Trained to Be Less Demanding and More Thankful

An environment dominated by less democracy and more authoritarianism generation after generation, and a constant deprivation of some of the most fundamental human rights—coupled with a collective memory of severe punishment in case of disagreement—eventually results in a mutation of the intellectual capabilities of a nation. It does not only make the majority into an unquestioning and sincere supporter of the system, but also shapes the minds of the opposing minority. You unknowingly become more content, less demanding, and ready to be happy with what you are given even if it is far from being something to be happy with. At the end, you find yourself successfully disciplined and trained, or rather domesticated, no matter how you perceive yourself as an adamant oppositionist.

This is what happens in Turkey and this is the situation where I found myself in connection with the film “Guz Sancisi” (Pain of Autumn, or the Painful Autumn, roughly in English). It’s a Turkish production about the reign of terror in Istanbul over the Greeks, Armenians, and Jews that lasted 48 hours in 1955 without any intervention by either the police or the army—one of the biggest and strongest in the world. The paradox was that, while watching the film, I was thankful to the filmmakers although I could see that, while disclosing some important facts, it did reproduce some Turkish stereotypes of non-Muslims and missed some very important points about the subject matter. This revealed a pathetic truth about myself—and about many others as well: For such a long time we were given so little that we were made ready to appreciate what does not deserve to be appreciated at all.