TURKISH ELECTIONS; KURDISH WOES
By Kani Xulam, KurdishMedia
Kurdish Aspect, CO
Jul y 25 2007
"I am in New York, but New York ain’t in me," says Mary to the
"Invisible Man", the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s novel of the
same name. She was a Southerner who had moved to the North thinking
that New York could perhaps free her of the unrelenting shadow of Jim
Crow. Notwithstanding hours of keyboard efforts that pass as news and
commentary about the upcoming "free and fair" elections in Turkey,
they will be nothing of the sort. To be sure, voting has made it to
the lands administered by the Turks, but the ruling circles in Ankara
have stymied its results since the inception of the republic. This
latest exercise, like the other exercises before it, will not bring
forth anything new. Like Mary, Turkey is unable, so far, to overcome
its legacy of authoritarianism. But unlike Mary, it will not have
the honesty to proclaim, "the elections ain’t in me."
To do so would require the Turkish military, the self-appointed
guardians of the state, to come to terms with the reality of the Kurds
and Islamists. An estimated one third to one fourth of the country is
Kurdish, and yet the military dictated constitution of the country
has simply declared us, courtesy of the Article 66 of the Turkish
constitution, Turks. (Imagine telling all the Palestinians in the West
Bank: they are now Hebrew speaking Jews by way of a solution to the
intractable Israeli-Arab conflict.) A vast majority of the population
in Turkey is Muslim, but the Turkish armed forces go ballistic when
their country is labeled Islamic. They love it whey they are called
Europeans, but don’t ask them, please, to act like Hans, Bridgette or
Tommy. If they had a wish they would wish all Kurds called themselves
Turks and all Muslim declared themselves atheists.
But people, unless they are subjects of totalitarian systems,
do not like it when someone out of the blue appoints himself,
be it Ataturk, their prophet and declares the fantasies of his
sick mind as a revelation for their future. That vision, to make
Turkey a carbon copy of a European country, noble as it may sound,
has produced schizophrenic individuals throughout the country. Woe to
the person who has challenged it or found himself unable to conform to
the prescribed orthodoxy. Mind numbing are the stories, as they are
heartbreaking. They are well known in Turkey. They are a source of
pride for the country’s Taliban-like secularists. But they make the
friends of the Turks, those of the Kurds and those religious freedom
cringe every time they hit the news. This Sunday we will have more
of the same.
One thing is for certain: this dissident will not take part in these
"free and fair" elections. Turkey doesn’t take kindly to its critics
and especially those who have made a profession of airing its dirty
laundry. Inside Turkey, my kinds are silenced. Outside of it, we are
trying hard to sound the alarm bells for liberty’s distress. Unlike
the rest of the world, where politics is often divided up between the
traditional rightwing and leftwing parties, in Turkey, if a European
style democracy were practiced, there would be three groupings: the
military and their favorites; the Islamists; and the Kurds. But don’t
look for a European style election here. Something called 10 percent
threshold has made sure the Kurds will not make it to the parliament
as a party. The Islamists and the militarists will fight this one out.
But the Kurds, numerous as we may be, are not the only ones subjected
to the lawful and awful wrath of the Turkish state. We have had
company lately, and it is no other than the most illustrious son of
Turkey, Orhan Pamuk. The recipient of 2006 Nobel Prize in literature
is now "almost" officially a persona non grata in the country. He
has left Turkey, the newspapers note, for fear of his life. He goes
home, on rare occasions –put down your coffee to read this one–
unannounced. If you think this is sad, there is more. The president
of the country, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, did not call him to congratulate
him for the award. And can you guess what might have been the reason?
He had said, "30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in
these lands, and nobody but me dares to talk about it."
With all due respect to the esteemed Turkish author, 30,000 Kurds
spoke before he did for the right to be themselves, the Kurds. But
"our" government, bewitched by the legacy of Ataturk, shamelessly
calls even their buried corpses Turks. There were those who insisted
that the world was flat too. Science finally, thank God, caught up
with them; will truth ever do the same with the children of Ataturk?