MATTERS OF PROTECTION
By Kristen Stevens

Turkish Daily News
Jan 24 2008
Turkey

In the year since Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink’s murder stained
this country’s fabric, my husband and I welcomed our fair-skinned son,
a Turkish citizen, into the world. Living in Turkey, I cannot deny
that I am scared for his safety and his future.

Since his birth, three Protestants were strangled after extensive
torture in Malatya because of their faith and attempts were made on
the lives of clergymen in several cities. So far authorities have
shown nothing but disregard for the recent escalation in violent
hatred here along ethnic, religious and nationalist lines. Soli Ozel,
an international relations professor at Bilgi University, wrote in
daily Sabah last week, "The political authority hasn’t clamped down
on the matter determinedly in any of these cases and hasn’t openly
declared that what was done was evil." Nor have they done anything
to scrap Article 301 even as it continues to hinder free speech and
condemn people like Dink to petty convictions that only serve to fuel
nationalist hatred.Two days before the anniversary of a murder born
of growing intolerance for minorities and free speech, Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdoðan set the public discourse over the flames of a
different freedom: the right of women to wear Islamic head cover in
school. He announced that his government would change the constitution
to lift the ban on religious headscarves in public universities.

Flawed mission

The prime minister extols the virtues of one freedom of religion and
not others, revealing a flaw in the government’s mission. They want
to sell the West on the idea that American-style freedom to worship
(secularism) suits their own cause of upending one of the country’s
founding principles that limited the influence of religion on the
state (laicism). If they were smart salesmen – or virtuous in their
ideology – they would not choose one religion’s exemption from the law
over another’s. By ignoring the trampled freedoms of religious and
ethnic minorities to worship and express themselves, the government
sets itself up to lose in the secular arena as well.

But the real losers are members of the next generation who saw images
of an ethnic Armenian Turkish journalist lying face down shot after
being convicted of insulting Turkishness. Leaders must take measures
to reassure kids that the same won’t happen to them if they speak or
write freely. In what might turn out to be a bold step in the right
direction, Turkish authorities arrested 30 people on Tuesday suspected
of a series of politically inspired killings and attacks.

Among them is a well-known lawyer involved in court cases against
Dink and Turkish Nobel prize winning author Orhan Pamuk, whose case
is ongoing. Maureen Freely, a writer, journalist and translator of
Pamuk’s books who grew up in Istanbul, told me during an interview on
Monday that the nationalist perspective could evolve into something
more benign through conversation and inclusion. "For Turkey to truly
prosper, people have to have room to maneuver," said Freely, who was
in town to remember Dink.Meanwhile over the weekend a Turkish court
blocked access to popular video sharing Web site YouTube for the second
time this year. At fault was a video insulting Ataturk, founder of
the republic. But nationalists posting death threats on Web sites are
protected. I stood holding my baby son on Saturday as nationalists
chanted insults when Dink’s wife Rakel addressed the crowd where her
husband was shot. Do they enjoy more freedoms than our children will?

–Boundary_(ID_yJlLSJnttYZWG6WGm7sBlw)–