Once upon a time in Turkey

I am not a historian.

I am certainly not a sociologist.

It cannot be said that I understand much about these matters either.

I am writing as a semi-literate civil engineer about the Turkey of the last 70-80 years.

As a generation, we coincided with Turkey's impoverished times.

Our childhood and youth were spent with limited means, like all the people of the world.

Technology had not yet begun to develop geometrically; it was trying to transition from the crawling stage to the standing stage.

It was after the Second World War.

We did not feel the Cold War and the NATO system to our bones because we were small; we did not understand.

I do not think the adults understood much either.

They thought they were a capitalist NATO country.

I, however, realized that we were the only "commie" state within NATO after the Cold War, when I saw the state of the iron curtain countries I visited frequently.

Consumption according to need, the supply of basic necessities by the state, and so on.

Uniformity.

A complete old Turkey.

The relative wealth of the produce they call the New Turkey led to the marginalization and humiliation of the old Turkey.

In the New Turkey, roads, hospitals, and airports had been built.

In schools, students were not wearing those black aprons with stiff collars, but were freely wearing civilian clothes.

The German-originated theoretical criticisms in the old one—about it being a gendarmerie state, a police state, a fascist administration, a lack of democratic rights, our differences, or self-governance—did not fail to confuse people's minds.

Just as I was about to be convinced, the videos that fell in front of me helped me sober up.

Thank God for social media, so we all saw the disgrace in the "kekomaris" (a derogatory slang term for a specific social group).

If the children of wealthy Turkey—who are the laughingstock of middle-lower class, elderly, overweight women coming from Europe, hoping to get a visa and escape to Europe—could only realize the disgrace they have fallen into, which is not very possible, they would do their best to dig up the old "fasho-commie" Turkey from its grave and bring it back.