| | | ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ
o.cengiz@todayszaman.com | ![ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ]() |
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| | | There is one thing that has never changed in Turkey. It is the lynching of dissidents. Intellectuals, artists and activists have suffered endless pain just because their words upset the people in power or the status quo. | |
The status quo may change over time, but the destiny of people who are regarded as a threat to them has never changed. People with "marginal" thoughts have been killed, imprisoned, forced to seek asylum abroad, assassinated or, at a minimum, turned into targets of popular anger incited by powerful people.
Nazim Hikmet and Orhan Kemal (my namesake) spent long years in prison and the former was also forced to leave Turkey to escape prosecution. The 1940s and '50s were terrible times for socialists. After the 1960 military coup, a witch hunt began for people from the right wing. Even Prime Minister Adnan Menderes was hanged. In the 1970s and 1980s, the leftists were persecuted again. Then, in the '90s, it was the Kurds and devout Muslims who suffered greatly from every kind of oppression.
Intellectuals were always an object of persecution. Many famous journalists like Cengiz Çandar and Memhet Ali Birand, the latter of whom died recently, became targets of character assassination after the Feb. 28, 1998 post-modern military coup in which the elected government was forced to leave power after being threatened and harassed by the military.
Candar and Birand were declared traitors back then just because a former PKK member had “confessed” that these two journalists were receiving money from the PKK. Later on it became clear that this “confession” statement was taken under duress and military personal manipulated him to launch a lynching campaign against these two intellectuals. Candar and Birand lost their jobs, were insulted everywhere and survived assassination attempts.
Other recent examples of lynching campaigns were those against singer Ahmet Kaya, novelist Orhan Pamuk and journalist Hrant Dink. In all these campaigns, unfortunately the media played a leading role. They took their victims' words out of context and demonized them in speculative headlines. Ahmet Kaya had to leave Turkey and he died in France. Orhan Pamuk also left Turkey and managed to avoid many assassination attacks. Hrant Dink lost his life in 2007 in an attack in front of the Agos newspaper
Turkey has not learned any lessons from this history of demonizing dissidents or people with unpopular views. After the Gezi Park protests, many intellectuals became targets of smear campaigns. Unfortunately, one of these campaigns is now leading in dangerous directions. Memet Ali Alabora, a theater actor, became a target of angry words from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan just because he tweeted a message supporting the Gezi protestors. Following Erdoğan's remarks, some newspapers started to accuse Alabora of inciting the “Gezi uprising.”
They claimed that a theater production called “Mi Minor,” allegedly supported by an agency in Britain, actually held rehearsals of a “revolution” in Turkey for months. The newspapers accused Memet Ali Alabora of collaborating with “external spies” to start an uprising in Turkey. Then, apparently, a prosecutor started an investigation of him for his alleged role in the Gezi protests.
The mayor of Ankara and some prominent figures from the ruling AK Party are orchestrating quite a dangerous smear campaign against him in social media. The mayor thanked people for making the hashtag demanding that Alabora go to prison become a top tweet in Turkey. Threats and insults targeting Alabora are now abundant on social media. He is being lynched psychologically and I have quite serious concerns that he may also become a target for physical attack if the verbal attack continues like this.
I would like to urge officials to take the necessary steps to protect his life and I want to call on everyone in Turkey to remember how so many people have been persecuted for this or that reason in Turkey. |
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