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January 30, 2007

The Hrant Dink Murder and Its Meaning

[Originally published in First Things website]

On January 19, 2007, a journalist named Hrant Dink was shot dead by a seventeen-year-old militant on one of Istanbul’s busiest avenues. In just thirty-two hours, the Turkish police caught the reckless killer, who confessed his crime quite proudly. “I shot the Armenian,” he said smugly, “because he had insulted Turkishness.”

Hrant Dink was a member of Turkey’s seventy-thousand-strong Armenian community. But he was not just any member. As the founder and editor of the weekly Agos, the bilingual Turkish/Armenian newspaper, he was certainly the most prominent Armenian public intellectual in the country. He was, like many Turkish democrats, critical of the authoritarian measures of the state, with a particular emphasis on the taboos about the Armenian tragedy of 1915. Mr. Dink, like many others, believed that the tragedy was indeed a planned genocide. (The Turkish view, on the other hand, is that hundreds of thousands Armenians did indeed perish in 1915, but so did many Turks and Kurds, and what happened should be defined as intercommunal violence, not as a campaign of extermination.)

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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 3:38 PM | Comments (2)

January 28, 2007

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Turkish Politics

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]

As George Orwell articulated so masterfully in his classic, “1984,” political wisdom begins with discovering the real meanings of political terms.

The real meanings of such terms in Turkey are especially worth finding out — and particularly for the uninitiated foreigner. If you are one of them, I suggest you take note of the following list, which might be helpful in understanding what some Turkish politicians and pundits mean when they speak about this country's big issues.

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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 3:45 PM | Comments (3)

January 24, 2007

Meet the Monster: Turkish Fascism

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]

Hrant Dink, a beacon of conscience and liberty, was shot dead on Jan. 19. Since that black Friday, many Turks have shown the virtue to condemn this heinous murder and cry out for the memory of this noble man. Yet some of our “opinion leaders” have also invented concealed plots against “the Turkish nation” behind this public killing. This is, they rushed to conclude, a maneuver by “foreign powers” and their intelligence services directed at putting Turkey in a difficult situation in the international scene.

But lo and behold! The Turkish police caught the killer and he turned out to be no agent of the CIA. Nor of Mossad, MI6, Mukhabarat, or some People's Army for The Liberation of The Turkish-Occupied Wherever. He is neither Armenian nor Kurdish. He is, as his family proudly noted, “of pure Turkish stock.” Moreover, as he himself proudly noted, he is a die-hard Turkish nationalist who killed Dink out of his zeal for the “Turkish blood.” It also turned out that the 17-year-old apparatchik was directed by his elder “brothers” in Trabzon who have an ugly history of nationalist violence. The city, after all, is the citadel of ultra-nationalism: Catholic priest Father Andrea Santoro was also shot there a year ago by a 16-year-old militant, who had a profile very similar to his comrade who killed Dink.

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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:22 AM | Comments (6)

January 19, 2007

I Am Armenian Today

Turkey’s most prominent Armenian intellectual, Hrant Dink, was murdered today at the door of the community newspaper he edits, Agos. He was a man of courage and principle. He opposed not only the fascism of Turkey’s ultra-nationalist circles, but also the fanatic anti-Turkism of some members of the Armenian Diaspora. His dream was a Turkey in which Turks and non-Turks, Muslims and Christians, and all others could live in mutual respect and understanding. He was a true freedom fighter—who knew that pen is both mightier and much more humane than the sword.

Alas, there are others in this country, Turkey, who lack the humanity to understand that. One of them killed Hrant Dink today. I denounce this killer and his patrons with all my heart. And respect the memory of Hrant Dink with all my soul. May he rest in peace, and may his dreams come true.

Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2007

Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Kurdistan

[Originally published in Turkish Daily News]

If one wishes to summarize Turkey's conventional policy on the Kurds within a single sentence, a modification of the first of the Ten Commandments might help: “Thou shalt not have any identities before me; for I am a jealous State.”

From the mid-20s on, Turkey asked its Kurdish citizens to deny and forget their authentic identity. Instead, they were forced to embrace “Turkishness,” in terms of not only citizenship, but also ethnicity. Similarly, “Kurdistan,” which was a term used unreservedly by the Ottomans to define their predominantly Kurdish provinces, disappeared from public discourse. No wonder, well into my adolescent years in Ankara, I simply hadn't heard the term “Kurd” at all. The first time I heard two Kurdish-speaking fellows on the street, I was quite amazed. I thought that they were tourists from some Middle Eastern country.

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Posted by Mustafa Akyol at 9:27 AM | Comments (10)