Basından
By Steve Bryant ISTANBUL (Reuters) -
No Racism in Turkey, if You Say You're a Turk
By Steve Bryant, Sun Aug 26, 2001
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - "I am Turkish. I am honest. I am hard-working."
So runs the oath sworn in Turkey. Its basic assertions come easily to
children, who yell them with gusto at assemblies in junior schools across
Turkey each morning.
But for many, particularly Kurds, it gets harder with age to accept the
simplicities of the oath, based on a speech by national hero Mustafa Kemal
Ataturk in 1933, and which ends: "Happy is he who calls himself a Turk."
For some, that careful wording makes being Turkish a matter of
self-description, not birth, and is the heart of a country that is
determined to allow no state discrimination between any of the myriad
ethnic groups and minorities within its borders.
For others it amounts to forced assimilation.
Constitutionally, a Turk is defined as any citizen of Turkey -- Kurdish,
Armenian, Greek, Chechen or, as is most often the case in this changing
country, an ethnic mix.
"The founders of the republic, 60-70 percent of whom would have been
minorities themselves, were making sure the word Turk would not be
monopolized by ethnic Turks," says Professor Gun Kut of Istanbul's
Bosphorus University.
The objective, he says, was a state blind to ethnicity.
GROWING UP KURDISH
For Kurdish Institute Chairman Hasan Kaya, the oath is a daily reminder of
an "unconscious, unorganized mentality of racism."
"If you look at the state textbooks and at the education system and read
between the lines you find it all places a subconscious mentality of racism
in the minds of children," Kaya says in small offices where scholars
compose Turkish-Kurdish dictionaries and research Kurdish culture and
language.
Kurds make up by far the largest ethnic group that does not have minority
status in Turkey.
In keeping with its refusal to recognize ethnic difference, the Turkish
state never asks people their racial background but various estimates put
the ethnic Kurdish population at 12-15 million of the total Turkish
population of around 65 million.
Kaya is on trial for allegedly teaching Kurdish without permission.
Official curbs on Kurdish education and broadcasting stem from fears that
awarding minority rights could fuel violent Kurdish separatism and lead to
the kind of splits on ethnic lines that helped destabilize the Ottoman empire.
Born into a northern Iraqi Kurdish family with a tradition of political
involvement, Kaya says he sensed at an early age that all was not right
with the official, all-encompassing "Turkishness."
While a thousand official sayings and stories exalt "the Turk," only
playground insults deal with Kurds.
Advocates of both positions will be representing Turkey at the United
Nations World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia
and Related Intolerance, which opens in Durban, South Africa on Friday
(August 31).
Neither the Foreign Ministry delegation nor the representative of the Human
Rights Association (IHD) expect Turkey's struggle with ethnicity to hit the
agenda at Durban.
But if Turkey can resolve how to treat groups that wish to differ from the
strict official vision of a country united by the one Turkish language and
heritage, the country's path to European Union membership would look more
open.
A 17-year-old conflict with Kurdish rebels might fade, and Turkish Kurds
might have TV and newspapers in their own tongue.
