Turkey Quotes

“Why after my years of education, after studying the secular civilization and the socialization process, should i decent to the level of common people, i will make them rise to my level, let me not resemble them, they should resemble me!”
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

“Because the Turkish nation has been successful in overcoming hardships through national unity and togetherness. And because the torch the Turkish nation holds in her hand and in her mind, while marching on the road of progress and civilization, is positive science.”
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

“If we hadn't had Atatürk, we would have been an Afghanistan, an Iraq!”
― Özden Toker

“We resemble ourselves.”
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

“The Turkish nation's character is noble
The Turkish nation is industrious
The Turkish nation is intelligent.”
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

“The desired modernization and rationalisation of Turkey will never be realised till the day the Modern Turks of Atatürk come to power because only modern and rational minds can create a modern and a rational country!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“takvime uzun uzun baktığımı gören yaşlı, güngörmüş ev sahibi yanıma geldi. ona bu resmin ne olduğunu sordum. şehname'de, rüstem'in sührab'ı öldürdükten sonra oğlu için ağladığı sahne olduğunu söyledi. yüzünde "nasıl bilmezsiniz?" diyen gururlu bir bakış vardı. iranlılar, batılılaşma yüzünden geçmiş şairlerini ve efsanelerini unutan biz türkler gibi değiller diye düşündüm. özellikle şairlerini unutmazlar.”
― Orhan Pamuk, Kırmızı Saçlı Kadın

“The military consider themselves the real owners of this country [Turkey] because they are ready to give their lives to save us. But I would like to be governed, not saved. I want to be saved from the people who want to save me.”
― Mehmet Dülger

“What is important for Islamic states is the spreading of fundamentalism. In order to survive inside Iran, they [the Mullahs] need to export their ideas. Our friends the Saudis finance it too. Their regime is not compatible with the modern era, but they have activists in Turkey who are trying to impose their ideology.”
― Fevzi Türkeri

“Türkiye’nin arzulanan modernleşmesi ve rasyonelleşmesi Atatürk’ün Modern Türkleri iktidara gelinceye kadar asla gerçekleşmeyecektir çünkü yalnızca modern ve rasyonel zihinler modern ve rasyonel bir ülke yaratabilir!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“After several hours of preparing, cooking, eating, and laughing together, the kitchen was now lit by the glow of candlelight, and the entire house filled with the glorious aroma of freshly roasted heritage turkey. While Dylan had readied the bird with a few sprigs of chopped rosemary, ground black peppercorn, and a splash of maple syrup, Grace and Carter gathered fall beans and bush squash and a few little sugar pie pumpkins, and cooked the vegetables along with the sweet corn that Carter had brought home.”
― Jeffrey Stepakoff, The Orchard

“I call them (international school clerics) international humanists. The survival of the world is dependent on such decent people. In Turkey, it was with faith that we helped stop the spread of communism. In Afghanistan, it was the believers who stopped the Soviets. Anyway, supporting those schools is good for business.”
― Mustafa Barutçuoğlu

“The vulgar Turk is very different from what is spoken at court, 'tis as ridiculous to make use of the expressions commonly used in speaking to a great man or lady, as it would be to talk broad Yorkshire or Somershetshire in the drawing room.”
― Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

“Rarely has the West in its quasi-totality taken up such a persistent and negative image of a people (the Turks).”
― Stéphane Yerasimos

“Reform isn't easy, and for me dress is the most important symbol of it, all revolutions must be takes as a whole, we've got to complete the mission.”
― Özden Toker

“Strictures and prohibitions availed nothing. The fatwas, the talk, made no impression on the people. One coffeehouse was opened after another, and men would gather together, with great eagerness and enthusiasm, to drink coffee... such things do not admit of a perpetual ban.”
― Kâtip Çelebi

“I am lucky that part from my blood is Turkish ...that is why I have the same feeling ....that has our Mr. President...Global Citizenship is fear for all how love Turkey! ...........Hesham Nebr
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انا محظوظ ان جزء من دمائي تركي ....!! لهذا انا معي هذا الإحساس ...الذي يمتلكة السيد الرئيس !! ...المواطنة العالمية هي امنية عادلة لكل من يحب تركيا! هشام نيبر”
― Hesham Nebr

“As soon as we open the apartment door, we can smell the turkey roasting. I've cooked it in a paper bag (a neat trick that ensures an incredibly moist bird without basting). The smell is a heady combination of roasting turkey, and apple brandy, butter, and wild mushrooms that I've combined and rubbed on the inside of the bird and under the skin of the breast and legs. It will be delicious.”
― Meredith Mileti, Aftertaste: A Novel in Five Courses

“They started conquering the world, then they over-stretched themselves and they collapsed. Today's Turkish people are those who left the territory of modern Kazakhstan and settled in the country where they live now.
When we meet each other, we always remember this.”
― Nursultan Nazarbayev

“The stray, ageing donkeys hadn't the slightest idea why they hadn't been stoned at Ak&‌ccedil;ali. They had been pelted and driven away from all the other villages as soon as they were released into the field. They made the most of what they took to be a welcome and accepted Ak&‌ccedil;ali as their home the morning after Sar&‌#x026A;k&‌#x026A;z had ridden them through the village. From that day on, any donkeys who were liberated from the saddles came, one by one, to settle in Ak&‌ccedil;ali.”
― Latife Tekin, Sevgili Arsız Ölüm

“Nicht der Islam bildet die Ursache für die Krise der Türkei, sondern die gesellschaftlichen Rahmenbedingungen, die einen Diskurs über Reformen der Religion, ja überhaupt einen vorurteilslosen Gedankenaustausch erschweren.”
― Gerhard Schweizer, Türkei verstehen: Von Atatürk bis Erdogan

“... despite the Turks' friendliness, most of the exiles soon left Istanbul. No opportunities existed there for them, and Turkey seemed an alien land. Private individuals proceeded to western Europe, French visas being most sought after. Russians still regarded Paris as the center of civilization, especially in contrast to the ferocious Stone Age into which Russia had fallen, or to the sleepy lands of the former Ottoman Empire.”
― John Curtis Perry, The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga

“The first turkey that ever came to me on the ground did it a long time ago. I sat there with my hands shaking and my breath short and my heart hammering so hard I could not understand why he could not hear it. The last turkey that came to me last spring had exactly the same effect, and the day that this does not happen to me is the day that I quit.”
― Tom Kelly

“Some of the customers would ask me, “Why are Kurds so hated in Turkey and Iraq?” As if I were responsible for dissecting idiocy and ignorance, as if cruelty and racism had a philosophical theory I was supposed to recite because I belonged to its victimized group. No one ever asked, “How does it feel to be a Kurd in a hateful world?”
― Ava Homa, Daughters of Smoke and Fire

“Kurt was crazy, who wouldn't have been?”
― Geoff Widders, Kurt Langer : Nemesis of Terror

“You are either Ataturk's turk or Erdogan's turk, you cannot be both.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“raised his arms like a magician or religious leader or politician; it was hard to tell which in this day and age”
― Christy Lefteri, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible

“Am I such a devil that I have to have Allah watching me from the front and Christ watching me from the back?”
― Christy Lefteri, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible

“Something which, once made, can never be destroyed, once destroyed, can never be repaired.”
― Christy Lefteri, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible

“I killed him because I am Turkish and he was Greek. But when I looked at his face, as he looked up at me blindly, I couldn't see what separated us.”
― Christy Lefteri, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible