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For Turkey's
Minorities, Four Words Say it All
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Originally published under the title, "Four words and a
number in the indictment ..."
Journalists
Hikmet Çetinkaya (left) and Ceyda Karan have been indicted for
"insulting" religious values by reprinting a Charlie Hebdo
cartoon.
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Just four words in Turkish. Five in English, depending on the
translation. Not less, not more. They make the opening of a line in an
indictment. Those four words tell more than any other four words coming one
after the other could. In the sequence they were put one after the other by
the honorable prosecutor, they unwillingly portray the unpleasant – and
well-known – facts about Turkey. They forcefully remind everyone what
Turkish democracy is and is not.
"In our Muslim-majority country…"
A Turkish prosecutor is seeking prison terms of up to four-and-a-half
years for columnists Ceyda Karan and Hikmet Çetinkaya of daily Cumhuriyet.
Ms. Karan and Mr. Çetinkaya are accused
of "insulting people's religious values" for reprinting the
caricature of Islam's prophet following the Jan. 7 attacks on the Charlie
Hebdo magazine in Paris that killed 12 people. The prosecutor opened
the investigation into the journalists after His Majesty's prime minister
accused Cumhuriyet of "incitement" for publishing the Charlie
Hebdo excerpts.
It's always better to have 1,280
plaintiffs than one angry assassin.
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The petitions and signatures of the 1,280 plaintiffs in the Cumhuriyet
case are attached to the prosecutor's 38-page indictment. A total of 1,280
Turks "in our Muslim-majority country" of nearly 80 million
people complained that their religious values had been humiliated by the
reprinted Charlie Hebdo excerpts. They have every liberty to feel so
and to complain. It's always better to have 1,280 plaintiffs than one angry
assassin.
Thus the honorable prosecutor sat at his desk and started to type on his
keyboard:
In our Muslim-majority country, it would
be impossible not to foresee the consequences of reprinting the same
caricatures… It is obvious even at first sight that the suspects reprinted
the cartoons with the aim of humiliating the religious values embraced by a
large part of society.
The indictment also mentions, in legal jargon, "discrimination
against Muslims and their faith," and "deliberate attempts to
violate social peace and public order."
The words "social peace" and "public order" may
sound amusing when mentioned in a Turkish official text. But a Turkish
indictment is always a serious text, regardless of its contents –
especially for the suspect(s).
The indictment against the Cumhuriyet journalists reveal bitter
open secrets that are increasingly more open than secret. Take those four
words: "in our Muslim-majority country."
Here, the honorable prosecutor reluctantly confesses, simply by
highlighting the predominant religion in Turkey, that he may not have
indicted persons who reprinted cartoons that were deemed insulting to other
(minority) faiths, or to atheism. Which, by the way, is an everyday
triviality in Turkey where, practically, there is unlimited freedom of
expression to insult all faiths except one.
Would any honorable Turkish prosecutor
dare to indict a Muslim for insulting other religions?
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Only a few months ago, a schoolteacher was caught hanging a sign at the
gate of the Neve Salom synagogue in Istanbul that read: "Building to
be destroyed." The man was not prosecuted.
The rich Wikipedia page on "Racism in Turkey" features one
photo with the slogan "Long Live Racist Turkey" spray-painted by
unidentified people on the walls of an Armenian church in Istanbul. Another
reads, "You Are Either a Turk, or a Bastard," near the wall of
another Armenian church in Istanbul. In February, banners
"celebrating" the Armenian genocide were spotted in several
cities throughout Turkey. They declared: "We celebrate the 100th
anniversary of our country being cleansed of Armenians. We are proud of our
glorious ancestors."
And the number in the indictment: 1,280. So many plaintiffs – enough to
make legal grounds to put two journalists in jail for four-and-a-half
years. Would any honorable Turkish prosecutor dare to indict a Muslim for
insulting other religions if 128,000 (or 1,280,000) Turks from any or no
faith complained? It's not too hard to guess.
The Islamist mind is both liberal/pluralistic and draconian/majoritarian
at the same time. It just depends on where: We can insult but cannot be
insulted in Muslim-majority lands, and we demand equal rights with the
adherents of other faiths in Muslim-minority lands.
What a curse on humanity Islamophobia is!
Burak Bekdil, based in Ankara, is a
columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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