I was talking with a friend and he told me, he is proud of being Italian from a cultural point of view after finding a Decameron print in Turkish at my place. This is an important remark and made me think on my own situation. Am I happy with my culture and proud of it. I do not have an immediate answer for that. I think first I am geographically in love with my mainland than for culture I am not that proud as culture consists of different aspects and clearly we are missing some parts.
There is no patronage to art or it is very limited, even it is very hard to keep ancient architecture in the city as people likes to destroy and create annuity. Let's think about the old town in Istanbul, clearly destroyed as much as they could.
Literature:With the Language revolution of Ataturk we changed our alphabet and Language to Turkish from Ottoman and lost our connection with our history and literature. I have just read Hamid and Ottoman Poet and hardly understood the words he used. So we can not talk about Turkish literature from 16th,17th and 18th century clearly there is another language around.
What about modern literature? There are cool and good authors around including nobel winning Pamuk and Marquez like Yasar Kemal. I am proud of them but this is not enough to be proud of everything.
Sculpture: Does not exist.
Music: Nothing to be proud of.
Modern arts:Istanbul is a center for artists but they are not producing a nationwide culture.
Long story short, I am proud of who I am and what I learned in Turkey but with an international perspective, I do not have that many things to be proud of a cultural point of view.
No offence :)
Cheers.
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