Cyprus-Forum.com

[denizaksulu]

Nikephoros,

This speech by Ataturk, is the best proof: that Turks are meant to be subjects of the Turkish state and not citiziens. Because to be a citizien, the state takes obligations toward you and you have certain "unalienable rights", a subject is meant to have absolutely loyal even if he gets nothing in return.

Except, of course, that in the UK the long history has been that people are subjects of the crown and NOT citizens. It took the formation of the EU to secure modern citizenship for British subjects. Thus your interpretation is not peculiar or exclusiove to Turkey

I'm strongly opposed to Kemalism and nationalism but it does nothing for your argument to either caricature Turkey or to to find Turkey 'exceptional' and unEuropean. In actual fact most of the qualities that people find objectionable about Turkish politics and society are (a) not exceptional and (b) thoroughly European, after all the principal successes (whether we like them/approve of them or not) of Kemalist reform and the new Turksih republic was precisely to modernise Turkey/Anatolia according to 'european' criteria. It is somewhat ironic that those who assert the exceptional character of Turkey are mimicking the argument of Turkish fascists, nationalists and militarists who give them so much grief.

Nikitas,
As I've said before I'm no apologist for Kemalism, but I do think a distinction has to be made between the politics of Ataturk himself and what can be called the 'neo-Kemalism' of the post-1980 period. The re-estabalishment of a distinctive Turkish polity was, at the time (1920s-1930s), revolutionary and progressive and arguably had some kind of formal democratic legitimacy. However, what goes under the name Kemalism today is fascism dressed up as nationalism and played out by militarism.

So, though I don't want to split hairs, classical Kemalism is very much an ideology which was product of and would have fitted very well with Europe; by contrast the neo-Kemalism of a fascist nationalism is, I agree, hostile to and antipathetic to Europe. For my way of thinking, the question is, again, how are those vast numbers of progressive, anti-nationalist anti fascist Turks, including in Cyprus, encouraged and given support. Certainly not by lambasting Turks and Turkey with the racist and fascist diatribes that regularly infest this forum (not you I hasten to add).

Well put Copperline. T'is a pity that the word 'Kemalism' is often misused by those with an anti-Turk agenda.

[Nikephoros]

I am gonna ignore the comments of idiots and just post info.

Recently I came across this by Taner Akcam:

http://www.lawandpolitics.com/minnesota ... dcf76.html

Now, this is important to understand because of the ongoing Turkish campaign in the United States to discredit me as a terrorist. The story begins with my arrest in 1974 for leafleting. At that time, the students didn't have representation at the universities. Our major demand was to have the freedom to establish a student organization to allow the university to hear us.

In order to distribute a leaflet in Turkey you had to go to the central police station and get special permission. You had to have this permit in your possession while distributing literature. However, even if you had this permit -- as I did -- you could still get arrested and held in jail for two or three days; which is exactly what happened to me. That was my "terrorist act": distributing leaflets -- with permission, mind you -- which said I opposed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. I was against war. So the police arrested me and I spent two days in prison.

...

So in 1976 I was arrested and sentenced to prison for eight years, nine months and twenty days. I escaped from prison in 1977 and fled to Germany where I received political asylum and became a German citizen. In 1991, while Turkey was applying for membership in the European Union, Paragraph 141 was rescinded and my conviction was annulled. My issue regarding the escape from prison had already lapsed under the statute of limitations. Suddenly, I could go back to Turkey. I returned in 1993 with my family, intending to establish a documentation and research center on the late Ottoman and modern Turkish history. I worked with a private university in Istanbul in 1996 to establish this institute. But within a year, the Turkish Secret Service distributed a file against me amongst the scholars at the university, and they had to terminate contact with me because it was too risky. My family and I had to leave again for Germany.

There were and are no criminal charges pending against me in Turkey. Despite this, I have been constantly targeted by Turkish media, by the nationalists, and in certain political circles. In 2004, because of the strengthening nationalist movement in Turkey, the penal code was changed to prohibit any statement that challenges the official Turkish position. This is the infamous Article 301 that exists today. Now there are many scholars and writers who espouse the official Turkish position for fear of reprisal.

This confirms how true the observation is that Turks are subjects of the Turkish state, which is something even Ataturk wrote in Nutuk. According to Neoklis Sarris, Turkey, is a state that has positions, that it gives the population, which they must accept.

I am thinking of establishing a website to fight the Turkish official history and its lies, to do this at first I have inter-library loaned:
Vryonis The Turkish State and History: Clio Meets the Grey Wolf
Heyd Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gokalp

I can gurantee you the info in these books is not something Turks want being known on the web. I will scan the whole damn books. If you are interested in helping to OCR them, PM me. The best excerpts can be posted to the website the whole text can be circulated amongst a small circle of Greeks willing to do more than yap all day.

[CopperLine]

Nikephoros
It will be interesting to see how Turkish official histories are propopagted and disseminated, though the choice of starting with Vryonis and Heyd seems a little odd. After all with Heyd's book on Ziya Gokalp, examining that for evidence of Turkish nationalism would be a bit like examining the Vatican for signs of catholicism or Mein Kampf for signs of Nazism.

Why wouldn't nationalist Turks want 'the info in these books .... being known on the web' ? For many nationalists (but not for all pan-Turanists for example) the more of Ziya Gokalp the better ! So it is not self-evident for whose benefit your initiative will be. All the same, the more original sources and the less Wikipedia the better, in my view.