Judeo-Hıristiyan Tarih Yazıcılığı, Oriyentalizm, Eski Anadolu Kültürleri, Arkeoloji ve Türkler
Ahmet ÜNAL 891–905 | Download
Abstract: Beside his indispensable contributions to Greek Philology Sencer Şahin used to reprimand the distorted position assigned to archaeology, and its incorrect perception in Turkey. With this in mind my contribution to his memorial volume stands in close relation with historiography, philosophy, archaeology and philological disciplines, all born and developed completely in the West, spread out all over the world, including Turkey. But these social sciences arose without exception under the shadow of Christian and European religious and ethical virtues. Therefore, methods and expectations of historical and archaeological investigations and interpretive evaluations are clearly predetermined alone by both of these core values. A close examination of the materialistic and virtual spoil of historical and archaeological data shows clearly that they principally serve to the motto “Bible and Homer are correct!” The paper investigates grotesquely what ridicules, distortions and eccentricities ensue when the European way of perception is adapted unquestioningly in the Third World countries who neither appropriate them to themselves nor have the ability to put their own standards by their evaluation. At this point the role of the Orientalists becomes critical who approach these sciences from the view-point of the Westerners and promote their subjective results such as methods of dating, interpretation and spoil, and export them to non-Christian (mostly Oriental) countries. Since alone Judeo-Christian historiography gets its lion’s share from the past cultural heritage, nothing remains for the people living in those once Kulturlandschaften. There is also an exasperating prerogative which establishes between the creators of extinguished cultures and modern ethnicities. All these push the masses into a dilemma; they feel to have lost out and have been cheated out of their cultural heritage by foreigners. The outcome is that either they reject the antiquities absolutely or they create fictive connections by means of exaggerated and non-scientific ideas with the past cultures. In addition to all sort of distortions and curiosities there comes one special awkwardness in Turkey, that namely alone archaeology among all other historical sciences would have the leading role. The scandals fabricated under the usage of effective orientalist deployments in recent years around the Trojan archaeology are warning examples, and they are also discussed in the course of the study.
Keywords: Historiography; Orientalism; Ancient Anatolian civilisations; archaeology; Turks; Trojan Archaeology; spoil of ancient civilisations.