Jirair Tutunjian, Toronto, 8 August 2011
Sad to say, Recep Erdogan, the cantankerous and headline-hungry prime minister of Turkey, is sleeping on the job. Otherwise, how would one explain that despite the acute need for one, he has failed to establish a Ministry of Apologies in Ankara?
While he has demanded apologies from Armenia, Germany and Israel, the irascible politician has failed to demand an apology from Queen Elizabeth II, her ancestors, the Oxford/Cambridge University Presses and the English people in general for naming an obese and clumsy bird ‘turkey’. Irritable Erdogan has also been negligent in suing the estates of Mozart and Puccini for the negative portrayal of Ottoman Turk/Turan people in “Escape from the Seraglio” and “Turandot” respectively.
Because for centuries Italians, especially in the coastal areas, faced threats from Turkish pirates and invaders, to this day some Italian peasant women warn their misbehaving children that the “Turchi” (Turks) would kidnap them. Here again we see that Erdogan has missed the golden opportunity to demand an apology from Italian peasant women.
The litany of Erdogan’s missed opportunities to extract apologies from non-Turks doesn’t end there. There is more… much more.
The fulminating prime minister of Turkey should go after Broadway and Hollywood: For far too long these two pillars of popular American entertainment have labeled “turkey” a play or a movie which has failed to sell tickets. American movies should be banished from Turkish screens and plays not produced unless Broadway and Hollywood promise to banish the negative descriptive to… Deir el Zorr?
In North America a fierce and cruel person is sometimes called a “turk”, due to the well-documented millennium-long history of Turkish barbarity. Erdogan should demand apologies from dictionaries and sports leagues, such as the National Hockey League where hockey players (“Turk Broda”, “Turk Derek Sanderson”
remain legends. Erdogan should also order Turkish linguists to find out the name of the culprit who named a certain vulture “turkey buzzard.” That person’s name should be blue-penciled from all books sold in Turkey.
