Turkey's Evil Image

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TURKEY'S EVIL IMAGE      

                                             Fatih BAYEZİT, Canakkale OM University


Turkey is one of the succeeding countries and the homeland of Ottoman Empire, had been the nightmare of the crusaders and the christian world for centuries. Ottoman means invades for the Europeans. Ottoman State do mean a fear of leaving your land to the Muslim governors. Ottoman means 'eternal defeat' for European kings. But is the situation the same for the people under European mandate, even they share the same ethnicity and religion with their rulers. All historical proofs show that people were very content with the just ruling of the Ottoman Pashas.
        Ottoman didn't conquer the lands for colonial aims, it is just the oppposite, Ottoman moved her borders to include more people to be met with Islam, but not with force, and Ottoman's aim was to serve the people. We can understand this from sayings of very different Sultans of different ages. For example the Constantinople's conquerer, Mehmed II, says after the fall of Constantinople, "I, the emperor of the west and east; south and north, will guarantee the lives and all the facilities of the Eastern Roman Church. You, my christian people, you're no different from Muslims living beside you. You, my Muslim people, if you treat differently to my christian people, you pay this."
       Ottomans never changed the religion and the names of the people with force. Christians and Jews lived in peace in Turkish nighbourhoods for years. Greek peninsula had been under Turkish mandate for 4 hunderd years, but the Greek culture and names and religion and, the most important, language survived. In Balkans under Turkish soverignty, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians all survived with their language. But I want you to give an eye to the short period of European countries mandate in Africa, Latin America and Asia.
In Africa, people are mostly christian and speak French and English. In India, traffic flows on the right lane, and people speak English as in Pakistan. Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, the native people all were eradicated and people speak Spanish and Portugese. Ottomans could have done the same for the Balkans and North Africa with today's Arab world.
       Despite Ottoman's great mercy and generousity towards the nonmuslim communities through centuries, the image of the Turks have always been evil for the Europeans. So, all the claims for evil Turkish image are not real. The evil image is still alive just because the Western countries canvass this.
      US, one of the oldest and strongest ally of Turkey, is still the home for this evil image of Turks and Turkish history. Armenian Genocide claims are always hot in US. But this never holds Turkey to account for Armenian deaths of 1915. This just points the inferiority of the American politicians. They need unproven historical pins to design the relations with their allies. They still think that they can afraid Turkish Government with threat to recognize Armenian Genocide officially.

     Turkish image started to become more acceptable in the European Union counties in the early 2000, especially among the Erasmus youth as they met with more Turkish and visited Turkey more. They, for sure, understood that Turks are not evil as none of the nations can be. This rise of good Turkish image started to fall again after Turkey's PM Tayyip Erdogan's scold of Israeli PM Shimon Perez on Palestine talks in Davos 2009. The western media started to flak Turkey, Turkish people, Turkish politians, Turkish Police and Turkish foreign policies. Obviously, Davos 2009 was the mile stone of a new era to empower 'Evil Turkish Image'. Because the world politics has been formed to protect the Jews and the Jewish State post WW II period in world politics. That means much to the Muslim populated states, like Turkey, Iran and Gulf Countries like BAE and Saudi Arabia. If they accept the presence of a Jewish state and behave accordingly, and even be in good neighbourhood, they will be rewarded with good friendship and alliance of the 'great' western world, the absolute victorious of the WW II and the Cold War. Thus, the western foreign politics and western media concerns mostly over  Jewish presence in the Middle East, so called promised land of Israelities.
      Turkey is mostly perceived differently from the Arab world by avarage western citizens. But we cannot minimize the ratio of the people who perceieve Turkey as an Arab country. This shows us that Turkey is equivilant to Islam perception in the western society. This is really important because all acts of Muslim countries, especially which is politically torn and socially underdeveloped countries like Afghanistan, and so-called radical Islamic armed groups like Taliban and Al-Queda and most recently Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) bears the 'image of Islam'. Turkey, as a mostly Muslim populated country, is effected by these bad image of these exceptional situations. Turkey, quite the contrary, is a modern, developing and secular country. Turkey has never been a base for such terrorist groups as well as Turkish people don't take them as real Muslims, on the contrary they are damned by almost all of the population.
      Turkey pays the cost of sharing borders with the unstable Middle East countries like Iraq and Syria not just to have a wrong image but also Turkish society and daily life is effected from the blood behind the fence of border. Turkey has become the second home for innocent Syrian refugees. The official number is above a million, but it is thought to have more than this figure.