Equilibrium - Sümela, Nikos and beyond…
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
BURAK BEKDİL
I shall call him Nikos...
He walked in hesitantly, sat at the next table, ordered a shot of rakı in perfect Turkish, and began to studiously inspect the blue Greek taverna in the small village on this side of the Aegean. For a few minutes he enjoyed the Cretan tunes on the radio, relaxed and smiled. Then he raised his head and asked me, in Greek, if I was Cretan. I told him I was Turkish.
I was wondering why a Turk was talking to me in Greek. He was probably wondering why a Turk would tell him he was Turkish in Greek. That was until we asked each other the same question: What is your name? Burak. Nikos. "Hero poli." "Hero poli." Where are you from? Ankara. And you? "Polis" (Konstantinopolis/Istanbul). My curiosity was gone. His curiosity would not go away until he joined me and my friends an hour later.
Nikos was one of the last 1,200 or so people who are "full" Turkish citizens, pay their taxes, have had their family properties confiscated a long time ago, possess bundles of title deeds that are not "legally valid" at Turkish courts, have done their military service, vote for our leaders but still carry an invisible tag that reads "gavur," or infidel, for most Turks.
Nikos' eyes got wet when he told me that before showing up at the blue taverna he had been eating at a fish restaurant and - unluckily - joined the locals' debate on the September referendum. Things went well until someone asked him his name. Nikos. A brief silence was followed by protests featuring the words 'Ah, gavur,' and "So you are not Turkish," and, when Nikos told them he was a Turkish citizen with a family background in these lands dating back to centuries ago, even such courtesies like "You can swim across, can't you?"
Nikos had been "politely" kicked out of the restaurant because a "Nikos" could not be Turkish, and therefore had no right to speak on Turkish politics. But that much should be normal in a country where the affairs of citizens with certain ethnic backgrounds fall into the effective jurisdiction of the Foreign Ministry. Earlier during the day I had read a columnist who wrote that an Ergenekon suspect, apparently not the most sane man in the world, had "insulted" Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by claiming that the prime minister had Greek origins. Mind you, the claim did not constitute offense by "incorrectness" but by "insult."
Nikos is a postgraduate student at a prominent British university, trying, at the same time, to put together groups of Greeks and Turks at closed sessions on Aegean islands in order to break the taboos on both sides of the Aegean. He smiled when he recalled the days he was in the Turkish army - his country's army. He was tasked with translating between Turkish and Greek texts. Apart from that, his routine duty was to appear before visiting foreign delegations as his commanders loved to showcase him to foreigners as "Dear Lt. Nikos" of the Turkish military. He became the "gavur" immediately after visitors left.
I recalled Nikos and his bitter tales of his own country when I happily read the news about the prayer on Sunday at the Sümela Monastery, a first during the 88 years of the Republic. Hats of to the government for bravely deciding to permit prayer services at Sümela and the Armenian Akdamar church on Lake Van. Another example illustrating that we must admit the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, does nice little miracles when its leaders are not enslaved by Islamist ideology. But the party's pragmatism has its limits.
The first service at Sümela was a merry event for the faithful. But why was security extremely tight in the area? Why were the Orthodox Christians not able to walk into the town, say hello to the locals, have coffee with them and have their prayers in peace without almost 'the-U.S.-President-is-around-level-security?' Why was there an exceptionally large police force protecting the visitors who were there only to pray, not to make war? Why were helicopters buzzing overhead? The answers to these questions are the same as to the question why the locals behaved with such hostility to Nikos in one of Turkey's most secular towns.
Since 2002, the AKP's ideological governance has dangerously boosted both religious and nationalist xenophobia. In the meantime, the party has pragmatically, not necessarily wholeheartedly, (shall we look a little bit prettier to our Western friends?) taken the right decisions like allowing services at the two churches. In other words, the executive branch has done the right things but its Siamese twin, the political machinery, has done the wrong ones.
Consequently, the net effect is what we saw at Sümela: the monastery reopens for prayers but security must be so tight because the AKP ideology has already deeply penetrated into the people's minds in big bold letters that read "I despise the other." The "Jewish Sümela" is the combined picture of Mr. Erdoğan co-chairing the Project Alliance of Civilizations that features interfaith dialogue and Jewish schools in Istanbul having security as tight as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Why, really, must Turkish citizens of a certain ethnicity protect their schoolchildren like armies protect their strategic outposts?
Good luck, Niko. I am sorry that we are living in times when this columnist must refrain from mentioning your real name for your own sake.
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