Thoughts on insulting Turkishishness?

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daddy cool

That article in the Turkish penal code is actually a REACTION to Kurdish racism -quite a political effort to smoothen possible reactions of Turkish nationalists.

Although lots of Turkish people object the very existence of THAT article, there are enough number of Turkish who'd feel offended when their nationality or race are insulted. So THAT article has a public support in many areas of Turkey.

As for Abdullah Gul's statement... The Islamist government has been swinging back and forth (from the very start) in order to satisfy their voters and also to attain democratic coherence... -> which is a difficult task indeed becuase Islamist voters do not necessarilly advocate 'liberal democracy'

So when you get to read the statements of Islamist government (be it the PM or the Minister of Foreign Affairs) yu must pay attention to which audience the statement is made.

hanibal

Article 301 ?

Someone can say '' I want to build an other country on your land . And this will be freedom of speech?
No this means freedom of terrorism.

They are talking about democracy.
I'm talking about protecting my country against to bloody baby killer terrorists.
Do you know any democratic fight or war ?

First EU must stop feeding these terrorist and than we can begin to discus article 301 .

Kapena

I am with you 100% about Turkey, it's a splendid country. With great people.........most of the time.........until you DARE to say anything that's the least bit anti-Turkish, then the hackles go up, the mood changes and you see them in an entirely different light just as the responses you have gotten. They will default to finding fault with YOU for daring to ask and won't give you a straightforward answer. More often than not, if you're from the USA they will immediately pull out their playbook and damn the USA for what they did to the American Indians rather than facing up to the question.

But they didn't pause for one second to destroy the chances of their own Foreign Minister, Abdullah Gul, and not because of anything he had done in his years of faithful service to Turkey but because he belonged to an Islamic political party.

On visits to Turkey, upon meeting Kurds, they will lean over and whisper..........."I'm Kurdish, you know" so that anyone else can't hear them...........that's abominable but it's also the truth.

And dare you say anything about Ataturk, party over. Cool it about Cyprus also.

Other than that, they have a great history, a wonderful culture and can be the best friends you'll ever have.........provided you don't mind holding your tongue.

Leprechaun

Firstly, there should be freedom for speech. As long as people don't insult others every person should have the right to state his ideas/thoughts.

But we should see the big picture. The reason why Europeans accept Turks as one of them has nothing to do with speech freedom or human rights. It's because Turks are different. They are (mostly muslims.)

There are loads of human rights violations in lots of European countries.

Europeans are against Turkish,not because they are Turkish. It's because they are muslims.

#Correction to quackpotwatcher: Those mentioned people who ruled Spain were not Turkish. They were muslim Arabs. Suggest you to read a little.

ZORBeY^

All of the states have same kind of laws, to protect their national vaues. It is the same that you can not swear to Queen in UK.

I admit that there is a problem in the application. Someone puts a case against someone regarding 301. It is discussed in the court after 30 days as the normal procedure. But in that 30 days all the European media and their Turkish branches accuse Turkey as if someone is jailed because of 301. Another issue, I think that it is unlogical to put a case against someone because of a book which s/he translated.

Turkey give too much freedom to seperatists. But they still don't have freedom to swear the our national values. So their propaganda is not effective enough. Therefore our allies are trying to give the opportunity to swear our national value as much as they want. Also it is a barrier in the way to EU membership. But it does not matter we already have thousands of others :)

MORTİCİA

Thumbs up for Hanibal. Nothing else to say.

tes

Words like Turkishnes, Greekishness and many others ending to -ishness stuck our minds to the past! OK nobody said that is a sin to love your country, but there are other things beyond this. Decide what do you want. Europe and evolution or East (and when I say East I DON'T mean tradition and culture). You can't have both!!!

DejaVu

Abdullah Gül doesn't know what he is talking about 1, Midnight express is a fiction the man who actually was there told of the story and it was never like the film 2, Turkish are made out of Turks, Kurds, cherkez etc...insulting Turkishness is insulting them all,

we had won our freedom like a miracle any boy who was more then 45 kg had to go war no matter what their age were as there were no men left in the country all fell dead in war days, our soldiers were poor rarely had guns, shoes, water or food, they still won and kicked the enemy out so they were our grand fathers... what I am saying is insulting Turkishness is like insulting them and we dont let no one to do that...

accented thoughts

it's against the freedom of speech but despite the fact that turkey is a rapidly developing country, western nations still do not know us. for example, i saw a scrubs episode where there was a turkish guy called omar BUT he had that thing of indians on his head and the skin of an indian, he was clearly indian! and when j.d. stood up to talk in turkish "omar, o benim muhallebim!" he pronunced it so harshly that, it sounded like arabic. that's the problem in a nutshell, a comedy of errors.
of course it's not an insult to turkishness but when turkishness is insulted we're always like bad bad guys, always drug-trafficking, always women-trafficking, have nothing else to do, useless, stupid, etc. people are influenced by these shows/speech and then they put up questions in y! answers like do i need vaccination to go to turkey!

Slick Rick

Whats wrong with protecting Turkishness ?
I wish we had something similar in the UK.
All we have is a load of multicultural idiots trying to change the way we live to cater for the immigrants that we don't want.

Do you want Turkey to go that way ?

Ps , I liked Midnight Express, and I am fully aware that it was a false representaion of a Turkish prison.
My wife said there were a few Armineans invovled in the production, is this true ?

♫ELI♫

Turkishness? WTF?

Trotsky vs Kerensky- НекIо!

Why is article 301 objected? Very simple, they say it is against freedom of speech. Well, what is freedom of speech then? Now this is the point where trouble begins. There are people in Europe who even say child porn is freedom of speech. Where do you draw the line? If I curse someones mother should he/she tolerate my words under freedom of speech? Can I make my racist propaganda under freedom of speech? So for my part, yes if someone goes around insulting 'Turkishness' or 'Turks' however you may put it, there should be a legal consequences. But then you may even argue what an "insult" is. Overall the situation is complicated and depends on from which way you look at it.

The traveler

insulting Turkishness belong to the anti Muslim campaign...and the campaign still going on with stopping Turkey to join the EU..Turkey been used for decades as a front line to stop the Communism and now the Communism is gone Turkey is not needed anymore..but stay as a big country to be insulted and disregarded. I do love Turkey and I'm not a Turk.

deadtree9

I would say article 301 is not nearly as bad for the image of Turkey as it would be if they invaded Northern Iraq. Just look what it did to the image of the US in the rest of the world's eye.

xxxx x

I don't think that this article is that bad. There are rules everywhere. I wonder when Europe and some other countries will be fed up with deailing with Turkey's political issues.As a Turk I should say that Turks are really aware of what is going on around our country and it is really disturbing that some people still dont know anything but nonsense things about this country. thanks to everyone who support Turkey and Turkish people. I have seen that people visiting Turkey came back their homes with so happy memories, It is for sure that we live in a beautiful country. thank you so much for your good remarks.

Irmak

301 is against freedom of speech...But I don't think Abdullah is honest.I think he said this for support of Europe..Actually I don't think he cares about that..

genç türk

Insulting a nation might be a crime like it is in France and Italy, but insulting turkishness is madness. Should we arrest Borat too???

EDIT: I wonder if frenchness or americanity exist under protection of law :PPP

tramp

i will not answer this question i just have some words for Kapena in Türkiye kürdish Türks dont whisper when they talk about their ethnicity.Especially in the fights they shout'' Do you know who I am?? I am Kürd and I f u ck your every member of your family.'' there are millions of Türks in Türkiye who are ethnically Kürd but there are two terms here . ''being a Kürd'' it means they are CRO uneducated,lives with 10 brothers and sisters in the rurals or in suburbs and there are normal human being Kürdish Türks, made his/her evaluation like other normal human beings.I say it clearly cos i have Kürd blood too especially from my father side and my grandma was %100 Kürd (blue eyed ginger mountain woman)and we had a Kürd president,preminister and lots of senators (we still have) this may explain everything

sultan.murat

Turks are proud to be Turks unlike many other European nations. They are reasonably sensitive on issues regarding
their history and identity.
It´s highly legitimate to protect your idenditiy by law but how do you lay that out? To what extent, how and on what cirsumstances? It´s down to the judges at the moment to decide what insults turkishness and what doesn´t.
Unfortunately some Turkish judges rule emotionally and the likes of those are to be found in almost all categories of law.
However, there are times when a Turk has all the reason on earth to feel insulted, especially when some so called Turkish intellectuals choose to ridicule turkishness.
It wouldn´t bother me so much,if the personal opinion of an individual isn´t turkish friendly. It definitely would bother me if that person spoke for a land or a group of other people.
The present law should be revised so that the judges are given better guidelines.

Turkey as a land has to lay some emphasize on the identity of his citizens, especially when quite a few imortant countries on earth are turning over the idea of punishing any Turk, who has a diffenrent opinion about his own history.
It´s not fair to be looked down upon for something you have never commited and at the same time to be pushed into a corner for sticking up for your history and identitty.
Mr. Gul said that the law should be changed and not discarded and I agree.

quackpotwatcher

turkey wishes respect & participation in world community bringing,for the most part,secular democracy,art,architecture,religious tradition,but ought to extirpate last vestiges of ottoman stupidity which ,in recent times,allows pockets of slavery traffic of slavic women,,,,,apologize to armenian people for massacres(2 million people) c. 1915.turks in spain showed wisdom in allowing spanish christians and jews to worship,conduct trade & commerce,and flourish it did until the catholic monarchs gathered armies to finally toss the turks out,,,,,,the city of granada in 13th & 14th century had a mile of paved streets,street lighting,museums,art galleries,uniformed police,,,,,all that was lacking were dvd players,at that rate.perhaps the muslim,christian,and jewish scholars and scientists might have developed steam,coal energy by 1600s,electricity by 1700s.the conquering turk armies of islam undercut their best efforts to advance their own culture by conquering others,there are worse things that can happen to a country than being insulted.might suggest to describe article 301..and a book or online history of turkey,,,,,,slaughters & massacres abound,in 1660s the cossacks killed about 100 k jews,,intances such as these made the reformation of israel inevitable,,,massacres & genocide need to be addressed by a humane central authority,prevented from happening again.the evidence of reconciliation is that descendants or compatriots of victims and perpetrators light a candle in memory,and get on with their lives

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