Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Ms. Banu Avar

There is a way in Turkey how to handle Turkey's their critics; counter attacking.
Like what the 'journalist' Ms. Banu Avar did two weeks ago when Orhan Pamuk, the first Turk who won a Nobel Price (for literature). She linked this prestigious price with a 'documentary' she created with the name Beyond Borders, about the 'genocide' the Swedish committed against the Laps in the Northern part of Scandinavia. Broadcasted on Turkish 'state' television TRT.
Sahin Alpay, a columnist for Zaman newspaper in Turkey watched this piece of art on TV and ironically concluded that Banu Avar was trying to convince her fellow country men the following:

  • Sweden was a country exporting weapons and war to the rest of the world
  • Sweden lacks freedom of expression.
  • Women were subject to intense violence.
  • Swedish people suffer from alcoholism and mental illnesses.
  • Racism prevailed and the Sami/Lappish minority was deprived of all rights and were subject to genocide in the country.
  • The Nobel Prize and similar international awards serve U.S. “global cultural imperialism.”
  • Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk was awarded this prize for this very reason.
  • The Swedes did not know anything about the Nobel prize nor about Pamuk...

A shocking piece of journalism.

And Ms. Avar: you disgraced journalism and you disgraced Turkey.