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The 49th Eurovision song contest presentation from
Turkey this year was a good example of a nationalist
gimmickry in the fullest sense of the word. For all
neighbouring countries the message was crystal
clear: We have taken your culture and just you wait,
soon we’ll take you too. The realm from Donau to
Turan is in sight. Never has the flag and an
innocent music competition been used so evidently
against several peoples, Kurds, Armenians, Syrians,
and Cypriots.
For all those aware of the political background,
it’s a torment to see how things are twisted and
presented in an extreme nationalistic and
fundamentalist way. What wee saw was a big and
carefully planned show of the undemocratic and in
many ways barbaric Turkey. The message of Turkey was
clear, but how many reflected upon that? That is the
question. The tourism commercial in the breaks
between the songs showed the cultural heritage from
the Kurdish, Armenian and Syrian parts of the
country. But the unambiguous message was: this is
only a Turkish landscape. An exhibition of “Turkish
folk-dance” was shown. It was really Kurdish, Greek
and Arabic folklore. The only part genuinely Turkish
was an accompaniment of an Ottoman military march
which willingly is played by the political police
during the act of torture of political prisoners.
The choice of this musical genre and it’s
militaristic, stage design really said everything of
Turkeys message. Neo-Nazis are forbidden to wear
swastikas in Europe, but an in so many ways
undemocratic country is blindly allowed to prepare
and present a European cultural event where it
really doesn’t belong. This is unacceptable in the
view of international law and democratic principles
of coexistence. Do we want this Europe? We are
fighting fundamentalism and terrorism, but evidently
we believe it only appears in the shape of Usama
Bin-Ladin, airplane hijackers or neo-Nazis with
explicit fascist symbols as swastikas and such. If
we halt with this evidently shallow analysis, we
won’t recognise it when it comes in a lightly
dressed song contest outfit. All bases of terrorism
must be fought, whether they wear explicit symbols
or a glitter dress. Extreme nationalism and
fundamentalism are in the end creating terrorism.
Assuredly it’s not at all nationalistic when for
instance the voting delegate from Switzerland greets
in Turkish and says a few words on the host
country’s language. On the contrary it ´s a sign of
globalisation in our part of the world. It was said:
”En butyuk Turkiye, baska buyuk yok!” which means
Greatest is Turkey no one is more powerful, but this
actually is a chauvinist Turkish military salute!
Remember that this host country don’t even allow
children to be baptised in Kurdish (It has to be
written in a certain Turkish way.) I hope you
haven’t forgotten that just a few years ago it was
totally banned to utter one single word in Kurdish
publicly. According to the latest news from
Kurdistan, the ban on the Kurdish language still is
a random exercise of authority. The Turkish logo of
the 49:th Eurovision song contest gives more signals
than any other. The heart with the Turkish flag in
the middle of the letter “E” for Europe, shows
without a doubt today’s hot topic on the Turkish
agenda: to enter the European community. But Turkey
still hasn’t done anything right in terms of
democratic reform to deserve being a part of the EU,
and be viewed as a fairly democratic EU-country.
Turkey’s song was called Athena, with a singer
looking like any European youth. The song wasn’t
sung in Turkish, the music had no oriental or
Turkish nuances at all and no swarthy men or
oriental beauty’s… Turkey is assuredly in a good
geographical position between Asia and Europe. When
the rulers of Turkey turn east it plays the role of
the pious Muslim and when facing west it plays the
role of the true democrat. Turkey has really learnt
to play this game very well. Let Turkey flavour its
dance with both oriental and western spices all it
wants, but the result wont taste good – that is
evident.
An in many ways barbaric country
Everybody who knows the “p” in politics knows that
economic interests are behind the European stance
when it comes to the integration and membership of
Turkey in the EU. But it´s going to cost more than
it tastes. Even the Byzantine and Roman empires were
influenced by Turkish political games and immoral.
That is why the political arena looks the way it
does in both Greece and Italy today. Like their
former neighbour Greece, Italy and all Balkan states
have not either managed to establish working
political ethics and morals in their democracies.
There hasn’t been a political and democratic
continuity in these countries as in the other
European countries because Turkey has been involved
in the game with these regions since old times.
Remember that the first casualty of war is moral.
Isn’t it obvious what awaits Europe next with
Turkey’s integration?
Don’t let extreme nationalistic and fundamentalist
states become EU members. They are a breeding-ground
for new trouble spots, terrorism and social unrest
in Europe. Many arguments speak against a Turkish
membership. Many still believes that a modernisation
and democratisation would make Turkey a worthy EU
member. That is farfetched. Many democratic forces
in Europe don’t want Turkey in the EU because it has
an undemocratic political and cultural tradition.
Their concern is justified. Turkey never has been a
democratic country, and can with this regime which
carries traditions from both the Asian “Great Khan”
chauvinist despotism and expansionistic tendencies
lingering from the barbarian Ottoman empire, never
bee. The Turkish state leaders stagnated political
mentality has never recovered from the early Djingis-Khan
state. Since the so called modern Turkey appeared
from the debris of the Ottoman empire in the early
twenties, its policy and rule has been one of
extreme nationalism and racism, like their
predecessor – which was called the prison of the
people. The very forces which has stood for
secularisation and civilianisation in modern Turkey
– embodied by the Turkish republics founder Kemal
Ataturk are also responsible for the violence,
oppression and persecution which has showed what
kind of state Turkey really is. Ataturk and his
nationalist republicans were neither democratic or
pluralistic nor tolerant. Ataturk conducted sweeping
reform but also hindered political opposition,
executed regime critics and persecuted Kurds and
other ethnical groups. Massacres were conducted on
those who didn’t want to forcefully be assimilated
in to the new Turkish identity. Since the 1920:s the
Turkish republic has denied the genocide of three
million Armenians, Syrians and Kurds which took
place in the Ottoman empire during and after the
first world war. Ataturks “heroic Turkey” is an
indivisible national state which must bee kept
immaculate at any cost. Both within and outside of
Turkey, Turkish governments avoid to talk about this
genocide and even use all disposable means to make
their allies (for instance USA) not to take up the
question. Still today Ataturks portrait watches over
all public buildings, places, work places and
schools in Turkey, not very dissimilar to the old
Soviet, Saddams Iraq or Iran and Syria today. Eighty
years on Ataturks heritage still is strong and
torture and persecution of dissidents is practiced
daily. The military has an influential power in a
way which is totally foreign to a democratic Europe.
Turkey has since a long time had a dormant
application in Brussels but doesn’t even fill the EU
mini standards to start negotiations. Government
after government has said that they want to improve
the social and cultural terms of living for the
minorities, but the EU parliament has in a report
remarked that a lot is left to do for Turkey for it
to be deemed politically acceptable.
With its dated legal system, continuous torture and
vanishings from police stations, courts and prisons
Turkey is still very much an undemocratic and
totalitarian country. The ban on Kurdish which
legally is lifted still lives in practice in all
public contexts. For Turkey to be accepted as an EU
member, the country must live up to the so called
Copenhagen criteria which means stabile democratic
institutions, law and order, guarantees of human
rights and respect for minorities. With the
oppression and persecution of Kurds, its
torture-prone police force and always present
military, Turkey is far from being accepted by the
EU today. It´s a process which might take one or
several decades. It´s about getting a queue ticket,
a principal stand that it in the long run is
desirable for Turkey to become a member. The history
of Turkey’s secularisation and civilisation is a
people’s drama in itself filled by oppression and
murder of innocent civilians and political failures.
The Turkish military which with even spaces every
decade (1960, 1971, 1980, 1991) disrupts the
democratic game and overturns it in a military coup,
is full of the islamist grey wolf movement
“Bozkurtlar” (Turkish extremists), and the national
ideology “Milli Gorus” (the present so called
liberalist AK-party which holds the power of
government), Kadrar and functionaries.During Turkeys
eighty year old democratic history it’s mostly these
islamist movements that keeps the governmental power
in their hands, and have also succeeded in
establishing secret associations high in the
military hierarchy. No wonder the country hasn’t
been able to live up to constitutional secularist
norms and principles. Many extreme, fundamentalist
and nationalist organisations as the God party
“Hizbullah” are popping up as mushrooms in Turkey.
After the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan 1979, these
Turkish islamists spread to all types of Islamic
fundamentalists organisations in a sort of new
international, in military training camps in former
no mans land Afghanistan. It’s well known that the
many Turkish and Saudi God- warriors “Mujahedin”
were recruited from these places. Turkish God-
warriors were deployed against the democratic
Kurdish human rights movement by the Turkish states
secret police during the whole 1980: s and 90: s.
Many innocent people, intellectual and activists
were abducted and killed by these paramilitary
terrorists. Who the Afghan- Saudi Islamic terrorists
where got known all over the world September 11 2001
when these terrorists used two hijacked civil
passenger airplanes as missiles against the World
Trade Centre twin towers in New York. If Turkey is
embraced one also embraces its army of Islamist,
fundamentalist terror organisations into the open
and vulnerable democratic Europe. All the latest
legislative and administrative changes which Turkey
has started to get to be an EU member are nothing
but a sham. Today the ninth of July 2004 is an
historic day. Turkey has namely allowed for the
first time in its state owned TV channel TRT, to
broadcast a program in Kurdish. It is interesting
that this is in the form of a multislide
presentation with an anonymous speaker voice. No
reasonably patriotic Kurd would dare to show his
face in Turkish state television. As the Bulgarian
saying goes: The wolf has changed furs but not soul!
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