What is this minority issue?

Turkish Daily News
23 November 2004

The European Commission Progress report on Turkey and the minority
report prepared in the name of the Prime Ministry have started a
debate that will be very hard to end. The language of the minority
report, which was far from sensitive and even approached fantasizing,
resulted in a crisis.

Additionally, a report purported to be about minority rights,
including concepts like supra-national or sub-national identities,
with no legal definition, confused all.

The naivety of believing an imaginary concept of “citizen of Turkey”
being the answer to a problem that is fundamentally a political
sovereignty and independence issue, prevented the debates to progress
towards the right path.

We cannot understand the concept of minority while ignoring our
recent past. In the century between the 1821 Greek uprising and the
1922 Independence War, five million Muslims and Turks were killed
and a another five million were forced to migrate to Anatolia, the
Balkans and the Caucasus.

In this context, the purpose of the wars against the Ottomans went
beyond the strategic and political interests. The goal was to “cleanse”
Europe from Turks and Turkish rule. The Christian communities that
“rid themselves” of the Muslim and Turkish population this way, were
able to establish their nation states. No one in the “civilized world”
defended the right to return of these Turkish and Muslim migrants. No
one thought of calling those remaining behind to be among the founders
of the new states. Most did not even receive minority rights.

Armenians being forced to migrate during the World War I and the
exchange of population between Greeks and Turks after the Independence
War was just a part of this break-up process of the Ottomans.

The Turks and Muslims, whose very existence in Anatolia were in danger
due to the Serve Treaty, initiated the Independence War and established
their new state. The empire was beaten by the nation states of Europe
and new nation states arose out of the ashes of the Ottomans. That’s
why the only way for the new republic to protect its own independence
was to accept the model of a nation state.

Those who support minority rights now appear to suggest that the
majority Turks established the republic and tried to assimilate the
Kurds, Circasians, Albanians, Bosnians and even the Alewis with the
dominant Sunni/Turkish ethnic identity. Don’t they realize that the
new state was established to protect all these communities? Why do
they forget how much the leading members and the intellectuals of
the Kurdish, Circasian and other groups worked to build a common
supra-national Turkish identity and to overcome the universal
“scientific” obstacles of the time that were based on race. Don’t
they realize that once this identity was established, the people
stood united around its state and the nation?

Don’t those who try to suggest that the members of these ethnic groups
still describing themselves as Turks as an effort to be accepted as
part of the dominant group to further one’s interests, in truth show
their “racist” outlook on identity?

Turkishness definitely includes ethnicity. However, those who even have
a slender knowledge about recent history know that the republic uses
the word “Turk” beyond the bounds imposed by ethnicity. If an ethnic
group starts an uprising 1.5 years after the founding of the republic
with the open incitement of foreign powers, claiming the religion
was in danger of being lost, there will definitely be some who will
try to emphasize the ethnic nature of the concept of Turkishness.

Those who constantly claim that the republic is mistreating its
non-Muslim minorities should keep in mind how Europe destroyed the
only minority it failed to assimilate, the Jews, in the Holocaust,
and how Turkey was forced to react after seeing how Turks left behind,
including in Cyprus, were treated.

Some, with a feeling of desperation, argue that Turkey will be forced
to accept the minority rights by greater powers and also the European
Union. They seem to be using others to take their revenge. If they
think Turkey is not strong enough to do what France has done, they are
mistaken. The solution lies with the Turkish supra-national identity
and cultural rights. Let everyone resolve their own sub-national
identity crisis within themselves.

NOTE: This article appears in daily Radikal and, after being translated
by the Turkish Daily News staff, in the Turkish Daily News on the
same day.

gunduzaktan@tdn.com.tr