This is a weird mentality Catwoman. If what you mean by "you" is an all-inclusive statement refering to anything from the government to the people and to all the institutions of a nation then you are talking about a plague - an epidemic for which there is no cure. Again in line with your thinking, the PKK terror is justified. That it claimed the lives of thousands of people, that it hampered progress in the region despite the desire of millions of peaceful Kurds have no weight in your line of thinking. We are all responsible for it and we must now bear the consequences. Good thing, we still have sane people around (unlike muhsin and you in this context) who are working on solutions rather than shoveling coal into the fire.

Kýro, keko,hýrbo, zonta, maganda,hanzo and many other words have been traditionally used to describe ethnicities in Anatolia. Kýro and keko are Kurdish words meaning: man, pal, friend. In Turkish however these words describe rotund people lacking manners who show off with the hair on their chest and arms. Zonta and maganda are two words with similar meanings probably created by some artists. Hýrbo and Hanzo are used to describe Anatolian Turks. Much of this stuff has been inherited from the Ottomans who had despised whoever lived in Anatolia.

It is not nice to use any of these words.

Don´t expect to be taken seriously when you talk about things like genocide light heartedly.

There are people from different nations, totally different walks of life. There is unfortunately one thing that is common to most users, we like fighting.  It doesn´t matter what we are fighting about.  People need to learn a new thing everyday, we should really learn not to fight over every little thing sooner than later.

Both catwoman and muhsin are making unsubstantiated accusations.  Webster dictinory  explains the word genocide as : "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group".  In order for a genocide exist there must be "destruction". We can blame the coup d´Etat of the early 80´s and the Ciller period where torture and murders committed by unknown perpetrators. It is true that thousands of people lost their lives. Nonetheless, the primary motive behind all these murders and torture was not eradicating the Kurdish population.  The two periods in the recent history were dominated by nationalist leaders who waged a war against anyone whom they had considered as terrorists and seperatists. Therefore, while it was certainly not a genocide, it did not target  exclusively the Kurds but all the citizens who defended what the government refered to as a seperatist policy.

There is probably no decent nation in the world. I can´t claim ours is among the best. Nevertheless, it is improbable that a genocide has occured in our recent history.

There were several genocide attempts in the 20th century. One of them was committed by the Germans. They completely accepted this. The massacre of muslims in Bosnia, this was also accepted by the international public and the perpetrators were convicted (though there is still some bad smell about this incident). The large scale oppression and forced emigration of Turks in Bulgaria. While this was not a genocide, all the precursors of one was present. God only knows what would happen if they did not leave Bulgaria.  We can also add to those Hutu-Tutsi conflict and the deeds of the Khmer Rouge regime.

I´ll probably sound a bit sexist but what are you women talking about? I read the last few messages and couldn´t understand where the dialogue is going....

Why don´t you discuss this through PM´s. You have known one another long enough. I am sure it is nothing that can´t  be solved with a little bit tolerance.

Cool down. This is just a comedy show meant for laughing. It is so obvious that they searched for the right people, asked them the right questions and helped them a bit to get to the point when necessary. Grab a mike an stop people in Istanbul and ask them carefully selected questions and you will get similar answers.

Just ask them what they think about the Jews or the US. They would sound perfectly anti-semitist or anti-American (strangely you can´t be one unless you are also the other), the same guy who answered the question might be doing business with a Jew or American citizen quite happily. Red necks are easy to fool. You can turn them into anything you want by guiding their thoughts.

It is indeed difficult to determine what recent means in connection with the US presidents. Considering the length of their office terms (Reagan 8 years, George (father) Bush 4 years, Clinton 8 years and George Bush 8 years), we are looking into a period of 28 years and five presidents.  It is generally believed that before the period of Reagan the world was totally different politically (a two pole world, cold war era, the lingering consequences of the world war the second and communism).

Reagan was the first of those leaders who began talking about concepts like global village, star wars etc. He proved the he was a president with a keen vision. Therefore he must be the starting point of  "recent" as applied to US presidents. Carter is admittedly a bit out of this scope but then again he is probably the most different US president ever. Therefore he is easily remembered.

I have never claimed I did not like your Reagan otherwise he wouldn´t make it on my conservative list of top three presidents.

Reagan was indeed a very successful leader. I admire the skill with which he kept the reins of his country at a very turbulent time making some of the most important decisions ever made by a US President. 

Nevertheless, Reagan can also be criticized for being on the border of old school patriotism. Having said that I can never compare him to the two Bushes.  He was a fatherly figure defending the need for believing in one´s country and supporting all its objectives with eyes closed - a thought which was not shared by the young generation in America. Nevertheless, it was this attitude of his that kept the country together and strong.  I believe he had te potential to become a president in the 60´s when he was much younger and smarter. Would he be as successful only God knows.

As for Carter and the criticism you direct to him. We had a prime minister who passed away a while ago. He can be compared to Carter in some regards. Ecevit was a poet and  a journalist. Though he was a left leader he was also a true believer of his country. This aspect is common to all American Presidents. In this country however, there are people who criticize leaders for being half as patriotic as the  average US president (or the leader of any country). 

You are bashing the high taxes and the bad state of the economy under Carter. Carter faced a global crisis which was several folds graver than the one we are having at the moment. These crises are like lottery tickets. We can´t blame Carter for this. During that critical period, he appeared on TV and invited the US public to conserve energy and stop wasting resources. You complain of high taxes but the entire Europe is run by governments collecting taxes several folds higher than those in the US. Both Obama and Carter promised people to cut off on defense expenses which I believe is very true.  The US went through many Great Recessions and Reagan was in power in one of them too.

As for the mirror talk, I based that on your posts until date which makes you a bit predictable in terms of political preferences. It is of course not my business to evaluate you and your preferences and should there be a countinuation on this matter maybe it must be through PM´s in order not to personalize matters on a public forum.  I hope you will find this critic within tolerable limits.

 I base my argument on the fact that human nature has essentially remained the same. You said you are not proud of Vahdettin and this is in line with the view of the general public - people are proud of victors.

A mirror reflects light in only one direction. Ask Serbs or Bulgarians about Ottomans, most of them will use words of hatred since it was their blood that was shed. Ask this question to a MHP supporter, and he can fill pages singing praises of them. A mirror will never fool you, it will never let you receive light beams from other directions unless you turn your own mirror yourself.

One of the posters in this thread supports  Reagan. She will probably support most presidents belonging to the political party she has always voted for. She will probably disdain the leaders from the opposition party. Again she probably believes in the doctrines of the political party she is supporting as if she established that party herself. In the political world out there, a completely different game is played.

My motto is: you can defend whatever cause you like but don´t forget to turn your mirror every now and then.

If we follow your reasoning all our Sultans were killers too. Nevertheless, we Turks are extremely proud of them. Almost any  political leader is involved this way or another in the deaths of people either intentionally or through omission or ignorance.