Trapped in Ignorance

I read İlhan Selçuk's work called Captain Selahattin's Novel in my high school years. Captain Selahattin was an Ottoman officer. He graduated from the Military Academy and served in the wars of the last period of the Ottoman Empire. He wrote about his life and his experiences in the wars in his diaries. Captain Selahattin's son gave these diaries to İlhan Selçuk to turn them into a book and the diaries turned into a book.

Captain Selahattin graduates from the Military Academy. He is on duty in Çanakkale during the Tripoli War. He lives in a tent. Every evening, he reads a book in front of his tent.

Captain Selahattin gradually feels something strange about the way the notables look at him. A young Ottoman officer who is doing his national service does not get the respect he expects. The sarcastic attitudes of those around him create question marks in his mind. He tries to understand the situation. Finally, he finds the reason for the attitudes he cannot understand.

The public did not miss the fact that this young Ottoman officer was constantly reading books. What business could a man who graduated from the great War School still have with reading books? Is there any respect for an ignorant person who still reads books?

I was surprised when I read what happened to Captain Selahattin. I was saddened by the state of the Ottoman Empire. The emotions that a story that happened in the early 20th century created in a high school student nearly 80 years later were striking. It explained to some extent why the Ottoman Empire collapsed.

Recently, I was chatting with a veterinarian near Muğla. I learned that even some very mild medications that people use in daily life can cause death when given to animals. Some animal lovers think that their pets have a cold and give them the same medications they use. In this way, they can cause their animals to die.

The veterinarian explained that when giving a drug to an animal, he carefully chooses the new drug he will give if the animal has another drug that it uses regularly. He explained that he always consults a thick book to understand how a new drug he is planning to give against any disease will react with the drug that is used regularly, and he chooses the new drug according to this book.

The veterinarian said that his reference to the book had caused problems in the way the local people viewed him. I asked what kind of a problem this could cause. However, it occurred to me that a story similar to the one I read in Captain Selahattin's Novel was coming. I was not wrong in my guess.

The farmers and animal breeders in the area were wondering how this man became a veterinarian. They thought he hadn't learned anything at school and they saw it as "ignorance" that he was trying to figure out from the book which medicine would react with which other medicine and how it would affect animals.

As we continued our conversation, we started talking about the state of Turkey and I told him about the section in Captain Selahattin's Novel. When I read the book, it was the 1980s. Now, the time is different, the people are different, the place is different, but the same ignorance remains.

I recently finished a memoir by a natural science teacher named Dr. Wilhelm Endriss. The teacher taught at a German High School for about six years in the 1900s. The book is called Wanderings in Turkey. He took long walks around Istanbul and the surrounding area. Imagine today's Gebze, Kartal, Mudanya. When you read Endriss' descriptions of his walks in these areas, you imagine vast, empty lands.

The time Endriss spent with different cultures in the Ottoman lands of that time is very interesting. We understand that the paranoid state tradition existed in those times as well, as he was constantly stopped by soldiers as a foreigner during his trips and from the fact that his trips sometimes reached a point where they were prevented. Why is a German walking from village to village with a bag on his back? What is his mission? Is he an agent who wants to divide the country?

While traveling around Anatolia, Endriss stops by Eskişehir. At that time, there were railway constructions in the Ottoman Empire. German engineers were managing the constructions. The workers were Ottoman citizens. The situation of those who read books and those who did not was similar in those years.

Endriss stops by a hotel in Eskişehir. The owner of the hotel is a German woman. Her name is Tadia. Today, there is a hotel in Eskişehir with the same name. Germans working in the railway construction stay in the hotel. They have established a German colony in Eskişehir.

Endriss pauses her trips in Anatolia with a visit to Lesbos Island. When she arrives in Lesbos, she feels like she has completely broken away from Turkish culture and has arrived in Greece. However, at the time of the visit, Lesbos Island was Ottoman territory. However, the dominant culture is different.

Endriss observes that the Greek people are more educated, better off economically, and more hardworking. He explains that the Turks also aspire to be as prosperous as the Greeks.

Endriss also says that when he went to the Middle East, which was Ottoman territory at the time, he witnessed a different culture than what he saw in Istanbul and western Anatolia. In his impressions of the Middle East, one does not get the impression from the descriptions in the book that the lands that have become separate countries in that region today are much more developed than they were in those days.

Germany, Turkey, Greece, Syria, Jordan, etc. Despite the passage of time, the positions of countries in the world do not change easily. The number of countries that break away from their cultural characteristics and develop themselves to a different position is very few. Culture is a very slow-changing phenomenon.

In the 1910s, engineers were German and workers were Turks. In terms of technical knowledge, the Turkish workforce was backward. Just like today.

In 1910, the Ottoman Empire's imports were 11.8 million Marks, while its exports were almost half that amount. Germany's imports were 10.7 billion Marks and its exports were 10.1 billion Marks, according to 1913 data. In those years, one country was talking about international trade data in the millions, the other in the billions.

Countries can also experience extremely turbulent times with great misfortunes. We also know what happened to Germany, especially after World War I, and that it went through severe depression until the 1950s.

We can multiply the examples above with many more. There are a few countries that can change their position. They may move down a few places or move up a few places in some subjects, or a country that has determined to focus on a very specific area as a strategy may reach a different position in a specific area. However, the common perspective and common philosophy of cultures determine the level of development in a weighted average logic. In every society, those who are considered "marginal" may read a little too many books, work tirelessly to break a fate, but is the "country" making progress?

It is of great importance to be able to collectively aim for the same goal and desire development with a common culture. How long do you think Türkiye has been away from such an atmosphere?