Younghusband brought this little fact to my attention: “ËœMein Kampf’ becomes best-seller in Turkey!
Yikes! I was in Turkey when he wrote that and I hadn’t noticed anything! But no sooner had I read the post, I looked harder at the bookshelves and did indeed spot it at several locations. Here’s the photographic evidence.
I think there is little doubt that Turkey is a very competitive society where a high premium is placed on financial success. What does it bode for the future if today’s frustrated young ones are reading “My Struggle”? Food for thought.
About Curzon
Lord George Nathaniel Curzon (1859 - 1925) entered the British House of Commons as a Conservative MP in 1886, where he served as undersecretary of India and Foreign Affairs. He was appointed Viceroy of India at the turn of the 20th century where he delineated the North West Frontier Province,
ordered a military expedition to Tibet, and unsuccessfully tried to partition the province of Bengal during his six-year tenure. Curzon served as Leader of the House of Lords in Prime Minister Lloyd George's War Cabinet and became Foreign Secretary in January 1919, where his most famous act was
the drawing of the Curzon Line between a new Polish state and Russia. His publications include
Russia in Central Asia (1889) and
Persia and the Persian Question (1892).
In real life, "Curzon" is a US citizen from the East Coast who has been a financial analyst, freelance translator, and university professor; he is currently on assignment in Tokyo.
I am reminded of a video I watched in an undergrad IR class in which the narrator, upon visiting Turkey points his camera towards a mountainside, upon which is written in gigantic letters: “How sad is the one who calls himself Kurd,” and “Happy is he who can call himself a Turk.” I realize I should probably read Mein Kampf before intelligently commenting, but drawing a relatively uneducated conclusion, if this is a best seller, how sad to be a Kurd indeed!
I read Mein Kampf several years ago, and I couldn’t figure out what was supposed to be so damn compelling about it. Unless there has been a massive surge in all types of WW2 related history books, there’s no way that this is bodes well.
I don’t think this has much to do with anti-Semitism or anti-Kurdish sentiment. Rather, I see it as resentment: many people work very hard in Turkey and do not get ahead. That’s what Hitler spoke too, and that’s probably what appeals to readers.
My sympathy for the Kurds in Turkey is pretty low. These are not a downtrodden people. There have been Kurdish PMs and Presidents. It isn’t like Blacks in America circa the 1960s or the ethnic minorities in China, where they want to join society and play by the same rules and yet can’t. As long as Kurds are Muslim and speak Turkish, they’re welcome and are wholly accepted, as are the other Turkified people of Anatolia: Arabs, Greeks, Bulgarians, Armenians, and the vast majority of the Kurds. That was Ataturk’s great gift to Turkey: the measure of whether or not you are Turkish is not skin-tone, it’s merely language.
Consequently, I have much more sympathy for the Uyghurs in China, the Hazara in Afghanistan, the Darfurian Christians, the Chechens, the Palestinians, and probably even the Tibetans.
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