An open letter to Hrant Dink

Sunday, October 16, 2005

Hrant, you did not commit any crime. It is those who make you feel like a foreigner in your own land that have been committing a crime for centuries. There are no courts to punish them, apart from our pens

  Dear Hrant,

  I learned of your conviction to six months for “insulting and belittling Turkishness” in one of your articles when I was in the United States. It appears despite the expert s report noting that there was no such thing, in other words you had not insulted Turkishness, the court found it appropriate to sentence you anyway. I tried to read everything about the case in both the national and international media. I desperately looked for an article that said, “The person you are talking about is a bridge between Armenians and Turks. For years, he has tried to establish peace between two peoples that were deaf to each other, even though he was never commended or supported in his efforts.”

  When I had nothing left to read, I took a walk on the streets. Americans, young and old, black and white, eating their pizzas and sipping their coffee with children playing by their side. All of a sudden I felt like a foreigner, enervated and alone. At the end of the day, that is what I am: a foreigner in America. No matter how well I learn their language, their values or symbols, no matter how well I keep with the pace of daily life, this foreignness of mine will never be gone. I know what it means to be a foreigner in a new country. But you tell me, Hrant, how does it feel to feel and to be seen as a “foreigner” in your own land, in your own country!

  I was never discriminated against in Turkey because of my name or surname, or due to what was written in the religion section of my ID card. As a child, I was never reprimanded and kicked out of a music competition just like dear Takuhi, an Istanbul Armenian, had. I was never accosted with questions like: “Your Turkish is great. When did you learn it?” Questions that dear Aron, whose family has been Sefarad from İzmir for centuries would have to face over and over. I never had to experience my school being closed and my childhood memories being erased in one glimpse, just like dear Eleni, an Istanbul, middle-aged Greek, had to.

  When I come across Turks who claim that non-Muslim minorities in Turkey were never treated badly, they were never discriminated against and our history has no blemishes, I look at their faces in amazement. They are either very naïve or apathetic. Given the fact that our history is full of tragedies, and the past lives within the present and a better future cannot be established without recognizing the pains of the past, neither naïvety nor apathy can be excusable.

  When I heard of the court s decision, what hurt me most was its conviction that you had “insulted the Turkish nation.” Because I know how much you love this land and the people of this land. Because I know how many times you had to fight against the sweepingly negative generalizations about Turks made by some Armenians in the diaspora. And that is the thing: The people who suffer the most are Turkey s Armenians who love the country they were born in. Both Turkish nationalism and Armenian nationalism in the diaspora regards them with great suspicion. They want to talk about the past but that offends the Turkish nationalists. They want to talk about a future with Turks but that offends the Armenian nationalists. Turkey s Armenian intellectuals are stuck between these two monoliths and are trying to find a way out. Meanwhile, Turkish courts are out to punish them.

  This country has yielded nationalist, xenophobic and discriminatory politics that smeared its own children. It charged its intellects, hung, tortured and imprisoned young people for their thoughts. It denied them freedom of thought, freedom of expression.

  However, it is equally true that this land has also produced an alternative culture, a fabric woven with egalitarian, cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and multi-faith threads. A discourse that says “there are as many paths in this world as the number of hearts beating for God, and no human being s path can be rendered superior to another.” A discourse teaching that says, “The man who doesn t see the peoples of the world as one, is a rebel even if the pious claim he s holy.” I have faith in this second component of Turkish culture, and I know you do too.

  Hrant, you did not commit a crime. It is those who make you feel like a “foreigner” in your own land that have been committing a crime for centuries. There are no courts to punish them, apart from our pens. If they try to silence your pen, I have mine to write what you would. If I have mine silenced, someone else will write what I would. The regime might succeed in punishing individuals one by one but how can they ever manage to imprison our words?

  Take good care and do not forget that you are not alone,

  Elif Şafak