Wallenburg wrote:Vistulange wrote:Absolutely, that's not what I am arguing. The whole idea of conflating "Turk" with "Muslim", or even "Turk" with the "Ottoman Empire" is very, very debatable, however. The Ottoman Empire itself underwent such immense identity shifts that it's impossible to consider the Ottoman state in 1453 the same as the one that ended in 1923. What I have a problem is the notion of considering certain imagined communities, i.e. nations and in my humble opinion, religions, to be immutable and non-temporal, and applying a post-18th century outlook to events that precede the maturation of certain ideas.
Otherwise, historical facts are not my beef with his approach, and neither is it my field of expertise to talk to great lengths about.
That may be true, but modern Turkey pretty clearly likes to maintain a strong ethnically Turkish and historically Ottoman image, with Erdogan imagining himself the heroic reconqueror of a new Ottoman Empire. This extends so far as for the Turkish government to deny that Ottoman and early Turkish genocides never happened. You don't engage in that sort of denial and come out innocent of those crimes.
That depends entirely on how you define "modern Turkey". If you mean 2019 Turkey, absolutely. However, I strongly disagree with the notion that Erdoğan imagines himself as some sort of neo-Sultan. I do not - not for one second - blame you for thinking so, however. You do not have access to Turkish media in an understandable manner, and you miss perhaps 95% of what goes on in Turkey at a given time. The neo-Ottoman rhetoric was never designed nor implemented as a means to reconquer territory and expand Turkish territory, not by Ahmet Davutoğlu, and not by whatever bumbling idiots - and this is perhaps the only time these days that you'll see me make a normative statement in NSG - are running the Foreign Ministry nowadays. It was a very poorly constructed rhetoric by Davutoğlu, relying on certain...oddities, let's call them, which have never been accepted by the academia of the time, either.
The Turkish government denies, specifically, the Armenian Genocide and the atrocities surrounding the First World War, such as the Assyrian Genocide. The ethnic cleansings of the past are never brought to government-level, instead staying at the level of, well, forum posters like us who don't have much else to do in their free time, for reasons such as "being too far in the past" and also the connected reason of "what the hell has that got to do with the world of 300/400/500/600 years later"?
Now, whether or not I believe the government's conduct regarding this is "right" or "wrong" is of absolutely no relevance and of very little importance, at least here on NSG. I would, however, argue with what I perceive to be wrong conceptualisations and formulations of ideas. Let's be honest: This is a forum. Topics are not opened for real debate, but in order to fuel a certain viewpoint, regardless of the side. Pro-choice topics are rarely opened for pro-choice supporters to genuinely have their ideas challenged, and are instead - in my observation - fields for pro-choice circlejerks. Same with practically every topic on NSG, and this topic is no different. The moment I make a post pointing out anything that I believe is problematic regarding a poster's idea, I am - I quote - labelled a genocide denier, when ironically, I'm genuinely not. This is because I put in my signature - stupidly so, perhaps - that I am indeed Turkish, and nothing else.
My behaviour against Nea Byzantia is an exception, though - I honestly can't bear that person.
Posted: Wed Oct 09, 2019 12:20 pm
