Seeds of Turkish nationalism sown at school

I was in Constantinople / Istanbul back in 1998, a few months before the big festivities celebrating 75 years of the Turkish state were held. Everywhere I went, Turkish flags and portraits of Mustafa Kemal lined the streets and were in every building. Kemal is worshipped there as if he were God. It was such a surreal experience, it reminded me of scenes from Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will, the movie that depicted Nazi Germany in 1934. The Turks I met were generally good people, but I was shocked at how even how such mild-mannered people thought of their own minorities and their neighbors. People in Turkey actually think their country could be invaded by a Greek-Armenian-Kurdish army at any time. The fears they have of the international community carving up their country obviously attests to their paranoia felt since 1923. This is a state that has succssfully fused elements of democracy and fascism together into one new political rhetoric, and almost every Turk I've met outside Turkey since then has told me of the fascistic ways of indoctrination their government imposes on them.

I was in Constantinople / Istanbul back in 1998, a few months before the big festivities celebrating 75 years of the Turkish state were held. Everywhere I went, Turkish flags and portraits of Mustafa Kemal lined the streets and were in every building. Kemal is worshipped there as if he were God. It was such a surreal experience, it reminded me of scenes from Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will, the movie that depicted Nazi Germany in 1934. The Turks I met were generally good people, but I was shocked at how even how such mild-mannered people thought of their own minorities and their neighbors. People in Turkey actually think their country could be invaded by a Greek-Armenian-Kurdish army at any time. The fears they have of the international community carving up their country obviously attests to their paranoia felt since 1923. This is a state that has succssfully fused elements of democracy and fascism together into one new political rhetoric, and almost every Turk I've met outside Turkey since then has told me of the fascistic ways of indoctrination their government imposes on them.