Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 5 2012
Intolerance record of the week in Turkey
ORHAN KEMAL CENGÄ°Z
Last week was so terrible in terms of witnessing intolerant attitudes
from the government and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an. So many
alarming and concerning developments happened one after another.
ErdoÄ?an has taken up his old habit of suing journalists for their
alleged defamatory remarks once again. We learned ErdoÄ?an has brought
some court cases against two writers from the Taraf daily. One was
Ahmet Altan, editor-in-chief of Taraf, for an article he wrote about
the Uludere massacre in which he criticized ErdoÄ?an very harshly.
ErdoÄ?an brought one civil and one criminal case against writer Perihan
MaÄ?den as well. Ironically, ErdoÄ?an’s cases target Perihan MaÄ?den’s
criticism of ErdoÄ?an’s intolerant behavior and the compensation cases
he had brought against her before. These are alarming developments if
you consider that ErdoÄ?an after the elections had left behind his
habit of suing journalists. He had dropped all cases he brought
against journalists as a goodwill gesture on his part, but once again,
we are returning to the old days.
Not only has he brought cases against journalists, but he also engaged
in quite nonsensical and unsophisticated discussion with novelist Paul
Auster, who said that he will not come to Turkey because of
journalists jailed here. If you ask me, Auster was ill-informed about
the situation in Turkey; however, ErdoÄ?an’s remarks have just
justified Auster’s erroneous assessment about Turkish democracy.
ErdoÄ?an called Auster `ignorant’ for choosing to visit Israel while
criticizing the limits on free press in Turkey. This nonsensical
debate between ErdoÄ?an and Auster was continuing while I was writing
this article. Auster’s final remarks were as follows: `All countries
are flawed and beset by myriad problems, Mr. Prime Minister, including
my United States, including your Turkey.’ We are all curious now if
ErdoÄ?an will continue his quarrel with Auster, one of my most favorite
novelists by the way.
The Malatya Municipality has just demolished structures that were
constructed in the Armenian cemetery with funds collected by the
Armenian community. Local Armenians stated they built these structures
by getting prior permission from authorities, and they could not
understand why the municipality destroyed them. The municipality
neither gave any explanation nor warned Armenians about their
intention to demolish these structures.
I am seriously concerned about the attitude of the Malatya
Municipality. Most probably this is `local’ retaliation against the
French bill. Intolerance always operates like this. When your prime
minister reacts strongly to something, then local authorities take a
cue from it and act accordingly. And when local authorities do
something, locals also get a message from their actions and act
accordingly. This is quite dangerous. I call on the government to
investigate the demolition of the structures in the Malatya Armenian
cemetery, which seems to me quite arbitrary and illegal.
My final bad news is about missionary paranoia, which has popped up
once again. I heard that the Directorate of Religious Affairs
(Diyanet) decided to combat missionary activities `in Turkey and
abroad.’ To be honest, I did not understand this `abroad’ part at all.
What are they planning to do? Last time this missionary paranoia was
raised, it created terrible consequences, leading up to the Malatya
massacre in which three missionaries were killed. I also want to call
on the government to investigate the policies of the Diyanet with
regard to missionaries and members of other religions. They do not
have any right to spread intolerance about people from other religions
while they get their salaries from the taxes collected from citizens
of this country, who are Muslim, Christian, Jewish and so on.
Well, as I said, last week was exceptionally bad in terms of
witnessing different expressions of intolerance. I hope this is not an
indication of a trend but rather a few separate incidents coming
simultaneously.
Finally, a terrible, manipulative article was published in the UK’s
Guardian newspaper. Penned by a Turkish journalist and bearing the
title `Turkish journalists are very frightened — but we must fight
this intimidation,’ the article presented the last photo of Hrant
Dink, lying on the street. The article was so terrible, portraying
Turkey as a first-class dictatorship in which journalists are
imprisoned for what they write day in and day out. And unfortunately,
Hrant Dink was also abused and exploited for this incredibly poor
analysis of Turkey, which even gives the impression he was killed by
this government.
I strongly recommend to ErdoÄ?an that he read this `analytical’ piece
in the Guardian to see how some shortcomings of Turkish democracy are
presented in the Western media, allowing him to ponder how he has
contributed to this surrealist picture of Turkey by suing journalists
for defamation.