Seeking a country in peace

A very close friend sent a holiday message. “I wish you and your family a happy holiday in a country of good and virtuous people living in peace,” the message read. I immediately replied: “Dear friend, I wish you a happy holiday also, but please tell me where is that country you wish me to live in?”

The administrators of the country might wish to ignore it, but since the start of the still-ambiguous “Kurdish opening” that has gradually transformed into a “national unity and brotherhood project” the existing political polarization in Turkey has taken on a very dangerous dimension of alienating people from each other and, indeed, torpedoing both national unity and the brotherhood among members of the nation from different ethnic, religious or sectarian backgrounds.

The separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, tried for more than 25 years to sow the seeds of alienation in this country and carve out a Kurdish state from Turkish territory. It failed.

Now, there are even some staunch nationalists who have started to say: “Let’s get rid of this burden on us. Let them go if they want to part from us so much. Without ‘them,’ Turkey would have tripled its per capita income long ago and, by now, we would have been in the European Union.”

There are die-hard nationalists who border on racists who were ready to die for the national and territorial integrity of Turkey yesterday who now don’t want to send their sons to the military. They say, “Why should my son die for the defense of the country if the government is so keen on having some secret deals with the terrorists and not only providing them a secret amnesty enabling them to escape from justice, but also allowing them to receive a hero’s welcome as if they had won and Turkey had lost the fight.”

Eminent columnist and daily Hürriyet editor-in-chief Ertuğrul Özkök wrote Thursday that while all through the past decades, the country was very much concerned about the eastern and southeastern provinces of the country seceding, but perhaps there is also a threat of some western provinces parting from Turkey and establishing let’s say an “İzmirya” state.

I indeed would like to put it slight differently. The government’s incredibly bad handling of whatever-its-name opening has started to divide the nation along ethnic lines. The people of this country never before questioned the ethnic, religious or sectarian background of each other. Even at the worst period of PKK terrorism, they never blamed the ethnic Kurdish people of this country for being responsible for the terror.

Now, however, they have started looking at each other with some dangerous considerations. Not only was the convoy of the Democratic Society Party, or DTP, or the political wing of the PKK, stoned in İzmir, in many other western cities there has been a marked increase in tension towards Kurdish political activities and, even sometimes, the Kurdish presence. What started in İzmir quickly spread to Çanakkale and some other western cities and towns and started to take on a very dangerous dimension.

Obviously no one can say that the ethnic Kurdish component of this country has been adventurous enough to engage in ethnic politics and aspire for some lunatic designs but the ethnic Turkish component cannot develop some designs that may land this country into a catastrophe.

Indeed, the rise in ethnic Kurdish politics coupled with the total fiasco in the government’s Kurdish initiative in this land of rising Islamist conservatism has started producing as well a very dangerous rise in Turkish nationalism with some fascist designs.

“Dividing this nation and making individuals look at each other in a discriminatory manner, looking at the ethnic, religious or sectarian backgrounds of each other is the worst one can do to Turkey,” veteran politician Süleyman Demirel told this writer the other day.

The veteran politician, like most people who indeed care for this nation and state, was very much worried of the growing, dangerous divide in the country. Yes, what we have is no longer just polarization, but a widening divide which, if not urgently addressed by the government, political leaders and opinion makers, may take on a dimension of no return.

So far there is only a surge in hate speech and some emotional outbursts like the İzmir stoning of a DTP convoy, the failed attempt of a Turkish mob in Çanakkale to lynch three ethnic Kurdish citizens, the DTP’s adventurous Diyarbakır rally and remarks by some DTP executives that eastern and southeastern cities were off limits for some politicians.

Yes, I want to live in a country where good and virtuous people are living in peace, but I just have difficulty figuring out where that country is…