155. Today in 1920s Turkey: 23 January 1926 (The Proliferation of Prophets and Ghosts)
Türkçe:
Peri ve Peygamber
İşitiyor musunuz, bu günlerde yine peygamberler çoğalmaya başladı. İngiltere’de bir delikanlı peygamberim diye kendini ortaya atmış, evinde bir kilise yapmış, gelene gidene tütsü, nasihat vermeye başlamış, Avrupalılar tuhaftır. Böyle birşey oldu mu hani tiyatroda meraklı bir oyun, sinemada eğlenceli bir film seyredeceklermiş gibi koşarlar. Böyle eğlenmek fikriyle yeni peygamberin evine gidenler epey çoklaşmış. Fakat bu aptal peygamber bu ziyaretleri kendine karşı bir teveccüh zannederek onlardan para istemeye, bana para verin de size mükemmel bir kilise yaparım demeye başlayınca gelen giden kalmamış, tabii Avrupalılara böle şeylerde alay lazım. Bu asırda peygamber yutarlar mı! Heriflerin kafasında medeniyetin, ilmin, fenin bin bir türlü makinesi var. Böyle peygamberin diye ortaya çıkanları bir nevi tımarhanelik deli diye seyrediyorlar. Bu hafta içinde bir de Hindistan’da “Mesih” benim diye biri türemiş, o da peygamberlik davasında! Geçen yıl da Paris’te on yedi yaşında bir genç kız “peygamberim” demişti. Ara sıra böyle tuhaflıklar olmasa dünya eğlencesiz kalacak. Bir Frenk gazetesi diyor ki artık bu maskaralıklar da kabak tadı verdi. Şimdi üç yaşındaki çocuklar bile böyle dolma yutmuyor, maksat aleme kendini güldürmekse başka şey yapsınlar.
Doğrusunu isterseniz ben de bunu söyleyeceğim. Fakat ondan evvel işaret ederim ki böyle maskaralıklar Avrupa’da olunca herkes gülüp geçiyor, peygamberim diyeni adeta maymun gibi, şebek gibi seyrediyorlar, işlerine gidiyorlar. Fakat eskiden bizde öyle miydi, bir şeyk birine okuyup üfleyüp, tesadüfen o adam da iyi oldu mu artık şeyk evliyalığa kadar çıkardı. Cahil insanlar çok saftırlar. Her şeye inanıyorlar, geçenlerde İstanbul’daki perili ev rezaleti meydana çıkıncaya kadar binlerce halk gitti o evi gezdi. Demek ki böyle şeylere bir merak var, olsun, fakat inanılmasın. İşte perili evin de hacizden kurtulmak için yapılan bir oyunla perilendiği anlaşıldı. Böyle şeylere gülmeli geçmeli. Dünyada fen ve ilim haricinde bir şey olmaz. Hepsi masaldır. Martavaldır. İnanan aptaldır, sersemdir, kazdır, işte bu kadar.
Bu peygamberler neden mesela Paris’de iken İstanbul’la konuşamıyorlar, o evliyalar niçin böbreğine taş düşmüş bir adamın kumunu çıkaramıyorlar. Niçin gökyüzüne çıkıp uçamıyorlar. Onlar yapamazlar, fakat bunları medeniyet, fen, ilim yapıyor. Yaşasın medeniyet!
English:
Ghosts and Prophets
Have you heard, these days prophets have begun to proliferate again. A young lad in England put himself forward as a prophet; made a church at his home; and began burning incense and giving advice to those who circulated through. Europeans are strange. When something like this happens they run to it as if to watch a curious play at the theater or an entertaining film at the cinema. Those who are going to the new prophet’s home with this intention of entertainment have multiplied quite a bit. But thinking that these visits were out of care for him, when this foolish prophet started asking for money from them, saying “give me money and I will make you a perfect church” people stopped coming around, of course with Europeans mockery is necessary with these things. They wouldn’t be duped by a prophet in this age! There are a thousand and one different machines of science, technology, and civilization in the heads of these men. Rather, they observe these types who show up claiming prophethood as a kind of crazy person from a mental institute. Even this week a person sprouted up in India saying “I am the Messiah,” he, too, is pursuing prophethood! And last year in Paris a seventeen-year-old girl had said “I am a prophet.” If such strangeness did not occur every once in a while the world would be devoid of amusement. A French newspaper says this buffoonery is boring nowadays. Now even three-year-old children aren’t duped, if their intention is to make the world laugh, they should do something else.
To be honest, this is what I will say. But before that I would like to indicate that when this kind of buffoonery happens in Europe everyone just laughs it off, they watch someone who claims prophecy like a monkey, like a baboon and go about their work. But back in the day it wasn’t so with us, when a sheikh would recite (prayers) and blow on someone who would by coincidence get better, he would be elevated to sainthood. Ignorant people are very gullible. They believe everything. Until the other day when the Istanbul haunted house scandal was revealed thousands of people visited that house. That means that there is a curiosity for this kind of thing, that’s fine, but it should not be believed. And then it was found out that the haunted house became haunted because of a scam to get out of (property) seizure. One needs to just laugh off these kinds of things. They are all fairy tales. Lies. Anyone who believes (them) is foolish, stupid, silly and that’s that.
Why can’t these prophets, for instance, talk to Istanbul while they are in Paris; why can’t those saints remove a man’s kidney stone? Why can they not enter the skies and fly? They cannot do these things, but civilization, science, and knowledge can do them. Long live civilization!
Comments:
Today’s column deploys several recent stories surrounding charlatans and false prophets to warn readers against superstitious beliefs. By satirizing belief-based scams, the writer attempts to reach out to potentially gullible people and lead them back to the safety and certainty of science, logic, and reason-based realities. The examples are all recent and draw from multiple countries: England, France, India, and of course, Turkey. The standard small illustration for the subject heading includes a telegraph pole and telephone, which reminds readers of the modern methods of communication and information gathering available to the Karagöz writers whose sources are so far-reaching. And in case it is not obvious from the current vehicle for communication, the bi-weekly satirical gazette, printed materials such as newspapers and journals also serve as informants for this kind of international news.
This article, its sources, and the examples it cites collectively betray an interesting (or dare I say, ironic) tension between reality and how the media represents and distorts it, for better or for worse. Based on his European sources, the author states that Europeans are too clever to be fooled by false prophets and that they simply mock such attempts by charlatans. Yet, that is what the papers say. Had the false prophets not garnered public attention, some of whom perhaps “hate watch” these events but some of whom would be true believers (we see examples of this behavior even now, in the 21st century), the papers would not have reported on them. And much like his European counterparts, this Karagöz writer also claims that such things were believed “back in our day” when people were more gullible and ignorant in Turkey. Does he mean that people are more discerning in Turkey now, like they are in Europe? But he does not make that statement overtly. Instead, he provides a recent example of a haunted house in Istanbul which garnered a great deal of attention but turned out to be a hoax. From this he concludes that the thousands of people who visited the house expecting to see ghosts were simply curious. And he warns, if they are believers, they need to stop. Because such things are nonsense. So like the European sources, the pseudo-paranormal activity in Istanbul was laughably misleading, yet people nevertheless showed up to see it. As such, it is more accurate to paint both 1920s Europe and Turkey as a mixed bag when it comes to peoples’ relationship to reality and the material world: some people relied on scientifically provable facts, concrete evidence, and principles of reason while some people (what percentage, nobody knows) still believed in ghosts, new prophets, healers, and apparitions.
The final statement of the article cements this binary system of science vs. superstition with a series of challenges to future false prophets by essentially asking them to replicate the seemingly magical functions performed by modern technology. Can a prophet communicate with someone over long distances like a telephone can enable? Can a prophet treat kidney stones like medicine does? Can a prophet fly like an airplane?
Originally published at https://steemit.com on January 23, 2019.
