Turkishness

Does the swift and universal condemnation of Hrant Dink's assassination suggest that attitudes in Turkey may be slowly be changing?

Less than a week before Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated, his compatriot Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, was made editor-in-chief for a day at Radikal, a small but influential newspaper. In a front-page article, Pamuk drew attention to the throngs of security personnel needed to ensure that Greek Orthodox religious ceremonies, considered provocative by Turkish ultra-nationalists, passed without incident. The lead article, however, discussed the persecution of writers and intellectuals in Turkey. Pamuk focused on Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963), Turkey's poet laureate, who was vilified in the press for his communist convictions and spent his last years in exile.

It is ironic that the assassination of Dink should have come so close on the heels of Pamuk's lament, as though to confirm the continued vulnerability of Turkish writers. Yet the outpouring of grief and condemnation by Turks of virtually all political stripes signaled a major shift in the public's perception of free speech. This political maturation may lead to pressure on the state to further enshrine intellectual freedoms.

Many of the reforms Turkey has recently pushed through have admittedly come at the behest of the European Union, which is using its leverage with membership-hungry Turkey to spur democratic change. Yet Turkish intellectuals have played a leading role in challenging taboos. And though much of this activism has traditionally emanated from the political left, even this trend may be changing. After all, the ruling Justice and Development Party - which has accelerated Turkey's reform drive - is conservative in orientation. Many of its prominent members - including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - have roots in political Islam. The right itself, whether nationalist or Islamist, is not monolithic. Alongside the mainstream media's condemnation of Dink's assassination, the headline of the Islamist newspaper Yeni Safak read: "Our Hrant is Murdered." Make no mistake: Political culture in Turkey is changing. [...]

Reformist intellectuals have long agonized over how to confront this issue of Turkishness. Acclaimed British novelist Moris Farhi, who is of Turkish-Jewish origin, has one of his characters make the following claim in his novel "Young Turk" of 2004: "True Turkishness means rejoicing in the infinite plurality of people as we rejoice in the infinite multiplicity of nature!" Then, not without irony, the same character pursues this line of thought to its logical conclusion: "It means rejecting all the 'isms' and 'nesses' - including Turkishness."

Will Turkey succeed in disentangling ethnicity from Turkishness? Can Turkishness become inclusive enough to embrace groups - like Kurds, Armenians, and others - that are not ethnically Turkish? If so, this will likely remove one of the last major impediments to a thorough reappraisal of Turkish history. For if ethnic nationalism ceases to be the ideological glue of the country, recognizing the history of non-Turkish groups will no longer be perceived as threatening to national unity. Perhaps then Turkey can fully integrate people who have for centuries constituted a part of Ottoman and now Turkish society.