From: mucit@cs.rochester.edu (Bulent Murtezaoglu)
Subject: A question
Organization: Computer Science Department, University of Rochester
Date: 24 Jan 93 15:56:46



While I am no fan of Ugur Mumcu, I am deeply disturbed by the recent
series of murders of people who clearly did nothing more than expressing
their ideas.  Their ways of expression might have been strong and maybe
unorthodox to for some, but nevertheless there was no clear-cut libel, no 
swearing, but just expression and publication of thoughts and investigations.
Judging by the sampling of people on s.c.t. , there doesn't seem to be a 
widespread respect for free expression of thought.  A disturbing number of
people seem to want to ban the expression of whatever set of ideas they are
against, and some others resort to associating disagreement with their
set of taboos with treachery and sacrilege.  This pattern seems to prevail
across "party lines" as evidenced by the assertions that one needs to 
buy into the hard-line approach to Islam to even be considered a decent
person, and that one needs to shun all criticism and indeed suppress evidence
of despotic tendencies of Ataturk to be a patriotic Turk, or that one needs
to blindly support "Argic" no matter what he says and how he says it to
protect the image of our country.  If one doesn't fit the above descriptions
one is an idolator or an embodiment of evil in one case, unpatriotic and 
disgraceful in other, and a "brown nose" whose motives in questioning
a style of discourse must be somehow dirty in yet another.  More often than
not, some folks claim that Turkey would be better off w/o the people they
disagree with.  A smaller, but still a disturbing number prescribe cures
for what they're convinced is a sickness.  Those solutions are mostly radical
such as military coups, banning non-violent associations, and doing away with 
secular government.  Pervasive in most such points of view is the call for
some sort of coercion from a higher institution towards people who simply
talked/thought a certain way, wore certain things, or did or didn't partake 
in certain ceremonies and did nothing else.  

Now, I know the above description is overly pessimistic
and there is a silent crowd if not a majority who just go about minding their 
own business.  But it is also evident that there's much truth in the above 
description.  What I'd like opinions on is how and when in people's
upbringing in Turkey this tendency towards intolerance and blind 
acceptance of taboos creep into people's intellectual make-up.  In other
words, what characteristics of our culture are conducive to intolerance and
blind faith?

It could also be that I'm way off base here.  If so, I'd like an
explanation of the difference between asserting that it's the duty of
patriotic Turks to disallow critical analysis of the early history of the
republic, and the assertion that it's the duty of the "submitters to God's 
will" to disallow critical analysis of origins of Islam.  I think that I could 
do a semi-smart global search and replace of some buzzwords in some postings 
and transform one sort into another :).

What do you think?

cheers,

BM
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish