by Orhan Kemal Cengiz
I am always struck by this enormous lack of empathy in Turkey. People cannot go out of their own identities; they do not try to feel what other people may be feeling under certain circumstances. Maybe each time I should give them some examples in which they themselves would appear as victims. How would a devout Muslim feel if his son was forced to make the “sign of the cross” in a mandatory religious lesson in a European country after he has explained that he is actually Muslim? Would his father accept that his son should tolerate this behavior because Christianity is the prevailing religious belief in that country? I don’t think this would happen.
In Turkey many things happen to non-Muslims which would drive Muslims crazy if the same things happened to them in a non-Muslim country. In spite of the lack of any legal provision criminalizing religious propaganda, Christian missionaries in Turkey have been arrested, interrogated and even put into jail for just trying to introduce their religious beliefs.
In the year 2000, Necati Aydın and Ercan Şengül were taken into custody while distributing Bibles and were arrested by the court in Kemalpaşa, İzmir. When I was looking at their file, something immediately struck me. There was a list of documents and publications seized from their houses and vehicles, and these materials were listed as “evidence of crime.” “Bibles” were amongst them. What would happen if this had occurred in a Christian country and the Quran was listed as “evidence of crime”?
This lack of empathy, which is partly caused by our cultural codes and partly because of the injection of nationalist sentiment into religious identities, is at the same time the biggest obstacle to understanding how the political system functions in Turkey. These two Christians became victims of a trap set by “deep state” elements back then. Şengül was interrogated by people who introduced themselves as members of JİTEM (an illegal extension of the gendarmerie) when he was arrested in Kemalpaşa. However, no one paid any attention to the details of this incident in the year 2000. Seven years later, Aydın was killed in a barbaric way in Malatya along with two other victims whose only crime was being Christian. Once again “the deep state” was in the background.
Because of this lack of empathy toward different identities, Turkish people have never fully understood the root causes of state-sponsored crimes and the general framework within which these deep state elements operate in Turkey. They never questioned how they were used by these deep state elements to oppress other groups.
You cannot understand today’s “deep state” in Turkey if you do not understand Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa (an Ottoman intelligence agency), which orchestrated Armenian massacres. If you do not understand the insidious plans aimed at totally destroying the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Turkey, you cannot understand how plans were being prepared to “finish off the [Justice and Development Party] AKP and the Gülen movement”; without understanding the “wealth tax” (1942), which aimed to rob non-Muslims, and the Sept. 6-7, 1955 pogroms, you cannot understand Ergenekon’s “Cage plan,” which targeted Christians to destroy the devout Muslim prime minister.
A lack of empathy is the root cause of your poor vision, which prevents you from understanding your own country and yourself. What you need to do is too simple: Each time you should ask yourself how would you feel if you were in this or that person’s situation. All you need is to have a little empathy. It will make huge difference when you have it!
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