csillagkohó’s Reviews > Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy > Status Update

"Bearing in mind that, with few exceptions, every Turkish man is put through the ruse of obligatory military service and that, for the past forty years, said service involves fighting a constant yet unnamed war, how much of the population of Turkey do you think might be suffering from Vietnam syndrome?"

"After the suppression of mass struggles through military coups, the struggle against paramilitary forces in the 1990s and the outcries over the poverty caused by IMF policies, only AKP gave bread and the promise of hope to the poor. The network set up by Fethullah Gülen united with AKP under the guise of welfare. The capital was of murky origins and votes were openly exchanged for a packet of burghul or flour."

🎩 "Eighteen people were executed in various parts of Turkey for opposing the Hat Law that became effective in 1925, while many were imprisoned or exiled. Public servants, for whom it was mandatory to wear hats, were given 'hat advances' so they could buy them. During the days when a hat advance was 80 liras, a loaf of bread cost 5 kuruş. That meant 1600 loaves of bread bought one hat."

"Some in Turkey today feel that the Ottomans themselves weren't Ottoman enough. It's like when President Erdoğan claimed that the harem women in the TV series The Magnificent Century depicting Suleiman the Magnificent were too scantily clad and that sultans should be on expeditions rather than in their palaces."

"AKP was the symbol of the conservative capital that surfaced with the military coup of 1980, achieved leverage throughout Asia Minor, and gained its claws in the 1990s when it adopted the moniker 'Anatolian Tigers'. It wasn't for nothing that former President Abdullah Gül, cofounder of AKP, proclaimed: 'We are the WASPs of this country.'"