turkish → English transcript

We cannot read our grandfathers' gravestones; in 1928 we were rendered illiterate overnight.

Subtitles: M.K.

We are a nation that has suffered genocide. The past was forgotten and erased.

And the main culprit for this is the murder of the written language.

Imagine the revolutions the world had seen.

It had seen the Soviet revolution; it had seen the Chinese revolution.

In none of them was the script touched.

The real issue was that our connection to the past was severed.

Why did they want this? Because they wanted to adopt Western civilization.

We changed our laws; we abandoned the Mecelle.

We adopted a fine civil code from Switzerland.

Just as we took the penal code from Italy, this too stemmed from our desire to be Western.

We wanted to live like Westerners; we wanted to think like Westerners.

We wanted to win their favor.

Therefore, we did it.

You cannot point to a single country on earth.

There, if young people by chance enter their national libraries, they leave without reading a single work and only glance at the titles.

No country and no country's history has witnessed such a massacre.

In Germany, along with Latin letters, German Gothic letters are also taught.

The like of the revolutionary bungling we have cannot be found anywhere in the world.

Do you want to teach young people Fuzuli — whose statue is erected in Russia and admired by the world — in the original?

You are reactionary.

Do you want to teach the principal works of Ottoman history, the greatest chapter of Turkish history?

You are reactionary.

Do you want to teach many works of Ahmet, the great Turkish poet with the most progressive outlook?

You are reactionary.

Do you want Turkish youth to be able to take notes easily and to write and read with ease?

You are reactionary.

Young generations are being sacrificed to this unscientific, warped, absurd conception of reform and reaction.