TURKEY BEGINS TO QUESTION THE PAST
by Shane Hensinger

Daily Kos
571/-Turkey-Begins-to-Question-the-Past
June 10 2009

In a little-noticed (outside Turkey anyway) speech the Prime Minister
of Turkey said something shocking (by Turkish standards) when he
questioned the way Turkey has treated its ethnic and religious
minorities in the past.

Shane Hensinger’s diary :: :: "For years, those of different identities
have been kicked out of our country…. This was not done with common
sense. This was done with a fascist approach," Erdogan said on May
23, during the annual congress of the Justice and Development Party,
held in the western province of Duzce.

"For many years," Erdogan continued, "various facts took place in this
country to the detriment of ethnic minorities who lived here. They
were ethnically cleansed because they had a different ethnic cultural
identity. The time has arrived for us to question ourselves about
why this happened and what we have learned from all of this. There
has been no analysis of this right up until now. In reality, this
behavior is the result of a fascist conception. We have also fallen
into this grave error."

I can’t begin to tell you how shocking these words are to those who
have studied and/or lived in Turkey. If there is one topic which is
considered off limits in Turkey, even in private conversations, it
is Turkey’s treatment of Turkish citizens who happened to be Greek or
Armenian or Kurdish. Even amongst friends this subject is incendiary
and generally considered off-limits.

The statement is just vague enough to allow each person to come up
with exactly which event Erdogan was speaking of.

Hurriyet (A Turkish daily) feels he was speaking of this:

Erdogan’s speech is seen as a reference to the Sept. 6 and 7 events
in Istanbul in 1955 when many Greek shops and houses were pillaged
by crowds after false news reported that founder of Turkey Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk’s house in the Thessaloniki neighborhood of Greece was
burnt down. After the events, many ethnic Greeks, who were born and
lived in Istanbul, left the city.

While Asparez (an Armenian daily) felt he was speaking about an
earlier event, one which presaged the anti-Greek riots in 1955:

Some commentators viewed Erdogan’s remarks as a reference to the
expulsion of 1.5 million ethnic Greeks from Turkey to Greece in
1923. The large-scale population exchange between the two countries
also included the transfer of more than 500,000 ethnic Turks from
Greece to Turkey.

Regardless of which particular event the Prime Minister was speaking
about his words had the effect of a bombshell in Turkish public life –
where criticism of the state is usually considered off limits.

>From Asbarez again:

Onur Oymen, vice president of the main opposition Republican
People’s Party (CHP) said that associating Turkey’s history with
terms like fascism based on hearsay was not right. He also said that
no Turkish citizen had ever been expelled because of his or her
ethnic background. Oktay Vural of the opposition MHP party added:
"Erdogan’s words are an insult to the Turkish nation."

But others felt differently, including members of Turkey’s tiny
(less than 2,000 people) Greek minority:

>From Hurriyet:

"This is a historical speech. The prime minister criticized history
on behalf of the state," Rıdvan Akar, editor-in-chief of news program
"32. Gun," told daily Vatan yesterday.

Words alone do not solve the current problems the communities face
in Turkey, according to Mihail Vasiliadis, editor-in-chief of the
Apoyevmatini, a Greek-language Istanbul newspaper. Self criticism
is good, but not enough, Vasiliadis told the daily Vatan. "I have
heard things like that before and have gotten excited, but now the
continuation of those speeches should come," said Vasiliadis.

And finally, from Zaman, which is a more pro-Islamist newspaper than
most, comes this, which I find very poignant and moving:

The problem of our beloved nation is that it is subjected to the
teaching of a fabricated history in which we Turks are always right
and often the victim of foreign and domestic "enemies." The end result
of this ideology-laden history teaching is ignorance of the historical
facts and the truth about what we have done…

The 1923 population exchange with Greece that forced two-and-a-half
million people of Greek origin to migrate was a successful ethnic
purification that was necessary to build a nation-state. The 1934
intimidation that forced the Jewish citizens out of Thrace (European
Turkey) was a measure to secure the western lands from minorities in
preparation for the world war that was approaching. In 1941 and 1942,
non-Muslim males were drafted on short notice to work as laborers
in what were called "labor battalions." They were also subjected to
exorbitant taxes in order to force them to sell their property and
abandon businesses. This was a measure to Turkify the entrepreneurial
class, which was thought to be the right thing to do under the shadow
of Fascism and Nazism, then the fashion of the day. The (officially
organized and provoked) events of Sept. 6-7, 1955 saw the destruction
and looting of non-Muslim businesses and shrines in Ä°stanbul and
Ä°zmir with a number of casualties. This formidable threat drove
the point home that they were not welcome in this country. Greek
citizens mainly left for Greece and Jewish citizens, by and large,
went to Israel. These things were all done against the principles
of the constitutive Treaty of Lausanne (1923) that gave birth to the
Turkish Republic…

In short, the prime minister was telling the truth… all the
institutions of the state have taken part in the discrimination
against minorities, limiting their property rights through systematic
confiscation to force a change of proprietorship. The judiciary (e.g.,
Council of State) deems non-Muslim minorities as "domestic aliens"
and treats their endowments as foreign institutions in order to limit
their rights to property. Both the bureaucracy and the judiciary have
been instrumental in implementing the two principles that have been in
effect since the last decade of the Ottoman Empire: 1) to get rid of
the minorities, and 2) to transfer their properties to Muslim citizens.

However, the usurpation of property has not made this nation any
richer. Entrepreneurship is not the same as proprietorship, and
ethnic or religious purity does not create problem-free and cohesive
nations. These truths have been realized after so much human suffering
and loss. What a pity.

It is indeed an amazing thing we’re seeing in Turkey – a nation where
the ice is slowly cracking and through these cracks we can see the
beginnings of a national effort to seek to understand the past and
perhaps more importantly to look at how the continual degradation of
Turkey’s minorities has harmed the Turkish state itself.