Quotes & Sayings About Turkish Culture

A society with lynch culture needs a big zoo, not for the animals definitely, but for the very people themselves! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

You cannot transpose the U.S. system on Turkey, and the Turkish system on France etc. You have to understand the people and their culture. That's leadership. — Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa

You do not have a mind belongs to yourself! Your thoughts are the thoughts of your culture! When you speak, it is not you but your culture, your religion, your traditions, your political or spiritual leaders speak! If not you but your culture, your religion etc. are speaking on behalf of you, then what are you, who are you? A stupid puppet? Get a mind which belongs to yourself! Only then you will be able to speak with your own thoughts on behalf of your own self! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

A whole new life at fifty, all because I had become entranced with both the Turkish culture and with Kazim - who one friend called a careening festival of a human being and another called an alcoholic Kurdish carpet salesman. I called him a catalyst. — Irfan Orga

Under orders from Kitchener himself, an attempt was to be made to bribe the Turkish commander of the Kut siege into letting Townshend's army go in return for one million English pounds' worth of gold. If Lawrence resented being the bearer of this shameful instruction, almost without precedent in British military history, he never let on. Then again, he'd very recently been given two reminders of the puffery and hypocrisy of military culture. — Scott Anderson

Albania's future is towards Christianity, since it is connected with it culturally, old memories, and its pre-Turkish nostalgia. With the passing of time, the late Islamic religion that came with the Ottomans should evaporate (at first in Albania and then in Kosova), until it will be replaced by Christianity or, to be more exact, Christian culture. Thus from one evil (the prohibition of religion in 1967) goodness will come. The Albanian nation will make a great historical correction that will accelerate its unity with its mother continent: Europe — Ismail Kadare

We're stuck. We're stuck between the East and the West. Between the past and the future. On the one hand there are the secular modernists, so proud of the regime they constructed, you cannot breathe a critical word. They've got the army and half of the state on their side. On the other hand there are the conventional traditionalist, so infatuated with the Ottoman past, you cannot breathe a critical word. They've got the general public and the remaining half of the state on their side. — Elif Shafak

It is not my intention to explain Turkey, its culture and its problems. My literature has a universal concern: I want to bring people and their emotions closer to my readers, not explain Turkish politics. — Orhan Pamuk