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As the Turkish Spring Ends on the Road to Europe
The reporter Boris Kalnoky of Die Welt, interviewing Norman Stone in the May 9th edition of that newspaper, asked, “How is it that some historians like Taner Akçam feel obligated to make these extreme negative predictions warning that Turkey has started down the path towards fascism?” Stone responded that while he had great respect for me, he felt that I was unduly influenced by the horrible experiences of the 80s, that my beliefs were a product of the negative impressions left in my memory of those years, and that “it is an exaggeration in light of the present circumstances to state that the country is headed towards fascism”.
I have never stated anywhere that the country is becoming fascist. The word “fascism” itself is misleading. At a conference in Bonn, organized by Körber Stiftung- Hamburg, I had remarked that “Turkey has not come to terms with its own 'fascism' from the early period. The dynamic forces that brought about the fascist movement in Europe after WWI are active in Turkey today, and since the country has not truly and honestly confronted them, they constitute a serious threat.” My primary concern was to give an answer to the question of why we have a rising phenomenon of deep and threatening nationalism. The rising tide of extremist nationalism now threatens to swamp democratic forces in Turkey.
Let's look at the history: Germany and Turkey entered WWI together in alliance and the two countries shared strong common traits in the behavior of their respective politicial elites and the prevailing political culture of their societies. The war ended in defeat for both countries and as a result Germany fell into a path of rising fascism. The simple question is: Why, therefore, did Turkey not experience the same phenomenon?
I would like to begin by taking a broader perspective. There was a deep wave of nationalism in Europe which brought fascism into power in Spain, Portugal and Italy, around the same time as Germany. Despite the differences in the way these countries experienced fascism, I believe that it is possible to evaluate them in a common way, understanding the phenomenon as each country's search for answers to a mindset that took hold during a specific stage in its development.
When we examine Italy, Spain and Germany and their fascist movements, specifically, the following characteristics were common to all.
a) A belief that the unity of the country had not been achieved and that achieving unity was under threat.
b) A belief that the country's honor had been despoiled and treated disrespectfully.
c) Conceiving the problems of the country altogether as an issue of existence versus annihilation.
d) Belief that there was a campaign from outside to slander one's country.
e) Belief that this campaign of slander originated with foreign powers who organized and ran the campaign through internal connections.
f) Belief that one's country is a true victim of history.
As a result the nation facing what it perceives to be a huge threat, is invited by fascist leaders to engage in a war for struggle of its very existence.
Fascism met with initial success in Europe, only later to be defeated. These societies today are confronting that history frankly and openly. Serious challenges to the mindset of those fascist regimes forced various changes in the political ruling elites with different degrees and caused a change in the way of thinking in these societies. Facing history became a source of renewed self-definition. In other words, changes within the ruling elite and coming to terms with the past and maintaining a continuous discourse over the past has become an important gain for the establishment of democracy.
I now return to the question of Turkey. If political energy and mindsets which arise in a society are not dissipated on their own, how is it that Turkey did not experience fascism following World War I, despite the fabric of Turkish society having shared many of the characteristics listed above? There are dozens of reasons, but one of the most noteworthy is the following: Turks applied a temporary balm to their “injured national honor.” For the Turks, the establishment of the Republic was a collective project which rose out of the ashes of the defeated Empire and was a moral monument to victory that was respected by even their former enemies. .
As a result, this victory acted like a temporary balm that healed the wounds inflicted by death and defeat in Turkey because it negated the need for the nation to come to terms with its history. It might help to add another factor, equally important. The party Union and Progress that thrust the Ottoman Empire into WWI was the same party that was instrumental in forming the Republic of Turkey. By not succumbing to fascism and thereby avoiding a confrontation with the forces of extreme nationalism, Turkey did not experience a profound or deep transformation during the Republican period. I want to emphasize this point, i.e., that Turkey did not experience the breakdowns that occurred in European regimes and thereby maintained continuity in political elites throughout that period. My argument is thus: when these two reasons combine with continuity in the power of the ruling elite, the need to confront this deep wave of feeling or mindset, which gave rise to fascism in Europe, did not occur in Turkey.
This mindset which I call “Unionist mindset” is still quite alive and strong in Turkey today. It is spreading over the surface of Turkish society as a strong swelling of nationalist feeling and it should not come as a surprise to anyone if we experience a hardening of the regime in conformance with this ground-swelling of nationalism. This change may not appear as fascism per se, however we are going to be facing a political alternative which puts itself in the role of savior of the nation that they perceive to be in danger. This political alternative could also mean society's falling apart along ethnic and religious identities.
The most important cause for my pessimism lies in the fact that as I mentioned above, the Unionist group which was in power in 1915 managed to maintain its stronghold of power throughout the Republican period, without experiencing any transformation in thinking vis-à-vis the military-civilian bureaucracy or Turkish Social Democracy. It has been observed in Turkish history that only those whom we can call “conservatives” in western terms were successful among different opposition movements against the military-civilian bureaucratic elite. After their electoral successes the conservative groups shared power with the military-civilian bureaucratic elite. These successes gave the opportunity to form a government, but never provided the change in political structure to allow them to rule the entire state. Generally, in a short time, the conservative cadres would surrender to the overpowering influence of the main military-civilian bureaucracy.
Well then, why this new groundswell of nationalist feeling? Weren't we experiencing a “Turkish spring” on the way to the European Union?
There has been a wide consensus in Turkey that the AKP-if we are candid we should call them an Islamist party-has created a genuine rift in the tradition of continuity of the Turkish political ruling elite. For the first time in history, a group has come to power that had an open opposition-policy to the military-civilian bureaucracy and this same group has been the cause for the success which Turkey has met in applying for EU membership. The new Islamist circles have realized that the key to staying in power lies with the European Union and in furtherance of this has laid the groundwork for the Turkish “spring.”
I am afraid that the “spring” which we have seen blooming in the events of the past few years in Turkey will soon be coming to an end. I am not the only one who believes this; it is a belief that has taken hold in Turkish intellectual circles. There are dozens of reasons why this spring will be ending. I will state only one of them here: it is the European Union itself that will bring it about, though not from negative reasons, rather positive ones. The reason is that the “actual rulers” of Turkey, the military-civilian bureaucracy, or more generally speaking, those of the ultra-nationalist mindset, never conceived of the possibility that the campaign by the AKP party to join the EU would ever bear fruit. More than anything, they trusted the “anti-Turkish” lobby in Europe to prevent this from happening.
When the road to EU membership started to post real gains, contrary to what they expected, the military-civilian bureaucratic elite, the descendants of the Committee for Union and Progress, the ones who really control what goes on in Turkey, began to see European Union membership for what it really is, which is a direct threat to their power. It would force them to confront and account for their prevailing mindset. EU membership is an invitation to account not only for the current administration but for all that has transpired in the past and their responsibility in that past. The military-civilian bureaucracy along with Turkish Social Democracy which is known as CHP [Republican People Party] does not want to permit the door to open onto a questioning of their existence. It will not permit it, and that is the gist of the current situation.
At this juncture there are two issues of primary importance. Alongside many other issues, Europe has demanded a “western standard” on two very basic issues: The Kurdish problem and an honest facing Turkey's history. These two points possess the kind of dynamic which will require fundamental changes in the ruling elite of Turkey, and it is for this reason that there is strong resistance to an examination of them. In fact, the Turkish ruling elite, using mainstream media, has been running a propaganda campaign for months with the sole purpose of presenting these two issues as ones involving “an existence question for the Turks” which bears the danger of “bringing about the annihilation of Turks.” The Kurdish and Armenians issues have been presented as those which have exhausted the limits of tolerance of the Turkish nation. What has not been picked up by the West-and what Norman Stone has not yet understood-is that the Turkish population has been subjected to a psychosis of confronting a “national threat” and a “national battle to fight for its right to exist” for months.
The AKP, which has been the torchbearer of the “Turkish Spring” until now, has, for reasons that I cannot explain here, bowed to the pressure exerted by the Unionist tradition and the military-civilian bureaucracy. The reformist party which carried Turkey to the EU, has appeared to have lost its reformist “fuel,” something that is not apparent yet in Europe. This group has unfortunately decided to follow in the footsteps of the tradition that preceded it, toeing the same line as the military-civilian bureaucracy on the subject of the Kurdish question and opposing an unfettered examination of Turkey's history.
In other words, I am not talking about an extremist-radical movement which emerged on the fringe of the society and comes in and takes over. I am discussing a phenomenon referred to as “extremism of the center -extremismus der mitte,” borrowing a term from Germany, when describing the way fascism took hold in Germany. One of the ways that fascism's ascension to power in Germany is explained is as a phenomenon that began not as an extremist fringe movement, but rather as the radicalization or extremism of the center. The center in Turkey, by trying to radicalize the population through explicit nationalistic policies, appears to be encouraging the same process. Today, what we are experiencing is not the radicalization of society but of the central governmental power, which is ready to provoke people to take to the streets in furtherance of its strategy, if necessary.
It would be helpful here to give a few examples from the past few months.
Several bombings which took place in a Kurdish town (_emdinli), the organization of which was traced to generals in Ankara, were like signal lights that the “spring” season had ended. The bomb attacks, which were apparently organized to provoke Turkish-Kurdish confrontation, turned into a major scandal when officers assigned to execute the attacks were apprehended by civilians in a manner which left no doubt as to their culpability in the attacks. One end of the attacks could be traced back to a general who was in line to be appointed the Turkish General Chief of Staff in August 2006. The mere mentioning of the general's name, Yusuf Büyükan?t, in the indictment against the arrested officers was enough for “all hell to break loose.” The generals made a public show of strength and the prosecutor was dismissed. In Turkish history, two prosecutors have been dismissed while on duty. The first was a prosecutor who wanted to indict General Kenan Evren for his leading role in the military coup of 1980; the second was the prosecutor of _emdinli for having permitted the name of the general from Ankara to be mentioned in the indictment on the bombings.
The entire mainstream media found the appearance of a general's name in an indictment to be inappropriate and supported the generals' position.
Gündüz Aktan wrote in Radikal, a daily newspaper known to be liberal, that the “Patience of Turks has reached an end” and explicitly stated that the forcible deportation of Kurds to Northern Iraq would solve the problem of how to deal with them. As an answer to the question of how to deal with the Kurds, many editorial writers from mainstream newspapers had no problem in writing “take a lesson from history,” repeating what they claim were the words of Hrant Dink, editor of AGOS, an Armenian-Turkish newspaper in Istanbul, who supposedly stated this at a meeting for Kurds, “Don't make the mistakes we made. It won't end well.” It is a bitter irony that the very thing that Turks have denied over and over again, at which they rage at any mention, “the events of 1915,” is used as secret code when discussing Kurds: “you know what we're talking about” with a wink and a nod.
In new legislation being drafted to combat terrorism that is being heavily pushed by the generals, the act of “promoting the ends of terror organizations” (defense of the right to speak Kurdish would qualify, for example,would constitute a punishable crime.
During the prosecution of Orhan Pamuk, after stating that it was wrong for people to physically attack the vehicle in which Pamuk arrived at court, the main columnist of the biggest selling daily newspapers added that he nevertheless sympathized with the feelings of these people. According to him, the anger directed at Pamuk was justified because a major injustice, given support by Europe, had been enacted against the nation, and nothing could be more natural than that nation defending its good name. Many editorialists in mainstream media viewed the pressure from the West on the Armenian issue as an act of disrespect denying a nation's right to exist.
The mobilization which has started on both the national and international levels against the claims of Armenian genocide should be understood within this framework. In an aggressive language and radicalization that has heretofore not been seen, Turks both in Turkey and in Diaspora are being mobilized: a mobilization against what is perceived to be an “attack against our country and our honour.”
If it had not been specifically forbidden due to EU relations, the demonstration in honor of Talaat Pasha which was planned in Berlin would have drawn tens of thousands. There were representatives from just about every political party in the organizing committee. For the past 1-2 years, the Turkish public has been encouraged to radical extremes over the 1915 axis. The Kurdish question and 1915-the Armenian Genocide- have become two decisive symbols for the Turkish fight over its existence versus annihilation. With the words, "as the terror of the Kurdish worker's party drains our patience, so too do the the statements of the genocide at the Armenians" brought up by Gündüz Aktan in "Radikal". These two "nation's existence-threatening" moments, which emerged and develop as two different issue and which I try to connect in this article were brought together by Aktan too, An unbelievable synthesis: it is as if the newspaper "Radikal," which is from the mainstream media, represents the radicalization of the center. The Kurdish and the Armenian problems are two indications why "the used up patience of the Turks" goes to end,.. These slogans which have been circulating in Turkey, “Turks are the real victims of history,” “don't try our patience,” and “stop abusing our honor,” are not just the product of retired diplomats and journalists, they have found their way into the justification for acts of lynching individuals who were distributing leaflets in some cities such as in Trabzon and Adapazar?.
I could present dozens of examples here, but what needs to be said in short is this: along with other reasons, the membership application process for the EU has thrust Turkey into the most serious questioning of its mindset since the founding of the Republic. The military-civilian bureaucracy is prepared to oppose any kind of challenge or pressure to change its Unionist mentality or its control and power over the country.
The Islamist party in government has recognized this threat from the generals and appears to have accepted it. Their wholesale surrender may have to do with pragmatism arising from their desire to choose the next President of Turkey from their own party in 2007. If this swelling of nationalistic pride grows into an organized movement, what this portends for the Kurdish issue is no less than the division or possibly breakdown of the country. What is also true is that there are strong political forces within Kurdish circles that are waiting opportunistically for just such an eventuality to occur.
In conclusion, this political stance, which I call the “Unionist mindset” in Turkey, which was prominent in 1915 and which is essentially the same mindset that brought about fascism in Europe, and which has maintained a chokehold on Turkey all these years, has reared up its head in anger.
The reporter Boris Kalnoky of Die Welt, interviewing Norman Stone in the May 9th edition of that newspaper, asked, “How is it that some historians like Taner Akçam feel obligated to make these extreme negative predictions warning that Turkey has started down the path towards fascism?” Stone responded that while he had great respect for me, he felt that I was unduly influenced by the horrible experiences of the 80s, that my beliefs were a product of the negative impressions left in my memory of those years, and that “it is an exaggeration in light of the present circumstances to state that the country is headed towards fascism”.
I have never stated anywhere that the country is becoming fascist. The word “fascism” itself is misleading. At a conference in Bonn, organized by Körber Stiftung- Hamburg, I had remarked that “Turkey has not come to terms with its own 'fascism' from the early period. The dynamic forces that brought about the fascist movement in Europe after WWI are active in Turkey today, and since the country has not truly and honestly confronted them, they constitute a serious threat.” My primary concern was to give an answer to the question of why we have a rising phenomenon of deep and threatening nationalism. The rising tide of extremist nationalism now threatens to swamp democratic forces in Turkey.
Let's look at the history: Germany and Turkey entered WWI together in alliance and the two countries shared strong common traits in the behavior of their respective politicial elites and the prevailing political culture of their societies. The war ended in defeat for both countries and as a result Germany fell into a path of rising fascism. The simple question is: Why, therefore, did Turkey not experience the same phenomenon?
I would like to begin by taking a broader perspective. There was a deep wave of nationalism in Europe which brought fascism into power in Spain, Portugal and Italy, around the same time as Germany. Despite the differences in the way these countries experienced fascism, I believe that it is possible to evaluate them in a common way, understanding the phenomenon as each country's search for answers to a mindset that took hold during a specific stage in its development.
When we examine Italy, Spain and Germany and their fascist movements, specifically, the following characteristics were common to all.
a) A belief that the unity of the country had not been achieved and that achieving unity was under threat.
b) A belief that the country's honor had been despoiled and treated disrespectfully.
c) Conceiving the problems of the country altogether as an issue of existence versus annihilation.
d) Belief that there was a campaign from outside to slander one's country.
e) Belief that this campaign of slander originated with foreign powers who organized and ran the campaign through internal connections.
f) Belief that one's country is a true victim of history.
As a result the nation facing what it perceives to be a huge threat, is invited by fascist leaders to engage in a war for struggle of its very existence.
Fascism met with initial success in Europe, only later to be defeated. These societies today are confronting that history frankly and openly. Serious challenges to the mindset of those fascist regimes forced various changes in the political ruling elites with different degrees and caused a change in the way of thinking in these societies. Facing history became a source of renewed self-definition. In other words, changes within the ruling elite and coming to terms with the past and maintaining a continuous discourse over the past has become an important gain for the establishment of democracy.
I now return to the question of Turkey. If political energy and mindsets which arise in a society are not dissipated on their own, how is it that Turkey did not experience fascism following World War I, despite the fabric of Turkish society having shared many of the characteristics listed above? There are dozens of reasons, but one of the most noteworthy is the following: Turks applied a temporary balm to their “injured national honor.” For the Turks, the establishment of the Republic was a collective project which rose out of the ashes of the defeated Empire and was a moral monument to victory that was respected by even their former enemies. .
As a result, this victory acted like a temporary balm that healed the wounds inflicted by death and defeat in Turkey because it negated the need for the nation to come to terms with its history. It might help to add another factor, equally important. The party Union and Progress that thrust the Ottoman Empire into WWI was the same party that was instrumental in forming the Republic of Turkey. By not succumbing to fascism and thereby avoiding a confrontation with the forces of extreme nationalism, Turkey did not experience a profound or deep transformation during the Republican period. I want to emphasize this point, i.e., that Turkey did not experience the breakdowns that occurred in European regimes and thereby maintained continuity in political elites throughout that period. My argument is thus: when these two reasons combine with continuity in the power of the ruling elite, the need to confront this deep wave of feeling or mindset, which gave rise to fascism in Europe, did not occur in Turkey.
This mindset which I call “Unionist mindset” is still quite alive and strong in Turkey today. It is spreading over the surface of Turkish society as a strong swelling of nationalist feeling and it should not come as a surprise to anyone if we experience a hardening of the regime in conformance with this ground-swelling of nationalism. This change may not appear as fascism per se, however we are going to be facing a political alternative which puts itself in the role of savior of the nation that they perceive to be in danger. This political alternative could also mean society's falling apart along ethnic and religious identities.
The most important cause for my pessimism lies in the fact that as I mentioned above, the Unionist group which was in power in 1915 managed to maintain its stronghold of power throughout the Republican period, without experiencing any transformation in thinking vis-à-vis the military-civilian bureaucracy or Turkish Social Democracy. It has been observed in Turkish history that only those whom we can call “conservatives” in western terms were successful among different opposition movements against the military-civilian bureaucratic elite. After their electoral successes the conservative groups shared power with the military-civilian bureaucratic elite. These successes gave the opportunity to form a government, but never provided the change in political structure to allow them to rule the entire state. Generally, in a short time, the conservative cadres would surrender to the overpowering influence of the main military-civilian bureaucracy.
Well then, why this new groundswell of nationalist feeling? Weren't we experiencing a “Turkish spring” on the way to the European Union?
There has been a wide consensus in Turkey that the AKP-if we are candid we should call them an Islamist party-has created a genuine rift in the tradition of continuity of the Turkish political ruling elite. For the first time in history, a group has come to power that had an open opposition-policy to the military-civilian bureaucracy and this same group has been the cause for the success which Turkey has met in applying for EU membership. The new Islamist circles have realized that the key to staying in power lies with the European Union and in furtherance of this has laid the groundwork for the Turkish “spring.”
I am afraid that the “spring” which we have seen blooming in the events of the past few years in Turkey will soon be coming to an end. I am not the only one who believes this; it is a belief that has taken hold in Turkish intellectual circles. There are dozens of reasons why this spring will be ending. I will state only one of them here: it is the European Union itself that will bring it about, though not from negative reasons, rather positive ones. The reason is that the “actual rulers” of Turkey, the military-civilian bureaucracy, or more generally speaking, those of the ultra-nationalist mindset, never conceived of the possibility that the campaign by the AKP party to join the EU would ever bear fruit. More than anything, they trusted the “anti-Turkish” lobby in Europe to prevent this from happening.
When the road to EU membership started to post real gains, contrary to what they expected, the military-civilian bureaucratic elite, the descendants of the Committee for Union and Progress, the ones who really control what goes on in Turkey, began to see European Union membership for what it really is, which is a direct threat to their power. It would force them to confront and account for their prevailing mindset. EU membership is an invitation to account not only for the current administration but for all that has transpired in the past and their responsibility in that past. The military-civilian bureaucracy along with Turkish Social Democracy which is known as CHP [Republican People Party] does not want to permit the door to open onto a questioning of their existence. It will not permit it, and that is the gist of the current situation.
At this juncture there are two issues of primary importance. Alongside many other issues, Europe has demanded a “western standard” on two very basic issues: The Kurdish problem and an honest facing Turkey's history. These two points possess the kind of dynamic which will require fundamental changes in the ruling elite of Turkey, and it is for this reason that there is strong resistance to an examination of them. In fact, the Turkish ruling elite, using mainstream media, has been running a propaganda campaign for months with the sole purpose of presenting these two issues as ones involving “an existence question for the Turks” which bears the danger of “bringing about the annihilation of Turks.” The Kurdish and Armenians issues have been presented as those which have exhausted the limits of tolerance of the Turkish nation. What has not been picked up by the West-and what Norman Stone has not yet understood-is that the Turkish population has been subjected to a psychosis of confronting a “national threat” and a “national battle to fight for its right to exist” for months.
The AKP, which has been the torchbearer of the “Turkish Spring” until now, has, for reasons that I cannot explain here, bowed to the pressure exerted by the Unionist tradition and the military-civilian bureaucracy. The reformist party which carried Turkey to the EU, has appeared to have lost its reformist “fuel,” something that is not apparent yet in Europe. This group has unfortunately decided to follow in the footsteps of the tradition that preceded it, toeing the same line as the military-civilian bureaucracy on the subject of the Kurdish question and opposing an unfettered examination of Turkey's history.
In other words, I am not talking about an extremist-radical movement which emerged on the fringe of the society and comes in and takes over. I am discussing a phenomenon referred to as “extremism of the center -extremismus der mitte,” borrowing a term from Germany, when describing the way fascism took hold in Germany. One of the ways that fascism's ascension to power in Germany is explained is as a phenomenon that began not as an extremist fringe movement, but rather as the radicalization or extremism of the center. The center in Turkey, by trying to radicalize the population through explicit nationalistic policies, appears to be encouraging the same process. Today, what we are experiencing is not the radicalization of society but of the central governmental power, which is ready to provoke people to take to the streets in furtherance of its strategy, if necessary.
It would be helpful here to give a few examples from the past few months.
Several bombings which took place in a Kurdish town (_emdinli), the organization of which was traced to generals in Ankara, were like signal lights that the “spring” season had ended. The bomb attacks, which were apparently organized to provoke Turkish-Kurdish confrontation, turned into a major scandal when officers assigned to execute the attacks were apprehended by civilians in a manner which left no doubt as to their culpability in the attacks. One end of the attacks could be traced back to a general who was in line to be appointed the Turkish General Chief of Staff in August 2006. The mere mentioning of the general's name, Yusuf Büyükan?t, in the indictment against the arrested officers was enough for “all hell to break loose.” The generals made a public show of strength and the prosecutor was dismissed. In Turkish history, two prosecutors have been dismissed while on duty. The first was a prosecutor who wanted to indict General Kenan Evren for his leading role in the military coup of 1980; the second was the prosecutor of _emdinli for having permitted the name of the general from Ankara to be mentioned in the indictment on the bombings.
The entire mainstream media found the appearance of a general's name in an indictment to be inappropriate and supported the generals' position.
Gündüz Aktan wrote in Radikal, a daily newspaper known to be liberal, that the “Patience of Turks has reached an end” and explicitly stated that the forcible deportation of Kurds to Northern Iraq would solve the problem of how to deal with them. As an answer to the question of how to deal with the Kurds, many editorial writers from mainstream newspapers had no problem in writing “take a lesson from history,” repeating what they claim were the words of Hrant Dink, editor of AGOS, an Armenian-Turkish newspaper in Istanbul, who supposedly stated this at a meeting for Kurds, “Don't make the mistakes we made. It won't end well.” It is a bitter irony that the very thing that Turks have denied over and over again, at which they rage at any mention, “the events of 1915,” is used as secret code when discussing Kurds: “you know what we're talking about” with a wink and a nod.
In new legislation being drafted to combat terrorism that is being heavily pushed by the generals, the act of “promoting the ends of terror organizations” (defense of the right to speak Kurdish would qualify, for example,would constitute a punishable crime.
During the prosecution of Orhan Pamuk, after stating that it was wrong for people to physically attack the vehicle in which Pamuk arrived at court, the main columnist of the biggest selling daily newspapers added that he nevertheless sympathized with the feelings of these people. According to him, the anger directed at Pamuk was justified because a major injustice, given support by Europe, had been enacted against the nation, and nothing could be more natural than that nation defending its good name. Many editorialists in mainstream media viewed the pressure from the West on the Armenian issue as an act of disrespect denying a nation's right to exist.
The mobilization which has started on both the national and international levels against the claims of Armenian genocide should be understood within this framework. In an aggressive language and radicalization that has heretofore not been seen, Turks both in Turkey and in Diaspora are being mobilized: a mobilization against what is perceived to be an “attack against our country and our honour.”
If it had not been specifically forbidden due to EU relations, the demonstration in honor of Talaat Pasha which was planned in Berlin would have drawn tens of thousands. There were representatives from just about every political party in the organizing committee. For the past 1-2 years, the Turkish public has been encouraged to radical extremes over the 1915 axis. The Kurdish question and 1915-the Armenian Genocide- have become two decisive symbols for the Turkish fight over its existence versus annihilation. With the words, "as the terror of the Kurdish worker's party drains our patience, so too do the the statements of the genocide at the Armenians" brought up by Gündüz Aktan in "Radikal". These two "nation's existence-threatening" moments, which emerged and develop as two different issue and which I try to connect in this article were brought together by Aktan too, An unbelievable synthesis: it is as if the newspaper "Radikal," which is from the mainstream media, represents the radicalization of the center. The Kurdish and the Armenian problems are two indications why "the used up patience of the Turks" goes to end,.. These slogans which have been circulating in Turkey, “Turks are the real victims of history,” “don't try our patience,” and “stop abusing our honor,” are not just the product of retired diplomats and journalists, they have found their way into the justification for acts of lynching individuals who were distributing leaflets in some cities such as in Trabzon and Adapazar?.
I could present dozens of examples here, but what needs to be said in short is this: along with other reasons, the membership application process for the EU has thrust Turkey into the most serious questioning of its mindset since the founding of the Republic. The military-civilian bureaucracy is prepared to oppose any kind of challenge or pressure to change its Unionist mentality or its control and power over the country.
The Islamist party in government has recognized this threat from the generals and appears to have accepted it. Their wholesale surrender may have to do with pragmatism arising from their desire to choose the next President of Turkey from their own party in 2007. If this swelling of nationalistic pride grows into an organized movement, what this portends for the Kurdish issue is no less than the division or possibly breakdown of the country. What is also true is that there are strong political forces within Kurdish circles that are waiting opportunistically for just such an eventuality to occur.
In conclusion, this political stance, which I call the “Unionist mindset” in Turkey, which was prominent in 1915 and which is essentially the same mindset that brought about fascism in Europe, and which has maintained a chokehold on Turkey all these years, has reared up its head in anger.