Kathimerini, Greece
Jan 26 2007

Shock therapy

By Stavros Lygeros

The massive march commemorating murdered journalist Hrant Dink and
his funeral is one of the most hopeful signs ever to come from
Turkey. The slaying was a shock even to a public injected with a good
dose of nationalism. The shock revealed a previously unseen facet of
Turkish society – an ambiguous but no less real one.

The murder was an extreme, but by no means isolated, incident. It
followed the prosecution of Nobel Literature Prize winner Orhan Pamuk
for his words on the Armenian genocide, the attacks against the
Ecumenical Patriarchate and the confiscation of minority property.
Article 301 of the Constitution which restricts freedom of
expression, the para-state of the security service and organized
crime all share the same womb: the deep state ideology.

This was exposed in late 2000 when security forces in Turkey used
their weapons to stop a hunger strike by thousands of inmates.
Thirty-one prisoners were killed and many more were injured but that
did not prevent then prime minister Bulent Ecevit from bragging about
what would be shameful for any civilized being. Ecevit spoke of
victory, as if the fully armed police force could ever have been
defeated by the inmates. What the West saw as an act of barbarity was
in Turkish eyes a demonstration of strength and determination.

The Turkish regime has a penchant for periodic displays of stealth.
This allows it to revive the specter of the ever-threatened albeit
all-powerful state. The need to crush outside threats legitimates the
hegemonic role of the security establishment – and all that
notwithstanding Ankara’s EU ambitions. The task of EU-minded
modernization is left to a great number of intellectuals, sections of
the business class and of the media. It remains to be seen whether
the aftermath of the Dink murder will prove to be a one-off reaction
or a catalyst for a different future.