Am I too radical for Pakistan?

[Baybars Han]

identity is a fundamental right.. like look at turkey, for decades they have been committing crimes, murder, rape and all sort of inhuman violences against the Kurds, yet have failed and brought nothing but burden on conscience of people. if there is any conscience left that is.

What you blabbering about?

 

[Leader]

What you blabbering about?

phat gai

 

[livingdead]

Ahhh what I replied with just disappeared, all of it.

@Horus @WebMaster @Jungibaaz What's going on?



Why do you want us to deny our Indus Valley roots? I am content with having ancestry amongst indigenous and later migration groups. We can teach about the Kingdom of Porus, we can teach about Taxilla, Indo Greek, Backterians, the Rai Dynasty etc, Sikh Empire. The culture found in Balouchistan which pre-dates the Indus Valley itself, the Khanata of Kalat. Sooo many things to learn and teach. We are not a people without history, not do we need to spit on our ancestors to feel proud to be Pakistanis.

Any Pakistani who refuses links with what is now India has jingoistic nationalism to affect their views, what is now Pakistan has always been linked to its eastern AND western territories in some way or form. We do have ethnic groups both from sides and the locals.

It's all fine to have a modern identity, but we don't need to forget our ancestral ties to this region to forge that.

I am nobody to deny your root but it is neither necessary nor sufficient to forge a national identity. America has barely 300 years history, does it make her any less great?
Nations are merely man made boundaries in which people have agreed to live together and rule themselves, they dont need to have anything in common other than willingness to live together as a society. Look at great cities like London, most of us have nothing in common but just by living here we have a sense of shared belonging.

 

[zeeshe100]

ik din Pakistan main sub say zeada urdu bolnay walay hoon gay or jald is din ko ana chiye ..

 

[Pakistani E]

What you blabbering about?

Don't worry he is a PTI/IK supporter, they have been pissed off at Erdogan/Turkey since he met NS and came to Pakistan to meet him. IK and his followers have a difficult time in rising above personal grievances to address national issues.

 

[KediKesenFare3]

Who told you this? Turkish genetic stock is far, far, far more diverse than Pakistan. It only looks like that to you because they have pushed their population through a grinder machine making one people, one nation, one language and above all united under one flag. They have inputs from Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Circcasians, Tatars, Dagestani, Ossetians and the list goes on ....

@KediKesenFare I will follow up with another post when I get time to wrap up my first post.

Yeh there is. You. I am sick of seeing your crappings. Avoiding them is as difficult as avoiding the dog pooh in the local park where I jog and as obnoxious.

I don't think Turkey and Pakistan are a fair comparison to be honest, the ethnic breakdown of Pakistan is much more diverse instead of having 2 major ethnic groups like Turkey, and even one with over 75% population. I think this is the biggest problem in trying to compare these two countries in terms of cultural assimilation.

I don't believe having different ethnic groups or speaking different languages is a problem. But trying to force them in to one just will not work apart from alienating certain groups. For example, which major ethnic group do you want to do assimilation towards apart from Urdu which is spoken as a mother tongue by only 8-9%. I understand exactly where you are coming from, but I personally believe having a diverse country is not an issue. What we do need is a unifying ideology, Islam does the role to an extent, but culture always trumps religion. Which is why I personally favour including the Indus Valley as the birth of Pakistan, not the Arab invasion. Arabs are still proud of their pre-islamic history, there is no reason why we cannot do the same without rejecting our faith.

P.S. I forgot to mention, I greatly appreciate your concerns for us and I hold all your opinions in a very high esteem. I can tell from the things you write, you have nothing but goodwill for us. Let me assure you, my respect is the same for Turkey and the Turks.

For instance, my parents do speak a different Indoeuropean language but they deliberately haven't taught us their language. None of my cousins understands or speaks this language. We only speak Turkish at home and in public. I asked them one day why they didn't teach us their mother tongue and they answered that they didn't see any reason for teaching us any other language than Turkish. Besides, my parents are religious and Sunni. It's easier for Sunni conservative people to embrace a post-Ottoman Turkish identity. I assume that a Pakistani Baloch, Punjab, Pahstu or Sindh would easily adjust to our society. Am I right?

But basically we have the same rights as citizens, we're Muslims, we share the same values and mindset, we live in one country – I guess my parents didn't want to disturb this precious unity. I personally know many Turks of Bosnian, Georgian, Arabic, Kurdish, Macedonian, Roma, Circassian, Albanian, Kosovar, Greek, Laz, Zazaki, Bulgarian/Pomaks, Caucassian and even Armenian/Hemshin (Muslim Armenian) origin and it's not unusual that many of them are often extremely nationalistic. Some of these people don't even want to be reminded of their non-Turkish heritage. And, yeah, normally, we don't unveil our "other" identity in front of foreigners because there is this common feeling that this is a delicate issue that is only our business. One of these stories that stays in the family. No need to inform any person from outside.

Even I feel a little bit strange talking publicly about my personal background. It doesn't feel right. Another true fact is that we have a strong overall acceptance in our society towards people who have non-Turkish ancestry but are willing to join and embrace our Turkishness. If you feel Turkish and you are a citizen of the Turkish Republic – you are Turkish without any limitation. Atatürk himself was a Turkish muhajir from the Balkan (even though he was of Turkish ethnicity) and with him hundreds of thousands of Muslims from all races fled to Anatolia. One of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's most famous quotes about being Turkish:

How happy is the one who says I am a Turk!
- Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

So, with the exception of Kurds, who only partially assimilated, all of these mentioned groups have completely embraced the Turkish identity. But even the Kurds play an important role in our history. At least 50 to 60 percent of them have a very strong sense of belonging to Turkey. That's the reason why the Turkish Kurds are underrepresented in the structures of PKK even though Turkish Kurds are the biggest group among the Kurdish speaking populations in the ME.

The thought leader of the modern Turkish nationalism was Ziya Gökalp who was a Turanist of Kurdish origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziya_Gökalp

Ismet Inönü, our second president after Atatürk, was partially Kurdish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/İsmet_İnönü#Family_and_early_life

Turgut Özal, a former prime minister had a Kurdish mother: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turgut_Özal

The guy who almost closed the party of Erdogan was a Kemalist with Kurdish heritage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdurrahman_Yalçınkaya

etc.pp.

AKP has 317 MPs and about 60 are of Kurdish origin. It's funny but based on ethnicity Kurds are in fact extremely overrepresented in the Turkish parliament, which is a barely known fact in the West.

I was born into this strong Turkish identity. My father was a Grey Wolve. We don't even share the same mezhep with our parents anymore. They are Shafi, we belong to the Hanefi branch of Sunni like the Turkish majority. My personal and very positive experience lead me to open this thread. I had no bad intentions at all. I'm just happy about the way my parents raised me thus I thought: Why not applying the same concept onto the Pakistani society forming a culturally and linguistic homogeneous country?

I just don't think that adopting a common identity within the same state, the same nation, the same society is something that should be avoided.

 

[Indus Pakistan]

I assume that a Pakistani Baloch, Punjab, Pahstu or Sindh

It's Pashtun by the way and the language is Pashto which is related along with Baloch with Kurdish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtuns

Thanks for that great post. I will give you full part two reply when I get time. I will give you full unredacted 'warts an all' picture so you can understand the real dynamic inside Pakistan. Besides Punjabi, Pashtuns, Baloch, Sindhi, Kashmiri we also have 'Mohajirs' from India making about 5% of the population living mostly in Karachi.

 

[19CavPK]

When it comes to culture, I'm not so sure whether there is a "pan-Pakistani" culture. Can someone give me a major characteristic that a citizen from Balochistan, Gilgit Baltistan and Sindh share apart from religion?

People are generally very religious, Islam plays a very important role in their lifes but yet people are sticking to their regional identities and traditions. But why? Can someone enlighten me, please?

To be honest.. There is no "Culture" of Pakistan as such.. Pakistan and its creation was part of the Sykes-Pikot game plan. Just the way a Kurd nation was divided carefully between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran so that it never rises again, the same was applied to the division of the Sub-Continental India. Such a division causes cultural encroachment. And it did so in case of Pakistan in such a successful manner that this could very well become a case study for the historians.

FACT: In any gathering, two Pashtuns would start talking in Pashtu without realizing that there are other people present who do not speak Pushto. Sindhis and Balochis would do the same. So much so that some small segments of Pakistan with unique languages would also follow suit. For example; Hazaras speaking Darri and Persian. Hunzai (Gilgit-Baltistan) speaking their Burushaski (which is more close and assimilated with Greek than any of our regional languages). All this except for Punjabis (A race inherently and willingly a slave race that would always welcome all the invaders and foreigners. They would fight the locals for them.).

Another side to this division based on linguistic lines can be clearly seen when we observe the human linguistic history with a little more detail and what it can do.

Pre-Nationhood, 1923, Arabic was the main spoken as well as written language in Turkey. The first step towards the assimilation of the Nation-State and the abolishing of the Caliphate was to get rid of the Language. If you remember your history, Attaturk, in his first year after the Caliph was exiled, 1. Banned Arabic. 2. Banner the Hijab. 3. Banned the Azaan fromt he Mosques. 4. Introduced a new Language for the Nation-State of Turkey.

The Azaan came back and its mesmerizing to hear some 3000 mosques in Istanbul make the call to the prayers simultaneously. But the other things were irreparable beyond repair. The separation of Religion and State somewhat destroyed the unifying factor among us Muslims and a reason for today's extremist elements among our ranks is something that is there due to this very factor. Like the famous British Foreign Secretary said back then;

“The point at issue is that Turkey has been destroyed and shall never rise again, because we have destroyed her spiritual power, the Caliphate and Islam. We must put an end to anything which brings about any Islamic unity between the sons of the Muslims. As we have already succeeded in finishing off the Caliphate, so we must ensure that there will never rise again unity for the Muslims, whether it be intellectual or cultural unity.”
Lord Curzon, British House Of Commons (March, 1924)

and if we go back in time a little farther..

"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in the country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."
Baron Macaulay, Speech/Address to the British Parliament, 1835

They succeeded in doing so. English, the language and the people, are considered to be far superior than any of our regional languages here in Pakistan. The british came in with the East-India Company and slowly turned trade into an occupation and colonized India. They stole our culture, our identity and our self-esteem along with all the jewels and material wealth.

In Pakistan, anyone who speaks fluent English is respected. Anyone who cannot master the English language is seen to be unfit, uncivilized and lowly.

Theoretically, as a Pakistani politician, I would try to systematically enforce Urdu in every part of the country. Only Urdu should be taught at schools, there should be a box "Pakistani" in the section about ethnicity in every census to strengthen a "pan-Pakistani" national identity.

They've already tried. But like I said, language cannot be revived with the current state of affairs. The system that we have devised for Pakistan, brings about only the affluent into politics and these politicians depend on their vote banks. They see politics as a form of investment. They spend a billion on winning the elections so that after 5 years of their term in the National Assembly, they come back with 5 billion, all through nothing but corruption. These very people cannot hurt the sentiments of the locals who take them up to the power corridors and one thing untouchable is the language. They will not do that out of self-interest.
Urdu is however taught at schools.
Pakistani is not an ethnicity.

The children of Pakistan must learn that Pakistan is older than 70 years. The Indus Valley Civilization must become a fixed part of school instruction, curricula and programs. The Pakistani civilization is thousands of years old. Educational school trips to archaeological sites would be a fine idea.

This already happens. Its more about learning to take pride in your own country. Its missing because the people believe the country has not given them anything. And partly this is true too, because of the corrupt political landscape that we have had since the very first Prime Minister was murdered. A parliament that is more a house of great personal gains and investment than legislation for the good of the people. An example is that for the last 6 or so months, the only thing happening in our Parliament is that the sitting Prime Minister and his entire ruling party are only defending the corruption of their party leader who had somehow stashed huge sums of money in offshore companies in Panama. SIX Freaking Months and this is the main news. Nothing else.

Even resettlement programs should be discussed. Punjabis and Sindh people could be resettled from crowded places in their home province to rural areas of Balochistan for the purpose of mixing up the different ethnicities like Turkey did after becoming a nation-state.

Happened and backfired. If the politicians keep on developing their own cities only and leave the rest of the rural Pakistan for God to handle, obviously we will witness a huge exodus from rural to urban areas of Pakistan. One small example;
Development Budget for 2017:

Lahore Rs. 600Billion
Rest of Punjab Rs. 200Billion​

Lahore is just one city of Punjab province. Now do the maths.

Why are people constantly demanding more and more provinces? You can ask a secular or religious Pakistani - both will explain to you that the current administrational system of Pakistan is not working very well. Why do you want to implement even more not working administrational units in the first place? Why do you want to pay monthly salaries to thousands of new deputies?

Answer is again in the figures given above for the Development Budget. I am a strong believer in giving the people their rights. We should create more administrative provinces. Small units that are easy to manage. Give the local people their own powers to govern with autonomy.

1. Re-Instate the Bahawalpur Province as promised by the Quaid that it will have its autonomy. This will lessen the burden on North Punjab and bring prosperity to the local people of Bahawalpur.
2. Re-Instate the Kalaat state in Balochistan. Minus the heirs who have turned out to be rotten traitors to Pakistan. But we must honor the commitment made to the Khan of Kalaat by our founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
3. Give true provincial status to Gilgit-Baltistan. Right now its not there. Its all constitutional gimmickry and they do not have autonomy as a province as yet except for a name.

The people are already there. Getting the salaries and perks. Its only that they've not been working and are required to be put to good use which will not happen unless the federal govt gives the provincial autonomy to existing provinces and create new small units (lets call that something like divide two very large provinces into four.).

So, am I too radical for Pakistan?

No.. You're not.. You've been raised in a highly Secularized and westernized society if your're from Turkey. So I would say You're tooo "Non-Pakistani" to think like that.

 

[Baybars Han]

To be honest.. There is no "Culture" of Pakistan as such.. Pakistan and its creation was part of the Sykes-Pikot game plan. Just the way a Kurd nation was divided carefully between Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran so that it never rises again, the same was applied to the division of the Sub-Continental India. Such a division causes cultural encroachment. And it did so in case of Pakistan in such a successful manner that this could very well become a case study for the historians.

FACT: In any gathering, two Pashtuns would start talking in Pashtu without realizing that there are other people present who do not speak Pushto. Sindhis and Balochis would do the same. So much so that some small segments of Pakistan with unique languages would also follow suit. For example; Hazaras speaking Darri and Persian. Hunzai (Gilgit-Baltistan) speaking their Burushaski (which is more close and assimilated with Greek than any of our regional languages). All this except for Punjabis (A race inherently and willingly a slave race that would always welcome all the invaders and foreigners. They would fight the locals for them.).

Another side to this division based on linguistic lines can be clearly seen when we observe the human linguistic history with a little more detail and what it can do.

Pre-Nationhood, 1923, Arabic was the main spoken as well as written language in Turkey. The first step towards the assimilation of the Nation-State and the abolishing of the Caliphate was to get rid of the Language. If you remember your history, Attaturk, in his first year after the Caliph was exiled, 1. Banned Arabic. 2. Banner the Hijab. 3. Banned the Azaan fromt he Mosques. 4. Introduced a new Language for the Nation-State of Turkey.

The Azaan came back and its mesmerizing to hear some 3000 mosques in Istanbul make the call to the prayers simultaneously. But the other things were irreparable beyond repair. The separation of Religion and State somewhat destroyed the unifying factor among us Muslims and a reason for today's extremist elements among our ranks is something that is there due to this very factor. Like the famous British Foreign Secretary said back then;

“The point at issue is that Turkey has been destroyed and shall never rise again, because we have destroyed her spiritual power, the Caliphate and Islam. We must put an end to anything which brings about any Islamic unity between the sons of the Muslims. As we have already succeeded in finishing off the Caliphate, so we must ensure that there will never rise again unity for the Muslims, whether it be intellectual or cultural unity.”
Lord Curzon, British House Of Commons (March, 1924)

and if we go back in time a little farther..

"I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in the country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."
Baron Macaulay, Speech/Address to the British Parliament, 1835

They succeeded in doing so. English, the language and the people, are considered to be far superior than any of our regional languages here in Pakistan. The british came in with the East-India Company and slowly turned trade into an occupation and colonized India. They stole our culture, our identity and our self-esteem along with all the jewels and material wealth.

In Pakistan, anyone who speaks fluent English is respected. Anyone who cannot master the English language is seen to be unfit, uncivilized and lowly.




They've already tried. But like I said, language cannot be revived with the current state of affairs. The system that we have devised for Pakistan, brings about only the affluent into politics and these politicians depend on their vote banks. They see politics as a form of investment. They spend a billion on winning the elections so that after 5 years of their term in the National Assembly, they come back with 5 billion, all through nothing but corruption. These very people cannot hurt the sentiments of the locals who take them up to the power corridors and one thing untouchable is the language. They will not do that out of self-interest.
Urdu is however taught at schools.
Pakistani is not an ethnicity.



This already happens. Its more about learning to take pride in your own country. Its missing because the people believe the country has not given them anything. And partly this is true too, because of the corrupt political landscape that we have had since the very first Prime Minister was murdered. A parliament that is more a house of great personal gains and investment than legislation for the good of the people. An example is that for the last 6 or so months, the only thing happening in our Parliament is that the sitting Prime Minister and his entire ruling party are only defending the corruption of their party leader who had somehow stashed huge sums of money in offshore companies in Panama. SIX Freaking Months and this is the main news. Nothing else.




Happened and backfired. If the politicians keep on developing their own cities only and leave the rest of the rural Pakistan for God to handle, obviously we will witness a huge exodus from rural to urban areas of Pakistan. One small example;
Development Budget for 2017:

Lahore Rs. 600Billion
Rest of Punjab Rs. 200Billion​

Lahore is just one city of Punjab province. Now do the maths.



Answer is again in the figures given above for the Development Budget. I am a strong believer in giving the people their rights. We should create more administrative provinces. Small units that are easy to manage. Give the local people their own powers to govern with autonomy.

1. Re-Instate the Bahawalpur Province as promised by the Quaid that it will have its autonomy. This will lessen the burden on North Punjab and bring prosperity to the local people of Bahawalpur.
2. Re-Instate the Kalaat state in Balochistan. Minus the heirs who have turned out to be rotten traitors to Pakistan. But we must honor the commitment made to the Khan of Kalaat by our founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
3. Give true provincial status to Gilgit-Baltistan. Right now its not there. Its all constitutional gimmickry and they do not have autonomy as a province as yet except for a name.

The people are already there. Getting the salaries and perks. Its only that they've not been working and are required to be put to good use which will not happen unless the federal govt gives the provincial autonomy to existing provinces and create new small units (lets call that something like divide two very large provinces into four.).




No.. You're not.. You've been raised in a highly Secularized and westernized society if your're from Turkey. So I would say You're tooo "Non-Pakistani" to think like that.

Just to correct a few things. The kurds was not carved into 4 states because they didn't have a nation to begin with. I can't recall in history any time in the last 2000 years they had a state or even ever.

Secondly, it was Ottoman Turkish spoken in the Ottoman Empire and is vastly different from Arabic.

 

[19CavPK]

The kurds was not carved into 4 states because they didn't have a nation to begin with

It must have been badly put forward by me then. But the fact that Kurds lived together before Sykes-Picot is what I was referring to. They may not have had a nation back then. That holds true as far as modern nation-states are defined. But the other fact is their native land, their language, their families, their culture.. in all their basic identity as a whole, all of this was divided in to the newly carved out nation-states that I had mentioned. The kurds ever since then have been fighting the Turks, Saddam and later Maliki, The Shah of Iran and later the Republican Guards of the Iranian Revolution and the Baathist Hafiz Al-Assad and now his son Bashar Al-Assad. The Kurds have longed for a nation-state of their own and are still struggling.

it was Ottoman Turkish spoken in the Ottoman Empire and is vastly different from Arabic.

For this, please read the following excerpt from Wikipedia.

Ottoman Turkish or the Ottoman language (لسان عثمانى‎‎ Lisân-ı Osmânî) (also known as تركجه‎ Türkçe or تركی‎ Türkî, "Turkish"), is the variety of the Turkish Language that was used in the Ottomon Empire. It borrows, in all aspects, extensively from Arabic and Persian, and it was written in the Ottomon Turkish alphabet. During the peak of Ottoman power, Persian and Arabic vocabulary accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary, while words of Arabic origins heavily outnumbered native Turkish words.

Consequently, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe ("raw/vulgar Turkish", as in Vulgar Latin), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern Turkish language. The Tanzimat era saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (لسان عثمانی‎ lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانليجه‎ Osmanlıca) and the same distinction is made in Modern Turkish (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi)

 

[war&peace]

It would be a terrible idea to forcefully impose a certain language in such a diverse country like Pakistan. There is a difference between been encouraged and imposed.
The better thing to do would be to make pushtu, balochi, sindhi seem as part of Pakistani identity rather than forcing people to give up their thousands of years of cuture.
If I am a proud Sindhi lets say than this should automatically make me a proud Pakistani.
All this is coming from someone belonging to Punjab who speaks Urdu and knows very little Punjabi.

Well I think for a greater integration and cohesion, more homogeneity is desired but it should not be forced through law and regulations but the environment should be created that everyone learns the national language in the school so as to secure any job whether it is private or government sector and gradient should be kept that society ultimately evolves in one homogeneous hotchpotch in which the individual or ethnic and linguistic discrimination is not possible. Right now Sindhi, Punjabi, Urdu, Balochi are discrete ethnicities and a lot of problems and issues are because of these well-defined edgy communities that are not ready to mix up.

 

[cocomo]

Pakistani identity/culture is essentially the aspects of the identity/culture that these sub-groups (Punjabi, Pashtun, Baluch, Sindhi, Saraiki, Kashmiri, Baltistani...) share. And what isn't common is particular to that group. I'd argue Pakistani identity doesn't stand on its own, its the collective identity of these sub-groups and the proposition that they are antithetical to one another is false. In Pakistan's case local and collective identities aren't mutually exclusive, you can be both. We are ethnically diverse nation, and we should celebrate it, acknowledging and respecting the particularities of these sub-groups will keep a harmonious environment. I'd suggest we teach our kids particularities of these sub-groups, they more people are aware of each other and learn to respect differences, the more tolerant Pakistan will become.

 

[Baybars Han]

It must have been badly put forward by me then. But the fact that Kurds lived together before Sykes-Picot is what I was referring to. They may not have had a nation back then. That holds true as far as modern nation-states are defined. But the other fact is their native land, their language, their families, their culture.. in all their basic identity as a whole, all of this was divided in to the newly carved out nation-states that I had mentioned. The kurds ever since then have been fighting the Turks, Saddam and later Maliki, The Shah of Iran and later the Republican Guards of the Iranian Revolution and the Baathist Hafiz Al-Assad and now his son Bashar Al-Assad. The Kurds have longed for a nation-state of their own and are still struggling.



For this, please read the following excerpt from Wikipedia.

Ottoman Turkish or the Ottoman language (لسان عثمانى‎‎ Lisân-ı Osmânî) (also known as تركجه‎ Türkçe or تركی‎ Türkî, "Turkish"), is the variety of the Turkish Language that was used in the Ottomon Empire. It borrows, in all aspects, extensively from Arabic and Persian, and it was written in the Ottomon Turkish alphabet. During the peak of Ottoman power, Persian and Arabic vocabulary accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary, while words of Arabic origins heavily outnumbered native Turkish words.

Consequently, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe ("raw/vulgar Turkish", as in Vulgar Latin), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern Turkish language. The Tanzimat era saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (لسان عثمانی‎ lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانليجه‎ Osmanlıca) and the same distinction is made in Modern Turkish (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi)

I know what Ottoman Turkish was so I don't need to read Wikipedia. A person that speaks Arabic or Persian can't understand.

Kurds are just a tool to be used today, just like the Arabs was 100 years ago. It's a tool to achieve the ambitions of USA etc.

 

[ABCharlie]

Linguistic identity is a sticky subject as can be gauged from the direction this thread has taken. Which is why using any kind of force on anyone's language will often backfire, if not in the short term then in the long term. Culture, of which language is a crucial part, evolves over time. It is never static. Same way, as Pakistan progresses and changes with time, its dynamics, including language preferences, will change. They will discard some, adopt some, discard them too, and perhaps come up with a totally new one as a result of a mixture of different languages.

But these changes have to come organically, as a result of inter city migration, economic compulsions, inter-marriages, urbanization into cosmopolitan cities, etc.

 

[Deliorman]

It must have been badly put forward by me then. But the fact that Kurds lived together before Sykes-Picot is what I was referring to. They may not have had a nation back then. That holds true as far as modern nation-states are defined. But the other fact is their native land, their language, their families, their culture.. in all their basic identity as a whole, all of this was divided in to the newly carved out nation-states that I had mentioned. The kurds ever since then have been fighting the Turks, Saddam and later Maliki, The Shah of Iran and later the Republican Guards of the Iranian Revolution and the Baathist Hafiz Al-Assad and now his son Bashar Al-Assad. The Kurds have longed for a nation-state of their own and are still struggling.



For this, please read the following excerpt from Wikipedia.

Ottoman Turkish or the Ottoman language (لسان عثمانى‎‎ Lisân-ı Osmânî) (also known as تركجه‎ Türkçe or تركی‎ Türkî, "Turkish"), is the variety of the Turkish Language that was used in the Ottomon Empire. It borrows, in all aspects, extensively from Arabic and Persian, and it was written in the Ottomon Turkish alphabet. During the peak of Ottoman power, Persian and Arabic vocabulary accounted for up to 88% of its vocabulary, while words of Arabic origins heavily outnumbered native Turkish words.

Consequently, Ottoman Turkish was largely unintelligible to the less-educated lower-class and rural Turks, who continued to use kaba Türkçe ("raw/vulgar Turkish", as in Vulgar Latin), which used far fewer foreign loanwords and is the basis of the modern Turkish language. The Tanzimat era saw the application of the term "Ottoman" when referring to the language (لسان عثمانی‎ lisân-ı Osmânî or عثمانليجه‎ Osmanlıca) and the same distinction is made in Modern Turkish (Osmanlıca and Osmanlı Türkçesi)

As a Turk from Bulgaria (a country that used to be under Ottoman rule for almost 500 years all until the end of the 19th century and where Turks now form 10% of the population) I can tell you that Ottoman Turkish has almost nothing to do with Arabic even if it was writen in Arabic letters and even if Arabic was spoken in large areas of the Empire and used in mosques. For example Turks on the Balkans (around 1,5 million people) were never part of that modern language reforms that took place in Turkey after the creation of the Republic in 1923 hence the Turkish we speak around here is more archaic and in rare cases influenced by the local Balkan languages. Still most Balkan Turks understand and use at least 90% of Modern Turkish that is being spoken in Turkey and nobody even knows Arabic or is interested in learning it. Maybe having Turkey next door and watching Turkish TV channels also helps a lot but still if my great-grandparents used to speak Arabic I would have known, right? On the other hand it is not strange that a lot of Arab, Persian, Latin/Western European and etc words are in our vocabulary (like 15% of it is non- Turkic) as we are people who have conquered many places and at the same time traded and lived with many different people. Turks in general are very diverse people and a huge nation living on a crossroad between cultures so it is a normal thing to have people of different backgrounds considering themselves Turkish. To be a Turk is a big honour for me.

ps It is nice to easily understand not only Turks in Turkey but also Azeris, Turkmens, Crimean Tatars, Gagauzs and other Turkic people from the Oghuz branch... Can't say the same about the Lebanese, Saudis or Algerians though.