Jihad Watch,
Jan 21 2007

Fitzgerald: The murder of Hrant Dink

When awards are handed out, they often go to the wrong people. It is
not the hapless Mohammed El Baradei, nor that apologist-for-Islam
("the mistreatment of women does not come from Islam") Shirin Ebadi,
who deserve that Nobel for Peace, but rather Ayaan Hirsi Ali and
other brave apostates. And the same is true for those prizes awarded
to journalists.

Who has given a prize to Flemming Rose? Or to Hrant Dink?

Hrant (pronounced "Ervant") Dink was a non-Muslim victim of Muslim
hatred of non-Muslims. He was shot because he was an Armenian citizen
of Turkey, who thought that the government and people of Turkey
should own up to the mass-murder (genocide) of the Armenians. He was
not, and could not be, a true "Turk" according to the definition
supplied by Turkish nationalists.

The particular variant on Islam operative in the murder of Hrant Dink
was the Kemalist cult of "the Turk" — Kemalism, in constraining
Islam, offered a replacement cult, the cult of Ataturk and of The
Turk. But in this case it can be seen to have adopted to a new age
essentially the same attitudes. The violence and aggression of Islam,
the inability to conceive of non-Muslims as fully equal legally and
socially to Muslims, have carried over into the Kemalist substitute
for Islam — the cult of "the Turk" by which the past civilizations
of Anatolia, its entire history, back to the Hittites, is ascribed to
"the Turks." This is another variant on the Muslim desire to ignore
everything that happened before Islam arrived as merely the time of
"Jahiliyya." That cannot be done in the case of Turkey: too many
impressive remnants of classical antiquity, as well as of Byzantium,
remain and must remain — if only for the Western tourists. The
solution of the Kemalist-nationalists was to take that pre-Islamic
past and enroll it in a counter-myth: the myth of the Turk to whom
all this somehow belongs, and for which he, the glorious Turk, is
somehow responsible. The educated elite realize that this is absurd,
but as in any country, and especially in such a country as Turkey,
how few must be those members of the educated elite who are immune to
both Islam and to the Myth of the Turk.

The re-emergence of Islam has led some Turks, including the one who
waited to kill Hrant Dink, to be possessed by a syncretistic mix. The
non-Turk means the non-Muslim citizen of Turkey — Armenian, Greek,
or Jew. No offense must be given by these inferior citizens to the
cult of the Turk, or to "the Turkish Nation." There is the same
readiness to be offended, the same division of the universe between
Us and Them (in the case of Islam it is Believer and Infidel, and in
the case of Muslim Turks who have embraced Kemalism it can be, for
the primitive, the true Turk and the non-Turk), the same recourse to
violence.

Hrant Dink should be remembered, and that memory honored, and not
only in Sausalito or Watertown, but everywhere. And the reasons for
his killing should be understood, including the reflection of the
persistence of Islamic attitudes in Turks, even those who are
"defending the Turkish nation from slander" rather than "defending
Muhammad from blasphemy." In the minds of Turkish Muslims, these
attitudes are mutually reinforcing.

One more thing.

This should be it, as far as entry into the EU is concerned. Call off
the farce. And this should also be the time when the Bush
Administration reads Turkey the riot act about Kurdistan, and starts
to make plans for that independent state, and tells the Turkish
government that it had better accept the American-extorted guarantees
that there will be no territorial claim made on Turkey by the new and
independent Kurdistan, but that Syria and Iran are fair game. And if
it doesn’t accept that? Then Turkey, whose military is entirely
dependent on American re-quipping, American spare parts, American
training, can see that American connection go up in smoke from the
top of Mount Ararat. No more nonsense about being afraid of "the
Turkish reaction." The Turkish government can get with the new
program, with those guarantees given by the Kurds to the Americans
(and without American diplomatic and military support an independent
Kurdistan could never exist) or face abandonment by its main, and
only sure ally. And if the Turkish government thinks that the Arabs
would or could ever be an ally of Turkey, rather than mischief-makers
intent on reversing 80 years of Kemalism, it should be disabused of
that thought quickly.

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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress