Turks, Nationalism
What is culture, national narrative? How is the interplay?
Brain is made-up of three layers; the reptilian brain, culture codes and intellect. Any group of people staying at a geography long enough will converge to a common sets of codes. This happens organically, wout anyone telling a kid how things are, it does not happen through modern education, or through stories told by a parent, or an uncle. It is an osmosis at a gargantuan level where an infant sucks in all available information at a young age from everything, and everyone around him, bcz this info is needed to fit in. Such task could not be outsourced to a single person, or few persons. The entire society, the life itself plays a part.
The codes are cemented near age 7 and locked in.
National narrative is something else, it is but a weak paint on top of existing structure. It can be changed, ignored, it can help or hinder a national conversation. Nationalism is second-wave, so narrative inescapably carries certain central, concentrated tendencies -- it is in a country's interest to make this narrative as sensible as possible, and it should be compatible with the culture codes of a populace. If not, it will be ignored, ridiculed, or worse create pathologies among the intellectuals.
What is the culture of the people of Anatolia? Simple, it is the culture of that particular geography, Surely some pre-agro codes like everyone else, then it invented organized agriculture (the first ones to do so), so it carries some of that baggage, but also has some decentralized airs being away from most "ancient" centers in the beginning of written history. Its governance culture is inescapably Roman however, bcz it was smack in the middle of Rome II and III, Byzantium and Ottomans, infecting people through a peasant/palace dynamic.
Everyone who came to these lands, assimilated into this culture.
The national narrative is the more crooked part. 1923 was probably the worst time to found a Republic. Ethnic nationalism was on the rise, WWI was over, WWII was not (so Mussolini, Hitler are not around yet), and here is the Anatolians trying to tailor a new national narrative for themselves. The existing structures around Ottomans had imploded along with the empire. Balkans, Middle Eastern "vassals" were gone, each worrying about their own nationalities. The founders needed an identity to inspire people, to make them forget about the "here and now" so they chose something "outside". This was the Turk. He was from Central Asia, and he was the ideal, the pure.
However this particular ethnicity was never known as imagined then, usually it would be conflated with religion, and/or (rightfully) to the few number of Turkomans who arrived at a some point, and settled in Anatolia in a particular region. Within the ball busting ethnic relations the particular word's standing wasn't that hot either, the ethnic label could even be considered a slur, no more than 100 years ago.
Best account of this comes from an officer in the Ottoman army. At the last days of the empire the new nationalism was circulating among the cadres, and he wanted to check how much the regular soldiers knew of "their identity". He starts easy, first asks them about the sultan, the Caliph, etc. The soldiers weren't really sure, many were confused, they thought sultan was prophet, Caliph was God, etc. the answers were a big mess. Frustrated, the officer asks "but aren't we all Turks!??". They knew the answer to that one. The responded, in unison with the word estağfurullah. Let me try to translate what this means... Say your friend drops something, or makes a mistake, and says "ah I'm such a putz", and this is the word you use. It's like "oh c'mon", "don't sell yourself short", forgive urself. IT CAN'T BE THAT BAD.
Obivously one of the founders Kemal took the name Ataturk (Father of all Turks) himself, so he was setting an example. But he was always more into this stuff than others in his circle. He reportedly told an American journalist who was visiting "you are also a Turk (because everyone was)" which flummoxed the man. Kemal went to some odd places with these theories, the last thing he came up was a Sun-Language-Theory that many researchers could not make heads or tails of, after his death the theory was quitely shelved. A minister when asked why this was done answered "what good is the Sun-Language-Theory after the Sun has set?".
To top if off, TR identity went through some incarnations that highly reduced its usefulness. As it was constructed, as delusional its roots might have been, it was imagined to be a secular identity. That was the other reason for "the Turk" to come "from outside", "Central Asia", meaning outside the realm of Islam. In fact many of the Turkists performed "research" that found that Turk to be followers of shamanistic religions, living as one with nature etc. In some ways they found what they wanted to find, a non-Islamic Turk.
But later, after the many political upheavals, coups in the country, and finally after the final 1980 fascist coup which was also trying to ingratiate itself into the 'green belt' strategy against the "Godless" Soviets changed the identity to be religious as well. Ottomans were also back in vogue. So now the identity became both secular and religious, Kemalist and Ottomanist (quite ironic since Kemal was a staunch anti-royalist), a weird potpourri of ideologies, except space for Kurds, who stayed away from this crooked identity en masse, to their detriment. A grab-bag of ideologies thrown together is obviously a perfect example of fascism.
If more and more admins to follow emphasized the fairy tales less and less, gradually it would help alleviate the bizarreness. The problem is the narrative is too tied with the foundation of the Republic, and whenever there is a crisis, the tendency is to get back to it, as if moving away from bizarreness wasn't the right thing to do to begin with. Since shit is always wrong in TR, such returns are common. The most recent flare-up happened after the 80 fascist coup, admin doubled down on crazy, even added some of its own -- now Otto past was fine along wolves, meandering treks, so niggers are now both from outside, and not.
That's why the objection "well if the narrative works, keep it" is moot. All indications are it stopped working long ago. A portion of the country did not embrace the identity which is seen as a prerequisite for citizenship, that puts these ppl at odds with the state. Kurds are the best example, I am sure when their elites heard of these fairy tales first, they must have said "waaat we come from central whaaat? I don't think so". That bullshit would never fly with them. Some groups could go along, ignore, lip sync to it, but Kurds definitely could not. Which made them the odd man out. Coupled with the decentralization needs of the region, Kurds are hounded ever since. These problems are not their fault.
The solution
The solution lies in the identity being rebuilt based on historic reality. First pick a different name, Anatolians, New Galatians, South Eurasians, whatever. The identity needs to be something that signifies the place, instead of an oddball ethnicity, distant past that noone can truly define.
The narrative, identity needs to be as simple, core as possible. Imbuing certain political choices on this identity turns it into a fascist propaganda tool. Any particular choice of religion (or rejection of) cannot be part of it. Neither can be synphatizes toward long-gone royals, or left / right ideological preferences which change from person to person.
Addendums
See population
A recent research [1] biologically only 9% of genetic structure (95% CI 7-11) of today's Anatolia is of Asiatic origin. This fits with the pop data above, about 1 million arriving into a population of 9 million, roughly 10%.
The religious make-up of 1800s proves the point, since the so-called "Turk" is closely related to Sunni Islam, was seen carrier of the religion, and some claim, forced people to adapt it. But in the 1890s, after loss of territory (lots of Christians gone) and before bigger waves of Tatar migrations, the proportion of Muslims was 76.2%. Note that a sizeable chunk of that would be Alevites, a branch of Islam so different that it could well be considered Christian, meaning as different as. So what kind of culture carriers are these "Turks" if they could not even carry their own religion to half the people? All this suggests the presence of these migrants was irrelevant. Even the "carrier" label itself suggests their role was nothing bigger than their numbers, tied to the region, whose realities would forge them as deeply as any other.
Urban Legends
WWI
Here is what TR text claims why it lost during World War I. Uh, like, our big ally Germany lost, so we lost, indirectly, by association. This sounds like a B-movie tough guy routine. I wanted-a smash-a but they would not-a let meeee! It is not only wrong, it is childish.
Wolf
Let's not get into stories around wolves, weird treks out of nowhere to f-ck knows where, whose at least wolf part sound awefully like the Romulus and Remus story, two lost babies who were suckled by a she-wolf, which was the beginning of the Roman legend (as much as a lie as anything). Delusional nats today making a variation of the heavy metal sign extended two mid fingers (wolve's nose) are on this particular drug. Sadly, not even my people's fairy tales are original.
Other countries
How does the narrative compare to other countries? Some countries do better than others. Russia nationalist stories are a crock. US does better; Here is portion of the US narrative; "Why did we seperate from England?". "Because ruling from a distance was not effective". Fine.
The best way to explain TR situation is this; Let's say US founders, bcz for whatever reason, due to loss in a war, cultural baggage, whatever, pick some marginal identity to get away from it all. Say they pick .. the Amish as the new identity. They'd say "happy are those who say they are Amish", and "everyone in the world is Amish they just don't know it yet". They'd rename the country Amishland, even George Washington changed his lastname to George GrandAncestorAmish. then many years later, confused citizens would turn to eachother, maybe to a grandson of a Japanese immigrant who is 100% culturally native, and say "you are Amish!", "fuck you if you dont say you are Amish". The Japanese looking dude would balk, he'd say I know I am not f-ing Amish, and this guy is ragging on me, maybe I should start learning Japanese (see how it backfires)", and the downslide begins.
Question: Why do we hear some lastnames that have the word "Turk" in them in TR?"
When the state came up with its delusional origin story, some ppl took as their lastname something Turkic, to make themselves friendly to the state. The lastnames are quite comical, walking turk, born soldier, or my favorite: soldier turk. Then, by implication, the Turkic lastnames can be taken to indicate a certain unawareness of history on the part of that family, due to lack of education, being far from the center, etc. It is sad in a way, the names scream not only "I am a pleb" they try to scream "I am your pleb".
I am certain once the descendants realize how foolish their ancestors have been to chose these stupid shit of names, they will rush to legal services en masse to have them changed. One day.
Nationalism in many countries, but especially in TR, is like a reverse-telephone game. The guy at the end of the line hears the message much more clearly than the people in the beginning of the line. The people at the beginning, closer to circle, know the nuances, warts, ignore and get around stuff. The guy at the end drinks the Kool-Aid, he is the true believer. He doesn't know any better.
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