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TURKEY : THE BLIGHT OF ASIA

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ASIA MINOR, THE GRAVEYARD OF GREEK CITIES

    THE possibilities of Asia Minor for Aryan civilization are better understood when one casts an eye back on that country to the period when it was covered with teeming millions and dotted with cities that were mothers of art, literature, philosophy, industry and all that is most useful and beautiful in human development. All this has been repeatedly swept over by Asiatic and Mongol invasion and is now covered with the Turkish blight.

 

    [Ellopos' note: I don't understand the talk about 'Aryan civilization', and certainly it has not become very famous after the Nazi crimes and the relevant ideology. Horton has not helped understanding here, while in other places rightly spoke about the real problem, which is the fade of civilization wherever Turks went.]

 

    In a paper read in December, 1922, by W. H. Buckler, of Baltimore, the well-known diplomat and archeologist, he calls attention to the great wealth of opportunity for archeological research in New Turkey, and he urges American scholars to concentrate their attention upon Anatolia and its new capital, Angora, and he expects that "the development of towns, roads, etc., will be much more rapid than formerly, and this change will be most marked at Angora, which, from a village must shortly transform herself into a metropolis."

    It is possible that a few new buildings may be put up at Angora in the near future, but the process of reasoning which connects the carrying out of massacres on a hitherto unprecedented scale with a freshly acquired ability for administration, agriculture, commerce and finance is incomprehensible.

 

    [Ellopos' note: It is not incomprehensible, if we think about the import of know-how and the co-operation of the West. The real thing is to remember that having spirit is not identical with knowing-how. Turkey may become very rich, with the Turks remaining as barbarous as before -  just as America is rich while stooping to barbarity day by day. With this in mind, we must read the paragraphs that follow. Predictions about Turkey's economic failure, wrong or right, are irrelevant - they have nothing to do with Turkey's cultural development. It suffices to remember what Herodotus said, that always Greece had poverty as a friend. The story of Croesus is also useful in this context.]

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