Fundamentalism, nationalism and Militarism in Turkey
greece / turkey / cyprus |
religion |
opinion / analysis
Tuesday July 19, 2005 22:29 by ? - 5th May Group
"We come to bury the Turkish Republic, not to praise it"
Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) had founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 upon six principles: republicanism, laicism , reformism, nationalism, populism, and statism. Under the Kemalist regime the State was set free from the dominance of religion and religion was put under the control of the State. Especially the ideas of Republicanism, Laicism, and Reformism were made good use of by the Kemalist élite to oppress people of Islamic faith. The relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed generally involves both oppression and resistance. But the relationship between Kemalists and Islamists in Turkey, as we will see, does not only consists in that: they also tend to exploit each other to achieve their ends
"We come to bury the Turkish
Republic, not to praise it"
Fundamentalism, nationalism and Militarism in Turkey
THE TURKISH GOVERNMENT and the military are preparing to celebrate
the 75th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. In relation to this
so-called "glorious" event, the government even plans to introduce a
new amnesty law for prisoners-political prisoners, for example,
prisoners of conscience, radical Leftists, Kurdish resisters, and
Islamists are, of course, not included. Although some of our Leftists
are very willing to join in these "pious orgies," the Turkish
Republic in fact established itself with the blood and tears of the
oppressed.
Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) had founded the Republic of Turkey
in 1923 upon six principles: republicanism, laicism , reformism,
nationalism, populism, and statism. Under the Kemalist regime the
State was set free from the dominance of religion and religion was
put under the control of the State. Especially the ideas of
Republicanism, Laicism, and Reformism were made good use of by the
Kemalist élite to oppress people of Islamic faith. The
relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed generally
involves both oppression and resistance. But the relationship between
Kemalists and Islamists in Turkey, as we will see, does not only
consists in that: they also tend to exploit each other to achieve
their ends
Islamic reaction in Turkey manifested itself through two
channels: rebellion of the conservative Islamic masses and
the Islamist political movement. People's discontent during
the first decades of the Republic usually took the form of
spontaneous explosions of anger on the part of the
conservative Islamic masses, who were mainly illiterate and
influenced to a great degree by religious sentiments. The
Rebellion of Sheikh Said in 1925, which was a rebellion of
Sunni Kurds in the Turkish Southeast, is a good example. The
army murderously put down both smaller and bigger scale
rebellions, including the Rebellion of Sheikh Said. Hundreds
of people who rose in opposition or armed resistance against
the prevailing social and political order were sentenced to
death in arbitrary and hasty trials.
The Islamist political movement, on the other hand,
rather than coming into conflict with the State, sought
allies within the ruling élite by adopting a moderate
line. After the Second World War the change from a one-party
to a multi-party system {this parliamentary change resulted
in a split within the ruling élite: on the one hand,
the Republican People's Party (CHP) that was the ruling
party, and on the other, the DP that emerged from within a
faction in the CHP} allowed the Islamist movement to find an
ally in the Democratic Party (DP). In order to gain most of
the votes of people in rural areas, the DP sought to take
the Islamist movement under its auspices, and won the
general election in 1950 by a wide margin. But after the
overthrow of the DP by a military coup d'état on May
27, 1960, it was the Justice Party (AP) inheriting the
politics of the banned DP that won once again the general
election in 1965. The AP utilised both the conservative
Islamic masses and the Islamist movement as street forces
against the rising youth and workers' movements. Merchants
from the provinces who became richer under the auspices of
the AP encouraged and funded the offensive actions of those
(artisans, small tradesmen, and people from rural regions
who gave up all hopes in the future) who were getting poorer
and angrier because of the growing economic pressures and
who in the last resort dropped the anchor of religion.
In 1969, the leaders of the Islamist movement who had
hitherto organised under the umbrella of AP felt that they
were enough powerful to form their own party, which was
called the National Order Party (MNP). However, on March 12,
1971, the military staged another coup d'état,
crushed the revolutionary movement, and suppressed the MNP:
the military which had previously turned a blind eye when
the Islamist movement was being used by the State against
the revolutionary movement viewed the aim of the Islamist
movement to gain the majority in the parliament as a threat.
During the 1970s the State continued with its policy of
utilising the fanatic Islamic sections of society against
the revolutionary movement. Especially in rural towns the
State deliberately provoked conservative Sunni people to
organise pogroms under the leadership of the Grey
Wolves-members of the fascist party, the Nationalist
Movement Party (MHP)-against a particular heretic sect in
Islam religion commonly known as Alevi people. The so-called
"non-modernist" Islamist movement gathered its most powerful
forces in the 1980s, when the so-called
"counter-fundamentalist" Kemalist military made yet another
coup d'état on September 12, 1980. The military
supported the Islamist movement, despite all its "modernist"
discourse, and thus benefited from that movement's
ideological power to control and pasify the people. The
Islamist movement, on the other hand, was not at all
reluctant to make use of every opportunity the State offered
for its purpose of climbing the ladder of power.
Unfortunately, even people among Marxist intellectuals
and Leftists in Turkey fail to understand the true basis of
the Laicism-versus-Islamism conflict in depth-an important
issue today that dominates the ideological and political
agenda of Turkey-and persist in taking the army's side in
this conflict. The fact remains that this is fundamentally a
power struggle between two forces, which are not principally
very different from each other, rather than being a conflict
between the two systems. The modernist army is as
conservative as the Islamist movement and the political
cadres of the Islamist movement are as much modernist as the
army. In other words, the power struggle is between the two
political forces both of which are modernist-conservative.
For this reason, it can be said that the Islamist
movement in Turkey is fundamentally different from the
fundamentalist movement in Algeria and Iran. A considerable
number of people from the prominent section of the Islamist
movement are businessmen. Some are still working in the
State institutions. Fundamentalist elements in the movement
are marginalised. Unlike the leaders of the fundamentalist
movement in Algeria, Islamist leaders in Turkey are in no
position to fight to the death, because their social and
political roles do not allow them to confront the State.
Moreover, they have close links with Saudi Arabia whose
integration with the world's capitalist system is the
highest among the Islamic countries. This is another factor
that reduces the degree of radicalism in the movement. One
of the most important characteristics of the Islamist
movement in Turkey is that Islamists, whose long-term aim is
to form a religious State such as the Iranian one, instead
of coming into conflict with the State, seek to make the
Islamist ideology and lifestyle embedded in all areas of
society-from education to fashion, from intellectual life to
sport, from the media to sexual life-by trying to adjust
Islamic values to the process of modernisation. By these
efforts they attempt to establish their ideological hegemony
in the society and then conquer the State, unlike
Jacobin-Kemalists who seek to establish their ideological
hegemony in the society by means of the State. In this
sense, the long and bitter conflict between Kemalists and
Islamists both of whom are oppressive and monolithic is a
struggle for ideological hegemony as well as for political
power. Kemalists appear now to have taken over the lead in
the struggle for ideological hegemony thanks to the media,
the military and the education system. For example, the
media tries to create a wave of secular-patriotic hysteria
in the society, similar to the anti-communist hysteria of
the 1950s in the McCarthy's America. In the 1980s, the
Islamist current, on the one hand, managed to strengthen its
ranks among people of Islamic faith, who were reacting
against the Kemalist dictatorship, and on the other, gained
greatly from the level of protection and subsequent
opportunities the same dictatorship offered. From the
mid-1990s onwards the Islamist movement, organised under the
Welfare Party (RP), was to gain more than 30 per cent of the
votes and be the biggest right-wing party (being the biggest
right-wing party means being the majority in the
parliament). They, therefore, decided to drop their
forty-years-old role of being an instrument at the hands of
the ruling élite and lay claim to a direct share in
power. The Generals leading the army had been accustomed to
sharing power for fifty years with the leadership of the
DP-AP tradition, members of whom were themselves not
Islamists but still flirting with them. In the 1980s, after
the military junta closed down the AP, this tradition was
divided in two: the Motherland Party (ANAP) and the True
Path Party (DYP). Owing to this important change the
Generals panicked and felt that their positions in the power
structure were threatened. In this situation, the militarist
clique began to consolidate the dictatorship, seeking the
tacit support of Alevi people who were the target of
fundamentalist attacks, some parts of the Left, and the
middle classes. Moreover, by putting tanks in the streets
and using the power of the National Security Council, a body
that legitimises army interventions in government business,
the militarist clique made a "post-modernist coup
d'état" in February 1997, suppressed the Islamist RP
with a rigid anti-fundamentalist propaganda that reminds us
the early period-1920s and 1930s-of the Kemalist
dictatorship. But the RP whose main tactic has always been
to obey the Generals chose to calm its followers and
supporters, and began to wait for the future times when the
secular dictatorship would loosen its grip and perhaps need
RP again.
|
Abbreviations
- CHP (Republican People's Party)
- DP (Democratic Party)
- DISK (Confederation of Revolutionary Workers' Unions)
- TIP (Workers' Party of Turkey)
- AP (Justice Party)
- MNP (National Order Party)
- MSP (National Salvation Party)
- MHP (Nationalist Movement Party)
- RP (Welfare Party)
- ANAP (Motherland Party)
- DYP (True Path Party)
- PKK (Workers' Party of Kurdistan)
- ISK (Izmir War Resisters)
- SWP (Socialist Worker Party)
- IP (Worker Party)
- ODP (Freedom and Solidarity Party)
- IHD (Human Rights Association)
- MIT (National Intelligence Service
-
Chronology
1908: The Committee of Union and Progress comes to power.
1915: The Committee of Union and Progress government
massacres 1,500,000 Armenian people.
1921: January 28: the Kemalist Ankara government kills
Mustafa Suphi, the leader of the Communist Party of Turkey,
and his comrades.
1923: October 29: the foundation of the Republic. CHP
rules with one-party dictatorship.
1925: The Rebellion of Sheikh Said.
1938: The Dersim Rebellion. Kemal Atatürk dies.
1939: Ismet Inönü replaces Atatürk as a
second dictator.
1946: A new party, DP.
1950: General election: DP wins, CHP loses.
1956: September 6-7: Patriotic mob attack Armenians and
Greeks in Istanbul.
1960: May 27: DP overthrown by a coup d'état.
1961: Adnan Menderes, the Prime Minister, Fatin
Rütü Zorlu, the Foreign Secretary, and Hasan
Polatkan, the Treasurer, hung. TIP was founded.
1963: Two army officers, Talat Aydemir and Fethi
Gürcan, hung for attempting another coup.
1965: AP wins the general election. DðSK was founded.
1968: Students occupy universities.
1970: June 15-16: a big workers' uprising in Istanbul.
1971: March 12: a military coup.
1972: May 6: three revolutionary young men, Deniz Gezmi,
Hüseyin ðnan and Yusuf Aslan, hung by the military
regime.
1974: July: general amnesty. Turkey occupies Northern
Cyprus.
1977: 1 May celebrations: 34 killed, many injured.
1979: 500 people killed by fascists in Mara.
1980: September 12: another military coup.
1985: PKK begins its guerilla war.
1993: July 2: Islamic fundamentalists set fire a hotel in
Sivas; 37 people killed.
1995: March: the police kills 24 people in the Gazi
demonstrations in Istanbul.
1996: November: the Susurluk scandal.
1997: February 28: "post-modernist military coup."
1998: The government suppresses the Islamist RP.
|
Nationalism, Populism, and Statism, the other three principles
upon which the Republic was established, are merely expressions of
repression against various ethnic groups and nationalities, in
particular Kurds who live within the national borders of Turkey, and
against Turkish Cypriots who live in Northern Cyprus, occupied since
1974 by the Turkish army. It was the ruling Committee of Union and
Progress that first put the Nation State's racist politics into
practice during the First World War-the last period of the Ottoman
Empire-by exterminating Armenian people in 1915, who were in
substantial numbers mainly in the East and Northeast. "Estimates of
the Armenians killed in the deportations and massacres of 1915-1916
range from a few hundred thousands to 1,500,000." When the Republic
was founded, the Kemalist ruling élite inherited the same
racist politics, and there were several uprisings and rebellions in
Kurdistan, the most important of which are the Rebellion of Sheikh
Said in 1925 and the Dersim Rebellion in 1938.
Unlike the Islamist movement, the Kurdish political movement,
pioneered by Kurdish intellectuals, could not find any allies within
the élite, and had to endure repression for many years. Only
in the 1960s when the Turkish Left began to rise was it able to open
up and express itself to a certain degree. In the 1970s, various
Kurdish nationalist groups from different tendencies, not having
found in the Turkish Leftist movement a platform on which they could
declare their own cultural and national demands, separated from the
Left and experienced an organisational preliminary period to assert
their rights for independence or autonomy. One of these groups, the
Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK), however, rather than attacking the
Turkish State, began to eliminate rival Kurdish and Turkish
organisations of the Left, and thus established its power base in the
region and dominated the area by force. It is interesting to point
out that the State ignored the PKK's actions and followed a policy of
non-interference. The fact that the PKK and other groups were
fighting and destroying each other did not matter much for the State.
With the military coup d'état of 12 September, 1980, the
Generals tried to militarise the whole society. The aim of this Latin
American type of coup d'état, which came later in Turkey than
in some Latin American countries, where the militaries were
retreating back to the barracks, was to gag the people. Did they
achieve it? No. On the contrary, such an appalling atmosphere of
oppression created among the people a feverish desire for freedom and
democracy. The reason, therefore, for the collapse of the Turkish
Left after the 1980s, which was dominated by Stalinism, should be
attributed to this desire for freedom and democracy rather than to
the military's attacks on the Left. It was inevitable that the
Leftist organisations would lose their "charm" particularly in the
eyes of Leftist people, considering that these organisations ignored
and scorned the idea of freedom, individual initiative and
organisational democracy, while they praised "the dictatorship of the
proletariat" and "the vanguard party." This led to the emergence of
anarchism, feminism and other currents such as libertarian socialism.
The number of people who sympathised with such currents increased in
the 1980s, particularly in big cultural centres such as Istanbul,
Ankara, and ðzmir. Such ideals were favoured more than others,
because the idea of freedom and individual initiative was important.
Of course, there were differences between the big cities in western
Turkey and the rural areas in Kurdistan in terms of what people felt
and heard and what kind of existence they led. The general atmosphere
of terror and repression together with the racist practices of the
Turkish State made life extremely unbearable for the Kurdish people.
In such circumstances, in which there was no alternative other than
to support the PKK, the desire for freedom of the Kurdish masses was
channelled into this organisation, where not a vestige of freedom
could be found.
The PKK began its guerrilla war in the mid-1980s, when the
military was still in power and the regime looked as powerful and
intact as before. The Kurdish masses responded positively and gave
active support to the PKK. The PKK found its most active supporters
and followers among young people in rural areas who had no
possibility of employment and lost all hopes in the future. The
guerrilla warfare and the number of deaths on both sides reached
their peak in the early 1990s, when the Turkish State decided to curb
all the guerrillas, their followers, and supporters by
counter-guerrilla war. The State organised its own Secret Gangs,
backed by the Army, its own Secret Police and Gendarmerie to murder
thousands of Kurdish people. Between 1990 and 1996 thousands of
villages in the Southeast were either destroyed or burnt down. People
were forced to leave their villages, and if they did not, they were
brutally killed. Many "disappeared" and their murderers-Secret State
Gangs' members-were sheltered and protected by the State itself.
Despite all this, the guerrilla movement did not stop; on the
contrary, it grew.
However, after the Susurluk scandal in 1996, the PKK leadership,
which was under the influence of Yalç"n Küçük
(a Stalinist writer and a supporter of Kemalism, who worked as an
expert at the Institute of State Planning in the 1960s), seemed to
believe that the military had shifted its policy and was now willing
to give some concessions to the Kurdish guerrilla movement. The PKK
henceforth sought to reach a compromise.
Until the Susurluk scandal, the Generals had been in close
collaboration with the then ruling party (DYP) and the police in
order to destroy the Kurdish guerrilla movement. But after the
general election in 1995, this collaboration changed into a quarrel
between the Generals leading the army and the DYP, because the DYP
now engaged in a coalition with the Islamist RP. This angered the
Generals. They blamed the DYP for all the failure of their bloody war
against Kurds and for the murders committed by Secret State Gangs.
The Susurluk scandal created an unmissable opportunity for the
military to overthrow the DYP-RP coalition. (We have mentioned this
"post-modernist coup d'état" above.)
The PKK still proceeds with its policy of compromise. However,
army operations in the Kurdish regions near or over the Iraqi border
have increased, and the PKK leadership seems to be disillusioned
because of this, though they have not changed their idea of coming to
an agreement. The army, on the other hand, seems as if it does not
wish to end this war. It is obvious that the prolongation of the war
on a certain level serves the army to pay its high debts, but most
importantly, to determine the political life of the country. It is
the young, the poor and the oppressed in Turkey and Kurdistan who
perish everyday that pay the price of this bloody war. The fact is
that the Turkish army tends to recruit its soldiers among the poor
young people. The rich always avoid joining the army by "legal" ways
and those who happen to join find their own ways (personal contacts
with élite bureaucrats) not to go to the front. Many poor
young people refuse to be part of this injustice and brutal savagery.
There are more than 300,000 deserters in Turkey and this number seems
to be on the increase.
Wars are the grave-diggers of revolution and they result in more
despotic regimes for both sides. Even if wars may result in
revolutions, in the last analysis they destroy them. (The First World
War resulted in the Russian Revolution, but the Civil War destroyed
it.) The war in Kurdistan not only militarises every cell of the
society, but causes in the long term the complete paralysis of
society as regards violence. It not only creates and feeds
chauvinistic feelings among Turkish and Kurdish people, but helps an
authoritarian sentiment spread, to the detriment of the cause of
freedom. All this makes it necessary for us to be more active in the
struggles to stop the war. The Turkish army must stop all its
operations in Kurdistan. We have always been in support of the
struggle of Kurdish people against the Nation State. This, however,
does not mean we support nationalist and patriotic feelings of the
oppressed people, nor does it mean we support the PKK, an
organisation that wants to create its own State.
As Turkish and Kurdish anarchists we also oppose the colonialist
policy of the Turkish State as well as its policy of assimilation,
settlement, and forced immigration against Turkish Cypriots in
Northern Cyprus. We believe that Turkish and Greek Cypriots can solve
their own disputes among themselves without any outside intervention
and without any manipulation in regard to this or that Cypriot
government. The concept of nation is an imaginary concept often
employed by ruling élites as the basis of their power
structure as well as by aspirant cliques to deceive oppressed
minorities. For this reason, we believe not in the so-called
self-determination of an imaginary "nation," but in the
self-government of voluntary individuals, groups and communities,
working and unwaged people, etc.
It is crucial for Turkish, Kurdish, and Greek peoples to be in
solidarity with each other against the expansionist and chauvinist
policies of the Turkish and Greek States. It is, therefore, important
to strengthen the existing links between Turkish, Greek, and Kurdish
anarchists.
The people who live within the borders of Turkey have been under
the dictatorship of the Kemalist élite for 75 years. The main
principle of this dictatorship is called Statism that means
domination rather than an economic form of governance by the State.
The State continually interferes with our liberty: on the one hand,
they say that women should not veil themselves, and on the other,
they attempt to check whether female high school students are virgins
or not. Everything is dominated by the State, including the media,
labour unions, and some parts of the Left. The media is the most
important and effective instrument of the present regime to brainwash
people into accepting their traditional roles. People, whether they
be political or not, are tortured systematically in many police
stations and prisons. The patriarchal State indirectly justifies
domestic violence against women and children. Workers and peasants
are oppressed and exploited as long as the State exists. Poor people
who flow day by day into the big cities because of the war in
Kurdistan are in desperate situation.
Some of the Left such as the Worker Party (IP) have become organs
of the State. Members of IP now carry Turkish flags in demonstrations
and attack other organisations of the Left which are in opposition to
them. IP also has relations with some factions of the fascist Grey
Wolves. Another party, the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP), is a
coalition of some Leftist factions. Although it fights against the
State to defend democratic rights, it does not go beyond the confines
of western democracy.
On the other hand, the radical Left, whose enemy is the Kemalist
State, is unfortunately narrow-minded and cannot somehow rescue
itself from the Stalinist tradition. According to each organisation
of the radical Left, the revolution will only happen, if "the party
of the proletariat" gains strength after strength. (There is no
disagreement whatsoever among them with regard to this point.) It is
ironic that there are so many so-called "parties of the proletariat"
which are deadly enemies competing with each other for power. But
only a revolution built upon the self-initiative of the masses and
individuals and without these self-indulgent parties is likely to be
successful.
The era of parties has ended. Even their members and followers
agree on the fact that all parties are miniature versions of the
tyrannical States and bureaucracies of the future. In this regard,
what is dead is not only Marxism, but also liberalism, the creator of
party systems. This also explains the new interest in anarchist
ideas.
We have so far drawn a negative picture of Turkey. It should not
be understood from what we have said that the society is under the
total control of the State. Despite everything, people resist to the
present regime in various ways and forms; and the parliament, the
fig-leaf of the dictatorship, is losing its credibility in the eyes
of people. In 1995, for example, Alevi people in the Gazi district of
Istanbul spontaneously rebelled against the local authorities because
of the murders committed by the secret police. There were violent
clashes between the police and people for three days. 22 people died
and many were injured. In this uprising Alevi people organised their
own independent networks to fight against the authorities. Another
example of self-organisation is the ecological resistance movement of
the Bergama peasants and town people in the form of very creative and
imaginative demonstrations against the gold mines run by the Eurogold
Company. The Bergama people organised themselves on their own
initiative and did not care what their so-called "leaders" said or
did.
Nobody except for Bergama peasants and their creative minds could
have thought of an illegal demonstration on the Bosphorus Bridge
where hundreds of women and men protested half-naked against the
government and the Eurogold Company. One of the most interesting
aspects of this struggle is the spiritual driving force of the women
involved who could neither read nor write. A third example is the
Human Rights Association (IHD) that publicises tortures and
"disappearances," despite all the attacks of the police and the
media. (Its president, Ak"n Birdal, was recently seriously injured in
an attempted assassination.) The significance of this organisation
lies in its brave and uncompromising attitude against political
prejudices and nationalist public hysteria. There are also the
"Saturday Mothers" who come together ever Saturday in the Galatasaray
avenue to ask for their "disappeared" children and relatives. The
fight of Osman Murat Ülke, a conscientious objector and an
activist from Izmir War Resisters (ISK), is also important, because
Murat Ülke confronts the huge military machine as an individual
and shows to everyone that the individual who has decided to resist
is stronger than any weapon.
When we were preparing this paper for publication, another scandal
occurred in Turkey: one of the most notorious Turkish mafia bosses,
Alaaddin Çakici, was caught and arrested in Paris. On him was
found a red passport-red passports are usually only given to
high-ranking diplomats-given to him by the National Intelligence
Service (MIT). It was also found out that before he was caught he
exchanged several phone calls with two ministers of the present
government of which the military is in control.
The Turkish State is involved in "dirty-work" jobs, including drug
trafficking, without which the economy may collapse. It becomes
clearer everyday that politicians, the MIT, the police and the
military are working with the mafia; that some of the Turkish mafia
bosses are even members of the MIT. It is known that Mahmut Yildirim
(code-name "Green"), a mass murderer who is "looked for" by the
police, will not be caught, because from the beginning he has been
protected by the State.
Corruption goes hand in hand with expansionism. The State
corruption is linked with the expansionist policies of the Turkish
military. The Generals who are in collaboration with the US and
Israel proudly declare that Turkish military forces have the power to
occupy several parts of the Middle East, the Balkans, or Caucasio.
It would be best to bury the 75 year old Republic where it
belongs, just next to the grave of the Ottoman Empire. Amen to that.
-
- Printed version published with the support of the Haringey
Solidarity Group some time around 1995
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3you wrote the pkk is the workers of kurdistan...which kurdistan did you write about..we live in TURKEY like brothers...you colonialists support all disjunctive activities...but turkey lives forever in a brotherly manner..
The idea that criticizing the fascist and ethnoracially totalitarian (Happy is he who is a Turk , et al) homogenizing nature of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey as imperialist is absurd and obscence.
You have here co-opted (stolen) and perverted for your own ends the idea of imperialism. Who was the imperialist, o you who still have the Ottoman Mentality, the CUP mentality colonizing your minds? O you who have not checked the Gendarme within, or your vanguard authoritarian power-plays!
On one hand in the international arena , denialists of genocide and ethnocide accuse of outside agitation - you use the Left line to deny of genocide and continuing ethnocide.
Then out of the other corner of your mouth,-The Right Wing Line you denounce the minorities, the different, the dissidents in solidarity with them as - REDS! AGITATATORS! Tashnaks, Hunchags, PKK, Turkis anarsizs- whatever!
Then out of a third strategy, you point to communal religous differences- even if we are screaming atheists! Even if our own so-called leaders TURN ON US -mutafian-and co-operate with you because of the likes of article 301 -and let also , let's face it,
organized hierarchical religion (sans rogue spiritual mystics) of whatever stripe simply acts to neutralize change and keep us sheepified.
We were all a nation of sheep ruled by poodles in wolves clothing !
all Kurds, Armenians etc., and other indigenous peoples of the lands are colonialist when you yourself are COLONIZING the struggle for justice? When you are a desdendant of colonisers?
Damn, at least confess that you are from a colonizing group. Admit and then go from there to the struggle against a homogenized, totalitarian world which we all face.
You may be surprise, Little Man, that when you push aside the Ottoman/CUP 301-wielding Pan-Turanist within that you may find that you yourself are that Red/Black minority who faces the yatagan. Or you may find the mosaic of a field of many wildflowers return....
And then what shall you do?
What shall you do tonight in your haunted houses ?
My comments were directed to the person who posted ridiculous comments before this post , implying criticism and confronting nad exposing truth equals imperialism . It is also directed to any who think along those lines.
To whoever authored the original article, Viva!