talk show about turkey on italian tv

A talk show about Turkey on Italian TV

Last night on one of the Italian TV channels, La7, in the program

called L'infedele, conducted by Gad Lerner, they talked about Turkey,

Iraq, PKK and the Armenian issue. During the whole day in our mailing

lists for Turks living in Italy we received mails asking for Turkish

people (around 5 people were asked for) living in Milan who would like

to participate in the program as part of the audience to represent the

Turkish side. The program was supposed to be on air at 21.30 and the

audience was called for 20.30. The problem is, if they were really

sincerely willing to have some people representing the Turkish side

they would have made this call days before so that people would get

ready/cancel appointments etc. to be able to attend the show. When you

receive a call just hours before a live talk show it is not easy to

say immediately 'OK, I am available'.

I wasn't willing to watch the show, in fact, since I get usually very

angry seeing these one-sided discussions that go nowhere. But my

husband while zapping had found the program and called me saying 'They

are talking about Turkey again'. After finishing whatever it was I

doing, I joined him. From the Turkish side there was only Yasemin

Taskin, correspondent of the Turkish newspaper Sabah in Rome.

Otherwise, there was someone from the Catholic University in Milan,

some expert on Pakistan, a guy, whose name I don't remember, born in

Turkey but of which origin he is I have no idea, an Armenian woman

with the surname Arslan, an Italian economist (she seemed really well

informed, and talked quite reasonably) and audience which was just

watching... They had a live connection to Murat Belge of Bilgi

University, Istanbul. Everything said in the program in Italian was

translated to English for him, he gave his answers in Turkish and his

words were translated back to Italian. The first sentence, the first

translation to Italian and it was not correct, so I lost my interest

and belief in the program immediately.

Once again, I am no politician or politics enthusiast, so all I can

report is how everything looked to 'a Turkish man on the street'. The

'Turkish side' did not exist. Whoever was chosen to represent the

Turkish side was, in fact, on 'the other side', thus it was quite a

'one-sided' discussion, again. Nothing seemed to be resolved, nothing

seemed to be clearer, they tried to draw a parallel between the

Turkish army and Pakistani army (!!!!), which was opposed by, if I am

not mistaken, the guy from the Catholic University in Milan, Murat

Belge was himself as usual, Yasemin Taskin was left alone there to

give the Turkish view (the cameraman was fixing the camera on her most

of the time; she is quite attractive, to tell the truth), and before I

fell asleep on the sofa nobody from the audience said a word.. I don't

think they said any words at all afterwards either.

Hence, another pointless discussion on TV that caused only a

discussion between me and my husband. Yes, me and my husband always

have some kind of fiery discussion when we watch these things because

he being from the west, although quite ignorant on our issues, thinks

to know everything and has the right solution to all the problems, and

me being Turkish and quite a nationalist (in his eyes) have to defend

myself, my people, my history. I am so fed up being on the defensive

side! It is not easy being a Turk outside of Turkey. We are like fish