TURKEY HANDS ITS ENEMIES AN OWN GOAL
Maureen Freely
The Independent – United Kingdom; Aug 31, 2005
Turkey was never going to have an easy ride into Europe. There was
the question of Cyprus, and the question of the Kurds. Turkey’s
checkered human rights record was a cause for concern, as was the
role the military played until very recently. There were also dark
mutterings about the Islamicization of Europe.
But the ghost at the feast has always been the question of the
Armenian massacres in 1915. Europe would like to see Turkey recognise
its responsibility and apologise. Turkey continues to maintain that
” while several hundred thousand Armenians may have perished ” this
happened in the context of parallel massacres perpetrated against
Muslim Turks.
In certain parts of the Turkish intelligentsia, however, there is
growing recognition that Turkey will not be successful in its European
bid until this issue is aired in an open way and somehow resolved.
It was in this spirit that Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s most famous novelist,
said, in an interview last winter with the Swiss newspaper Tages
Anzeiger that ‘30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in
these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it’. His comments,
reprinted in the Turkish press the following day, caused a furore,
with leading commentators denouncing him as a traitor.
There followed death threats, ostensibly from offended members of
the public, probably linked to right-wing paramilitaries. Fearing
for his safety, Pamuk’s friends advised him to leave the country. In
his absence, the story ran and ran, with the Turkish press seizing
on every comment from abroad to paint him as a Turk who shames his
country abroad.
As his friend and translator, I would like to make it very clear
(here and in the Turkish newspapers where this piece will no doubt
appear tomorrow) that this image is wholly false. This is a man who
loves his country deeply, defends it fiercely, especially when abroad,
and who cannot imagine living anywhere else.
Pamuk is not the only Turkish intellectual to have brought the Armenian
question into the public domain in recent months. Last May, a group
of Turkish academics ” some from Turkish universities, some based
in the US and Europe ” tried to hold a conference on the subject at
Bogazici University in Istanbul.
Entitled ‘The Ottoman Armenians during the Era of Ottoman Decline’,
its aim was ‘to understand and recount a historical issue that
… has become trapped and increasingly politicised between the
radical Armenian national and official Turkish theses’. There was
also a recognition amongst the (largely pro-EU) participants that
if Turkish academics were able to find a space in which to ‘own’ the
issue, this would in itself be proof to the European community that
Turkey was a maturing democracy, intent on promoting and protecting
freedom of thought.
Sadly, the Justice Minister, Cemil Cicek, saw fit to indicate otherwise
in the National Assembly the day before the conference was due to
open. When an opposition deputy denounced the organisers as traitors,
he rose to concur, going on to call the conference a ‘dagger in the
back of the Turkish people’.
The conference was postponed. Many of those who were to have given
papers vented their anger in the press, and though they were roundly
condemned by very angry others there were those who saw this fiery
exchange as proof that matters previously viewed as untouchable were
at least getting a public airing.
The optimists were vindicated when the conference was rescheduled for
late September, and they were further encouraged when Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan told the organisers that he supported the conference and
wanted it to take place before his own talks with the EU on 3 October.
But now this same government seems to have decided to shoot itself
in the foot. For a public prosecutor has brought a case against Orhan
Pamuk, having found his remarks in the Swiss newspaper last winter to
be an infringement of Article 301/1 of the Turkish Penal Code. This
states that ‘the public denigration of Turkish identity’ is a crime
and recommends that those found guilty be given prison sentences of
six to 36 months.
Because another law prohibits Pamuk from commenting on his case
while it is pending, the statement that his Turkish publishers will
be sending out today is a three-sentence affair which sets out the
facts and offers no opinion. It is up to us to decide how to read it.
There is no doubt that it will raise questions about the wisdom of
Turkey’s EU membership bid. How can it possibly claim to be a European
country if it has such laws on the books, and if public prosecutors
can bring such cases? No doubt the censure has already started behind
closed doors. No doubt it will be followed by more public denigration
of Turkishness in the European press.
This does not preclude a fairy-tale ending: common sense could
prevail. The government could persuade the public prosecutor to drop
his case. It could then put its full weight behind the conference,
and signal to the right- wing paramilitaries to stay away.
If the government fails to achieve any of the above, it may well be
because it can’t. Since December of last year, there has been a slow
but steady rise of nationalist, anti-EU sentiment inside the ruling
party, an even more dramatic rise in nationalist rhetoric in the
main opposition party, and a growing recalcitrance in the vast state
bureaucracies that must implement the sweeping legal, social, and
economic changes Turkey must make if it is join the EU. In the same
period, the government’s ability to make a case for Europe has been
severely weakened by the stream of anti-Turkish voices from Europe.
The then French Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, set the tone
during the French referendum, when he cast doubt on Turkey’s EU bid
by wondering if it was wise for the ‘river of Islam to enter the
riverbed of secularism in Europe’. (Did they forget to tell him that
Turkey has been a secular state for more than 80 years?) The great
man did not intend his remarks for the Turkish public, but of course,
they read it, too. Now, with Merkel and Chirac promising to block
Turkey’s EU bid altogether, resentment can only grow.
This is good news for all those inside Turkey who would like to stay
out of the EU, and especially good news to hardliners who would like
to see the state and the military returned to their former power, and
the intelligentsia muzzled. The badmouthing from Europe has greatly
strengthened their cause. The case against Orhan Pamuk is more grist
for their mill. Unless it is handled wisely, that is. If you care at
all about democracy in Turkey, don’t let them use him as a pawn.