We cannot let it happen again

Sunday, October 9, 2005

‘How many great poets, like Nazim Hikmet, could we have had if in the past hundred years our culture had not been suppressed,’ Yasar Kemal had once lamented. He would know the answer better than anyone. Himself an ethnic Kurd, Kemal has always been outspoken on issues of human and minority rights not only via his writing but also via his activism.

  “How many great poets like Nazim Hikmet could we have had if in the past hundred years our culture had not been suppressed,” Yasar Kemal once lamented. He would know the answer better than anyone. Himself an ethnic Kurd, Kemal has always been outspoken on issues of human and minority rights not only via his writing but also via his activism. In 1995 after publishing an article in Der Spiegel, he was given a suspended sentence of 20 months in prison. During Kemal s trial 1,000 intellectuals had claimed responsibility for the book in which his article had appeared in order to stand behind him. Among these intellectuals, 99 went on trial at the Istanbul State Security Court (DGM).

  Viewed from this perspective, it looks like nowadays an old pattern is repeating itself. Once again an acclaimed Turkish novelist is being put on trial for his views. Orhan Pamuk will go to court in December for the views he expressed during an interview with a Swiss paper. In that interview Pamuk had claimed, "Thirty thousand Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.” Once this statement was heard in Turkey, it triggered a huge reaction and nationalist uproar. At the same time there was an intricate debate in the Turkish media, full of twists and turns. The debate was not between “black” and “white” but between “shades of gray.” Not many Western journalists have paid attention to the nuances of this debate, and not many Turkish intellectuals have tried to explain the nuances to foreign journalists. As a result, civil society in Turkey has been depicted as more black-and-white than it really is.

  There is no clash of civilizations. Instead there is a clash of opinions and values. As in many countries, in Turkey too there is a clash between two forces. On the one hand there is the “state oriented.” They comprise a crooked alliance: army officers, conservative bureaucrats, some diplomats, ultranationalist groups, some Kemalists and some groups on the far left. All these people can act together if they suspect that “Atatürk s legacy is being challenged” and that the state is in danger. For them the state machinery is above everything, above society and the individual. They all respond with a nationalist reflex when a Turkish intellectual voices a critical opinion outside Turkey. The desire to look “good” in the eyes of the Western world runs deep in the subconscious of this group. Anyone who taints Turkey s image in the eyes of the Western world is seen as a “traitor.” This group is strong, as it is backed by state apparatuses. Yet, it is also problematically heterogeneous.

  The second major force in Turkey today is the “civil society-oriented.” These, too, compose an alliance: liberals, libertarians, some social democrats, some conservative Muslims critical of an excessively centralized regime, many Kurds and Alawis and Sufis and all open-minded intellectuals. This second alliance is pushing the country harder and harder towards a multicultural, cosmopolitan regime and strongly favors Turkey s accession to the EU. This group is strong. The problem is, the more they gain pace, the more the backlash against them.

  Turkish media and civil society were recently stirred by a critical conference that was held for the first time in Istanbul: a conference on Ottoman Armenians. Over the last four years, similar workshops and conferences had been organized by open-minded Turkish and Armenian scholars in different parts of the United States. Yet this conference differed from the previous ones in three aspects: It was held in Istanbul, organized collectively by three Turkish universities and all its keynote speakers came originally from Turkey. For the first time critical-minded Turkish intellectuals came together to jointly explore what had happened to the Ottoman Armenians before, during and after 1915. Though highly diverse in other ways, the participants shared one thing in common: their belief in the need to face the atrocities of the past, no matter how distressing or dangerous, in order to create a better future and a more democratic society in Turkey. Despite a last-minute legal maneuver by a lawyer to prevent it from happening, the conference was held and openly supported by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. All papers were presented without censure, and even the taboo word “genocide” was publicly uttered. The next day Turkey s Milliyet said “Another Taboo Has Been Smashed.”

  Though there has been an accompanying nationalist smear campaign, the number of Turks supporting the network of intellectual solidarity between Turkish and Armenian intellectuals is on the rise. Through the collective efforts of academics, journalists, writers and media correspondents, 1915 is finally being opened to discussion in Turkey like never before. All this is accompanied by a series of important steps that the government has taken to improve its human rights record.

  Therefore, Pamuk s case will be received within such a complicated framework in which two forces are in conflict. We are in need of collective efforts for the civil society-oriented to preside over the state-oriented. Turkey is a country where in the past, social transformation was always introduced from above, imposed by a cultural elite on the rest of society. This time it has to be different. For a true democracy to exist, change has to come from below and from within. This is what we are struggling for.

  Turkish intellectuals will stand by Pamuk on the day of his trial, just like they stood by Kemal in the past. Our country has already hurt and isolated many of its great poets and writers in the past. We cannot let it happen again.