One side of the problem here is simple ignorance. It is about not comprehending what a film is and how it differs from real life. In the past, there have been similarly funny incidents where some Turkish bystanders that were watching the shooting of an action scene on a street got so excited that they physically intervened to save the endangered actress from the bad guys. This naïveté seems to be the advanced version of the reaction to the first film ever, “The Great Train Robbery.” When the final shot of a gun was fired toward the camera in that silent movie, it is said that some in the audience pulled out their firearms and shot back.

Crusades, Crusades, Everywhere

The Great Train Robbery was in 1903. In the Turkey of 2008, though, the only problem is not this funny lack of distinction between fact and fiction. The deeper problem that relates to the incident in Kayseri is a paranoia about the Crusades, which is prevalent not only in Turkey but also in the broader Islamic world. The knights and armed monks of the middle ages are long gone, but they are too much alive in the minds of many Muslims.

To be sure, there are very good reasons to despise the Crusaders. They were a brutal, savage force that slaughtered and plundered not just Muslims but also Jews and even Eastern Christians. In the early centuries of the second millennium, the Eastern World was the center of civility, and the “Franks” of Europe were basically barbaric invaders supported by religious zeal.

Yet the world has changed a lot since then. Today the West is not launching crusades anymore, and even its very allegiance to the cross is very shaky. Especially Europe is becoming increasingly secular. The challenge for Pope Benedict XVI today, unlike that of the crusade-launching Pope Urban II, is how to reclaim Europe for God. And the Pope's armies, are today made up of not armed divisions, as Stalin famously noted, but peaceful preachers. Meanwhile, the center of Christianity is moving from the West to the South and the East. Many Turks think of French or British men when they hear the term “missionaries.” Yet more missionaries are coming today from countries like South Korea. If there was really a link between Western imperialism and Christianity, as leftists love to emphasize, it is very much a thing of the past now.

In short, to see today's world through the lens of the crusades is an illusion. Yet it is also a very popular one. Many Muslims just need to hear the C word in order to start building up conspiracy theories about the evil intentions of the “Christian West”. When President Bush used the term “crusade against terrorism” right after Sept. 11, 2001, the same theories started to pour into Middle Eastern media, including the Turkish media. Few people noted that American culture is also full of “crusades” against polio, poverty or racism. Many Muslims also overlooked the fact that they were making the very same excuse Bush needed when they noted that the word “jihad” could refer to not just “holy war,” but also a peaceful effort against selfishness or social injustice. To be fair, there were, and still are, lunatics around such as Ann Coulter who madly wrote, “We should invade [the Muslims'] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” And the occupation of Iraq by the Bush Administration created a horrible, bloody carnage. But this was not a “Crusade” in that medieval sense. It couldn't have been so, because we were simply at a different phase of history.

Living in History

That brings us to a fundamental problem that one can come across in the contemporary Islamic world: living in history. History is actually a great source of wisdom if you get it right. A secularist could tell you at this point that it is the Islamic culture which is responsible for this mind-blocking nostalgia. So, his reasoning would go, we should cleanse our minds from the effects of Islam.

Well, apparently things are not that simple. If you look at Turkey's Kemalists, you will see that their passionately secular minds are deeply trapped in history, too. They just take their blueprint from the time of not Prophet Muhammad, but Supreme Leader Atatürk. They dogmatically believe that all enemies of Mustafa Kemal – the Greek invaders, the European colonialists, and the internal “collaborators” – are just alive and kicking today. No wonder the Crusade-phobia is also shared by Turkey's Kemalo-nationalists. I am getting unsolicited emails from the marginal Workers Party (İşçi Partisi) of the ex-Maoist and born-again-Kemalist Doğu Perinçek almost every day on the joint Crusader/Islamist conspiracy against the Turkish Republic.

Apparently you can be delusional within any world view. As you can also be sensible within them.