to understand dis situation, we must look the historical process turkish society lived.ottomns governed the country from one hand..padişah.....bfor he decide something he asked the religious authority and the experinced statesmen.
now we vote and chose our won leaders....look the differency....and we always thaught ''the padişahs decide wad they want,they cut heads and kills people'' maybe dis is for making us to believe republic is better than monarchy....and so we tried to change for years....we tried to forget who we r....and we forget much things from ourselves.....and we couldnt forget many things too...and now we r in middle.....and dunno wad to do....
somebody want us to hate our history...they achieved much.....we dont like ottomans...we dunno our past...we dunno who we r...we do just wad we see from holywood films...and try to imitate them....
its not bad but now we eat at mcdonalds,drink cocacola....we r now here in the middle...we r not old turks and not real turks...we r not from east nor west...middle...

ramoş... hehe... that was very well put.. aferin...

I understand you Tim. You're not wrong in fact. I'm afraid my english isn't very good to explain well what I want to. There may be different answers to this, but I am going to say what I think and know. We're proud of being Turk maybe we have a reason such as having a proudful history maybe sometimes it's more than enough. At school the complete Turkish history is taught, so that's a very long history, and Ottoman time is a period that's more than 600 years. When we're proud of being turk, it comes from the history and the turkish history isn't separated from Ottoman time. It's such a long time, there had been gold times, but also falling time of the empire.in the ends of 19th century and till 1920s, the Ottoman government was no more powerful and was no more working for the Anatolian people. Ottoman empire was far behind the age and civilisation. After WW1, the ottoman empire was going to diminish from history, so the Turks were going to lose their freedom, independence. The ottoman government and sultan were ready to be under the control of the big countries especially England. So, the Turks needed a leader to save them and to fight against the big powers that want to erase the Turks from Anatolia. So, it was Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). With thousands of difficulties, with the leadership of M.Kemal Turkish people fighted against both the Ottoman government, sultan and the exterior powers (England, Greece, France etc.) and in the end they saved the Turkish nation and got our independence. Trkish Republic was founded. Later a lot of reforms were made. So, after 1923 it is a new page for the Turks. Otherwise, the Turks would have diminished. By Mustafa Kemal, being a nation got a meaning, and if we want to get far beyond the civilized, developped countries, we should follow M.Kemal's principles, we should be aware of our history, but the direction isn't backward, but it's always further. We should protect our independence, and shouldn't try to get back to the Ottoman Time, because it's in the past, and it was an empire, it's just left in the history books, but now we're a nation and an independent secular republic, so our inspiration is Atatürk's principles. "Ne mutlu Türküm diyene!!!! ehehehe ok ok I stop.

Merhaba mltm. Well said! Your english is very good.The turkish people must be very proud of their achievments over the past 80 years.

Thanks for the feedback, everyone (well, except for that one guy up there, heh).

I suspect the "those were the Ottomans" responses I've gotten had more to do with what I was discussing at the time than any wish to compartmentalize their (Ottoman Empire) doings.

When I started reading this sequence, I found first a reasonable question by TimRoy, who managed subsequently to maintain his cool despite what seemed to be totally unjustified accusations. As I continued my reading it became clear that there was some scatalogical nitwit who had entered the discussion with remarks which somehow became attributed to TimRoy. I am very glad that the matter was cleared up. I assume that the administrator caught that entry and removed it, so all I saw of it was in quotes by other members, and this caused my bewilderment.

I appreciated particularly the response by mltm, which was very pertinent and thoughtful. And please, mltm, don't worry about your English. Fortunately, English is a language which can be mangled and yet understood, and you made your points very clear and thank you for them.

I am new to this forum and have hopes that I can find in it serious discussions of topics related to Turkey, its history, culture, language, literature, and even politics and current events. I will have the opportunity of visiting Turkey this April/May, spending two weeks on an archeological tour of Anatolia and then spending an additional two weeks exploring Istanbul - the city in the entire world that I have for years most wanted to see. I am most excited about it and, besides trying to learn as much Turkish as I can (I have no teacher), I have been reading a great deal more about the country. Earlier I have studied the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, but it is only recently that I have begun a study of the Republic. I am absolutely amazed what one man, Kemal Ataturk (sorry, I don't know how to make the umlaut u), was able to accomplish. He was a phenomenon! The great respect that the Turks have for him is easily understandable, as I, a foreigner, have it myself.

I tend to go on at length, and for that I apologize. Enough for now!

we achieved many things well done us...i wish we could achieve dis except losing many things that make us turk(different)...everyday we are becoming same with american (holywood) culture.....