The dark point is that, it's still not clear if we Turks really converted Islam by our will or if we forced to convert that religion.
It's always the same. People want to rule over others in the name of their people, their god, their national or "racial" interests or their purse
. It's a problem of authoritarian thinking, of oppressing oneself and building the need to oppress others in order to compensate. Throughout human history the clergy used to hold the people face down in the mud. It's the same with colonialism, and it has been the same in Europe with christianity.
My roots are Frisian/Saxon in NW Germany, and the than Christian Franks made my ancestors Christians by killing 2.000 people of the ruling class. Theres still an alley in NW Germany where they hung to show the people what could happen to them
(and that their gods can't protect them) That about christianity and christian love of your fellow people
But Im no Christian by my own will, and Im no heathen either. And why should I? I dont mind what religion a person has who lives in the next house, as long as he or she doesnt want me to practice his. My girlfriend is a (German/Hungarian/Romanian/Polish) Jew (Yes. Its Europe. Even our extreme nationalists have ancestors of three or more peoples, if they would only open their eyes
- but its the same in the Middle East
), and I respect her religious feelings, but they are not mine. She is mine (hehe). (Please don't tell her ...)
The point is that we have to leave the continuum of collectivity of mind; any person's identity is like a rhizom of influences. You have to find your identity within that rhizom, and others have to look at you as an individual as the result of your decisions about yourself. Maybe you are a Turk. And I'm a German. Shit on this! Probably our mentality is different, cause the ways of thinking in our societys are different; and probably our feelings are the similar: cause we listen to the same music, and probably we have more in common than the people who live above my apartment have to do with me.
Don't think of your roots as a monolithic block - think of Asia Minor as a melting pot! Probably you are a mixture of Turk/Greek/Lydian/Kurd/Hittite/Persian/Armenian/Aserbaijani/Galatian/Phrygian and so on ancestors.
When we are all individuals in future (if that would happen), all those repressive collectives will disappear.
Just let's make the best of our short time on earth!
(I just decided to become a priest or a demagogue. Sorry for the lecture ...
)
