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64 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Watch out - this book has a hidden agenda., October 1, 2000
By A Customer
Venomously biased, full of distortions, mis-translation, and
mis-quoted sources. Unless you already know a lot about Turkey and
the Turkish language, stay away from this one. This book is a
deliberate attempt to mislead. It disguises a deep-rooted contempt of
Turkish culture and Turkish people behind a thin veneer of poisonous
jokes. Its mean-spirited political agenda is never stated clearly
- never out in the open, where the average reader might have enough
information to argue with Seal's reasoning. Instead, the bias sticks
like mud between the lines. This is an exercise in classic yellow
journalism, communicating emotional bias in place of facts and reason.
Seal quotes sources out of context for the specific purpose of
obscuring or reversing the original author's intent. For example, a
reference to the classic travel account, "On Horseback Through Asia
Minor," by Capt. Frederick Burnaby, directly reverses the
explicitly stated position of Burnaby. In 1876 Burnaby traveled
through Turkey to investigate the rumors of Turkish atrocities which
were current in Europe at that time. Burnaby found NO evidence to
support those rumors - instead, he was impressed with the fairness
of Turkish treatment of the Armenians, and he was unimpressed with the
cleanliness of the Armenians. Seal, the rumor-monger for a new age,
takes one line of Burnaby out of context, and uses it to support his
contention that the Turkish people are racist and unfair to Armenians
and Kurds - and always have been. I only happened to catch this
because I had just finished reading Burnaby myself - but it calls
into question the honesty of all Seal's other references. Be warned
that if you read this book, you will need to check every reference for
accuracy and context. I have lived five years in Turkey as a
foreigner, and I speak Turkish - better than Seal, apparently. I
can attest that Seal's attempt to portray the Turkish people as racist
or ethnocentric is grossly unfair. Seal claims to be fluent in
Turkish, but his writing is filled with mis-translations and
distortions. For example, he goes far out of his way, to a remote
village, looking for the most reactionary backwaters of Turkish
culture. During this excursion, he claims to be communicating with
his guide entirely in Turkish (unlikely). The guide, a man from
Istanbul (who almost certainly speaks good English) brings two
shotguns, to shoot "Kurds." In Turkish, the word for Kurdish
sounds very like the word for `wolf' - especially to foreign
ears. So of course the shotguns are for wolves. For an very
inexperienced Turkish speaker, it might be possible to make this
mistake, on first hearing, but for the misunderstanding to continue he
must be willing to believe the worst - that an educated man from
Istanbul might go out shooting Kurds in the country on the weekend.
Seal allows his "joke" to go on for almost four pages, and even
then does not clearly explain his mistake, thus leaving a residue of
suspicion, distrust, and ill-will. He makes a routine practice of
changing the names of Turkish towns - improvising mis-translations
and using those in place of the honorable old names. He calls the
town of Gaziantep `Warrior Pistachio' - just to be funny. But,
while Gazi does mean something which might be translated as warrior,
Antep does NOT mean pistachio. Many pistachio's are called `Antep'
because that is where they come from, just as we might talk about
Washington apples, or Florida oranges. He calls a village hospital
`Blackberry General,' when in fact the name of the town does not
mean Blackberry, and the direct translation of "Hastanesi" is
simply `Hospital,' NOT `General.' Seal says you have to be
suspicious of any language which does not have its own word for sex.
As always, his jokes are all at the expense of Turkey, always laughing
AT his subject. But consider this: how good can Seal's Turkish really
be if he doesn't even know any words for `sex?' There are probably
as many words in Turkish as in English. (I don't know exactly - I
haven't counted.) Seal definitely has some political/racial axes
to grind (especially with regard to the Kurds) but, beyond that, what
he really seems to want most is for Turkey to devolve back a hundred
years, to return to the bad old days of the declining Ottoman Empire.
In this light, he resents and ridicules every advance the Republic of
Turkey has made in the direction of modernization, and he mocks
Ataturk - whose reforms prevent him from being able to effectively
look down his disdainfully Imperialist nose, and thereby consider
himself a real adventurer. Seal travels around Turkey asking about
fezzes and Sultans, and congratulating himself on how he has struck a
nerve. He thinks upsetting people is a point for his side, but the
reality is that some of his questions and presumptions are as
inappropriate and offensive as a foreign tourist traveling around the
American South hoping to photograph smiling African-Americans picking
cotton by hand. If that same foreigner also interviewed KKK members
and visited the Arian Nation (while ridiculing all other views), and
then wrote about his experiences as the "REAL" America, what
would we think of that? That's what Seal has done with Turkey. He
clearly despises his subject. Seal has carefully constructed an
emotionally charged image of Turkey as a country which usurps power,
and has no right even to exist. To this end, he painstakingly seeks
out all the lunatics, fundamentalists, and reactionaries, and points
out every Turkish transgression he can find, whether factually
grounded or not. If you have lived in Turkey, speak Turkish, and have
done some reading, you may want to read this for the purposes of
argument. Otherwise steer clear. The best contemporary Turkish
travel book I know is sadly out of print, but you might find it [online]: "Journey to Kars," by Phillip Glazebrook. If you
can't find that, Mary Lee Settle's "Turkish Reflections" is also
very informative, and well researched.
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by Mary Lee Settle
by Maureen Freely
by Yashar Kemal
by Irfan Orga
See all 18 books this book cites
