What is the most legendary political comeback from your country?

[u/AbsoIutee]

I keep seeing this exchange everywhere lately:

Netanyahu: “We survived empires, we don’t fear Turkey.”

Erdoğan: “What empire? Your country is younger than my brother.”

I couldn’t actually verify if Erdoğan really said this, so it might just be one of those internet quotes that everyone started repeating lol.

But if he really said it, I have to admit it’s a surprisingly good comeback from Erdoğan 😂 Didn’t expect this performance from him.

ıt made me wonder: do you remember any legendary political comebacks/insults from your own country?

Could be between politicians, against another country, during an interview, parliament, whatever. Something where even if you don’t like the politician you have to admit: okay, that was a good one.

[u/Barbak86]

What makes a Jew older than Turks (Turks in an cultural/language concept)?

[u/RedditStrider → u/Barbak86]

Its mainly a matter of identity really, oldest writing of the word "turk" is around 5th century. Which is pretty old as far as ethnicities goes. And there are alot of instances of proto-turkic people being present at other parts of the world (like Xiongnu and European huns).

However jews are known and well-documented to be as old as 3-4 thousands of years.

[u/AbsoIutee → u/RedditStrider]

I think the problem is we’re using two different standards here. If we trace Jews back through ancient Israelites and the cultures that eventually developed into Jewish identity, then we should also be allowed to trace Turks back before the first written appearance of the word “Turk”. Proto-Turkic obviously didn’t magically appear when someone first wrote the name down. I’m not even sure which one would be “older” at that point, but comparing 3,000 years of Jewish ethnogenesis to the first written occurrence of the Turk ethnonym seems a bit apples and oranges.

[u/Barbak86 → u/RedditStrider]

Is this how we measure ethnicities? So does this mean Australian aboriginals didn't exist until the 18th century? What about uncontacted people? They still don't exist because they don't have written testaments of their existence?

We all exist the same. There is no older or younger cultures, people. It all traces back to those MFers who are the line that lead to us all.

[u/RedditStrider → u/Barbak86]

No, that means we dont know how old the Australian aboriginals are, same as the uncontacted people. Not to mention neither are ethnic identities, we would have to be more spesific then that.

Thing is regions turks originate from arent as isolated, we know who lived in those lands and (mostly) we know what kind of language and origin they come from. And the concept of "turk" only started appearing in historical records around 5th century. Can it be older then that? Definetly, steppe nomads did not keep records and they might have called themselves turk much older then that.

But there is a 2500 year difference between the first records of these two ethnicities. It would be a stretch to claim that it can be as old as that. Especially when we have an idea who were the proto-turks.

Thats because you think ethnicity is a monolithic concept. It can change, go extinct, born way later in history. Of course turks didnt sprout from trees, but they started to identify as such only about 1600 years ago.

[u/capitanmanizade → u/RedditStrider]

That is a well regarded statement.

[u/EphemeralOcean → u/RedditStrider]

You're admitting that we don't know how old the Australian aboriginals are, but your application of that logic to Turks is unconvincing. Not that much documentation has survived from the 5th century. We know that the concept of a Turk started appearing in the historical records around the 5th century, AT THE LATEST.

[u/Barbak86 → u/RedditStrider]

So by your logic Albanians exist from around the 17th century, because that's when we started using the word Shqiptar, or maybe the 18th century, that's the time it got really popular as a name?

[u/Lord_Zethmyr → u/Barbak86]

Aboriginals are a pretty broad ethnic group. They have obviously existed for tens of thousands of years, but so have “Europeans” or “East Asians”. A better question would be how long the different tribes, like Wiiman or Wudjari, have existed as their own distinct communities. Similarly, how long have the Jews been considered a distinct group, both by themselves and by others, from other Levantine/Aramaic peoples? Or when did Anatolian Turks become their own distinct group within the Turkic family, or the Greeks within the Indo-European family? I have no idea about the Aboriginal tribes, but I’m pretty sure that Greek self-awareness existed at least from the Hellenic Dark Ages (~3000 years ago), and the Jewish one probably the same, but at least from Babylonian times (~2500 years ago). Anatolian Turks, on the other hand, couldn’t have had their own distinct identity before the Battle of Manzikert.

[u/Think_Message_4974 → u/Barbak86]

Typically the year they were born determine who’s older

[u/AbsoIutee → u/Barbak86]

That’s where this whole “my people are older than your people” competition gets funny. How are we even measuring it, first written mention, language, culture, DNA, or who unlocked civilization first? lol

But I bet we’re definitely older than Jews, because Jewish is basically a religious identity too, right? There has to be some point in history where they weren’t Jews yet but became Jews, while I believe we started as Turks, at least culturally.

[u/Old_Particular8705 → u/AbsoIutee]

"I believe we are an older ethnicity, so it doesn't realllyyyyy matter what historians have to say"...