No, it is not just the secularist media that unleashed its wrath on these ladies, namely Nuray Bezirgan and Kevser Çakır. The prosecutors have also caught on. The other day, an Istanbul prosecutor announced that an investigation has been launched in order to file a case against these university students for violating the “Law on Crimes Against Atatürk.” If they get penalized for this “felony,” then it will mean that the level of our official thought control has been raised from orange to red. Every Turkish citizen will have to love the Eternal Leader in order to avoid jail.

Not Suppressed Enough?

I think the more reasonable secularists will tell you that it will be wrong to prosecute Ms. Bezirgan and Ms. Çakır because of their remarks. Yet, they are arguing that such outrageous ideas show the severity of the “Islamic threat” to the Turkish Republic. They also say that the establishment is right in its authoritarian ways to contain religious practice. “You see,” they reason, “what will happen if we don’t sufficiently suppress these religious bigots.”

Well, could the problem rather be that those “religious bigots” have been suppressed too much?

Let’s just get back to the TV show in question to get some insight. It was journalist Fatih Altaylı who hosted Ms. Bezirgan and Ms. Çakır, who are both university students who wear the headscarf (at least outside the campus). At some point in the show, Mr. Altaylı asked them about Khomeini. Ms. Çakır said she “liked” the late Ayatollah because “he was a Muslim.” Yet when Mr. Altaylı asked them about the current regime in Iran, which is obviously suppressive, both students noted that they don’t approve of it.

The real shocking news came a minute later. Mr. Altaylı asked, “So what about Atatürk, do you love him as well?” Ms. Bezirgan responded first by asking, “Do I have the right not to love him?” And she added, “If yes, then I don’t love him.” Then she said why:

“If people are persecuting me in the name of Atatürk, you can’t expect me to love him.”

When, in return, Mr. Altaylı noted, “Atatürk fought against invasion and saved us from the British yoke,” the young lady gave a very interesting reply. “If the British were here, I actually would have much broader rights,” she said. “That’s the whole point.”

And then she further explained what her problem was with the Kemalist system in Turkey:

“A party which will defend my ideas cannot be found in Turkey. It will be banned. Yes, if any party dares to defend my view, it will be closed down… Muslims work day and night in this country in order to get their rights. Then when Parliament gives them a little right, someone comes and takes those freedoms away from us in the name of Atatürk, or the Republic.”

“What I want,” she finally said, “is a system in which I am totally free, in which my rights and freedoms are not suppressed.”

Thus, fellow columnist Yusuf Kanlı was right yesterday to point out that these ladies “want to wear Islamist attire everywhere, including state offices!” In other words, they want full equal citizenship. What a big heresy for our Republic, which openly favors secular citizens over observant ones...

Atatürk and His Discontents

Now, the big question is this: How do we suppress the rights of conservative Muslims in the name Atatürk and then expect them to be his greatest fans?

The Kemalists can’t think of that, because they have no sense of empathy. For them, Atatürk is the Great Liberator who gave them all the privileges they have. But not all groups in society have had the same experience. For conservative Muslims, Atatürk symbolizes the purging of religion and religious believers from public life. In the eyes of the Kurds, he is the one who initiated the policy of enforced “Turkification.”

In other words, while the early decades of the Turkish Republic were a great blessing for some elements of society, it was a dark period for the rest. And there is no way that you can make them “love” this system, and its official cult of personality, by media campaigns and court decisions.

But you can do something else. You can put Atatürk in his historical context, argue that his revolution was destined to give all of us freedom in the future, and you can move toward that point. In other words, you can stop using Atatürk as a flag against “internal enemies,” which make up at least half of the nation.

Let me give you an example. What do you think blacks would have felt like in the 1960s if the U.S. Supreme Court had decided that segregation had to go on because of the “principles of George Washington”? Washington, after all, established a republic in which blacks were slaves. Wouldn’t that make Afro-Americans cold toward the founding father? Today America doesn’t have Black Panthers anymore, or black leaders who denounce the “American dream” as “American nightmare,” because racial segregation, at least officially, has become history. And the more Americans solve the “race issue,” the more the scars of the past will be healed.

If Turkey’s secular elites want to achieve social reconciliation, which we desperately need, then they have to accept a similar act of civil rights. If you want all citizens to appreciate Atatürk as The Father of All Turks, then you should make him the symbol of freedom and justice for all. As the famous Turkish proverb goes, “there is no benevolence by force.” And as common wisdom suggests, there is no love for Atatürk by the how-dare-you-not-love-Atatürk hype.