Sabah Newspaper English Edition

Upsurge in ultra-nationalist feeling has become lethal in Turkey

The Economist magazine has published an article focused on the uprising of
nationalist movement in Turkey.

Extract from the Economist article:

"The upsurge threatens to undo the good of four years of reforms by the
mildly Islamist government led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Indeed, it is partly
in response to these reforms-more freedom for the Kurds, a trimming of the
army’s powers, concessions on Cyprus-that nationalist passions have been
roused. The knowledge that many members of the European Union do not want
Turkey to join has inflamed them further (the EU partially suspended
membership talks with Turkey in December because of its refusal to open its
ports and airspace to Greek-Cypriots).

Another factor is America’s refusal to move against separatist PKK
guerrillas who are based in northern Iraq. If the United States Congress
delivers its pledge to adopt a resolution calling the mass slaughter of the
Ottoman Armenians in 1915 genocide, Turkey’s relationship with its ally
would suffer "lasting damage", says the foreign minister, Abdullah Gul.

Murat Belge, a leftist intellectual who is being hounded by Mr Kerincsiz,
sees disturbing similarities between the racist nationalism espoused by the
"Young Turks" in the dying days of the Ottoman empire (who ordered the mass
slaughter of its Armenian subjects), and the siege mentality gripping Turkey
today. The perception, now as then, is that Western powers are pressing for
changes to empower their local collaborators (ie, Kurds and non-Muslims),
with the aim of breaking up the country. "This social Darwinist mindset that
implies it’s OK to kill your enemies in order to survive" has been
perpetuated through an education system that tells young Turks that "they
have no other friend than the Turks," says Mr Belge. And it has been
cynically exploited by politicians and generals alike.

Mr Erdogan and Deniz Baykal, the leader of the opposition Republican
People’s Party, have proved no exception. When more than 100,000 Turks
gathered at Mr Dink’s funeral chanting "We are all Armenians", Mr Erdogan
opined that they had gone "too far". Both he and Mr Baykal have resisted
calls to scrap article 301, though there have been hints that it will be
amended.

The politicians are keen to court nationalist votes in the run-up to
November’s parliamentary election. Mr Erdogan also hopes that burnishing his
nationalist credentials will help him to coax a blessing from Turkey’s
hawkish generals for his hopes of succeeding the fiercely secular Ahmet
Necdet Sezer as president in May.

Yet a recent outburst by the chief of the general staff, Yasar Buyukanit,
suggests otherwise. He declared that Turkey faced more threats to its
national security than at any time in its modern history and added that only
its "dynamic forces" [ie, the army] could prevent efforts to "partition the
country". These words, uttered during an official trip to America, were
widely seen as a direct warning to Mr Erdogan to shelve his presidential
ambitions."

Publish Date: 09.03.2007
Link: 47712EB420.html
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress