Keghart
Antranig Avakian, Toronto, 20 May 2016
Cenk Uygur, the C-SPAN host; Dr. Oz of TV, and Coca-Cola chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent are probably the best-known Turkish Americans. But if there was justice in the world, by rights the honor should go to one Ergun Kirlikovali, a denizen of Irving, Southern California.
Ergun Kirlikovali?
Yes. Kir-li-ko-va-li.
Kirli… etc. is the hardest-working Turkish-American in the continental United States plus Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Guam.
Despite his yeoman efforts for the past 30 years, as far as not getting respect, the Izmir-born “logoriac” leaves Rodney Dangerfield in the dust. In contempt Ergun Kirli… (Let’s call him EK) ranks right up there with Geraldo Rivera and hucksters who phone at dinner time.
Antranig Avakian, Toronto, 20 May 2016
Cenk Uygur, the C-SPAN host; Dr. Oz of TV, and Coca-Cola chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent are probably the best-known Turkish Americans. But if there was justice in the world, by rights the honor should go to one Ergun Kirlikovali, a denizen of Irving, Southern California.
Ergun Kirlikovali?
Yes. Kir-li-ko-va-li.
Kirli… etc. is the hardest-working Turkish-American in the continental United States plus Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and Guam.
Despite his yeoman efforts for the past 30 years, as far as not getting respect, the Izmir-born “logoriac” leaves Rodney Dangerfield in the dust. In contempt Ergun Kirli… (Let’s call him EK) ranks right up there with Geraldo Rivera and hucksters who phone at dinner time.
This is a shameful state of affairs when one considers that on a good day EK is more prolific than Alexander Dumas, more imaginative than Don Quixote, more brazen than Joan Rivers and a more impressive fabulist than that naughty wooden boy Pinocchio.
What does EK do?
He is a walking, talking encyclopaedia of Armenophobia. He is a falsifier cum laude from the University of Litotes. Of course he gets a little bit of help from his friends among the Ankara propaganda apparatchiks, the sad caravan of the usual suspect Genocide deniers, and the Turkish Hysterical Society—the ground zero of charlatans and creative historiography. Year-round, 24/7, EK bears false witness about Armenians. He has been at it for three decades. For a while, he had an august job as president of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) whose letterhead bears Ataturk’s portrait with the sublime quote: “Peace at home, Peace on Earth”. Just like a Christmas card message.
EK’s correspondence school major must have been Armenian/Turkish relations, and anything which portrays Armenians in bad light and Turks (take a wild guess) in bright light. On a slow day, the voluble gnome of Irvine might decide to go after the Kurds, the Pope, the “New York Times”, lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, the Zoryan Institute, “Le Monde”, Israel Charny, Taner Akcam, Turkish journalists Amberin Zaman and Cengiz Aktar, and any country which recognizes the Genocide. EK is an equal opportunity hater. Whoever gets on his frazzled nerves impels him to hit his sweaty key board.
EK’s claim to fame should have long ago placed him in the “Guinness Book of Records”. According to usually reliable sources, EK is the world champion of letter writing. The Turkish Troll has sent more than 5,000 emails, missives, and letters to news programs, politicians, departments of education, academicians, TV panelists, and assorted opinion makers in addition to gracing the airwaves with his unctuous elocutions.
Before limning the Brave New Turkish World According to EK, let’s get familiar (but not too familiar) with the eminent Turkish man of letters. In his humble panegyric (LinkedIn), he writes that his skills include strategic planning, business strategy, entrepreneurship, public speaking, management, biomarkers, business planning, public relations, strategic partnership, and management consulting.
[Catch your breath]… EK is also adept at assay development, business development strategy, start-ups, international relations, mass spectrometry, product development, organic chemistry, non-profits, R&D, mergers and acquisitions, parallel synthesis and nanotechnology.
Plus he is a master of competitive analysis, carbohydrate chemistry, technology transfer, data analysis, and polymer science research. In layman’s term, the latter is the craft of making something out of nothing—such as cork-like bubble stuffing used in packaging your Dustbuster. It’s this same nothing he dishes year in, year out to innocent bystanders who don’t know Seljuk barbarian from Young Turk barbarian to Grey Wolf barbarian.
To call EK a Renaissance Man would do injustice. He is a Man for All Seasons. Nay, a Man for All Eras… going back 9,000-years when Turks lived in Asia Minor and became the fountain of all civilizations as we know them.
After obsessively spouting predictable inanities for years, the poor man has been forced to reduce his logorrhoea to tiresome boilerplate text. Press the button and the same phrases, buzzwords, memes, tropes, and sentences pop out like stale candy bar.
Here’s a sample of EK’s loquacious effusions:
Armenians?
Geno-peddlers…Backstabbing ingrates…who betrayed their country, their neighbours, their fellow citizens and …they joined invading Russian armies to destroy Turkey…Armenians have no respect for freedom of speech. Armenians have no respect for academic freedom…
Armenia?
It has always been an aggressive country. The dark and ugly tradition goes on today.
Armenian Genocide?
Armenian Genocide is totally bogus. It’s 100 years of lying by Armenians. It was temporary resettlement…Genocide? Yes, there was the genocide of Turks!!!!! [Count the exclamation marks]. The exclamation marks are understandable: after beating the same dead horse for twenty years and getting nowhere, the man is getting tad frustrated. One wonders whether his physician has advised him that all the hatred, lies, anger in his heart are bad for his blood pressure.
Armenian Genocide (Part II)?
The real genocide was in Khojaly, committed by Armenians. Karabakh suffers under an inhuman military occupation by barbaric Armenian murderers and shameless liars.
Responsibility for the “resettlement” of Armenians in 1915?
American missionaries brought nationalistic ideas to the Ottoman Empire and created enmity towards the peace-loving and tolerant Turks…The missionaries encouraged Armenian revolutionaries to topple the multicultural empire…resettlement was implemented because of wartime conditions and security, in the face of Armenian insurgency.
Armenian/Turkish relations in Ottoman times?
Turks and Armenians lived in peaceful cohabitation for a millennium, that’s a thousand years (sic). Armenian presence was valued and respected. What changed was when Armenians transformed from a religious group to a political group.
Armenian Cruelty
Extreme Armenian nationalists in the Russian army slaughtered 120,000 (Dec. 1914) non-Armenians while the Turkish army was fighting at Sarikamish.
In a pinch, EK likes to quote grotesque fellow travellers such as Justin McCarthy, Michael Gunter, Tal Buenos, Norman Stone, Edward J. Erickson, Alexander Murinson, and Jeremy Salt: the Who’s Who of the Genocide-Denying Lunatic Fringe. Quoting one of these Armenian-hating savants, he writes: “Armenians spoke Ottoman Turkish. They had no use for an ancient Armenian language in their daily interactions. Moreover, the very use of the title ‘Armenian’—an indication of the Anglo-American influence—was not indigenous to these people who had referred to themselves as ‘Haik’”.
In his ornate letters EK not only gets short-tempered (“You are a typical Armenian deceiver…suffering from bigotry…you are a disturbed Kurd…you are cowardly and have ignoramus personality…”) but also indulges in obscenity (“Boy, some Turk must have shagged you good for you to spread such filth…”). Not the language one would expect from the former president of the ATAA. Ayib, Mr. Kirlikovali.
To maintain his stature as a multi-faceted pundit, EK also delves into ancient history, etymology, religion, literature… He says the English language originated in Turkey…the Etruscans were called “tuscii” by the Romans because they came from Turkey…the Abyssinians [He means Ethiopians] were the first to accept Christianity, not the Armenians.
EK will be 65 soon. Is he hearing the Grim Reaper’s footsteps? Is he tutoring a younger EK model to replace him in the Troll Olympus …someone who, like him, will beg for the attention of TV cameras during April 24 demonstrations?
We will miss the prolix and garrulous mount back when he is gone. Science fiction will be poorer for it. Erdogan, no slouch when it comes to bizarre and noxious statements, will have a tough time filling the shoes of this peddler of counterfactual narratives.
But then again, in his sunset years EK might be invited to “Jeopardy” and be asked by Alex Trebek for the year the Young Turks launched the Armenian Genocide.
Keghart
Keghart
Keghart
2 comments
Word Inventor
Hilarious. You've pinned down the tendentious windbag.
Another thing about Kirlikovali: he has coined an English word which dictionary publishers have somehow ignored. The word is ethocide.
Ethocide, according to Kirlikovali, is the "systematic extermination of ethics via malicious and deliberate mass deception for political, personal, economic, social, moral, religious, ethnic, national, regional, and other gain." Kirlikovali invented the word to describe Armenians. I guess it's a case of extreme projection.
Vahakn
Poor Exile
Keghart readers might be perplexed by the unTurkish name of Kirlikovali. It sounds vaguely like a Georgian name. Here's the tale behind the name.
Kirlikovali says that his father was born in a town called Kirlikovali in the Balkans. When the Turks were driven out of that peninsula just prior to the WWI, the father of the Mr. Typist of Irvine, Califronia, settled in Izmir and changed his name to Kirlikovali in honor or his lost homeland. It's a saga which brings tears to ones eyes, the way Ergun Kirlikovali tells the tale now.
In his paean to the "lost homeland", Kirlikovali conveniently forgets that his family, like other Balkan Turks, were privileged colonizers who had oppressed the native population of the Balkans for nearly 500 years. The "Kirlikovalis" lost their illegal possessions in the Balkans because the natives rose up and kicked them out.
By the way, the Balkan Turks who returned to Asia Minor were often given Armenian lands by the government and were among the main supporters of the Armenian Genocide. Because Christians had forced them from the occupied Balkans, these Turks took revenge by hurting the Christians of Asia Minor. Because they had medieval, if not primitive, mentality, their big distinction between people was religion. Not Muslim? Hence gavoor. Deserving of death– the same mindset as the ISIS butchers who are armed, financed, and protected by Turkey–the "Only Muslim Democracy, the Bridge Between the East and the West,
and Loyal Friend of the West".
Comments are closed.