Vandals destroy part of a new ottoman sultan statue :o

[Kyriakos]

An unusual statue of an Ottoman prince taking a selfie with a modern day mobile phone while gripping his sword raised eyebrows as it was revealed in Amasya, Turkey, Hurriyet Daily News reported on Sunday.

The strange sculpture had been unveiled on the town's riverbank a day earlier, according to Doğan News Agency.

“We built it for a purely visual purpose. We thought it would draw attention,” Osman Akbaş, deputy mayor of Amasya was quoted as saying in the report.

Only hours after reports of the statue appeared in the media, tourists were flocking to the statue to take their own selfies with it, with most appreciating the bizarre nature of it.

Tourists flocked to the statue to take their own selfies with it. (Courtesy: Hurriyet Daily News)

In the Ottoman period, the city served as one to which sultans would send their sons, known as “Shahzade,” to learn how to rule. Akbaş said that the statue did not depict any particular such “Shahzade.”

Tourists and residents of the city seemed to react to the statue light-heartedly, with one saying “It certainly is very beautiful. It’s different” and another saying “I don’t think it’s a bad idea. It’s just a joke.”

Still, the statue was not appreciated by everyone, as Ramis Topal, deputy to the Republican People’s Party, took to Twitter to share his opinion. “This is our government’s latest investment in Amasya: A selfie-taking Shahzade. Not a joke,” he wrote.

But only a day after the statue was revealed, it was defaced by unknown vandals who broke off the mobile phone.

http://english.alarabiya.net/en/lif...ue-of-Ottoman-prince-revealed-in-Turkey-.html

-Do you think that vandals went too far by now? Maybe they should be confined in northern Africa?
This statue now has no mobile phone and no purpose.

 

[warpus]

Didn't the Ottomans invent the cell phone back in the 1400s? Seems historically accurate enough to me.

 

[Domen]

Didn't the Ottomans invent the cell phone back in the 1400s? Seems historically accurate enough to me.

Actually, in the 1500s, because that was their magnificent century:


Link to video.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I'm torn on this. On the one hand I am against vandalism, on the other hand this statue is a really stupid idea and I saw it my city I would hate it.

 

[PhroX]

Meh, the robot was better.

 

[NovaKart]

Turks can be very nationalist.

It's actually a pretty tame statue compared to some of the bizarre stuff you see in Eastern Europe. and in Sulaymaniyah in Kurdistan there's a statue of a man with a donkey's head and of a man standing on his head on a book.

 

[Joecoolyo]

I think it's cute. People don't have to take history so seriously.

 

[Kyriakos]

I think it's cute. People don't have to take history so seriously.

I am sure that is what happened here.

 

[NovaKart]

I thought my post would start a queue of photos of weird European statues.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I thought my post would start a queue of photos of weird European statues.

Ok, let the open with the Child Eater Fountain in Bern.

Spoiler :

 

[Borachio]

Amazingly, I heard today, this is the most vandalized statue in the UK.

This man's chief claim to fame is that he was the first person to be run over by a locomotive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Huskisson

Just quite why being killed in this way should provoke such ire in statuary vandals isn't known.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Maybe the people are angry that it's not really an achievement, or maybe it's about his anachronistic clothes. Or was that locomotive built by Heron of Alexandria ?

 

[Borachio]

All three, or none, of those might have a bearing on the persistence with which the vandals attack his statue.

That's the whole thing with mysteries: we just don't know. And the vandals aren't forthcoming about their thinking on the matter.

My personal feeling on the statue would be one of almost enraged blind indifference. I'm surprised that not everyone feels the same way.

 

[Leonel]

Didn't the Ottomans invent the cell phone back in the 1400s? Seems historically accurate enough to me.

No that was the Chinese. They invented the cell phone 500 years before the Ottomans, although they did improve the design.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

No, cell phones are older. The Chinese invented them during the early Tang dynasty (around 650) and the Arabs learned how to built them from POWs after the Battle of Talas after which they became widespread in the middle east. The Caliphate made some minor improvements to the designs like color displays, but the Ottomans added touch screens.

 

[gay_Aleks]

"In with the times."

 

[Leoreth]

No need to send those vandals to Poland, that seems unnecessarily cruel.

Not sure if the reaction to the statue is because it glorifies or trivializes the Ottomans ...

 

[Smellincoffee]

Vandals in Turkey? I thought they primarily raided in Italy.

 

[Borachio]

"See, Doris? I told you! It's only this big. Not so "super" after all, eh?"

 

[Kyriakos]

Vandals in Turkey? I thought they primarily raided in Italy.

It is a sign, anyway. To defeat the Vandals, Belisarius will be resurrected