Recently, we have been far away from the self-culture and self-identification of the geography that we have had for years. In particular, the people of our country have changed their identities involuntarily, with the attention of different cultures. What I mean is that the term of change refers to social degeneration. What reasons do you think we can avoid social degeneration by examining them closely? There are remarkable causes of social corrruption, several of which are cultural transfer, migration, and assimilation.
The first and the most popular cause of social corrruption is cultural transfer. Cultural transfer can lead to social degeneration in indirect and direct ways. Cultural transfer and cultural exports are most comprehensive means of mass media, which is influenced by our lives. Two brief examples might clarify this concept. Since private televisions entered our lives, every television has been a regular dancer. In addition, they have organized programs to dance a country with the ‘Dance-star’ competitions. Cultural transfer can also be changing the consumption habits of our people. To exemplify, because of the long conversations with coffee in our culture, our old people say ”one cup of coffee makes you owe a favor for forty years.” However, nowadays coffee has become a beverage that is consumed hastily. It is now clear that it leads to social degeneration.
Another and well-liked cause of social degeneration is migration. Migration is a significant shareholder in the information of social degeneration. For business, education, political and similar reasons, our citizens who have to emigrate are not in line with their own desires, but can be moved away from their own cultures. To illustrate, in hopes of a better job, the child of a family going abroad will adopt the culture of place because it is educated there. Furthermore, people from different cultures come to our country for different purposes. This person comes from the foreign country and carries its own culture. For instance, lets imagine a student from Africa to İstanbul. This student will either get away from his own culture and adopt to our culture or instill his own culture in our culture. If this student succeeds, we begin to climbs the steps of social degeneration.
Last but not least, social corrruption results from assimilation which is the movement of a community, by changing the language, religion and cultures of other communities that live in, to destroy their self and to accept them rather than enforce their own self or obligation. As the definition suggests, it causes direct social degeneration. Let’s reinforce these explanations by an example. In the last ten to twenty years, some Turkish words were replaced by foreign languages. Namely the word ‘song’ is replaced by a ‘single’ Word. We can further increase these examples, Moreover, assimilation can also be done by reducing the national feelings of people, not just words. For example, the ‘Andımız’ was banned and thus one of our arteries, which fed the national personality of our nation, was destroyed.
In conclusion, the arguments given above suggest that there are three noticeable causes of social degeneration: cultural transfer, migration and assimilation. It seems to me that Turkish citizens face moral and social decline in today’s modern life. As Ataturk said ”The sleeping nations will either die or awaken as slaves.”, we should return our own essence as soon as possible.