Science's trial with ignorance, humanity's trial with racism

Racism is not an idea, not a political stance; above all it is a disease. But a disease that harbors within it immorality and feelings harmful to humanity. It is not a disease that touches only oneself; because it touches others as well, because it has contagious properties, and because it disrupts the harmony of society, it is a disease that must be avoided. When it comes to this disease, we can generally say that we have an immunity serious enough to make us say "thank God." In particular, Islam's values, which work like medicine on people's souls, provide serious protection against racism. But of course this is a protection limited by how far some of Islam's values are embraced.

Unfortunately it has seeped incurably into a certain segment of our society, and unfortunately what stokes this disease in the most dangerous way is that it finds political courage and is seen by politicians as an opportunity, an arena of political profit.

The way the main opposition voices its claims about Qatar is only one example of this racism. As a social democratic party, the role written for it all over the world is in fact to stand against racism and hostility toward migrants or foreigners. Yet here Kılıçdaroğlu makes even the most thoroughgoing fascist racists look good by comparison. But another sickness of racism shows itself here too:

Racists, even if they regard themselves as superior to some races, see themselves as inferior to certain others. For example, the racism he displays toward Qatar he does not show toward the Dutch, German, English, Italian or French race. Turkey's economy, like all economies open to the world, has to see foreign capital inflows also as an indicator of the economy's strength. But Qatar is not even a "foreigner" on this track. With what kind of outlook is Qatari capital made an object of hatred, beyond even a foreigner? But the other side of this process is that it ends up with Kılıçdaroğlu and those who fall in with these racist discourses seeing themselves as inferior to other races.

The subject had come up from the internationalization of Turkey's universities and the importance, as an indicator of this, of the number of foreign students studying at some of our universities.

The way a website acting on behalf of the left opposition reported these words of mine already showed from the outset how much they belittle themselves. By God, they took, without adding anything, only my words in that article and carried them to the headline. But from the way these words were selected, they show that they know very well what message they are sending to whom and what kind of bait they are throwing before the racist monster inside their audience.

The sentence "As an academic, it excites me greatly to know that today 10 thousand students from 90 different countries are studying at Karabük University, and 3 thousand students from 35 different countries at Siirt University" collected reactions such as the following, abundant, but with one or two typical examples:

"If only he had given the country names too: 1) 1,000 students from Finland, 2) 999 students from Switzerland, 3) 998 students from Japan, 4) 997 students from Denmark, 5) 996 students from Germany...."

"So there is no room left for Turkish students... man, all of them together have a problem with numbers...."

"How many people from Türkiye are left!*

"Are the students studying from england for example or from switzerland, or how many Norwegian students are studying, how many Swedish German American Italian Spanish Japanese students are there, if there really are I would count it a success"

"If not them; there are Syrians, Somalis, Africans, Lebanese, Kyrgyz and Turkmens. Oh and now our Qatari brothers will settle into our Medical Faculties too. Alhamdulillah...:)"

I am deliberately not correcting the spelling errors at all. It will thus be better seen how far Turkey's universities have come from where they started, in explaining them to a political outlook aimed at provoking the reactions of people at what level.

This outlook, which sees itself as a superior race over the Syrian, Somali, African, Lebanese, Kyrgyz and Turkmen, of course also sees itself as inferior to the Swiss, German, Danish and Swedish, or at best has adopted so comfortably and so unquestioningly the seeing of some as superior or inferior to others. Probably there are those from the racists of those countries who say the same things about Turks studying at the universities of the countries it mentions. But I do not know whether their numbers are proportionally this large. This crowd of ours is of frightening proportions for the sake of humanity.

First of all, a significant portion of the foreign students studying in the countries it positions as "superior" to itself come, again, from these countries it "belittles." Do you think students from Europe or America study at England's universities? There too, proportionally, it is precisely students from these Asian and African countries who study, and after studying they either stay in the country and contribute to its brain potential, or return to their countries and become natural carriers and ambassadors of English culture. But in England no one will emerge who belittles them on this particular matter, because everyone knows what this export of education means.

In my student years ODTÜ was Turkey's most international university, and yet most of the students, whose numbers did not exceed a hundred, were again from Asian and African countries.

In Turkey, on the other hand, the field of education is opening to export for the first time, and at the very beginning the picture already emerging is absolutely of a gratifying scale. But what we meet on this scale is the resistance of ignorant people and racist immoral people.

Is this not too the age-old trial of science by ignorance?