KEEPING TRACK OF “OTHER”S: SURVEILLANCE OF RELIGIOUS MINORITIES FROM TURKEY TO THE U.S.
The Faculty Lounge
August 4, 2013 Sunday 2:37 PM EST
On my last day in Istanbul, I remembered that a colleague had asked
whether I could bring him back a copy of the Turkish newspaper, Å~^alom
(Turkish spelling for Shalom). To my knowledge, the weekly Å~^alom
is one of two regularly published Ladino publications in the world,
along with the monthly El Amaneser, also published in Istanbul. I was
also looking for a copy of Agos, the Armenian-Turkish weekly. Because
Jewish and Armenian communities are primarily centered in a few larger
cities, I knew that my best chance of finding print copies of these
papers would be in Istanbul. After visiting a few newsstands and
bookstores, I learnt that it was not easy to find either paper even
in the heart of Istanbul, and was told by a bookstore owner that both
papers operated primarily through individual subscribership. I finally
found the papers in a small bookstore with a newsstand, complete
with papers in various other languages, primarily from Europe. When
I told the shopkeeper that I had a hard time finding the newspapers,
he told me, “You’re lucky. Today is the first day they came in!”
The previous day, the Turkish daily Radikal reported that the Turkish
government is categorizing its non-Muslim citizens by a numbers system:
1 for Greeks, 2 for Armenians, 3 for Jews, 4 for Assyrian Christians,
and 5 for all other non-Muslims. It remains unclear for how long this
system has been in effect. The categorization came to light when
an Armenian woman who was raised as Muslim decided to reclaim her
Armenian identity. She was baptized, converted to Christianity, and
in an effort to assure her child would grow up aware of her Armenian
identity, wanted to enroll her child in an Armenian pre-school. Her
husband did not change the official records indicating his religion
as Islam. As a result, the Armenian school asked the mother to
obtain official records proving she is Armenian, since to enroll in
a minority school in Turkey, the child’s parent must prove that she
is indeed of that minority. The school official’s letter requesting
proof of Armenian identity explicitly stated that Armenian citizens
were categorized as category 2, and he needed proof that the mother’s
“family or descent code” was 2.
The school official’s letter written in the most matter-of-fact tone
has caused much discussion in the last few days. Government officials
have tried to downplay the significance of the categorization saying
that it is a mere administrative tool to ensure that religious
minorities’ rights are fulfilled while others have argued that the
practice violates the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne, which ended the
war between the Turkish Republic and the occupying powers at the end
of World War I. Articles 37 through 45 of Part I Section III of the
Treaty sets out the rights of religious minorities in Turkey. When
the first 3 categories of the ancestral coding system were revealed,
the government’s initial response was that the numbers merely helped
fulfill the mandates of Section III, by ensuring that the students
going to minority schools indeed belonged to the respective minority
community. However, since the information about categories 4 for
Assyrians and 5 for all other non-Muslims has come to light, the
government’s explanation no longer makes sense because Assyrians (or
other non-Muslims who would fall under category 5) do not have schools
for which such “administrative convenience” would be necessary. It
remains unclear whether the practice has been in place since the
founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923 (which the government claim
of administrative efficiency might imply) or if it is a more recent
surveillance method. It is also unclear whether it is only religious
minorities whose ancestry is “coded” or if there are other codes for
ethnic and linguistic minorities and perhaps even political outsiders
such as communists.
As I expressed in my previous post, vulnerability exists in every
society and some communities are particularly vulnerable in the face
of State practices, including facially neutral laws. Reading about
Turkish government’s ancestral coding system and talking to friends and
family about it, I cannot refrain from drawing parallels between this
appalling practice and the kind of invasive and still mostly-unknown
surveillance of Muslim communities in the U.S.- from the placement
of undercover agents in mosques trying to convince innocent Muslims
to participate in violent plots to collection of private data by
the government. (On surveillance in mosques and profiling in Muslim
communities see here and here, and on reactions to the reported end
to surveillance in the mosques after 2011, see here).
Religious identity as a basis of vulnerability is nothing new. From
Native Americans to Jews, Mormons and Quakers, many before Muslims have
known religious persecution in the U.S. When compared to its Western
European counterparts, the Ottoman Empire may have been a relatively
gentler place with its millet system, but it was still not a land of
egalitarianism for religious minorities. Thus, the current problematic
and appalling ancestral coding system should not be a surprise to any
of us familiar with world histories, though the attendant nausea is
hard to hold back. From an unwitting school official in Turkey to
courageous individuals like Bradley Manning imprisoned and Edward
Snowden forced into self-exile, one cannot help but hope that the
unearthing of government surveillance of private citizens will continue
across the globe. Despite the disappointing and infuriating outcome of
the Manning case and the forced exile of Snowden, it is important that
we know through which means our governments continue to monitor our
private lives, our bodies and our beliefs. With increasing intrusive
technologies including drones over our backyards, computerized census
records, and the monitoring of our e-mails and cellular phones,
Turkey and the U.S. have outdone even the worst examples of Michel
Foucault’s surveillance society where the State constantly watches,
surveys, orders and disciplines its citizens.