ANSA English Media Service
April 12, 2005
TURKEY: INTELLECTUALS APPEAL AGAINST NATIONALIST WAVE
(ANSA) – ANKARA, April 12 – A group of 200 Turkish
intellectuals have published an open letter expressing their
concerns about the nationalist wave flooding the country, which
they believe risks heightening the internal tension with the
Kurds and giving an impetus to the external opposition to the
controversial Armenian genocide of 1915.
“Using recent events as pretext, attempts are being made to
hamper the peace process and the pacification of our country,”
the appeal, signed by academics, writers, artists, journalists
and heads of non-governmental organisations, published in
several Turkish newspapers, says.
The intellectuals backing the appeal refer to recent
incidents singalling a certain revival of nationalist moods,
which took place in Trabzon, on the Black Sea, between
nationalists and members of the Association of Solidarity Among
Families of Inmates (TAYAD).
Five TAYAD members were recently taken in custody by the
police accused of inflaming public feelings after escaping a
nationalist lynching by a crowd that wrongly took them for
supporters of a banned Kurdish rebel movement. Local media said
the crowd had mistaken the TAYAD members for followers of the
Kurdish PKK movement thinking the youths were thinking of burn a
Turkish flag at the time of the Newroz [spring New Year]
celebrations.
Nationalist feelings have been running high in Turkey since
young pro-Kurdish supporters tried to set fire to a Turkish flag
last month in the Mediterranean port city of Mersin. That
incident unleashed nationwide rallies in defence of the flag.
Another incident took place in Trabzon on Sunday where the
police intervened to protect and save some thirty TAYAD
activists who were staging a protest against the lynch attempts
from the previous days and who were attacked and roughed up by a
group of some 200 nationalists.
The Trabzon incidents are related, according to those
launching the appeal, to the wave of nationalist rallies and the
counter reaction to fly the Turkish flag in all Turkish towns in
the wake of the burning of the national flag in Mersin by a
group of youngsters who, the local press press said, could have
been inspired by Kurdish PKK movement militants.
“The reactions to this incident tend to verge on racism and
nationalism, not without the support of state officials,” the
200 intellectuals claim in their appeal focusing the attention
on the mass hysteria caused by both Kurdish and Turkish
nationalism.
The authors of the appeal also asked for the immediate
dismissal of the deputy governor of the Turkish town of
Sutculer, who recently who ordered the seizure and destruction
of works by novelist Orhan Pamuk for making a reference to the
massacre of Armenians. Pamuk said in an interview that in 1915
“nearly one million Armenians were massacred (by the Ottoman
government at the time, editor’s note) thus giving arguments to
the international community, contrasting with Turkey’s decisive
position, in support of the fact that this massacre was actually
“a genocide”.
The books, however, did not end on the pyre as it seemed none
of Pamuk’s books could be found in the local libraries. Still,
the steps taken by the high-ranking official tarred Turkey’s
image in the eyes of the European Union, with which accession
talks are due to start on October 3.
“These methods remind of the Nazi period,” the Turkish
intellectuals stressed in their appeal, calling upon the
government to distance itself from the incident by dismissing
the deputy governor. (ANSA)
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