Can Turkey Learn Tolerance?

[Gavur]

They need to change this culture of violence
Any Turks like tell me how are they proposing to this?
Because it looks like the fish is stinking from the head.


Turkish Mayor Halil Bakirci: "If I would've realized who they were, I would've also lynched th



NEWSDESK, Nov 5 (DozaMe.org) - A group from the 'Solidarity With Prisoner Families Association' (TAYAD) visiting the grave of a leftist prisoner who died in a death hunger strike protesting the implementation of F-type Isolation Prisons, were attacked by 300 Turkish ultra-nationalist in the city of Rize in northern Turkey.

Rize's Mayor Halil Bakirci of the ruling party AKP gave his support to the ultra-nationalists, saying that he would also have joined the lynching if he had realized that the ones being beaten were TAYAD members.

Bakirci's statement in verbatim:

"I saw that some people were arguing when I looked out the window of the City Hall. I later found out that the TAYAD members had tried to flash some banners. If I would've realized who they were, I would've also lynched them. No one has the right to surge our people's patience. Our people gave them the necessary answer. They won't dare to come here again. If they come again, things will be much different. They will not escape as easily as this time", Rize's Mayor threatened.

Another politician praising the ultra-nationalists was Rize's MP to the Turkish parliament, Abdulkadir Kart of the AKP party.

"We know what they are trying to do. There are no F-type prisons in Rize or Trabzon. No one has the right to come here and disturb our people. The Black Sea people, who are loyal to its state and nation, gave them the proper lesson. They will not dare to come here again", Kart said.

[tevfik fikret]

x

[maral_m79]

[QUOTE=tevfik fikret]xQUOTE]


It's your #1 post, are you sure you don't want to edit that in more respectful way ?!

[Kharpert]

It's a culture thing. Western culture lets us forget past discrepancies within minutes. It's an Eastern European/Middle East thing to hold grudges for billions of years.

So, yes, it's definitely possible. It only requires an attitude change, which must be brought about through vigorous social reform.

[Gavur]

http://www.armeniangenocide.com/forum/showthread.php?t=696

[Gavur]

Fight hate and promote tolerance

http://www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/index.html

[Gavur]

Kurds Of Armenia Organized A March

Before the PACE makes a decision about the leader of the Kurdish nation Abdullah Odjalan on November 20, the Kurdish community of Armenia has already organized acts of complaint.

Today about a thousand Kurds came to Yerevan from the Kotayq, Aragatsotn and Armavir regions and organized a march from the Opera House to the Republic Square. The demand of the participants of the march was to restore the violated rights of the leader and not to allow an unjust decision to be made.

The leaflets spread by the committee «Kurdistan» said, «Our Leader is kept in terrible conditions, and moreover, he was deprived of the possibility to see his relatives». The Kurds are convinced that dangerous games are played with the will and national identity of their nation not only by Turkey but also by the European countries and the USA.

And as far as according to them the only person responsible for the settlement of the Kurdish conflict in Abdullah Odjalan, the patriotic movement will possibly continue.


© "A1Plus". Republication and quoting of content is permitted only with due indication of the source.

[elendil]

What nonsense, the leader of Kurdish nationalist movement..... Abdullah Öcalan is just a pawn, used by greater powers to create a buffer guerilla force between Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq...If you dont believe me you can check out the elections of Turkey and see Kurdish party Hadep takes votes %5-%6 where Kurdish population forms %15-20 of the total population of Turkey.... Besides what kind of a nationalistic leader would kill 30000 people where much of his population was in fact Kurdish.... He is a killer and his organization PKK is a terrorist, simple as that....

[Gavur]

Turkey's Kurds set up new party

10.11.2005

ANKARA, Nov 9 (AFP) - 16h02 - Leading Kurdish activists set up a new political party in Turkey on Wednesday, pledging to work to resolve the Kurdish conflict through peaceful means.

"We will work for peace," Aysel Tugluk, the co-chairwoman of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), told AFP shortly before she sumbitted to the Interior Ministry the documents announcing the party's formation.

Tugluk is one of the lawyers of jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan, accused by the government of acting as intermediaries between their client and his militants in the mountains.

Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party, the Democratic People's Party (DEHAP), is under the threat of closure in a pending court case on charges of links to Ocalan's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara as well as the European Union and the United States.

DEHAP has said it will dissolve itself and merge with the new party.

The DTP was spearheaded by four former Kurdish parliament members, including human rights award winner Leyla Zana, who were released last year after a decade in jail for collaborating with the PKK in its armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast.

"The DTP places importance on resolving the Kurdish conflict through dialogue," Tugluk was quoted as saying by Anatolia news agency. "We believe this problem could be resolved with the institutions and rules of democracy."

Kurdish politicians in Turkey are traditionally regarded with suspicion and often seen as instruments of the PKK.

Some activists have recently called for a new political movement that will shrug off Ocalan's influence, known to be notable among Kurdish activists, in order to win Ankara's confidence and wage a more efficient struggle for Kurdish rights.

Officials from the EU, which has long advocated the rights of the Kurdish minority, have also urged Kurdish politicians to dissociate themselves from violence.

Some 37,000 people have been killed since 1984 when the PKK launched a bloody separatist campaign, prompting a heavy-handed response by the Turkish army.

Keen to boost its EU membership bid, Ankara has recently granted the Kurds a measure of cultural freedoms.

AFP

[Gavur]

Bring Turkey into Europe

Jake Hess

At this time four years ago, I was spending my political energy writing letters to the Turkish government. Our chapter of Amnesty International at Winnacunnet High School was demanding that Leyla Zana, a Kurdish political prisoner, be freed immediately. She – a fairly elected parliamentarian - had been locked up since 1994. Her crime? Peacefully agitating for Kurdish rights and speaking her native tongue in the Turkish parliament.

Thus, when Zana and here colleagues were finally released in June 2004, I rushed to call friends and declare victory. But it quickly became apparent that my elation was unfounded: the Ankara regime had not buckled under pressure from AI. No; this was just the latest in a series of attempts to court the approval of a certain club based in Brussels.

In other words, the prospect of Turkish entry to the European Union accomplished what a decade of human rights activism could not. In a classic display of ‘soft power’, Brussels fueled change in Ankara not with threats of punitive action, but disassociation. And more innovation can be expected: to become a member of the European club, Turkey will have to complete a series of dramatic institutional reforms, cumulatively sweeping away its legacy of state tyranny and establishing a truly democratic political system. As a result, the commencement of formal accession talks between Turkey and the EU should be warmly embraced by human rights advocates.

Since it achieved independence in 1923, government repression has been a basic fact of Turkish political life. More than four-hundred people were tortured to death in Turkish prisons in the last decade alone. Intellectuals and activists were routinely incarcerated for such brutal offenses as advocating Kurdish rights or remembering the Armenian Genocide. State political killings occurred almost daily. But thanks to the EU and brave campaigners in Turkish civil society, these days are coming to an end.

An Ankara Spring has gradually taken shape since 1999. The military’s preeminent role in civilian affairs – constitutionally entrenched after the 1980 coup – has been all but eliminated. Capital punishment was finally abolished last year, and the government now has a ‘zero tolerance’ approach to torture. Strikingly, Turkey’s arcane laws restricting the use of minority languages in public have been eased: Kurdish is now taught, albeit sparingly, in some schools. Kurdish-language programs have even appeared on state television.

These changes are hugely significant, as is immediately obvious to anyone who follows Turkish affairs. Still, implementation of reforms has been – predictably – slow and uneven. Progress is needed in a range of areas, including the return of Kurdish refugees, civil liberties and police brutality. Nonetheless, Human Rights Watch points to a “consistent trend of improvement” in the reform process, including in relation to “freedom of expression, religion, association and assembly and respect for minorities.”

This is where Europe comes in. Its strict membership requirements will be a final nudge needed to consummate Turkey’s quiet political revolution. The Copenhagen Criteria on EU accession obligates candidates to ‘achieve stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the respect for and protection of minorities.’ Brussels will present Turkey with a list of 150 short-term tasks toward this end later in the week. According to the London Financial Times, these will include comprehensively eliminating torture, asserting full civilian control of the military, and legally enshrining religious and minority rights.

It should be repeated that these are only ‘short-term’ tasks. Excitingly, a lasting settlement to the Kurdish and Cyprus questions will almost certainly have to be reached in the future.

Achieving change of this magnitude will not be easy for Turkey. The deep-seated military and bureaucratic elite, long the self-appointed ‘guardians’ of Turkey’s political order, will be loathe to surrender their influence – especially to what they see as an intrusive foreign power. Wide swaths of the Turkish populace doubtlessly share this Euro-phobia. For decades, Turkish politicians have fostered a nefarious siege mentality in the national political culture: the country is, according to many, constantly facing internal (Kurdish) and external (Greek, Armenian) threats to its sovereignty. For these reasons, the pace of reform will have to be measured.

Another complicating factor will be Europe’s substantial Turko-skepticism. Brussels, considering the widespread opposition to Turkish entry within the EU, is not about to let Ankara off the hook easily. However, this will only translate into deeper and more lasting democratic reform in Turkey – and it won’t be in vain. Formal membership talks have already opened, and if Turkey is like every other country to have begun the process, they will end successfully.

Human Rights Watch puts it best. “With sustained government focus, and continued EU scrutiny, Turkey could truly live up to its potential as a country that respects the human rights of all its citizens, and leave behind an ugly past of torture and ethnic conflict.” Indeed, the “Sick Man of Europe” is about to be cured once and for all.
Jake Hess, 20, is a student activist based in Boston. He can be contacted at [email protected].