Turkey

"I am a Turk, honest and hardworking. My principle is to protect the younger, to respect the elder, to love my homeland and my nation more than myself. My ideal is to rise, to progress. O Great Atatürk! On the path that you have paved, I swear to walk incessantly toward the aims that you have set. Let my existence be a gift to the Turkish existence. How happy is the one who says "I am a Turk!" Original: Türk'üm, doğruyum, çalışkanım, İlkem: küçüklerimi korumak, büyüklerimi saymak, yurdumu, milletimi özümden çok sevmektir. Ülküm: yükselmek, ileri gitmektir. Ey Büyük Atatürk! Açtığın yolda, gösterdiğin hedefe durmadan yürüyeceğime ant içerim. Varlığım Türk varlığına armağan olsun. Ne mutlu Türk'üm diyene!"

"…O Turkish child of future generations! As you see, even under these circumstances and conditions, it is your duty to save the Turkish Independence and the Republic! The strength that you will need is present in the noble blood which flows in your veins!"

"The Republic of Turkey cannot be a country of sheikhs, dervishes, and disciples. The truest, most real order is the order of civilisation."

"The torch that the Turkish nation holds in her hand and in her mind, while marching on the road of progress and civilisation, is positive sciences."

"Turkey's true master is the peasant."

"... He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap. My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will; every man can follow his own conscience, provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him against the liberty of his fellow-men."

"Turks can be killed, but they can never be conquered."

"I immediately liked the people — brave, stoical, generous, hospitable and patriotic, if a little inclined to conspiracy theories."

"Turkey had been our ally in the World War. Its unfortunate result was as heavy a burden for Turkey as it was for us. The great and ingenious reconstructor of the new Turkey gave his Allies, beaten by fate, the first example of resurrection. While Turkey, thanks to the realistic attitude of her State leadership, preserved her independent attitude Yugoslavia fell a victim to British intrigues."

"[Türkiye] does not seem to have a system for supporting refugees, not even by placing them in temporary camps as other countries do. This puts the [Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light] group’s members in the impossible situation of either ending up homeless on the streets [and isolated from each other], or risk becoming illegal and being deported back to their countries of origin."

"We are ever mindful of the vital role which the Turkish nation has played and continues to play in the NATO defensive shield. We in America are proud to be allied with the Turkish people in a determined effort to bring peace and prosperity to all mankind. Each of our nations can take much pride in the success we have achieved in this great undertaking since 1947. Of great interest to the American people is the progress which Turkey has made in developing its economy. The historical bonds of friendship which unite our nations have been strengthened by President Truman's historic decision, and I am confident that, in the future, these ties will grow ever stronger."

"Understand this: Turkey is a country whose warnings should be taken seriously and listened to. Don't test Turkey's patience. Try to win its friendship."

"I recall with pleasant memories of my own visits to Turkey, in 1983 and 1994 and once again in 1997 to attend the first D-8 Summit in Istanbul. Personally, I have sailed along the beautiful coast of Turkey, in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. Turkey is certainly blessed not only with a rich cultural heritage, but magnificent and breathtaking landscape and scenery. Anatolia is truly a cradle of civilisation."

"[I]n Germany we are giving work to two million people from Turkey."

"“…the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B-612. This asteroid has only once been seen through a telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909. On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said. …Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.”"

"I hate calumny so much that I do not want even to impute foolishness to the Turks, although I detest them as tyrants over women and enemies of the arts."

"We became acquainted we found the people, whether Christian or Turkish, prevailingly of a friendly, kindly, progressive type, as is often the case with simple-minded people in times of peace."

"I always liked the common Turkish people unless they were stirred to passion by militarists."

"In the College two classes were called preparatory, while four bore the ordinary college class names. The schools from which our students came did not carry them far. When Americans first came to Turkey, hardly any vernacular was taught anywhere. Instruction was in classic tongues and religious lore. But our students for the most part came with a purpose in modern life. They wanted to attain a worth-while and useful manhood and they felt that the College could give them a start."

"One student told me in after years that when he came to Marsovan [a city in Turkey] he was really illiterate, that is, he could not fairly read his native tongue, or any other. But he had no chance of learning more in his native village. For a number of months he was cow-boy for an American family, and eagerly studying too."

"Another time I was riding alone with a Circassian, and in the talk of man to man in such companionship, asked him a bit about his occupation and his affairs. "Sometimes I get a traveller to escort, like you", he replied, "and then I take him, but my regular business is smuggling tobacco. Every man in our village has a regular job, some are smugglers, some are farmers, and some are thieves". I asked him about his chance of getting caught, and he promptly said, "There are two kinds of smugglers; one kind gets caught and one kind doesn't get caught", and he added a pious expression of gratitude to the good Lord that he never had been put to shame yet. We knew very well that the mounted police of Anatolia were largely recruited from among the robbers and smugglers of the mountain roads. One of the most effective ways of securing official employment, and who knows what promotion later, was to acquire the reputation of a daring hold-up man on the mountains.""

"The unspeakable Turk should be immediately struck out of the question, and the country be left to honest European guidance."

"[Turks] one and all, bag and baggage, shall I hope clear out from the province they have desolated and profaned."

"The Lofty Gate of the Royal Tent."

"[The Ottoman Empire] whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it."

"We have on our hands a sick man,—a very sick man. [The sick man of Europe, the Turk.]"

"[The Ottoman Empire] has the body of a sick old man, who tried to appear healthy, although his end was near."

"Your Majesty may think me an impatient sick man, and that the Turks are even sicker."

"For nearly five hundred years, these rules and theories of an Arab Shaikh and the interpretations of generations of lazy and good-for-nothing priests have decided the civil and criminal law of Turkey. They have decided the form of the Constitution, the details of the lives of each Turk, his food, his hours of rising and sleeping the shape of his clothes, the routine of the midwife who produced his children, what he learned in his schools, his customs, his thoughts-even his most intimate habits. Islam – this theology of an immoral Arab – is a dead thing. Possibly it might have suited tribes in the desert. It is no good for modern, progressive state. God’s revelation! There is no God! These are only the chains by which the priests and bad rulers bound the people down. A ruler who needs religion is a weakling. No weaklings should rule."

"Even before accepting the religion of the Arabs, the Turks were a great nation. After accepting the religion of the Arabs, this religion, didn't effect to combine the Arabs, the Persians and Egyptians with the Turks to constitute a nation. (This religion) rather, loosened the national nexus of Turkish nation, got national excitement numb. This was very natural. Because the purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag to an including Arab national politics."

"“According to the Syrian writer Zenob there was an Indian colony in the canton of Taron on the upper Euphrates, to the west of Lake Van, as early as the second century BC. The Indians had built there two temples containing images of Gods about 18 and 22 feet high. When, about AD 304, St. Gregory came to destroy these images, he was strongly opposed by the Hindus. But he defeated them and smashed the images, thus anticipating the iconoclastic zeal of Mahmud of Ghazni.”"

"They live mainly in coastal regions, are sensitive when it comes to secularism, they drink alcohol, have a high purchasing power, a western lifestyle and the women do not wear hijabs."

"In Constantinople, the seat of the Ottoman Empire, where it was a commonplace for Turkish gentlemen to have numerous concubines, it was rare to see a mulatto. The offspring of such relationships generally fell victim to infanticide which, according to one report of the Anti-Slavery Reporter, the organ of the British Anti-Slavery Society (that appeared on September 1, 1856), was widely practiced in Stamboul “as a matter of course and without the least remorse or dread.”"

"The most beautiful Turkish is the Turkish of the 1920s, sir, there is no need to delve deeper... Its simplest form is the Turkish of Ömer Seyfettin's stories. Novelist Hüseyin Rahmi's Turkish, Yakup Kadri's Turkish, Yahya Kemal's Turkish…. Turkish was corrupted in the 1930s, the state tried to reform Turkish by force of bayonets, and this eventually became the title of the book of the Englishman I mentioned earlier: He calls the language revolution "a catastrophic success." Those who translated it into Turkish also translated it as "tragic success". — Mehmed Şevket Eygı. A Portrait of a Muslim Gentleman from Istanbul."