JTW News - The way I think after Srebrenica tape

JTW News

"National heroes are part of a cultural identity. What kind of cultural identity should we expect from a nation whose heroes are Mladic and Karadzic? The answer is not easy and a positive one for Serbs. Instead of blaming Serbs, we tried to understand them. Serbia as a country and nation has been at the cross roads of wars and disputes. Is Serbia traumatized by all these wars? Can we conclude that Serbian people are not thinking the way we think?

In the orthodox world, there is this image of Turks. I have mails from Armenian and Greek readers, those claim Turks are not as they were described. Nearly all claims that we(Turks and Greeks, Turks and Armenians) are so similar. In one real life story told to me by an academician, an Armenian who promised himself to spit to every Turks’ face he meets, was stunned by the similarities between himself and a Turk, they went for a drink after an hour or so.

The Turks in the fantasies of the Serbs, Armenians and Greeks have no relation whatsoever with Turks. They are just “the other” puppet used by authorities to gain ground domestically. Greeks are slowly embracing the real Turks. The similarities between two nations surpass the disputes between each other. When a Greek sits with a Turk he may talk about three or four disputes, but they can talk for days about the common points.

Now, I believe, it is time for Serbs to wake up from the hallucinations. To achieve this, education is a must. Education is the key to wake up people from dreams to realities. For example, there must be a student exchange programs between two nations. Serbs may think that they are better than Turks, but the new generation in Turkey has a potential. Even this year, I was surprised by a Leonardo da Vinci project from a high school student from Trabzon about nanotechnology. They should see Turkey and judge their fantasies.

In terms of nationalism, most of the Balkans think that Turks are like them, nationalist. We talked about it a lot, we are not nationalist but patriotic. Turkish nationalism is very hard to implement, because there are lots of groups and races in Turkey. It is hard to define a race as Turkic race. Instead, as appeared in the Economist few weeks ago, being a Turk is more or less defined with sentences like “strong family relations, risk takers and etc.” On the other hand, Turkish nationalism is a one of its kind. Turkish nationalists are annoyingly relaxed people. Whenever you ask them about their policies, they will say “We will sort it out”. Of course what is meant by “sorting out” is a mystery, because most of the nationalist are silent and calm figures in Turkish society. As one high ranking nationalist puts it, young generation of nationalists are more interested in girls than politics.

Serbia, with Russia, is key to the peace in the Balkans and with the crisis EU and US struggling, the region may turn to bloodbath. Turkey, although reluctant, must calculate and consider the future of Balkans for the sake of its stability. The peace and stability in the region is –as always been, the priority of Turkey. To achieve this, there had to be constructive policies. Policies those need the cooperation of Russians, Turks, Serbs, Bosnians, Croatians, Albanians and Macedonians. The process may be painful and may require lots of commitments from both parties, but doesn’t it worth for our children?"