Israel Hayom
Aug 17 2014
Turkey making racism ordinary
by Uzay Bulut
Insulting other nations on TV might not be a method of boosting one’s
presidential election campaign in most countries, but in Turkey, this
method seems to work, at least for Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
When he was asked of his earlier discriminatory statements during a
live interview, five days before the August 10 presidential
elections, Erdogan said:
“One of them came and said I was a Georgian. Then another came up
and, I beg your pardon, called me uglier things, saying I was
Armenian.”
This was not the first time that Erdogan openly insulted another
nation in a public statement.
On June 10, 2011, he said in an interview on national TV: “There are
many books, more than 30 written about us, calling us Jewish,
Armenian, excuse my language, Rum [a term used for Greek in
Turkey].”
Those statements alone should be enough to show the insincerity of the
reforms that Erdogan or his Justice and Development Party government
has conducted concerning the national conflicts in which Turkey is
involved, mainly the Cyprus issue, relations with Armenia and the
recognition — or denial — of the Armenian Genocide.
But Erdogan is hardly the only political figure in Turkey who, without
reserve, has insulted other nations.
On November 10, 2013, on the 75th anniversary of Ataturk’s death,
Muharrem Ince, deputy chairman of the Republican People’s Party, the
main Turkish opposition party, said: “If there had been no Ataturk,
your names would not have been Ahmet, Hasan, or Huseyin. Your names
would have been Yorgo or Dimitri.”
In response, Yorgo Demir, one of the very few Greeks who have remained
in Istanbul and who works at Galata Greek School Foundation, said:
“Ironically, the Dimitris and Yorgos, who had always existed in the
lands Ince mentions, were either assimilated after being forced to
adopt names like Hasan and Huseyin — especially in the Pontus region
— when their lives fell in danger during the foundation phase of the
Turkish republic, or were slain and wiped off these lands. That was no
different from the atrocities against the Armenians in Anatolia and
the Jews in Thrace.”
Both Ince and Demir were right. The names of many people in Asia
Minor would still be Dimitri or Yorgo today if Ince’s party, the
Republican People’s Party, had not exposed the Greeks to genocide,
forced conversions, or assimilation.
According to a report by Jeff Benvenuto and John Lim at the Center
for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights of Rutgers University:
“Pontian and Anatolian Greeks were victims of a broader Turkish
genocidal project aimed at all Christian minorities in the Ottoman
Empire. A total of more than 3.5 million Greeks, Armenians, and
Assyrians were killed under the successive regimes of the Young Turks
and of Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk] from roughly 1914 to 1923. Of this, as
many as 1.5 million Greeks may have died. The end of the genocide
marked a profound rupture in the long Greek historical presence on
the Asia Minor.”
A total of 22 countries and 42 U.S. states have adopted resolutions
acknowledging the Armenian Genocide as a bona fide historical event.
In addition, the International Association of Genocide Scholars has
passed a resolution affirming that the 1914-1923 campaign against
Ottoman Greeks constituted genocide, alongside the genocides of other
groups — namely the Armenians and Assyrians.
But in Turkey, history textbooks and the mainstream media do not
utter a single word about the destruction of historic Hellenic and
Armenian communities in Asia Minor, and the fact that genocide in the
early 20th century claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of
Ottoman Greeks remains untold.
Due to the assimilationist policies of the Turkish state, several
languages once spoken by the inhabitants of Asia Minor have become
extinct or endangered, according to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s
Languages in Danger. Judezmo, for example, which was originally spoken
in the former territories of the Ottoman Empire, has become a
severely endangered language. Western Armenian and Pontic Greek have
become definitely endangered. And Cappadocian Greek has become an
extinct language.
But that is fine. What if many people in Turkey were still called
Dimitri or Yorgo today? What if the current prime minister of Turkey
was a Jew, an “ugly Armenian” or — excuse my language — a Greek? So
let us not make a very big deal out of those physical and cultural
genocides.
As Chris Crutcher puts it, “Racist thought and action says far more
about the person they come from than the person they are directed
at.”
So the more tragic question is why Erdogan and Ince feel superior to
Armenians, Greeks or Jews, the indigenous peoples of Asia Minor and
Thrace, and proudly express their hateful thoughts even 90 years
after the establishment of the Turkish republic.
This discriminatory mentality did not just begin to prevail under
Justice and Development Party rule, of course. It is the result of
unending propaganda designed by the Turkish state and imposed on its
people for 90 years.
Through the official education system and mainstream media, the people
in Turkey have been indoctrinated to believe in a Turkish version of
history, which is deliberately distorted in accordance with the
official ideology of the state. From when Turkish people commence
school, they are exposed to the Turkish state propaganda — an
imaginative and untrue version of history.
When people in Turkey are asked about fundamental issues in the
history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkish republic, the following
answers are likely:
What happened in the 1915 Armenian genocide?
“It was a period of war and a necessary deportation of Armenians that
had to be conducted to stop the reciprocal conflicts between Turks
and Armenians.”
What happened to the Greeks in Asia Minor, Pontos, and Eastern Thrace
in the 1912-1923 genocide?
“Was there ever such a genocide? It was a period of war. People die
in war times. The world attacked our country during this period. So
we fought back. And how many Greeks lived here back then, by the way?
No so many, I suppose.”
What happened in the 1934 anti-Jewish pogroms in Eastern Thrace?
“Did Jews ever live in Thrace? I thought the region has always been
predominantly Turkish and Muslim.”
What happened in the 1974 Turkish occupation of Cyprus?
“It was not an occupation. It was a peace operation that Turkey
carried out to protect Turkish Cypriots from killings at the hands of
Greek Cypriots. Moreover, the northern part of the island has always
been historically Turkish soil.”
Why does the whole world call it an illegal invasion and occupation?
“Because they hate us. They always have a hidden agenda against our country.”
As a result of this unimaginable propaganda that Turkish people are
regularly fed, discrimination, hate speech and racism have become
routine practices publicly carried out even by the head of the
government and other parliamentarians. This is one of the most
extensive, long-standing and systematic propaganda campaigns ever
conducted in world history, and it has produced tragic results.
According to a survey conducted in January 2014 by the Istanbul-based
Konda Reserch Company, 67 percent of respondents believe that “the
Turkish nation is superior to other nations in all respects.”
According to another report based on the results of a survey titled
“Nationalism in Turkey and in the world,” conducted by Professor
Ersin Kalaycioglu of Sabanci University and Professor Ali Carkoglu of
Koc University, a large majority of Turkish people think there is
nothing in their history that they should be ashamed of.
The view that theirs is a model nation and an example to the world is
much more common in Turkey than it is in other countries, the report
added.
“It seems that Turkey has a xenophobic, autarchic and nationalistic
culture which could be summed up with the common Turkish saying:
‘There is no friend of Turks but Turks themselves,'” according to the
survey, based on interviews conducted with Turkish citizens above the
age of 18 in 64 cities.
About 63 percent of respondents agreed that one should support one’s
country even if it does wrong, and 71 percent thought Turkey was a
better country than most, according to the report.
“Next year will be the anniversary of 1915 [the Armenian Genocide].
Turkish people do not tend to do historical research on this issue.
In a country that does not get ashamed and has a very high level of
self-confidence, people tend to say that they are a better country
than others. It seems that people do not critically evaluate
history,” Professor Ali Carkoglu said.
It is certain that genocides, massacres and atrocities have been
committed throughout history in every corner of the world, but what
makes Turkey unique is its “talent” for denying them.
This mentality is what made a prime minister call another a nation
“ugly” on national TV and helped guarantee his success in the
presidential election.
http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id-39