Targeting the Peacemakers
October 13, 2005
Spiegel
By Cem Özdemir (is a German of Turkish origin and a member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where he also serves as the foreign policy spokesman for the Green Party.)
[...]
[...] Hrant Dink is an Armenian in Turkey, actively supporting the Turkish democratic movement and sensing an opportunity for reconciliation with his own history. But Dink, and others like him, are caught between a rock and a hard place.
[...]. At the forefront are the Turkish Ultra-Nationalists, who would like to see him silenced sooner rather than later. Their allies in Turkey's judiciary underlined these sentiments again recently. On Oct. 7, an Istanbul court sentenced Dink to six months in jail for a "crime of ideas." The sentence was suspended on the grounds that he had no previous convictions.
[...] By putting intellectual figureheads like Dink or the German Publishers' Association Peace Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk in the dock, the judiciary is sending unequivocal signals to Ankara and Brussels. The timing of the charges is anything but coincidental.[...].
[...] {if} the conference on the historical question of Armenia had been cancelled [...] Turkish opponents of entry to the EU would likely have had a major victory on their hands.
Derailment was ultimately only avoided thanks to an unlikely alliance between liberal civil rights campaigners and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-Conservative government.
Dink's courageous efforts as one of the organizers were a major catalyst in making the conference actually happen. Even the most ardent skeptics with regard to the killings were swayed enough to reconsider when challenged by the compelling Dink. Many in the crowd of scientists, intellectuals, politicians and journalists were moved to tears as he spoke of an Armenian woman from the Turkish town of Sivas. It was the story of a woman who had lived in Paris and whose greatest wish was to be buried in the place where she and her ancestors had lived for centuries.
The telephone calls that followed Dink's television appearances have become legendary. Some Turkish people come forward to reveal Armenian roots which they have hitherto kept hidden. Others report traces of Armenian life in their local areas and ask for assistance in preserving this cultural legacy. On one occasion, a whole village turned up in the newspaper offices: descendents of Turkish Armenians who had fled for safety to their Alevite neighbors in the Tunceli region (Dersim) in 1915, when persecution was at its worst.
Dink's prime concern is the future of Armenian and Christian minorities in a cosmopolitan, secular Turkey as part of Europe [...].
His strategy is as unorthodox as it is effective. He does not allow himself to get entangled in cynical discussions about whether the number of Armenians murdered was 600,000 or 1.5 million. Instead, he confronts the Turkish people with a history of which they either were ignorant, or had only learned about through distorted channels of propaganda. His arguments are persuasive, bringing to light what Turkey has irrevocably lost in their destruction and denial of Armenian life. "If the Armenians were alive today, Van (once a predominantly Armenian city in the East of Turkey) would be the Paris of the East," he says. Dink surprises his people with unexpected ideas. He has proposed, for example, a memorial to the slaughtered Armenians in Turkey. A memorial for the Turks who fell at the hands of Armenian freedom fighters already exists.
[...]
In the offending newspaper article, Dink is said to have insulted "Turkishness," as the judge put it. In fact, his column was aimed at the Armenian diaspora. Dink's appeal left no room for misinterpretation: The Armenian diaspora should surrender their hostility to the Turks, hitherto a defining element of Armenian identity. Even independent assessors brought in by the courts could not find any disparaging references to Turkey in his comments.
[...].He intends to take all legal measures available to prove his innocence. If the sentence is not revoked, he plans to leave the country.
This should not be seen as a threat -- that is not Dink's nature. Nevertheless, the Turkish government does need to take note of what his statement signifies. The new penal code, which only came into effect on June 1, 2005, is already in need of another overhaul. The law needs to be implemented in such a way that it cannot be used as a weapon against free speech. Nor should it be possible for judges or prosecutors to exploit it in ways that would impede reform in Turkey. A prime minister who was, himself, imprisoned for reciting a religious poem ought to be well aware of that.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
Spiegel
By Cem Özdemir (is a German of Turkish origin and a member of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where he also serves as the foreign policy spokesman for the Green Party.)
[...]
[...] Hrant Dink is an Armenian in Turkey, actively supporting the Turkish democratic movement and sensing an opportunity for reconciliation with his own history. But Dink, and others like him, are caught between a rock and a hard place.
[...]. At the forefront are the Turkish Ultra-Nationalists, who would like to see him silenced sooner rather than later. Their allies in Turkey's judiciary underlined these sentiments again recently. On Oct. 7, an Istanbul court sentenced Dink to six months in jail for a "crime of ideas." The sentence was suspended on the grounds that he had no previous convictions.
[...] By putting intellectual figureheads like Dink or the German Publishers' Association Peace Prize Winner Orhan Pamuk in the dock, the judiciary is sending unequivocal signals to Ankara and Brussels. The timing of the charges is anything but coincidental.[...].
[...] {if} the conference on the historical question of Armenia had been cancelled [...] Turkish opponents of entry to the EU would likely have had a major victory on their hands.
Derailment was ultimately only avoided thanks to an unlikely alliance between liberal civil rights campaigners and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-Conservative government.
Dink's courageous efforts as one of the organizers were a major catalyst in making the conference actually happen. Even the most ardent skeptics with regard to the killings were swayed enough to reconsider when challenged by the compelling Dink. Many in the crowd of scientists, intellectuals, politicians and journalists were moved to tears as he spoke of an Armenian woman from the Turkish town of Sivas. It was the story of a woman who had lived in Paris and whose greatest wish was to be buried in the place where she and her ancestors had lived for centuries.
The telephone calls that followed Dink's television appearances have become legendary. Some Turkish people come forward to reveal Armenian roots which they have hitherto kept hidden. Others report traces of Armenian life in their local areas and ask for assistance in preserving this cultural legacy. On one occasion, a whole village turned up in the newspaper offices: descendents of Turkish Armenians who had fled for safety to their Alevite neighbors in the Tunceli region (Dersim) in 1915, when persecution was at its worst.
Dink's prime concern is the future of Armenian and Christian minorities in a cosmopolitan, secular Turkey as part of Europe [...].
His strategy is as unorthodox as it is effective. He does not allow himself to get entangled in cynical discussions about whether the number of Armenians murdered was 600,000 or 1.5 million. Instead, he confronts the Turkish people with a history of which they either were ignorant, or had only learned about through distorted channels of propaganda. His arguments are persuasive, bringing to light what Turkey has irrevocably lost in their destruction and denial of Armenian life. "If the Armenians were alive today, Van (once a predominantly Armenian city in the East of Turkey) would be the Paris of the East," he says. Dink surprises his people with unexpected ideas. He has proposed, for example, a memorial to the slaughtered Armenians in Turkey. A memorial for the Turks who fell at the hands of Armenian freedom fighters already exists.
[...]
In the offending newspaper article, Dink is said to have insulted "Turkishness," as the judge put it. In fact, his column was aimed at the Armenian diaspora. Dink's appeal left no room for misinterpretation: The Armenian diaspora should surrender their hostility to the Turks, hitherto a defining element of Armenian identity. Even independent assessors brought in by the courts could not find any disparaging references to Turkey in his comments.
[...].He intends to take all legal measures available to prove his innocence. If the sentence is not revoked, he plans to leave the country.
This should not be seen as a threat -- that is not Dink's nature. Nevertheless, the Turkish government does need to take note of what his statement signifies. The new penal code, which only came into effect on June 1, 2005, is already in need of another overhaul. The law needs to be implemented in such a way that it cannot be used as a weapon against free speech. Nor should it be possible for judges or prosecutors to exploit it in ways that would impede reform in Turkey. A prime minister who was, himself, imprisoned for reciting a religious poem ought to be well aware of that.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 8:34 AM
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