Of course this is no suprize but this article depicts the mentality of our beloved neighbors..



Bekir Coskun: The cry for blood



They had never been this excited by anything before. But they were thrilled to "be Ogun Samast." Thousands of them yelled "We are all Ogun Samast" at the match.

They never much cared for fighting for democracy.

They weren't ones to struggle against reactionaryism or backward thinking.

Working for a clean society was never their thing.

Nor was putting up a front against thieves and robbers.

Never, not even one day, did they ever shout out in anger about poverty, hunger, or the powerless in this country.

But what they all just loved doing was "being Ogun Samast."

Yes, they fill the weekend football stadium stands yelling "We are all Ogun Samast," over and over.

Ogun Samast, the murderer.

They say "We are all Ogun Samast."

And there are so many of them.

One, two, three, ten, one hundred thousand......

*

Meanwhile, here we are stupidly debating the deep state, who the real killer is, whether or not there is a secret organization at work, and who exactly might be behind this murder.

When all the time, the truth is being shouted in those football stadium stands: "We are all Ogun Samast."

Some are putting on replicas of that same white beret Samast wore when he committed the murder, the better to resemble him....

Just look around you. They're everywhere.

They're all yelling that they are each one "Ogun Samast."

A killer.

But when it comes to being equipped, cultured, knowledgeable, good citizens, people in whom their families can feel pride, well, there is no reaction from these same crowds.

They have never yelled with such ferocity when it comes to just growing up and becoming men. Nor when it comes to becoming human. What they want is to "be Ogun Samast." And so they yell in unison "We are all Ogun Samast."


Listen and listen well: this is the loud cry which yells out that peace and love can never come to this country. This is the cry of blood.

Hurriyet

for more background on this story:

BBC NEWS | Europe | Turkey's nationalist hotbed (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6403813.stm)

What better representation of Turkish nationalism than that depicted in the notorious "Article 301"

According to Amnesty International (EUR 44/035/2005) it states the following:

1. Public denigration of Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.
2. Public denigration of the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security structures shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.
3. In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.
4. Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

It continues by clarifying that:

The final qualification of the article in paragraph 4 suggests that expressions amounting to “criticism” rather than “public denigration” are not punishable. Amnesty International considers that the attempt to draw a distinction between criticism and denigration is highly problematic. The lack of legal certainty of the crime will lead to arbitrary interpretation by prosecutors and judges. Even the Turkish Minister of Justice himself, Cemil Cicek, has reportedly stated that “the whole issue comes down to how the laws are interpreted”.

Amnesty International believes that Article 301 poses a direct threat to freedom of expression, as enshrined in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and in Article 10 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (ECHR).

Heres an interesting little story directly linked to "Article 301"


Kurdish political leader sentenced for saying ‘Mr.’ Ocalan

09.03.2007

Ahmet Turk, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Democ-ratic Society Party (DTP) in Turkey has been sentenced by a court in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir to six months in prison for referring to jailed Kurdish insurgent Abdullah Ocalan as "Sayin," which means as 'Mister' or 'Sir' in English, implying a respect and support for the leader of the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).
Ocalan is serving a life sentence after being found guilty of treason for leading the Kurdish armed campaign in which more than 30,000 people died. It was the second conviction for the leader of the DTP in seven days. Last week Turk and a DTP deputy leader were sentenced to 18 months in prison for distributing party materials in the Kurdish language, Turkish law allows distribution of political materials only in the Turkish language. The DTP is viewed with suspicion by Turkish nationalists arguing it is closely tied to the Kurdish separatist cause.
Guilty for praising Ocalan
Turk was sentenced by the court on a charge of supporting a criminal in a speech he made in January 2006.

He said in his speech, "Meanwhile we are doing our utmost to silence the guns while the isolation of 'Sayin' Ocalan is deepening social concerns."


The court said that Turk was guilty of praising a criminal, noting that the punishment was given because the defendant repeated the same expression over and over again and because Turk is a leader of a political party and has influence in society. Turk is considering a legal appeal.

Kurdish group claim jailed leader being slowly poisoned

The Turkish government on Monday announced that it has dispatched expert doctors to the Imrali island prison where PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan is serving his life sentence but dismissed accusations that he was being slowly poisoned. The government took the decision after Ocalan's lawyers alleged there was evidence that he was being poisoned at the prison.
Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek, who also serves as the government spokesman, was quoted as saying that a group of doctors, including toxicology experts, travelled to the prison island near Istanbul on Monday "to verify the claims and to prevent the exploitation of such allegations," however, he added that the claims are pure lies.
Pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DTP) mayors from the southeast of the country are being investigated by the Prosecutor's Office of the Southeastern Diyarbakir province for calling on the Turkish government to send an independent team of doctors to conduct tests on Ocalan. According to media reports, 54 mayors from the DTP will be investigated for the statement that they released.
The results of Ocalan's health check had not been made public by the time the Cyprus Observer went to print.


Source:
observercyprus.com

Amazing, its seems Trapezounta has been turned into the centre of Turkish nationalism....

Another fine article from the Cyprus Observer



Turkey, the 21st century’s Orwellian Oceania

26.01.2007

What has become obvious, once again after Hrant Dink’s murder, is that no one is really secure in Turkey who expresses an alternative to the mainstream ideas or to the policies that maintains the Turkish state’s status quo.

By Umut Uras

Armenian Turkish journalist Hrant Dink is dead; killed by a 17 year-old Turkish youth antagonised by the Turkish mass media that rallied against Dink, declaring him a ‘traitor’. Turkey lost a brain, a democracy activist, a citizen in love with his country and a courageous intellectual standing up for what he believed in.

What has become obvious, once again after this horrible murder, is that no one is really secure in Turkey if they express an alternative to the mainstream ideas in Turkey or to the policies that maintains the state’s status quo. Apart from the existence of a Turkish ‘deep state’ in various state institutions independent of the government’s will, the public opinion manipulated by the media and the state institutions are also threats for that ‘one’, who has a ‘negative’ say on the traditional autocratic mentality and ideas in the country.

Anyone but Turkey guilty
The cold heart of politics came to light again, as government officials, like the ruling Justice and Development Party deputy Saban Disli, started to talk about how this assassination is going to be used by European governments against Turkey.

Disli made his comments on Turkish television NTV a few hours after the assassination. Yes, it is really unfair that Turkey’s image is again made corrupt by this major murder in Turkey, committed by a young brainwashed Turkish citizen. It is unfair that the EU criticise the country for such a murder; they should just let it go (!).

In the same line, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Grand Unity Party, Muhsin Yazicioglu, was again creating very ‘original and intelligent’ conspiracy theories on the same day. He said that it was a move made in order to create a mess for Turkey as has been done in previous years on issues like Cyprus and the Kurdish. He said this killing would contribute to the adoption of bills on the Armenian issue awaiting foreign Parliaments, pointing to foreign forces behind the assassination. I guess this was a claim meaning that the Armenian Diaspora could be behind the assassination. Well, he was wrong.

Workers Party leader Dogu Perincek, claimed that the assassination was organised by the US and the EU, unsurprisingly to cause confusion in the country. The main opposition Republican Turkish Party leader Deniz Baykal also claimed that the assassination was organised by circles who wanted to dig under Turkey and put the country into a tough situation.

Hasan Celal Guzel, a conservative columnist and a former minister of Turkey, came up with the claim that Armenian and Kurdish circles are the primary suspects for this murder in his column in the Turkish Daily Radikal without advancing any concrete background for the claim. Nationalist newspaper Tercuman also claimed that the murderer was Armenian, again without actually indicating any proof for the claim.

An expression popular with Turkish officials was, ‘Whatever the reason is …’, to my understanding expressing that there could be valid reasons to hate this person because of his thoughts, but one did not have to kill him. In a statement the Speaker of the Parliament, Bulent Arinc, said: “Whatever the reason is, whatever purpose it carries, this is an attack against Turkey’s peace and unity as well as the nation’s domestic harmony.”

A one-sided blame game still continues with various circles’ making massive efforts to create more surreal scenarios to make citizens on the street believe the nation, the state and the country itself have no responsibility in this murder and nothing to be ashamed of. In fact they have.

Turkey vs. Turkey?
It has always been about provocations against Turkey. In all the above statements, these well known people of Turkey blame various domestic and foreign circles, anyone, and anything apart from blaming Turkey itself. They talked about provocations by these circles but not about Turkey’s crippled democracy, almost instinctual hostility against heterogeneity, and the public and state-based targeting of any dissimilar view to any traditional mainstream way of thinking in the country. They talked as if it was not the Turkish governments’ – ironically – Justice Minister who blamed an Armenian conference as being organised by traitors; as if Article 301 was not a part of Turkish penal code used by the Turkish judicial system to target intellectuals in the country; as if nationalism was not perpetually stimulated by the mass media, politicians and various NGOs, feeding the racism within Turkey and fomenting hostility against the West; and as if the democratisation of the country has not been constantly confronted with the effects of all of these.

No one admitted that this was a racist murder; Hrant Dink was killed because he was Armenian. And the environment for this murder was created by the factors mentioned above and more.

Not surprisingly, the youthful murderer does not seem like someone who has connections with ‘hostile foreign circles’, as he is an unemployed Turkish youth with only a High School education from a very conservative and nationalist region in the country, one who could be provoked by almost anything. This is a youth who was affected by one of the ‘very creative news pieces’ on the internet like those saying that Armenians would split his country, without mentioning that there are only 40-50 thousands Armenians living in Turkey, a country of 73 million.

A lover of Turkey charged with ‘insulting Turkishness’
Dink was charged with ‘insulting Turkishness’ according to the internationally infamous Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code that punishes people who publicly denigrate Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations. It also says, “Expressions of thought intended to criticise shall not constitute a crime,” but the meaning of ‘criticism’ is not defined.

I met Dink in Istanbul once at a conference on the minority issue and foundation properties in Turkey. He, again, broke down in tears when talking about the Armenians and the minority issue in Turkey in general. As far as I was told then, he had a tough past; born in Anatolia, brought up in orphanages, to come to where he was after going through many very hard times. Whenever he talked about issues that were sensitive to him in public, he would cry, as he did at that conference.

Dink knew that he had become a target with the opening of his case based on Article 301 for saying that he believed in the existence of the alleged Armenian genocide. Actually, in one of his last articles published in the Agos newspaper he said: “What did Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah Gul say? What did Minister of Justice Cemil Cicek say? “The issue of Article 301 should not be exaggerated. Is there someone found guilty and sent to prison?” As if paying a price always means going to prison... Just see the price... This is the price... Ministers, do you know what the price is to imprison someone with the skittishness of a dove? Do you know it? Don’t you look at doves at all? There were times when I seriously thought about leaving the country. Especially at moments when the threats focused on the ones close to me...”

He did no harm to Turkey; all he did was utter his love for his country with every opportunity he had, and expressed thoughts different than what are generally believed, or expressed, in Turkey about the alleged Armenian genocide. What he asked for many times at different times was to discuss and to be challenged for his opinions, but not to be charged for them.

A bullet to Turkey or from Turkey?
Despite being a journalist whose area of focus is International Relations and Foreign Policy, I believe democratization is more important than national interest, a citizen is more important than the state, and EU membership is more important than anything else for Turkey if we do not want to sacrifice other Hrant Dinks. As Orhan Pamuk says, the defenders of 301 are guilty of this murder; politicians, the media and intellectuals – anyone that contributed in the creation of this environment.

We should make one question clear: Was this an attack against Hrant Dink as well as Turkey as was stated by various officials including the Prime Minister? Or was it an attack by Turkey against Hrant Dink on behalf of democracy and freedom of speech?

“We should judge the darkness that turns a baby into a murderer,” Rakel Dink

umut@observercyprus.com

I can not help myself with this infamous Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which states the following:

* A person who publicly denigrates Turkishness, the Republic or the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and three years.
* A person who publicly denigrates the Government of the Republic of Turkey, the judicial institutions of the State, the military or security organizations shall be punishable by imprisonment of between six months and two years.
* In cases where denigration of Turkishness is committed by a Turkish citizen in another country the punishment shall be increased by one third.
* Expressions of thought intended to criticize shall not constitute a crime.

Thank God I am not a Turkish Citizen in England, so i can enjoy my desires and write freely about my concerns. The really funny part is that this Law was passed in 2005 in an effort to integrate with the EU, by passing more liberal laws that respect diversity, human rights and the rest well known Western "damnations". One can only imagine what kind of Law, this article replaced.

During the Past 2 years that this Article has taken effect, it is already proud to have ruled in almost 60 cases, with some of them quite high-profile and megaly controversial.

One of them is the Orhan Pamuk case, for stating, in an interview with a Swiss magazine, that "Thirty thousand Kurds and a million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it". Another high-profile case to result from this legislation involved the writer and journalist Perihan Magden, who was prosecuted for a December 2005 newspaper column in which she strongly defended the principle of conscientious objection and the refusal to perform military service. In response to this column, the Turkish military filed a complaint against her. And another In July 2006 the Istanbul public prosecutor's office prepared an indictment alleging that the statements in the book Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman constituted a breach of the article. The publisher and editors of the Turkish translation, as well as the translator, were brought to trial accordingly, but acquitted in December 2006. And another...Publisher Ragıp Zarakolu is on trial under Article 301 as well as for “insulting the legacy of Atatürk” under Law 5816.

Last but not least, is, the well-known Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, peace be upon him, who was prosecuted under the Article 301 for insulting Turkishness, and received a six month suspended sentence. He was subsequently assassinated on January 19, 2007 in the Istanbul district of Şişli, in front of the offices of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. He left behind a wife and three children. Orhan Pamuk declared, "In a sense, we are all responsible for his death. However, at the very forefront of this responsibility are those who still defend article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code. Those who campaigned against him, those who portrayed this sibling of ours as an enemy of Turkey, those who painted him as a target, they are the most responsible in this."

Finally, the Cherry came on Top with the ban of youtube access in the whole of Turkey, for hosting a video which showed that Turkey's founder Kemal Ataturk was a homosexual, and therefore youtube insulted Turkishness, censoring its services in a country of 70 million citizens that aspires for EU membership and has already been granted Candidate Status.

What, i am wondering while i am writing all these stuff, along with the ones i don't, like Armenian, Greek-Pontian, Assyrian and Kurdish mass massacres, genocides, -call it as you wish- as well as the Cyprus Issue and the Aegean Grey Zones is:

Is Turkey's Political Machine that STUPID, or is it occupied by Agents Provocateurs?
We spoke of Idealism in Real and Pragmatical terms, the other day, and i am really trying hard to find a reason at any level that could or would satisfy my hunger for identifying causality. Propably, i am the one who's stupid here.

I wrote this a few days ago for the blog, it doesn't say much more than already mentioned, i think it still is a contribution, though.

Link: Noemon: "The Deep State"/Article 301 (http://noemon.blogspot.com/2007/03/deep-statearticle-301.html)

Turkish Nationalism on the rise

Poll finds Turkish nationalism on the rise
Published: Tuesday, 13 March, 2007, 09:24 AM Doha Time

ANKARA: A majority of Turks believes nationalism is on the rise in Turkey and that the European Union’s treatment of their country is the main reason, according to a poll published in the Milliyet newspaper yesterday.
The poll, conducted last month by the A&G market research company, found just over 50% of those canvassed felt nationalism was rising against 30% who disagreed.
About one-fifth of those polled said they personally felt more nationalistic.
The survey coincides with soul-searching in Turkey over the recent murder of a prominent Turkish Armenian editor in Istanbul by an ultra-nationalist teenager. Turkey is also preparing for presidential and parliamentary elections.
One-third of the poll’s respondents blamed the increase in nationalism on the European Union, which Turkey hopes to join.
In December, Brussels froze entry talks with Turkey in eight of 35 policy areas because of Ankara’s refusal to open its ports to EU member state Cyprus. Ankara has no diplomatic ties with the internationally recognised Greek Cypriot government.
Many Turks feel the EU puts unfair pressure on their country over a wide range of issues and that the wealthy bloc does not really want Turkey, a Muslim country, as a member.
The second reason given for the upsurge in Turkish nationalism was the “inadequacy of Turkish foreign policy” on issues such as Iraq and Cyprus.
Ankara is very worried about the possible disintegration of neighbouring Iraq and the emergence of an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq which could fan separatism among the large Kurdish population of southeast Turkey.
Turkish politicians and army generals sometimes threaten to take military action against Turkish Kurdish rebels hiding in northern Iraq but have not followed up on these threats.
The A&G survey canvassed the views of 2,396 people across the country on February 17-18. – Reuters

Turkish Daily

Is AKP the most nationalist party?
Tuesday, March 13, 2007


Apparently the most popular nationalism in Turkey is not ethnic or patriotic in nature. It is a nationalism with a high dose of religious sensitivity, i.e., Islamic nationalism

Cüneyt Ülsever Milliyet daily published a public opinion poll about �nationalism�. (March 12, 2007). Here are a few excerpts that I came up with:

�According a research conducted by A&G, 50.1 percent of the population thinks nationalism in Turkey is on the rise lately. The ratio of those who don't agree with that point of view is 30.4 percent… The ratio of those who believe that 'nationalism in on the rise' escalates as the age gets younger and education level goes up. The point reached in full membership talks with the European Union, developments in Northern Iraq and the social experiences after the Hrank Dink murder have all added to the nationalistic reflexes.�

Milliyet goes on to add:

�To the question, �Did your feelings for Turkish nationalism increase for some reason?' 21.2 percent of the participants answered, �Yes, my feeling got stronger lately,' 15.7 percent said, �It increases time to time,' 42.1 percent responded, �I don't feel any change.'

To the question, �Regardless of which party you voted for, which party and political leader, do you think, responded best to these new increasing nationalistic feelings?' the 21.6 percent answered as, 'AKP'. It was followed by a 17.3 percent for MHP, 7.6 percent for CHP and a 6 percent for the BBP.�

Nationalism redefined

This poll reveals two interesting findings relating to the concept of nationalism:

1) People think that the nationalistic feelings of others have risen more than their own. (Note that 21.2 percent believe their own nationalist feelings got stronger, while the ratio of who think that nationalism has risen in society is 50.1 percent.)

2) The party responding best to nationalist feelings is the AKP!

All right, what kind of nationalism are we speaking about here?

In April 2006, another public opinion poll by Tempo Magazine revealed that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) was seen as the 'most nationalist party.' On April 11, 2006, I penned down the following regarding to Tempo's poll:

A poll titled 'Nationalism Research' conducted by Bilgi University and Infakto Research Workshop for Tempo magazine points a finger to a crucial development, in my opinion.

I added:1) The conservative 'National View' that AKP has been inspired by gets more and more dominant in the definition of Turkish nationalism.

2) In other words, the conservative �National View's� contribution to the definition about who the Turks are and how they perceive the world increases.

3) The �National View� has accomplished to propose its understanding of Islamic communal identity to the national domain.


Islamic nationalism

When I reached this conclusion a year ago, I had referred to some findings of the poll:

�….After they acknowledge that a non-Muslim could be a Turk and even a non-Turkish speaking person could be a Turk, participants enumerate �being an atheist' at the top of the elements that �contradict with Turkishness.' They place �being a Jew or a Christian' to the second place!

To the question, 'To which elements a Turkish nationalist pay most attention?' the answer, 'Turkey's territorial integrity' sits at the top with 59.9 percent; however, to the same question, the answer, 'being Muslim' (13.6 percent) is voted way above the answer, such as 'Turkish language' (2 percent).�

And according to the data Infakto Research Workshop has collected, the politician who is regarded as the "most nationalist" is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Recently, the opposition parties, primarily the Republican People's Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), are trying to strike at AKP with nationalist rhetoric. But apparently the popular nationalism is not ethnic or patriotic nationalism, but a one with a high dose of religious sensitivity, i.e., Islamic nationalism!

Cyprus Observer


Death, lies and videotape
16.03.2007

Yesim Erdem Holland / Istanbul
The internet again under scrutiny in Turkey following the gigantic video sharing website YouTube was banned because of a video insulting Ataturk

Everybody knows that the Internet is full of filth. It offers wonderful opportunities, and as often gives space to offensive or downright criminal ideas and visions. After the murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, provoked by an article Dink wrote which had landed its author in court, the Internet became a focus of attention in Turkey. It turned out that the extreme nationalist and fascist ideas that led to Dink's death were able to take root, spread and find support in this virtual environment. Suspects detained in relation to the murder in various parts of Turkey were linked through certain web sites. Many writers referred to the phenomenon as a new form of gang for today's society: the 'internet gang'. The dangers of such gangs are that they are easy to find but difficult to disband. They can easily find adherents, manipulate those who are in doubt; at the same time, while open to anyone who happens to click on the right link, they are sufficiently disguised. Secrecy is achieved not through privacy but through anonymity.
After the Dink murder, many people were shocked to discover the kind of criminal ideas that are openly espoused on the internet, and the freedom it offers was once again debated. But this time it was not merely a debate on whether censorship is bad without exception, or whether it can sometimes be necessary. Rather it centred on the difficulties of keeping an official eye on what's happening on the internet and then acting accordingly - for example, tracking down the people expressing the criminal ideas, or interpreting the significance of a threat openly voiced in the safety of the virtual environment.
It was in this safe atmosphere that we first saw the YouTube video in which Dink's murderer Ogun Samast, in his white hat, was portrayed as a 'hero' with his picture inserted on a billowing Turkish flag. This disturbing picture was occasionally replaced by even more disturbing ones: pictures of Dink's body lying on the pavement, covered with newspapers, presented like the first enemy shot down in a war. There followed warnings to Orhan Pamuk and Elif Safak, and all these menacing scenes were accompanied by a horribly racist song.

That video and similar ones should have been removed, and their creators traced if possible. Nobody expected that access to YouTube should be denied to the whole country, but whatever control mechanism YouTube had to stop criminally offensive videos had to be enforced. Turkish people, or authorities, should have reacted to it. Did they? No.
Are they trying to trace those fascist internet gang members? Maybe so, but Turkey is a country where these efforts could go on for years and bear no fruit, or could be resolved in a matter of days, without necessarily following every official procedure. It all depends on the will.

Where there's a will …
Obviously there was no lack of it when, in one of the speediest court decisions in Turkish history, it was ruled that a video on YouTube insulted our nation's founder and great leader Ataturk. Turkey straightaway shut down access to YouTube for the whole country. There was no joking matter there.
The phone monopoly Turk Telekom, which runs Turkey's internet infrastructure, barred access to YouTube after receiving an order from the Court. Human-rights activists argued that the decision violated freedom of expression. Yusuf Alatas, head of the Human Rights Association, said the case highlighted "the general problem that Turkish judges don't protect speech but instead are used to limit expression … the judiciary acts as a censor."
YouTube stayed barred for two days and access was permitted again once the video was permanently removed. The video allegedly was mocking Turks and Ataturk with references to homosexuality. It was said to be a part of the battle between Turks and Greeks, carried out this time in a virtual environment, and it was one of the many insulting videos that both sides deploy against each other. There are no reports of the Greeks starting any legal procedure against the videos or protesting YouTube, let alone barring access to it in desperation.

The case of Turkey
In Turkey however, as usual, one of the many prosecutors who act like a radar in detecting 'things wounding national sensitivities' detected this video and felt wounded and applied the court. The court acted with an impressive promptness basing its action on one of the unique laws in Turkey which protests Ataturk's legacy.

Can the internet be banned?
The process raised questions about internet regulations in Turkey. Can Turkey block access because it cannot control its content? This is not the first time that a video has evoked reaction in a country. It is said that a video that displayed a rape scene was removed. Another, mocking Bush, was taken out. A third one, showing a banker having sex on a beach with an ex-girlfriend of famous footballer Ronaldo, was also removed. But the court decisions ruling them to be insulting or violating privacy were submitted to YouTube, which deleted the videos, saying they violated the site's terms of use. YouTube in fact has its own control mechanism too. If a certain number of people who watch a video disapprove of it, then it is removed. But it can always be posted again under a different name. In that event, a court ruling is a more decisive and permanent solution
But no institutions can compete with Turkish ones when it comes to being decisive. If our institutions want to, they can act in such a way as to leave no doubt on how strongly they feel on the issue, in case what insulted them is judged not all that offensive by others. It is like showing to the world, as well as to the more liberal minds with more democratic tendencies within this country, where we draw the line. The more spectacularly they show it, the merrier and prouder they are. Meanwhile, videos screaming joy over murders keep being reproduced with no visible reaction from the same touchy institutions.

A fine example of what type of videos Mr. Yesim Erdem is talking about..

Note the 'catchy' chorus line that says "ne mutlu turkum diyene" (how proud it is to be a Turk) while depicting the murderer's picture..


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7PJrMOWu34

When racsism is cultivated to such an extent in a country's youth, its easy to understand why the celebration of such stupidity would indeed make some individuals feel pride.

TURKEY: Sign reads ‘Israeli murderers keep out’


Sign hung above clothing store in southern city of Alanya; Israeli tourist who photographed sign: Even on the way back to the cruise ship someone asked me if I was a solider and if I enjoy killing children

Miri Chason

A sign reading “For Children killers Israelis No Sale, No Entry ” welcomed Israel tourists who passed by a clothing store in the city of Alanya in south Turkey.

The city is frequented by many Israelis, who arrive mainly on cruse ships during the summer.

“We entered the store because I didn’t notice the sign, which was hung very high,” said Nimrod Buchman, 25, of central Israel, who was on a trip with his girlfriend.

http://www.ynetnews.com/PicServer2/20122005/864777/RM17525493_wa.jpg
Sign at Alanya clothing store (Photo: Nimrod Buchman)


“The Turks immediately recognize Israelis, and therefore they asked us if we are soldiers and if we are capable of murdering children. They told us to leave and did not let us go inside. I had to take a photo of the shocking sign.”

When the vendor realized that Buchman had photographed the sign, an argument erupted.

“One of the salespeople began to chase after me and demanded to see what I had photographed,” Buchman said. “We argued for a while and then he began to curse, but when he understood that I was not about to give up the camera he left. We were very frightened, as were the other people present. Even on the way back to the cruise ship someone asked me if I was a solider and if I enjoy killing children.”

“I will definitely never return to this city, despite the fact that is amazing” Buchman said. “There is an uneasiness that surrounds you here, and people look at you with contempt.



Source:
ynetnews.com

The Turks talk about child killing !! the greatest Genociders of the planet.

Greeks are more nationalist then Turks!!!!

TURKEY: Sign reads ‘Israeli murderers keep out’


Sign hung above clothing store in southern city of Alanya; Israeli tourist who photographed sign: Even on the way back to the cruise ship someone asked me if I was a solider and if I enjoy killing children

Miri Chason

A sign reading “For Children killers Israelis No Sale, No Entry ” welcomed Israel tourists who passed by a clothing store in the city of Alanya in south Turkey.

The city is frequented by many Israelis, who arrive mainly on cruse ships during the summer.

“We entered the store because I didn’t notice the sign, which was hung very high,” said Nimrod Buchman, 25, of central Israel, who was on a trip with his girlfriend.

http://www.ynetnews.com/PicServer2/20122005/864777/RM17525493_wa.jpg
Sign at Alanya clothing store (Photo: Nimrod Buchman)


“The Turks immediately recognize Israelis, and therefore they asked us if we are soldiers and if we are capable of murdering children. They told us to leave and did not let us go inside. I had to take a photo of the shocking sign.”

When the vendor realized that Buchman had photographed the sign, an argument erupted.

“One of the salespeople began to chase after me and demanded to see what I had photographed,” Buchman said. “We argued for a while and then he began to curse, but when he understood that I was not about to give up the camera he left. We were very frightened, as were the other people present. Even on the way back to the cruise ship someone asked me if I was a solider and if I enjoy killing children.”

“I will definitely never return to this city, despite the fact that is amazing” Buchman said. “There is an uneasiness that surrounds you here, and people look at you with contempt.



Source:
ynetnews.com

Orphic, I think everyone can have his/her own opinions about anything.

This post you made is a bit out of topic.

If I don't want a hebrew to enter my store, then I will erect a sign outside that says so. The only people that will call me racist are the ones who have a vendetta against me.

The guy had every right to put that sign in front of his store. It's his store and no one can make him change his mind.

If the israelis don't like to be called "child killers" (of course I do not say that every one is) then perhaps they should wonder why they are called like that and what has their government done to the Palestinians.

I saw at least two videos last week with israeli soldiers harassing palestinians. In the first they used a young girl as a human shield in a clean up operation and in the second they released an army dog against an unarmed palestinian woman who was running away from them...

Greeks are more nationalist then Turks!!!!

I wish Greeks showed more nationalism, but not to the extent the turks do. Thank god there is no law in Greece about "insulting Greekness" in the way the Turks have a law against "insulting Turkishness"

Ehatlaios,

When you say "Hebrew" do you mean Hebrew speakers? Or Jews? Or Israelis? Not all Hebrew speakers are Jews or Isrealis. Not all Jews are Israelis or Hebrew speakers. Not all Israelis are Jews, and not all of them speak Hebrew.

Or will the sign outside your shop say "No Jews"?

Also, you may think it is your right to put up signs like that in front of your shop, but in democratic countries that do not discriminate on the basis of religion or language those signs would be illegal. I believe Greece belongs to this group too.

Regards,
Hebrew.

That shows how low the level of education of the turks are nothing more. Muslims attacking Israel didnt and dont discriminate between women and children. Its not the good muslims(palestinians syrians...) and the evil israelis. If the muslims had enough power israeli children would be butchered. In war both sides sin.

When you say "Hebrew" do you mean Hebrew speakers? Or Jews? Or Israelis? Not all Hebrew speakers are Jews or Isrealis. Not all Jews are Israelis or Hebrew speakers. Not all Israelis are Jews, and not all of them speak Hebrew.
.

Then my own sign would be "no israelis".

A couple of extracts from Dogu Ergil's (professor of political science at Ankara University) article titled "Turkish Nationalism, Then and Now"


................In search of a unifying myth, long forgotten roots of the pre-Ottoman, pre-Islamic era were re-introduced. However, this process was construed not as a scientific endeavor but as ideological glue for national cohesion. In the absence of a medieval high culture that could be labeled `Turkish,' the nationalist elite found their glory in a history that never was. The search for, and consolidation of, a new national identity were carried to such extremes in the 1930s that theories like the Sun Theory of Language were concocted. According to this "theory," all languages emerged out of Turkish. As a reminder of those days, the presidential banner consists of a sun representing the Turkish Republic encircled by 16 stars, symbolizing the Turkish states that were presumably created by Turks throughout history This fabricated glorious past was a panacea for Turkish pride wounded by the loss of empire and reincarnated as a poor, backward society that was occupied during the First World War.................



...................Second, the elite set about to establish a new national Turkish identity Just as it was planned that secularization would emancipate the nation from the fetters of religion, Turkish identity would iron out ethnic and cultural differences and produce a homogenized population. This strategy led to the policy of denying the existence of national minorities in Turkey All existing Muslim minorities were granted a kind of Turkishness. For example, the largest non-Turkish Muslim minority in Anatolia-the Kurds became Mountain Turks. Paradoxically, however, by forcing all Muslims into a Turkish identity, the new regime was also associating Turkish identity with Islam, which was contrary to its secularization project. This built-in contradiction would later make it easier for non-state actors to politicize religion. 'Aren't we all Muslims, so why do we argue whether we agree on the principles of religion (Islam) to guide social life or not?" became the most commonly asked question in the political debate of the 1990s...............



.................................The Turkification process had already begun during the period of the Young Turks in the latter years of the Ottoman Empire. The Young Turks learned the power of nationalism from the struggle of Ottoman peoples whom they fought against to keep the remaining parts of the Empire together. By the end of the First World War and the Turko-Greek War, which lasted from 1919 to 1922, there were few non-Muslim peoples left in Anatolia, which subsequently became the Turkish motherland. The majority of Turkey's two million Armenians were deported to Syria and Mesopotamia in 1915 by the Ottoman Young Turk administration, so that they would not side with advancing Russian troops and declare independence in eastern Turkey Deportations continued until 1918 and it has been estimated that as many as 1.5 million Armenians died or were killed en routes The remaining Greeks, who had not fled after the Turko-Greek War, were exchanged for Turks (in fact Muslims) in Greece under a treaty that went into effect in 1924. This homogenization of the population helped the Republican elite declare the rest of the population Turkish.............




Decades of indoctrination and a heavy dose of nationalist education created a deep sense of pride in being a Turk. Moreover, citizens of the Republic had objective reasons to be proud. They were the heirs of a major world empire and had created a new state by rescuing their country from the victors of the First World War. Through significant economic and political reforms, they were advancing on the road toward contemporary Western civilization. Although the country was poor, its pragmatic policies saved it from the devastation of the Second World War.

However, the euphoria started to dissipate in the second half of the 1950s. Problems caused by political authoritarianism and the limitations of an import-substitution economy were further exacerbated by the failure to manage massive urban migration of people from the countryside. Wide protests staged by labor organizations, professional and student groups began to disrupt the country........................





Most people in Turkey have achieved a better understanding of the root causes of their society's problems. It is clear that the country's underdevelopment and prevailing traditionalism is not the result of Western imperialism as once claimed by the Left. Also, religion is not a barrier for candidacy to the European Union, as claimed by religious fundamentalists and secular skeptics. The effect of politicized religion, however, may be detrimental to political liberty and stability Further, ethnic separatism only reinforces militarism and delays further democratization, as the leader of the PKK has admitted during his trial.

It remains to be seen if Turkey perpetuates its anti-democratic secularist policy, or decides to create a new democratic constitution where traditional groups with religious sensitivities, as well as citizens with other ethnic backgrounds, can feel included. If the official policy of laicism has failed to secularize society because it has not been supported by commercialization, industrialization, modern education and urbanization, then religious affairs should be taken from state control and left to civil society. Only then can. the sociological process of secularization proceed.

Ehetlaios

Sure anyone is entitled to their own opinion and is free to express it but calling these individuals racist isn't based on some vendeta but common logic.
I mean the opposition to the specific approach Israel has taken in the Palestine conflict is something totally justified (in my view) and something I'd fully support, but I won't say I hate ALL Israelies for their government's choice in the issue, I can't but find that utterly stupid and the exact definition of racism.

The Economist


Waving Ataturk's flag

Mar 8th 2007

There has been a lethal upsurge in ultra-nationalist feeling in Turkey

SITTING in an office plastered with Ottoman pennants, portraits of Ataturk and the Turkish flag, Kemal Kerincsiz, a lawyer, says his mission in life is to protect the Turkish nation from “Western imperialism and global forces that want to dismember and destroy us”. In the past two years Mr Kerincsiz and his Turkish Jurists' Union have launched a slew of cases against Turkish intellectuals under article 301 of the penal code, which makes “insulting Turkishness” a criminal offence.

Mr Kerincsiz has confined his nationalism to the courts. But elsewhere new ultra-nationalist groups, some of them led by retired army officers, have been vowing over guns and copies of the Koran to make Turks “the masters of the world” and even “to die and kill” in the process. In January one of Mr Kerincsiz's targets, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor, Hrant Dink, was shot dead by a 17-year-old, Ogun Samast, because he had “insulted the Turks”. The murder, in broad daylight on one of Istanbul's busiest streets, was a chilling manifestation of a resurgence of xenophobic nationalism aimed at Turkey's non-Muslim minorities and the Kurds—plus their defenders in the liberal elite.

The upsurge threatens to undo the good of four years of reforms by the mildly Islamist government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Indeed, it is partly in response to these reforms—more freedom for the Kurds, a trimming of the army's powers, concessions on Cyprus—that nationalist passions have been roused. The knowledge that many members of the European Union do not want Turkey to join has inflamed them further (the EU partially suspended membership talks with Turkey in December because of its refusal to open its ports and airspace to Greek-Cypriots).

Another factor is America's refusal to move against separatist PKK guerrillas who are based in northern Iraq. If the United States Congress delivers its pledge to adopt a resolution calling the mass slaughter of the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 genocide, Turkey's relationship with its ally would suffer “lasting damage”, says the foreign minister, Abdullah Gul.

Murat Belge, a leftist intellectual who is being hounded by Mr Kerincsiz, sees disturbing similarities between the racist nationalism espoused by the “Young Turks” in the dying days of the Ottoman empire (who ordered the mass slaughter of its Armenian subjects), and the siege mentality gripping Turkey today. The perception, now as then, is that Western powers are pressing for changes to empower their local collaborators (ie, Kurds and non-Muslims), with the aim of breaking up the country. “This social Darwinist mindset that implies it's OK to kill your enemies in order to survive” has been perpetuated through an education system that tells young Turks that “they have no other friend than the Turks,” says Mr Belge. And it has been cynically exploited by politicians and generals alike.

Mr Erdogan and Deniz Baykal, the leader of the opposition Republican People's Party, have proved no exception. When more than 100,000 Turks gathered at Mr Dink's funeral chanting “We are all Armenians”, Mr Erdogan opined that they had gone “too far”. Both he and Mr Baykal have resisted calls to scrap article 301, though there have been hints that it will be amended.

The politicians are keen to court nationalist votes in the run-up to November's parliamentary election. Mr Erdogan also hopes that burnishing his nationalist credentials will help him to coax a blessing from Turkey's hawkish generals for his hopes of succeeding the fiercely secular Ahmet Necdet Sezer as president in May.

Yet a recent outburst by the chief of the general staff, Yasar Buyukanit, suggests otherwise. He declared that Turkey faced more threats to its national security than at any time in its modern history and added that only its “dynamic forces” [ie, the army] could prevent efforts to “partition the country”. These words, uttered during an official trip to America, were widely seen as a direct warning to Mr Erdogan to shelve his presidential ambitions.

Others do not rule out possible collusion between nationalist elements within the army and retired officers who are organising new ultra-nationalist groups (one is said to be training nationalist youths in Trabzon, where Dink's alleged murderers came from). “The real purpose is to sow chaos, to polarise society so they can regain ground [lost with the EU reforms],” argues Belma Akcura, an investigative journalist whose recent book about rogue security forces known as the “deep state” earned her a three-month jail sentence. It would not be surprising if their next target were a nationalist, she adds.

Meanwhile prominent writers and academics, including Mr Belge, continue to be bombarded with death threats. Some are under police protection. Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel prize-winning author whom Mr Kerincsiz took to court over his comments about the persecution of the Armenians and the Kurds, has fled to New York.

Where will matters go from here? This week one court banned access to YouTube after clips calling Ataturk gay appeared on it; and another sentenced a Kurdish politician to six months' jail for giving the PKK leader, Abdullah Ocalan, an honorific Mr. But a private television station also withdrew a popular series, “The Valley of the Wolves”, that glorifies gun-toting nationalists who mow down their mainly Kurdish enemies, after the channel was inundated with calls for the show's axing. The battle for Turkey's soul is not over yet.

From Muslim to Turkish Nationalism.
Elite Socialization in the Turkish Foyers in Switzerland (1912-1922)

Hans-Lukas Kieser



Workshop "Cultural Conceptions of Middle Eastern Statesmen, Intellectuals and Technocrats (19th - 21st Centuries)", World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies, Mainz, 9.-13. September 2002





Elite diasporas represent an often underestimated factor in the modern remodeling of the East and Near East. During the decades before, in and just after World War One, elite diasporas in Switzerland formed a small but significant arena for what was to happen in the big empires of the Tsar and the Sultan, and the whole Muslim world. La petite Russie, the "little Russia", rue de Carouge in Geneva was well known as a center of the Russian diaspora, famed for its revolutionary stance. The same quarter around the rue de Carouge also housed several Young Turks and the room, rue de Carouge 7, where they weekly met. Interestingly enough, this was also the address of Kurdistan, the first Kurdish periodical. Those responsible of Kurdistan peacefully shared the same work room with later Turkists and members of the Ankara parliament, and an Armenian typesetter made their publications possible.

At the eve of WWI the situation had changed radically. The South Eastern and Ottoman diaspora was now strongly divided along ethno-national lines. Bulgarian, Armenian, Greek, Serbian and Zionist organisations had already existed at the turn of the century, an Egyptian club emerged soon after; new in 1911 was the Türk Yurdu, or Turkish Foyer, followed a few months later by the Kurdish Hêvi. Lausanne had the first Türk Yurdu in Europe that, until 1923, remained the most important one; after WWI it became a strong propaganda center of the Turkish national movement.

We know a lot about the Young Turks in opposition in Geneva, but much less about the Turkish Foyers and the role the Oriental diaspora played during and after WWI for the future of the Caliph's Empire. The Foyers of Lausanne and Geneva were founded in 1911; other European cities and, as Halide Edip put it, the Ottoman "capital soon followed the[ir] example", by establishing the Turkish Hearths (Türk Ocagi) in Istanbul and Asia Minor. Despite their concern for politics and society, medecine, science and law always remained the subjects of study prefered by the Ottoman Muslims including the Foyer members (they numbered about 60 of a total of about 350 Ottoman students then in Switzerland, about seventy percent of these were non-Muslims). Thus a community mainly educated in natural and technical sciences devoted itself mostly to social, political and cultural questions. As an important consequence, we see them often using scientific or medical metaphors for social issues.

Analysing the little Helvetic arena helps explaining the specific role Western-trained new elites played in the changes from the Fin de siècle to the aftermath of WWI. The Foyers in Geneva, Lausanne and Paris presented themselves as an apolitic cultural club; they formed an elite milieu in which young people were converted and mentally trained as nationalists. After the establishment of the Republic of Turkey dozens of members of these Foyers came to important positions in the new state, putting into practice their former ideas. Among them many deputies, ambassadors and ministers, e. g. Þükrü Saraçoglu, president of the Turkish Foyer in Geneva, later minister of finance and prime minister, Yusuf Kemal Tengirsek, minister of foreign affairs, Cemal Hüsnü Taray, minister of education, and Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, president of the Turkish Foyer in Lausanne, later minister of Justice, who introduced the Swiss Civil Code in Turkey.

Mahmut Esat Bey is an impressive member of a generation born in the Fin de siècle whose desire of a new order got caught in the whirl of a violent nationalist and etatist thinking. His ambiguity was that of the whole Foyer movement. Desiring to catch up with the nations renowned as civilized and politically strong, its representatives in the Swiss diaspora selectively adopted elements of Western culture which they considered as "progressive", even though the spirit of these elements, e. g. of the Civil Code, stood in an unresolvable tension to an ethno-nationalist credo. Lacking credibility in their own society, the protagonists thus continuously had to resort to coercion and violence in their political practice.



II

In this workshop we are interested in cultural concepts, the construction of a self-image and national identity. My hypothesis is that the Turkish Foyer milieu in Europe, and especially in Switzerland, was a most formative place of cultural elite socialization; that ex-Foyer members contributed towards forming the civilian wing of the Kemalist Republic's otherwise predominantly military cadre; and that they adapted themselves to the pragmatical power politics of the generals, even though culturally they were highly "idealistic". A dozen years before the abolition of the Caliphate they began to believe, in the way of a secular religion, in a völkisch or ethno-nationalist ideal linked to high modernism and anti-conservative "social technology". We find a similar trend in many right-wing modernist movements of the time. Like the socialists they wanted a social revolution, içtimâî inkilâb, but strictly limited to the nation which they imagined in ethnical terms. Although similar in many respects to the Zionists - which in the same period founded their student clubs in Switzerland -, the Turkists had a much more conflicting relationship with religion. They could not convincingly square their being Muslims and their wish to be Western at the same time. Thus Islam remained a primordial, at the same time highly critical element of ethnicity as part of Turkishness, but was completely devoid of its character of religious revelation. Paradoxically at the same time the Young Turkish regime, to which the Foyer movement was linked, almost completely islamified Asia Minor through coercive demographic politics. The civil architects of the Republic did not face the challenge, which they however realized, of theologically modernizing Islam and adapting its contents to present society. Instead they filled the religious gap with Turkism, myths of national salvation, and a pantheon of heros. I use "Turkism", by the way, as synonym of Turkish ethno-nationalism of which Panturkism or Panturanism is the maximalist and irredentist version.

Let us follow some expressions of Turkey's Muslim diaspora in Switzerland and first return to the turn of the century. I want to show one of numerous caricatures showing the explosion of a bomb.

- We see Abdulhamid torn to pieces by a bomb. "Hükümet-i hamidiyenin sonu. Eden bulur!", in Beberuhi, Nr 3, Geneva, April 1898.

This and other similar caricatures reveal the desire not only to deprive Sultan Abdulhamid of power, but for a complete tabula rasa. Tabula rasa should violently be made of despotism, corruption, religious backwardness, cosmopolitan complexity, "Byzantine" confusion, a Babel of languages, and foreign interference - in short all that the Young Turks saw as weakening the Empire, hampering progress and reducing their chances as the future elite of the state. However they were not able to define common terms for what they wanted to create. They were young people on the search - some twelve years later, those activists now in the diaspora appear to have found what they were looking for in terms of cultural identity. In the protocols of the Foyer turc in Lausanne we read in June 1918: "Brothers, from day to day nationalism exercises a stronger influence upon the Turkish world. While yesterday we answered to the question ‘What is your nationality’ by saying ‘I am Muslim’, today we do not hesitate to respond by proudly saying ‘I am a Turk’." The Foyer explicitly saw its mission in converting desoriented Turkish students to Turkism.

Resorting to Turkishness and Turkdom was an escape to an imagined essence, to given prehistorical, "natural" origins. What was considered as given and solid, was in reality under construction and highly speculative. But for elites socialized in the European Fin de siècle, it appeared much easier to believe in such pseudo-natural essences instead of continuously negociating relations that defined subtly changing identities in a shifting polyethnic context. The new ethno-national self-image miraculously reduced the complexity of being Ottoman. It suppressed the difficulty of being Muslim in a world of declining Islamic power and of global elites believing in scientific progress. In Europe we had the same phenomenon of shattered mirrors - in the sense of broken self-images that had been linked to religious tradition -, but this occured in a much longer period and concerned the whole society, whereas in the late Ottoman world this happened in a concentrated manner in the few decades of the Young Turkish generation and was limited to the Western trained elites.

Thus we see a large majority of the Muslim Turks of the universitary diaspora in Switzerland quickly becoming more or less Turkist, declaring that they now knew who they were, and what they were heading for: a social revolution (içtimâî inkilab) in Turkist terms with Turan as last reference of the quasi religious ideal or mefkûre. The Turkist gospel appears more as an ersatz than a real answer to the probing theological and cultural questions raised by some restless Young Turkish intellectuals of the Fin de siècle, like Abdullah Cevdet.

The Foyers and their sympathizers incited boys and girls of well-to-do parents to study in Europe by dramatically saying, I quote: "Go to the Occident. There learn knowledge and sciences and bring it back with you. If you do not so, our motherland will die, we will die, Islam and Turkdom will die, all will die. It will be trodden under the feet of the Occident. It already is being trodden upon." These rhetorics aptly reveal the mentality, desires and fears of the new academic Turkish elite after the Balkan wars. Contrary to the weltschmerz or at least the grief on account of Islam's general despair in the Fin the siècle, the feeling of doom now had a primarily ethnic connotation.

Salvation was expected through education - this certainly was a constructive aspect of the Foyer movement. The Türk Yurdu in Geneva even published a detailed study guide in the Ottoman language. The enthusiasm for Western style knowledge was however closely linked to the question of maintaining and reenforcing their own nation's power. The desire for female education was revolutionary in the Muslim context, but its scope was not so much individual emancipation than to enable women and mothers to be efficient transmitters of "national" culture, and productive members of a modern nation. This new concept made professional careers of women possible for the first time.

A most significant example of a brilliant female career in close dependence of its masculine architects is Ayse Afetinan (1908-85), the adopted daughter of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, herself a Foyer or Hearth member in Ankara shortly before the Türk Ocagi was taken up by the single party regime. With some interruptions she received her high school and academic education in Lausanne and Geneva between 1925 and 1939. Member of the Turkish Historical Society and secretary of her adoptive father, she was the mouthpiece of the highly ethnocentric Turkish History Thesis, that was imposed on the academic life and text books in the authoritarian Republic in the 1930s.



III

Despite the groundbreaking change to an ethno-nationalist stance, there were many mental images and discursive features common to the Fin de sièce-generation and the 1910s-generation in the Swiss diaspora. Both believed in their vocation as elitist saviours of a not yet awakened nation, be it the millet-i Osmaniye, de facto reduced to the Muslims, or the Türk milleti. Both believed that their nation was the greatest victim of contemporary history that not only suffered tremendous losses of power and territory but was threatened by annihilation in the near future. This view was however strongly elito-centric, "annihilation" firstly meant loss of one's own power, not the misery and death of the masses. Both generations shared a social-darwinist conception of a secular apocalypse presently taking place. For both nature - in the scientific, positivist sense of the 19th century - and its so-called iron laws represented an absolute reference for human society. Organicist metaphores thus had an important place in their political language.

On the whole the new Turkish Muslim elites since the Fin de siècle turned to a right-wing paradigm of modernization, by hypostasizing a community through the term of "nation" and by adopting so called " benefits of science and civilization", but not the spirit of the Enligthenment laying behind them. Politically and culturally (over-)sensitized elite diasporas were powerful catalysts for modernist changes. The dynamics in those closed circles, surrounded by equally over-politicised and over-Europeanized students from imperial Russia, anticipated processes which in the society on the ground would have taken much longer and which, probably, would have taken another direction. The Foyers developed a previously hardly existing ethnic solidarity among elites; verbal and violent attacks against others, e. g. Armenians, strengthened their boundaries. The masculine desire to be empire-saviours and nation-builders existed at a multiple distance: far from their own country, far from the lower classes and far from the reality of the provinces - but greatly desiring to act for them all.

What today we see as dangerous ingredients of a strong and exclusive nationalism was a widespread phenomenon in the first half of the 20th century. Anti-universalist, völkisch nationalism linked with right-wing progressism was a strong paradigm for disoriented societies between the Fin de siècle and World War II. WWI is the time when universal and internationalist references dramatically collapsed. The relevant question is, where and how far this negative development could be rectified in the following decades. In the post-Ottoman world, we must say, this was much less the case than in Europe where the War itself had begun. Just like the European elites of the time, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress, which extended the War into the East, believed in war as means of salvation for what it saw as national progress. Tragically, this destructive link of war and civilization, violence and culture could not decisively be broken; the collapse of universal references not be repared; the peaceful negociation and competition of identities not be renewed in the post-Ottoman area.

To resume the title of my paper: Fleeing from a religious to an ethnic nationalism appears like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Nevertheless it was a logic, even if unsatisfiying step for people who were in fear of loosing everything. With WWI, the world openly denied the credible modern universal references that were needed to settle the cohabitation of different religions and cultures that coexisted nowhere so densily than in the Middle East. Culturally the post-Ottoman world could not recover from WWI. Decomposing essentialist ersatz identities - be they Turkist, Islamist or right-wing Zionist - is one of the preconditions for building up pluralist relations based on agreements, confidence and demographic realities - instead of imagined communities. However the deconstruction of essentialist images and beliefs (which so easily can be instrumentalized for power politics) will only succeed if they are replaced in society by a convincing faith in what mankind can and should be.



For more informations see Osmanische Diaspora, thematic issue of Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, Nr. 3, 2002.

Eurasianet.org

TAMING TURKISH NATIONALISM A CHALLENGE IN ACCUSED KILLER’S HOMETOWN
Nicholas Birch 1/26/07



The murder last week of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink continues to make waves in Turkey, with the country’s powerful Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association joining in national and international calls for the immediate scrapping of a law that makes it a crime "to belittle Turkishness." But the increasingly aggressive nationalism that characterizes Trabzon, the port city that is home to Dink’s suspected killer, suggests that the campaign to overturn the law could face an uphill struggle.

Article 301, as the law is called, "laid the groundwork for the assassination," said Mustafa Koç, a member of the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD) and the chairman of the board of Koç Holding, Turkey’s largest and most influential business group. Those who support the law, he added, speaking at the January 25 annual meeting of the TUSIAD high council, "are trying to block transition . . . resist renewal . . . surrender themselves to the current authoritarian atmosphere."

Taken to court by the same ultra-nationalists who targeted Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk, Dink, the editor-in-chief of Agos newspaper, received a six-month suspended prison sentence under the law in October 2005. In the last article he ever published, the editor described the trial as a turning point in his life, writing that the law had prompted "a significant segment of the population . . . [to] view [me] as someone �insulting Turkishness.’"

Police have now detained five people in connection with Dink’s January 19 murder, including 17-year-old suspected gunman Ogun Samast, and an ultra-nationalist university student thought to be the mastermind behind the attack. [For details, see the Eurasia Insight archive].

All five detainees are from Trabzon, a fact that has convinced many inhabitants that this port town, seen as the unofficial capital of Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coastal region, is part of a sinister plot.

For those locals less inclined to conspiracy theories, it is the continuation of a nightmare that began in May 2005, when four young left-wing students narrowly avoided being beaten to death in central Trabzon by a lynch mob.

Like two smaller lynching attempts that followed it, that incident hit Turkish headlines. Then, in February 2006, Trabzon gained international notoriety after a 16-year old local boy shot and killed the Italian priest who ran the local Catholic church.

"What has happened to Trabzon?" asked the headline in the Turkish daily Radikal on January 22, a day after police, tipped off by relatives, arrested gunman Ogun Samast on a bus that would have taken him to Georgia.

Turkey was a nationalist country long before groups opposed to its European Union accession process began pumping up xenophobia. Radical nationalism of the sort that appears to have influenced Dink’s murderers has traditionally been strongest in the towns south of the 3,500-meter peaks dividing Trabzon from the bleak Anatolian interior. But it’s only recently that Trabzon has become a center for such thinking, and locals say the phenomenon is spiraling out of control.

"What you have here is a headless monster, a nursery for potential assassins," said Omer Faruk Altuntas, a lawyer and the local head of the small, left-leaning Freedom and Democracy Party.

"You may not like its policies, but at least the MHP [Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi � Nationalist Movement Party] controls its followers," agreed town councilor Mehmet Akcelep, referring to Turkey’s biggest extremist nationalist party. "But Samast and hundreds of others like him aren’t party people. They’re free operators. In part, Trabzon’s problems are Turkey’s problems. In the space of little more than a decade, the port city’s population has swollen from 150,000 to around 400,000 as farmers flee the economic deprivation of the countryside. In Pelitli, the Trabzon suburb which was home to Ogun Samast, youth unemployment is high, with only two Internet cafes in which idle youngsters can wile the time away."

Local media also play a role. When General Hilmi Ozkok, then commander-in-chief of Turkey’s armed forces, termed two Kurdish teenagers arrested for trying to burn the Turkish flag "so-called citizens," the town’s media outlets readily took up the accusation. When leftist students began distributing leaflets about prison conditions, two television stations told viewers they were separatists. Within minutes, hundreds of shopkeepers were on the street. The result was the May 2005 attempted lynching.

"Three or four times, [the local media has] pretty much invited people to take out their guns and start shooting", said Gultekin Yucesan, head of Trabzon’s Human Rights Association (IHD).

In most Anatolian towns, where people often only read local newspapers for the used car advertisements, that wouldn’t matter. But Trabzon’s ten papers and television stations are influential, for the simple reason that this is a city built around soccer.

Trabzonspor is the only non-Istanbul club ever to have won the Turkish League. Its blue and purple colors drape the city. And while everybody here supports it, some say its influence on the city is increasingly negative.

"Trabzon football has become a semi-official conduit for nationalism," said retired teacher Nuri Topal.

Locals say it’s no surprise that Ogun Samast and Yasin Hayal, the man believed to have given the teenager the gun that killed Dink, played amateur soccer for Pelitlispor.

Rumors have long circulated about the club’s links with a local mafia that got rich controlling this crucial staging post in Black Sea human trafficking networks. Just last year, the club’s best player was banned for conniving with match-fixing mafiosi.

IHD head Gultekin Yucesan describes an incident he saw at a Trabzonspor match two days after Dink’s murder.

After a couple of bad decisions by the referee, he said, one supporter shouted "Do that again and I’ll put a white hat on and blow your head off." Samast was wearing a white hat when he shot Hrant Dink.

"Trabzon must learn its lesson," proclaimed a headline in one local paper on January 22. Though for now, it is far from clear that it has.

Mehmet Samast, a distant relative of the teenager suspected of killing Dink, tells a reporter how much he regrets what has happened, how ashamed he feels. He appears to be sincere. But then, echoing the rhetoric of several nationalist parties, he goes on to say that Ogun Samast was the victim of an international plot.

"Trabzon is vital strategically," he explained. "This murder was the work of the Americans, or the Armenian Diaspora. They didn’t like [Dink] either, you know."

Writing on January 22 in the local newspaper Ilkhaber, columnist Temel Korkmaz was blunter. Since Europeans insist on calling the Kurdish separatists who kill Turkish soldiers "guerrillas," he wrote, "I’ll call the man who killed Dink a guerrilla, too."

In her January 26 column, Ece Temelkuran, a liberal columnist who writes for the national daily Milliyet, was pessimistic about Turkey’s future. Readers were evenly divided in their reactions to her earlier comments on Hrant Dink’s death, she wrote, with 50 percent supportive, 50 percent warning her to watch what she said.

But people who want to see a more open, more democratic Turkey "are not 50 percent of this country," Temelkuran wrote. "We are in a tiny minority. . . More than 200,000 people marched for Hrant Dink’s funeral. That’s good. But don’t forget that number is barely 1 percent of Istanbul’s population."

Editor's Note: Nicholas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the Middle East.

Ayse Kadioglu, "The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official Identity," Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, no. 2 (April 1996)


Civilization is a book to be written internationally: Each chapter containing the culture of a single nation.
Ziya Gokalp

On an ordinary day in 1986, a group of Turkish stage actors dressed in Nazi (SS) uniforms asked randomly the people walking in the streets of Istanbul to show their identity cards. Interestingly, they had employed a mixed language semi German and semi Turkish -- in approaching these people and asked for kimlik bitte!'. What was more interesting was that the majority of the people who were approached by these actors in SS uniforms showed their identity cards without questioning any part of the staged act. The whole event was meant to be humorous, yet it also revealed the unquestioned authority of anybody dressed in a uniform in a country with a strong state tradition.

A study trying to come to grips with the official Turkish identity, first of all, makes references to the strong state tradition in this country which evolved in such a way as to stifle the civil society. It is possible to argue that in such a country, the question of national identity was hardly posed as `Who are the Turks?, but rather as `Who and/or how are the Turks going to be?'. The latter question was clearly more prevalent throughout Turkish history indicating the manufactured character of the Republican Turkish identity. Secondly, the study of official Turkish identity makes references to the paradox of Turkish nationalism. Such a paradox is a characteristic of Eastern nationalisms with a derivative discourse. In fact, it is possible to argue that the paradox of Turkish nationalism enhanced the power of the state elites in Turkey and paved the way to a manufactured, official identity.

In what follows, first of all, the paradox of Turkish nationalism will be unravelled. Secondly, the role of the state elites in Turkey, especially during the single party regime in manufacturing an official Republican ideology will be portrayed.

The theme that a patriotic Turk should try to achieve a balance between the benefits of the West and the East by opting for adopting the science and technology of the former and the spirituality of the latter is repeated quite often in the schooling system designed by the educational establishment in Turkey. This difficult endeavour is almost like a mission for every patriotic Turk. Hence, it is possible to argue that since the days of the early Westernization efforts. the Turkish psyche has been burdened with the difficult task of achieving a balance between the Western civilization and the Turkish culture. Perhaps, one can argue that the women's world is like a microcosm of this paradox ingrained within the Turkish psyche. Since the early days of Westernization at the beginning of the nineteenth century, women have been burdened with the task of being tight-rope walkers between tradition and modernity.(1) They are expected to be modern in appearance while retaining some traditional virtues such as modesty which would keep them away from stepping into men's realm. Those women who are unable to achieve such a delicate balance by either being too modern as to warrant promiscuity or by being too traditional for not keeping up with novel fashions are usually pushed to the margins of society. The former are usually portrayed as too ambitious, and promiscuous `loose women' while the latter as old-fashioned and outmoded types. The tension between modernity and tradition depicted in the behaviour and dress codes of women exists albeit in a less apparent way in other domains of the Turkish social life as well. Patriotic Turks try to resolve this tension by achieving a balance between the materiality of the West and the spirituality of the East. However, the achievement of such a balance is quite enigmatic since a combination of Western civilization and Eastern culture, when transposed to the realm of nationalism renders itself as an insoluble problem.

Partha Chatterjee identifies nationalism as a problem in the history of political ideas.(2) This is especially apparent in the deeply contradictory mission of Eastern nationalism opting for transforming a national culture by adjusting it to the requirements of progress while at the same time maintaining its distinctive identity. In trying to shed some light on to the contradiction embedded within Eastern nationalism, it is necessary to point to a distinction between Western and non-Western nationalisms that is employed quite often in the literature. Such a distinction is made by Hans Kohn, for instance, between Western and non-Western nationalisms that are referred to as good and evil nationalisms, respectively.(3) Accordingly, while the former is taken as the normal type, the latter becomes the deviant type of nationalism. One of the distinguishing characteristics of Western nationalism is its cosmopolitan outlook, universalism, and its acceptance of civilization along with the material and intellectual premises of the European Enlightenment. French nation-state that was established in 1789 emerged concomitantly with such a nationalism which `represented to the rest of continental Europe the modernity of a nation based upon individual liberty, equality, and a cosmopolitan outlook'.(4) German nationalism, on the other hand, which emerged about half a century prior to the formation of the German nation-state in 1870, acquired an ethnic and cultural character with anti-Western, anti-Enlightenment, and Romantic premises. The nationalist youth movement in Germany at the turn of the nineteenth century was fraught with the purpose of `reconstructing the yolk along more genuine and natural principles than modernity had offered'.(5) These Volkish ideas were adopted by the German youth immediately preceding the National Socialists' rise to power as well. In an analysis of the intellectual origins of the Third Reich, George Mosse maintains that the discovery of such ideological presuppositions of the German youth is much more important than the search for some individual precursors of National Socialism such as Herder, Wagner or Nietzsche.(6) German nationalism is loaded with such Volkish ideas. Perhaps, the most distinguishing feature of these ideas is the distinction they put between culture and civilization which, according to Mosse, `was always on the lips of its adherents'.(7) While regarding culture as an entity with a soul, German nationalists regarded civilization as external and artificial, a feature which had forgotten its genuine, Germanic purpose. In the words of Mosse:

The acceptance of Culture and the rejection of Civilization meant for many

people an end to alienation from their society. The word `rootedness' occurs

constantly in their vocabulary. They sought this in spiritual terms,

through an inward correspondence between the individual, the native

soil, the yolk, and the universe. In this manner the isolation they

felt so deeply would be destroyed.(8)

These people opted for `a spiritual revolution which would revitalize the nation without revolutionizing its structure', that is, `a revolution of the soul'.(9)

Both the French and the German models of nationalism and the nation-state deeply influenced the character of rising nation-states everywhere. The paradox of Eastern nationalism stems from its attempt to combine the missions of both the French and the German models. Chatterjee, who focuses on anti-colonial, Eastern nationalism, maintains that such an attempt is deeply contradictory since `It is both imitative and hostile to the model it imitates. It is imitative in that it accepts the value of the standards set by the alien culture. But it also involves a rejection . . . of ancestral ways which are seen as obstacles to progress and yet also cherished as marks of identity.(10) The search of Eastern nationalism, then, is to transform the nation culturally while at the same time retaining its distinctiveness. Such a contradictory attempt is a leitmotiv in Turkish nationalism as it evolved alongside Turkish modernization.

Turkish modernization began in the course of the eighteenth century at the end of the first systematic attempts to understand the difference between the Ottoman and the European military systems. As a result, first traces of modernization involved the establishment of disciplined troops trained upon the recommendations of Western, mostly French, advisers in an effort to replace the janissaries that had become an organic part of the state rather than its instrument. At the turn of the nineteenth century, modernization involved areas other than the military as well. Between 1839 and 1908, the reforms increasingly involved civilian matters that resulted in the `revamping of the civil and political institutions of the Ottomans'.(11) These reforms were introduced by the Tanzimat Charter which was proclaimed by Sultan Abdulmecid in 1839. Tanzimat reforms which involved a major reorganization at the levels of provincial administration, education, and the judiciary brought the Ottomans to a point of no return towards institutional modernization. The ultimate aim of the Tanzimat reformers was the achievement of sivilizasyon as seen through French eyes.(12) This aim later became the slogan of the Republican reforms in the 1920s that strove to elevate Turkey to the level of muasir medeniyet (contemporary civilization).

With the initiation of Tanzimat reforms, the dilemma of the achievement of a balance between the materiality of the West and the spirituality of the East became quite clear. The main problematique of the Tanzimat writers was the achievement of a balance between these reforms and Islamic teachings by delineating the possibility of a compatibility between the two. The writings of the Young Ottomans -- a new literary movement that was inspired by French writing -- became crucial in coming to terms with the ongoing modernization by focusing on such a balance. The extent of modernization and its compatibility with Islam, for instance, constituted the problematique of the writings of Namik Kemal (1840-88), a leading young Ottoman.

In a study that focuses on the implications of the Tanzimat reforms on women, Nilufer Gole depicts a similar theme within the literary movements of the period that opt for achieving a balance between the materiality of the West and the spirituality of the East.(13) She maintains that authors like Namik Kemal, Ahmet Midhat, who thought with the conventions of West-East, and/or a la Franca-a la Turca, distinguished between the good and the bad aspects of the Western civilization corresponding to its material and spiritual aspects, respectively. These authors opted for a balance between Islam and Western civilization by making references to the practices associated with the early, golden age of Islam (Asr-i Saadet). In so doing, they tried to manifest the compatibility between Islamic culture and Western civilization. Tanzimat writers were critical of the adoption of certain Western codes of conduct and life styles on the part of the Ottoman elites. All the debates regarding modernization and Westernization were, in fact, about how to set limitations to this process. As ,Serif Mardin puts it:

One of the questions raised was the extent to which European or western

civilization is an indivisible force . . . Every time the question came up,

whether in the nineteenth century or in the twentieth, the idea of equality

as a fundamental value of the Ottoman system emerged as one which competed

with the idea of an untrammeled bourgeoisie. This is possibly one of the

subtlest strains of `survivals' which cannot be neglected in considering the

position of Turkey vis-a-vis Western Europe. In the nineteenth century, one of

its manifestations was the disapproving attitude of much of the Ottoman

middle- and lower-class population towards the behaviour of westernized

Tanzimat statesmen. Ottoman grandees who had borne the responsibility and

the risk of initiating new policies had also developed Western European

consumption patterns. Crinolines, pianos, dining tables and living-room

furniture were new ideas which the official class soon adopted, and these

were often seen as foolish luxuries by the section of the population that had

lived on the modest standards imposed by traditional values.(14)

It is obvious that a seemingly cosmetic Westernization adopted by the Ottoman elites was only skin-deep. Nevertheless, it generated criticism in the society that was crystallized in the Tanzimat literary tradition. Cosmetic Westernization was criticized as imitation of Western ways. It was also maintained that modernization was possible without resorting to Western codes of conduct that were usually portrayed as ridiculous for being artificial and phony.

Since the literary tradition between Tanzimat and the Republic is like a gold mine in unravelling the problematique of modernization/Westernization, it is worthwhile to refer to a couple of cases in this context. One of the most important novels written at the end of the nineteenth century that focuses on the theme of the extent of Westernization is Felatun Bey ile Rakim Efendi by Ahmet Midhat which was published in 1876.(15) The main theme of the novel is the description of the difference between an imitative, cosmetic Westernization which is ridiculed as phony and a rather preferred one which is characterized by a relentless effort to hold on to indigenous cultural traits. Whereas Felatun Bey is portrayed as an archetype of the former, Rakim Efendi represents the latter trend. Felatun Bey, for instance, prefers the name Plato rather than the Ottoman Felatun. He is the heir to an abundant inheritance and spends his life on the European side of Istanbul gambling and entertaining with women. Rakim Efendi, on the other hand spends his time working diligently in order to achieve his goal of leading a modest life. He is someone who was sent to school as a result of the self-sacrificing efforts of his guardian. He not only graduated from Ottoman educational institutions but also studied French. He is a serious, hard-working person, in contrast to the affluent, flagrant and spend-thrift Felatun Bey. It is obvious that Rakim Efendi represents a preferred model of Westernization without falling into the trap of engaging in conspicuous consumption and by retaining distinctive traits such as modesty.

Another well-known example is Bihruz Bey, an ostentatious Western character in Recaizade Ekrem's novel Araba Serdasi which was published in 1896.(16) Bihruz Bey is a man who became a public official through his father's connections despite the fact that he was a lazy, incompetent, fool for Western materialism. He inherits his father's fortunes which is more than adequate in guaranteeing a comfortable life for him and his mother on the European side of Istanbul. Bihruz Bey refers to Turkish customs as barbaric. He makes fun of the traditional costumes of the Turks. He, on the other hand, dresses himself in the European style with expensive, tailored costumes. He spends his fortune on carriages to roam around in the style of the European aristocrats. He constantly makes remarks in French. In short, he behaves and lives like a French noblesse de robe in Istanbul at the end of the nineteenth century. The Bihruz Bey syndrome which is so eloquently depicted in Recaizade Ekrem's novel generates a criticism against such cosmetic Westernization.

It is obvious that there were many Bihruz Beys in the Ottoman society at that particular historical juncture who were characterized by their imitative Westernization. The criticisms that were directed against them focused on their exaggerated adoption of Western materialism at the expense of indigenous cultural traits. The criticisms that were directed against Felatun Beys and Bihruz Beys point to the evolution of what Mardin calls the `just discourse' in Turkish society.(17) Drawing on the dichotomous classification of the Ottoman Empire with an elite stratum of military and civilian establishment on the one hand, and a folk stratum of the administered, on the other, Mardin maintains that the ensuing duality appears in a number of guises that sets a neat separation between Ottoman political society and civil society. In raising the issue of the `cause of the just' or the `just discourse', Mardin portrays `the lingering modern feeling that the folk are a part of a `team of the just"'.(18) More significantly, Mardin points to the way the `just discourse' is embedded within the Islamic discourse in modern Turkey enabling the folk to seek protection from the changes introduced by Western-oriented Republican reforms. Hence, the rift between the teams of the unjust and the just was produced and reproduced in the course of the modernization of the Ottomans, representing the `high', `palace' culture or the culture of the elites and the `little', `folk' culture, respectively.

It is obvious that with modernization efforts while the `cause of the unjust' was affiliated with the Westernizing elites -- hence critically portraying their affluent and spend-thrift life styles, `the cause of the just' which is characterized by a sense of grievance gradually began to be embraced by the Islamic discourse. The reforms introduced by the young Turks and the Republicans which continued a modernizing trend that was set with Tanzimat, purported to replace from above the Islamic teachings about a `good and just' life.(19) This eventually paved the way to the identification of the Kemalist secularists with the rule of the unjust. The Republican regime simply could not fill the vacuum that was formed with the estrangement and delinking of the discourses of the just and the unjust from each other.

A preoccupation with this balance between modernity and tradition, Western materialism and Eastern spirituality as well as Civilization -- based on the premises of Enlightenment -- and Culture -- based on the premises of Romanticism -- is a recurring theme accompanying Turkish modernization. The desire to achieve such a balance is nowhere better expressed than in Ziya Gokalp's (1876-1924) works. Ziya Gokalp's ideas were wavering between the three trends of Islamism, Turkism, and Westernism, hence, reflecting the political climate of the context in which he was located. As Niyazi Berkes puts it: `He was fighting within himself the battle that intellectuals and politicians were raging on other levels'.(20)

Ziya Gokalp produced his basic writings between the years 1911 and 1918 when he was associated with the Party of Union and Progress against the emotional background of the period laden with nationalist movements among the non-Muslim and non-Turkish peoples of the decadent Ottoman Empire. While on the one hand, there were those intellectuals and politicians who opted for a social reconstruction by way of reversion to Sriat (Islamic law), there were those who staunchly supported the idea of Westernization, on the other. In addition to these two groups, there were others who longed for the romantic ideal of the pre-Islamic Turkic unity. Ziya Gokalp was influenced by all of these trends. Yet, he envisaged a middle road in the tradition of Namik Kemal: `that only the material civilization of Europe should be taken and not its non-material aspects'.(21) Yet, contrary to Namik Kemal's thought, Ziya Gokalp did not think that the individual and his reason could be a criteria for social reconstruction. Ziya Gokalp rather signified a shift from Tanzimat rationalism inspired by the eighteenth century thinkers of the European Enlightenment to the nineteenth century Romantic thought in the tradition of the German philosophers by accepting the transcendental reality of society identified with the nation instead of individual reason. Berkes sums up Ziya Gokalp's convictions in the following manner: `As the ultimate reality of contemporary society is the nation, and as national ideals are ultimate forces orienting the behavior of the individuals, so the most urgent task for the Turks consisted of awakening as a nation in order to adapt themselves to the conditions of contemporary civilization'.(22)

Ziya Gokalp believed that it was the primary task of sociology to determine `what the Turkish people already possessed or lacked to be a modern nation'.(23) He diagnosed the major ailment of the existing cultural climate in Turkey within the dichotomous representations of the East and the West. Accordingly, he believed in the necessity of an adjustment between the two aspects of social life, namely civilization and culture. Ziya Gokalp believed that civilization simply became a matter of mechanical imitation without a cultural basis. The source of cultural values was located in the social unit that he called `nation' Hence, he tried to give momentum to the rise of the concept of a modern Turkish nation as an independent cultural unit within the confines of contemporary civilization. He placed a lot of emphasis on the concept of `nation in coming to terms with the adjustment of culture and civilization. Ziya Gokalp's analyses contained the premises of both Enlightenment and Romanticism symbolized in the concepts of civilization and culture, respectively. By the same token, the nationalism that he described contained elements of individual liberty, rational cosmopolitanism, and universalism while at the same time tended for its own self-preservation. In short, it contained elements of both a cosmopolitan French nationalism and an organic, anti-Western and anti-enlightenment German nationalism. This paradoxical synthesis, first of all, posed the national question in the Turkish context as an insoluble problem; secondly it assigned a particular role to the refined intellect in transforming the popular consciousness by an elitist project from above. The latter had paved the way to the evolution of an official Turkish identity within the confines of a peculiar Turkish nationalism that was adopted in the course of the formative years of the Turkish Republic.

The national question poses itself theoretically as an insoluble problem in the Turkish context. Chatterjee explains the theoretical insolubility of the national question in colonial countries by pointing to a distinction between the thematic and problematic levels of nationalist thought. In so doing, Chatterjee draws a great deal from Anouar Abdel-Malek's distinction between the thematic and problematic levels of Orientalism.(24) Accordingly, Orientalism at the level of the thematic is `codified in linguistic conventions'.(25) It is a style of thought based on an ontological and epistemological distinction between the Orient and the Occident, the East and the West. Orientalism, at the level of the problematic, on the other hand, involves a separation of the Orient as an object of study stamped with an otherness that is passive and non-participant. Edward Said's description of Flaubert's encounter with an Egyptian courtesan, which produced a widely influential model of an Oriental woman portrays Orientalism at the level of the problematic:

. . . she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions,

presence, or history. He spoke for and represented her. He was foreign,

comparatively wealthy, male and these were historical facts of domination

that allowed him not only to possess Kuchuk Hanem physically but to speak

for her and tell his readers in what way she was `typically Oriental'.(26)

It is obvious that Said's description points to a power relation between the Orient and the Occident that enables the latter to dominate the former. Therefore, the subjectivity of the object is denied to him/her. Orientalism at the level of the problematic is analogous to `an understanding of meaning in terms of the subjective intentions that lie behind particular speech acts.'(27)

When these two levels of Orientalism are transposed to the nationalist thought, the compatibility between the two levels extinguishes. At the level of the thematic, nationalist thought adopts the same essentialist distinction between the Orient and the Occident or the East and the West. Therefore, the object still retains the essentialist Oriental character. Yet, at the level of the problematic, the nationalist thought, quite contrary to Orientalism, relinquishes the subjectivity of the object who thenceforth is no longer passive, and non-participant. Since the subject is the advocate of an anti-colonial, anti-Western nationalist cause, `he is seen to possess a "subjectivity" which he can himself "make".'(28) The active, autonomous, sovereign subject is burdened with the mission of carrying an anti-colonial nationalist movement at the level of the problematic. It is obvious that in the nationalist discourse while the object retains its essentialist, passive Oriental character at the level of the thematic which condemns its subjectivity, it is also positioned in an active role in the anti-colonial nationalist struggle at the level of the problematic. These two levels of nationalist thought are inherently contradictory. It is this contradictoriness which places the national question as an insoluble problem in a post-colonial country. As Chatterjee puts its: `There is, consequently, an inherent contradictoriness in nationalist thinking, because it reasons within a framework of knowledge whose representational structure corresponds to the very structure of power nationalist thought seeks to repudiate.'(29)

Despite the fact that Turkey was not a colony, a similar contradictoriness and insolubility results from the adoption of a Westernization project while at the same time clinging on to distinctive cultural traits. The paradox of Turkish nationalism which resulted in both a hostility towards and an imitation of Western ways has accompanied the modernization process since the turn of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, it is quite obvious that Turkish nationalism was not the awakening of Turks to national consciousness. It was rather a project undertaken by intellectuals whose discourse was laden with the dilemma of a choice between imitation and identity stemming from the aforementioned paradox. The intellectuals, in Chatterjee's words,

always face the crucial dilemma between `westernizing' and a narodnik

tendency . . . But the dilemma is quite spurious: ultimately the movements

invariably contain both elements, a genuine modernism and a more or less

spurious concern for local culture . . . By the twentieth century, the dilemma

hardly bothers anyone: the philosopher-kings of

the `underdeveloped' world all act as westernizers, and all talk like

narodniks.(30)

The superior material qualities of the West, its science and technology, however, can only be synthesized with the spirituality of the East with a project from without' which necessarily involves the intellectuals who take upon themselves the task of transforming a popular consciousness `steeped in centuries of superstition and irrational folk religion'.(31) By adopting a positivistic stance that was intolerant towards the religio-mystical tradition, the Republican elites in Turkey instigated a distancing of popular, religious elements that thenceforth represented the `cause of the just.'

The proclamation of the Republic in 1923 was followed by the abolition of the office of the caliphate in 1924. Other steps were taken in the course of the 1920s and early 1930s towards secularizing the Republic. These included the abolition of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations, abolition of religious courts, proscription of male religious headgear, namely the fez, dissolution of the dervish orders, reform of the calendar, and adoption of the Swiss Civil Code. By the end of the 1920s, radical reforms were passed such as disestablishment of the state religion (10 April 1928), adoption of the Latin alphabet (1 November 1928), and the use of the Turkish language in the Islamic call to prayer (3 February 1932).(32) These reforms constituted an onslaught on the existing cultural practices. They opted for a general state of amnesia which would lead to a process of estrangement of the people from some of their own cultural practices. Feroz Ahmad refers to the adoption of the Latin alphabet in place of the Arabic script as the `most iconoclastic reform of the period.'(33) He says: `At a stroke, even the literate people were cut off from their past. Overnight, virtually the entire nation was made illiterate'.(34)

The notion of an Islamic state was anathema to the Republican elites organized around the Republican People's Party. They wanted Turkey to reach to the level of contemporary civilization by emphasizing notions such as science, modern education, rationality and secularism. The 1920s and the 1930s were crucial years in the making of the new Republican Turkey and the emergence of the `new Turks'.(35) In the course of this transformation, there were certain critical turning points that portrayed the gradually increasing conflict between the state and the civil society. In fact, one of the first opposition parties that was founded in November 1924, the Progressive Republican Party -- led by ax-officers like Ali Fuad Cebesoy and Rauf Orbay, opted for `restoring the sovereignty of the people over that of the state'.(36) The Progressive Republicans declared their commitment to liberalism and promised to respect religious opinions and beliefs. Yet, their attempts to pose themselves as a viable opposition failed when an extraordinary law -- Takrir-i Sukun Kanunu (the Law for the Maintenance of Order) -- was passed in March 1925 as a response to a Kurdish rebellion that broke out in eastern Anatolia in February. Thereafter, all the opposition to the Kemalist regime was either crushed or was `created' by the regime itself which was acting as a `referee'. After prompting the establishment of the token Republican Free Party in 1930 as the opposition, Ataturk advised the leaders of the two political parties (Ismet Inonu and Fethi Okyar) in the following manner: `I am now a father. Both of you are my sons. As far as I am concerned there is no difference between the two of you. What I want from you in the Grand National Assembly is an open debate upon national issues.'(37)

The February 1925 rebellion was launched and sustained in religious terms. It confirmed the fears of the Republican leaders of religious reaction and counter-revolution in a society in which a revolution was being realized from above. The Law for the Maintenance of Order gave the government virtually absolute powers for the next two years and on other occasions until March 1929. The 1924 rebellion and the ensuing extraordinary legislation was a dress rehearsal of the dynamics of the Republican regime which was determined by the undisputed principle of the indivisibility of the country. It was through such critical turning points that the Republican regime finally established itself in a centralized fashion.

Another fuming point which furthered the centralization of the Republican regime was the incident in Menemen, near Izmir, in November 1930, where a violent reaction erupted which was directed against the secular military-bureaucratic elites. The disturbance began when a reserve officer in the local gendarmerie was sent to Menemen to quell a disturbance caused by Dervis Mehmed of the Naksibendi mystical order who claimed that he was the Mahdi, who had come to save the world. The reserve officer was seized by the raging crowd, beheaded, and his head was stuck on a flag pole and paraded around the town. The Menemen incident is critical in channelling the subsequent route of the Republican regime since it made it quite clear to the Republican elites that the reforms that were undertaken in the 1920s had not taken root. It manifested in no uncertain terms the erasure of the link between the causes of the unjust and the just, manifested in the centre and the periphery, respectively. As Mardin puts it: `. . . between 1923 and 1946 the periphery -- in the sense of the provinces -- was suspect and because it was considered an area of potential disaffection, the political center kept it under close observation'.(38)

In the period after 1930, the efforts of the Republican elites were more systematically geared towards creating a new ideology. In May 1931, the ideology of Kemalism was launched in accordance with the principles adopted at the Third Party Congress of the Republican People's Party. Accordingly, the six fundamental and unchanging principles of the regime were defined as Republicanism, Nationalism, Populism, Statism, Secularism and Revolutionism/Reformism. The insignia of the six arrows of the Republican Peoples' Party represent the premises of the Turkish Republic that were formulated at that time. Since liberalism and democracy had already been discredited in the eyes of the Republican elites in the 1930s due to the instability of the regimes in Western Europe, they were not included within the founding principles of the Republic. Moreover, the principles of liberalism and democracy did not coincide with the interests of the Republican elites internally since they were constantly trying to tighten their grip on the periphery. The efforts of the Republican elites to create a systematic ideology led to the publication of a monthly called Kadro. Kadro, which began publication in Ankara in January 1932, aimed at `creating an ideology original to the regime'.(39) The Kemalist regime tightened its grip over the periphery in the aftermath of revolts such as the 1925 Kurdish rebellion -- which was actually a religious reaction -- and the 1930 Menemen incident. In fact, the dynamics of events that paved the way to overt attempts at creating a Republican ideology from above manifested a latent fear of the Kemalist elites that Anatolia would be split on primordial group lines.(40) That fear channelled the Kemalist elites towards further social engineering.

By 1930, it was generally agreed by the Republican elites that the reforms that were undertaken in the course of the 1920s had not taken root. This problem was to be remedied with further reforms from above that were geared towards creating a new Turk. The emerging new Turkish identity, then, was distinguished by its manufactured character. Turks were a `made' nation by virtue of emphasizing their difference from the Ottomans along the similar Jacobin lines that the French revolutionaries followed in creating the Frenchman. The fervent desire to break with the past was clearly manifested in the ensuing reforms. From 1923 onwards, the new Turks were to be governed from their new capital at the heart of Anatolia, Ankara, in a mental state that was havoc and can perhaps best be described as `voluntary amnesia'. The Republican state had the mission of elevating people to the level of contemporary civilization. Since any peripheral revolt was interpreted as an effort to revive the old religious order, Republican reforms contained anti-religious themes or in the words of Mardin `showed a clear distaste for religion'.(41) The plain fact remained, however, that the Kemalist ideology could not replace Islam in the lives of the people. The teachings of the Kemalist doctrine were internalized only by the intelligentsia which contributed to the widening of the rift between the center and the periphery.

The Republican elites' attempts to create an ideology was only skin-deep and not espoused by all the classes. The Republic was founded upon principles that were not genuine but were rather manufactured from above. In short, the Republic was not democratic. Democracy was not one of the six arrows of the Republican People's Party.

In the aftermath of the military coup on 12 September 1980, a trend was set in Turkey towards challenging the early Kemalist principles. Such a trend was set in the political atmosphere created in the aftermath of the 1982 Constitution which curbed the number of categories of the state elites, that is, the appointed rather than elected bureaucratic and military elites. The evolution of the Turkish democracy involved a constant conflict between the state elites and political elites, namely, the elected representatives of political parties, who emphasized the vertical and horizontal dimensions of democracy, respectively.(42) It is obvious that an undue stress on the vertical dimension maintaining the long-term interests of the community paves the way to the evolution of strong states that block the development of pluralism and/or civil society. An undue stress on the horizontal dimension, i.e. political participation, leads to debilitating pluralism. Hence the problematique of democracy lies in the achievement of a balance between these two dimensions. In the words of Metin Heper:

The problematique democracy faces is the necessity of striking a balance

between political participation and prudent leadership. By definition,

increased participation democratizes political regimes, but the

consolidation of democracy necessitates the less dramatic but equally

significant process of the emergence of a prudent, not merely a responsive

government.(43)

It is obvious that the state elites reinstituted their powers throughout Turkish political history whenever they felt that the political elites gained too much independence. Hence, the political elites were allowed to play their roles in a system in which the state elites had traditionally been more established. Since the time of the drafting of the early Republican principles the state elites had always felt that they had the last word on vital matters. They took it upon themselves to protect the early Republican ideals that came to be symbolized in the six arrows of the Republican People's Party. Hence, the three military interventions (1960-61, 1971-73, 1980-83) were undertaken in order to reinstitute these early ideals that the political elites had ostensibly ignored. The tradition of resolving the conflict between the state elites and the political elites by reinstituting the powers of the former and by punishing the latter had among other things led to the mystification of an official, absolute, and monolithic Turkish identity.

The 1980s opened up a new chapter in Turkey's political dynamics. Many international and internal factors were influential in prompting this opening. The end of Cold War rhetoric, the opening up of new foreign policy arenas for Turkey, globalization and a score of internal factors pertaining to the Turkish political structure heralded this new era in Turkish politics.(44) Perhaps one of the most critical consequences of the process of globalization is the shattering of homogenous, standardized cultures in an international order whose main political actors were the nation-states. Globalization paradoxically led to the emergence of local identities. The liberal economic policies which were adopted in Turkey in the early 1980s were geared towards global integration. This process was accelerated by the exposure of the Turkish public to global television channels such as CNN and BBC. Moreover, the emergence of various Turkish television channels has lessened the importance of the official Turkish Radio and Television that had been instrumental in maintaining the monolithic Turkish identity.

The internal political dynamics set in the post-1980 period had certain characteristics which connected Turkey with the international global medium. First of all, the post-1983 regime strengthened the political elites in Turkey as a prelude to further democratization. Secondly, the new discourse of the state elites began to make references to the significance of the Islamic identity of the Turks. This discourse led to the abandonment of Kemalism as a political manifesto. It is true that Kemalist principles were still emphasized in this period although not for the sake of creating a monolithic Turkish identity but rather arresting the spread of Marxism, fascism, and religious fundamentalism. The new discourse of the state elites, on the other hand, were laden with references to the significance of religious values for the Turks. Such references represented a stark contrast when compared with the early Kemalist-secular discourse of the state elites. Despite the fact that such a shift was probably prompted by an urge to fight communism rather than by a genuine renewed interest in Turkish identity, it led to a legitimation of the `cause of the just' represented by the Islamic periphery. Islam had finally been brought from the periphery to the centre of Turkish politics as the antidote of communism. Thirdly, many civil societal elements were able to find for themselves a breathing space in this medium in which the grip of the centre over the periphery was gradually being removed. This has led to the emergence of women activists marching to protest against being battered by men, environmentalists, homosexuals and transsexuals seeking the protection of their rights, and Islamic university students protesting against university dress codes. The mushrooming of such civil societal elements coupled with the new mission of the technocratic elites of the 1980s who `defined their goal less in terms of educating the people than of synthesizing Islamic values and pragmatic rationality' gave rise to a political climate that allowed the search for a more historically rooted Turkish identity.(45)

In the course of these developments there also emerged those groups who were critical of these shifts in the discourse of the state elites and expressed a clear wish for the reinstitution of the official Turkish identity which was viewed as secular, nationalist, statist, republican, populist, and reformist in an early Republican sense. The debates and clashes between the Kemalist-secular groups and others who are tolerant towards religious images have begun to represent the newly polarized political cleavages in Turkey in the 1990s.

It is meaningful to refer at this point to the manner in which the Westernist and Islamic discourses are interwoven in the Turkish context in spite of the fact that both trends in their current political manifestations are waging a war to exclude one another. In other words, while the secular Westernists are increasingly becoming more hostile to religious images by relying on and commodifying the image of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the religious groups are increasing their attacks on the decadent Western culture. Ironically, Ataturk who set the trajectory of Turkish modernization towards a zealous Westernization, had never abandoned the rhetoric of a synthesis between the West and Islam. In fact, he adopted for himself and for the Turkish military the title gazi' (connoting a crusading spirit shared by the Muslims who waged wars against the infidel). Ironically, the syntactic and semantic structure of the discourse of the Islamists who have attacked the decadence of the West of the past decade is laden with representations of post-Enlightenment rational thought. Ismet Ozel, for instance, who is a prominent Islamic poet in Turkey has titled his autobiography: Waldo, Sen Neden Burada Degilsin? (Waldo, Why Aren't You Here?), which is a statement made by an American thinker Henry David Thoreau when his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson came to visit him in jail.(46)

The above analysis endeavoured to show the connections between the paradox of Turkish nationalism and the emergence of a Jacobin, `managerial' intelligentsia during the early years of the Republic. Turkish nationalism contained the premises of an Enlightenment mentality as well as a brand of Romanticism. It purported to synthesize the materialism of the West and certain indigenous cultural traits such as Islam, as well as pre-Islamic Turkic traditions. The origins of the attempts to realize such a synthesis date back to the beginnings of Turkish modernization with the Tanzimat reforms. Such a synthesis could only be realized by a social engineering from above that was undertaken by the early Republican elites. The early Republican reforms which were represented in the Republican People's Party's six arrows contained a clear distaste for religion. The reforms instigated during the early Republican years represented a turning point regarding the managerial role of the state geared towards revamping the old social institutions. It is at this historical juncture that the links between the discourse of the periphery and the centre were erased. The early Republican project of social engineering reproduced itself whenever there emerged peripheral revolts challenging the unquestioned authority of the centre. Even the opposition parties were founded in accordance with the limitations posed by the r