From: korman@seas.gwu.edu (John Korman)
Subject: Re: A question
Organization: George Washington University
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 18:05:09 GMT

In article <MUCIT.93Jan24155646@slate.cs.rochester.edu> mucit@cs.rochester.edu (Bulent Murtezaoglu) writes:
>
>
>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?

....

A very nice article Bulent. You ask about the reasons for the 
intolerance and blind faith  in our culture (which seems to 
pop up every time there is some kind of crisis). I just wanted 
to say a few words about it. 

Perhaps the main reason is historical. I am no historian but 
perhaps one doesn't need to be an historian to observe that
Turkiye and most other countries in the region have beed ruled
by iron-fisted governments of one point of view or another. 
The ideas of human rights, tolerance to opposing ideas, religions, 
nations, minority groups, democracy, etc. are, so to speak, new 
to the governments and to the people. Of course, at varying degrees.

From early childhood, most of us seem to have been `programmed'
to have a role (or roles) which is supposedly 'the way to go'. Some
examples of these roles are: Kemalist, fundamentalist, Kurd, Turk,
Laz, intellectual (aydIn), leftist, rightist, nationalist, Alevi, 
Suryani, etc. Obviously, what follows this role is somekind of
a statement like "Stick to your guns and be strong and be proud,
and our ancestors did that, and such and such leader was this 
wonderful and that the people opposing this leader were horrible, 
wave the flag and blah, blah, blah ..." Whenever these 'tribalistic'
ideas have any precedence over basic human rights, dignity and
tolerance to other people irrespective of their thoughts, race,
gender, etc., the nation ends up being in some sort of turmoil.

This leads to clustering of different 'tribes', each in their
own corner, making sure that only their group has the largest
stick so they can hit the other group on their head. We've seen 
many manifestations of this mentality over the years. As we all
know, they have ranged from: ban this, ban that, don't allow
people with head scarves into schools, screw the sharia, bring 
back the sharia, ban Kurdish, screw Kemalists, illegal to 
criticize Ataturk, 'biz bu isin caresini biliriz abi, askerler 
gelsin ortaligi hemen temizlerler', put communists in jail, put 
fundamentalist in jail, put fundamentalists in to the education
department, put fascists into the education department, etc. 

These kinds of ideas seem to be perpetrated not only in political 
and social circles, but in our education system as well. Rather
than encouraging kids to think and reason for themselves, the 
education system seems to emphasize conformity and intolerance.
There are many things that are right about our education system
but there are also many thing that can be improved. This is a 
major topic on its own and perhaps others may want to elaborate
on it.

Perhaps, in historical perspective, Ugur Mumcu's tragic death will 
be another item in our nation's growing pains towards democracy,
human rights and mutual tolerance. 

Regards,

Can Korman



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