Pakistani actor Iffat Omar is against the veneration of Turkish and Ottoman heroes in Pakistan.
Speaking with Naumaan Ijaz in a recent interview, Omar pressed on the fact that the Turkish history is not Pakistani history and urged the government to instead invest on promoting out scientists- the actual Pakistani heroes.
“They [Turks] invaded us. Understand this. We do not need fictional characters, we need stories about scientists. There’s not a single mathematician, a scientist in Pakistan that is known world over,” asserted Omar.
Speaking further about the upcoming Pak-Turk collaboration on an upcoming series on Salauddin Ayyubi, Omar iterated that Ayyubi is not a Pakistani hero.
“He [Salauddin Ayyubi] is not our hero,” she asserted. “This has been indoctrinated in Pakistanis since our country has been formed. We think of ourselves as superiors. Our history is of sub-continent, we need to endorse that. Our history isn’t of Turkey.”
