TURKEY’S NATIONALIST HOTBED
By Sarah Rainsford
BBC News, Trabzon, eastern Turkey
e/6403813.stm
Published: 2007/03/01 10:21:32 GMT
On match days Trabzon turns claret and blue as thousands of football
fans stream towards their stadium.
The Black Sea port city was always famous for its football. The only
team outside Istanbul ever to win the league title, Trabzonspor,
is the pride of this place – its identity.
But the city is now notorious as home to the teenage boy and eight
accomplices charged with plotting to kill ethnic Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink, who was shot dead in Istanbul last month.
Some here seem proud of that connection.
‘We’re all Turks’
When Dink was murdered, tens of thousands of people took to the
streets of Istanbul and declared themselves Armenian in solidarity.
In public people will say it is bad that [Hrant Dink] was killed,
but to most Trabzon people he was not an intellectual – he was just
an Armenian Political activist Zeynep Erdugul In Trabzon, football
fans held up banners in response that read: "We’re all Turks."
"People here are proud to be Turks, without thinking about what
it really means. There is a blind nationalism here. Racism has
flourished," says local political activist Zeynep Erdugul.
Two years ago she and her friends were beaten in the streets of
Trabzon by a furious mob that mistook them for supporters of the
Kurdish separatist party, the PKK.
Ms Erdugul fears nationalist feeling is now climbing to dangerous
new heights.
In public people will say it is bad that Hrant Dink was killed, but
to most Trabzon people he was not an intellectual – he was just an
Armenian," she says.
‘Insecure place’
The alleged teenage gunman, Ogun Samast, is said to have told police
the journalist had "insulted Turkishness" by contesting the state
position that the mass killing of Armenians by Turks in 1915 was
not genocide.
Tucked away on Turkey’s northern coast between snow-capped mountains
and the Black Sea, Trabzon was once a cosmopolitan metropolis. It
was a Greek colony, then capital of the Trebizond Empire – a bustling
trading town on the Silk Road.
As the Turkish Republic was forged a century ago, the Greeks were
expelled and the Armenians deported or killed.
When Trabzon people talk about outsiders today, they mean migrants
from the next village.
"The nationalist instinct is higher in Trabzon than in other regions
of Turkey and it’s rising," says newspaper editor Ali Ozturk.
He describes Trabzon as an insecure, even paranoid, place.
"From time to time Trabzon appears on new maps of a Greater Armenia
or the Pontus Greek Empire and some groups here see that as a real
threat. They think the Armenians and Greeks want to take over their
land and that makes them very sensitive," Mr Ozturk says.
‘Lost hopes’
But most locals believe it was poverty that drove Dink’s alleged
killers to murder.
They point to crowds of youths and men wandering the city’s cobbled
streets or lounging on its benches, unemployed and disenchanted.
Mayor Volkan Canalioglu rejects any suggestion that there is a problem
here with ultra-nationalism.
"Murders, rapes and other crimes are on the increase all over the
world," he says. "Hrant Dink’s killing should be seen in that context.
"The people of this region have characters like the waves of the
Black Sea. They explode suddenly then calm down.
"When you add unemployment, broken homes and lost hopes to that
character – then it’s very easy to influence people here, and provoke
them to action."
Unemployment levels here are about average for Turkey, but there is
just one factory and it produces young players for Trabzonspor.
Football-mad city
Football is the height of boys’ hopes here. It represents their ticket
to wealth and status, and a way to prove themselves.
"The young people of Trabzon are so neglected that there are no other
opportunities to fulfil their ambitions," says youth team co-ordinator
Ozkan Sumer, as boys in pale blue dash about a nearby training pitch.
A former Trabzonspor player himself, Mr Sumer makes mighty claims
for the game this city is obsessed with.
"Young people here are left dangling and there’s always a danger they
could break away from society. Football is the only thing that keeps
them from falling," he says.
In depressed city suburbs like Pelitli, there does seem little else
to dream of.
The accused gunman and his alleged chief accomplice both come from
this neglected neighbourhood, where small children play in puddles
and older boys chase a ball down the street.
But even Pelitli has a football team and the both the main accused
played for it.
The team, Pelitlispor, initially carried messages of support for its
ex-teammates on its website.
Friends of those in custody now insist they do not agree with the
murder of Dink. But they do share the alleged killer’s controversial
views on Turkish history.
"As the people of this soil, we don’t believe there was any Armenian
genocide," says one friend, Serkan.
It is that view – still the official position of Turkey and hotly
disputed by Armenians – that Dink challenged in his work.
"This land is ours – and when there are things to defend, we definitely
do that," adds another friend of one of the accused.
"But we talk about football or finding a job round here, not about
Hrant Dink or any genocide."
Trabzon is a city where nationalism is nurtured and admired. It
certainly does not feel ashamed by its association with the murder
of Dink. It feels defensive.
The only question people here are asking themselves is what all the
fuss is about.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
