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I stumbled onto this article and was shocked to find that some Turks actually believe they are considered a Eurasian nation, this is highly inaccurate. Turkey's small enclave in Continental Europe is neither a natural or ethnic reflection of the country, it would be analogous to argue that Spain is an African country based on its tiny outposts in North Africa. Additionally Turks have no ethnic, cultural or historical commonality with Europe apart from Terrorizing the Romanians and Balkan peoples. Koalorka23:44, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know the meaning of Eurasia? It is the name of the main continent which contains both Europe and Asia. Let me put it this way, geographically, there is no difference between Germany, Turkey and China. They are all located on Eurasia. Deliogul18:11, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Geographically there are the official continents of Europe and Asia that have clear borders. There is also the so-called Eurasian landmass. Your claims to be seen as more civilized by claiming commonality with Europe are false. Join the Arab league, much more suitable. Koalorka19:33, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Turks have a saying, "Kazın ayağı öyle değil", which simply means "That is not the case". Europe and Asia are terms that were constructed according to the ancient understanding of the world, which is a perspective with no geographical basis. By the way, I think you are also not familiar with the ethnic distribution of humans because ethnically Turks have nothing to do with Arabs etc. Turks also have another saying, "Bilmeden fikir sahibi olmak", which means "Having an idea about a case without actually knowing the case". Think about it. Deliogul20:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Europe and Asia are continents. I'm aware of the landmass that constitutes Eurasia but it is simply not classified a continent. Are you debating this, maybe you should point this out to the intellectual authorities, just so you can claim "Turkey is Eurasian" in a Wikipedia article. I've been to Turkey, and Egypt and Libya, Tunisia, Jordan I see no distinction between the peoples there, unlike Italy or Greece, Spain, whose people have a dramatically different appearance. You certainly have more in common with Arabs than any European, I find it comical that Turks living abroad strive to be considered Mediterranean or Southern European. Man up and take some pride in your own Mongoloid/Arabic ethnic inheritance. BTW your subtle insults in your Arab-derived language have no effect on me but only reflect your lack of civility. Koalorka00:33, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sadly, there is not a thing called Mongolic/Arabic ethnic inheritance in Turkey's case. Turks came from Central Asia and they are not Mongols (see Oghuz Turks) or Arabs. Also, what is the Arab derived language. Turkish language has its roots in Central Asia and once owned its unique language system (see Orkhon script). Of course, Ottomans adopted the Arabic "alphabet" because Arabic is the language which Qur'an was written in. This doesn't mean that Anatolian people were talking in Arabic, they were still talking in Turkish. There were some influences that shaped the direction of Turkish language. Once it was under the effect of the Persian literature and, during the 19th century, under the effect of the Western languages, dominantly French. Assuming that, at least, we all know that both French people and Persians are not Mongolic or Arabic, your interesting theory comes to an end here. Actually, it would be hard for you to conclude any discussion positively, as long as you keep your current way of thinking. Deliogul20:20, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Timeline Broken?
Minor Technical thing, can someone with account fix it? There is this "time line" thing but when you click on it, well it look like cubist abstract art... no text no nothing. can someone delete that or switch it with an actual time line or something? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.161.69.231 (talk • contribs)
Is Turkey officialy an islamic or a secular country ?
My question is basically a question of intrenational law vs. the state's constitution.
Since: the OIC says that its goal is to: "promote solidarity among all islamic member states"
-Turkey officially appoints a foreign minister to the "Conference of Ministers" of the OIC, so it de facto acknowledges itself to be an islamic state,
-the Turkish representative, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, is a Turkish official, representing the State of Turkey and acting on its behalf at the meetings of the OIC, and not on behalf of a private group (e.g. an Islamic Union of Istanbul, or something like that)
- The OIC is a group of countries, not individuals(by the way, the TRNC is not a full member of the OIC - and obvioulsy with no right to vote - but an observer state, as is the Russian Federation)
In a way, it is clear that Turkey admits, at least de facto if not de jure, that it is an islamic state - maybe not in the sense that (sunni) Islam is the state religion, but certainly not indifferent towards the religion of its citizens, as it would be in a 100% secular state. I agree that Turkey "has a strong tradition of secularism" in a kemalic sense, but that's not quite the same as being a secular state (I don't think that Italy or Spain are members of a Catholic Union).
Again, I think it's just a detail in international law not worth lingering on, but it is funny that Turkey always compains about the E.U. being a "Christian Club", while Turkey itself is a member of an islamic one. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.1.51.216 (talk) 22:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]
If it's not worth lingering on, why did you post it? In any case, any complaint including the term "Christian Club" most likely refers to a Turkish perception of the EU as being suspicious of Muslim nations. The EU, as I'm sure you know, is not a religious institution. 85.117.44.5318:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Secularism is one of the building blocks of Turkey. The state has no state religion. England has a state church but they are still secular and democratic so Turkey can be secular and a member of an Islamic organization at the same time. It looks like a dilemma at first impression but actually it is not. Also, you have to analyze Turkey's position in OIC. It is not like "come on Muslim brothers lets unite and destroy the western civilization!". Actually, we are the window of those Islamic states (sadly most of them are not developed) to the Western world. We broke the chains of imperialism (by both getting rid of the British and our own monarch) and we are the first nation to fought and won against the harsh rule of the Islamic law and we formed a modern secular state from the ruins of a collapsed empire. Turkey is not a procedural democracy, it is more than that. I'm saying it both as a free citizen of Turkey and as a student of International Relations. See you, Deliogul22:29, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What? Turkey never broke any chains of imperialism! Turkish imperialism ruled the Islamic world for centuries. Britian never successfully ruled Turkey. Britian ended *Turkish* imperialism at the Treaty of Sèvres. And that helped empower the nationalists who kicked Britian back out. Turkish nationalists were obviously secular then, although they are not secular today. I've no idea how the Islamic world sees Turkey today, but a "windows" seems ridiculously unlikely. How many Arabs learn Turkish? How many learn English?
To give a clear answer to the question: Turkey's constitution makes it secular, just like the US. Turkey has one dominant religion which oppresses all others any way it can, also like the US. Turkey has one enormously powerful & dangerous religious political party, again just like the US. Yes, "Islamists" are currently in control of Turkey, but these Islamists are not like the Talliban, they are much more like American Neo-conservatives.
Britian is a bad comparison since Britian is effectively far more secular than either the US or Turkey, even if less officially seclar. JeffBurdges03:20, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep your "Operation Iraqi Freedom" dreams to yourself. And by the way, do you really think that learning english has ANTYHING to do with Britian, especially for Arabs? 88.245.72.16601:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]
Sometimes I see that people and institutions in Turkey fuse Islam with national identity and the Principle of the indivisibility of the Turkish state, as defined in the Constitution of Turkey. Things that have to do with religion (e.g. Armenian Christians, the question of the ecumenical status of the Patriarch of Constantinople, conversions to Christianity or things like that) are classified as violations of Article 14. How so? Does the indivisibility of the State comprise religious indivisibility - i.e. is Islam a nationally "safe" or preferable religion ? How is this combined with Kemal Attatürk's secular and anti-islamic atiitude ?
Secondly, can anyone tell me if the Article 14 has an enforced status in comparison to the other articles (e.g. those granting the freedom of speach, religion and opinion) of the Constitution? Is that legally possible? In most European constitutions it's almost a dogma that all articles are equal amongst them. How is the term "indivisibility" defined ?
To JeffBurdges, Turkey defeated the so called "invincible" Great Britain (of course politically, because we lost the WWI). Turkish independence was the first crack on the walls of the Western imperialism. On the other hand, Ottoman Empire was imperialist (haha of course it was, look at its name :D ) and nationalists ended the Sultanate so Turkey won another challenge against imperialism. By saying "windows", I didn't want to refer to culture imperialism because the example you gave about the languages is clearly culture imperialism. I tried to show the role of Turkey among undeveloped (maybe rich but politically undeveloped) Muslim states because I guess we are the only one to reach such a degree in democracy among Muslim nations. And your comment about secularism... I can't reach to a statement as fast as you could but it seems like Turkey lost some of its notion and ambition about developing. In 1930's, Turkey was a success story, in 1950's it slowly became the frontier of the Cold War and after 1960's (with the help of military coups and social uprisings), Turkey slowed down a little bit and this situation gives hope to Islamists (fundamentalists etc.) in Turkey. Therefore, it is a tuff political issue and we can't form clear statements about it so easily. Deliogul19:56, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
yes we were ruling the rest of the world but im sure we were better than Bush. we are a great nation and be sure that we will rule again. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.96.212.144 (talk) 02:45, 1 April 2007 (UTC).[reply]
It is true that some portion of the population is happy with the expressing of the Sunni Muslim point of view (they don't even like Alevi Muslim point of view to be expressed). So there is a problem there but the state is still secular, de jure totally and de facto generally. I think the current parliament causes such religion problems (they don't accept their pro- Islamist roots but the truth lies in front of us) and such problems can be solved with discussions because Turks live next to people from different nations or beliefs for a really long time. Also, citizens from other faiths can go to the court if they think that they are facing some kind of discrimination. Religion is a tuff issue but with a little understanding, the state is capable to keep and make secularism even stronger. Deliogul19:10, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to make a minor point which may or may not have been said earlier. You don't have to be an Islamic country to join OIC. India and the Phillipines, both of which have non-muslim majoritY populations. Tourskin03:47, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Scientific output of Turkey
Turkey with its 70M population have the 60% science output of 1.5 Billion muslim world, besides its annual science output growth rate is even twice of some EU countries. I could not find any place to put these kind of scientific output information. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.96.179.60 (talk) 13:03, 14 March 2007 (UTC).[reply]
could you plese name any official international statistics resource (non turkish) which shows that turkey has 60 percent of all muslem scientific outputs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.229.34.25 (talk) 22:52, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This claim seem rather ridiculous and another attempt a recent revisionist trend where Muslims claim to have somekind of scientific contribution to civilization, where in fact it has been historically MINUTE. It's like the "Egyptians are black" claim. Koalorka23:38, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Finally :) I just ran into this: [1]. This should put an end to it. It is a major survey done by a major newspaper and research institutes among 50,000 people about the ethnic repartition and identification of Turkey. I will slowly integrate the info in there to concerned articles. It also includes the first serious survey on language repartition since 1965 btw.
So, among adults, 82 percent of the population are Turks, 13 Kurdish+Zaza, the rest Caucasian etc (obviously this was about self-identification, not genetic testing) And no, half the Turkey is not Kurdish or Albanian :)))
As for assimilation:
4 percent of the population self-identifies as Turk even though their first language is Kurdish,
8.82 percent self-identifies as Kurd even though their first language is ₥Turkish.
+ 1.38 percent has Arabic as first language even though 0.7 percent self-identifies as Arab, and there are more Arabs than Zaza.
There is more info in the survey, but those ones were interesting. Those percentages are included in the general self-identification survey. The info there can be used in many articles about Turkey, it is a pretty good source. It also includes info on Lausanne minorities. I will try to update this article based on that later today. Baristarim17:33, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As far as the language goes, 85 percent have Turkish as a first language, 12 Kurdish, 1 Zaza, 1.38 Arab, Turkic and Balkan languages 0.25 percent each, Laz 0.12 percent, Armenian and Caucasian languages 0.07 percent each, Greek 0.06 percent.
There is another article at [2] - It is a survey done by the European Union about languages spoken.. That survey lists 93 percent Turkish as first language, 7 percent others.. Baristarim00:19, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Congratualtions. I hope and wish that this survey might put an end to all the discussions going on. I believe we should make more people hear about this. Again, thanks for sharing. Thelorien17:19, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this survey clearly puts an end to any argument going on, doesn't it? Cause Turkey is a place that you can carelessly give answers about how you identify yourself ethnically to any reporter coming from the west, and the number of people who claim to have kurdish as a mother tongue in a survey using wrecked population statistics as the basis of sampling process clearly identifies the percentage of ethnic groups within population. Oh, and the newspaper cited is also one of the most impartial sources of information titled with a name as "nationality" and i guess this paper should also be known for reporting any item throughly and decently, so that we can agree that the survey it has paid to be conducted should be held as the last point to be made on the subject. What a relief this is..TheDreamingCelestial01:24, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I noted that it's widely believed that 99.0% of Turkish population is Muslim. This percentage is getting upto 99.8% in some other sites. I tried to find a official or unofficial statistics in internet but I couldn't. I believe that this statistics don't reflect the reality. I've checked the talk archive of this article, and saw that there were some other people with same doubt, and asked for a citation. Current citation directs to a missing page. This page supposed to be in the site of an international development agency. It doesn't sound reliable. I added a 'citation needed' in this sentence. Please don't remove it until there's an official source of information. iyigun20:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I added it, and that was the best one there was available. The link is there but there might be a typo. I have reverted you both here and in Religion in Turkey. I will try to fix the problem though. Baristarim20:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And not quite. A survey by a newspaper in 2001 had found that 97.4 percent were Muslims. However I cannot remember where I had seen it. Will check back in. And why is it not "reliable"? Please try to raise the issues in the talk page before making substantial changes and particularly before adding fact tags. Cheers! Baristarim20:46, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not reliable because they label people as Muslims right after they were born hehe :) I'm not the best Muslim around but my ID says that I'm one... This is the problem. See you, Deliogul22:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I know :)) For one reason whenever I hear something like "99" or, even worse, "99.8" percent it just doesn't sound right.. There was a debate in another page sometime ago about Cultural Muslim.. Baristarim23:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we can use your percentage (97.4%) in the article but we have to mention that this is the legal status of people and doesn't have to be correct in real life. Deliogul09:32, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's not reliable because they don't give any source to the information in their site. Do you really believe that an agency which defines itself as "international development agency" can determine such statistics? If you find such statistics in "www.die.gov.tr" or from a respectful international organization which deals with statistics this would be reliable. Btw, the link in the citation doesn't work. Please either remove the citation or correct the link. iyigun19:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As a second topic, if we're not able to confirm the statistics, we should write that this is not confirmed. In my opinion it could be written like "although it's not confirmed, it's widely accepted that..." I don't think wikipedia is the correct place to express such wishes or claims. iyigun19:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this Muslim identity issue is more than claims in Turkey's case. Also, this 99% thing is not "widely accepted", it is "widely imposed"... See you, Deliogul19:26, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note, that info was sourced (and the sources are the best thing we have, unfortunately), I am still trying to figure out why the link is not working.. In any case, even though we know that the 99 percent figure is mostly imposed since nearly everyone is marked with a religious marker as soon as they are born, it is not for us to judge to what degree until the day there are major surveys about religion in Turkey.. I wonder why the link is not working, it was from a UN agency as well.. Baristarim19:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Baristarim, don't you think that we should at least mention in the article that "99%" does not reflect reality because of this reason or that reason? You also know that this religion marker you're talking about is the reason of this high value in the statistics and there has never been a major survey. Can't we just tell it to other people also? If it's written here as 99% and reference a site, someone reading this may think it's actually reality. iyigun17:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In Turkey, is it not required that every individual be born into a religion? If nothing else, I heard that one was automatically registered by the government as a Muslim, but correct me if I am wrong. Maybe thats why the percentage is higher than should be.Tourskin03:50, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"Muslim 99.8% (mostly Sunni), other 0.2% (mostly Christians and Jews)" I am quoting this from the CIA World Factbook... please change it because it is the most current and accurate source.
These numbers are pure political. As Tourskin said, you are given the religion of your father when you were born (in many cases Islam) and nobody asks anything about it again during your life if you don't change it with your own will (which is nearly impossible in many regions of Turkey). So in that 99.8%, there are practicing Sunnis, Cultural Muslims, atheists, deists etc. That 99.8% also contains a huge Alevi population that is very different from the Sunni population. I'm not even talking about the state's suppression on non-Sunni people (by giving insane funds to Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı etc.). Deliogul10:26, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What just happenned??!!! Man, some people are really going out of their way to be negative.. And now the article is full protected.. Baristarim21:20, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If there's no objections, I'll unprotect and set sprotection back again. The vandal is bound to run out of sleeper accounts at some point. El_C21:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Don't we all? (Despite being very busy at the same time, maybe) Did we not block the page before against new users? Did s/he have all of those user names ready? Man, people think a lot ahead. :) denizTC06:36, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think we need IP filtering.. We shouldn't allow any IP to edit this page from Armenia. They do change more than us..
WHO LIVES IN TURKEY?? THEY OR WE??? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.233.97.30 (talk • contribs)
Well, in any case I will second what Atilim said in one of his edit summaries and ask the anon what relation that addition has to do with this article. I mean, I read it and it can be of use in another article (I don't know the subject though), but it doesn't seem to have much to do with this page, let alone the need to have it all the way up in the beginning... Baristarim23:35, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia articles can be edited by anyone. We don't exclude editors based on where they live or don't live. Turkish editors and readers do not own this article. IP filtering, blocking certain IPs from editing specific articles, is also technically impossible. AecisBrievenbus12:04, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
We don't own this article. It belongs to the universal knowledge. Yurttaşlar, Please be calm while expressing your ideas. Deliogul12:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Are you talking about my comment? I don't know about technical impossibilities, it does not seem impossible to me, it might just not be implemented in the wiki source code yet for some reason, though I have doubts about that; as far as I know there are bunch of IP's blocked (I know that some Yemeni Ip's are blocked at least). We exclude editors based on what they do. There are rules in every society and one needs to follow the rules. We are provided these Internet services under some rules, we should not abuse them. Anyway, if I was going to take some action, then I would just do that.
Now, giving information about vandal might keep the vandal away, hopefully. Once we write rv v , so claim that someone is vandal, this is not going that far, I think. Anyway, like Nasreddin Hoca said, What about the thief who succeeded to make some admin protect the article, now we can't improve it easily.
Also, if this vandal is really Ararat arev, he is already excluded'. Apparently now s/he hacked into people's accounts, so this is not simple vandalism, as having disturbed bunch of people, related, unrelated, attacking their personal accounts, etc.; but this is probably an easy to do action (as hacking accounts of users' with easy password, probably many people can do it), it is not like hacking and unblocking himself/herself. denizTC15:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm talking about 88.233.97.30. I was sure that you can understand that. 88.233.97.30 has to understand that you don't have to live in a place to know something about it. Take care, Deliogul17:52, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delioglu, I didnt tell that filter all world except Turkey. I said it is better to filter Armenia. This is very well known technic used to prevent attacks: "Filter some region of world which is the origin of attacks." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.233.97.30 (talk • contribs)
88.233.97.30, please understand that what you said was wrong (except maybe the first sentence). We should not care about countries of origins of editors. Let's try to improve all of the articles all of us. If you want to reply, please leave a comment at User Talk:Denizz. denizTC21:54, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
1. This goes against what Wikipedia stands for. Period. Origin of the editor doesn't matter. I have just as much right to add information to United Kingdom as a British citizen, and an Armenian has just as much right to edit Turkey as a Turkish citizen. If someone disrupts or vandalises this article, it needs to be dealt with on an individual basis. It is irrelevant to that disruption where the editor lives.
As You can see,deleted due to Copyright problems. There is a gap in our watchlist. Please check a way for watch to deletion nominated images.Must.T C18:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I have fixed it. But it's funny - it doesn't seem to be the same link which I had pasted a while back, even though it looks very similar. Did they take the info out since then? I will check into this asap, so in the meantime don't remove it yet please! Baristarim05:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Motto
The motto of Turkey isn't unofficial. It's official. See also Turkish Version of Wikipedia.
Actually, a national motto is a word or sentence which you can read on the emblems and coat of arms of the countries. Turkey hasn't got such a word on her flag and, imho, Turkey has no coat of arms either. We can call SPQR a national motto but we can't determine a motto for Turkey because there is not an officially accepted one. Turkey uses different quotes from her founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Deliogul11:18, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
State policies aren't determined according to mottos in many countries. I know many mottos about freedom etc. but some of the countries that use this kind of mottos are actually not democracies or they are in anarchy. Deliogul16:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I guess, it is locked because of some high profile! vandals. We can barely add new things to articles because all we do is to fix the articles after vandal attacks. Take care, Deliogul11:22, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's getting annoying having to revert all the sock puppets that are vandalizing this article with the same text, over and over and over again. Honestly, WTF? --Kimontalk19:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It's someone who's got a whole drawer of aged socks ready, obviously. I've just requested full protection, and hopefully a checkuser will get to the whole "Armenia-Azerbaijan" case sometime to try and clear this sock drawer out. (Though with the sheer insanity that's turning into, it's likely to take them a while to sort through.) Tony Fox(arf!)19:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't been doing nearly as much against it as you, but I agree. How many sockpuppets did he have in waiting for this moment anyway? They all had to be at least 4 days old to edit the article. He must have been running out of names, because Sock really sounds unimaginative. --LuigiManiac19:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The guy must've been planning this for a while. But, for so much preparation, this is pretty lame vandalism.
As for the name, "Sock" is rather dull. But, I'm surprised nobody had already used it before.
Yeah, over at requests for checkuser, this has been lumped into a case with about two dozen or so other users tied in with an arbitration case. It's an absolute mess. But, hey, it gives me something to do during sanity breaks at work... Tony Fox(arf!)19:40, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is not only creating new user accounts, having gazillions of sock accounts ready, that is what I thought at first, too. According to Artaxiad, now a fellow banned editor who has connections to Ararat Arev, Ararat arev hacks into other user accounts as well, by guessing their passwords. Apparently there are bunch of wiki editors with easy to guess passwords. So, this case is bigger than it seems. Wikipedia really should implement that code to filter IP's, but the authority to filter IP's should be given committee's of administrators. denizTC19:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Fully protecting the page might take care of the immediate issue, but damn! It just sucks to have to do that all the time. It's a wiki version of a DoS attack. In regards to the passwords, perhaps password rules should be implemented. That would take care of the "easy to guess" password problem. And on the the IP filtering, how would it be different to the current IP blocking mechanism that's in place? --Kimontalk20:01, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think with the current IP blocking, we can only block the anon's, here that is not enough. We need some IP filtering at least during account creation (just like proxy IP's). If the vandal uses bunch of different IP's, we might need to contact the service provider. I guess I am going to do that soon, as the person is really going overboard. I don't know whether that will help. It would help greatly if he were using some school account or something like that to access wiki, but he is not. denizTC20:13, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
editprotected
{{editprotected}}
I wanted to make some (rather minor) changes, I will write them down, and that put the editportected tag if there are no objections. I was just going to make these edits, but due to Ararat arev's (or maybe Artaxiad?) disruptive edits, I cannot do it now
please remove the blank space at the end of section as well (one byte gained one byte gained)
Since this page was very recently protected for edit warring, it wouldn't be appropriate for anyone to make this kind of change. The protection will likely be removed in a few days, at which point you will be able to edit the article to make the desired changes. CMummert · talk12:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Demographics
The article says ...Turkey prohibits by law the wearing of religious headcover and theo-political symbolic garments for both genders in government buildings, schools, and universities...
Does this mean: schools, universities and government buildings OR government buildings, government schools and government universities? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.190.253.129 (talk • contribs)
That means all schools, unis etc. Turkey has a unified education system, which means all schools and universities, even though some are private, fall under the jurisdiction of one national education ministry for general guidelines on how they function. Nevertheless, I see where the confusion is coming from and I will move "govt buildings" to the end of the sentence. Baristarim12:36, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I must add that such "ban" certainly doesn't include all the universities. Actually the university administration chooses whether or not to ban religious symbols, etc. Bilkent University is an example where there's no such ban (or any kind of problem for that matter), no one bugs anyone for their attire. The women who cover their heads do so with hats or wigs though.. In some other universities like Gazi University, the choice is mostly up to the instructors; they can take some action or they may just ignore it. Yet in some other universities the people sporting the so-called religious symbols can't even enter the campus. One last thing, there's no law explicitly prohibiting "the wearing of religious headcover and theo-political symbolic garments" Ozkaplan12:23, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry but this is false. It is banned in all educational systems regardless of the ownership status (public vs. private). The university administration does NOT have any authority over this issue. Basar Kizildere11:38, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As a Bilkent University student, I feel myself responsible to correct this false argument. Firstly, I have to say that girls with headscarfs are very rare in Bilkent. My observation is, people wear religious headcover inside the campus but not in buildings. When they enter a building, they uncover their hair. I am pretty not sure whether it is allowed and legal but as I previously said they are walking around with headscarfs in the campus but they are not allowed to enter the buildings with headscarfs. --Ugur Olgun05:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes there is a "law" in the large sense: court decisions by the Constit Court and Court of Cassation which explicitly ban it. In law, jurisprudence (court decisions) are also considered as making up the "body of law".
Well, as for Bilkent et al - I really doubt it: The university administration doesn't have the legal prerogative to have the right to decide. Wigs and hats example is a good one since it shows that it actually is banned. The thing is, they cannot simply hunt down every single student - but what matters are the exams: they are banned during the exams and that pretty much means that it is banned in the uni. If you cannot pass exams, no diploma :) Baristarim14:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Everybody is right, in a way. The headscarf ban for university students is unevenly enforced. Ditto for civil servants (visit the municipal offices in Istanbul and you'll get your confiration). As far as the law/regulation goes, it is for the univesity students, and civil servants -- the general public even inside government buildings can use headscarves unimpeded with some rare exceptions. 85.102.155.22816:20, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody is prohibited from entering the exams for covering her head in Bilkent. Where did you hear that? :) Yes it may be banned in a broader sense and the university admin. may not have legal authority over the matter but it certainly has in practice and that's what i'm talking about. And please don't get excited as if this is a debate on whether or not to ban the headscarf and such, we're just talking. Besides, my main aim was to inform non-natives that's all. Another example; I know for a fact that some instructors in Bilgi University allow students wearing headscarves to attend the lectures. cheerio.. Ozkaplan10:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Page protected
Page protected to deal with vandalism once more. I'm still banging my head against my desk over this... it's amazing how persistant some users are, so we need to send the message clearly... "We don't care, go away". --Deskana(fry that thing!)16:55, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is in the article, and is comprehensively covered and links to other articles which cover the subject fully is given as well :) Baristarim01:42, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This page is getting vandalised a lot, dispite the semi-protection.
What makes me point the finger at sockpuppets is the curious manner in that the attacks bring the page to a similar or identical state as other attacks I've seen. Either hunt the puppeteer or consider stricter protection. Bob f it13:49, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They are sockpuppets of User:Ararat arev (I hope I got it right this time). He has already been banned from editing either from an account or anonymously, but from what I hear he has been hijacking these accounts and using them to bombard the article. --LuigiManiac13:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, 244+58 sockpuppets at the moment, so 303 accounts (probably many more). He stopped being imaginative though. DenizTC05:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
External links should not be put in the article body, and this one doesn't fit into the external links section at the end, which is carefully focused. CMummert · talk13:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
shrug* I haven't done any work on this article, but the link looked potentially useful, so I just wanted to pass it on to those who would have a more educated perspective on it. PaladinWhite15:55, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
External links in the article body are called "citations". If you want to stick an external link into an article, find some claim that the linked page makes and cite it. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 21:39, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
the vandal always wins
I started to hate this, whenever I try to edit this article, I find out that mr vandal, Ararat arev, or Artaxiad, or whoever else, with their hundreds of (suspected) sockpuppets, and gazillions of hacked accounts, managed to get the article protected once again. Please tell me on which administrative page I should mention this, so that we can possibly stop it. Apparently no one is going to do anything except reverting and protecting, and the vandal gets away with it. If we have similar vandals attacking other articles, this might be the doom of Wikipedia. denizTC00:47, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, that is about all we can do. But we do understand that this is a pain in the ass, too, and we will be very happy to make protected edits. Just put up {{editprotected}} and say what you want done. It sucks, I agree, but sooner or later the guy will get bored and go away. SeraphimbladeTalk to me03:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
According to Turkish state politics, there is a seperate state in the northern part of the island. It is clear that this state is not an official sovereign state. Therefore I want to ask two questions. First, why did you write this comment under "Abdullah Gül" headline? Second, do you want us not to count a governmental body as an actor in the region because it is not a legitimate one? Don't forget that, even if Turkey doesn't accept Northern Iraq as a seperate political entity, this doesn't change the reality about the autonomy that is enjoyed by the Kurdish population in the region and their effect on the regional politics. Deliogul19:01, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"Following their victory over the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, the Turks began to abandon their nomadic roots in favour of a permanent role in Anatolia, bringing rise to the Seljuk Empire.[20]"
If you have ref #20 (cyril mango, oxford history of byzantium), please check it, and if the sentence above is not correct, write down the corrected version below, so that an admin can edit it. Thanks. denizTC03:24, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Turkish republic of northern Cyprus was established about 9 years after the invasion. we might need to revise the sentence. denizTC03:33, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They wouldn't become an empire if they weren't settled but I'm not sure that they gave up nomadic tradition specially for Anatolia. Also, nomadic tradition didn't just go away, there were many people in Turkish ruled lands that still live according to old traditions. Deliogul16:17, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Edits to chronically protected page
Feel free to outline your edits here and an admin may add these to the protected page for you. Thank you, and sorry for the inconvenience. El_C02:34, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Motto
Shouldn't as turkey's national motto be as "ne mutlu türküm diyene" this phrase is more commonly used. Or maybe "egemenlik kayıtsız şartsız milletindir" as it is written on parliment.
Actually, a national motto is a word or sentence which you can read on the emblems and coat of arms of the countries. Turkey hasn't got such a word on her flag and, imho, Turkey has no coat of arms either. We can call SPQR a national motto but we can't determine a motto for Turkey because there is not an officially accepted one. Turkey uses different quotes from her founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Deliogul11:17, 4 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that "ne mutlu turkum diyene" (how proud are those who pronounce themselves as turks) should be marked as the motto, because it defines the structure and reality of the state and also all the elementary school students are made to cry this motto out every single day in the state schools which comprehend some 80%+ of the people at that age. It is also frequently used in the military as the young male population is forced to cry this slogan out throughout the mandatory military service and they are also made to write this slogan in the face of the mountains with rocks painted in white, especially in the regions where the low-intensity war with the kurdish separatists is going on. the current 'motto' listed is one of the more moderate sentences devised by M.Kemal (the founder), but it is not actually referenced that much aside from some opportunistic accounts in contemporary history books and it is mostly favored by a small cadre of elitist intellectuals and not the state itself.TheDreamingCelestial01:39, 12 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
[Proposed edit 1]
minor edit
section Turks and Ottoman Empire
from
In its wake, one of the Turkish principalities governed by Osman I was to evolve into the Ottoman Empire, thus filling the void left by the collapsed Seljuks and Byzantines.
to
In its wake, one of the Turkish principalities in Anatolia governed by Osman I was to evolve into the Ottoman Empire, thus filling the void left by the collapsed Seljuks and Byzantines.
My apologies, the deletion was to remove the recent disruptive edits which has made the history not useful, it has now been restored and unprotected. --WinHunter(talk)16:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The first sentence of the Culture article is hard to read. "Turkey has a very diverse culture that is a blend of various elements of the Oğuz Turkic and Anatolian, Ottoman which was itself a continuation of both Greco-Roman and Islamic cultures, and Western culture and traditions which started with the Westernization of the Ottoman Empire and continues today."
I suggest the sentence be edited to read "Turkey has a very diverse culture that is a blend of various elements including Oğuz Turkic and Anatolian, Ottoman (which was itself a continuation of both Greco-Roman and Islamic cultures), Western culture and traditions which started with the Westernization of the Ottoman Empire."
I'm not sure my edit preserves the full intention of the original. My guess is the author is involved in a complicated political act of trying to carefully acknowledge a host of cultural influences and at the same time subtly and carefully suggest the importance of each without offending anyone. But the sentence as constructed is confusing and hard to understand.
According to Turkish Constitution article 109 "The Prime Minister shall be appointed by the President of the Republic from among the members of the Turkish Grand National Assembly." so "Neither the Prime Minister nor the Ministers have to be members of the parliament" statement in wikipedia article is false, at least for prime minister.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.234.60.255 (talk • contribs) 13:43, April 27, 2007 (UTC)
Can someone look carefully at the history please, to me, it appears it has been reverted to a much earlier version. --A.Garnet14:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A.Garnet is right. The problem is not just a missing {{featured article}} tag. Going through the history, I see that the problem is introduced by admin User:Shreshth91 at 17:05, 28 April 2007 ([4], marked "minor" with edit summary "moved User:Riana/Turkey dump to Turkey: history merge"), reverting the article to a much older state easily recognizable by its layout / linking of currently non-existing images / lack of {{featured article}} template at the top. All the good-faith edits after that point only fix the issues of an obsolete version of the article, like the linking of dead-images. The article should be reverted back to [5] edited by User:Denizz at 03:30, 25 April 2007. I have never been able to understand what the admins are trying to achieve by these cut-and-paste operations and now this actually did serious harm to the article. Please be more careful, the article suffers enough from the vandals. Atilim Gunes Baydin15:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have no idea how the FA star got removed - I did do a history dump last night, but it screwed up halfway through and I needed considerable help from Shresth91 to get it all fixed up. If you look at what I deleted, you'll see that all the lost revisions are completely useless, and I didn't remove anything that added useful content to the page. So I'm really, really not sure how the FA bit got lost. I'll revert back the version noted. *very confused* – Rianaऋ15:17, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I did wonder why there were so many dead images to remove from a featured article. My humblest apologies to all involved. Feel free to have a yell at me on my talk page. – Rianaऋ15:29, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Riana's last edit fixed the problem. The article seems fine to me now, and I apologize if I overreacted. The article represents the collective effort of dozens of users and many hours of serious work and it made me quite emotional to imagine it being carelessly copied and pasted between pages. It could also be a technical fault. Thanks for the quick fix. Atilim Gunes Baydin17:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
i think the bird is unnecessary at the top since there is already a disambiguation and humiliating/misleading coz the name of the bird comes from the country. 85.97.12.11022:36, 2 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the genocides of the Constantinopolitan Greeks, Pontic Greeks, Armenians and other non-Turkish muslims, as carried out by the "secular" Kemalists are a very important and historically validated point of view that should be included in the modern history of Turkey. It is a very divisive issue that deals directly with the self-perceived Turkish national identity and has played and will continue to play a very important role in politics in Turkey (eg. Article 301 (Turkish penal code)). I think it should be mentioned in the article.
Please before you post any comment on Wikipedia, do check it is correct. I can clearly see that you've failed to do that. There are no "real" references to any genocides that you've mentioned. The stress on the world real is becuase I believe, a real reference does not come from a politician but from a scientist. Thelorien17:28, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, also, please do get used to the correct and official name of our beautiful city Istanbul. One might think that you still live in the Medieval Ages...Thelorien17:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
All of this Genocide business is nothing but a theory and we can't accept it just because some politicians accept it to collect more votes. If you would know anything about the six arrow of Kemalism, you wouldn't say such things. Also, why didn't you sign your post? Here is mine, Deliogul15:30, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I can accept that Kemal was great leader, I can accept the his intentions for Turkey where good from the point of view of the average Turk Muslim. What the average Turk cannot accept (including you as I can see) is that Turkey is a state that was founded in a land that belong and was inhabited by many different "millet's". Kemal, his predecessors and his successors saw that as a weakness and decided to solve it by ethnic cleansing. This is not a theory it is a historic fact, the only place in the world that this is not accepted is Turkey. The reason is simple and it is that people would need to revisit their history and identity and moral standing. That is a very brave stance that not many people are willing to take but I guarantee you that this is the only way forward. If you are looking for evidence here is some: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-44274/Armenia (note where it says the first genocide of the 20th century) this is britannica not "some politician". You can find a lot of evidence everywhere if you look (with the eyes open:) ). Finally the fact that there are many efforts to not present those facts is evidence that it is a significant issue for Turkey. People in Turkey are dying all the time, others go to jail for mentioning the truth, doesn't that make you suspicious? Since you talked about the six arrows you would know that one of them is populism... in other words you need to sustain a popular myth among the uneducated masses... I firmly believe that it needs to be mentioned. -- Kosta Servis 12:52 GMT+10 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Farm3r (talk • contribs) 02:58, 8 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]
Britannica is not a reliable source of information just like many others are not for one very simple reason: Those information did not exist till this very decade. Before, this "artificial" genocide could not harm the realation between the Armenians and Turks. Well, now it can because now Turkey is in great danger. Now, there are many people who "choose" to believe what you defende because this idea is also defended by the superpowers of Europe. One more thing. How reasonable do you believe France's acts are. They theoratically defend freedom of speech. Well, now they don't. They ban to "tell the truth" as you've mentioned. It is banned to express you idea. One last thing. I also live in Turkey but what you said about jails makes no sense. I have many Kurdish friends. I didn'T hear about that even from them. But you know what, you guys will not succeed. You'll never make me and my fellow citizens hate our Kurdish fellows. We are brothers. I do not expect you to understand brotherhood. Still, do RESPECT it.Thelorien17:39, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Mustafa Kemal was a colonel (not even a pasha) fighting in Galipoli in 1915, what Kemalists? This is the first time for me to hear that the Istanbul Pogrom is referred to as a genocide, and certainly whether Menderes is Kemalist or not is a matter of debate, many people wouldn't say he is Kemalist. Pontic Greek genocide is not called so among the majority of scholars, as far as I know, and again what Kemalists? Article 301 bans insulting, it also mentions that Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime. These matters are discussed enough in the main article. By the way, we should not make Wikipe-tan cry. This reminded me of something. DenizTC13:41, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"You can find a lot of evidence everywhere if you look (with the eyes open:))"... Hımm, I'm a student at the Koç University, a university which uses the US system in all of its structure (and it has a considerably big library), so it is really hard to find a more "objective" place in Turkey to talk such things "freely". I'm here, talking to you as an educated brother of those "uneducated" masses. I can clearly say that you are totally subjective. Bad things happened during the fall of the Ottoman Empire but they were because of the status co and things didn't happen in the way the Western scholars (actually not all of them) think today. I talked about the six arrows not because your claims are connected with Mustafa Kemal or his ideals but the six arrows is the symbol of progress and rise in a newly formed country. We can discuss for hours about your every single claim (you wrote them just like simple things but social sciences are not that simple) and we still can't reach to a conclusion. This is why they are not facts but theories. They are not the law of gravity which is a pure example for the things that we call "facts". Deliogul19:38, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Farm3r, why dont you start looking at things from our perspective for only a short time. Our grandfathers were fighting with the rest of the world and there wasnt even any food to find. Then imagine a people, a people who you never discriminated, and brang to the highest statues of the Empire again founded by your grandfathers. There are millions of them and they start to join the rest of the world to fight you. You are completely weak not and will at least lose your country that you inhabited for thousand years in the end. what would your grandfathers do? give them flowers?? 85.97.12.2500:10, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am quite disgusted by the logical fallacy that 85.97.12.25 has given. The Turks had began the "allegded" Armenian genocide in 1915, before World War 1 ended. Look at Germany and Austria, did they start ethnicnally cleansing people in their countries as the war came bad? Besides, you don't deal with a rebellion by crushing women and children too. Their are rules in war no matter what and civilians were caught up and murdered. Remember, the Turks were a Steppe peoples who came to Anotalia by force and conquest and butchered the inhabitants of Constantinople for at least two days. This proud empire that your grand fathers built was built upon murder. Turley cannot deny the Genocide forever, and the more it does or the more it justifies the killing of Women and Children, the more barbaric it appears. It is well known that for centuries, Assyrians and Maronites have been heavily persecuted throughout the hundreds of years of Ottoman Rule. The Genocides of 1915 and after are no different. You may reply with all yoru anger that these are theories but blood has already soaked the lands of the Earth. There is no such extreme choice presented as teh one you are suggesting - giving flowers or massacring women and children or starving. However they died, they did so at the hands of the Young Turks. No you don't give flowers to your enemies User 85.97.12.25 BUT YOU DON'T GIVE THE FOLLOWING ORDERS: "In case of the smallest resistance, every soldier must perform his duty to murder these men in large numbers. The fatherland orders so. You must not neglect to perform your duty: every soldier is obliged to kill four to five Greeks for our country's grandeur. Every soldier is obliged to carry out the contents of this order."
Citizens of Constantinople were killed by the Ottoman troops, a common thing for the Middle Ages for many sieges. You know, the citizens wouldn’t receive flowers if another army would manage to conquer the city instead of the Ottomans or Greeks wouldn't think a second to kill people if they would take Edirne etc. during the Middle Ages so be calm and don't judge the past with today’s understanding. Also, don't show it just like Turks killing people and remember what the Greek army did when they entered Anatolia back in 1919. Don't be subjective... Deliogul20:15, 20 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone please stop using wrong names of our city Istanbul. It is wordwide accepted that, even by the Greeks although they refure to admit that, Istanbul is the official and correct (also modern) name. Thelorien17:42, 22 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I can cite hundreds of reliable and independent (and even opposing) sources which would reveal that most of the above claims (from both sides) have no basis whatsoever. However; I am too tired, too busy, and too lazy for doing this over and over. The information is out there; please take the time to go and look for it. There are thousands of websites, books, and other resources. Seriously; have many books have you read on these issues and these people? Have many original sources have you seen? How many people have you talked to? Have you heard of Artin Penik before? Did you know that Eleftherios Venizelos, the Greek president of the time, has nominated Ataturk for the nobel prize for establishing peace in the region, only a very short time after the war? The whole purpose of writing these articles in Wikipedia, expressing comments, and making these discussions should not be about being argumentative or making people believe in your version of the story. It should be about trying to discover the truth. And frankly, the most basic truth is that you cannot learn something if you believe that you already know it. These are very delicate issues, and we should not form opinions -yet alone make accusations- without acquiring extensive knowledge first. This applies to both sides, and other similar discussions. I am not claiming that our hands (or yours, or theirs, whatever) are perfectly clean. All I am trying to say is that this should not be about defending your interests, proving yourself right at all costs, or seeking for closure. This should not be a war, it should be a collaboration. --386-DX22:50, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On second review I agree with 386-DX, I was just putting an alternate view point in an equally inflammatory manner. Well the article should have a section questioning whether or not the Genocide occured but then again that would create endless debate so I must withdraw from this discussion without further suggestions. Sorry for any insults intended. You can deny the genocide, that is debatable but no one can deny that killing women and children is wrong. There is never a strict choice as to whether one should give flowers or death. Thats a logical fallacy because one is assuming that there is no middle way. That was what I found to be wrong. And yes, all empires and kingdoms are founded upon bloodshed, not just the Ottoman empire. Tourskin00:41, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
386-DX, I don't want anybody to believe in "my version of history". It would be enough if they can be a little objective and really that's all. Tourskin, I didn't say that death is a good thing, I just said that it was "ordinary" in the past. Countless numbers of people died in America back in 1918 because of a simple illness like influenza. Today, we think that we are unlucky if we can't recover from it fast enough. So times are changing ;) Take care folks, Deliogul09:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Economist: A reliable source ?
Given the praise given to The Economist on the newspaper's Wikipedia article (and the fact that all the world's leaders read and rely on it, blah blah blah), can it be quoted as a reliable enough source concerning facts about Turkey's economy, ec. growth, statistics etc. ? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.1.219.142 (talk) 13:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]
Not "perfect" but this is what we have. I don't see a problem to use it until a better source will be found. Deliogul19:41, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OK. I was going through some articles of the Economist lately, and fell on a report called: "The Economist Intelligence Unit's index of democracy", which describes Turkey as a "hybrid regime". It didn't even make it to the "flawed democracies" category (which includes Botswana, Mongolia and Papua New Guinea). Do you think that we should replace the "secular democracy" in the text with "hybrid regime" and add a link to the Economist's report ;-) ?
According to the Polity Index, Turkey's democracy score is 8/10 (not bad at all haha). This doesn't mean that Turkey doesn't have a "secular democracy" or it has a bad regime. The real problem is Papua New Guinea's score is 10/10 :) ... Actually, this is one thing but Turkey is 30 times more populous, nearly 40 times richer and has a way better HDI score. Deliogul22:00, 10 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I somehow noticed that, as it seems, just the facts that paint the country in an absolutely positive way get to stay int article (not even western European states, let alone the U.S. come away so smoothly :-) ). If the reality of a statement by the Economist is well accepted, if it is favorable for the country in question, but ignored when deemed uncomfortable, it only speaks about the objectivity of the article.
By the way, comparing to Papua New Guinea and coming out as a winner isn't that hard a task for most European countries. And the original question was about democracy, not population or income. Last time I checked, the way a democracy works is indifferent to the country's population, size or GDP. Saudi Arabia is an extremely wealty country, but can hardly be called democratic. And, according to the UN's Human Development Report, Turkey is surpassed (among others) by Libya, Albania, China and Fiji. Seems like there's a long way ahead of you.
You have to ask the source of the article to the unsigned user who added the comment about it brother ;) Imho, I think that economy and population is important for the system of the country. It is a different thing to handle a million people and seventy million people. Also, if you are connected to the world with complex economic ties as a small open economy it is hard to change things. Maybe a CEO can make Papua New Guinea better off but you need many CEOs for the countless numbers of companies in Turkey and they can only take care of the economy, not politics ;) Libya and Fiji are crucial examples but I can't even dream of living in such countries. China is another story. It is completely normal to have such a high HDI scores in a socialist country. These days they are leaving behind their closed centralized economy and transforming it into a large open economy. Just wait until "free trade" will finish its job with China and leave the economic gap behind. Then we can discuss about the comparison between Chinese and Turkish people. Deliogul16:50, 14 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
TOURISM
Turkey is one of the top 10 world destinations in all tourism categories.why not adding this info into economy?
I LOVE INDIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YAY ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
IM FROM THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YAY ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You can be shocked when you hear it but the incident in 1915 is not accepted as a Genocide by many people. I guess there is not a healthy entry about the government of Enver Bey because there is not a consensus on what had happened during his time. Deliogul15:06, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Mark, the issue is mentioned in the "Foreign relations" section with links to the articles you've cited. This is a consensus reached after serious discussions during this article's FA candidacy to mention the issue in relation to Turkey's foreign relations, since it's a major problem in that area. Atilim Gunes Baydin15:26, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On the above points, (1) I am not shocked that many Turks dispute the Armenian Genocide, but that is irrelevant to Wikipedia, which seeks to tell the truth - 24 countries now formally recognise it as a genocide and no serious historian outside Turkey doubts its existence, so not to mention it is extreme-Turkish-nationalist POV of the worst sort and (2) it isn't just a "foreign relations" issue. The fact that many Turks disaprove of mentioning it does not mean that it does not have a place here on the main Wikipedia page for Turkey. This logic extends to other country pages where people within that country for nationalistic or racist reasons do not want a particularly unpleasant episode in their countries' history to be mentioned. It's basically censorship of Wikipedia. MarkThomas17:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that "the events of 1915–17, in which actions by the Ottoman Young Turks led to the forced mass evacuation and related deaths of an estimated hundreds of thousands, up to 1.5 million, Armenians." is clearly mentioned in the article, with links to Young Turks and Armenian Genocide articles for detailed information. So, what censorship are you talking about? Do you just want this to be repeated more than once within the article? I did not say it's "just" foreign relations and I'm also one of the least nationalistic persons you can encounter on the planet. I personally don't like what Deliogul's been doing with discussing the events instead of the article's situation, and using this page as a forum, while it is not. But it's his choice and style. Because of your reply bordering on rudeness, I tend to believe you've come here with the prejudice of not finding a reference to the events in the article and thus shouting "censorship", a prejudice not realized. The info and the links are in place since months and this article passed a very serious and lengthy FA review process with many comments and discussions (accessible in the archives) involving editors of Armenian ethnicity. Atilim Gunes Baydin20:49, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I should be clearer. My point is that it should be in the history section. The current context within foreign relations, together with the way in which it is described, makes it sound as if the whole thing is a misunderstanding by foreign powers about a much-misunderstood and best forgotten non-event in a minor part of Turkish history. Whereas the truth is that it is a central event in Turkish history. MarkThomas21:31, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Mark, there are 200 countries in the world and only 24 of them recognized the things happened during the rule of Young Turks as a Genocide. Also, what is your degree of "seriousness". I guess you classify a historian as a great person when he/she accepts every cliché Western point of view and if he/she rejects the obviously true Western ideals, he/she is a loser. Turks didn't come out in the 20th century. They saw many important social and political events in their history in the last couple of thousands years so I also don't understand how you decide if an even is a "central" one or not. We are not talking about nationalism here. Actually I'm sure that people suffered a lot during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Our problem is objectivity. Take care, Deliogul21:42, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever. It's a lot more important than a "problem in foreign relations". However I agree with you that the Turks have had a long history of mass-murder, so it's not exactly a new thing. MarkThomas21:50, 28 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The Armenian Deportations of 1915-1917 are already mentioned in the Ottoman Empire article.
Therefore, an event which did not take place in the Republic of Turkey will normally not be mentioned in its article.
On the other hand, I hope you are showing the same sensitivity for the Belgium article. You know, King Leopold II of Belgium killed nearly 20 million Africans in Congo, but unfortunately it's not mentioned in the Belgium article.
7 million Gulags killed by Stalin also deserve to be mentioned in the Russia article.
Assuming that you're British, might I remind you that your Queen refused to apologize for the British atrocities during the Boer Wars - particularly during the Second Boer War in which 620,000 Africans died in your concentration camps. And this was only a "single" atrocity episode of the British Empire, as I have no time to mention all of them, such as those in India and elsewhere. Empires are built with bloodshed, not by distributing candies among the local indigenous people of the conquered lands. And the Brits were among the greatest imperialists in history, hence one of the last people who can teach humanity to others.
Don't get me wrong, but history has seen far worse than the deaths of 600,000 Armenians in WWI (according to independent resources like Arnold J. Toynbee. Turks claim 300,000 deaths while Armenians claim 1,500,000 deaths).
The Armenians, unlike the people of Congo, however, are doing a great job in advertising their plight (whereas the only concern for the descendants of the Congo Genocide is to find a piece of bread and save the day).
The ultimate goal (dream) is to set up a valid excuse for gaining land from Turkey (i.e. Eastern Anatolia)
MarkThomas, you showed that you are totally subjective. Yes, Turks didn't march to Anatolia with peace songs etc. but this is the same for every nation without exception. The West was burning people alive because they were "witches" during the Inquisitions. So don't play the defender of the civilization to us. Deliogul11:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
All of the genocides mentioned above are mentioned in articles, see for example [[6]]. The Boer War concentration camp victims and other victims of British imperialism I agree should be described briefly in United Kingdom and I will raise it. All I am asking for here is a sensible mention of this very key episode in the main history section. I'm afraid I don't find the argument that Turkey is not the successor state of the Ottoman Empire very convincing, especially since pride in Ottoman history appears to be a cornerstone of Turkish xenophobic racist nationalism. But at least you're not alleging that the Armenians just invented the whole thing, as many in Turkey apparently believe. MarkThomas15:54, 1 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So, you practically want the Armenian Deportations of 1915-1917 to be added to the Republic of Turkey (1923) article.
A bit like adding an Etruscan event in the Roman Empire article, or a Republic of Venice event to the Italy article.
I'm sorry, but it's not the proper thing to do.
By the way, the Normans didn't enter England in 1066 by singing songs either, just like the Turks didn't while entering Anatolia five years later.
And for the record, the Armenians were the 3rd largest ethnic group in Eastern Anatolia even before 1915 (after the Turks/Turkicized Kurds and Kurds) so they can't make any land claims in this area by spicing up a genocide story.
You can be sure that any hands which stretch towards our land will be repulsed accordingly.
As for the Ottoman Empire - yes, Turkey is indeed the only legal heir to the Ottoman Empire. Turkey maintained the last Ottoman flag, inherited the Ottoman institutions, and payed for the Ottoman debts until the late 1950s. We have nothing to feel ashamed about our history. Those who talk about the Armenian Deportations usually deny the fact that more than 700,000 Kurds and Turks were massacred in Eastern Anatolia (the bloodiest of them in the city of Van) by the advancing Russian Army and the Armenian "Dashnaksutyun" and "Henchak" terrorists who helped them. When you add the Turkish military casualties on fronts like Gallipoli and elsewhere, you'll see that we suffered a far worse death toll than the Armenians in WWI. The Armenians, however, deserve credit for doing a great job in inflating their figures (from the original 600,000 to the current 1,500,000) and advertising their plight, with the hope of setting an international approval for grabbing land from Turkey in the very first suitable occasion (such as a Turkish defeat in a future war). Eastern Anatolia was already promised to them in the Sevres Treaty (1920), that's why they are still crying like a baby who lost his lollypop.
Regards. Flavius Belisarius18:33, 2 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I deleted a uselessly long "research" by an unsigned contributor. Please put your work on internet and send us the link rather than destroying the talk page. Deliogul09:05, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It writes : "Other major ethnic groups include the Kurds, Circassians, Roma, Arabs and the three officially-recognized minorities (per the treaty of Lausanne) of Greeks, Armenians and Jews"
Firstly there is no officially-recognized minority(no minority has special rights) in Turkey. Also in the treaty of Lausanne, no minorities were officialy recongnized and all the previous rights given to these minorities were cancelled officially. The only rights minorities have right now are langugage related.
The reference about the quoted part from the article, (that is [85]) does not say anything about any offical minorities. So that sentence is wrong and has no reference. It is a totaly subjective comment and therefore should be edited.
--81.213.200.3117:41, 31 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
NPOV2?
(For some reason I am unable to edit NPOV? so this is a continuation of NPOV?)
Lets take things from the beginning and find out what you guys disagree in. Is it:
1. Kemalists in Turkey have commited genocide against a number of ethnicities.
1a. not a gencide because it is a rumour.
1b. not a genocide because we have the right to desplace, kill, force to labour etc. people who oppose our national policy.
1c. it wasn't the Kemalists it was the ... (insert scapegoat here) who did it.
1d. Only the Armenians suffered genocide, not the Greeks or the Kurds.
2. There is sufficient mention of those events in the article.
3. It is irrelevant to the Republic of Turkey, because since the foundation of the Republic, Armenians, Greeks or Kurds have been left alone.
Which is it?
I am very interested in your opinions, and I am open to discussion and I might reconsider. Farm3r22:46, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Young Turks are accused of committing Genocide, not Kemalists and yes, the Ottoman Empire always used harsh policies against rebels. Generally all nations in Anatolia faced such aggression by the Sublime Porte instead of Armenians until the 19th century. Times were changed so Armenians used the policies that they faced to shape their theories about Genocide. We have to clearly understand one thing, the empire forced Armenians to leave their homes, it used force on insisting fractions and many people died in the end this policy but this wasn't like the completely planned and organized Holocaust of Nazi Party. The goals were different and yes, if the empire was a bit capable at the time of these sad events, many Armenians wouldn't die because of hunger etc. Russians and British government were also in the business because they armed Armenian rebels and gave them promises which were impossible to be kept. So their ambition to save the day also shaped the situation. We can’t call an event a Genocide just because people died during that event. Take care folks, Deliogul08:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I would be interested to see how long the revisionism on the Armenian genocide will last. Turkey has already threatened France to desist from officially recognising the Armenian genocide. Obviously its power to threaten any country that has a commemoration date for this atrocity is limited. It will probably end with Turkey being the only country to dispute this well documented event -- much in the same way that Turkey still recognises TRNC. Everyone demands a balanced representation of turkish history in this article but it seems all the black spots have been removed. --Tedblack11:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think there is no problem to talk about the Armenian casualties in the article as long as the records are objective and not propaganda oriented. We are talking about an empire here. House of Osman couldn't just watch Armenian rebels are getting what they want. It would be two times worse since the WWI was continuing during the events. You are partially correct about the standing of Turkey but you shouldn't forget one thing. Many times, Turkish scholars offered Armenian scholars to gather and talk these issues with documents from the two sides but Armenian side hasn't taken any positive move yet. I also have to add that the events of 1915 are nobody's business but Turks and Armenians. France, California etc. don't have right to talk about this issue at least at political level (of course academic studies from all around the world are kept separated from politics of such states). See you brother, Deliogul15:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
On the contrary, it is the duty of any signatory to the Genocide Convention to punish genocide. So the events of 1915 are all signatories business. (Where this argument breaks down is that there is not similar laws regarding denial of other genocides, except for the Holocaust). Fmark13:17, 10 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think this argumentation should be developed under Ottoman Empire. Armenian efforts related with the Turkey is limited to bring the recognition of what they consider as a historical fact of the WWI. Issues related with the WWI (size of the casualties, who killed who...) should be under Ottoman Empire; simply that is the state and political system of its time. Talat Pasha is the Ottoman Empire's Pasha not the Republic of Turkey. Turkish people learn about the conditions of Ottoman Armenian citizens, but the Armenians do not learn about the conditions and difficulties of Ottoman Empire. I believe the hatred is so big, that they do not even want to use the word "Ottoman" in their language. Development of these issues under its time and period would create a better understanding of the issues involved, as all the related information will be under the same page. --Anglepush23:55, 8 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I want to know why other countries support Turkey in the region if they are working next Armenia to punish Turkey. Just have a look at the natural gas and industrial routes between the Central Asia and Europe (For example, [7]). They are just skipping Armenia, whatever the extra cost is. So thinking that one day Turkey will be left alone in the international arena is just absurd when we look at the growing social and economic ties between Turkey and the other countries. On the other hand, Armenia slowly becomes the playground of the Armenian Diaspora and if this economic exclusion will continue, they will have even harder times. I also didn't see any backfire from the West to Azerbaijan when Azeris said that they want Nagorno-Karabakh and other Armenian occupied territories back (they added that if Armenians don't give up these lands, Azerbaijan will invade Armenia). All of these can look irrelevant but actually they show the latest scores. Deliogul14:03, 31 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Republican Era
Republican era part seems to be weak. 1960-1971-1980 should be better explained, especially the constitution of 1960. I will start working on the topic soon. 1980 is also crucial as it lies behind all the problems which Turkey is suffering from. But maybe Republican Era needs to be divided into sub-chapters in order to ensure readability. Like 1923-1945/1945-60/1960-1980/1980-2000. It is too comprehensive to put all under.--Z yTalk21:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I offer 1923-1938/1938-1950/1950-1960/1960-1970/1970-1980/1980-present
Because the rule of Atatürk and İnönü are completely different in nature even if we call them simply the single party period. We must stop when İnönü lost the power in 1950 elections, because he maintained majority in 1946. After that, we can take military coups as turning points as you see in my offer. We also need titles for these time intervals. For example “1980- present: Liberalization” etc. Please share your ideas. Deliogul10:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well lets not to look for labels-titles at this stage cause it may bring about controversies..For example if we start liberalisation with 1980 it would be nothing else than ironic. I hope you get the point.
I agree with the time intervals you suggest..--Z yTalk09:57, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Actually it is related to what you understand from "liberalization" but you are right. People from different political orientations can start an edit war immediately :) I use it as an economic change in the country politics because with the rule of ANAP, Turkey left statism, one of the six arrows. Whatever, I will try to do my best about categorize the republican era, and possibly expanding it a little bit. Deliogul12:21, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I understood what you meant to do it may be right but only partially :) Especially when it is taken from a political perspective. Maybe you can add "economic" to the word liberalization? --Z yTalk22:09, 6 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I dont think the section should be divided into sub chapters, such changes usually lead to an ugly presentation and take the article away from its summary style. Rather, I believe one or two concise paragraphs can be added which provide a bit more detail on the late republican era, specifically the lack of 21st century coverage including EU accession negotiations and the like. --A.Garnet14:17, 20 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The use of the Turkish "dotted I" (İ) in Turkey-related articles
As a Turk I understand why some Turkish users prefer using the Turkish dotted capital İ in Turkey-related texts such as "İstanbul" and "İzmir", etc. Many Spanish and French city names in the English Wikipedia also use such national letters.
However, such a use might be misleading, especially for those who don't know that the Turkish "İ" is practically the English "I", while the Turkish "I" is actually equal to the sound of ë.
Those who don't know this might think that the "İ" represents a "long I".
I've always wondered why my Italian friends say "Iiiiistanbul" instead of "Istanbul", perhaps thinking that the "İ" in front signifies the correct way that it should be spelled.
If I were not Turkish, I would also think the same way.
Therefore, it's perhaps better to avoid the Turkish "İ" unless it's really necessary.
Yes, it's really necessary. No average English reader knows how to read the non standard Latin letters in A Coruña, Münster, Antonín Dvořák, Franz Josef Strauß (and many other articles, as you have noted), and precisely for this reason, the pronunciation of these are presented at the beginning with IPA letters and a sound recording in some. Turkish language and the Turkish alphabet deserves the same respect shown to German, French, Spanish, Czech alphabets. Atilim Gunes Baydin10:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
money
i doubt the country makes 350,000 billion a year.
If you are referring to Nominal GDP, it already surpassed $410 billion by the end of March 2007 (2007 Q1)
edit:I understand the source of my problem. Nominal values are at the bottom of PPP values. It confused me for half an hour so it can confuse others too. AKP has nothing to do about a problem maybe for the first time in their history :D Deliogul10:21, 15 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rankings
Why dont we add an international rankings section like Ukraine or Sweden to the article?
I actually agree that using that map would be better, since the current map uses the Mercator projection, in which countries further north appear larger than they actually are. Look at the size of the Scandinavian countries on the current map, to me that proportion looks rather strange. JACOPLANE • 2007-07-23 18:33
Rejecting a map because of technical reasons and political reasons are two different things. Therefore I respect you Jacoplane but I still defend the current map to show at least where Turkey goes. Deliogul19:50, 23 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The consequence of the present picture is that Sweden looks larger than Turkey. The actual fact is that Turkey is about 70% larger by area than Sweden. / Rgds Mkch17:48, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What about this image? JACOPLANE • 2007-07-24 18:34
I was not aware of this distortion, but now that i see it I agree a new map should be found. In fact, I wish the Wikiproject on countries would come up with a standard map for all country articles. In the meantine, I dont find the second one too bad. Thanks, --A.Garnet19:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we need to use red color to mark Turkey. I know that using green is like a standard in Wikipedia but it can evoke some religious ideas in people's minds. I know it is a "detail" but please consider it ;) Deliogul12:32, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Edit: Half of us gave our votes to AKP and therefore we don't care about the green of Islam anymore :) That's what I think because nobody responds. Deliogul18:05, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I also don't like the current map because Turkey appears in the lower right corner. I would prefer a map in which it would appear in the center if possible. --Kudret abi06:18, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
What justification is there for that though? A map of the continent of Europe, showing Turkey's location within/relative to it seems much more appropriate for an encyclopedia with an international audience, given that people will be familiar with that kind of map. Has anyone even seen a map showing Turkey relative to other countries, that puts Turkey in the center? I know I haven't. -- Hux11:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
LocationTurkey2.png How about LocationTurkey2.png on the right? I think it is quite accurate (even shows Gokceada), it has Turkey in the center while still showing almost all of Europe as well as large portions of Asia and even Africa, illustrating its unique geopolitical position within three continents. It also addresses the color concerns of Deliogul above. --Kudret abi08:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Note on Talk:Georgia in a discussion about that page being used for the country rather than a disambig page, a user states that he thinks that "[Turkey] ... seems like an excellent candidate (for a disambig)". Jooler22:17, 14 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And? I am sure there were some discussions abut it here as well. One factor discussed might be google searches which in a way reflect common usage. Please make the following google searches turkey -wikipedia (I guess more than 90% is about the country Turkey, which is a quite big number) and georgia -wikipedia (much more mixed between state and country). You can also do google news, and google scholar searches. DenizTC03:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If you start to call "Hindistan" as "Bharat" your wish may come true... And you talk of "foreigners" in general, not of English speakers? 88.235.90.11420:24, 16 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I mean everybody in the world can call this country Turkiye and some organizations work on this naming issue these days. We will wait and see ;) Deliogul14:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Proposed move
I propose that this article should be moved to "Republic of Turkey" and that "Turkey" should be a disambiguation page. My reasoning for this is that, while a very large number of people will arrive at the "Turkey" article expecting to read about the country, a similarly large number will arrive here expecting to read about the bird. When an article title has two or more meanings that are very commonly used, it is better to have that title be a disambig page. This is the reason why Georgia goes to a disambig page, for example, and not to the article about the country.
Thoughts? -- Hux06:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should not do that if one is used overwhelmingly, which is the case here. For instance Batman should not be a disambiguation page (there is a Batman (disambiguation)). The person looking for the city of Batman (or people whose surname is Batman) will need to click one more time in both cases (disambig or not), and the overwhelming majority looking for Batman, the hero, won't have to click at all. Here, we should just add a {{for}} for the bird. DenizTC23:54, 21 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
"I think we should not do that if one is used overwhelmingly, which is the case here." Do you know that this is the case though, or is that just your assumption? Because I would be very surprised if you're correct. I think it's much more likely that both "Turkey", the country, and "turkey", the bird, get very large amounts of page hits, given that both are very well-known in the English-speaking world. Is there a way we can find out how many hits each page is getting? It would seem important to know this before any decisions can be made. -- Hux06:09, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is what I wrote above (previous section):
And? I am sure there were some discussions abut it here as well. One factor discussed might be google searches which in a way reflect common usage. Please make the following google searches turkey -wikipedia (I guess more than 90% is about the country Turkey, which is a quite big number) and georgia -wikipedia (much more mixed between state and country). You can also do google news, and google scholar searches. DenizTC03:22, 15 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I made the search for you and here are the ones about Turkey (bird) (rest is for the Turkey (country)):
I don't really think a Google search is going to help here because Google is not Wikipedia. What we need is information about Wikipedia page hits specifically. I know these can be found somehow because this editor managed to get the stats for page hits to Georgia-related articles (see the table below "May 2004") when they were having a similar discussion about moving the page a year or so ago. Maybe it's a simple matter of changing the URL that editor used, downloading the entire Wikipedia stats for, say, July, 2007, and doing some data mining. I'd do that myself but alas I'm on a metered internet connection and I don't really want to spend the money downloading a file which I'm guessing will be around 100MB big!! ;) -- Hux22:01, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think Google 'evidence' is sufficient here, at least that is what is accepted overall on Wikipedia, as far as I can see. In the (rare ?) cases where Google/Google news/Google scholar do not help us much or conflict other evidences/each other, we can try and find other ways, maybe like the one you introduced. Like you mentioned on the talk page of Georgia, we would be needing recent data, which are not available. One thing is available, as far as I know Turkey (country) is in top 300 or something like that in Wikipedia. Like I said before, we should just add a {{for}} for the bird. It's good for Wikipedia servers as well. DenizTC22:53, 23 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You make some reasonable points. Let me see if I can find some Wikipedia-specific data though. And let's also wait and see what other editors think. -- Hux05:51, 24 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In addition to the ideas already presented, I would also like to point out that there are thousands of pages that contain [[Turkey]] with the intention of linking to the country Turkey, which will all have to be replaced if the proposed change is realized. As someone who has taken part in some disambiguation sorting myself, I can say that this is by no means easy and quite time and resource consuming. Also, I do not see how the change will significantly benefit the people who are searching for the bird turkey. When they type turkey, they will be still have to go through the disambiguation page to reach their target. It will only save perhaps one mouse click, and in my humble opinion, one less click for the people who are searching for the bird turkey is not enough benefit to outweigh the evidence presented above that the country of Turkey constitutes for the majority of the searches, as well as the fact I pointed out that a lot of effort will be required to sort out the disambiguation links. --Kudret abi01:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Well, as I said above, the Google evidence is questionable to say the least. It would be much more appropriate to be able to use evidence from Wikipedia (i.e. hit counts, page links, etc.) - 100 links on Google is a very small number plus, let's face it, when a country is involved there is often a nationalist drive to get the topic well-represented on search engines. Naturally this doesn't say a lot about what people actually want when they type "Turkey".
Also, whether one is receiving a majority of attention over the other is not relevant when it comes to disambig pages. As long as there are at least two terms that are both popular, along with a number of other, less popular terms, a disambig page makes the site more useful than sending very large numbers of people to the wrong article. For example, if there are five different meanings for "Turkey", one gets 10,000 hits per month and the others all get 100, then obviously "Turkey" should go directly to the 10,000 hit page. However, if one gets 10,000, another gets 7,000, and the other three get 100 each, then a disambig page is warranted.
How much work it will take to make the change should also not really be a consideration when the result is greater reader utility. If we go down that road then we can justify all kinds of bad decisions based on "too much work for one more click" reasoning. -- Hux08:54, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
You can't make me believe that people are that much interested in the bird, at least if we are not in the Christmas time. Turkey is in G20 and what tricks does the bird got for it :) Deliogul18:13, 1 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Here is some Wiki based stats for you, as of this moment:
To be fair, you're not comparing like with like: sites linking to "Turkey (bird)" are all linking deliberately to the article for the bird, whereas sites linking simply to "Turkey" are doing so for any reason, whether the country, the bird or something else. However, browsing through the articles linking to "Turkey" it does seem that they are overwhelmingly doing so with reference to the country, so that satisfies me that the article doesn't need to be moved at this point. -- Hux06:25, 3 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Umm guys... Turkey (bird) got its name from Turkey (country). In that respect Turkish word for turkey (bird) is hindi which got its name from Hindistan (India). The bird itself is of American in origin but at the time people thought they got to India. See Turkey (bird)#Naming -- Catchi? 13:51, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Request for sources
Can anyone provide me with sources, either from Turkish leaders ot scholars (historians, anthropologists) about the extent to which people consider Turkish people to be a European people/nationality? Thanks, Slrubenstein | Talk10:33, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
They are not European. But they have some territory in Europe. And to answer your question very few I'm guessing. --Vonones10:42, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am not asking whether they are or are not European. I am asking if anyone has any sources. And I am not interested in guesses. If you do not know any sources, you need not bother respondeing. if anyone knows any sources, please let me now. Slrubenstein | Talk10:51, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, you may find "Who are the Turks?" available online here useful. It was written for the Turkish curriculum and is very large at 45Mb. I havent downloaded it for a while but if I remember correctly there was a discussion on the origins of modern Turks. Also, The Turks in World History may help you, providing an overview of Turkic people from their orgins to modern Turkey and Central Asia. Neither of these are specific to Turks and Europe, but you might find them useful nonetheless. --A.Garnet12:26, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I edited the motto. Turkey's motto is "Yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh" which was said by Atatürk and is not "Yurtta barış, dünyada barış" which is a translation of the original motto into "modern" Turkish. The original motto is easily understood by everybody in Turkey and does not need a "translation". Also Turkey's national anthem is called "istiklal marşı" which literally means "the anthem of independence" not "the march of independence". "Marş" means "anthem" in Turkish and doesn't mean "military march" in any sense of walking and the anthem itself has nothing to do with a military marching. --Abuk7821:16, 29 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Occupation of North West Kurdistan
Why is there no mention of Turkish terror against the Kurds? Kurdistan should be independent and Turkey oppresses and occupies Kurdistan to steal the oil. Turkey is imperialist. Stop the occupation! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.68.98.95 (talk) 17:27, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Turkey's borders and unity are officially recognized by the world as they are. Also, where is the oil? When I last left it, it was making your brother Barzani a richer man in Iraq. Logic will save us, Deliogul21:16, 2 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
81.68.98.95, see WP:NOT#SOAPBOX. 88.246.15.164, see WP:NPA. Thanks. -- Catchi? 11:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Culture
I must disagree with a couple of sentences from the Culture section.
Nazım Hikmet is the most famous Turkish poet abroad and one of the all-time greatest literary figures of the 20th century
Good poet but is he really one of the all-time greatest literary figures? I think we must change it to something more neutral.
Pekinel sisters, the world's most famous pianist twins
Again, world's most famous pianist twins? Who makes this decision?
I think these ones are driven by a somewhat patriotic spirit and I would suggest that we use a more neutral style of writing. Northern09:11, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know much about Pekinel sisters because I am not a listener of classical music but I can clearly say that Nazım Hikmet was one of the most successful literary figures of the Turkish republican era and one of the most famous people in his field in the socialist world where he spent a considerable portion of his life. Therefore if we are talking about "all-time greatest" stuff, Hikmet would be in the list at least for the 20th century without a doubt. Deliogul10:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I do not think that such a comment is correct about ANY poet because this issue is very objectionable. I simply suggest a more neutral language whether the current style is specifically correct or not Northern11:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I say, we can wait for other Wikipedians' comments but what kind of a patriotism can be involved in the case of Hikmet. You know, he faced many problems in Turkey and he had to escape to Moscow. Republic of Turkey marked him as a traitor during his lifetime. Also, I'm keeping my view that for Turkey and for the socialist world, he was one of the prominent figures of his time and he was more than just a "good poet". Whatever, lets wait for others ;) Deliogul11:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I also think that Nazim was a great poet but I agree with the point user:Northern brought up. Same goes for the Pekinel sisters. The sentences can be justified with a source (such as: "According to poets international, Nazim Hikmet was one of the most succesful literary figures..." vice versa...) Other than that, I am also for the NPOVization. Kerem Özcan16:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reducing Article Size
OK, it appears I was a little too bold with my edits from yesterday meant solely to reduce the size. My goal here was the same as what I did on Ottoman Empire about a month ago. The article is so large that it simply takes a long time to load. Load Portugal, and then load Turkey and compare the load times as an example of what I am talking about. Most of the text I removed is redundant to the links which I still left behind. Namely, the history sections that deal with the entire known history of Anatolia. I think it is only neccesary to have the small portion of the Ottoman history which I left behind as an intro to the founding of the modern Republic of Turkey. Most of the other edits deal with removing images (how many pictures of Ataturk does this article actually need?). I tried to avoid removing anything that was controversial. Likewise, I consolidated several areas dealing with the Republic's membership in organizations (two mentions with the same citation discussing UN membership, for example). The intro need only be what I left behind, as the rest of the information exists in the correct location already. Anything not in the article is still found under one of the remaining links. I'll leave everything as is for the moment, but I would like to see the article move back towards this direction. I would not bother getting too hung up on the featured article status, since streamlining really does not warrant removing information on the Republic of Turkey, so much as moving extraneous, or redundant information. Hiberniantears13:14, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Should we shorten the refs (instead of full citation template, just last name of author + title of the book + page (if known))? That would greatly reduce the size in my opinion. Do we have a rule of 100kb (=102400 b) maximum for FA's (or is it a rather arbitrary number for 'too large size')? Let's try to leave ourselves (our opinions, etc.) aside, when choosing the parts to remove and the images to keep/remove. DenizTC15:43, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, I made an "on purpose" revert today to show a detail about all this edit craze. I know that people are editing this article for good but they don't discuss it here and they don't take other Wikipedians' opinions before they make changes. Let’s talk every single step before taking action. This is a featured article not the "dingonun ahırı" (I couldn't find the English equivalent) ;) Deliogul16:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I was wondering what you were up to, but figured it was something along those lines. :-) I left your on purpose edit alone (and the others) in recognition of the amount of work many editors have put into this page, as well as the amount of controversy the small changes in the Turkey article can illicit. I realize that my edit was pretty bold, but I was genuinely focusing on the removal of redundant materials. I think if you compare the 100+k version, to my last edit you will see that the information contained in the article is essentially the same. I like Denizz's suggestion above, and that might actually go a long way to reducing the size. From a general "readability" standpoint, I think we should consider my edits in three distinct segments: First, streamlining the intro. Most of the information in the intro is also included elsewhere in the article, so removing it here does not remove it from the article. Second, images take up a lot of k, and do not always add an equivalent amount of value that a comparable amount of text might (OK... I'll say it... "but isn't a picture worth a 1000 words?"). My reduction of images was an effort to reduce memory, but also increase the value of the images which remain in place by not overloading the reader. Third, my edits to the history section removed the bulk of pre-Republic of Turkey material in defference to simply leaving in place links to articles on the removed subjects (such as the overall history of Anatolia, or the history of the Seljuks). While these topics are clearly relevent to the modern Republic, they are not actually the history of the Republic of Turkey itself. As such, it is not neccesary to have a lengthy amount of text dedicated to these subjects, when we can simply link an interested reader over to a more specific article. That's my ten cents for the moment, but I just wanted to make sure it was clear what I was up to. Hiberniantears20:20, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
After reading your reasons, your edits are ok for me. I like this article. I watched it growing day by day so, of course, I want it to be the best. Thanks for your efforts brother. Deliogul20:32, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I am having troubles with visualizing 'France and UK together'. I can only say 'Hmmm'; this way it is a sacrificable trivia imo. We can say something like the Anatolia is about the size of X (Texas?) whereas eastern Thrace is about the size of Y. That way 'X and Y together' would be somewhat clear and useful imo. Also if all reliable sources that compare, compare it to Texas, we should do so as well. Do we have other comparisons? Do British and French compare to something else? DenizTC03:02, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
American sources compare Turkey with Texas, because that's the only way the average American can understand or try to imagine inside his/her head the size of Turkey. In reality, the difference between Turkey (783,000 km2) and Texas (678,000 km2) is 105,000 km2, and that's a HUGE difference. Many countries are smaller than 105,000 km2 (i.e. 3,5 x Armenia). Whereas Metropolitan France (France in Europe) and the United Kingdom together measure about 794,000 km2, which is much closer to 783,000 km2 (a much closer comparison). As Turkey is in Europe and wants to join the EU, it's better for the "Europeans" to understand it. France and the United Kingdom are neighbouring countries, and actually formed a single state together during the Hundred Years' War in the medieval period (France was under English occupation back then, remember Joan of Arc.) Josémaríacórdoba18:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How much do they represent present-day Republic of Turkey's culture or demographics (are they widespread)?
As far as I know, they are little more than a tourist attraction (I watched them at the Galata Mevlevi House this summer), similar to the Mehteran (Ottoman Army Band) which performs for tourists in front of the Topkapi or Dolmabahce Palace.
Not to mention that Sufism and the Dervish order were banned by Ataturk, but later unbanned by Menderes for "tourism attraction" purposes.
How much do the Whirling Dervishes or the Mehteran represent "present-day Republic of Turkey's culture or demographics", I have doubts.
Marcus Garvey once said “A man without history is like a tree without roots”. We can't live without the past. You may not see how they affect us today but all these acts are in our roots. They still carry water from the soil for new generations. Deliogul18:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Marcus Garvey also wanted all Afro-Americans to turn back to Africa and form a single African State, which obviously didn't make much sense to them, since they remained in the United States. But the real question is, "what percentage of present-day Turkish demographics do the Dancing Sufis or the Mehteran Janissaries employed by the Turkish Ministry of Tourism represent?" 0.000001% maybe? They may look good and interesting in the Bollywoodesque advertisement films of Turkey (where a Middle Eastern horseman comes out from the doors of an Istanbul subway train and throws flowers to a lady) but in real life they represent Turkish demographics far less than the sunbathers at the Turkish Riviera, who probably correspond to more than 60-70% of the Turkish population. Josémaríacórdoba19:34, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, he is one of my favorites ;) By the way, the advertisement sucks as you mentioned but horses are important figures of the Central Asian roots and the Seljuq tradition so if they can get rid of the subway station and flowers and put that horseman (a more Turkish one would be better) next to those sunbathing crazy Germans, Turkey would possibly double its reputation :) Also, If you want to learn the percentage of the Sufism in our present day culture, I recommend you the great Omar Faruk Tekbilek. Deliogul22:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I had purchased one of his CDs from Virgin Megastore at Times Square (NY) back in 2000 (it was mass-advertised on the shop windows). The album had a yellowish cover with the interior view of a mosque's dome (I suppose the Suleymaniye Mosque or Sehzade Mosque in Istanbul). I only remember the song "Menem" because it was kind of weird, like "Meneeeeeeeeeem" :-) Josémaríacórdoba01:32, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It must be the "One Truth", the masterpiece of him that includes his popular songs, Istanbul, I Love You and Red Skies. His song, I Love You, can be found in the Buddha Bar II. Whatever, this old cultural icons are more than tourist hunters as I said before. Assuming that I'm not a tourist and I'm not the only one who listens to Tekbilek :) Deliogul11:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If I'm not mistaken there's just one whirling dervish' picture in the article and no info about neither those dervishes nor the mehteran. I think it's not going to hurt anybody if it stays in, since the article is not build on them. I'm not stricly against the removal though since you're also right in your concerns. Maybe the picture can be carried to the Culture section, since it's more of a culture thing now rather than a religious sect. Kerem Özcan12:45, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Economy During 1980s
The article mentions that Turkey passed to a more private owned and marked based system with the reign of ANAP. It also objectively mentions that this decision caused several economic crises but it doesn't mention one important detail. Before the changes of 1980s, citizens were benefiting from the output of their country more equally. The article must mention how 1980s created a new rich community from nothing and how political references and being backed up by important people became more important in Turkey. This can also be mentioned in the social part of the article. Of course, if you agree with me and if you have some good references about what I'm trying to say ;) Deliogul15:31, 22 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The foreign relations section is ridicolously large, good quality images have been shrunk (I understand MOS is being cited as a reason but see Bangladesh for example where forced sizes are used) and too many images have been added to culture and economy sections. People seem to forget this article went through a rigorous FA process, substantial changes should be made with care. --A.Garnet11:19, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Being someone who earns money by shooting publicity films for large banks in Italy, I must say that Turkey has a serious PR problem and needs the "maximum" amount of images to express itself properly, especially in relation to its bid to join the European Union. As long as the average Frenchman thinks that Turkey is the Arabian desert country on the package of Camel cigarettes, or that the Turks are no different than the North Africans who burn the suburbs of Paris, this will not be possible. Turkey is in a serious need of properly expressing itself, and "images" will be an essential part of this. Of course I'm not saying "let's overload the article with images", but using "as many images as possible, without damaging the article's quality", is definitely a big MUST in Turkey's case. The country's future is at stake. 151.38.183.17620:05, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, the re-election of "wannabe bedouins" like Erdoğan and Gül is not helping Turkey's image problem within the EU at all; but we, as common citizens who support Turkey's bid to join the EU, must do whatever we can to make up the ante. It's a "duty" that we owe to our children and grandchildren. As John F. Kennedy said, "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." 151.38.183.17620:51, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Is this Flavius/Shup again? I'm not sure approaching article improvement/writing/maintaining/creating is well served by taking into account any given nation's image problem. There is no shortage of countries that would benefit from better PR, but degrading the objectivity of an encyclopedia article to that end is contrary to the goals of this project. I understand the point you are making, but the article certainly has plenty of pictures (even in my reduced version) which demonstrate that Turkey is not a desertscape. Hiberniantears21:04, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
And I believe they were right, because you completely preserved the unnecessarily long Foreign Relations section, while arbitrarily (without asking other users) chopping off the important and essential information from the other sections. Hence all the protests. 151.38.183.17601:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As for the images, try enlarging them and User:Caniago will instantly revert it. He seems determined to wage a revert war on this issue, since he spent a lot of time and effort for bringing a standard to the size of images in every single country article on Wikipedia. 151.38.183.17601:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As for the Foreign Relations section, try removing a single comma from the Armenian Genocide, Greece or Cyprus sections, and User:Kékrōps or User:Vonones will instantly revert it, since they seem determined to defend the interests (point of view) of their respective nations on these issues; even at the cost of a revert war, which caused my ban as Flavius Belisarius until October 12. 151.38.183.17601:57, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Granted, my edits were a bit too bold for this article, which as you pointed out, is the work of a very lengthy series of collaborations between many editors. For whatever reason, Turkey is the target of all kinds of biased editing, running the spectrum of views, and removing one sentence here or there can trigger far more of a response than it would in a less emotionally charged article. That said, my 10k reduction did lead quickly to a 4k compromise reduction, and some constructive discussion here on the talk page. As far as I can tell, there really was no discord over my edits once I made clear what I was doing. In the mean time, I still think there is plenty of room to further reduce this article in the following three areas:
1) There is little need for the extended history section. I think leading in with a brief history of the end of the Ottoman Period is a sufficient intro to explaining the founding period of the Republic of Turkey. Keeping in place the other history related links at the top of the history section (i.e. Anatolia/Seljuks/the full Ottoman Period) is enough to tell the reader that civilization, and human occupation have existed on the land of modern Turkey for a very long time.
2) Images. This is a pet peeve of mine, in that many images in an already large article can make the page very difficult to load. I understand Flavius when he states that you want the pictures in an article to cleary illustrate the article topic, but I don't think it takes 100 pictures to do this. Some streetscapes, a few images from the regions of Turkey, and maybe pics of Attaturk and Erdogan/Gul to draw together past and present.
3) As noted by a couple of editors, the foreign policy section is too long. This is a dodgier section as it tends to attract a large amount of weasel words, and POV editing. I stay away from making too much substantive change as my own view of this is probably clouded by an American-centric access to information. The Armenian Genocide/Issue is clearly a massive stumbling block on par with trying to have an objective, level-headed conversation between a Catholic and a Protestant from Belfast. Not sure what to do on this point other than suggest that all regular contributors to this article take care to discuss Armenian related changes on the talk page first.
Red is more than the color of the flag in Turkey's case. It is the symbol of sovereignty and nobility in the Central Asia originated cultures. Whatever, it is better than green ;) Deliogul19:28, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Turks being the regional Redcoats, the "British Racing Green" map is fine too. But it just doesn't have the gutsy and passionate looks and feel of the red map, i.e. the "rosso corsa" Ferrari Enzo. 151.38.183.17619:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever the color, I still don't think the Europe based maps are the right way to go. They only show the location in relation to Europe, and Turkey appears pushed to the corner and rotated. Perhaps I will open an RFC on this and collect some opinions. --Kudret abiTalk21:01, 25 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion the first two paragraphs (relations with the E.U. and the U.S.) should be kept, while the rest should be copy-pasted to the respective sections of the main article Foreign relations of Turkey, which is already linked at the top of the Foreign Relations section.
I think Greece (Cyprus issue), Armenia (Diaspora, energy issues and political relations), Syria (water relations and the Hatay issue), Iraq (effect of Gulf wars and autonomous Kurds in the north) and Iran (religion export of Iran, possible economic ties between the two country) deserve to be mentioned in this section with couple of sentences. Then people can go to the main articles of these issues but first they have to know what it is all about. Deliogul14:25, 26 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Or, they can be linked at the bottom of the section, such as:
In line with its traditional Western orientation, relations with Europe have always been a central part of Turkish foreign policy. Turkey became a member of the Council of Europe in 1949, applied for associate membership of the EEC (predecessor of the EU) in 1959 and became an associate member in 1963. After decades of political negotiations, Turkey applied for full membership of the EEC in 1987, became an associate member of the Western European Union in 1992, reached a Customs Union agreement with the EU in 1995 and has officially begun full accession negotiations with the EU on October 32005.[5] It is believed that the accession process will take at least 15 years due to Turkey's size and the depth of disagreements over certain issues.[6] The European Union remains Turkey's biggest trading partner, and the presence of a well-established Turkish diaspora in Europe has contributed to the development of extensive relations between the two sides over the years.
The other defining aspect of Turkey's foreign relations has been its ties with the United States. Membership of NATO in 1952 ensured close bilateral relations with Washington, based on common threats and interest. Turkey was the bulwark of NATO's southeastern flank throughout the Cold War, directly bordering Warsaw Pact countries and risking nuclear war on its soil during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Although Turkey also supported the United States in the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan after September 11, the Iraq War faced strong domestic opposition in the country. A government motion which would have allowed U.S. troops to attack Iraq from Turkey's southeastern border couldn't reach the absolute majority of 276 votes needed for its adoption in the Turkish Parliament, the final tally being 264 votes for and 250 against.[7] This led to a cooling in relations between the U.S. and Turkey and fears that they may be damaged as a result of the situation in Iraq.[8] Turkey is particularly cautious about an independent Kurdish state arising from a destabilised Iraq; it has previously fought an insurgent war on its own soil, in which an estimated 37,000 people lost their lives, against the PKK (listed as a terrorist organization by a number of states and organisations, including the U.S. and the EU).[9][10] This led the Turkish government to put pressure on the U.S. to clamp down on insurgent training camps in northern Iraq, without much success.[11]
But of course, all information below the first two paragraphs should be first copy-pasted to the respective articles for avoiding the loss of information. Patrick Sanders00:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
As an IR student, I'm pretty shocked when I saw that there are no articles about such important aspects of Turkish foreign policy. By the way, A government motion which would have allowed U.S. troops to attack Iraq from Turkey's southeastern border couldn't reach the absolute majority of 276 votes needed for its adoption in the Turkish Parliament, the final tally being 264 votes for and 250 against. part is longer than it can be. It would be enough if we state that the offer wasn't accepted. Deliogul16:31, 27 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should wait just a little bit longer before attempting this. As it is, with all the sockpuppeting, it is pretty difficult to make constructive edits on a large scale to this article while still following WP:AGF with any new editor who jumps in and makes a series of well intentioned edits. Hiberniantears14:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It needs to be drastically trimmed and written in summary style, that means abandoning much of tedious details such as how many points Turkey gave Armenian in the Eurovision song contest (!!). The section should be split into US, EU and regional relations, the regional section comprising of Turkeys tilt away from Western reliance during the Cold War towards regional assertiveness in the Middle East and Caucasus. Controversies such as Cyprus and Armenia should be summarized into sentences, not paragraphs. --A.Garnet14:32, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed, but we need to wait until the sockpuppeting issue is resolved, otherwise this will just turn into a massive edit war. Most of the edits made to Turkey by different users over the past couple of weeks are the same person. Many of the socks are now blocked, but new ones just pop up, or the editor jumps over to editing from dynamic IP's. Any major revisions we make will be chewed apart by the editor in question, either through wholesale revisions, or minor tweaks which over time restore the old version. Its clear that most of us are not happy with the current state of the article. That said, the current state of events makes it nearly impossible to constructively improve this article. To that end, we all just need to be patient for the time being. Hiberniantears15:20, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm actually very happy of the recent changes (apart from a few minor punctuation errors that I noticed - which I'll leave for someone else to correct.) If a shop window stays the same for too long, it starts to get boring. Besides, the Winter 2007-2008 season is here :) Being an advertiser in Milan, I have a lot of experience in making "catchy windows", as you might have noticed. But for this season I'll leave the window-making entirely to you guys :) Anyway, Hiberniantears, the amount of information that I poured into Turkey-related articles is so big that, no matter how much you change them, they'll still carry traces of me; because some of the information that I added is "truly essential" and "too important to delete". For instance, it was me who added that Turkey is a "developed country", a "member of the G-20", the "Big Three: Roosevelt-İnönü-Churchill" (similar to the Yalta Conference - I actually created the Second Cairo Conference article just to put that photo), the "TCDD High Speed Train" (HSTs are usually in developed countries), the "KC-135 Stratotanker" (only 4 countries operate them), the Levent financial district photo (my friend took that photo, but used my shoulder as a tripod), all Maslak, Levent, Nişantaşı, Bağdat Avenue, etc. photos (my friends provided them) etc... It takes someone with a "marketing instinct" to come up with these "status symbols" to boost the image of Turkey, and that's exactly what I have done (and I'm proud of it, as a responsible citizen who wants to serve his nation). In reality, many of the things that I wrote are actually known by very few people. For instance, most History of Art teachers in Turkish universities don't even know that there's a Genoese Palace behind Bankalar Caddesi, or that it's a copy of the San Giorgio Palace in Genoa. Or that Cristoforo Buondelmonte, author of the oldest surviving map of Istanbul, is Florentine. Many "true Istanbulites" don't even know that there was a water trench in front of the triple land walls of Theodosius II, or the details regarding the Sphendone, or that the tribunes of the Hippodrome are buried 8 feet below ground level, or that the Arap Mosque is the only surviving building from the Latin Empire (I had to make a revert war to add the Latin Empire into the Istanbul article), etc... I haven't met any person who knows Turkish marine history better than I do. And I'm not surprised that noone has added anything new to many articles that I created, simply because they don't know anything more about them, and because the articles are near absolute saturation in terms of information (with nothing more left to add). Am I being a bit megalomaniac and larger-than-life? Maybe. Maybe not. ;) 206.71.149.8023:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've made some changes to reduce the clutter on the article. As for the sockpuppetry, if your referring to Flavius, he was in favour of reducing the foreign relations section so I do not see a problem with get started as soon as possible. I've removed the paragraph on Greece and Cyprus and merged a few sentences to do with Cyprus into the EU section, I think this is a good start. I've also removed some unnecessary photos and made some relevant additions. --A.Garnet18:16, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Are these languages are accepted as legal by the state or not. If they aren't, you can't add them to the article. As far as I know, the only legal language in Turkey is Turkish. Deliogul13:54, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I believe you are correct Deliogul. So far as I know, only Kurdish is even under consideration by the current government, and I haven't actually heard the AKP considering "official" status, so much as allowing it to be taught. Hiberniantears14:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To Deliogul: The state has no business deciding what languages are spoken in its territory. The state may decide whether a certain group gets special minority rights connected with their language, but whether or not the language exists is (one hopes!) none of the government's business. Relevant sources would be demographic and linguistic studies; Ethnologue is a good place to start. But I agree one shouldn't overload the infobox with such a list. Fut.Perf.☼14:58, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
To Hiberniantears: As far as official recognition is concerned, I think that at least Greek and Armenian have a special protected status under the Treaty of Lausanne. There are schools operating in these languages, as far as I know. Kurdish doesn't have any special status of its own. If I remember correctly, the new legislation that allowed some marginal use of it in the media and education is worded so as to extend to all local "mother tongues" (anadilleri) Fut.Perf.☼15:27, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, if one day humanity can reach to the ideal liberal democracy, as some of the Western scholars argue, the state will be minimized and all people will have the right to live as they want but until that day, it is the "business" of the states to regulate what is going on in their territories. This is what we call the sovereignity of the state and if the constitution of a state bans or doesn't recognize the regional languages, any international agreement about human rights can't be operated in that state because the constitution is above the international agreements (at least in Turkey's case where the country is not bounded with the regulations of a supranational organization like EU). We all want to reach the world peace and stop global warming but it is not that easy :) Deliogul16:42, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Completely off-topic. The languages are there, it's a fact (the Turkish government doesn't actually deny that); what the Turkish government thinks about how and when and where they can be used is of no importance whatsoever to the writing of an encyclopdia. When and where we want to describe what languages are spoken in Turkey, we will name them all; when and where we want to describe the language policies of the Turkish state, we will describe those. Simple. Fut.Perf.☼16:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, you can put this list to anywhere in the article, instead of the infobox. People are talking in countless ways but there is not a regulation of the Republic of Turkey about them. Therefore, until it becomes legal (a term I don't like either), infobox is closed to these languages. Deliogul16:49, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I agree, for practical reasons, that they shouldn't be in the infobox. I disagree in the strongest possible terms that the reason why they sholdn't be in the infobox is their non-recognition. That view is, to put it frankly, disgusting and revolting to me. Fut.Perf.☼16:56, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A slight rise in the amount of nationalist flavour
For what it's worth: I have sensed a slight rise in nationalist flavour in the article.
I can't help but think that this "slight change in tone" might be linked with the recent terror attacks in which 15 Turkish soldiers were killed, and the reluctance of the U.S. to help Turkey in dealing with the PKK bases in Northern Iraq, possibly as a retaliation for Turkey's reluctance of allowing U.S. troops to attack Iraq from Turkey in 2003.
The Foreign Relations section has become a bit "less empathic" towards Turkey-U.S. relations.
And the painting of Mehmed II entering Constantinople by Fausto Zonaro, no matter how beautiful, has a slightly "triumphalist" tone, with dead Byzantine soldiers (and their cross-bearing shields) lying on the ground. It can be interpreted as stressing "the victory of Islam over Christianity." And that's not a very good PR strategy.
There's also a misleading detail in Zonaro's painting: In 1453 there were no African soldiers in the Ottoman Army. The first African (black) soldiers from Nubia (Sudan) entered the Ottoman ranks after Selim I's conquest of Egypt in 1517. Zonaro obviously wanted to add an "orientalist" appeal to his painting, which was quite fashionable in the late 19th century.
I believe that the Sultanahmet Mosque photo was a "less aggressive" representative of Turkey's Ottoman heritage, and will attract less vandalism by the Greeks. 206.71.149.8010:28, 10 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think you are reading too much into it my friend. Recent political events were certainly not in my mind when editing, and I dont see how any of my edits can be seen as being more aggresive to the US when all I did was trim a few sentences. As for the Zonaro image, I felt the Ottoman Empire needed stronger representation, and the partial view of the Sultan Ahment mosque didnt seem to provide that. The conquest of Istanbul, whatever national sensitivies it might evoke, is highly factually relavant since it marks the Ottomans true transition to empire. I'd place the portrait of Suleiman the Magnificent if you want, but I'm sure you'd complain his turban isnt the image you want representative of Turkey. Whatever, if other people find it aggresive (which was not my intention) then they can remove it, I just find factually relavant. --A.Garnet10:51, 10 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think the original "Mehmed entering Constantinople" portrait belongs to Benjamin-Constant (made in 1876) and others have been imitating his version. Constant's version also has Constantine XI lying dead next to Mehmed's horse, of course a romantic depiction since nobody saw the last emperor after May 29. By the way, Fall of Constantinople also marked the end of the age of castles by presenting the gun power. Therefore, it is an important event both for the Turkish and world history and the military circles. Whatever, you can either keep or delete the image from Turkey's article, it is not a big deal for me too. Deliogul14:01, 10 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Reminds me of which: Wouldn't Mehmed II be more correct, rather than "Mehmet II", since "Mehmet" is a relatively modern form of the name Mehmed (its modern evolution after the Turkish language reforms in the republican period) 206.71.149.8015:10, 10 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I know the portrait because it has a place in my userpage ;) You can visit the talk page of Mehmed II for this "t-d" business. We discussed it there and more or less decided that using "d" is the best way. Deliogul18:58, 10 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The single biggest issue for turkey is the call by kurds for self determination. A human right that has been trampled upon by the ethnic cleansing and the brutal suppression of culture and language of the kurdish people, and the killing and jailing of their political leaders. There is no mention of the history of the kurdistan since before turkey was formed. It is mentioned as a problem that "emerged" after the iraq invasion by the us led forces!?! This misleads the reader to think that this hasn't been an issue since before the existence of Turkey itself!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.111.167.232 (talk) 22:42, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Turks have had problems with Kurds since Ottoman times. Governments made many bad decisions while handling the Kurdish issue, nobody can say the opposite, but Kurds also aren't "Sütten çıkmış ak kaşık" (Totally innocent). Many soldiers have been killed, many villages have been destroyed and the people who commited these crimes are Kurds. By the way, if Turkish central government wanted to "clean" the Kurds, why there are some ten million Kurds in Turkey? Deliogul23:34, 20 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
OECD is more important than OSCE, United Nations has vanished
I'm sure Hiberniantears has good intentions in shortening the article, but Turkey's status as a "founding member of the OECD" has disappeared while he removed the last paragraph of the opening section (which I believe was wrong) and moved some of that information (such as Turkey being a founding member of the OSCE, which is also correct) to the Foreign Relations section.
The OECD is a far more important and prestigious organization than the OSCE (largely symbolic), and yet it has not been added to the Foreign Relations section after the removal of the last paragraph of the opening section.
Likewise, Turkey's status as a "founding member of the United Nations" has also vanished.
The Foreign Relations section was already too long, so why lengthen it further by dumping some of the information of the opening section to it?
Well, thanks for making my earlier point... that you will just revert whatever I do. OSCE and OECD were both in my version of the article. One in economy, the other in foreign relations. The paragraph I removed is entirely redundant, and every single point of information remained in the article. Hiberniantears11:24, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ottoman opressions and the negative impact of the Ottoman empire on the Balkans
Why does the history in this article not mention the great opression that the Ottoman Empire cause to the nations it enslaved? For examle the Bulgarians? What about the negative impact of Turkey on the Balkans? Here is a citation from the article history of the Balkans:
By the end of the 16th century, the Ottoman Empire became the controlling force in the region, although it was centered around Anatolia. In the past 550 years, because of the frequent Ottoman wars in Europe fought in and around the Balkans, and the comparative Ottoman isolation from the mainstream of economic advance (reflecting the shift of Europe's commercial and political centre of gravity towards the Atlantic), the Balkans has been the least developed part of Europe.
While this article makes it sounds almost like the Ottoman rule was a totally positive thing. I can understand that the history books in Turkey are all biased but can we show some balls and put some real history in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.126.113.154 (talk) 17:16, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ottoman State was "imperialist" as you can understand from its name :) We can talk about the economic system in the empire as you want. The name of the system was "protectionism" which was focused on the basic needs of the local people in every region. This means that producers were bounded in the regional territories by quotas and harsh rules. This system didn't change until the reform period of the empire. This was a bad thing when you look at it from the liberalist perspective but some kind of an advantage for the royalist state economy of the empire. By adding those, you shouldn't forget the rights granted to millets in the Ottoman system. They were given the right to operate their own schools and live according to their traditions. Even the legal code was different for these millets. So, the system had bad and good sides. Calling it a total mess would be pure subjectivity. Deliogul17:26, 11 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I want to add a little detail. There is not a thing called "unbiased history book" if it is prepared for the widespread education in a state. If you put a Serbian and a Turk in a room and want them to revise the historical events between the 15th and 20th centuries, you would possibly hear two totally different versions of the same events. Deliogul20:19, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Aremenian Genocide and Foreign Relations Update
Shouldnt there be some mention of that fact that Turkey recalled its ambassador to the United States, after the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs passed a resolution condemning the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire?Giovanni3318:56, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we can wait for a couple of days before adding a detailed data to the main page of the relations about this new event but we can put a sentence about it in this article. There are many ways that this conflict can go. I'm afraid of the possibilities like "Johnson letter paving the way for Cyprus".1 US's opposition to Turkey has generally caused many problems ;) Deliogul20:20, 12 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I know it is already in the article, but until this comes to at least a full vote in the house, it's still developing. The resolution itself is non-binding, does not have the support of the administration, and has no counterpart in the Senate. Outside of Senate support, followed by Administration support, this bill is moot, other than to reflect the opinion of Democratic Party members in the House itself. Given the legal insignificance this bill will have on American policy, this strikes me as a savvy move by the Turkish government, which is certainly looking for a reason to enter Norther Iraq, and this probably represents a bargaining chip to either gain American approval of a Turkish operation in Iraq, or to gain American assistance in securing the Iraqi-Turkish border. Either way, its all just speculation at this point... Hiberniantears23:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If the government wants to occupy Northern Iraq, I am the king of Sarıyer :) They are giving electricity cheaper to Iraq, their companies have strong economic ties with the Kurdish authority and their economic success is somewhat depended on the Western support. I also don't want them to play Risk in real life but not for the "cold cash", basically, for the sake of our reputation and international justice. Deliogul13:40, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Let me qualify my last statement. I'm not saying the Turkish government wants to occupy any part of Iraq. They do, however, want to conduct some operations there specifically against the PKK, or find a way to better secure the border. Hiberniantears13:59, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, if they desperately want to do such a thing, they have to do it secretly this time. If they will announce the operation, which is a thing they are doing in recent days with all their statements, they won't find any PKK member to kill when they attack :) This is not a joke, Tansu Çiller did it before. Deliogul21:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
When did Turkey become "Turkey"
Can anyone please tell me when "Turkey" first appeared in the historical record?
Is it's first appearence when Ataturk established the "Republic of Turkey" or had the term been used before as a description for Asia Minor or Anatolia?
As far as I know, "Turkey" first was used during the late Ottoman period to define the empire by European powers. At that time it wasn't a legal name, it was only a nickname. If you think that the other nickname of the empire was the "Sick Man of Europe", you can understand the good intentions behind this nickname business :) Deliogul15:59, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Make that: the early Ottoman period, or even earlier. I don't know about the word Türkiye in Turkish itself, but in the Western European languages, Turcia, Turkey and its equivalents were common from the Middle Ages. Haven't got access to the OED right now, but the German Deutsches Wörterbuch has citations from the 13th century.
ein wint von Barbarie waet, der ander von Türkie ['one wind blows from Barbary, the other from Turkey'] - Tannhäuser, 13th cent.
es möcht eym hertten steyn thůn we, was wir alleyn verloren hant in kleyn Asyen vnd Kriechenlandt, das man die grosz Türcky yetz nennt ['it would make a hard stone hurt to see what we have lost, in Asia Minor and Greece, which is called Great Turkey now.'] - Sebastian Brant, 1495.
I guess you got it wrong. "Turkey" is not a different version of the earlier name "Turcia", which is still used to refer Turkey in many languages. "Turkey" possibly comes from a word trick "Turk to Turkey". I'm not an expert on this issue but I guess it is somehow the same as "James becomes Jimmy". Of course, if you say that Europeans didn't have any bad intentions about the Ottomans and they gave the name of a bird to a country just by coincidence or because of a similarity between Turkey and Turcia, I don't have anything to add :) Deliogul18:14, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Uhm, no. the bird has nothing to do with it, if that's what you mean. (The bird was named after the country, much later.) The English word Turkey, just like the German counterparts I quoted, certainly comes ultimately from the form Turcia in the mediterranean languages. In Latin, Greek and Italian, -ia is the regular derivational suffix to form country names from ethnic names. It was called so in several mediterranean languages alike, from there the northwest European languages probably got it via French (Turquie). Fut.Perf.☼18:25, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't have anything to add, as I said before, because you are standing there with the knowledge of the subject my friend :) Deliogul18:35, 14 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Turks in Iran
Turks in iran are azerian branch of turkic languages. They constitute up to 25-30 percent of Iranian population. They live mostly in northwestern part of iran but live in other parts of Iran as well. They are Shia muslems.The interesting point about them is that their religion (Shia) is more important to them rather than their turkic language and ethnicity so that they feel much closer to persians rather than to turks. They even dislike to call themselves as turks and they always say they are azeris not turks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.229.34.25 (talk) 01:01, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is like hating America but proudly stating that you are from New York :) When you say "I'm an Azeri", that generally means "I'm Turkic" and it is a totally different identity than a person's religious identity. It was discussed that Iranian Azeris would revolt to gain their freedom to join Azerbaijan if a possible occupation of Iran by USA occurs. Of course, if what you say is true, that wouldn't take place as Azeris love Iranians. We will wait and see. Deliogul13:03, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Propose Edit : 17th Oct. 2007
_
I am very thankful to each and every editor who feels responsible for the well-being of article and who keeps an eye on it to avoid corruption.
I would like to share a few ideas about it.
I believe, Istanbul should be replaced with "İstanbul" at every place it is used. And it might as well be mentioned as the "Most Populous" city instead of the largest city on the overview section.
Also the sentence; "The New Turkish Lira (Yeni Türk Lirası, YTL) replaced the old Turkish Lira on 1 January 2005." should be replaced with "The New Turkish Lira (Yeni Türk Lirası, YTL) replaced the Turkish Lira (Türk Lirası, TL) on 1 January 2005." The linkings should remain the same.
Another issue is that, in the etymology section "Göktürks" should not be quoted in parenthesis as "Sky Turks". If there shall be a quote, it should be "Blue Turks" instead. But there are no needs for any quotes for that proper particular name of the related community/nation.
Thank you & Have a good one...
Respectfully Submitted,
MKM
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These are okay with me. By the way, do we really have to find an English version of "Göktürk", if there is not a widely accepted one. An internal link to the main article of Göktürks would be enough. Deliogul13:06, 16 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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For Gokturks; No translation is needed at all,
especially not that false one.
The old currency is not called "old Turkish Lira",
It is simply "The Turkish Lira."
MKM
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Featured Article Status
With an eye to maintaining the featured article status, or improving it, I pulled this dif, which compares the version of the article right now, with that version when the article was promoted to featured article status. I have not yet given it a thorough review, but at some point it may behoove a few of us to print out both versions, and make a comparison of the two hardcopies in order to assess the current state of the article. I am pretty busy at work this week, so this is more of a long term project for me, but I thought I would get the dif out there for any enterprising editors who care to partake. Hiberniantears12:56, 17 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
How Turks became Kurds neighbours
Do you think You can delete this article? someone did that and i put it here again. Why do you fear the truth that much?
This is the story of how Turks and Kurds became neighbours, this is completely true and if you have any doubt about it, you can search through independent information resources about them.Edited by Awyer
1. Turks: turkic migration: First of all turkic is a big language family including those languages that people in today's Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrkizstan Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and a few other countries speak.But what is their past history? and how they spread widely in those regions? about 1200 - 1400 years ago nearly all turkic people were living in a region in northwest of today's Mongolia. Because of their frequent invasions to the east (today's China) and killing their people and making alot of trouble for them, finaly the chinese got exhausted and start to force them to migrate from their lands towards the west. The migration started from this point.First they moved to a region in east of caspian sea (today 's turkmenistan). During next 100 - 200 years they expand through the region and dominate over the todays turkic language countries. Oguz turks (seljuk turks or todays istanbuli turkish) settled in the north of the caspian sea for a while and then started to migrate again to Anatolia (todays turkey) they were living in a small part of anatolia (near homelands of Kurds and Armenians)for a while then invaded towards the west were greek people were living. there were some fights between indigenous people of the region( greek, armenians and kurds) and the newcomer turks but finaly turks could (because they were invading and fighting for many years and the indigenous people not) dominate over the region. after a while they embraced Islam and because of their fighting and invading capabilities, Abbasid Baghdad khaliphs(today 's Iraq) recruited them in their army to use them in the Islamic fights against christians. Seljuk turks gradually became powerfull and started to form theirown powerful army. After several years they formed big ottoman empire and could form an allied army of muslims(including arabs and kurds as well). they could defeat many christian(european) countries and expand their empire. they killed a lot of christians including christian armenians in anatolia who didn't embrace islam. They dominated over many european countries for many years until allied forces could defeat them in world war 2, and put an end to invador ottoman empire. Allied forces wanted to make past ottoman empire territory to different smaller countries in severes of france in 1981, and make another country with different language and culture in the east of anatoly (Kurdistan country). Then a brilliant turk soldier (Mustafa kemal pasha Atta turk) with strong nationalist turkish feelings but not very kind heart and not islamic and religious thoughts (Although he knew that all turks and ottoman empire had was because of islam but he had a feeling that islam cannot help turkish people anymore) could change the allied forces mind in less than one year and linked kurdistan to turkey one more time.during afew decades he tried to change turkish culture, language and every thing towards modernity and he was succesful. he had a thought that turkish is the only race and culture that should survive in turkey. he denied kurdish as another language and ethnicity in turkey and put pressure on them to change their language and culture. he called them mountain turks. but he was not very succesful in forcing kurds to change their identity since they had a strong culture which had resisted against stranger cultures for more than 7000 years.
2.Kurds: Indoeuropean migration: Around 7000 years ago the first migration waves( maybe because of population overcrowd) of the biggest language family of the world called indoeuropean language family started.The members of this big family first live together in a region in caucasus(west of caspian sea and today's Georgia and Armenia) or maybe in Anatolia near Van lake(today's turkey). Different branches of this big family were Germanic,Celtic, Baltic Slavic, Albanian, Latin, Greek, Armenian, Iranian and indoaryans. Among these branches there was a big branch named Iranian family. Iranian family had three major subgroups : Medes(today's Kurdish), Persian(today's Farsi,Tajik and Dari) and Parthian(extincted). Iranian people who called themselves as aryans( and iran means the land of aryans) first started their settlement in zagros mountains(west of today's iran)to anatolia (east of today's Van lake in turkey) in around 7000 years ago. They were Medes( ancectors of today's Kurds) first iranians who came to iran. Persians and Parthians came to iran hundreds of years later. The Medes formed the first big civilization of aryans (or maybe all indoeuropeans) in their lands. They preserved their brilliant culture and language against all foreign invasions during thausands of years. The first iranian big empire was founded by these people around 3000 years ago although they had many smaller kingdoms before that.Medes people( Kurds) have had important roles in development and vanishment of different big empires and kingdomes of the region until around 1000 ago when islam came to their region. Many scolars believe that Zoroaster, the great iranian prophet was median. You can find in ancient greek and asyrian documents that they frequently mentioned directly to Median or Kurdish people as a people with a great civilization. Today their land is divided into more than four countries including Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia and Azerbaijan as well. but all of the kurds in those countries still have the same language and culture. Except for Azerbaijan and Armenia and recently Iraq all other three countries are not democratic countries and kurds think they are under oppression in those countries and are fighting against those governments militarily or politicaly for their natural rights.----Awyer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.51.33.239 (talk) 22:04, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If we forget about the parts which cover the "dictatorship" in Turkey and how Kurdish freedom fighters kill Turkish soldiers for their "natural rights", your long comment may start to make some sense. By the way, you know that I didn't delete this because of "fear" but because it is uselessly long and only consists of your uncited history vision and possibly will never make its way into the main article. Also, if all Kurds have the same language and culture, I'm the king of Sarıyer :) Deliogul22:20, 26 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
so you mean turkey is a democratic country? it s ridiculous. do you forget how turkish state banned speaking kurdish in public or in the schools afew years ago. and still islamic hijab is not alowded in official places and alot more...you d better go out of the kurdish lands and go back to mongolia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Awyer (talk • contribs) 09:53, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Mongolia... That shows your degree of historical knowledge. By the way, I just said Turkey isn't a dictatorship. I didn't claim that it is the symbol of democracy or something. Still, it is one of the G20 nations and it is a secular republic where the sovereignty belongs to its people. The real ridiculous thing is that, you are comparing Turkey to countries like Iraq, which is in the middle of civil war, Armenia, the playground of the Armenian Diaspora, and Azerbaijan, which is under the rule of former Soviets. I expected you to take another step forward and claim that Iran is more democratic than Turkey but at least you didn't do that. Deliogul11:52, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
History section
What happened to the history section? I didn't read all through the debates above, but what was the reason for removing all of it? It passed the FA nomination in that state. Does anyone know what happened? I was thinking of going back to the older sub-sections version. Cheers (I knew I shouldn't have even taken one look at a Wikipedia article :)) Baristarim04:44, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I see where the debate was. But it is way too short to undertake such a serious overhaul of the article. The history section is long because it provides very valuable and succinct info about the country to the reader at the very beginning of the article. However, any improvements could be debated. Baristarim05:09, 2 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
^Daniel C. Waugh (2004). "Constantinople/Istanbul". University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Retrieved 2006-12-26.
^Daniel C. Waugh (2004). "Constantinople/Istanbul". University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Retrieved 2006-12-26.
^"Timeline: Cyprus". British Broadcasting Corporation. 2006-12-12. Retrieved 2006-12-25.
^"Timeline: Cyprus". British Broadcasting Corporation. 2006-12-12. Retrieved 2006-12-25.
^Cite error: The named reference TR_EUChrono was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
To-do: 
Done--WinHunter (talk) 03:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
. Can someone please check if it has been done correctly? – Riana ऋ 15:19, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
![[7]](https://sivegame.netlify.app/host-https-upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Btc_pipeline_route.png){kind=link}
