to accept weapons and money whoever was willing to give them, but they had absolutely no intention of allowing the Bolsheviks to communize the Turkish Revolution. And the Bolsheviks themselves, when they saw that their efforts to establish a Turkish Communist Party were being suppressed, decided that it was more important to them to end the British occupation of Istanbul and the British use of Istanbul to supply the Whites than it was to communize Turkey, so they continued to send arms and money even after the Turkish Communists were suppressed in Turkey.

    2.A second factor of success was the nature of the Allied occupation itself. While initially the British allowed what was left of the Ottoman government to continue its operations in Istanbul, the fact that many members of that government secretly helped the Turkish national resistance in Anatolia, and that the newly elected Ottoman parliament supported and confirmed the Turkish National Pact, led the British to take over the Ottoman government and imprison many of its leaders. This harsh occupation caused many of those who had initially supported the occupation, as well as those who had secretly helped the nationalists, to flee to Anatolia where they joined the Turkish national movement. British discrimination against Turks in the occupation areas added to Turkish resentment and disabused most Turks of the idea that many of them held that the Allies had come to help them. Even more, however, it was the utter brutality of the Greek occupation of Southwestern Anatolia and of the French occupation of the Southeast, which contributed in major way to determination of most Turks to resist the entire occupation. When the Greek army landed in Izmir, and as it advanced through Anatolia toward Ankara, it slaughtered thousands of Turkish Muslims and Jews with the major assistance of the Greek peasants and urban dwellers who lived in the area and thought the time had come to openly express their hatred of Islam and Judaism which they had concealed for centuries. I might add that later on as the Turkish national movement drove the Greeks out of Anatolia, they burned most of the towns and cities that lay in their path, including the great port of Izmir, in the process establishing the pattern which is followed today by the Serbs as they slaughter and burn Muslim areas in Bosnia and Kosovo, and then blame the slaughtered people for their own destruction.

    At the same time in the Southeast, while the French themselves wanted to show the Turks the benefits of French rule, there were very few Frenchmen in the French occupying army. France had just emerged from the devastation of World War I. Thousands of French soldiers had been killed. The country itself had been the scene of most of the devastating battles of the war, so that it lay in ruins. They occupying army therefore consisted mainly of colonial troops from Black Africa assisted by what was known as the Armenian Legion, composed of young Armenians brought from Egypt as well as Europe and America, and committed to a campaign of vengeance against Turks and other Muslims. So while the French tried to establish order and security in the towns of Cukurova, the African troops and even more members of the Armenian Legion spread out in the countryside, ravaging, raiding and killing to the point where the French commanders themselves were outraged. After trying to bring the Legion under control, they finally dissolved it and at least tried to send its members away in an effort to end the carnage, which was being carried out in the name of France. Bu the memory of what had happened stirred most Turks to resist, not just the French occupation, but the entire occupation throughout Turkey.

    3.A third factor of success lay in Greece. Just as the Greek War for Independence from the Ottoman Empire in the early years of the nineteenth century could not have been achieved without the help of the British navy, so also the Greek army that invaded Anatolia could not have advanced so rapidly after World War I had it not been for major military assistance given it by Great Britain. But back in Greece these very successes emboldened the Greek people to throw out Prime Minister Venizelos and his government, which had been installed by a British invasion of Greece in 1917 and to bring back Greek King Constantine, who had been dethroned by the British because of his determination to keep Greece neutral or have it join Germany during the war. The restoration of King Constantine in Greece came just in time when the famous British historian, Arnold Toynbee, went to Anatolia as a reporter for the Manchester Guardian and began to publish accounts of the barbarous conduct of the Greek army as it advanced in Southwestern Anatolia. This caused the British people to awaken to the fact that Greek barbarism was being carried out with the material as well as moral support of Great Britain, and when combined with their revulsion against the restoration of the pro-German King Constantine, led Britain to end its support of the Greek invasion of Anatolia. This involved not merely the cessation of assistance with money and arms, but also prohibitions against Greece sending supplies to its Anatolian expeditionary force from the Sea of Marmara, leaving it to send supplies only from its occupation base at Izmir, in caravans and trains shipments which were easily attacked and destroyed by the Turkish cavalry.

    4.A fourth factor in Turkish success was the ever present racial and religious prejudice against Muslims in general and Turks in particular by the Christian nations and people in the West. This, of course, had existed ever since the time of the Prophet, and particularly since the time of the Crusades, and I am sorry to say it continues to exist right to this present day. However, much fundamentalists Christians dislike Jews for not accepting Christ as their Savior, they dislike and disdain Muslims even more for following what they consider to be a false religion. Added to this is discrimination against Turks, who for most Christians have been the principal symbol of Islam, again right to the present day. It was as a result of this prejudice that Europe built up the myth of “the terrible Turk” and readily accepted all the myths of massacre and persecution spread by non Muslim immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, completely ignoring the massacre as inflicted on Muslims by the Russian expansion into Central Asia and the newly-independent Christian states of Southeastern Europe, starting with Greek Revolution in the early 19th century which massacred thousands of Muslims and Jews in the process of creating a homogeneous Greek and Christian state. Insofar as this prejudice effected Turkey following World War I, it led the victorious Allies to two fateful policies. First of all, as we mentioned already, the Allies concluded that the Turks as Muslims lacked the ability to ever rule themselves, and that therefore not only non Turkish parts of the Ottoman Empire but also areas where the Turks lived as sizeable majorities had to be placed under the control, either of the Powers themselves, or under the non Muslim peoples who were promised their own independent states regardless of the makeup of the people in the territories which were being given to them. The second result of the racial and religious prejudice of Christian Europe was t think that they could impose such draconian arrangement on the Turks with a relatively small expeditionary force which at its peak numbered no more than 50,000 men, aside from the approximately 100,000 men which were to be provided by Greece for the occupation of western Anatolia and its annexation to Greece. Insofar as the Allies were concerned, not only were the Turks incapable of ruling themselves, but they also were incapable of defending themselves, and would be forced to accept whatever the Allies dictated as their fate. Of course, the Allies were entirely disabused of this idea by what followed.

    All of these factor of success could not have automatically brought success to the Turkish War of National Liberation had it not been for the ability of the Turkish people to take advantage of them to neutralize and/or drive out the occupying powers. How were the Turks able to accomplish this? 1.First and foremost, there was the reaction of the Turkish people to the harshness of the Allied occupation. Throughout the 19th century, those Turks who supported Ottoman reform looked to the democratic nations of America and Western Europe as the model of the rejuvenated Empire they hoped would emerge. They thought that these states would selflessly give them assistance they needed to create a new and modern Turkish state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. They thought that point 12 of Woodrow Wilson’s 14 points announced in January 1918, which stated that all the subjected people of the Ottoman Empire, like others, were entitled to their own independence, would apply to the Turks as well as to the other people who had been subjected by the Ottomans. However, the brutality of the occupation along with the realization by most Turks as a result that the Allies had come to Turkey to subject the Turks, not to liberate and modernize them, caused most Turks to unite in the Turkish War of National Liberation. The national movement thus united Turks who were parts of a wide political religious spectrum. There were supporters of the Ottoman Sultans, advocates of a Republic, secularists, religious leaders, who subordinated their personal desires to the common objective of defending the Turkish people and enabling them to defeat the effort to subject them to foreign rule. Without this unity, the Turks could never have taken advantage of the factors of success.
    2.The second factor that enabled the Turkish people to take advantage of the factors of success was the unity of the leadership achieved among leaders and followers alike, the willingness of the various Turkish political, religious, and military leaders to work together for the good of the nation as a whole, and the willingness of the Turkish people do whatever was necessary to support their efforts, whether by joining the national army or by providing it with food, supplies and weapons. There were many leaders who lead successful resistance movements in various parts of Thrace and Anatolia early in the war of National Liberation, to name but a very few Kzam Karabekir and Fevzi Cakmak in addition to Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and Ismet Inn. There were all the leaders of the different local resistance groups that arose throughout Thrace and Anatolia in reaction to the occupation, groups that were later given unified names, the National Forces, even though they were anything but unified at the time. Each of them had his own ambitions and policies. But the very reality of the Allied occupation made it essential for them to work together. That they did so was due to the political genius of Mustafa Ataturk. Mustafa Kemal’s greatest contribution tot he Turkish War of National Liberation lay in his ability to use the dangers that the Turks faced to bring all the leaders together, to get them to postpone their individual ambitions and political and religious goals, and to get them to work together for the common cause. How difficult a task this was and how brilliant Mustafa Kemal’s success in getting all these divergent individuals and groups to unite under his leadership is shown by the disunity that emerged among the same leaders as soon as the war was won and the Turkish Republic was established, and I might add by the political disunity which has seriously damaged Turkey’s position in the world in recent years.

    3.A third factor which enabled the Turkish people to win out over those who wanted to oppress them was willingness to abandon the past, to lay into the dust of history the Ottoman Empire which had shone so brilliantly well into the nineteenth century but which had been condemned to dissolution of the rise of nationalism and democratic liberalism since the time of the French Revolution and the industrial progress of Europe. The multinational Ottoman Empire which had done so much to enable peoples of different ethnic origins to live together peacefully over many centuries had become obsolete due tothe spread among its Christian subject peoples of the kind of nationalism which dictated not only that they had the right to become independent, but that all those who did not share their ethnic myths and their religion had to be massacred or driven out. The nationalistic policy of ethnic cleansing which has been followed by Serbia in recent years, first in Bosnia and now in Kosovo, was in fact born during the Greek Revolution early in the 19th century, when the Christian peoples living in what has become Greece adopted the ancient Greeks as their ancestors, borrowed ancient Hellenic culture as their own, and then went on to massacre or drive out all those who did not accept their vision, including not only Muslims but also Jews. The same policies of ethnic cleansing were followed by the Bulgars, the Rumanians, the Hungarians and the Serbs in their drive to create independent states in subsequent years. The excesses of the Greek invasion of Anatolia in the name of the Paris Peace Conference showed the Turks that is they were to survive and to avoid being subjected to extermination in their own homeland, they would have to give up the ideal of the multiethnic and multi-religious state which they had maintained for so long in the Ottoman Empire and instead create their own national Turkish state, which could be done only if the last vestiges of the Ottoman Empire were abandoned, along with the Sultanate and the Caliphate. While the multi-ethnic demographic composition of the Ottoman Empire was no longer valid for the new state, the Republic turned its attention to defining being Turkish not in terms of race or ethnicity, but regarding those who were of the land and shared common goals of an independent, progressive, contemporary Republic which would be apart of the family of nations, this creating an inclusive rather than an exclusive identity for Turks.

    4.A fourth reason that the Turks were able to use conditions to their advantage was their determination to follow policies which they felt were good for their own nation and to ignore the opinions and desires of the Great Powers. This would seem to be obvious, but it was not at the time. Throughout the Tanzimat reform era of the nineteenth century, many Ottoman leaders looked to Europe as the model for the reforms they wanted to follow. They considered Europe to be more advanced, and they sought to create an Ottoman Empire in the image of Europe. This was one of the many reasons that the Tanzimat was not entirely successful, since in many areas it failed to adopt European institutions to meet Ottoman customs and traditions. Even after World War I, however, when the European powers were occupying the country, many Ottoman leaders felt that Europe knew best, Europe was more advanced, the desires of the Europeans had to be followed, and that if the Europeans said that Turks were unfit to govern themselves, then so be it, the diktat of the Powers had to be accepted. One of the Powers, either Britain or the United States, had to be accepted as a Mandatory power to make the Turks capable of governing themselves. Had this opinion been accepted, there would have been no Turkish Republic, at least until the end of World War II. It was because Mustafa Kemal Atatrk and his colleagues refused this idea, refused the plan to establish a British or American mandate, and in the process refused to accept the opinions of the westerners regarding Turks that Turks were emboldened to resist, and resist successfully.

  • THE WORLD HAS LOST A TITAN: PROF. TALAT SAIT HALMAN

    THE WORLD HAS LOST A TITAN: PROF. TALAT SAIT HALMAN

    A TRIBUTE BY THE LIGHT MILLENNIUM TO PROFESSOR TALAT SAIT HALMAN
    (7 July 1931 – 5 December 2014):

    A TRUE GLOBAL MONUMENT FOR THE CULTURE OF PEACE –
    THE WORLD HAS LOST A TITAN: PROF. TALAT SAIT HALMAN

    Prof. Talat Halman and Defne Halman, Rumi event, 2004
     Professor Talat Sait Halman with Defne Halman, presenting Rumi event
    at New York Turkish Center in 2004.


    “For those who truly love God and his ways
    All the people of the world are brothers.
    We regard no one’s religion as contrary to ours,
    True love is born when all faiths are united as a whole.
    True faith is in the head, not in the headgear.”

    Professor Talat Sait Halman was considered a true global monument for the culture of peace that when he past away on December 5, 2014; the world lost a titan. Despite our sadness, we would like to celebrate his remarkable life with a tribute to Prof. Talat Halman.

    Prof. Halman* was the principal scholar and translator of Yunus Emre’s (Yunus Emre was a 13th century Turkish poet and Sufi mystic – 1241-1320 /or 1321) work. He published the first English language book on Yunus Emre, “The Humanist Poetry of Yunus Emre,” in 1971. This work was followed by “Yunus Emre and His Mystical Poetry,” in 1981, and ” Yunus Emre: Selected Poems,” in 1990. In Turkey, he published a critical book on Yunus Emre in 2003. Prof. Halman published over 100 books and hundreds of articles in Turkish and English and gave hundreds of lectures in the United States, Turkey, and many other countries. Prof. Talat Halman served as the first Minister of Culture of the Turkish Republic as well as the Ambassador for Cultural Affairs and Turkey’s Deputy Permanent Representative at the United Nations in New York (1980-1982). Further, Prof. Halman was an elected Member of UNESCO’s Executive Board (1991 – 1995). Until his departure, Prof. Halman was President of the UNICEF Turkish National Committee. For decades, he was on the faculty of Columbia University, Princeton University, University of Penn and New York University. Since 1998, he had served as the Chairman of the Department of Turkish Literature at Bilkent; a private university in Turkey. Honors include Columbia University’s “Thornton Wilder Prize” for lifetime achievement as translator, an honorary doctorate from the Bosphorus University, a Rockefeller Fellowship in the Humanities, the UNESCO Medal, and “Knight Grand Cross, the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire”.

    One of the best things that has ever happened to The Light Millennium (LM) during its 15 years of online presence (as well as its presence as a public benefit organization) was being able to present three, open to the public, events featuring Prof. Halman.  Each event became a significant landmark for the organization. Following The LM’s very first and highly successful event with Prof. Halman at the Turkish Center in 2004 in New York City titled, “Rumi: Soaring to Ecstasy,”  the organization received several requests to turn it into a U.S. Tour.  At about the same time, a few other requests were received from India and other parts of the world and although there were potential collaborators, the availability and travel schedule conflicted with that of Prof. Halman’s. Therefore, we had to focus on Prof. Halman’s availability whenever he visited New York to which he was always open and ready to provide us with his knowledge, wisdom and vision. The LM believes that the event on Rumi in 2004 led the way for the 2007 International Rumi Year, which was declared by UNESCO and is celebrated internationally. Based on that event, The LMTV produced a program in 2007 celebrating Rumi’s 800th birthday, which also led to the public event “Two Universal Men: Rumi & Clarke’s” at CUNY-GC on December 5, 2007. There is an interesting connection with our last event to Rumi along with Arthur C. Clarke’s 90th birthday, which interestingly coincides with the departure date to that of Prof. Halman, from our world. This huge loss alone has already inspired The LM to possibly dedicate an event in the near future to FOUR UNIVERSAL MEN: RUMI, EMRE, CLARKE, and HALMAN!

    talat_halman_ataturk
    Prof. Halman presented his “Atatürk: In His Words
    at the New York Turkish Center, 2010.

    In 2011, Prof. Halman’s eleven books were published right around his 80th birthday. We were communicating at one point in hope that we could organize an event to launch his translation from the contemporary Turkish poetry in English, which titled “A Brave New World” in New York! Further, he had already promised to speak about, at the next conference on “Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) & Ataturk.”  Although we have missed that opportunity forever, Prof. Halman was generous enough to share his book’s e-version with the organization titled “Atatürk Alive: In his Words,” which has become a historical source for the organization.

    Now, let us imagine Prof. Halman citing the below stanza:

    “When love arrives, all needs and flaws are gone –
    I love you beyond the depths of my soul –
    I was born with divine love –
    Death is for beasts, it is not the Lover’s destiny –
    I love you, so the hand of death can never touch me.” 

    – Yunus Emre: Contemporary of Rumi (2008)
    For each public event of the LM with Prof. Halman,  the organization did in collaborated with three different institutions for each time such as New York Turkish Center (2004), Stevens Institute of Technology (SIT) and Columbia University, New York (2008).

    In that regard, in 2005, the organization had collaborated with Professor Edward Foster, College of Arts and Letters at SIT in Hoboken, New Jersey, who had then already knew Prof. Halman very well for a long-period of time. Prof. Foster; who is also a publisher and editor of the Talisman and both Prof. Halman’s and the LM’s long-term collaborator and friend as well as an Advisory Board Member, shared his sincere thoughts on Prof. Halman with us. “Talat Halman showed that it was possible to be a gentleman, an intellectual, an educator, an administrator, a statesman, a friend, a translator, a historian, an editor, an essayist, a scholar, a poet, and, above all, a man of exceptional kindness whose great ambition and achievement was to serve others and to leave the world a better place than he had found it.”

    Stephen Kinzer, the very first New York Times foreign correspondent for Turkey and Iran (1996-2000), Professor at Brown University – International Studies, and former Advisory Board member of the LM stated the following: “Talat Bey was a humanist deeply convinced that knowledge can make the human spirit soar. Bringing the best of world culture to Turkey, and bringing Turkish culture to the world, was the focus of his life. He was never aggressive, partisan, angry, or divisive. This was one of Turkey’s greatest global citizens. We have lost a titan. Turkey’s future depends on whether there are enough Turks with his wisdom and gentle passion.” In Prof. Kinzer’s words, “We have lost a titan” in which, the organization perceives the term “we” as a universal loss.

    One of the organization’s former editor and supporters, Emily Alp, wrote in her article, titled “Yunus Emre: “The visit to a heart is best of all…” based on the “Yunus Emre: Contemporary of Rumi” event (2008) “The event put on by Light Millennium—in collaboration with Columbia University—served as an appropriate reminder that it is a human impulse to shut people out using religion but a divine aspiration to include them no matter what their faith or other differences may be. Indeed, Emre believed that spiritual perfection could be found when all religions combine.

    Yunus Emre stood fast against fundamentalism and rigidity as practices in the Islamic faith and in general society; according to Halman. He promoted the idea of expansion beyond the self through love and service to others. He was indeed a mystic as well as a point of contrast for Europeans wallowing in the dark ages as well as over-zealous enforcers of the Islamic faith throughout his native land of Anatolia and beyond.

    Pharisee, make the holy pilgrimage if need be a hundred times—but if you ask me, the visit to a heart is best of all,’ Halman quoted.”
    Mujgan Hedges; Board Member and Treasurer of The Light Millennium wrote on Prof. Halman’s remarkable generosity to offer and share his knowledge, translation, time, expertise to whomever approached him from the Turkish-American community in the U.S:
    “Prof. TALAT HALMAN was a great supporter; monetarily and emotionally to many Turkish American Associations. He was only a phone call away when his wisdom and advice was needed.
    He was a unique person and a proud Turk. He will be missed by many. May his soul rest in peace.”

    The following poems of Yunus Emre have been translated by Talat Halman. Last quatrain of poem reads:

    “To you, what Yunus says is clear,
    It is meaning is in your heart’s ear:
    We should all live the good life here,
    Because nobody will live on.”

    For the concluding of this tribute, through Rumi, Prof. Halman’s says to all of us and the world “farewell,” in the following Rubaiyat:

    “THIS IS THE NIGHT OF THE SEMA
    WHEN WE WHIRL TO ECSTASY.
    THERE IS LIGHT NOW,
    THERE IS LIGHT, THERE IS LIGHT.
    THIS IS TRUE LOVE
    WHICH MEANS FAREWELL TO THE MIND.
    THERE IS FAREWELL TODAY, FAREWELL.”

    – Rumi: Soaring to Ecstasy** (2004)

    Prof. Talat S. Halman - Rumi Event, NY Turkish Center, 2004

    _ . _

    [*] Detailed biography of Talât Sait Halman:

    Prof. Talat S. Halman presentations – selected media releases on the
    Lightmillennium.Org:
    [**] RUMI: SOARING TO ECSTASY – 2004
    https://www.lightmillennium.org/2005_15th/thalman_rumi_p1.html
    https://www.lightmillennium.org/2005_15th/thalman_rumi_p2.html

    “YUNUS EMRE: TURKISH MEDIEVAL HUMANIST MYSTIC” – 2005
    https://www.lightmillennium.org/2006_17th/thalman_yemre_p1.html
    https://www.lightmillennium.org/2006_17th/thalman_yemre_pII.html
    Presented by Prof. Halman
    Media Release: http://www.lightmillennium.org/events/thalman_yemre_mr.html

    YUNUS EMRE: CONTEMPORARY OF RUMI – 2008
    Media Release: http://www.lightmillennium.org/events/yemre_mr_oct27_08.html
    https://www.lightmillennium.org/21st_22nd/emilyalp_yunusemre.html

    ”Atatürk Alive: In his Words” E-book by Prof. Talat S. Halman
    https://www.lightmillennium.org/ataturk/thalman_book_p1.pdf
    https://www.lightmillennium.org/ataturk/thalman_book_p2.pdf

    City of Cities: Byzantium – Constantinople – Istanbul – 2011:
    https://www.lightmillennium.org/2011_25th/thalman_stevens_apr7_11.html.

  • TURKISH FORUM’S NEW INITIATIVE: E-JOURNAL

    Turkish Forum, ever since its inception in 1993 and in line with its mission and policies, has always been trying to come up with innovative ideas and lead the way to or be the mouthpiece of  the Turkic  peoples all around the world. 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Victory, the war that was nowhere like any other: “There’s nowhere on the Western Front where there’s a continuous line like this. It’s the best-preserved World War I battlefield anywhere in the world.” Gallipoli marked the emergence of the man who would shape modern Turkey, Colonel Mustafa Kemal who would later take the name Ataturk.

    Gallipoli proved to be the Turks’ greatest victory of the war. In London, the campaign’s failure led to the demotion of Winston Churchill and contributed to the collapse of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith’s government. The fighting at Gallipoli proved a galvanizing national experience for the Turks . Hence it carries a lot of significance in Turkish History. To make this historical day and event more memorable, Turkish Forum has launched a new project: the E-Journal. The first issue will be dedicated to the 100th Anniversary of the Gallipoli Victory.

    To materialize our project we would like all the writers, researchers, academics to submit articles to be published in the first issue of the e-journal.

    Please find the details in the attached announcement.

    We look forward to receiving your articles. And please do spread the word around.

    Thank you.

    Respectfully,

    Dr. Kayaalp Buyukataman, President

    Turkish Forum and World Turkish Alliance

    ENGLISH CALL FOR ARTICLES

  • TURKISH FORUM’S NEW INITIATIVE: E-JOURNAL

    TURKISH FORUM’S NEW INITIATIVE: E-JOURNAL

    KAYA

    Turkish Forum, ever since its inception in 1993 and in line with its mission and policies, has always been trying to come up with innovative ideas and lead the way to or be the mouthpiece of  the Turkic  peoples all around the world. 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli Victory, the war that was nowhere like any other: “There’s nowhere on the Western Front where there’s a continuous line like this. It’s the best-preserved World War I battlefield anywhere in the world.” Gallipoli marked the emergence of the man who would shape modern Turkey, Colonel Mustafa Kemal who would later take the name Ataturk.

    Gallipoli proved to be the Turks’ greatest victory of the war. In London, the campaign’s failure led to the demotion of Winston Churchill and contributed to the collapse of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith’s government. The fighting at Gallipoli proved a galvanizing national experience for the Turks . Hence it carries a lot of significance in Turkish History. To make this historical day and event more memorable, Turkish Forum has launched a new project: the E-Journal. The first issue will be dedicated to the 100th Anniversary of the Gallipoli Victory.

    To materialize our project we would like all the writers, researchers, academics to submit articles to be published in the first issue of the e-journal.

    Please find the details in the attached announcement.

    We look forward to receiving your articles. And please do spread the word around.

    Thank you.

    Respectfully,

    Dr. Kayaalp Buyukataman, President

    Turkish Forum and World Turkish Alliance

     

    ENGLISH CALL FOR ARTICLES

     

  • AMERICAN BOYZ N THE HOOD

    AMERICAN BOYZ N THE HOOD

    Turkish Soldiers Hooded by America Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. 4 July 2003
    Turkish Soldiers Hooded by America
    Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. 4 July 2003

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Istanbul: 13 November 2014

    Yesterday, three sailors from the uncontrollably violent neighborhood called America met the true face of Turkey. Poor boys, they don’t even know what they represent. They don’t even know that their so-called leaders have made them punching bags for its criminal enterprise called American imperialism. They don’t even know how America and its treasonous internal agents, in particular the Turkish government, are attempting to destroy the future of the Turkish youth.

    Perhaps these American boys got a quick lesson in the true nature of Turkish-American relations yesterday? But, sadly, probably not. The American boys ran back to the false safety of their warship, re-entering their “safe” world of imperialist propaganda, economic excess and hypocrisy. But there is no safety anywhere any longer. That is the gift of America to Turkey, and to the world. As usual, America authorities and its treacherous collaborating Turkish puppets screamed in outrage. And, as usual, the youth of Turkey, the true defenders of the Republic of Turkey, went to jail for exercising their patriotic duty. Nothing has changed, except one thing. Turkish young people, the nation’s true patriotic voice, will not take American crap anymore. And America should understand that. Listen and learn, America. You owe it to your own youth. Think of it this way, think of it as a symbol.

    That’s the way the resident American-imposed agent of destruction, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, thought about his hooding of Turkish women into a grotesque series of Middle Age costumes that squeeze feminine brains into numb submission. So what, declared the then prime minister, if the head scarf is a political symbol? So what, indeed! Erdoğan used his compliant covered women to destroy democracy in his own country. He and his collaborators hid behind their women’s headscarves to do America’s dirty work. And now they cannot safely visit any neighborhood in their own land. No “hood” is safe for the hoodlums. And now the new president hides in a billion-dollar illegal palace, his inadvertent monument to treason. So what if he and his ilk cannot appear in public! So what!

    So what if in 1980 the American president celebrated the success of his CIA-engineered military coup by proclaiming “Our boys did it!” Yes, then his gangster BOYZ did it. And yesterday, today’s Turkish youth remembered. And yesterday, our Turkish boys did it to America, symbolically, of course, because Turkish youth is civilized. They can be no other way; they are the current-day “soldiers of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.” This is something that the treacherous opposition political polities can neither say nor understand. Yes, Turkish young people are civilized and enlightened by the patriotic principles of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. That’s why, yesterday, no one, neither American boy nor Turkish boy was hurt. No one was tortured. No one was hung. No one was shot, exploded, beaten, gassed, or otherwise maimed. And that’s a lot more than America can ever say about their overt and covert interventions in Turkey’s affairs.

    So what if America and its craven ambassador, Francis Ricciardone, aided and abetted the Turkish government in its beating, gassing, maiming and murdering of democratically assembled Gezi Park protestors. “The Turkish government is having a conversation with its people,” said the deceitful ambassador, as he arranged to have more poisonous gas sold to Erdoğan and his hoodlum police. A “conversation?” So what!

    So what if the same ambassador conspired with the main opposition party leader to assure the election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the presidency!

    So what if yesterday the American boys’ heads momentarily felt the experience of being symbolically hooded! Symbolically hooded, not actually hung like so many patriotic Turkish young people have been. And by their own government! The Turkish people have been strangled and hooded by America, by its CIA meddlers and by its corrupt politicians for decades. And in the past decade of Erdoğan’s treacherous rule, America’s CIA “boys” have done it again. Or tried to.

    So what if America has used its youth to kill hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in its deceitful, illegal war of aggression!

    So what if America has humiliated the Turkish military by hooding its soldiers in Iraq in July 2003!

    So what if America has conspired with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan to kill hundreds of thousands of Syrians in its deceitful pretext of bringing democracy!

    So what if America has supported the treasonous, under-educated, Islamic zealot, CIA-asset, Fethullah Gulen for decades in the Pennsylvania countryside!

    So what if Gulen and Erdoğan have collaborated for decades in treacherous union to do America’s bidding in the subversion of the Turkish Republic! So what if the Turkish Army has been destroyed! So what if the independence of the Turkish judiciary has collapsed! So what if rivers have been stopped, farmers’ fields uprooted, forests felled, eternal olive trees murdered, lakes polluted, mountains plundered, the air made poisonous, all in pursuit of private profit, all indicative of massive governmental corruption! So what if the government has looted public funds! So what if the Turkish mass media slithers like a reptile on its overstuffed belly doing the bidding of its governmental master! So what if Turkey stinks from America’s subversion like a rotting corpse in the noonday sun!

    Yes, SO WHAT?

    Yesterday, clearly, directly, in a street-theater performance, Turkish “boyz” encountered American “boyz” in the Turkish “hood.” The US embassy in Turkey called the incident “appalling.” What is appalling is the embassy’s ignorance and arrogance. What is appalling is the criminal behavior of its criminal boss, the president of the United States. It is he and Erdoğan and all their co-conspirators, all the ones who need protection by regiments of armed-to-the-teeth goons, who deserve to be hooded. And now they can never step foot in our hood, ever again. Not ever! That’s the message from yesterday. Take your warships and your political puppets and go!

    James C. Ryan

    Istanbul

    13 November 2014

  • ATATURK’S ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (1925. ANKARA)

    ATATURK’S ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (1925. ANKARA)

    Atatürk_3

    ¨ ATATURK’S ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE (1925. ANKARA)

    ¨Dearest Americans,

    I would like to mention a few words about the natural origin of the undeniable sincere relationship between the people of Turkey and those of the United States of America.

    The Turks are already a Democratic Nation . If this true fact has not been understood by today’s civilized world I must direct attention to the remarkable comments made by our ambassador regarding the last days of the Ottoman empire. On the other hand the American people have always relied and depended on democracy to identify them as a nation since their inception . It has been through this blessing that they have been placed amongst today’s civilized world as a new nation (country).
    ¨

    ¨This has given them acceptance as a new nation . Thus the Turkish people feel a strong sentiment of love and understanding towards the American people . I do hope that the observation of this fact will encourage further dialog and warm relations between the two nations; but this will not be all!

    I am sure that this will also allow the rest of the civilized world to have more good will towards one another and ERASE all past negative FABLES and experiences; thus leading the world towards a more peaceful and lawful existence.

    Dear Americans,
    As a proud representative of the Turkish nation I give you this as a goal and sole purpose of the new Turkish people. I have no doubt that the American nation who has already reached this ultimate goal shall understand and join the new Turkish nation.

    ¨