I personally don't care where people's ethnic origin come from, and it wouldn't matter to me if our president had a lineage in any of the dozens of different ethnic groups that make up the "nation of Turkey." But many in this country who insist on defining the nation on ethnic "Turkishness" are obsessed with who-is-who in the countrywide family tree. This ethnicist -- something that is slightly short of racist -- attitude can be found in almost all political traditions. Yet, I think it was phenomenal that this week it came from the ranks of the CHP, which, amusingly, considers itself the standard bearer of "Turkish modernity."

WeApologize.Com

Let me first tell you how this came about. It started last Monday with a declaration prepared by four public intellectuals; Baskın Oran, Ali Bayramoğlu, Ahmet İnsel, Cengiz Aktar. (Besides his chair at Bahçeşehir University, Dr. Aktar is also a columnist for this paper.) They put up a website addressed www.ozurdiliyoruz.com, which means "WeApologize.Com," and said this: "My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them."

Many Turks, mostly intellectuals, joined the campaign, and in just a few days the number of signatories had reached 14,000. But the reaction against them also grew like wildfire. Political leaders, including the prime minister, said that they did not approve this "apology," because there wasn't anything that Turks needed to apologize for. They voiced the common view in Turkey which regards the tragedy of 1915 as an episode of inter-communal violence, not a one-sided "genocide."

I did not join the campaign. I, too, think that much of the tragedy boils down to the inter-communal blood-lust that erupted during the fall of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. The loss of the Armenians were definitely greater than that of the other side, Turks and Kurds, and that is a deep pain that we have to respect, understand and share today. So, I could sign a declaration of "compassion," a term whose Latin origin means "suffering together." But a one-sided apology did not convince me to put my name to it.

Yet it is definitely a right for others to sign the declaration. And how can we blame them for expressing a sympathy that they genuinely feel? Many people do not understand that fact, because they think all citizens should be united behind "national causes." But the conscious of individuals are more valuable than such causes. In fact, setting this conscious free should actually be the greatest national cause. What made President Abdullah Gül a target of CHP's not-so-closet fascism is that he defended this much-needed freedom of conscious. When asked about the "We Apologize" campaign, he, unlike party leaders who denounced it, simply said that it is "a matter of freedom of speech."

Hence came the attack by CHP's İzmir MP, Canan Arıtman. She told the press that the president's grandmother was of Armenian descent, and that was why he was "supporting the Armenians." The next day, Gül's office issued a statement. "The president sees the free medium of debate on this topic," it read, "as the proof of the advanced and free democratic environment in Turkey, and the self-confidence of the Turkish people." But Mrs. Arıtman was too furious to calm down. She spoke the other day and insisted on her view. "If you are supporting the Armenians," she said, "it is only natural that people wonder whether you are Armenian."

Yesterday daily Radikal published a phone conversation between her and the paper's Ankara representative, Murat Yetkin. It went like this:

Yetkin: Why do you think that the ethnic origin of the president's family matters?

Arıtman: It doesn't matter.

Yetkin: Then why did you mention it?

Arıtman: As president, he needs to protect the rights of this nation. But he is protecting his ethnic belonging. Whoever threatens Turkey by not opposing this campaign will be asked, 'are you an Armenian?'."

A Muslim Democrat

To his credit, CHP Deputy Chairman Mustafa Özyürek, criticized this outright fascism in his party's ranks. However, we haven't heard anything from the party's leader, Deniz Baykal, yet. And we should note that Arıtman's line of thinking is not alien to the CHP, which has proved to be xenophobic and minority-disliking over and over again in the recent years.

As for President Gül, I can only applaud him for the sane, democratic and liberal stance he takes. Fascist nutcases in this country depicted him as a crypto-Jew before. (A bestseller book, "The Gül of Moses," by a lunatic Kemalist author argued that he was a willing collaborator of the "elders of Zion.") And now he is being branded as a crypto-Armenian. All this only confirms that he is, in fact, a Muslim democrat.