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EVENING OUT ONE MISERY WITH ANOTHER
Hurriyet Daily News
Feb 28 2012
Turkey
How easy it is, isn't it? Let's pit one evil against another. Let's
have the sorrows duke it out against each other. Let's even out our
miseries with each other. Yours is false, mine is true. A negative
negates a positive, so we can conclude that nobody has massacred
anyone else in the land of the living.
Before arriving in Taksim, I passed by billboards put up here days
before, saying: "Don't believe in the Armenian lie." Roads leading to
the square were packed with double-parked buses. As a matter of fact,
bus photos had been posted on the Facebook page of the rally since
8 a.m.; buses coming from different cities were saluted.
The statue was covered with posters full of Turkish spelling mistakes
crying out the power of the Turk. There was no correct version of the
tricky Turkish suffix "de, da," [one meaning "also," "too;" the other
"in," "inside"] for example.
The flags were Turkish and Azeri - smaller ones sold for 10 Turkish
Liras, big ones for 15. At one instance, a warning was announced
through a megaphone not to buy the wrong Azeri flag; the green needed
to be on the top. Another warned the megaphone guy: "And also, it is
not Azeri; it is another Turk. Let's not have the partition of Turks
here." Then he showed the grey wolf [political symbol of extreme
nationalists] on his scarf: "This is what matters."
How can I explain the full hour in which I was stuck at the entrance
of Tokatlıyan Han [A building on İstiklal Avenue leading to Taksim]?
After hearing those voices coming from below and the grey wolf gesture
reaching toward the sky, after seeing the eyes of those shouting,
"We are all Ogun Samast" [the convicted murderer of Hrant Dink], who
can make me believe that those present there were genuinely grieving
for the Khojaly Massacre victims?
Are the 20-year-old Asenas [believed to be the name of a female wolf
in Turkish mythology] giggling and hugging each other as they pose with
posters written "You are all Armenians, you are all bastards" in their
hands, or are those who shout "Grey wolves are here, where are the
Hrants?" sincerely demanding that genocides should not be repeated? Do
these people demand justice? Are they the ones who demand peace, those
shouting "revenge" under the flag of this and that peace association?
At first, I thought I should not report about all the racist slogans
seen on the placards. After all, this was what they wanted, and
I should not publicize their views. That's what I thought. But,
no. This gathering should go down in history with these slogans,
as a rally that was announced with posters all around the city and
then with full-page ads in all newspapers (including Radikal) -
placed with whatever kind of capital there was - as an event where
the Metropolitan Municipality was thanked on the rally's Facebook
page and as a gathering where Interior Minister Ä°dris Naim Å~^ahin
delivered a speech.
The identical round placards which were trademarks of Hrant Dink
gatherings have been reproduced. In variety: "We are all Turks, We are
all from Khojaly, We are all Mehmet." In one of them it said, "It was
blood flowing in Khojaly, you all kept quiet; You were either French,
Armenian or Russian anyway." The slogan "The murderer of Khojaly [is]
the savage Armenian" was interrupted with "God is great" chants in
Arabic, and after that came "You are invaders, you are murderers,
you are all Armenians."
What else? "Those tailoring the Turk's death shroud will find their
own terrible death. Since you are Armenians, you have to answer
for Khojaly. The Turkish army is the fear of the Armenian. [The
fact that] those who cannot regard this atrocity with humanitarian
consciousness [the Turkish word "vicdan" was misspelled as "vijdan"]
are all Armenians is because of their bestialities."
There were thousands who attribute the massacre to a nation, who assume
that an Armenian will not feel sorry for the atrocity experienced at
Khojaly, who think they can solve everything by placing one genocide
against the other.
Around the same time, a small group marched with posters on Yuksel
Street in Ankara. Nobody was behind them; they were Azerbaijanis who
were able to make their voices heard from Facebook.
The statement they made as the "Turkey Platform of Socialist
Azerbaijanis" should be recorded in history: "We reject the suggestion
'We are all Azeris' that was brought up to weaken and invalidate the
slogan 'We are all Armenians,' which was expressed with pain and anger
after Hrant Dink's murder, in a context meaning solidarity with the
Armenian minority in Turkey. To take part in this game, to tolerate how
the Khojaly Massacre has become a political tool for these circles, is,
first and foremost, an example of disrespect to the memory of those
people brutally murdered in the Khojaly Massacre; it is indifference
against the grief of those from Khojaly. We reject being both an actor
in this game and a viewer. Long live the brotherhood of the peoples."
Note Feb. 26 somewhere. We will see where this hate discourse will
lead us, with its path that has been "officially" opened, and with
the platform it has found for itself. Yet no suffering disappears
because of another's suffering.
[email protected]
Pınar Ogunc is a columnist for daily Radikal in which this piece
was published Feb 27. It was translated into English by the Daily
News staff.
Hurriyet Daily News
Feb 28 2012
Turkey
How easy it is, isn't it? Let's pit one evil against another. Let's
have the sorrows duke it out against each other. Let's even out our
miseries with each other. Yours is false, mine is true. A negative
negates a positive, so we can conclude that nobody has massacred
anyone else in the land of the living.
Before arriving in Taksim, I passed by billboards put up here days
before, saying: "Don't believe in the Armenian lie." Roads leading to
the square were packed with double-parked buses. As a matter of fact,
bus photos had been posted on the Facebook page of the rally since
8 a.m.; buses coming from different cities were saluted.
The statue was covered with posters full of Turkish spelling mistakes
crying out the power of the Turk. There was no correct version of the
tricky Turkish suffix "de, da," [one meaning "also," "too;" the other
"in," "inside"] for example.
The flags were Turkish and Azeri - smaller ones sold for 10 Turkish
Liras, big ones for 15. At one instance, a warning was announced
through a megaphone not to buy the wrong Azeri flag; the green needed
to be on the top. Another warned the megaphone guy: "And also, it is
not Azeri; it is another Turk. Let's not have the partition of Turks
here." Then he showed the grey wolf [political symbol of extreme
nationalists] on his scarf: "This is what matters."
How can I explain the full hour in which I was stuck at the entrance
of Tokatlıyan Han [A building on İstiklal Avenue leading to Taksim]?
After hearing those voices coming from below and the grey wolf gesture
reaching toward the sky, after seeing the eyes of those shouting,
"We are all Ogun Samast" [the convicted murderer of Hrant Dink], who
can make me believe that those present there were genuinely grieving
for the Khojaly Massacre victims?
Are the 20-year-old Asenas [believed to be the name of a female wolf
in Turkish mythology] giggling and hugging each other as they pose with
posters written "You are all Armenians, you are all bastards" in their
hands, or are those who shout "Grey wolves are here, where are the
Hrants?" sincerely demanding that genocides should not be repeated? Do
these people demand justice? Are they the ones who demand peace, those
shouting "revenge" under the flag of this and that peace association?
At first, I thought I should not report about all the racist slogans
seen on the placards. After all, this was what they wanted, and
I should not publicize their views. That's what I thought. But,
no. This gathering should go down in history with these slogans,
as a rally that was announced with posters all around the city and
then with full-page ads in all newspapers (including Radikal) -
placed with whatever kind of capital there was - as an event where
the Metropolitan Municipality was thanked on the rally's Facebook
page and as a gathering where Interior Minister Ä°dris Naim Å~^ahin
delivered a speech.
The identical round placards which were trademarks of Hrant Dink
gatherings have been reproduced. In variety: "We are all Turks, We are
all from Khojaly, We are all Mehmet." In one of them it said, "It was
blood flowing in Khojaly, you all kept quiet; You were either French,
Armenian or Russian anyway." The slogan "The murderer of Khojaly [is]
the savage Armenian" was interrupted with "God is great" chants in
Arabic, and after that came "You are invaders, you are murderers,
you are all Armenians."
What else? "Those tailoring the Turk's death shroud will find their
own terrible death. Since you are Armenians, you have to answer
for Khojaly. The Turkish army is the fear of the Armenian. [The
fact that] those who cannot regard this atrocity with humanitarian
consciousness [the Turkish word "vicdan" was misspelled as "vijdan"]
are all Armenians is because of their bestialities."
There were thousands who attribute the massacre to a nation, who assume
that an Armenian will not feel sorry for the atrocity experienced at
Khojaly, who think they can solve everything by placing one genocide
against the other.
Around the same time, a small group marched with posters on Yuksel
Street in Ankara. Nobody was behind them; they were Azerbaijanis who
were able to make their voices heard from Facebook.
The statement they made as the "Turkey Platform of Socialist
Azerbaijanis" should be recorded in history: "We reject the suggestion
'We are all Azeris' that was brought up to weaken and invalidate the
slogan 'We are all Armenians,' which was expressed with pain and anger
after Hrant Dink's murder, in a context meaning solidarity with the
Armenian minority in Turkey. To take part in this game, to tolerate how
the Khojaly Massacre has become a political tool for these circles, is,
first and foremost, an example of disrespect to the memory of those
people brutally murdered in the Khojaly Massacre; it is indifference
against the grief of those from Khojaly. We reject being both an actor
in this game and a viewer. Long live the brotherhood of the peoples."
Note Feb. 26 somewhere. We will see where this hate discourse will
lead us, with its path that has been "officially" opened, and with
the platform it has found for itself. Yet no suffering disappears
because of another's suffering.
[email protected]
Pınar Ogunc is a columnist for daily Radikal in which this piece
was published Feb 27. It was translated into English by the Daily
News staff.