Notes from a Funeral a Letter from Istanbul
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LETTERS & NOTES Notes from a Funeral A Letter from Istanbul Henri J. Barkey his past winter, on January 23, I attended key’s Armenian community, in solidarity with the funeral of the slain Turkish-Arme- all Turks devoted to free expression, in solidar- Tnian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul. ity with everyone, everywhere, affirming the Dink was an extraordinary individual, a coura- spirit of what it is to be human. These are not geous campaigner for the right of free expression common events in today’s Istanbul. in Turkey, as well as both a proud Armenian Awe, however, was brushed dull by the sad- and a proud Turkish national. Dink fell victim ness in the eyes of ordinary Armenian parish- to a surge of xenophobic Turkish nationalism, ioners who had come to say farewell to a hero. itself the result of a creeping panic caused by the That sadness reflected not just the murder of a war in Iraq, an ideologically fossilized and un- man, but the death of an era. Turkey long en- responsive state apparatus, and politicians and a joyed a period of cohabitation and coexistence media quick to blame everything on foreigners in a genuinely multicultural environment, a broadly—all too broadly—defined. His murder legacy of a proud multicultural history and a and the resulting debate over its causes and con- confidence in the future. For Armenians in Tur- sequences typify all the fissures, insecurities and key, that social environment now seems a kind contradictions of contemporary Turkey. of relic. Theirs was a precarious existence to be- I had never met Hrant Dink and, truth to gin with, for Turkey’s Armenian population has tell, I felt terribly guilty standing there, just a been steadily dwindling: It stands at 50,000 at few feet away from his casket in the church, last estimate, down from two million on the eve when so many with a stronger claim to pro- of World War I. Meanwhile, growing sentiment pinquity were still clamoring to get inside. A around the world to push Turkey to come to mere academic interloper born in Turkey but terms with its past—specifically with the mass long since a citizen of the United States, I had murder of Armenians in late Ottoman times managed entry into the church thanks to some during World War I—has further isolated the journalist friends who maneuvered me through Armenian community within Turkey’s newly the security lines. Yet my sense of guilt was unsettled political culture. soon overwhelmed by an odd mix of awe and Hrant Dink had not been afraid to chal- sadness. I was awed by the sight of Armenians, lenge the official Turkish line on Armenian is- Muslims and Jews, Turks and foreigners, young sues. He had been prosecuted under Article 301 and old, united in a moment of grief. More than of the criminal code, a macabre construction 100,000 people had walked that brisk morning that allows the state to go after anyone for in- in the streets of Istanbul in solidarity with Tur- sulting “Turkishness”—Türklüğü—a term that truly qualifies as “Orwellian” Turkish. Dink Henri J. Barkey is the Bernard and Bertha Cohen was found guilty. His prosecution, murder and Professor of International Relations at Lehigh Uni- most post-assassination press discussions of versity and currently a Public Policy Scholar at the both are symptomatic of the growing unease of Woodrow Wilson Center. the Turkish elite with minorities and minority VACATION (JULY/AUGUST) 2007 139 LETTERS & NOTES Associated Press Protesting the assassination of Hrant Dink issues. They may not be able to define “Turk- they need in upcoming parliamentary elections. ishness” in so many words, but they are sure The President of the Republic, Ahmet Necdet they know what it feels like. Sezer, who had refused to congratulate Turkey’s This new unease with minorities, however, is first Nobel Prize winner, novelist Orhan Pamuk, a symptom of a larger discomfort. Many Turks on the grounds that he had publicly acknowl- are wallowing in fear and self-doubt, suspecting edged that Ottoman Turkey had killed a million anybody and everybody—indeed, the world at Armenians, also failed to show up. large—of ganging up on them. So it was no However miniscule a community they may particular surprise when the 100,000 marchers be (non-Muslims in Turkey represent less than at Hrant Dink’s funeral were assailed by col- one half of one percent of the 72 million-strong umnists and some party leaders for “diminish- population), most Turks view the non-Muslim ing the value of Turkishness.” Some criticized religious minorities in their midst, many of European reactions of sympathy and outrage whom have inhabited regions of Anatolia for over Dink’s murder by wrongly claiming that centuries, if not millennia, as foreign. Ironic, is Europeans fail to demonstrate similar feelings it not, that a country that wants to be considered of human solidarity when Turks are the victims “not foreign” in the eyes of the European Union of racial hatred—in Germany, for example. labels non-Muslims in its own midst thus, even They somehow managed to forget that Dink though the ancestors of many of these “foreign- was first and foremost a Turkish citizen. ers” lived on present-day Turkish soil before the Dink’s murder was highly symbolic and so migration of Turkish tribes from the east. required an equally symbolic reaction from state The Turkish fear of minorities does not officials. It didn’t happen. Not one senior Turk- stop with tiny religious ones. It is the Kurds ish official was present at the funeral. The Prime who keep most Turkish decision-makers, espe- Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and his deputy, cially the civil-military elite, up at night. As the Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül, stayed away for Kurds increasingly agitate for cultural and even fear of offending Turkish nationalists whose votes national rights in Turkey, more and more are 140 THE AMERICAN INTEREST NOTES FROM A FUNERAL being arrested or charged, often just for verbal emergence of a systematic attempt at silencing slights to official dogma. Some Kurdish activists domestic critics—not Armenians or Kurds, but in Turkey do their people no favors by deliber- Turks. Things have gotten sufficiently danger- ately employing a discourse designed to infuri- ous that Orhan Pamuk has felt obliged to leave ate the Turkish majority, but the fact remains the country; he now lives in New York and that speech itself is increasingly being punished returns only for unannounced brief trips. The once again. Ahmet Türk, the leader of the pro- security services have assigned bodyguards to Kurdish party, was sentenced to six months in many other intellectuals. jail for referring to the imprisoned PKK (Kurd- At some level, the rising intimidation of do- istan Workers Party) leader Abdullah Öcalan as mestic critics is sanctioned by officials, and not “honorable” (sayın), a quite common attribution necessarily elected ones. A few months ago a in Turkish. weekly magazine, Nokta, revealed that the Turk- Turkish fear of its Kurdish minority extends ish Armed Forces has a rating system for newspa- to Iraq. Turks are utterly and unconditionally pers and journalists based on their opposition to opposed to Kurdish independence in any form, the military’s interference in politics. Permission anywhere. This is an odd view for a country that to cover the operations of the Turkish General supports the independence of some 180,000 Staff is apparently based on how well journalists Turkish Cypriots in northern Cyprus, but re- and their editors do on this points system. fuses to contemplate Kurdish independence for a considerably larger number of people in o some extent, Turkish insecurities can be the event this becomes the only viable option Ttraced back to the collapse of the Ottoman for Iraqi Kurds. President Sezer has refused to Empire. Having chosen the losing side in World invite his Iraqi counterpart to Ankara because War I, the “sick man of Europe”, as the Empire Jalal Talabani, who receives full honors every- was then known beyond it borders, found its ter- where else, happens to be a Kurd. Meanwhile, ritories carved up by the victorious powers. The the Turkish Chief of Staff, Yaşar Büyükanıt, 1920 Sèvres Treaty, imposed by the victorious blocked the one serious attempt by the Turkish allies on the Ottomans, was undoubtedly harsh, government to establish a dialogue with Iraqi though no harsher than those the Ottomans had Kurds by refusing publicly to sanction talks imposed on others in their long heyday. with anyone supporting the anti-Turkish PKK Turks, however, are not taught about that. insurgents with arms—though there is no evi- They are taught about the Sèvres Treaty, thanks dence that any Iraqi group, let alone the Iraqi to an intense state-directed process of politi- government, does so. The U.S. State Depart- cal socialization process that starts in primary ment, too, has said as much. schools. Though Sèvres was heroically undone On the other hand, Masoud Barzani, the by Mustafa Kemal—by Atatürk, the founder of leader of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, modern Turkey—the memory of that humilia- does not help when he often uses language even tion still haunts every Turk, and every Turk is more inflammatory than Kurds use inside Tur- raised to see ulterior motives in the policies of all key. Every time Barzani opens his mouth, the great powers, Western powers not least among Turkish press and an assortment of political them. In his farewell address at the military hardliners are spun into a frenzy of overcom- academies this April, President Sezer warned the pensating xenophobia, the effect of which is to officers of the sinister plots by “domestic and for- undermine any hope of political reform in Tur- eign forces” to install a moderate Islamic regime key.