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**Joseph** · 01-20-2007, 06:38 PM

"When the European Union is asked why it wishes to include Turkey, with its lower economic and democratic standards, the answer suggests an uncomfortable truth - that the relationship between Turkey and the EU is governed less by reciprocal desire than by fear.
The military elite of the Turkish republic probably calculates that a Turkey unable to enter the European Union is in danger of becoming a strategical irrelevance, while the European Union's power-brokers must consider that a Turkey remaining outside of Europe might become a combatant on the other side of a 'clash of civilizations.'

As long as the engine of fear pushing from the back is stronger than the engine of desire pulling from the front, the dynamics of Turkish-European Union relations will be uneasy and contested on all sides - not just in Turkey.

Where fear is dominant, it produces symptoms of resistance to change at all levels of society. The more some people yearn and work for openness and enlightenment, the more others who are afraid of such changes struggle to keep society closed. In Turkey, the legal cases against Hrant Dink, Orhan Pamuk, Ragip Zarakolu or Murat Belge are examples of how the breaking of every taboo causes panic in the end.

This is especially true of the Armenian issue: the greatest of all taboos in Turkey, one that was present at the creation of the state and which represents the principal 'other' of Turkish national identity."

Dec. 2005 - Hrant Dink - A prominent Turkish-Armenian

**Joseph** · 01-24-2007, 02:57 AM

Meet the monster: Turkish fascism

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

It is simply tragic and repulsive to see some prominent figures in Turkey who insist on putting the blame on imagined 'external enemies.' Alas, enough is enough, and it is time to be honest. What we are facing is an internal enemy. And it deserves being called 'Turkish fascism'

MUSTAFA AKYOL

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.

In the face of all that, it is simply tragic and repulsive to see some prominent figures in Turkey who insist on putting the blame on imagined ?external enemies.? Alas, enough is enough, and it is time be honest. What we are facing is an internal enemy. And it deserves to be called ?Turkish fascism.?

Measuring the Turkish skull:

The term does not imply an organic link between Turks and the fascist ideology. The latter is a modern disease that has influenced many nations throughout the 20th century. Germans and Italians are the two most obvious cases, of course, but there are countless others. Even the quintessentially liberal Anglo-Saxons had their experience with the monster. (Remember the Ku Klux Klan and the British Union of Fascists.)

In Turkey, the story of fascism is most ironic, because although our contemporary fascists are fanatically anti-Western, the ideology is an import from the West into the traditionally multicultural lands of the great Ottoman Empire. It all began with the Social Darwinism that some Young Turk intellectuals, such as Yusuf Ak�ura, acquired in European capitals in the turn of the century. Their vision of a fully Turkified state came true in the 1920's, with the creation of the Turkish Republic. Atat�rk's vision for this new state was not racist, he instead defined Turkishness in terms culture and citizenship, but things started to change in the '30s. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were admired by some of the Republican elite, such as Recep Peker, the long-time general secretary of the CHP (the party, which is now chaired by his intellectual descendant, Deniz Baykal.) The Turkey of the '30s also imitated corporatism, the economic model of fascist Italy, and internalized Mussolini's motto, ?Everything for the State; nothing outside the State; nothing against the State."

In the same period, ?Turkishness? also acquired an ethnic meaning. An officially sanctioned ?scientific? congress was held in Ankara in 1932, in which the ?advanced? features of the ?Turkish skull? was praised and Turks were proudly declared to be ?Aryans.? During the same period, public calls for applicants to government offices demanded them to be ?of the Turkish stock.? Tevfik R�?t� Aras, the foreign minister, affirmed, ?Kurds will be beaten by Turks in the struggle for life.? And Mahmut Esat xxxkurt, the minister of justice, notoriously announced, ?In Turkey, non-Turks are the servants and slaves of Turks.?

During the war years, Turkey also initiated the infamous Wealth Tax, which was designed to confiscate the properties of its Christian and Jewish citizens. 1942, the first and only Jewish labor camp was established in A?kale, a district in Erzurum. Had the Third Reich won the war, Turkey apparently would not have had much trouble fitting into its ?new order.?

The hysteria on ?internal enemies':

Of course, Turkey never became fully fascist, but there is plenty of evidence to argue that it was deeply influenced by that monstrous ideology. But, alas, since Turkey never became fully fascist, it never had the chance to fully liberate itself from it. Post-war Germany, Italy and Japan started as tabula rasas, but Turkey had only a partial transition to democracy. In 1950, the Democrat Party (DP) came to power in the first free and fair elections since the beginning of the republic, with the motto, ?Enough, the nation has the word!? But with a military coup in 1960, the DP was crushed by despots in uniform, who did not hesitate to execute Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and two of his ministers after a show trial.

Since then, fascism, not as a system but a spirit, has survived in Turkey. The depiction of all other nations as ?the enemies of Turks,? the cult of personality built around the country's founder, and the deification of the state are all elements of that spirit. In recent years, as a reaction to the EU-inspired push for more democracy and freedom, the fascist rhetoric has ascended. Some elements of the media, along with some pundits, bureaucrats and politicians, systematically spread the fear that Turkey is facing existential threats. Kurds, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, missionaries, non-nationalist Muslims � anybody who falls outside the narrow definition of a ?good Turk? � are all seen as ?internal enemies,? who are in bed with the external ones � the Europeans, the Americans, Iraqi Kurds, and, actually, the whole world.

The militant who killed Dink is the product of this popular hysteria. Unless we accept this bitter fact and start to think seriously about our internal fascism, it is quite likely that Turkey will produce more of them. ?Nationalism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,? said Samuel Johnson. We should not tolerate becoming a nation of scoundrels.

**1.5 million** · 01-25-2007, 08:18 PM

In the same vein...

/PanARMENIAN.Net/

�Nothing much has changed, it seems. They were killed both in 1915 and in 2007,�

Turkish writer and journalist Ahmet Altan says in his �1915-2007� article, which was published in "Gazetem.net" site just the other days. Independent French journalist Jean Eckian retold the PanARMENIAN.Net corespondent Ahmet Altan�s article. �They killed us, and we killed them back. What are we going to say about the murder of Hrant then? That "Hrant killed us, and we killed Hrant back?" Now that is not what we say, is it? We say "traitors killed Hrant." We do not see the murderers of Hrant as one of "us." Why is it that "we" are the ones who ninety years ago killed hundreds of thousands of people, without forsaking children, women, elderly and babies, who decimated the Armenians, but we are not the ones who killed Hrant? What is the difference between the two? The difference is that this time we saw the murder, that we have an idea about the intentions of the murderer. This time they did not "tell us" how the murder was committed, we personally witnessed it ourselves. If those who in this country "write" the history of 1915 had also written the murder of Hrant, the children in this country would have said fifty years later that "Hrant had killed us, and we killed Hrant back. The truth would have changed shape in the hands of the liars.�

We did not kill Hrant. Most probably some people who have ferreted their way into the state had Hrant killed. Their intention was for the world to react negatively to Turkey, which would have escalated nationalism within the country in response, leading to a break off from Europe. In 1915 as well, "we" did not kill the Armenians. Those poor people were not killed by "the ones ferreted inside the state," but directly by the state itself. A great massacre that was organized by the Unionists in government was actualized. The Armenians who were killed were Ottoman subjects. They were a part of the Ottoman nation. A part of the nation was utterly destroyed by the state. "We" are the nation. The ones who were killed were a part of "us." Since each Turk who lives in this country see themselves not as a "part of the nation" but rather a "part of the state," however, they also own this massacre executed by the state. "They killed us, we killed them," they say. Now that is a lie. The Ottoman State, under the government of the Unionists killed, in an organized manner, with the planning of the intelligence unit entitled Special Organization (Teskilat-? Mahsusa), a "part of us." The murdered Armenians are a part of "us." It is actually our duty to ask them to account for that murdered part of us. "We" ought to face this state and ask them "are you a continuation of the Ottoman state," ask them "why do you own up to the murder committed by a state you destroyed," ask them "why don't you yourself seek accountability for this destruction by the state of a part of its nation and instead leave this task to others. "Because "we" did not ask this, one of "us," Hrant Dink, has now been murdered. On top of it all, he, while still mourning for his ancestors, wanted Turkey not to be trapped solely within the term "genocide," not to have the entire debate forced into a single word; he wanted Turkey to be permitted to become democratized through uniting with the world. Hrant Dink was declared "an enemy of the Turks." He was no one's enemy, he was not someone who could have been a foe. He was a friend. And he was a friend to everyone. Why is it that in this country those who are "for murders and massacres" are accepted as a Turk while "those for friendship, peace, justice and humanity" are regarded as foe. The Turkish populace owns up to the crimes of the old and new "state" because it cannot grasp that it is the "nation." As it cannot grasp that it itself is the nation, it identifies itself with the murderers instead and says "us." My heart could never bear to have the sorrowful deaths of those hundreds of thousands of people, the bloody tragedy that was experienced to be lost within the vortex created by the term "genocide." Yet because we have not been able to move beyond that word, people like Hrant are still being killed. I think that now, in order to prevent new murders, in order to stop this country from being dragged to a dead end, it is up to us to move beyond that word. The Ottoman State killed hundreds of thousands of people solely because they were "Armenians." And today a hidden force kills Hrant for "being an Armenian." What are we going to call it if a person is being killed solely because of their race or their religion? It is up to "us," to this nation to ask for an accounting of those who were killed. Hrant's death hurts you all deeply. If you had witnessed what had happened in 1915, you would have been likewise deeply hurt. And you would not have said "they killed us, we killed them." You would have been ashamed. Just as you wanted Hrant's murderers to be found, you would have wanted the murderers of those Armenians found as well.

With his death, Hrant made us remember that we are a nation, that we should not identify ourselves with the murderers. Then let us do what befits being a nation. Who killed Hrant? Who killed the Armenians in 1915? They do not have to account for their actions to "others," they have to account to "us." For we are the ones who have died. The ones who died are a part of us".

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