[center][size=x-large][color=#CC0000][b]Extreme nationalism
in Eurovision song contest outfit and EU membership[/b][/color][/size][/center]

[b]E-KurdNet[/b]

10.1.2005

[center][img]http://www.koskkoyu.com/web/images/stories/haber/maras3.jpg[/img][/cent…]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The 49th Eurovision song contest presentation from Turkey this year was a good example of a nationalist gimmickry in the fullest sense of the word. For all neighbouring countries the message was crystal clear: We have taken your culture and just you wait, soon we'll take you too. The realm from Donau to Turan is in sight. Never has the flag and an innocent music competition been used so evidently against several peoples, Kurds, Armenians, Syrians, and Cypriots.

For all those aware of the political background, it's a torment to see how things are twisted and presented in an extreme nationalistic and fundamentalist way. What wee saw was a big and carefully planned show of the undemocratic and in many ways barbaric Turkey. The message of Turkey was clear, but how many reflected upon that? That is the question. The tourism commercial in the breaks between the songs showed the cultural heritage from the Kurdish, Armenian and Syrian parts of the country. But the unambiguous message was: this is only a Turkish landscape. An exhibition of “Turkish folk-dance“ was shown. It was really Kurdish, Greek and Arabic folklore. The only part genuinely Turkish was an accompaniment of an Ottoman military march which willingly is played by the political police during the act of torture of political prisoners. The choice of this musical genre and it's militaristic, stage design really said everything of Turkeys message. Neo-Nazis are forbidden to wear swastikas in Europe, but an in so many ways undemocratic country is blindly allowed to prepare and present a European cultural event where it really doesn't belong. This is unacceptable in the view of international law and democratic principles of coexistence. Do we want this Europe? We are fighting fundamentalism and terrorism, but evidently we believe it only appears in the shape of Usama Bin-Ladin, airplane hijackers or neo-Nazis with explicit fascist symbols as swastikas and such. If we halt with this evidently shallow analysis, we won't recognise it when it comes in a lightly dressed song contest outfit. All bases of terrorism must be fought, whether they wear explicit symbols or a glitter dress. Extreme nationalism and fundamentalism are in the end creating terrorism. Assuredly it's not at all nationalistic when for instance the voting delegate from Switzerland greets in Turkish and says a few words on the host country's language. On the contrary it ´s a sign of globalisation in our part of the world. It was said: “En butyuk Turkiye, baska buyuk yok!“ which means Greatest is Turkey no one is more powerful, but this actually is a chauvinist Turkish military salute! Remember that this host country don't even allow children to be baptised in Kurdish (It has to be written in a certain Turkish way.) I hope you haven't forgotten that just a few years ago it was totally banned to utter one single word in Kurdish publicly. According to the latest news from Kurdistan, the ban on the Kurdish language still is a random exercise of authority. The Turkish logo of the 49:th Eurovision song contest gives more signals than any other. The heart with the Turkish flag in the middle of the letter “E“ for Europe, shows without a doubt today's hot topic on the Turkish agenda: to enter the European community. But Turkey still hasn't done anything right in terms of democratic reform to deserve being a part of the EU, and be viewed as a fairly democratic EU-country.

Turkey's song was called Athena, with a singer looking like any European youth. The song wasn't sung in Turkish, the music had no oriental or Turkish nuances at all and no swarthy men or oriental beauty's... Turkey is assuredly in a good geographical position between Asia and Europe. When the rulers of Turkey turn east it plays the role of the pious Muslim and when facing west it plays the role of the true democrat. Turkey has really learnt to play this game very well. Let Turkey flavour its dance with both oriental and western spices all it wants, but the result wont taste good – that is evident.

An in many ways barbaric country
Everybody who knows the “p“ in politics knows that economic interests are behind the European stance when it comes to the integration and membership of Turkey in the EU. But it´s going to cost more than it tastes. Even the Byzantine and Roman empires were influenced by Turkish political games and immoral. That is why the political arena looks the way it does in both Greece and Italy today. Like their former neighbour Greece, Italy and all Balkan states have not either managed to establish working political ethics and morals in their democracies. There hasn't been a political and democratic continuity in these countries as in the other European countries because Turkey has been involved in the game with these regions since old times. Remember that the first casualty of war is moral. Isn't it obvious what awaits Europe next with Turkey's integration?

Don't let extreme nationalistic and fundamentalist states become EU members. They are a breeding-ground for new trouble spots, terrorism and social unrest in Europe. Many arguments speak against a Turkish membership. Many still believes that a modernisation and democratisation would make Turkey a worthy EU member. That is farfetched. Many democratic forces in Europe don't want Turkey in the EU because it has an undemocratic political and cultural tradition. Their concern is justified. Turkey never has been a democratic country, and can with this regime which carries traditions from both the Asian “Great Khan“ chauvinist despotism and expansionistic tendencies lingering from the barbarian Ottoman empire, never bee. The Turkish state leaders stagnated political mentality has never recovered from the early Djingis-Khan state. Since the so called modern Turkey appeared from the debris of the Ottoman empire in the early twenties, its policy and rule has been one of extreme nationalism and racism, like their predecessor – which was called the prison of the people. The very forces which has stood for secularisation and civilianisation in modern Turkey – embodied by the Turkish republics founder Kemal Ataturk are also responsible for the violence, oppression and persecution which has showed what kind of state Turkey really is. Ataturk and his nationalist republicans were neither democratic or pluralistic nor tolerant. Ataturk conducted sweeping reform but also hindered political opposition, executed regime critics and persecuted Kurds and other ethnical groups. Massacres were conducted on those who didn't want to forcefully be assimilated in to the new Turkish identity. Since the 1920:s the Turkish republic has denied the genocide of three million Armenians, Syrians and Kurds which took place in the Ottoman empire during and after the first world war. Ataturks “heroic Turkey“ is an indivisible national state which must bee kept immaculate at any cost. Both within and outside of Turkey, Turkish governments avoid to talk about this genocide and even use all disposable means to make their allies (for instance USA) not to take up the question. Still today Ataturks portrait watches over all public buildings, places, work places and schools in Turkey, not very dissimilar to the old Soviet, Saddams Iraq or Iran and Syria today. Eighty years on Ataturks heritage still is strong and torture and persecution of dissidents is practiced daily. The military has an influential power in a way which is totally foreign to a democratic Europe. Turkey has since a long time had a dormant application in Brussels but doesn't even fill the EU mini standards to start negotiations. Government after government has said that they want to improve the social and cultural terms of living for the minorities, but the EU parliament has in a report remarked that a lot is left to do for Turkey for it to be deemed politically acceptable.

With its dated legal system, continuous torture and vanishings from police stations, courts and prisons Turkey is still very much an undemocratic and totalitarian country. The ban on Kurdish which legally is lifted still lives in practice in all public contexts. For Turkey to be accepted as an EU member, the country must live up to the so called Copenhagen criteria which means stabile democratic institutions, law and order, guarantees of human rights and respect for minorities. With the oppression and persecution of Kurds, its torture-prone police force and always present military, Turkey is far from being accepted by the EU today. It´s a process which might take one or several decades. It´s about getting a queue ticket, a principal stand that it in the long run is desirable for Turkey to become a member. The history of Turkey's secularisation and civilisation is a people's drama in itself filled by oppression and murder of innocent civilians and political failures. The Turkish military which with even spaces every decade (1960, 1971, 1980, 1991) disrupts the democratic game and overturns it in a military coup, is full of the islamist grey wolf movement “Bozkurtlar“ (Turkish extremists), and the national ideology “Milli Gorus“ (the present so called liberalist AK-party which holds the power of government), Kadrar and functionaries.During Turkeys eighty year old democratic history it's mostly these islamist movements that keeps the governmental power in their hands, and have also succeeded in establishing secret associations high in the military hierarchy. No wonder the country hasn't been able to live up to constitutional secularist norms and principles. Many extreme, fundamentalist and nationalist organisations as the God party “Hizbullah“ are popping up as mushrooms in Turkey. After the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan 1979, these Turkish islamists spread to all types of Islamic fundamentalists organisations in a sort of new international, in military training camps in former no mans land Afghanistan. It's well known that the many Turkish and Saudi God- warriors “Mujahedin“ were recruited from these places. Turkish God- warriors were deployed against the democratic Kurdish human rights movement by the Turkish states secret police during the whole 1980: s and 90: s. Many innocent people, intellectual and activists were abducted and killed by these paramilitary terrorists. Who the Afghan- Saudi Islamic terrorists where got known all over the world September 11 2001 when these terrorists used two hijacked civil passenger airplanes as missiles against the World Trade Centre twin towers in New York. If Turkey is embraced one also embraces its army of Islamist, fundamentalist terror organisations into the open and vulnerable democratic Europe. All the latest legislative and administrative changes which Turkey has started to get to be an EU member are nothing but a sham. Today the ninth of July 2004 is an historic day. Turkey has namely allowed for the first time in its state owned TV channel TRT, to broadcast a program in Kurdish. It is interesting that this is in the form of a multislide presentation with an anonymous speaker voice. No reasonably patriotic Kurd would dare to show his face in Turkish state television. As the Bulgarian saying goes: The wolf has changed furs but not soul!

http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2005/1/turkeykurdistan1.htm

*************************************

[center][img]http://www.assistnews.net/WRITERSPICS/EKendal%203%20Aug2002.jpg[/img][/…]

http://www.assistnews.net/STORIES/2007/s07120030.htm

[center][size=x-large][color=#990000][b]* * *[/b][/color][/size][/center]

Wednesday, December 5, 2007

[center][size=x-large][color=#990000][b]Turkish nationalism threatens Christians[/b][/color][/size][/center]

[b]By Elizabeth Kendal[/b]

World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC)
Special to ASSIST News Service
AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- This posting aims to give some degree of understanding the phenomenon of Turkish nationalism, its relationship to the persecution of Christians and the immense difficulties facing those hoping to secure justice and security for Christians through the Malatya murder trial. Turkey has only around 100,000 Christians left, making up less than one percent of the population.

HISTORY: TURKEY IS BORN

After World War One, all the Turks retained of the once expansive Ottoman Empire was Anatolia and Istanbul (Constantinople). Through the Treaty of Sevres (1920) the Allies sought to protect Christian minorities by placing most of Anatolia under Christian control: the Greeks occupied the west and the Allies (British, French and Italian) occupied the south, while the Armenian remnant declared an independent republic in the east. Moreover, the Turks were also supposed to grant autonomy to Kurdistan.

Under the leadership of military commander Kemal Mustapha Ataturk, Turkish nationalist forces in Anatolia, rejecting the conditions of the Treaty of Sevres, mounted a War of Independence. They fought and defeated the Greeks in the west and drove the Allied forces out of the south. They also drove the Armenian remnant out of their Armenian Republic in the east. Ataturk thus forced the Allies to return to the negotiating table. With the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the modern state of Turkey was founded to be the successor state to the Ottoman Empire. The borders were set and the security of remnant minorities was to be guaranteed. Ataturk became Turkey's first president.

Thus Turkish nationalism rose from the ashes of the decimated Ottoman Empire and became established through the subsequent War of Independence. Turkish nationalism was born through Turkish struggles against Christian nations, both indigenous minorities and great foreign powers.

After becoming president, Aaturk committed himself to reforming, secularising and modernising Turkey. He imposed a program of secularisation that repressed Islam by force, liberating and enlightening multitudes (especially women and intellectuals) but confounding others, in particular observant Muslims. But whilst Ataturk felled the tree of Islam, cutting off its expression, he did not deal with the life-force within its roots, something he could have done had he facilitated an open and honest examination of Ottoman history and the Islamic ideology that drove it. Islamic expression was repressed, but Islamic ideology was spared. Consequently, as repression gradually lessened from the 1950s onwards, Islam slowly grew again, increasing in strength through subsequent generations.

HISTORY: THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE

People interpret history differently. The abusive master and the downtrodden slave view life on the plantation from quite different perspectives, just as high caste Brahmins and "untouchable" Dalits have conflicting views of life in Hindu India. In each case, the former boasts from their elevated position of a wonderful existence with prosperity and opportunity. The latter, at whose expense this prosperity and elevation was gained, has a rather different view. Furthermore, the former may expect the latter to appreciate the way they have been tolerated or let live, while the latter simply longs for liberty and equality. It is the same with Muslims and dhimmis, that is Jews and Christians subjugated under Islamic domination and rule.

Just because people see history differently does not mean that objective truth does not exist -- it does. Wilberforce revealed the shameful truth of slavery to the consciences of the British and the truth set multitudes free.

Muslims tend to interpret history though the prism of their Islamic ideology of Muslim superiority and the perfection of Sharia (Allah's perfect law). According to Islam, jihad for the advance of Islam and the implementation of Sharia results in perfect peace, harmony and security. Muslims therefore speak of Islamic Empire as something glorious and benevolent, while they either repress or do not see that the defeated, subjugated peoples had a rather different view. These peoples' lands had been invaded, conquered, occupied and colonised. The conquered peoples were stripped of their rights, disarmed, subjugated, exploited, heavily taxed of money and sons, persecuted and repressed. These were Christian peoples -- Greeks, Serbs, Armenians, Bulgarians, to name a few -- proud, ancient Christian cultures and nations that centuries of Islamic domination reduced to traumatised serfs or slaves.

As post-Reformation Europe rose through liberty and industry, the Ottoman Empire declined through endemic corruption and poor governance. As the Empire weakened, the long-subjugated Christian nations rose up, fought and liberated their people, lands and culture from the Ottoman Muslim yoke.

However, when Turkish Muslims look at the same events they conclude that all history proves is that acquiescing to Western demands is fatal and that Christians are an existential threat to the security and territorial integrity of the Turkish nation.

Salim Cohce is a professor of history and sociology at the state-run Inonu University in Malatya. He believes that missionaries working in Turkey are focusing on "destabilisation, manipulation and propaganda" and concludes, "If they are not controlled, this can be dangerous for Turkey." (Link 1)

As long as the truth of history is subservient to myth and "insulting Turkishness" remains a crime, then Turkey's Christians will have trouble as they will have to continue to bear the burden of Islamised history. Peace and reconciliation are the end products of a process that commences with truth and progresses through confession, repentance and forgiveness. There can be no peace and reconciliation without truth.

TURKISH NATIONALISM SOARS

The US-led invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam's regime put Iraq "in play", not only for pan-Islamists and Shi'ites, but also for pan-Turkists who would like to see an autonomous Turkman entity in Northern Iraq. At least 2.5 million ethnic Turkmen live in Iraq in a corridor that runs from the Turkish border south through Mosul and Kirkuk. It is a strip of land that also includes the bulk of Iraq's northern oilfields and the country's main oil pipelines. Consequentially, pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism have escalated dramatically since the drums of war started beating in mid-2002.

Pan-Turkist aspirations for northern Iraq have more to do with Turkish nationalism than irredentism or imperialism. When the Ottoman Turks and the British signed an armistice on 31 October 1918, the Ottoman Turks still occupied the vilayet (province) of Mosul. At the time, Mesopotamia (Iraq) was part of the Ottoman Empire and was divided into three vilayets: Basra (Arab Shi'ite), Baghdad (Arab Sunni) and Mosul (ethnically and religiously mixed). The British had captured Basra and Baghdad, but they had their sights sets on oil-rich Kirkuk. Within 48 hours of the armistice, Mesopotamian commander in chief William Marshall gave the order to take Mosul, and so the British forces pushed on and drove the Ottoman forces out of Mosul in violation of the ceasefire. Days later the war ended and in the words of Edwin Black, "The shooting stopped. The shouting would now begin." (Link 2)

Turkish nationalism is further provoked by the aspirations of US-backed Iraqi Kurds. For one thing, the territorial claims of Iraqi Kurds and Iraqi Turkmen overlap, most notably their common claim to oil-rich Kirkuk. Further to that, the prospect of autonomy for Iraqi Kurds is motivating Turkey's Kurds to step up their fight for autonomy or an independent Kurdistan, both of which would involve the partition of Turkey. Kurds, who make up more than 20 percent of the population of Turkey, are concentrated in south-east Anatolia. Terrorism from the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK: a Kurdish separatist terror group) has dramatically escalated recently causing Turkish nationalism to soar. It adds to Turkish angst that the PKK are proving to be "better capable of defence than hitherto believed". (Gregory Copley, International Strategic Studies Association, Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy 10, 2007)

The problem being, that one integral element of Turkish nationalism is a deep suspicion and fear of Christians and ethnic minorities that borders on paranoia. Turkish nationalism deems Christians to be an existential threat. As Turkish nationalism rises, so too does persecution of Christians.

MALATYA MURDER TRIAL

This environment of escalating Turkish nationalist and Islamic zeal is not the ideal environment for a trial that is supposed to deliver justice for three martyred Christians -- Necati Aydin, Ugur Yuksel and Tilmann Geske -- who were tortured and murdered by Muslim Turkish nationalists in Zirve Publishing House in Malatya, Southern Turkey on 18 April 2007.

Compass Direct reports that after six months of investigations, criminal prosecutors charged Emre Gunaydin, Abuzer Yildirim, Hamit Ceker, Cuma Ozdemir and Salih Guler of founding an armed group and murdering Necati Aydin and Ugur Yuksel and Tilmann Geske in a deliberate and organised manner. (Link 3)

According to Compass Direct, when the Turkish press reported the 23 November trial date, they did so in articles that sensationalised some of the scandalous allegations that the professed killers made during their interrogations, include that the Christians were linked with the PKK and were forcing local girls into prostitution. Compass reports: "Sabah newspaper's headline quoted Emre Gunaydin, the alleged ringleader of the five killers, as saying, 'We committed murder out of fear they would harm our families.'" (Link 3)

Isa Karatas, a spokesperson for the Alliance of Protestant Churches in Turkey told Compass, "These people want to portray Turkey's Protestants as enemies of the nation. [And] because honour is such an important concept in our culture, they are trying to accuse us of having weak morals, so that they can find a justification for their murders." (Link 3)

The trial commenced on 23 November, but as Compass Direct reports: "At the request of the murderers' defence team of lawyers, who declared they had not had sufficient time to examine the prosecution files and prepare the accused suspects to testify, the court adjourned the hearing until 14 January 2008." (Link 4)

Lawyers working on behalf of the victim's families have expressed outrage at the direction the investigations have taken. Of the 31 files the prosecutors assembled for the case, 15 give only limited information on the five murderers and their crime, while 16 files give detailed information on the three Christian "missionaries" and their "missionary activity".

Compass reports: "According to one lawyer quoted by Milliyet newspaper on November 20, this 'irrelevant' information looked like an indirect effort by the chief prosecutor 'to reduce the charges by making the victims' attempts to spread their religion look like 'provocation'." (Link 4)

Independent Turkish media network Bianet commented on the "biased reporting" noting: "There has been a dangerous shift of focus in news reports on the trial." (Link 5)

Bianet notes that the media, instead of focusing on the horrendous crime of torture and murder, focused on the Christians with the implication that their "missionary activities" provided some justification for their murder. Then, in the days before the trial opened, the media shifted its attention to the plaintiffs' attorneys, alleging that "among the lawyers there are some who have defended militants of the PKK terrorist organisation before".

Bianet reports that the Turkish media has published "the names of all the lawyers joining the hearing, together with the names of those whom they had defended before. There is thus a dangerous shift of focus from the presumed perpetrators of a crime to conspiracy theories linking Christian missionaries and PKK activities."

Orhan Kemal Cengiz, the legal representative of the Alliance of Turkish Protestant Churches, is a lawyer for the plaintiffs. He wrote a powerful column "What is going on in the Malatya massacre case?" which was published in the Turkish Daily News on 22 November. (Link 6)

Cengiz laments the sloppy work of the prosecutors who have focused more on the activities of the victims than of the murderers.

Most seriously, Cengiz complains: "The prosecutor retrieved all documents from the computers of the victims and put them in the case file as 'evidence'. Furthermore, these files, which are public now, may lead to new murders because they include many details on other Protestants who reside in different parts of Turkey. The addresses, emails, telephones of many other Turkish Protestants are in the files, which have already been in the hands of the murderers. The prosecutor failed to make a thorough investigation and he has also put many other lives in danger."

Cengiz also complains that the murderers were not properly investigated. Their membership of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MPH) is noted in the files but not investigated. The confessed murderers gave conflicting testimonies, but these were not challenged or investigated. According to Cengiz, the files lack any details that could implicate others as instigators or motivators of the crime.

Cengiz notes that while the files cast suspicion over the "missionaries", they glorify the murderers by publishing letters they wrote to their families where they explain that they were acting in defence of their homeland.

Cengiz warns: "If state officials keep talking everyday that Turkey is in imminent danger, that there are internal enemies of this country, that missionaries are the agents of foreign states who try to break up Turkey and so on, such horrible crimes are inevitable. If 'internal enemies' such as missionaries are shown on countless Web pages as legitimate targets, and no legal action is taken against this mania, we will continue to see new murders, attacks and slaughters."

Elizabeth Kendal
[email protected]

Links

1) Murders shine spotlight on evangelical activity in Turkey
By Yigal Schleifer, 25 April 2007
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav042507.shtml

2) Book: Banking on Baghdad
Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict.
By Edwin Black
Wiley 2004

3) Malatya Murder Trial Set to Open in Turkey
Local press sensationalizes killers' justifications for deaths by torture.
Compass Direct, 5 Nov 2007
http://www.compassdirect.org/content/index.php?id=25

4) Lawyers Slam Investigation of Malatya Murders in Turkey
Widows of slain Christians speak out at opening day of trial.
Compass Direct, 27 Nov 2007
http://www.compassdirect.org/content/index.php?id=25

5) Malatya Murder Case Postponed
There has been a dangerous shift of focus in news reports on the trial.
By Erol Onderoglu and Nilufer Zengin.
Bıa news centre, 26 Nov 2007
http://www.bianet.org/english/kategori/english/103126/malatya-murder-cas...
SEE ALSO
Judiciary under international spotlight in the murder of Christians in Malatya
The New Anatolian / Ankara, 26 November 2007
http://www.thenewanatolian.com/tna-29736.html
AND
Turks in Christian murder trial. BBC 23 Nov 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7108607.stm
AND
Five on trial in Turkey for missionary murders
By Nicholas Birch in Istanbul. 24 Nov 2007
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3191522.ece

6) What is going on in the Malatya massacre case?
By Orhan Kemal Cengiz, 22 November 2007
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/article.php?enewsid=89265

FURTHER ANALYSIS
Forum 18. TURKEY: What causes intolerance and violence? 29 Nov 2007
By Guzide Ceyhan. http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=1053