Hurriyet, Turkey
Jan 8 2010

Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu: Yet another crypto-Armenian?

Friday, January 8, 2010
Mustafa AKYOL

Ahmet DavutoÄ?lu, the former academic who has been mastering Turkish
foreign policy since 2003, is a remarkable man. First as an adviser to
the prime minister, and recently as foreign minister, he really
transformed the way Ankara does business in the world. His strategies
of `zero problems with neighbors,’ `pro-active engagement,’ or
`multi-lateral foreign policy’ made Turkey a much more influential
actor in its region. You might like or dislike the results of this new
paradigm, but it would be only fair to acknowledge the depth and
creativity of its vision.

Yet some opposition figures in Turkey have a simpler way of explaining
why Mr. DavutoÄ?lu is such a revolutionary man. One of them is Ensar
Ã-Ä?üt, a member of Parliament. He is also a member of the Republican
People’s Party, or CHP, the bastion of `Kemalism,’ the ideology that
comes from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic.

The trouble with impure blood

A few weeks ago, Mr. Ã-Ä?üt gave a press conference, in which he angrily
bashed Mr. DavutoÄ?lu for not being nationalist enough. He first showed
a map aired on an American TV program and which defined eastern Turkey
as `Kurdistan.’ Then he asked why in the world the foreign ministry
doesn’t protest this heinous conspiracy against Turkey. He then
personally called on Mr. DavutoÄ?lu:

`What do you, man, as Turkey’s foreign minister? What do you really
do? What is your surname, DavutoÄ?lu or Davutyan? Are you really
Turkish? Why then do you not protest?’

Now, for those who are not well-versed in the linguistic intricacies
here, let me explain: The suffixes `oÄ?lu’ and `yan’ both mean `the son
of.’ But the first one is in Turkish, while the latter is in Armenian.
So, asking whether DavutoÄ?lu is actually `Davutyan’ implies that he is
a crypto-Armenian. (And being an Armenian, apparently, is a very bad
thing in the eyes of Mr. Ã-Ä?üt.)

If he were the only Kemalist with this attitude, I wouldn’t worry that
much. But, alas, the paranoia about Turks-who-are-not-real-Turks is a
popular Kemalist theme. About a year ago, Canan Arıtman, another CHP
deputy, had made headlines by claiming that President Abdullah Gül was
a `secret Armenian.’ Otherwise, she claimed, why would the president
be so friendly to Armenia?

Armenians are not the only scapegoats, though. Two years ago, a
die-hard Kemalist author, Ergun Poyraz, produced a series of
`investigative’ books claiming that Prime Minister Tayyip ErdoÄ?an and
other prominent names in the `Islamist’ Justice and Development Party,
or AKP, were actually crypto-Jews conspiring against Atatürk’s
Republic hand in hand with the `elders of Zion.’ The books remained
bestsellers for months, giving us a clue about the popularity of
insanity in this country.

Besides the AKP folks, many liberal intellectuals as well have been
accused by the Kemalists of being `kanı bozuk,’ which literally means,
`whose blood is impure.’ I see similar suspicions raised against
myself, too, in some of the comments that come to the Hürriyet Daily
News & Economic Review. A few commentators openly argued that I
couldn’t be `a real Turk,’ for that I fail to properly acknowledge the
spotless wisdom of Atatürk, `the father of all Turks.’

But, alas, where does this obsession with ethnicity and `purity of
blood’ come from?

Well, one answer can be found in the teachings of none other than the
father of all Turks. He has a famous `Address to the Youth,’ which
every school child in Turkey is made to not just memorize, but also
internalize during the 11-year-long `national education.’ In it,
Atatürk warns his young followers against the `enemies within and
without,’ and orders them to fight relentlessly to save the Republic
from these bad people. In the very final line, he proclaims this gem:

`The power you need exists in the noble blood in your veins!’

This implies two things:

1) The followers of Atatürk, the `Turkish Youth,’ have a special
bodily fluid (a `noble blood’) that gives them some special power.

2) The `enemies within’ lack the same blood, and that is one reason
why they `combine their personal interests with the political
ambitions of the occupiers,’ as the "Address to the Youth" also nicely
explains.

Please don’t address the youth

Like every other Turkish child, I grew up by reading the `Address to
the Youth’ in every textbook, seeing it on every school wall, and
reciting it out loud on every national day. I just had to grow up a
little more to realize that all this brainwashing was a part of a
totalitarian agenda to make every Turk a Kemalist. If you fail to be a
Kemalist, the same discourse defines you as an `internal enemy’ whose
blood is not of the noble one that only Turks have. You must be
Armenian, Jewish, Kurdish, Circassian, or something ` but not a Turk.

This archaic ideology, this relic from the ’30s, can’t help modern
Turkey, if it really wants to become a democratic country. Kemalism,
of course, has the right to be an ideology among other ideologies, and
compete with them within the rules of the democratic game. But it does
not have the right to remain as the official doctrine and impose
itself on every citizen.

One good step towards democratization would be to remove the `Address
to the Youth’ from textbooks and schools. The `Youth’ have learnt more
than enough about the `noble blood’ in Turkish veins. What it really
needs to learn is democratic values such as tolerance and respect to
different thoughts, faiths and identities.

p?n=ahmet-davutoglu-yet-another-crypto-armenian-20 10-01-08