Dear class mates, espcially those who are turkish, do you feel close to Europe or Asia in your mentality? Let's us do not take the everage of people who has the University up to MA-MBA or Ph.D. level of education, but thoses who compose the middle class of the country? Is turkish people identity are trully came from Europe or perphaps traditions of the East are still so strong that Turkey in part of Asia?

Dear aluette,

welcome to the TurkishClass forums. People who have visited Turkia will realise that Turks are much more close to European culture and European values than the Asian ones.
Turkish people are very much like Italian people. We are also not very different than the Greek.

Since the fountadion of the Turkish Republic in 1923 Turkia has turned its face towards Europe. Since then our aim is to find the modernism no matter in which part it is on the world.

Atatürk has set the aim of the Turkish Nation: Çağdaş uygarlık seviyesine ulaşmak. "To reach the most modern level of civilization."
He wanted to see the Turkish Republic competing with the most modern nations. Many people including me have now the same dream.

In the past 83 years of the Republic we have gone a lot, maybe so much it would take other nations 500 years, but we still have a long way to go.

Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic has introduced many revolutions to change the nation. One of them was the change of the Arabic alphabet in 1928.

I don't know if you could possibly understand how I feel when looking at these letters below now. The change was so dramatic, it was like a dream, like a journey from the darkness into the light.


ﺍ ﺀ ﺏ ﭖ ﺕ ﺙ ﺝ ﭺ ﺡ ﺥ ﺩ ﺫ ﺭ ﺯ ﮊ ﺱ ﺵ ﺹ ﺽ ﻁ ﻅ ﻉ ﻍ ﻑ ﻕ ﻙ ﮒ ﯓ ﻝ ﻡ ﻥ ﻭ ﻩ ﻻ ﻯ


a b c ç d e f g ğ h ı i j k l m n o ö p r s ş t u ü v y z


http://www.business-with-turkey.com/tourist-guide/turkish_language.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_language

İ can say that everything what Erdinc said about Turkish people is right in every word. only one thing.....Turks are not like İtalian or Greek or any other nation - they are unique as all Turkey is. And this is why İ love it.

Erdinc was spot on. Religion has nothing to do with it.

First time I see arabic alphabet writen from left to righ

no
it is written from right to left....

It has nothing to do with religion,as someone(who?) previously said.Turkey is not a theocracit country who stinks of piss,opposite,it is a unique place where hell loads of different people can live not in harmony but without harming(each other).

BTW

Many people consider themselves as European and Many as Arabic-Persian

But the truth which they cannot evade is their ancestral past from the "steppes"(instead of deserts and stones) will catch them one day

Ahhh nevermind,too hard to tell what I mean to a non-turk

in appearance turks may look like european but in sense and moral way we think like asian....i dont mean in religious way....we turks came from steppes and after the collapse of ottoman empire we gave a great war against illetaracy and we changed our alphabet we tried to change our mentality and our phisical apperance...but think we cant achieve this....and perhaps i think we lost our own personality....this is because why earopeans like us more than persian or arabic...but this is also why they interest in us....
maybe we ask foreigners about that????its sometimes be nonsense to talk about that as a turk
thx