WHAT DO TURKS READ… AND DON’T
Sender: Aris Babikian , Canada

Pan Armenian
Published: 13.10.2005 GMT+04:00

If what people read reflects their attitudes and interests then what
Turks are reading these days should worry-if not scare-civilized
people everywhere.

Adolf Hitler’s notorious racist creed ‘Mein Kampf’ is a bestseller
in Turkey these days, so is a novel about an imminent U.S. invasion
of Turkey.

‘Mein Kampf,’ the classic anti-Semitism text preaching and attacks on
non-Teutonic races, is a hot seller in Istanbul and beyond. According
to some estimates, over 100,000 copies of the book have been printed
in Turkey.

Uguz Tektas of the Manifesto publishing house, one of the two
publishing houses which have issued the book, said their first run
of 30,000 copies are almost sold out.

The publication of the book is threatening to create a diplomatic
incident between Germany and Turkey. The German Government has raised
its concerns about the publication of ‘Mein Kampf,’ which is banned
in Germany. The Bavarian state finance minister Kurt Faltlhauser
is contemplating court action to stop further publication of the
book. Bavaria holds the copyright of ‘Mein Kampf.’ Minister Faltlhauser
stated: “The book should not be reprinted.” A German embassy official
in Ankara said: “The availability and rising popularity of this book
in Turkey are matters of serious concern for us.”

The Jewish community of Turkey is also alarmed by the popularity of
‘Mein Kampf.’ Lina Filiba, the executive vice-president of the Jewish
community, called the book’s popularity “disturbing.” The publication
of ‘Mein Kampf’ and the ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ is a
” worrying trend,” she said. The latter is a well-known 19th century
forgery concocted by Tsarist Russia’s secret police to justify pogroms
against Jews.

Even more worrying is the sale of the books in mainstream and busy
department stores, Filiba said. “I think there’s an increase in
anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-foreigner feeling…”

Silvio Ovadyo, a spokesman for the Jewish community of Istanbul,
attributed the popularity of ‘Mein Kampf’ to rising anti-Semitism in
the nationalist Turkish press. “This [‘Mein Kampf’] is an anti-Semitic
book and, yes, we are concerned about it,” the spokesperson said.

The other Turkish bestseller-‘The Metal Storm’-is a novel. The events
in the thriller take place in 2007 when an evil empire (the United
States) invades Turkey to take control of Turkey’s uranium, borax and
thorium deposits. The brave Turks, led by the military, resist the
new Crusade. The anti-American nature of the book is the main reason
for the book’s popularity, according to published reports. The book,
first published in late 2004, is now in its eighth printing of 50,000.

Repeated surveys show anti-Americanism is on the rise in Turkey. In
March, Ankara-based Pollmark Research Company found 31% of Turks
believe the United States will invade Turkey. Turkish public
opinion was almost unanimously against the war in Iraq. Turkish
anti-Americanism stems from the belief that the U.S. invasion of
Iraq will help the Kurds in Northern Iraq establish an independent
Kurdish state that in turn would encourage Turkey’s Kurds to rebel
and try to establish their own state in Eastern Turkey.

The Turkish government might be wrong, but it’s certainly consistent
in its misguided policies. So it comes as no surprise that while
Ankara allows the sale of anti-Semitic (“Mein Kampf,” and “The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion”) books and anti-American novel about
an impending U.S. invasion of Turkey, the government is using its
full might, under the new Turkish penal code, to intimidate, harass,
ban, prosecute and jail Turkish scholars, journalists, human rights
activists and professors who speak, write or publish anything to do
with the Armenian Genocide or the status of the Kurdish people.

The most famous case is the recent fatwa against the well-known Turkish
author Orhan Pamuk. In February Pamuk said in a series of interviews
with Turkish and Swiss newspapers that “Thirty thousand Kurds and
nearly a million Armenians were massacred on these lands [Turkey],
and no one, but me, has dared to speak about it.” Turkish nationalists
have since issued a fatwa against Pamuk; some government officials
have banned his books from libraries while his books were burned
in mass demonstrations. Recently, Pamuk was charged with insulting
Turkey’s national character. His trial is in December. If convicted,
he could be sent to prison for three years.

Journalist, publisher and human-rights activist Ragip Zarakolu is
another public figure who has been indicted for publishing books on
Kurds and Armenians.

Hrant Dink, the publisher of Turkish-Armenian “Agos” weekly newspaper,
has been found guilty for “insult to the Turkish national identity”
and sentenced to six-month suspended sentence by the Turkish state
for stating that he is not a Turk but a Turk of Armenian descent.

In the light of these regrettable developments, it’s incomprehensible
to learn that the Anti-Defamation League in the U.S. recently awarded
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, the league’s
Courage to Care award.

Aris Babikian is a journalist with “Horzion” weekly and member of
the National Ethnic Press and Media Council of Canada.