Word: turk
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Before the abolishment of the caliphate in Turkey, our religion and our conscience kept us away from liquor. Now the law forbids the Turks to imbibe, but we can get the stuff if we want on the sly. But the problem of bad, poisonous alcohol is just the same as in the United States. I will say, though, that the idea inherent in a Turk for centuries that he shall not drink or gamble because his religion so demands, still persists. He believes that drink leads toward degeneration of his race. His religion works for higher ideals, as any creed...
...Turk is a grisly crusader in any style. Americans have sometimes undergone duckings for too early and too eager donning of straws and white flannels, but a wireless message from the Black Sea shore informs the New York Times that twenty-four Turks have been executed for not wearing according to Mustafa Kemal's late decree, hats of the European mode. Non-conformance is costly in Asia Minor...
Conversion by the sword seems to apply alike to gods and galoshes. The derbied and the turbaned Turk are brothers below the scalp. Their desires repressed on the battle-fields of the Balkans and in the valleys of Armenia, find vent in less holy carnage on the Black Sea coast. But it must be tedious for the more peaceful Moslems to spend their mornings in detailed perusal of statute books, lost a life be at stake in the crease of a trouser leg or the tilt of a hat brim...
This bloodthirstiness is introspective not to say suicidal. If similar penalties are to be devised for dating a letter according to the flight of the Prophet and for marrying polygamously, it may be that the Turk will succeed in his own extermination far beyond the hopes that Europe has long and fondly entertained...
...Europeanizing Turkey by holding a dinner-dance in Occidental style. He shattered tradition by insisting that all the women present should remove their veils and join in an old-time Turkish dance with the men. Previously such a proceeding would have been considered sacrilegious, especially as many non-Turks of the foreign diplomatic corps were present. So great is the ascendancy of Mustafa Kemal at present, however, that all the members of his Cabinet and their wives, as well as the leaders of Young Turk society, conformed docilely to his edict...