[Bilimsel Haber] Silenced: The nationalist war on Turkey's i

[incirli at bilkent.edu.tr]

Yazi The Independent'ta yayinlanmis: http://www.independent.co.uk/



08 Mar 2007 10:16 EET tarihinde yazmışsınız:

> Silenced: The nationalist war on Turkey's intellectuals
> 
> Free-thinkers are under siege from a campaign of intimidation by the far
> right which has created a climate of repression and self-censorship.
> Elizabeth Davies reports from Istanbul
> 
> Published: 07 March 2007
> 
> Perihan Magden is not, by her own admission, "a bodyguard kind of woman".
> Energetic and feisty, with a mass of tousled hair falling in her face and a
> decrepit, fading rucksack slung carelessly over one shoulder, she doesn't
> look like someone who would need - or want - protecting. A best-selling
> novelist and celebrated commentator, hailed by the Nobel Prize-winning
> author Orhan Pamuk as "one of the most inventive and outspoken writers of
> our time", Magden regularly shuns the spotlight in favour of a quieter life
> at home in Istanbul with her teenage daughter. She rarely gives interviews
> and, she says, has no desire to see her face on the evening news or "spread
> across the papers".
> 
> It is hardly a high-profile, celebrity lifestyle. Yet last month, despite
> all her efforts to stay out of the public eye, Magden was considered to be
> sufficiently at risk to be given a 24-hour security detail. For 10 days
> after the murder of the prominent Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, her every
> move was watched by a government bodyguard. In an indication of the gravity
> of the threat, at least a dozen others needed similar protection. All of
> them, from novelists to researchers to newspaper editors, had at some point
> voiced their criticism of the Turkish state - and now all were paying the
> price.
> 
> "We don't want to live like hunted animals," Magden says, her eyes blazing
> with indignation. "But we have been made international targets. It's a
> lottery and this time it stopped at Hrant's slot. What if next time it stops
> at mine?" She breaks off, gazing wistfully through the window out to the
> glinting blue of the Bosphorus.
> 
> Turkey's intellectuals are living in fear. Dink's assassination in January
> was just the latest, if by far the most brutal, manifestation of a rising
> tide of nationalism which is posing an increasing threat to the country's
> pro-European aspirations and democratic reform. A climate of repression and
> of self-censorship has set in among the intelligentsia, leaving the people
> who should be their country's most eloquent and effective ambassadors scared
> to speak out - and those who are the country's worst enemy holding the rest
> of the nation to ransom by means of a relentless campaign of violence and
> intimidation.
> 
> For a great many people it has become almost impossible to live a normal
> life. There are those like Ismet Berkan, the editor of the liberal newspaper
> Radikal, who receive death threats in the post. Those like Baskin Oran, a
> 62-year-old professor of political science at Ankara University, who are
> unable to leave their house without police protection. Others have lost
> their jobs after writing reports just a little too critical of the military,
> or the judiciary, or the enigmatic quality of "Turkishness".
> 
> For Orhan Pamuk, the author of a string of acclaimed novels including Snow
> and My Name Is Red, it was all too much. Just days after Dink's funeral he
> abruptly left the country for self-imposed exile in the US, declaring
> himself to be "furious at everyone and everything".
> 
> It was a coup for the far-right mob and a major blow for liberal,
> pro-democratic Turks. The man who, through his writing, had done more than
> perhaps any other to introduce modern Turkey's complexities to the West had
> been forced out. It is as yet unclear when he will return.
> 
> In a sign of how deep-rooted and fundamental the problem is, by far the most
> effective method of intimidation has proved to be none other than the
> Turkish penal code itself, which decrees that denigrating the national
> identity is punishable by up to two years in prison.
> 
> At least 50 people, from a 92-year-old archaeologist to the Nobel laureate
> Pamuk, who enraged conservatives by referring to the mass killings of
> Armenians in the early part of the 20th century as genocide, were charged
> with offences under the infamous Article 301 in 2006 alone. As Magden,
> herself on trial last year for defending conscientious objection, says, the
> process is highly disturbing. "They show you that you are being threatened.
> My life was shattered. Isn't that punishment enough?"
> 
> Magden's case was unusual in that it was brought by the still-powerful
> military, which was enraged by her defence of conscientious objection in one
> of her columns. Almost all the other cases have been brought by members of
> the ultra-nationalist Turkish Lawyers' Union, at the helm of which is a
> lawyer called Kemal Kerincsiz who has made it his mission to protect Turkey
> and "Turkishness" from such malevolent outside forces as the EU and
> democracy. If there is one man in Turkey who is reaping the rewards of the
> surge in support for nationalism, one man who has almost single-handedly
> waged a legal war on intellectuals and is driving home the message of the
> far right to the people most vulnerable to its rhetoric, it is Kerincsiz.
> Speaking from a workers' cafe after the Taksim rally, where he moved
> stealthily through the side crowds, a little man with a long dark overcoat
> and toothbrush moustache, he explains with unfailing politeness but absolute
> conviction why Turkey should be left alone.
> 
> "There is no evidence in world history that Muslim and Christian
> civilisations, East and West, can peacefully co-exist with one another," he
> says, passing trays of steaming glasses of tea down the long trestle tables
> to his bevy of supporters. "The democracy that the EU is trying to impose is
> an elite democracy. It is just for people like Elif Shafak, Orhan Pamuk and
> Hrant Dink [all of whom he brought charges against under Article 301]."
> 
> Freedom of speech should not be abused, he proclaims. His friends down table
> smile and nod. "Laws like 301 protect freedom of speech," he says, adding
> with chilling logic: "Because if they didn't exist those people who talk
> against the nation would be shot." Does he feel responsible in any way for
> Hrant Dink's murder, perpetrated by a 17-year-old boy pumped up on deadly
> nationalist rhetoric? "I bear no responsibility for such violent acts. We
> have always worked within the framework of the law." And, again, that logic:
> "We were more sad than anyone else because we would have preferred to show
> Turkey how wrong his ideas were. We would have liked to teach him a lesson."
> 
> Article 301 has attracted the attention of human rights groups the world
> over, with Amnesty International repeatedly calling for its abolition.
> Brussels has urged Ankara to make further reforms of the penal code. In
> Turkey, too, protests are continuing despite the scare tactics of the far
> right.
> 
> But campaigners complain that the government is hamstrung in the run-up to
> elections later this year. Tuna Beklevic, the leader of a small,
> youth-oriented political party, has urged the government to repeal the
> clause. "Politicians are not standing up for freedom of speech," he says
> from his ramshackle office in the centre of the city. On the seats around
> him lie the discarded placards waved by thousands at Hrant Dink's funeral in
> solidarity with the Armenian cause. "The government is losing its power to
> do anything before the elections. It has made a lot of progress towards EU
> integration but now it is acutely aware of the nationalists. It cannot turn
> its back on them completely."
> 
> Although liberals are keen to dismiss the nationalists as a noisy minority,
> at the moment it is clear that they are punching well above their weight.
> Recent polls show that support for the Nationalist Action Party, or MHP, has
> gone up from 8.4 per cent in the 2003 elections to 14.1 per cent. The AK
> party, led by the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has fallen meanwhile
> from 33 to 26 per cent. And, while there are hints that the more moderate
> wings of the government would like to change Article 301, there is no chance
> they will risk alienating key support. Come April, the Prime Minister will
> have to announce whether he is to run for President - a post in which the
> former Islamist would wield veto power over all legislation. The very idea
> of this is enough to make many conservatives' blood run cold; the last thing
> Mr Erdogan wants to do is enrage those in the powerful and staunchly secular
> military, judiciary and bureaucracy, or "deep state".
> 
> This has all led to what Volkan Aytar, of the leading independent think-tank
> Tesev, calls "a society of lynching" in which the far right is able to lash
> out at those it wants to silence because the government lacks the will to
> stop it. "These people are not comfortable with the idea that there are
> people out there challenging the basic notions of what it means to be
> Turkish. They have always thought of those things as unchangeable, that you
> cannot talk about them, that you just have to accept them as they are. And
> the only way they can fight is with violence." Last month, after the arrest
> of Dink's killer, photographs surfaced showing the teenager posing with
> smiling police officers beneath a Turkish flag. The collaboration between
> nationalist forces and the establishment, says Aytar, is still very much a
> problem. "You are tried for what you say, not what you do. There are still
> institutions within the state who do not want Turkey to progress. And when
> you follow through this line of thought Hrant Dink's murder was not such a
> big surprise."
> 
> Ask many nationalists whether they too believe Hrant Dink's death had been
> predictable and chances are you will get a similar response. At a recent
> rally of die-hards, the red and white of the Turkish flag flying high and
> the chant of "We are all Turks" echoing around the bleak, concrete expanse
> of Istanbul's Taksim Square, a young IT technician with a flag tied around
> his shaved head explained why the journalist's death was necessary. "He was
> a danger to the nation, so it was his fate," Tahir Ozan says bluntly. He was
> not keen to go into detail.
> 
> There are a growing number of people like him in Turkey, young,
> impressionable voters who are feeling increasingly resentful towards the
> outside world, Brussels in particular and the West in general. Since the
> partial suspension of EU membership talks in December, mounting frustration
> has in some groups boiled over into nationalist fervour. Turkey's young
> people are facing a dilemma, says Tuna Beklevic. "The EU integration period
> is causing problems, as is the US involvement in Iraq. They see a lot of
> Islamophobia in the West, they are becoming more nationalistic because they
> feel shunned." Magden, formerly a vociferous advocate of EU accession,
> agrees. "Now even I want to tell them to bugger off," she admits.
> 
> It is clear where this could all go horribly wrong. Turkey is at a kind of
> tipping point. With a very young society and high levels of youth
> unemployment, observers warn it could be sleepwalking towards disaster.
> "It's like Nazi Germany; it's a ticking bomb," says Magden. "The land is
> very fertile for a great rise in nationalism."
> 
> For many, the choice is clear. As Elif Shafak, a novelist put on trial by
> Kerincsiz last year after one of her fictional characters spoke of the
> Armenian genocide, says: "I think we should ask ourselves this simple
> question: What kind of a Turkey do we envisage? One that is part of European
> civilisation, open, democratic, egalitarian and pluralistic? Or one that is
> insular, xenophobic, closed and governed by politics of fear?"
> 
> The future is there for the taking. But now, more than ever, those Turks who
> do want to see their country progress are in need of their most articulate
> representatives to fight their cause for them. The far right has voiced its
> intentions loud and clear; it is no time for those who despise it to keep
> quiet.
> 
> 
> 
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