Minorities in Turkey: How a nation neglects its diversity
Photo by Carolina Drüten
Leyla Zana’s life would change forever on a November day in 1991. She had just been elected to the Turkish parliament and was about to take her oath on the constitution. As she made her way to the lectern, heckling arose: Zana was wearing a headband with the Kurdish colours – yellow, green and red. Then she started speaking.
“I take this oath for the brotherhood between the Turkish people and the Kurdish people,” she said. The sentence caused agitation. “Kızım,” – my girl – the chairman of the session shouted indignantly to interrupt her, “kızım!” But Zana remained unwavering. The problem was not the meaning of what Zana had said. Rather it was the language she had used. Kurdish, Zana’s mother tongue, was then a forbidden language in Turkey. Her provocation came at a high cost. Zana spent ten years in prison.
Although progress has been made since then, Kurdish people still experience exclusion in Turkey. They are the largest minority of the country, but they are not the only ones that suffer from severe discrimination.
Prejudice has deep historical roots
In fact, minorities have always been struggling against intolerance. Especially their freedom of expression is restricted. According to a 2015 study funded by the European Union (EU), 80% of minorities in Turkey could not freely express themselves on social media due to fears and concerns. More than one third were even subject to hate speech. Another recent survey by the Beyoğlu Jewish Rabbinate Foundation revealed the ingrained prejudices of the Turkish society: 42% of the respondents wouldn’t want a Jewish neighbour, while more than one third are opposed to the idea of living door to door with a Christian. Only 7-10% of the participants said they had non-Muslim friends.
“Neither the Ottoman Empire, nor the Republic of Turkey have succeeded to combine diversity and actual equality,” said the Swiss historian Hans-Lukas Kieser. Prejudices and systematic exclusion are by no means a solely Turkish problem, but the scepticism towards minorities is quite conspicuous within the society. It stems from the constructed homogeneity of the Turkish identity, which especially stresses “Turkish” features and neglects other ethnic or religious groups. It is composed of different aspects, some of them leading back a century ago.
After the First World War, the Turkish Republic arose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. In order to build a nation characterised by integrity, several nationality policies were implemented. Today, Turks still proudly look back at their founding myth of one people who share the same culture. This unity, however, typically denies other ethnic groups. One example for this is the mass murder perpetuated against the Armenians. In 1915, amongst the turmoil of the First World War, between 300,000 and 1.5 million Armenians were killed due to mass deportations. The death toll is disputed and varies depending on the source. According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), “more than a million” Armenians died. Turkey, however, still refuses to recognise the incidents as genocide. Not only would that strongly contradict its historiography of a pure nation, but also Armenians are still socially marginalised. President Erdoğan for instance indicated in a 2014 television interview during the presidential election campaign that he considers being called Armenian an insult: “They called me uglier things, saying I was an Armenian,” he stated.
As a matter of fact, the Turkish language is not neutral towards minorities. The Turkish word azınlık – minority – for example is negatively connoted. “It immediately provokes the association with problems,” explained Kieser. This leads back to the late 19th century, when minorities were linked to traitors and separatists in the public opinion. The linguistic bias has survived the transition from empire to republic and is still apparent in the Turkish language today.
History textbooks spread misinformation
Turkish children are adapted to the hostility at early stages of their lives, at the latest in school. History textbooks glorify the role of the Ottoman Empire while promoting prejudice against minorities such as Armenians and Kurds. A 2015 empirical study by the university professor Kenan Çayır reveals that Turkish textbooks preserve an ethno-religious national identity, rather than including and appreciating differences and variety.
Kurds, for example, are only mentioned as harmful societies in the textbooks – which is an affront to every Kurdish student attending a history lesson. The Armenian genocide, on the other hand, is presented as an act of self-defence of Turks, who fell victim to massacring Armenians. This cynical approach neglects the misery of the Armenians at that time and deprives pupils of the chance to form their own critical opinions. Not only that members of minorities are taken the chance to place themselves within the narrative of identity in the textbooks and thus feel segregated. But this combination of misinformation and lack of information about the pluralistic society of Turkey also fosters nationalistic thoughts, which can take on quite dangerous proportions – as in the case of murdered journalist Hrant Dink.
Hrant Dink was 52 years old when he was murdered in the streets of Istanbul just outside his office on a January day in 2007. The prominent advocate of the Armenian minority in Turkey had run the only Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos. A few months before his death, Dink was given a suspended sentence of six months, and by the time of his death, three more trials against him were pending. He had been prosecuted for charges on the Turkish penal code 301, which then prohibited the insult of Turkishness – the Turkish-Armenian journalist had formerly denounced the Armenian genocide. His murderer was a 17-year-old nationalist. “I shot the infidel,” he shouted as he ran away from the crime scene. It would be naïve to declare these incidents – Dink’s continuous charges and his murder – as coincidence. By accusing him of insulting Turkishness over and over again, the Turkish state de facto declared him as hostile towards the Turkish nation. Nationalists took this as a free ticket to mete out justice for themselves.
In the meantime, the controversial article 301 has been altered. It now interdicts insulting the Turkish nation instead of Turkishness. Yet, the Turkish legislation still fails to adequately protect minorities. Hate speech, for instance – inciting the public towards hostility – is illegal in Turkey. However, the law does not particularly outlaw hate speech against minorities and thus creates latitude for those who spread prejudice and intolerance.
Along with the neglect of minority rights, there is also a focus on Turkism in the Turkish penal code. Parts of it are conspicuously patriotic: article 305 criminalises engaging in deeds that run counter to fundamental national interests, while article 318 prohibits discouraging the public from military service. The judges are left with much room for interpretation, making it easy to prosecute uncomfortable critics – or members of minorities.
Besides nationalism, religion is another factor that can partly foster discrimination against minorities in a country where the overwhelming majority of 98% are Muslim and religion significantly shapes people’s self-perception. Officially, Turkey grants freedom of religion in its constitution, allowing minorities such as Jews or Christians to freely live their beliefs. “But in reality, there’s a tendency towards harassment and discrimination,” said Amke Dietert, who works as an author with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), focusing on Turkish affairs. Late March this year, the Turkish state seized six churches as state property in Diyarbakır. According to official sources, this was in order to restore the historic centre of the war-torn city. Ahmet Guvener, pastor of Diyarbakir Protestant Church, however, suspects ulterior motives: "The government didn't take over these pieces of property in order to protect them," he told World Watch Monitor. "They did so to acquire them." In fact, property is a delicate issue for Christian organisations. An orthodox monastery in Heybeliada was recently expropriated and is being turned into a fire station. Christian communities don’t have a legal status in Turkey. Most churches are thus owned and financed by foundations, whereas mosques are funded by the state.
Alarming scenes in Turkey’s Southeast
The situation of human rights and those of minorities in particular has not always been as critical as it is today. The historian Kieser explained that the country has experienced a comparably liberal phase regarding the perception of minorities, starting from 2002. Back then, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) had implemented long overdue reforms, which gave minorities the scope to culturally and personally develop. To name but a few, many Crypto-Christians – a denomination who practice their religion secretly while pretending to belong to another one – openly made profession of their faith, and the Kurdish language was further legalised at schools and broadcasting institutions. It was the EU that predominantly pushed these reforms forward, and Turkey was keen to fulfil them in order to join the union. “But in the recent past, a lot of these achievements have been put into question,” said Kieser.
To understand what he means, one must simply turn their gaze on Turkey’s Southeast.
Once a flourishing city, today a landscape of ruins. Houses, once big enough to accommodate a number of families, are unrecognisable today. Piles of rubble shape the street scene. Enduring fights and merciless attacks have left nothing but destruction. What sounds like restive region from war-torn Syria is in fact Turkey’s city of Cizre.
Since the ceasefire between the Turkish army and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) failed in the summer of 2015, Turkey’s Southeast has been shaken by a civil war-like situation. The Turkish government calls it a fight against terrorism, but the scenes resemble a war against Turkey’s own population. Hundreds of civilians have died under 24-hour military curfews, as the Turkish Human Rights Foundation stated. Turkey had been shaken by a number of terrorist attacks in the past months, for some of which pro-Kurdish militant organisations claimed responsibility. The army typically reacts with massive military operations in the country’s Southeast. The tense situation is not likely to ease anytime soon. “It is a problem that entire groups are being generalised and lumped together in one political margin,” claimed the historian Kieser. Turkish media outlets don’t do much to create a more balanced picture of the incidents. Since president Erdoğan has begun his offensive against independently reporting media, many critical voices have been silenced. The pro-regime news outlets, however, add fuel to the fire by biased reporting about military “successes” in the fight against terror, completely neglecting the suffering of people in the area. That only increases prejudices against the Kurdish minority.
In this explosive time it is dangerous to even show compassion towards the Kurdish people. When academics signed a petition in January 2016, asking the Turkish government to “abandon its deliberate massacre and deportation of Kurdish and other peoples in the region”, three of them were jailed for spreading so-called terrorist propaganda, and many more were suspended from their universities.
A long way to go
The modern Turkish identity is still shaped by a process of cultural assimilation that leads back to the 1920s. In the nation-state formation process, individual rights to ethnic and religious self-determination were systematically neglected and even unwelcome – the Turks constructed their own identity by systematically differentiating from other ethnic and religious groups. The outcome is still noticeable in Turkey’s society today, showing hierarchical and essentialist features. But as hope slips away, especially in light of the violent conflict in the Kurdish areas of Turkey, finding a solution becomes more critical. Turkey is a crucial ally in the war on the self-titled Islamic State (IS) and it plays a major role in Europe’s plan to tackle the refugee crisis. It is therefore all the more important that the international attention shifts to human rights in Turkey, particularly to those of minorities. Turning a blind eye on human rights violations due to strategic reasons is not only hypocritical, it is cynical.
Author Amke Dietert, who is also active for Amnesty International, stresses the importance of reforming the educational system. “The whole system is very much focused on the state ideology, on a nationalistic-Turkish thinking,” she explained. In order to overcome prejudices, it is necessary to allow differentiated approaches in Turkish classrooms.
Doubtlessly, a long way lies ahead for Turkey to accept and appreciate its pluralistic society. Given the country’s recent authoritarian shift, prospects for a democratisation seem quite low.
The Kurdish rebel
Leyla Zana continued her political career after ten years behind bars. She was awarded the Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament for the defence of human rights and the freedom of thought in 1995, but was unable to collect it until her release from prison years later.
Today, the 55-year-old politician is a member of parliament for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Ağrı. She has, despite years of imprisonment, maintained her rebellious attitude: in 2015, while taking the oath in the parliament, Zana changed the words “Turkish nation” to “the nation of Turkey”. Her point is clear: Turkey consists of a number of diverse people, such as Kurds, Armenians, Alevis. However, it remains controversial whether her action was a brave act of resistance or an unwise act of defiance. Since she refused to read the oath verbatim, it was declared null. Zana now won’t be able to vote in the parliament, let alone hold speeches – at a time when the Kurdish people in Turkey are in dire need of a voice.
