the laz and the "papaz"

in the last post i tried to explain the way the laz mind works and how that phenomenon spreads through the community by way of cultural osmosis (1) with increasing speed.

just as they are accustomed to shoot first and ask questions afterward (2), the laz have the habit of talking first and if at all, start thinking about what they said only subsequently, along with the audience. then comes stage 2, turning what was said around to mend or control the damage. tayyib efendi, who is originally from rize, and is a perfect laz, has demonstrated that trait countless times in his public career. he practically solved the question by appointing a special officer mr. atıf beki, to turn around and translate what he said into what he did not mean (or worse, sometimes into what he did mean).

as a matter of fact, tayyib efendi, persecuted by the approaching vote over the constitutional amendment, has recently gone absolutely laz and claimed that "eleventh in actual fact, means 12th".

well, good luck to tayyib efendi, but our target today is another laz, the father of the minor o.a., the assassin of father santoro of the catholic church in trabzon, who was a victim of slef declared jehad by a band of ultra nationalists. the "killer" was sentenced to 18 years of which it will be a miracle if he serves six. said his father, rebelling to the court's decision: "if my son had killed a mufti, they would have given him no more than eight years. just because he killed a papaz (3), they sentenced him to 18".

do not be misled: the speaker is not just a frustrated parent, he is a retired teacher, who supposedly has the faculty to distinguish right from wrong. of course, he is laz.

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(1) don't look up the term. i just made it up. obviously, it refers to the automatic transferral of cultural cumuli from one social group to another, simply by virtue of sharing the same social space. this is not a case of learning by observation or imitation. as in biological osmosis, traits seep from one element to the other due to differences of cultural density, that is, the ability or degree to which one group maintains and preserves its so-called identifying characteristics. (there you go! garfucius has rolled up another fold up his social scientific sleeve...)
(2) the laz love guns. they used to make excellent copies of famous firearms by hand for decades. when the turkish government could not outlaw guns, gun bearing or gun production, it legalized them, during the life and times of turkey's hero-saint of liberalism, turgut özal. just as other laz-ic phenomena, gun love, too, spread in society especially whereever the mental aspects of personality development ran slack. now, we have more firearms than we have people. anybody can simply shoot anybody else and not even has to ask any questions later. killing is so "normal", when a pathological sadist butchered eight family members couple months age, it hardly made front page news.
(3) mufti is a higher muslim cleric that corresponds more or less to a bishop or arch diocese. "papaz" is turkified from the greek papas, father and is used to desecribe all christian priests.
few turks are aware that papaz means father. the "lower classe" often use it as a term of derision.