One of Ataturk's most famous dictums was "Ne mutlu türküm diyene" =
Happy is he who says "I am a Turk". I have a Turkish friend who was a lecturer in Bilgi University, Istanbul, who said to me that if Ataturk had only said 'Happy is he who says "I am a citizen of Turkey"' then much misery would have been saved over the years. When I first went to Turkey in the 1990s I heard about "Mountain Turks" = a euphemism for Kurds. I met many young men who had done national service and been sent East to do their time. They were prey to the PKK and came back almost universally hating Kurds in general. Erdogan's clever games by first courting the Kurds in the hope they would give AKP the 50% required to make him All-powerful President/Sultan, and then dropping them when they carried on and voted HDP anyway, and then trying to get the nationalists on side by promising a hard-line on "The Kurdish Problem", have lit a very dangerous fire in Turkey. How long ago was I reading on CBF about what a wonderful chap the Fethiye Mayor was for tourists and expats whilst carefully managing to ignore the fact that he was organizing nationalist thugs to attack the HDP offices and officers in Fethiye? I know of one Fethiye resident who was a voice, perhaps a lone one, in condemning this action and not fooled by the Mayor's apparently pleasant posture towards foreigners.
