The roundtable between Armenia and Turkey called Expanding Frameworks of Dialogue: Armenian-Turkish Relations at This Moment organized in the framework of the SATR project continues in Diyarbekir. Yesterday its reporter was Hilal Kaplan, a famous columnist in Turkey and a journalist of the Yeni Şafak newspaper.
Ms. Kaplan was one of two people who won an award in the framework of this year’s project Support to Armenia-Turkey Rapprochement as a journalist who had best covered the Armenian-Turkish relations in the Turkish press.
Read also
Hilal Kaplan talked about Article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code, which provided for responsibility for actions and phrases “humiliating and insulting Turkishness” and under which Hrant Dink had been convicted too. According to Kaplan, this article could be used quite subjectively – one judge could say that a certain article humiliated the Turkish identity, another judge could say that it didn’t, anyone could interpret that article of the Criminal Code from his/her perspective or in accordance with the political atmosphere.
Ms. Kaplan also talked about the issue of xenophobia, which the Turkish society faces, when only the Turk is good and right and the others are bad and wrong, but she didn’t forget to mention that there were people who expressed such discriminatory opinions in the West
too; for example, she saw posters in the New York subway, which read, “Civilized people struggle against barbarians. Support Israel, struggle against the Jihad!” According to the columnist, it is a demonic phrase humiliating Muslims, “Is it like Israel is civilized and all Muslims are barbarians?” She was against the opinion that everything is bad in Turkey and everything is good in the US.
Nonetheless, she pointed out the drawbacks of her country’s system, “At schools, our children necessarily pray in the morning that they are Turks, so they are hard-working, happy and everyone has to say that regardless of his/her nationality. We educate our society in such a manner and this is the result of it. I am ashamed to say, but the word ‘Armenian’ is like a curse, a swearword in the Turkish society, ‘Armenian merit’ is a widespread curse and we had ministers who used such phrases. They say about me, for instance, that I am pro-Armenian or pro-Kurdish, because I reveal some facts, oppose the official ideology in regard to certain issues.”
By the way, when Hilal Kaplan was talking about the phrases offending other nations and mentioned the phrase in the press “the best Kurd is the dead Kurd,’ another Turkish journalist, Ipek Yezdani, suddenly interrupted her saying that “I have never read such a phrase in my life.” Ms. Kaplan continued to talk imperturbably saying that “I am glad that such a phrase is not very common and probably you don’t read any newspapers to see it,” Ms. Ipak was offended and said that “what you say is personal offense.”
Hilal Kaplan also mentioned that as a result of a more liberal attitude of the ruling Justice and Development Party recently, they could express themselves more freely, even representatives of other religions were invited to religious parties etc., “In this sense, the murder of our dear Hrant Dink was a turning point for Turkey. It showed that xenophobia was abnormal, wrong and those who, killing Hrant, wanted to send a message that this was what could be with those who ‘insult the Turkish identity’ faced another fact that hundreds of thousands of people rose up against that xenophobia and everyone rejected xenophobia by saying, ‘We are all Hrant.’”
She also remembered that as early as in 2003, an anti-missionary campaign had been started and even at one of the monthly meetings of the National Security Council, the military had decided that Christian missionaries were number one threat to the state and after that meeting, a strong xenophobic propaganda had started in the mass media, movies had been shot etc. and the atmosphere caused by that propaganda had become the underlying reason for not only Hrant Dink’s murder, but also the murders of Christian missionaries in different provinces of Turkey, “At that time, many articles were written against Hrant Dink and I can say that the mass media were accomplices in Hrant’s murder.”
Ms. Kaplan who was also wearing a headscarf said that there was intolerance toward those who wore headscarves too – they were mocked in the press, there was certain propaganda against them.
Ipek Yezdani representing the Hürriyet newspaper didn’t agree with Hilal Kaplan’s idea that there was a certain positive change during the tenure of the current government in terms of
the attitude toward other religious groups and claimed that in reality, what was ostensibly done in that field was formal and in reality, there was no serious change.
She also talked about the Armenian-Turkish relations saying that Turkey had many problems with the neighbors these days and national problems inside the country, “Turkey has so many external problems that the protocols and the relations with Armenia are one of the least important problems. Today the Syrian question, the serious threat of war facing us, problems with Iraq, problems with Iran, the Kurdish problem and all the other problems facing Turkey force our country to push the normalization of relations with Armenia to the sidelines. Minister of Foreign Affairs Davutoğlu is severely criticized these days; they say that the policy of zero problems with the neighbors is void. If we take all this into account, I am sure that the normalization of relations with Armenia will not be on the agenda for quite a long time.”
Melanya BARSEGHYAN
