06 10 24 - Modern Turkey Faces Its Demons

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100506H.shtml
from Truthout.org- Le Monde Thursday 05 October2006(R. From, A.M.USA)

By Claude Edelmann

An affectionate father offers us the hand in marriage of his sick daughter. The beauty is dazzling. And, to top off our happiness, this father assures us that the promised child, now under medical care, is on the road to recovery. "I don't minimize the work that we still need to accomplish," he adds, as though it's a secondary detail. That's what Mr. Abdullah Gul, Turkish Vice-Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister, wrote in September 26th's Le Monde. He agrees with us that obstacles exist on the path to his country's adhesion to the European Union.
But Mr. Gul is silent concerning the disgrace that consumes the fiancée, overrun by horrible demons that must be exorcized. When a person finds herself prey to two contradictory personalities, we say she is affected by schizophrenia. She must be treated urgently, for she suffers from a terrifying identity crisis. Many in Turkey seek to democratize this country and, certainly, that is the case for Mr. Abdullah Gul and his friend the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But their opponents reign throughout the Turkish state apparatus, in the political parties, in Parliament, in the army, and in the public administration.
On September 21, I was present for the trial of novelist Elif Safak at the Beyoglu court of assizes in Istanbul. She was accused by the ultranationalist lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz of having "insulted the Turkish identity" in her most recent novel, wherein she recounts the story of Armenian orphans whose parents were massacred by the Turks in 1915. In front of the courthouse, thirty nationalists howled their hatred for the European Union. They waved the EU's blue flags embellished with the Swastika, thus proclaiming that the Union, full of Nazis, seeks only to destroy Turkey.
Protected by 200 policemen, the president of an EU parliamentary group, Joost Lagendijk, observers from Amnesty International and Pen International, as well as dozens of journalists from the entire world arrived. Was that international pressure? Like writer Orhan Pamuk last year, Elif Safak was acquitted. For the observers present, this mediatized sentence hardly made sense in the light of the 120 suits filed this year against journalists, writers, and less well-known editors. Eighteen were acquitted, but many return in the court of assizes. Others are subject to fine; newspapers have been suspended. The journalist Hrant Dink, who speaks freely about the massacre of the Armenians, returns for the third time before the courts, but this time he risks prison, since he has already been convicted with a suspended sentence. Forty-five trials of this sort remain before year's end.
On the one hand, Prime Minister Erdogan telephones the acquitted novelist Elif Safak to tell her how pleased he is. On the other hand, he allows the nationalist parties to exclude from upcoming reforms the famous article 301 of the penal code, which sends any person "denigrating Turkish identity" to prison. The terms of this law are so vague that they allow the nationalists to override Turkey's commitments to the EU concerning freedom of expression.
On the one hand, Erdogan proclaims a policy of "zero tolerance for torture." On the other, cases of alleged torture continue, reinforced by the Americans' new interrogation techniques. In southeast Turkey summary executions, kidnappings, attacks and torture perpetrated by the security services increase and thus feed the PKK guerrilla with new sympathizers. In that region, close to 15 million Kurds are taken hostage between the guerrilla movement and the army. For EU experts and for the Turkish government, the problem of the Kurdish minority is only a question of standard of living ...
On the one hand, Mr. Abdullah Gul assures us in Brussels that reforms are under way; on the other, Turkish legislators ignore the rules of precision and exactitude that obtain for all democratic legislation. Thus, the new anti-terrorist law voted in in June is so poorly drafted that it could be used to charge any peaceful Kurd, any reporter exercising his profession, as a terrorist. Turkey, Europe's next fiancée according to Mr. Abdullah Gul's desires, is in full identity crisis. She is certainly sick. But let's not reject her: rather let's help her get well.
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Claude Edelmann, a filmmaker, is a member of the Collective for Human Rights in Turkey.

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