Proverbial

An allegedly Greek user uploads a video to YouTube making fun of Mustafa Atatürk, and the next thing you know a Turkish court bans access to the site. Meanwhile, offended Turks flood YouTube with “response” videos.

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Mustafa Hulusi, a British artist of Turkish-Cypriot origin that was in Rio Grande do Sul photographing watermelons. He talked about how it’s easy for people from the New World to think things like the animosity between Greeks and Turks could be settled over a bar table, when in fact they should spend a little more time researching how far back their histories go, and where their people’s sense of national pride comes from. But I believe even he would’ve thought this YouTube thing is just plain silly.