TURKEY’S DISSIDENT INTELLECTUALS GROW ACCUSTOMED TO LIFE WITH BODYGUARDS
Nicholas Birch

EurasiaNet, NY
March 22 2007

Waving a yellow press card usually opens doors in Turkey. It didn~Aft
impress the police officer guarding the entrance to Agos, the
Turkish-Armenian newspaper run by Hrant Dink until a 17-year-old
Turkish nationalist gunned him down in January as he stepped outside.

"Who are you working for," the officer asked suspiciously. "Who do
you want to talk to?"

Like the closed-circuit camera set up last month to survey the patch
of Istanbul street where Dink died, the officer~Afs questions
underscore the heightened sense of insecurity facing dissidents in
Turkey today. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. A
well-known columnist who took over as editor of Agos after his
friend~Afs death, Etyen Mahcupyan has been receiving threats for as
long as he can remember.

"It~Afs like a side dish," he says. "You are so accustomed to it that
when the threats go down, you ask what is happening. And that~Afs why
the murder was a real shock. Because you have so many threats every
day and nothing happens."

Hrant Dink~Afs death was a turning point for Atilla Yayla, too. An
Ankara-based political scientist, his nightmare began last November
when he adopted a position during a public conference that the
single-party regime set up by Turkey~Afs founder Kemal Ataturk was "a
period of regression, not progress."

Turkish media outlets branded him a traitor. His university removed
him from his teaching position for four months. Last week, a
prosecutor opened a case against him for "insulting the legacy of
Ataturk." He faces up to three years in jail.

"For five days, I couldn~Aft sleep," Yayla remembers, comparing the
media campaign against him to "the Moscow courts in Stalin~Afs time."

The stress eventually overwhelmed him. "I collapsed physically," he
said. It wasn~Aft until after Dink~Afs death, though, that he began to
take the death threats he was receiving seriously. Now, like more
than a dozen other Turkish dissidents, he shares his life with a
police bodyguard. "He is so much a part of me that I~Afm planning to
buy him and his family presents," Yayla commented wryly.

Other Turkish intellectuals find it much less easy to laugh at the
new climate of fear. One of the most prominent of 50 people taken to
court by ultra-nationalists last year on charges of "insulting
Turkishness," best-selling novelist Elif Safak has now given up
writing columns in two newspapers and keeps trips outside her house
to a minimum. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Dink "was a close friend, and I haven~Aft got over the shock of his
death," she said in a telephone conversation. She declined to talk at
length.

Interviewed by daily Hurriyet in February, her husband Eyup Can said
she was so upset that she was no longer able to breast-feed her
six-month-old daughter.

Orhan Pamuk, meanwhile, the novelist who won last year~Afs Nobel Prize
for literature, left Turkey under police escort in February,
declaring himself "furious at everyone and everything." [For
background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. A week before, the man
police believe organized Hrant Dink~Afs murder had warned him to
"watch your step" as he was taken into custody.

When well over 100,000 people attended Dink~Afs funeral procession
late in January, many hoped his death might mark the end of what one
columnist called "the ultra-nationalist tsunami" that has swept
Turkey since its European Union bid started. [For background see the
Eurasia Insight archive]. In fact the protest, and the protestors~Af
choice of the slogan "we are all Armenians," stirred up nationalist
ire further. A key demand made by the protesters — that the law
criminalizing insults to "Turkishness" should be repealed ~Aã has
failed to make an impact on legislators.

Despite the risks they face, many Turkish dissidents say they have no
intention of giving up the struggle. "Such a thing has happened, you
know, that you cannot be cautious any more," says Mahcupyan, the new
Agos editor. "It~Afs immoral to be cautious."

Like Mahcupyan, who says you can only tell the real threats from the
false ones after it~Afs too late, Baskin Oran knows his bodyguard will
not be able to stop a professional assassination attempt. "This nice
person is protecting me from amateur killers, like the one who killed
Hrant," said Oran, an Ankara-based political scientist who
co-authored a 2004 government report on minority rights that sparked
today~Afs nationalist surge.

He goes on to quote the Turkish proverb that he who fears birds
doesn~Aft plant corn. "If you are afraid, you should stop. But how can
I look into the mirror in the morning if I do stop? How can I lecture
my students?"

Today~Afs threats and restrictions on freedom of movement, he says,
are part of the growing pains of Turkish democracy. "The road to
paradise passes by hell, and we are walking."

Editor’s Note: Nicolas Birch specializes in Turkey, Iran and the
Middle East.

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