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contestgamer said:
Helloplite said:

 Now you are concerned that Turkey is at risk of losing its culture?

 

What do you think will happen once that "quest for diversity" is achieved? People will have a uniform khaki colour, speak desperado, and eat a strange cuisine comprised of bittersweet halal macarons with pizza base, ants, and soya?

 

Do you know just how many things you think are part of someone's culture ... Are imports? Spaghetti? That's Chinese. Tomatoes? South American. Potatoes? Bolivian. And that's only cuisine, so far. 

 

Europe is not being Americanized (see my further point below). America is literally the outcome of Europeanisation. A bunch of Europeans went there, raped and pillaged the local cultures thinking they were in India, proceeded to establish states and borders that were totally alien to the local cultures, and several centuries later you have what you have.

 

The world was first Europeanised, in the most sustained epoch of globalization, transporting through colonialism the state structure and the ideology of nationalism worldwide, then -- after cultural hegemony passed onto USA, it was Americanised through newer concepts of "free world", and market capitalism.

 

Turkey is already a "Europeanised" state. It used to be the Islamic Empire par excellence, commanding power over the Islamic world and beyond for centuries. Then, the nationalist uprisings in the  Balkans set up the stage for the end of the empire and it's eventual Europeanization. That's is literally what Kemal Atatürk did: he established a modern secular state in the European paradigm. Erdogan is now trying to reverse this and return the country to its roots as an Islamic State. Something which I am sure you are a big fan of, what with your wishy-washy "being a nationalist does not mean being a racist" pro-culturalist approach.

Save the hypocrisy. You do not give a damn if Turkey is losing its identity or not. Your closest encounter with Turkish culture probably started and ended with Turkish Delight confections.

Lol, you dont want to have a discussion. You just want to point fingers and call people that disagree with you racist, evidence be damned. Actually I've visited Istanbul multiple times and enjoyed it there. I love Islamic and Asian art and architectural styles more than I do American. But that wont matter to you. I disagree with you, so ergo I'm racist and hate turkey. 

Apologies, for maintaining unnecessarily the momentum here. I will be happy to have an actual conversation, without low remarks about intellect or qualifications. This is not at all what I am saying, however. You somehow worry that Turkey will lose its identity, but you haven't noticed that in a way, it has. This is an inevitable outcome of the interaction between cultures, and to somehow fantasize that Turkey has an oriental character, in this time and age, is misguided. Since you've been to Instanbul, have you been to Levant? Did you see there any "Islamic and Asian art and architectural style"? Did you see the Hagia Sophia and its impressive mixture of Byzantine and Ottoman structures? And, per chance, are you aware that Instanbul is probably one of the least 'representative' cities to visit in Turkey in order to take in the local culture? Instanbul has literally been a hub of cultures, possibly one of the most ancient hubs of globalization itself, in the history of mankind. What you see there, is exactly the outcome of cultures merging, clashing, integrating, and changing. That's the City.

As I said elsewhere, this is not necessarily benign, nor necessarily evil. It is what it is, in the plainest way possible. Are you worried about the Kurds in Turkey, whose culture is also at risk? Do you support that an independent Kurdistan is formed, to protect their  culture, identity, and sense of nationhood?

This is the true face of nationalism. It protects itself behind nice things, while at the same time proceeding to become the basis of a majority of human conflict. It is why a long conversation on whether racism and nationalism are compatible became our subject in the first place. You may hold to a very narrow understanding of what 'racism' is, but ultimately even the fetishization of 'the Orient' is in itself a racist attiude. Don't believe me? Read Edward Said's Orientalism