Keghart
Don’t be a Chicken. Go to Turkey
Non-partisan Website Devoted to Armenian Affairs, Human Rights
https://keghart.org/tutunjian-turkey-tourism/
and Democracy
DON’T BE A CHICKEN. GO TO TURKEY
Posted on April 26, 2021 by Keghart
Category: Opinions
Page: 1
Keghart
Don’t be a Chicken. Go to Turkey
Non-partisan Website Devoted to Armenian Affairs, Human Rights
https://keghart.org/tutunjian-turkey-tourism/
and Democracy
By Jirair Tutunjian, 23 April 2021
Now retired, Jan Morris was from the Sixties to the Nineties the premiere travel writer in Britain, if not
the world. The author of more than 20 travel books, Morris wrote a series of articles for Rolling Stones
magazine in the late Seventies. One of the articles (in1978) was titled City of Yok. It was about
Istanbul. This is how she started the article:
“The favorite epithet of Istanbul seems to be yok. I don’t speak Turkish, but yok appears to be sort of
general-purpose discouragement, to imply that (for instance) it can’t be done, she isn’t home, the
shop’s shut, the train’s left, take it or leave it, you can’t come this way or there’s no good making a
fuss about it, that’s the way it is. Yok (at least in my interpretation) is like nyet in Moscow."
Morris described the Istanbulis as drably dressed in “browns, grays and in grubby blacks.” The
markets were not picturesque. There were armies of stray dogs and mangy cats everywhere. She
talked about how Turks mask the sinister and ruthless side of their nature. She also mentioned that
bear-baiting is still popular in Turkey.
The following year, Canadian Motorist travel magazine published an article titled “Don’t be a chicken,
go to Turkey” by travel writer Steve Howe. Informed by the Midnight Express movie, Howe criticized
Turkish prisons and pointed out how Turkish narcotics agents plant drugs on innocent tourists. With
his tongue firmly in his cheek, Howe wrote: “Turkey is best known for its military expertise. Alone and
unaided while the world was busy with the First World War, the fearless Turks marched on hapless
Armenians and in the face of almost insurmountable odds, managed to massacre a million men,
women and children.”
The above articles reflected traditional Western perceptions. A booklet can be published containing
Western sayings and impressions of Turks, Turkey, and the Ottoman Empire—almost all negative.
Until recently, European mothers “disciplined” their children by threatening them that if they didn’t
behave, the big, bad Turk would take them. Everyone from Shakespeare’s contemporary playwright
Christopher Marlowe to Edmund Burke to Lord Byron and Mark Twain has carved a niche on the
barbarian Ottoman Empire. Twain wrote (1869) in Innocents Abroad: “I wish Europe would let Russia
annihilate Turkey a little—not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again, without a
divining rod or a diving bell.”
Forty years later (1907), Gertrude Bell described Turkey as "monotonous, colorless, lifeless…” Two
centuries earlier (1717), Lady Mary W. Montague, the wife of the English ambassador to the
Ottomans, wrote to Alexander Pope: “But what can you expect from such a country as this which
muses have fled from, from which letters seem eternally banished…”
Turkish bureaucrats must have finally received the message that they and their country were not
liked in the West. But since Turkey was in desperate need of financial infusion, the sly bureaucrats
of dingy and dull Ankara decided Turkey could grab a slice of the booming international tourism
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Keghart
Don’t be a Chicken. Go to Turkey
Non-partisan Website Devoted to Armenian Affairs, Human Rights
https://keghart.org/tutunjian-turkey-tourism/
and Democracy
markets. Thus, Turkey launched its charm offensive to make Turkey a hot tourist destination.
Henceforth, Turks would mask their scowls with smiles as genuine as that of flight attendants. Turks
would beam. Turks would be friendly. Turks would be hospitable. Turks would hug the gavoor
tourist to grab the tourist mark, franc, lira, pound. Whatever. Butter wouldn’t melt in Turkish mouths
when they met the European tourist.
Turkish Airlines, largely-owned by the state, provided a million complimentary seats to travel writers
while hotels and motels furnished free accommodation to the journalist and tourist sites offered free
admission to junketing writers. Stranger to common courtesy and polite, professional distancing, the
Turkish waiter would repel the tourist through uninvited and overly-familiar ways: “Madam, did you
ask for a glass of cold water? Here are two glasses of cold water… and here’s a picture of my
family…Oh, you are not married? I am so sorry.”
The forced smile campaign went national. If you didn’t smile to the infidel tourists, you were not
doing your national duty as a Turk. Ataturk would not forgive you. Erdogan’s agents would make
note of your behavior.
The “charm offensive” worked. By 2015, Turkey was among the 10 most popular tourist destinations
in the world. In 2019 some 45 million (other sources say 51 million) tourists visited Turkey bringing in
$34.5 billion in revenues (12% of the economy).
What were Turkey’s “attractions” other than the inane, stunted, insincere smiles? According to the
Turkish tourism promotion page on the internet, the following are the top tourist draws:
Pamukkele spas. Nothing Turkish about them.They have been operating since Roman times;
Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine cathedral which shameless Erdogan converted to a mosque;
Dolmabahche Palace which was built by the Armenian Balian architects;
Mount Nimrud ruins. The city was built by the a dynasty related to the Armenian royal family;
Ephesus, an ancient Greek city;
Sumela Monastery in Trebizond. Greek;
Cappadocia hermit caves: natural formations;
Topkapi Palace where the Sultans kept thousands of concubines, practised fratricide, and tossed the
bodies of unruly concubines into the Bosporus;
Mosques which are copies of Arab and Iranian mosques;
The Grand Bazaar—a giant emporium of million polished junk;
The Galata Tower—Byzantine;
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Keghart
Don’t be a Chicken. Go to Turkey
Non-partisan Website Devoted to Armenian Affairs, Human Rights
https://keghart.org/tutunjian-turkey-tourism/
and Democracy
Istanbul’s three bridges: all built by foreigners;
Mediterranean resorts which rely on the blue water to attract tourists.
Cappadocia Hermit Caves
But eventually the Turks couldn’t maintain their smiles. Their facial muscles hurt from the forced
smiles. They had also become spoiled by the flow of billions of gavoor money into Turkey. To make
things worse, China exported COVID-19 to Erdoganland without asking for Mr. Irate’s permission.
Tourism took a precipitous dive. From 50 million tourists (2020), the number sank to 12 million (a 72%
decrease) and the Grand Bazaar shopkeepers began “killing flies”, as Armenians say, instead of
peddling made-in-China souvenirs. Tourism honcho Firuz Bagilikaya would be ecstatic if in 2021
tourist numbers rise to 25 million. But the chances are slim that Bagilikaya and his friends would
reach anywhere close to that target when, on the average, 200 Turks are dying every day from the
exotic virus.
Adding to the calamity is Erdogan’s violent bragadacchio, his anti-feminism, his hostility to anyone
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Keghart
Don’t be a Chicken. Go to Turkey
Non-partisan Website Devoted to Armenian Affairs, Human Rights
https://keghart.org/tutunjian-turkey-tourism/
and Democracy
who is not a Turk or Turkic, his sponsorship of Jihadi terrorists, his threat to release “Syrian” refugees
to Europe, his alliance with Russia, his threats to attack Greece, his insults of practically every
European leader…and the most recent icing on the cake…President Joe Biden’s recognition of the
Armenian Genocide.
Turks had been ordered to wear a friendly mask to appeal to European tourists. No sooner they had
ripped that onerous mask, they were ordered to wear COVID-19 masks. With 13,700 Turks
contracting the virus typically on a single day, they have no choice but to obey. But it’s not that bad:
on the plus side is the fact that now—behind their masks--they can scowl to their heart’s natural
content and mutter curses against the Armenians, Assyrians, Syrians, Greeks, Kurds, Egyptians,
Yezidis, Alevis, Israelis, Iraqis, Saudis, Yemenis…and Americans.
Teaser image: Library of Celsus, an ancient Roman building in Ephesus
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Keghart
Don’t be a Chicken. Go to Turkey
Non-partisan Website Devoted to Armenian Affairs, Human Rights
https://keghart.org/tutunjian-turkey-tourism/
and Democracy
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