Turkish nationalists perceived power as a way to take over wealth and change social status. In addition to this, they see nationalism as a way to modernize society because this ideology stems from the ideas of the industrial society. There are two versions of Turkish nationalists: conservative and religious nationalists and completely positivist and pro-secular nationalists. These two versions have always been in conflict with one another. The former belongs to the ordinary people and the latter belongs to the ruling elites who have certain privileges. The second group does not see religion as an influential or determining factor. To the contrary, they see religion as an obstacle to achieving progress, reaching the “level of contemporary civilization” and obtaining power. It inherited this notion from 19th century Western and Ottoman positivists.Naturally nationalist ideology first targets language. It seeks to make the language laic and secular. Nationalism or neo-national ideology is filled with emotion. In fact it is a form of romance and has a weak rationale. In all nationalist ideologies, the moment you start thinking analytically, you start thinking differently. Because it is mainly emotion-oriented, its discourse centers around literature, novels, poetry, articles and stories. For example, the plan to secularize language was inspired by the Sun Language Theory. The thesis that determined the point of departure for them was this: The Turkish nation is at the center of human history; it is like the sun and all other nations or people are like its moons or are like planets orbiting around it. For example, according to them the island of Greenland is a Turkish island. Turkish captains who were sailing across the sea went up north and sailed for several months. They had become extremely tired by the time they saw the first piece of land. A Turkish crewmember exuberantly shouted, “The land has appeared.” The other member said: “Where? I don’t see it.” To which the first one replied, “Gör lan,” which means “look man,” and so the island became known as Grönland (Greenland).
Likewise, Turkish explorers supposedly started exploring different parts of the world way before the Europeans. They traveled through Latin America and went to Brazil. They discovered a river, which they spent days walking along to find how long it was. They walked for several weeks but they were unable to reach the point where it flowed into the ocean. They eventually said “amma da uzun” which means “it’s so long” and so the river was named Amazon.
The main purpose here is to disconnect language from its religious and spiritual roots, to change its meaning and to free it -- especially from the influence of Arabic and Farsi. The Ottoman language was a substantial language. It was the language of an empire and it was developed mainly from Arabic and Farsi. Fuzuli wrote poems using 18,000 words from three different languages, namely, Turkish, Arabic and Farsi. How many poets today can write poems with 18,000 words?
The average person, meaning a fairly intellectual and literate person who can understand and analyze the world, is supposed to use around 5,000 words a day. According to studies, the average Turkish person today uses between 300 and 500 words a day. People have become so shallow that they have difficulty expressing their thoughts and emotions. The language is becoming increasingly impoverished and detached from its spiritual and transcendental dimension, and it is losing vocabulary. As the number of words in a language decreases, people become unable to express their thoughts through words. So they instead use their body language and their hands and feet to express themselves. In today’s world, body language has become more important than words.
This is compatible with nationalist tendencies which love and exalt violence due to its nature. This is also an indication of why society is so filled with rage. People cannot find words with which they can express themselves.
Turkish nationalism has searched for a pre-Islamic history, past and roots for itself. It is for this reason that it has discovered or rather resurrected the Akkadians, the Sumerians and the Hittites or has turned to Central Asian figures and tried to attribute our roots to this region. But none of these efforts worked and so we have been left with a modernizing, laic, positivist and essentially secular nationalism. And this is not enough to understand today’s world.
