WE ARE ALL DEEPLY MOVED!
Hurriyet
March 23 2010
Turkey
President Abdullah Gul was "deeply moved" when a chorus of Cameroonian
schoolchildren sang a Turkish song during his visit to a college in
Cameron’s capital Yaoundé. He was probably even more deeply moved when
he won the Chatham House Prize awarded by the prestigious British think
tank for being "deemed to have made the most significant contribution
to the improvement of international relations."
Naturally, we are deeply moved to have a president who has made a
most significant contribution to the improvement of international
relations. It’s good to know that international relations, on a global
scale, have improved significantly thanks to the Turkish president.
Ironically, the man who has made the most significant contribution to
the improvement of international relations has declared that he will
never again talk to President Barack Obama on the Armenian genocide
issue. And his country’s embassies in a number of capitals, including
Washington, are ambassador-less in a rather silly protest against
genocide resolutions. With a few more significant contributions
to international relations we may soon have hardly any ambassadors
abroad. Alternatively, the Foreign Ministry may establish a general
directorate for recalled ambassadors.
On a personal note, I was deeply moved when President Gul took my
advice in defense of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s niceties
about illegal Armenian workers. Last week, I wrote that the pro-Erdogan
intellectual relief teams may claim that the prime minister threatened
to expel 100,000 illegal Armenians "in order to illustrate to the
world how hospitable Turks are" (TDN, The Exodus – Part II?).
I felt like a presidential advisor when Mr. Gul argued that "the
prime minister said that to show we did not hate the Armenians." I
must agree that the president’s choice of wording was a smarter line
of defense to salvage the prime minister’s unsalvageable, near-hate
speech. But I claim presidential praise for the idea!
In defense of his not too original idea of Exodus II (see 1915-1918
for Exodus I) Mr. Erdogan claimed that he was misquoted. He said,
"There is a difference between expelling Armenians and expelling
Armenians working in Turkey illegally." I wasn’t deeply moved with
that poor self-defense for a number of reasons.
First, the press did not misquote the prime minister. He was quoted
as saying exactly that: expelling 100,000 illegal Armenian workers.
Second, the prime minister cannot expel Turkish citizens of Armenians
origin in any case – well, he almost cannot. And third, expelling
100,000 officially-tolerated Armenian workers, legal or illegal,
is as unpleasant as expelling Armenians.
If Mr. Erdogan spoke of expelling illegal workers regardless of their
nationality that would have been something else; but [mass] deportation
on the basis of ethnic selection is… well, we all know what…
But, apparently, Turks were "deeply moved" by their prime minister’s
ethnic offensive. A survey by pollsters, MetroPOLL, has revealed that
48.8 percent of Turks support the deportation of illegal Armenian
workers – while only 33.9 percent disapprove the idea. It must
be a "statistical coincidence" that the percentage of Turks on the
"go-home-Armenians" camp is almost identical to Mr. Erdogan’s party’s
vote in the last general elections (47 percent).
It is hardly surprising if half of the Turks favor the idea of mass
deportation targeting one specific ethnicity. But by leaving the
survey incomplete, MetroPOLL missed a great opportunity to make a
significant contribution to the improvement of political science.
For a better understanding of the Turkish mental calculus, the
pollsters should have asked the respondents an accompanying question:
Would you approve if the government expelled illegal Muslim workers
from Turkey? Any bets that the percentage of Turks who would have
responded positively would have been (at most) a fifth of those who
favored Exodus II?