This is a perfect example what the article by BURAK BEKDİL is talking about, between Reality and Fiction for the Turks.!:lol:
EU chides Turkey over lack of relations with CyprusFule said that it was a matter of credibility for Turkey, stressing that if Ankara wished to open the eight blocked chapters, it has to implement the Customs Union Protocol with Cyprus."I am not saying Turkey is perfect ... she has to solve very important issues," Bagis said. But "compared to the past, Turkey is at a much better point."
"We have started to taste, to smell full accession," he said. "The fact that the European Commission found that Turkey achieved progress in all chapters signals better days."
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/cyprus/eu-ch ... s/20101110
Those crazy Turks!
Thursday, February 3, 2011
BURAK BEKDİL
Plenty of Turkish warriors heroically fought big Byzantine armies, in most scenes in a one-man-against-a-hundred set-up, always killing the entire enemy bunch. All the same, in these Byzantine-era fighting scenes there were technical snags, such as a forgotten watch on the hero’s wrist or a tanker ship quietly passing by in the background while ancient figures were fighting sword-against-sword on the tower of a Bosphorus castle. But my favorite has always been the Turk who kept on fighting the enemy after having been beheaded by the Greeks. Of course that was all movie fiction and the innocent 1970s…
But in 2006, a James Bond-plus-Rambo-inspired Turk, Polat Alemdar, hit the fiction scene. The invincible character Alemdar got revenge for a non-fiction incident which had badly hurt the Turks’ national pride in July 2003, when U.S. officers detained Turkish soldiers and covered their heads with hoods. While punishing the arrogant Americans, Alemdar did not forget to expose the evil Jews as baby killers and human organ traffickers. Millions of Turks left theaters feeling deeply relieved that the scores with the gringos – and evil Jews – had now been settled.
Alemdar, the hero of the popular soap “Valley of the Wolves” and the film “Valley of the Wolves: Iraq,” is now back with “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine” which made its debut – coincidentally – on the day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In “Palestine,” Alemdar removes another glitch from Turkey’s diplomatic scene as he avenges Israel’s deadly raid on a Turkish-led flotilla last May.
In the film, Alemdar emerges from a series of bloody clashes to track down and kill the sinister Israeli commander who had ordered the storming of the Mavi Marmara “aid” ship heading for Gaza. In one particularly heart-breaking scene (heart-breaking because it reminds viewers of the 13th-century Turkish warrior who wore a wrist-watch), an Israeli soldier asks Alemdar why he came to Israel.
“I didn't come to Israel, I came to Palestine [thundering applause!],” he says.
And with that remark, Alemdar miraculously manages to set foot in Israeli (ooops, sorry, Palestinian) territory. Good thing the Turks do not realize that a more real Alemdar would now probably be spending time in an Israeli jail, eventually to be extradited to Turkey. Just the other day, I had to advise an inspired waiter against the idea.
Ironically, in ensuing scenes, Alemdar succeeds in nailing down the Israeli commander, but only after having caused more Palestinian deaths than the Israeli operation caused on Mavi Marmara. But who cares? Five years after applauding Alemdar for avenging the arrest of Turkish soldiers in northern Iraq, the Turks will now go home with stronger relief as their hero has now avenged the Israeli raid.
For a solution to the ongoing diplomatic crisis with Israel I suggest the Israeli Embassy in Ankara send a free ticket for “Valley of the Wolves: Palestine” to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu. Perhaps the minister may take a more compromising line if he himself views how Alemdar settles scores with blood-thirsty Israelis in a language they understand. And please note, Mr. Davutoğlu, that Alemdar can always be lent to Hamas for similar operations which may pave the way for landmark Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement.
It is a famous story that the Turks tend to believe fictional characters are, in fact, real. The legendary story of an audience attacking the bad guy character on a theater stage in the 1930s – because he was ill-treating the entire cast – is still an entertaining memory. But the Turks hardly seem to have progressed in distinguishing fiction from reality in the 80 or so years since then.
Hürriyet columnist Yılmaz Özdil cataloged a few equally entertaining stories from “today’s Turkey” in his Jan. 14 piece. And they are all real! In one recent case, a street crowd almost lynched an actor who was playing a drug dealer in a TV soap. An actress who in real life is a bachelorette and does not have children but played a golden-hearted mother in another soap was elected the “Mother of the Year.”
Newspapers published obituaries, and religious ceremonies were held after a character in the Valley of the Wolves died in one of the episodes. Local people in a neighborhood tipped off the police after they learned that a scene in another soap would be featuring a robbery. Mr. Özdil remembers that the police almost fired at the masked “thieves.”
And locals in Kayseri almost lynched a documentary crew after the TV men hoisted the Byzantine flag on a castle. After “re-conquering” the castle, the same locals hoisted a Turkish flag – borrowed from a nearby taxi company — chanted “Allah-u Akbar (God is great) and sang the Turkish national anthem. Not the end of the story: The police detained the crew, who had a hard time explaining to prosecutors that they were just a TV crew.
In reality, many Turks exhibit a collective desire for the power and glory today’s Turkey does not possess – they are programmed to boast a longing for what present-day Turkey would like to be, but is not. Remember that feeling from somewhere, someone? You are right, some call it “Strategic Depth.”
But self-deception by means of fiction is not always bad. The “hoods-over-the-heads-of-our-soldiers” trauma visibly subsided after Alemdar blew up the Americans in Iraq – and he did that so skillfully that Washington did not even notice! Fortunately, the Israelis are too busy these days pondering over the big game-changer to their southwest; they won’t notice Alemdar blowing up an entire military unit in their country and killing one of their commanders.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php? ... 2011-02-03
