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ISTANBUL: Mood swings ahead of January 19

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  • ISTANBUL: Mood swings ahead of January 19

    Hürriyet - Turkey
    Jan 15 2010



    Mood swings ahead of January 19

    Friday, January 15, 2010
    CENGÄ°Z AKTAR

    `It's been three years since the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant
    Dink was murdered. But the perpetrators are free outside. A collective
    'official' will is behind Hrant's murder. Unless the 'stately hand'
    behind the killing is put before court, we know that our futures will
    not be under guarantee,' says the group called Hrant's Friends. They
    will once again gather in front of the Agos newspaper on Tuesday at
    2:30 p.m. to claim justice.

    The Hrant Dink murder is probably one of the unnamed stories that are
    caused by the criminal `patriotic gangs.' Hrant's identity and
    personality make the search for truth more compulsory than ever ` for
    the sake of the country and society. If the justice cannot be served
    in Turkey, then it is time to set-up a Dink Commission just like the
    Hariri Commission and Bhutto Commission formed by the United Nations
    in order to shed light on the assassinations of Rafiq Hariri and
    Benazir Bhutto.

    Lynching and racism

    The xenophobia existing in every human community is blending with the
    arrogance of a dominant ethnic element to evolve into sheer racism. We
    hear lynching news almost every day. The most ironic of all is that
    the crowd shouting: `Go home America. This land is ours' was attacked
    by those who are thinking alike in the northwestern province of
    Edirne, on the impression that they were Kurds!

    But this is how mass psychology works. No one can stand in front of
    hatred and the sum of personal dissatisfactions. In the early 1990s,
    Serbians were drinking `kavitsa' with Bosnians and Croatians in the
    morning but they were slaughtering each other at noon. Those in
    Yugoslavia who grew with tales of socialist brotherhood couldn't
    believe the ferocity and burst of racist demons in the wars that took
    place in Yugoslavia.

    Drop in population growth

    We all are familiar with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip ErdoÄ?an's
    obsession that everyone should have at least three children. The
    paranoia that some day the Kurdish population (whatever it means) will
    outnumber the Turkish one is apparently behind the obsession. Don't we
    make mixed-marriages? Aren't we flesh and bone? In any case, the
    population growth rate is decreasing in Kurd-inhabited areas as well.

    The education minister recently expressed concern about a drop in the
    population growth rate while making assessments over an official
    statistical report. Turkey can neither educate the youth nor employ
    them. Young males are sent to military service and that's basically
    all. Following the military service, general education is provided
    through the television. Again, according to official data, the
    population below 50 is 88 percent of the total population. Present and
    future prospects of this giant mass in terms of education and
    employment are rather very dark. There is no room for pro-natalist
    policies in Turkey's present economic and social framework but there
    is certainly one in future social implosions.

    Just 18 years old and knows everything

    `Don't tell us about the European Union. We know the EU. The EU is the
    reason for what Tekel workers have been going through, for depletion
    of our people due to privatizations and for the French bomb showers
    over the Ivory coasts (sic). EU killer, AKP its follower.'

    These `views' are shouted by the `youth' gathered to listen to State
    Minister for EU Affairs Egemen BaÄ?ıÅ? during a panel on EU developments
    at BahçeÅ?ehir University last week. I do remember when the Romanian
    dictator Nicola Ceausescu was executed, only in Turkey were protests
    held. The nostalgic shouted, `Ceausescus never die.' Present day
    avatars and nostalgics of a Stalinist system that is politically dead
    and morally corrupted have nothing to do with the youth's hot blood.
    These are young-looking old men who refuse to learn anything.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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