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| Turkey - by Selcuk Somer | ||
I believe that is why Rotary pays so much value to fellowship. Fellowship is a must to create really effective programs. But I think for Rotarians, knowing each other through the activities of Rotary cannot be sufficient to really say “I know all about you”. Besides personal knowledge we have to have more thorough knowledge about each other’s countries, about each other’s countrymen, etc. Some countries are already known in much detail by almost everyone, such as USA,UK, FRANCE, GERMANY, etc. , whereas some others are quite a mystery to the rest of the world. |
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I believe Turkey is one of these mysterious countries. Therefore I wanted to make a trial. Below I am sending you the web address of a link prepared by a Rotary Club to unveil the fog that covers this country. It is prepared in 4 languages, English, French, German, and Italian. It is a small trial with a very limited scope, but if you find such endeavours useful we may go in more elaborate procedures. ENGLISH : http://www.goldenhorn-rotary.com/ercu/ERCU_FLASH_eng.html
Troy and its legendary horse, Hitites, Urartians, Lycians,, Lydians, Assyrians, Phrygians and their King Midas, Macedonians and Alexander The Great, Romans with Cesare, Antonius, Egyptians with Cleopatra, Byzantines, Arabs and many more have all gone through Anatolia bringing in their culture, their wealth, mixing them and thus creating a new culture that we might call the ANATOLIAN CULTURE. But this did not stop there because the first CHRISTIANS, too, after the crucifixion of Christ, fleeing from the Roman oppression moved into Anatolia, hiding themselves in caves in Antioch, building the first Christian Church which is still open for ceremonies. St. Paul and St. John accompanied VIRGIN MARY on top of a serene mountain near Izmir where she is believed to have spent her last days. Her house a small brick-and-stone chapel is a shrine for all believers of all religions. The most drastic change in Anatolia occurred with the arrival of the TURKS in 1071 A.D. They were the SELCUK TURKS, from which my name derive.And they settled down for good.Their invading number was only 60,000 people. Today the population in Turkey is ca. 70 millions. This is a very simple equation that shows the people now living in Anatolia are the mixture of all people that have passed through it, mixing their cultures, this is where civilizations converge and merge. The country possesses the heritage of perhaps fifty civilizations, 3 thousand ancient cities, and 25 thousand historical monuments. So WHO WERE THESE TURKS that first came to Anatolia in 1071 and gave their name to the people living now in Turkey ?? According to Professor JUSTIN McCARTH of the University of Louiseville the known history of the Turks starts ca.200 BC in Central Asia. During the time until the 20th Century they have funded 16 great empires . Europe’s first encounter with the Turks was around 450 AD when Attila conquered Europe, including ROME. This first encounter was a very unhappy event which is not still forgotten even after ca. 1560 years and is the root of the negative feelings in the western world. After this first encounter the Ottoman Empire which was funded in 1281 in the present day’s Anatolia enforced this feeling because this empire conquered half of Europe until Vienna. So the fear of Attila or in another word of the Turks was kept alive and is still living. Professor Justin McCarty says that “the foundation of western world’s feelings is IGNORANCE AND PREJUDICE”. In fact TURKS have always been very tolerant towards all religions. In 1492 when the Catholic King and Queen, Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, signed an official decree to deport all the Jews of Spain outside the country and the Tribunal of the Inquisition was condemning Jews to be burnt alive unless they changed their religion, the Turkish sultan, Bajazet II invited all the Jews of Europe to come to Turkey and sent a fleet to Kadiz in Spain to bring them safely within the Ottoman territory. Their descendents are still living happily in Turkey. From the XVI Century on the mighty Ottoman Empire started to shrink and became THE SICK MAN OF EUROPE. And in 1914 when the Ottomans joined Germany to fight against the Allied Forces, the beginning of the END was at sight. At the end of World War I, France, Italy, Greece and naturally England got a share from the Ottoman Territory and just an arid small portion of middle Anatolia was left to the Turks so that they may starve in a short time. But there was a miscalculation because the handful of Turks still alive after the war, under the leadership of MUSTAFA KEMAL ATATÜRK started a war of Independence. Europe’s big powers were sick and tired of fighting and they encouraged the spoiled child of Europe, Greece, to fight the Turks and all the financial and military aid necessary to exterminate this unwanted ethnic population was supplied to them. But the Greeks suffered a terrible defeat and from the ashes of the defunct Ottoman Empire a new secular democratic Republic emerged. The LAUSANNE TREATY was signed. 10 January 1923 the American Ambassador to Turkey, his Excellency HENRY MORGENTHAU, in an article in the NEW-YORK TIMES, wrote ”Lausanne was a very bitter lesson for the Europeans, who have been striving for 400 years to oust, to evict the Turks from Istanbul. Now it is seen that instead of expelling the Turks from Europe, the Europeans will be expelled from Turkey.” And so it happened. The Turkish Republic of today is the one and only secular democratic country in the whole Muslim world. From the day of its birth the STATE MOTTO of the republic has been the great Atatürk’s words : PEACE AT HOME, PEACE IN THE WORLD. One of our Rotary Clubs, namely Istanbul-Halic R.C. taking into consideration the 4th Object of Rotary “The advancement of international understanding, goodwill and peace through a world fellowship of business and professional persons united in the ideal of service” decided to prepare a CD and a web page to illustrate, be it in a general and superficial way, a very short history of Anatolia which is, now, the home of the present day Turkish Republic. Professor Justin McCarthy knowing that prejudices can only be erased with education and believing that the education of young generations should start latest from the High School age prepared a book with the title WHO ARE THE TURKS which can be downloaded from http:/www.globaled.org/ To have a more detailed and visual insight about Turkey these two references may serve as first hand addresses. I have tried to expose a concise picture of the past, now I would like to tell a few words about the present and our expectations for the future. The new Turkish Republic is a completely different country when compared with the old Ottoman Empire. According to Sir Percy Loraine Atatürk fashioned and founded a new body politic out of the ashes, and the mentality of despotism. Turkey of today is a secular , democratic state with a PARLIEMENT, PRESIDENT OF REPUBLIC, PRIME MINISTER and GOVERNMENT. Although 99 % of the population is Moslem, religion has no power over the Government As a state Turkey is a part of Europe. The Turkish economy at the end of the 20th century is now one that rests on manufacturing and international trade. Turkey is no longer predominantly a rural and agricultural society but an urban and industrial one like the rest of Europe. Kindest regards, Selcuk Somer - |
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Paul Harris said 
I know that probably most of you do not know much about Turkey, some even may know almost nothing at all. Although Turkey, for centuries, has always been an integral part of Europe and the western world it still is a country of mystery for the majority of westerners. The topic is perplexingly complex, essentially because of our cultural diversity on the Anatolian peninsula where we live in. Time starts in Anatolia with NOAH’S ARCH which is believed to rest on top of Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey.
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