Turkish Vampire Was Not A Blood-Addict, But Maybe We Are

In the past, I had written about the Turkish zombies and how Hollywood neoliberalized the vampires.

Moreover, I had recently read a hilarious book, titled "Theories of International Politics and Zombies," with gratitude to Kadri Gursel who recommended it to me.

I also knew The Giaour, as well as the Vampires of Istanbul. 

And Dracula in Istanbul (below) is one of my favorite cinema adaptations.

So, I was excited when Sabah newspaper reported today that a real-life vampire is found in Turkey.

Then, I discovered that there were some glitches in the story.

First of all, I checked the original scientific magazine and found out that the aforementioned article was published last November, not in the latest issue as Sabah claims.

Secondly, semi-official Anatolian news agency interviewed Direnc Sakarya, a Turkish doctor from Denizli province who is one of the authors of the article about that research, and he corrected many points.

I'm still not sure to trust in Anatolian's story completely, as it also mistakenly claims that the article was published by the Journal of Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics in 2011.

But still, here is the picture of "the Turkish vampire" that I see through Dr. Sakarya's corrections:

* An unnamed 23-year-old, who was married with children at that time, was admitted to Denizli Military Hospital in 2011.

* The patient was showing signs of post traumatic stress disorder, chronic depression and alcoholism.

* The most remarkable symptom was his desire to drink human blood. When he started to injure himself to fulfill this desire, his father began shopping from the blood bank! This reminded me of the Swedish horror movie Låt den rätte komma in.

* A panel of four doctors took in charge of his therapy. The diagnosis was disassociative identity disorder. The doctors concluded that the patient was indeed the first example of vampirism in modern history of medicine (Eat your hearts out, my Romanian friends! Literally!). 

* When they treated the trauma, Turkish doctors saw that the patient stopped craving for blood. So, his desire was not "blood addiction" in a physical sense. It was an extreme psychological reaction to losing many beloved ones in a short period of time, as well as being abused by others as a child.

Simply, "the vampire" was a victim of society. He was never an evil person. And he is now quite "normal."

After the Tarzan of Manisa, the Vampire of Denizli sounds like another interesting reality-turned-fiction in Turkish style, but let's look at ourselves for a moment of reflection:

Let's ask what turns us into vampires or zombies...

Let's ask who or what is normal...