Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Jan 3 2007
I am from Trabzon, but not one of those…
by KERIM BALCI
Identifying oneself with a hometown is a human need. Being from a
certain city provides a person a reference point to give meaning to
the world. `I am from this and that place’ refers to a consciousness
standing in this and that place and perceiving the surrounding
realities from the angle that place supplies. In many languages, the
relationship between `temporal-spatial reality’ of the self and
`cognitive meaning given to the world around that self’ is reflected
in the words: stand-understand in English and mawqif-wuquf with the
same meanings in Arabic.
Identifying with a city as a hometown, with a country as a fatherland
or with the geography of a religion as the Holy Land is not only
about the nostalgic backlash of memory nor about a social mechanism
to relate to other `co-placer.’ It is about who you are. You not only
identify yourself with a place; you make it a part of your identity.
And the perceived identity of your city, your country, may stick onto
your identity in an unpleasant way. This was the main reason why the
Greek philosopher Diogenes, who, upon being asked to give the name of
the city-state in which he had been brought up, responded with the
remark that he was a citizen of the world: cosmopolitan. If you are
not an Athenian in Athens, it is better to be cosmopolitan, he should
have thought.
Well, I am from Trabzon. I was born and raised in Samsun, but my
reference point in life, my identity has always been
Trabzon-centered. The perceived image of this city has suddenly
turned to an ultranationalist, violent and lawless one. This
pejorative image spread so quickly that many from Trabzon feel the
need to say `I am from Trabzon, but…’ This is the same apologetic
feeling I observed in Muslims of the West after 9/11. Deep inside
every Muslim in the West was an imposed sense of guiltiness.
Ogün Samast, an ideologically poisoned and manipulated young man from
Trabzon, murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink two weeks
ago. Within those two weeks, Trabzon was put under inquiry by the
police and politicians and worst of all, by journalists. Some had
neo-Marxist ideas that economic inequalities were pushing the youth
to marginal ideologies and violence. Others were more thinking more
in terms of social psychology, claiming that as a frontier city
against Russian and Georgian Christian influence, Trabzon developed a
nationalist version of Islamism. There were more to-the-point
analyses of the inner dynamics of Turkish educational politics and
the influence of `Almancis,’ the second and third generation Turks
who settled as workers in Germany and other European countries.
None dared to say that this was an isolated case, and stereotyping
all the people from Trabzon on the basis of two or three cases is as
silly as this joke: An imam in Rize, a neighboring city, had recited
the call for evening prayer during a Ramadan earlier than he should
have. Since this call is also the call for breaking the fast, all the
people of Rize broke their fasts earlier than they should have.
Later, the Mufti of the city decided that this early fast-breaking
was unacceptable and made a public call to the people of Rize to fast
one day extra as a substitute for that day. To his astonishment, he
received calls from people of Rize who were settled in Germany on
whether they should also fast that extra day.
Tragicomic as it is, the sense of guilt among the people of Trabzon
is almost the same. What happens to me when I, as a person born and
raised in Samsun but who has visited Trabzon only twice in my life,
feel a necessity to say that I am not of those radicals? This feeling
itself is more dangerous than the fact that there are some marginal
groups in this wonderfully beautiful city, my hometown…
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
