Thanking Erdoğan

Feb. 13, 2025

Hon. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Sultan Manque
Ak Palas, Ankara,
Türkiye

Your Eminence, Second-To-None Erdoğan, the Sword of Islam, Successor of Saladin, the Pride of Islam and of ISIS, greetings from the International Association of Pure-bred North American Turkeys.

For five long centuries, our self-esteem and reputation have suffered because we shared an identical name: your countrymen’s racism, extremism, brutality, and ignorance has cast a dark shadow on our reputation. As a result, we have been considered landlocked vultures hence a pariah breed and a figure of ridicule and contempt in the global avian community. The English and other European nations have also depicted us as figures of ridicule. Like the late American comedian whose name I can’t remember, we get no respect among our feathered brothers and sisters. When residents of English-speaking countries say something or someone is “a turkey” or “a real turkey,” they mean the person is an incorrigible, hopeless loser. Your once-reputation as “the Sick Man of Europe” has translated into “not the brightest bird in the coop” for yours truly. To add further insult, the English use the phrase “turkey shoot,” meaning a trifle of a job, something even a “slow” person can do. Then, there’s “going cold turkey.” I don’t know what it means, but I suspect it’s not complimentary. It might have links to illegal drug use. A brutal person is called “Turk” in the above countries. In contrast, we are a mild-mannered species which patiently endures genocide every fall so that North Americans can congratulate themselves for living in the best countries in the world.

Sorry, for the digression. We would like to thank you and your etymologist advisers for recently changing your name to Türkiye. The decision certainly puts some welcome distance between us and your country. However, your effort seems to have been half-hearted because the key letters, the four letters which form “Turk,” still dominate your new descriptive. So, we are still not fully liberated from the damaging association of our name with your new name.

Luckily, our organization has a suggestion which should resolve the matter once and for all. Although you try to hide it, people in the know, especially historians, DNA scientists and media people know that a high percentage of contemporary “Turks” have Albanian, Arab, Armenian, Assyrian, Georgian, Greek, Kurd, Serb, and Yezidi DNA. Your salad of a DNA is the result of your country’s centuries-old brutal policy of abducting non-Turkish boys and forcibly Turkifying them to turn them into Janissary soldiers. You also abducted countless Christian girls and women and forced them to marry Turks in the same brutal tradition. The latter intensified particularly during the frequent Ottoman massacres of non-Turks.

Our organization has a practical suggestion which should address the above nomenclature dilemma: Why not go all hog and completely change your name? Why don’t you pick up the first letters of the names of the above minorities and call “your” country a conflation of those letters… for example, the GAYGAKASA Sultanate? The Sultanate of KAGASAGAY also sounds good.

Sincerely,
Gobble G. Gobble
President
International Association of Pure-bred North American Turkeys