Good night, Turkey, and good luck! III

There may be trouble ahead
But while there is moonlight, and music, and love, and romance
Let's face the music and dance.
Irving Berlin, 1936

He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.
Bertold Brecht

Ah, if I were to live in Turkey, for sure I could not (easily) sleep tonight.

Therefore, for those visiting me a little more to read, maybe to think about and to reflect, perhaps even to laugh here and there.
Yes, those who have come to know me and my dearest friend - a writer who would not write for reasons I shall probably never understand -, a little better, and whose visits I do appreciate very much, will know that we do rather prefer to look on the bright side of life. And life is bright when we can celebrate our sense for humour, irony and well ... some sarcasm here and there.
Really happy Tetrapilotomos and I however are, when we can lean back.

Today could have become such a day. Burak Bekdil, this year's first Flann O'Brian Prize Winner, and Huysman-Wilde-Prize Winner Mustafa Akyol started a new competition.
The little difference: This time Mr. Bekdil started, Mr. Akyol replied; and, for sure, this time it will be Mr. Bekdil who will give a reply to this reply (if the circumstances will allow).

Allright, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy yourselves first here, then here.


* For those readers who unfortunately happened to miss the first competition it is highly recommended not to miss reading this and this.

Good night, Turkey, and good luck! II

Those self-important fathers of their country
Think they're above the people.
(Euripides, c. 426 B.C.E.)

Hm, I do admit that I was very very close to withold what immediately follows, as I am not sure about its level of wisdom.
But why should a wise man be not wrong at the end?

Here we go, then:

. . . Why they're nothing!
The citizen is infinitely wiser.


Hm, being honest has produced a tiny dilemma: How to get the act together?

You see, the first two lines were thought as a lovely entry for this joke.
For a joke that tells what this blog's name promises: Omnium.
It tells all, about what can easily happen to everybody, if young or old, if white or black, if dark- or blue-eyed, if so-called Kemalists, secularists or Islamists, if followers of this Ism or that ideology, and whatever she or he may believe in, or not.

Having said this, I invite you to read:

With a little money in their pockets, they [two blacks] are walking down the street and run into a shop with a sign hanging on its window, that reads, “We make blacks white, guaranteed. Only $100.” However, one has $110 and the other $90. They make a deal: The owner of the bigger amount will go first and test it out; if he really turns white, he will give the remaining $10 to his friend so he can do the same. The first black man goes into the shop and leaves it after a very short time as a completely white person. His friend waiting outside is flabbergasted and immediately asks for the $10. But the answer he gets is like a slap on the cheek: “Go away, you dirty negro!”


With thanks to M. Nedin Hazar who "told" this joke, which is rather a dark parable getting close to the essential inheritent interior essence which is hidden in the root of the kernel of everything.
Read his complete article here.

Good night, Turkey, and good luck!

The good news first. According to Erkan, Turkish bloggers are not longer banned from accessing to wordpress.

The . . . other (flash-) news:
MILITARY SAYS SECULARISM UNDER ATTACK BY “CENTERS OF EVIL” --The staunchly secular Turkish military said Monday that secularism is under attack by “centers of evil” in a strong warning one day ahead of the expected election to the presidency of a candidate with a background in political Islam. Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt, chief of the military, said in a note on the military Web site that “our nation has been watching the behavior of those separatists who cannot embrace unitary nature of Turkey and (behavior of) centers of evil who systematically try to corrode the secular nature of the Turkish Republic.”
[source: Turkish Daily News]

It seems, while Greece is burning (has been set on fire?), the Turkish people are sitting on a powder-keg . . . and . . . somebody else is sitting at the other end of the fuse.

Good night, everybody in Turkey. And good luck!

A kingdom for a headline!

In today’s Turkish Daily News (TDN) one could find an article about Hamam owners claiming that the baths and saunas in 5-star hotels do not reflect Turkish culture are going to start a campaign to promote the traditional Turkish Hamam.

That’s it.

Today’s most important story . . . for hamam owners.

And for most readers: A banal story.

So how to attract reader’s interest?

A kingdom for a headline!

- Campaign promotes traditional Hamam

Hm, that’s it, actually. But …

- Traditional Hamams: We are the Stars

A little more entertaining, but . . .

Ah!!! Heureka!!! . . . No. That’s Greek. . . . er ... I got it!!!!!!

Hamam owners declare war on five-star hotels


Epilogue:
Do not blame the writer, rather his teacher(s)!

Turkish medias' strange silence

Quite a few well-known media in Turkey meanwhile could know that Turkish bloggers are banned from access to wordpress.com, as their chief columnists received emails, in which they have been told the brief fact, in which they got offered some links for basic research, in which they have been asked to start / initiate investigation and as soon as possible publish the story (behind), as it's a matter of "freedom of speech" respectively censorship!

There has, yet, not been any reply.

Does article 301 apply for Erdoğan ?

In an article published by Hürriyet, Bekir Coşkun essentially proclaimed that he would not recognize Abdullah Gül his president.

Obviously filled with deep indignation, in a "direct" response - via TV - (future Ex-) Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (RTE) said: "If he is not your president, then renounce your citizenship of this country."

As one of the politest blogger on this planet one might only say: Sic tacuisses . . .

However, can anybody imagine RTE being a philosopher?

Rather there will be a prosecutor putting his eminent magnificence on trial under article 301 for insulting the Turkishness of 53,41 per cent of all Turkish voters who did not vote for his (sic!) party.

Impossible? Cave Cihan, would-be padişah! Not in Turkey.

Thus, let's wait and . . . meanwhile read comments penned by two most respectable Turkish columnists: Yusuf Kanli and Murat Yetkin.

Nothing else to do

In case you would still doubt the correctness of Schopenhauer's conclusion wherupon genitals are the sounding-board of brain, you will find another evidence here.

Pestering Problem

Just to keep you informed about the most important problem keeping 70 million Turks on tenterhooks.

Having read this and this and this you might murmur like Tetrapilotomos:
"I did not see one single tiny hair, one could cut into four pieces."

Good to have somebody to cut the problem in pieces . . .

Turkey: wordpress-blogs banned

Aber man wird nicht sagen:
Die Zeiten waren finster
Sondern: Warum haben ihre Dichter geschwiegen?
(Bertolt Brecht)

However one will not say:
Those times were dark
But: Why did their poets keep quiet?


Replacing poets by bloggers, it's easy to know what to do after having read the following:

Turkish bloggers are being banned from access to wordpress.com!

There does not exist any official statement, yet, nor did Turkish
newspapers like TDN and Today's Zaman mention the fact.

For the beginning, a little more information here and here and here.

Turkey and Europe: The Way Ahead

The International Crisis Group has published its Europe Report No. 184.

The "Executive Summary and Recommendations" you find

in English here

in Turkish here


The full report is available as a pdf-file.

Man ... kind ... less

Writing this post took five days.

Right now, before setting the link,
by reading this article
for the third time since Monday,
suddenly I felt what ought to be done:

Cancelling all I had written.

Each word an empty one.

Güle gidin!

Being distracted from posting by my closest friend who unfortunately managed to implicate me in a discussion without any emotional blockade about prophets, quad negations, pleonasms and redudancy, I leave the field to the first Flann O'Brian Prize Winner.

Your turn, Mr. Bekdil!


And now
The Peace of the Night.

Güle gidin!

False prophet's surprise

In the dusk a man entered a village and claimed to be a prophet. The countrymen did not believe him, yet. "Prove it", they demanded.

The man pointed at the opposite wall and asked: "If this wall spoke and affirmed I am a prophet, would you believe me, then?"

By Allah, then we shall believe you", they shouted.

The man turned to the wall, put forth one hand and commanded: "Speak, oh wall!"

And the wall began to speak: "This man is no prophet. He's fooling you. He is no prophet."


As to my knowledge there does not exist an English version of Zülfü Livaneli's "Engereğingözüdeki kamaşma", published 1996 by Can Yayinlari Ltd. Sti, Istanbul,

I tried to translate the perhaps most amazing and sophisticated beginning of all novels I came to read within the past couple of years.
The author may consider my humble attempt a kind of hommage.