It just happen to be the other day when I was looking up Turkish scouting websites, I ran into this charming and intriguing photo:

This is a picture of Turkish Cubscouts. The official name for the Turkish Scouting movement is Türkiye İzcilik Federasyonu (Scouting and Guiding Federation of Turkey, TİF). The picture in the background (I’m assuming) is Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Pasha aka “Atatürk“.[*edit] What I find most intriguing about Turkish scouts is that the cubscouts are co-ed while the boy scouting part is split up by gender (M/F), however there really isn’t a separate group for women… They’re all under the universal banner of scouts, but they’re separate.

A second, equally intriguing, thing I find interesting is that in Turkey the scouting movement is strong enough and big enough to be in both the main country of Turkey and the de facto part of Turkey (The independent Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus) Both groups advance the values of scouting which are universal..

The Scout Motto is Daima Hazır, Always Prepared in Turkish.

And their emblem is still the fleur-de-lis.

Something to point out is that massive portrait of (who I think) is the scouting founder. WHAT A Testament! They obviously value this person’s contribution to society. I vaguely remember a news report of youth in a similar Russian scouting movement (though it was very different from scouting) that had a giant portrait of Vladimir Putin (BTW good job on being re-elected 🙂 .

If anything unique came out of the Cold War it may have very well been this massive portrait thing that seems to glorify great leaders. Imagine one of these in your public school for each president in office, imagine one of these in your office for each Company CEO, imagine one of these at your family reunion for the couple that immigrated to the United States… Wow wouldn’t THAT be something?!

Indeed.. ..

For all you scouter’s out there here’s just one more token of proof that the scouting movement is still strong world wide!

~J

[*edit note] Originally I thought it was Turkey’s Scouting Founder Ahmet Robenson, but after some more research I now think it’s Atatürk which would make a lot more sense then Ahmet. The funny thing is all these Turkish guys look similar in their portraits.

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