Kuwait Times, Kuwait –
July 11 2007
Turks vent nationalist anger, pride before poll
Published Date: July 11, 2007
GALLIPOLI: The monuments and mass graves of Gallipoli record the
horrors and heroism of war, but also help explain the nationalism
that fires Turks and is shaping a parliamentary election campaign.
British, French, Australian and other troops stormed the beaches of
this windswept peninsula in 1915 to try to capture Istanbul, knock
the Ottoman Turkish Empire out of World War One and open a sea route
to their ally Russia. But they reckoned without the bravery of the
Turks and their commander Mustafa Kemal, w
ho said: "I am ordering you not to fight but to die". Nearly 400,000
men, more than half of them Turks, were killed or wounded before the
Turks prevailed.
It was a triumph which prepared Turks psychologically for future
battles in which they trounced powerful Western armies and went on to
establish the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 under the leadership of
Kemal, later known as Ataturk. "My father was just 14 when he fought
here with Ataturk and was wounded. Our country was saved here, the
republic really began here," said Ahmet Oktay, 78, a retired railway
worker.
We owe our present life to the sacrifices they made. If we had no
nationalism, we would not have the life we enjoy today," he said at
the monument commemorating the Ottoman Turkish casualties, a tranquil
site overlooking the Dardanelles Straits. All political parties are
pressing their nationalist credentials before the election on July
22. The far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) is expected to be
the third party in parliament, after the centre-right AK Party and
the main opposition centre-left Rep
ublican People’s Party (CHP), which is also nationalist-minded. The
MHP and CHP have criticized the ruling Islamist-rooted AK Party for
selling off Turkish firms to foreign investors and favor a tough
stance on the European Union in membership talks.
Distrust, fear
But there is a darker side to Turkish nationalism that one can also
encounter at Gallipoli, even though the site commemorates both sides’
dead. "Western countries have the same intentions as they had in
World War One. They want to weaken and divide Turkey, they fear a
strong Turkey will become the leader of the Muslim world," said
Cuneyt Musuk, 34, a factory worker now living in Germany. This is not
an uncommon view in NATO member Turkey, where fear of outsiders can
erupt into violence. Ultra-nationalists
were blamed for the recent murders of Turkish Armenian editor Hrant
Dink and an Italian Catholic priest.
They have thrived in a legal and political climate that makes it a
crime to insult "Turkishness". People who question the official,
nationalist version of Turkey’s history, such as Nobel Literature
Laureate Orhan Pamuk, have been prosecuted. The nationalist trend has
prompted the AK Party, which is widely expected to be re-elected, to
sound more hawkish. It has threatened to send troops into northern
Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels and avoided discussions about the
supranational, increasingly unpopular EU. "T
here is much more nationalism in Turkey today because of the Iraq war
and US policy in Iraq," said William Hale, a Turkey scholar at
Istanbul’s Sabanci University.
Concerns of Kurdish state
Turks fear US policy is leading inexorably to the creation of an
independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq which could fan separatism
among Kurds in southeastern Turkey. They are also angry the United
States has not tackled some 4,000 Turkish Kurdish separatist rebels
based in northern Iraq. Hale also attributed the upsurge in
nationalism to Ankara’s EU-linked reforms, which are often depicted
by Turkish media as one-sided concessions to a Europe they say will
never admit Turkey, a large, relatively poor,
overwhelmingly Muslim country.
The MHP is optimistic, unsurprisingly after a poll found more than
half of Turks saw themselves as "very nationalistic". "We are
climbing the ladder. People are angry because the AK Party is
throwing into question our national identity, the foundations of the
republic, our Turkishness," said Vural Oktay, an MHP candidate for
the western port city of Izmir. Under electoral rules, if the MHP
clears the 10 percent threshold to enter parliament, the AK Party
could end up with a smaller majority. This could spe
ll political instability, and some human rights activists fear a
rollback of reforms. "The nationalism is often provoked by state
officials, including in the army, who often do not grasp the
volatility of the situation," said Orhan Kemal Cengiz of the Human
Rights Agenda Association in Ankara. He fears clashes between Turks
and Kurds in Turkish cities. Some members of Turkey’s security forces
are also known to sympathize with shadowy ultra-nationalist groups,
often made up of disaffected young men looking
for a cause. – Reuters