I can't hold my tears back as I watch original footage of Ataturk's ceremony. 69 years ago, the leader of the century closed his eyes and left the newly-founded Turkey on her own legs. Having been force-fed western values as the ultimate modern and best, I had forgotten how rich our heritage really is and how much of it we really should be proud of. Looking through the slideshow composed of pictures taken from the original ceremony, I can't help but feel like a traitor for leaving my country in pursuit of my personal gains and goals. I feel irresponsible and it makes me feel awful. This might be a foreign concept to a lot of people, and it might really be unique to countries that have formed out of nationalism at its peak, but it's something that I feel very strongly about: to contribute back to Turkey for what I've gained from my ancestors.
The one thing that makes me happy is that we, Turks, are now coming to our senses in terms of our identity. We don't accept ourselves as "third world" or "second-class" to the rest of the world anymore, which has been projected to us all the time we tried to make ourselves more modern. We are now at the brink of creating our kind of modern that lives hand-in-hand with our past. We are becoming independently modern. Looking at the pictures below, I almost feel like we're catching up with our past, which we had lost for some reason. It looks as if we were more modern back then than what we have become now. Regardless, I'm glad to hear half a million people visited Ataturk's mausoleum today in remembrance for all he started, lead, finished, and paved the way for.
No comments:
Post a Comment