PRO-AKP MEDIA FIGURES CONTINUE TO TARGET
ACADEMICS FOR PEACE
On 22 March 2016, Yıldıray Oğur, a pro-government media
figure, wrote a column targeting the Academics for Peace,
Bosphorus/Boğaziçi University, the Middle East Studies
Association (MESA), and Jadaliyya, among others.
The piece problematically conflates terrorism with Academics for
Peace, and blatantly asserts that signatory academics manipulate facts. At the
same time, the author appears to obscure the fact that after the Suruç bombing
on 20 July 2015, the ruling party AKP, together with Turkish
nationalist party MHP, blocked a parliamentary investigation on the ISIS-led
suicide bombing in Suruç. And in fact, only one month before the Suruç bombing,
on 16 June 2015, reporters had asked
the AKP-appointed governor of Urfa (where Suruç is located) whether ISIS
militants posited a threat in the area. In response, the
governor had the reporters taken into custody. The thirty-two youth killed on 20 July 2015 were pro-Kurdish
activists who were getting ready to cross the Syrian border to plant trees as a
symbolic act for peace and to bring humanitarian aid (toys, food) to Kobane—where
Kurds fought against ISIS. Instead of investigating ISIS at length, the
government started bombing PKK camps, thus ending the peace process.
Had the government shown the same diligence with the ISIS
cell responsible for the Suruç bombing and not blocked a parliamentary
investigation, could the bloody Ankara bombing that cost
102 lives in October 2015 be prevented? (The Ankara bombing had
targeted a pro-Kurdish peace rally organized by labor unions and professional
organizations, including the Turkish Medical Association.) This is a legitimate
question, as it turned out the same ISIS cell was responsible for both the
Suruç and the Ankara bombings.
By lumping together all these different bombings that
marked Turkey since June 2015 (when another bomb exploded during the pro-Kurdish
party HDP electoral rally right before the general elections), the author conveniently
erases their differences as though they all have targeted the government. As
such, the author appears to attribute them altogether to the government’s
perceived enemies, such the Kurds or the Academics for Peace. Further, the
author obscures the fact that calling for government
accountability doesn’t have the same implication for each and every one of the bombings
he cites. The 2015 Suruç and Ankara bombings are examples for this.
In the current Turkish context, where bureaucratic
transparency has dramatically eroded, a parliamentary investigation could have
meant some sort of transparency; the investigation findings would likely go on
the public record. Currently, the public is cut off from the opportunity to even
follow any such violent attack (i.e., suicide bombing) in the media, because government
officials are quick to issue a public ban on media coverage of the bombings, and
to suspend access to some websites and social media. This has been a general
trend so far, with some variations in application.
Holding one's government accountable for the escalated
violence and the prolonged bans against going out in the street (mistakenly
called "curfews"—as they last for months
without any possibility of going to search for food, water, or medical aid,
including at night) that cost civilian lives in Kurdish regions would be
a predictable outcome in a democratic country. In a democracy, the
government would be accountable for and to its citizens, and the citizens would
have the right to critique the government's policies and demand transparency.
But to pro-government media figures, exercising the right to freedom of
expression and assembly appears to be a sign of propagandizing terrorism. It is
indeed important to remember that this is what the court record finds the three
imprisoned academics guilty of: that they signed a petition which
only criticized their own government,and not the PKK.
One thing is certain: the advocacy of conspiracy theories
and the criminalization of a petition are in fact the criminalization of the
right to expression and assembly, and amount to a practice of thought policing.
Further, in the below piece, Yıldıray Oğur disingenuously
insinuates that MESA's letters are the result of a conspiracy, dismissing the
fact that MESA in itself has members who study Turkey or other countries in the
Middle East, and who are perfectly capable of reading, listening and judging
the situation for themselves. In addition, in an environment where academics
are placed in high-security prisons, strip-searched, and put in solitary
confinement simply for having signed a petition and for having called for
peace, such professional support is a demand for justice for one's colleagues,
and not evidence of a conspiracy.
The readers might ask why we give such space to a clearly
polemical newspaper column. Unfortunately, it is because such conspiracy theory
articles might be considered as grounds for prosecution in Turkey. Indeed, as
we have already mentioned in an earlier post, a similarly
conspiratorial and problematic article was accepted as a criminal complaint by
the Istanbul Chief Prosecutor's Office, which eventually led to the arrest
warrant for the three academics who are now in prison and placed under solitary
confinement.
The English translation of the piece is below.
******************************
Simons[1] Living in Bosphorus
-2-
22 March 2016
Yıldıray Ogur
There was a fire set in the Kartal Aydos Forests on 25 August
2015. Tuzla Infantry School was also located there. It was difficult to
extinguish the fire. The police started to inquire about the possibility that
the fires were acts of sabotage when a new forest fire was set on 10 September 2015,
fifteen days after the first fire on the same military location.
After some time, a group of PKK members who set this fire
organized attacks against general stores and the offices of the Justice and
Development Party (AKP).
On the basis of the information acquired from these PKK members,
a “carrier,” who carries the PKK’s reports from İstanbul and other regions to
Diyarbakır, was spotted.
The carrier was monitored, and on 7 October 2015 was taken under
custody at İstanbul Sabiha Gökçen Airport when he was just about to get on a
flight to Diyarbakır.
The person who was taken under custody was H.D., a senior at Bosphorus
University—a university where students are admitted by the higher scores on the
central examination for university education.
H.D., who was a member of the Youth Assembly of the Peoples’
Democratic Congress—an organization run by co-presidents Sabahat Tuncel and
Ertuğrul Kürkçü—had not committed any illegal deed until that day. According to
the police forces, that is the reason why
he was selected as the carrier. The information that he carried was on a flash
memory drive, containing the reports released to the press. The reports were
meant to be handed to someone whose address and identity was specified and who
was in Diyarbakır and known as the [PKK] Representative in Turkey.
According to the resources of the police, one of the reports in
the same flash memory drive was sent from the PKK’s Çukurova region, in which a
woman militant stated that “she is ready even for a suicide bomb attack if
needed.”
Up until now I have listed the claims of the police forces
released to the [mass] media, and those that I could access myself.
Now let’s turn to what H.D.’s attorney said:
“The police forces invaded H.D’s home and they seized his
unbanned books. These books have the record label of the Ministry of Culture on
them. Besides that, a couple of journals were also confiscated. Apart from that
they also found a couple of songs on his phone and downloaded them. Afterwards
they said ‘If you listen to these songs and read these books, then you are a
member of the organization’ [meaning the PKK—translator’s note]. They showed
the videos that he watched and songs that he listened to, saying that ‘There
are members of the organization in these videos,’ thus blaming H.D. for this
reason.”
This is the defense that claims “there is nothing at all,”
resembling the defense by the attorneys, examples of which were also listed in
my previous piece. It turns out that the police forces took under custody a
university student, not in his home or school, but at the airport just on the
basis of the songs that he listened to on YouTube, just for oppression.
Yet, we still have just reasons to be skeptical. In Turkey there
is this tradition of unjust custody and quick attribution to membership in the
organization. There were a lot of examples of this in the past; today it is
still continuing.
The news was broadcast in certain part of the mass media
on the basis of the claims by the police forces; and in another part of the
mass media on the basis of the attorney’s declarations. Again, the news
concerned was cleared of any doubt. For example: “The Bosphorus
University student who was an HDK member, was arrested because of the books he
read and the songs he listened to!” But I assume that when we are struggling
against terror which locks people in their houses, no one has the luxury
to manipulate the truth in accordance with political interests, not at
all. Especially in a country where suicide bombers explode themselves
all over [the country]; when the PKK started armed “resistance” in Sur, Cizre; when
the world is struggling against terror and Turkey is the neighbor of those
centers of terror; and moreover when the state is being criticized rightly for
failing to preempt the terrorist acts on time, for failing in intelligence
regarding suicide bombers, a university, and especially the scholars of the
university—which is the best university in Turkey—are expected to be more
cautious, more skeptical.
This is all the more so when the students whose responsibilities
that they take on themselves are concerned. But no, it could not happen
this time either. Partisanship, revolutionary solidarity, unconditional support
overwhelmed; and the academics did what the journalists in my previous piece
did. Around two hundred academics working at Bosphorus University,
including those most prominent in their respective fields, all of whom are
typically very wary, signed a declaration, titled “we
claim our student.” This did not suffice. Beth Baron, the chair of the
US-based Middle East Studies Association (MESA), one of the most well-known
institutions in the field of research on the Middle East, wrote
a letter to Prime Minister Davutoğlu on behalf of H.D., clearly based on the
reference of the scholars from Bosphorus University.
(I can presume who facilitated the writing of the letter.
However I do not have solid information about it. Thus, let me just put this
link here: http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/about)
While the scholars were writing the
aforementioned declaration, H.D.’s attorney, Hüseyin Boğatekin, who is a member
of the Association of Libertarian Jurists [Özgürlükçü Hukukçular Derneği],
was defending the rights of other students in Balıkesir in another lawsuit.
(There is a legal support network formed by Boğatekin and his association,
which gives support to the students who are brought to court in PKK-related
cases.) One of those students turned out to be a suicide bomber six months
later in Ankara. Briefly, the attorney who is the source of all the
information about H.D.’s innocence has another client whose name is even mentioned
in the letter from the MESA chair to Prime Minister Davutoğlu, and whom the
attorney defended on the grounds of similar arguments, exploded herself/himself
five months later in the center of Ankara. It is certain that an attorney
can defend anybody. S/he cannot be blamed for defending her/his client. But it
is essential to keep doubt alive when you’re vouching for some one. This is all
the more so when the student you had defended against slander turns out to be the
suicide bomber responsible for the death of thirty-seven innocent people.But
even this case does not seem to have led to doubt or confusion among the Simons
living in Bosphorus. This is still so even when the police forces claimed
that one of the reports carried by one of the students contained a woman’s statement
of her willingness to be a suicide bomber. And we are talking about a
university where two vehicles parked in the parking lots in and out of the
campus, were seized with the suspicion that they would be used in a suicide
bombing attack, about twenty days ago. Let’s read the news about the
seizing of the first vehicle from Hürriyet: “The police forces were
following Sinem Oğuz, with the alias Funda Kaya. According to the police
forces’ findings, mechanisms were set in the Citroen brand automobile; the
explosives that would be carried over from Diyarbakır were yet to come. The
automobile was taken to the parking lot in the university by an employee in the
Bosphorus University, who is an acquaintance of Sinem Oğuz.The university
employee, R.Ü. who helped Oğuz, vanished away. Sinem Oğuz went to Diyarbakır.
Oğuz and her accomplice H.A. beside her, both purported PKK members, were
arrested in Diyarbakır on 27 January.”When you search on the campus of
Bosphorus University for R.Ü., the university employee who “hosted” the vehicle
carrying the mechanism for locating the bomb you come across an administrator
who is probably in control of the whole information network of the
university. According to the police records, the bomber Sinem Oğuz and the
person accompanying her went to Diyarbakır to pick up the bombs that would be
located inside the vehicle. Then, if they had been able to return [to İstanbul]
without being arrested, where was the target of the vehicle, waiting on the
campus of Bosphorus University? Again, according to the police records, the
target was the mobile striking force spot, just behind Taksim Square. This
means Taksim Square! This means all of us! If a state had this much
information, and if the state were to say “no way, s/he would not do such
things,” and if that man or another person with his assistance had committed an
act, that state would have been severely accused and this would have been a
just accusation. And what about signing a petition under this
responsibility, in the face of a case that makes one horrified even in its one
in a billion probability of being true? We are all right to criticize the
state, the intelligence, to ask for more precautions regarding suicide bombers,
regarding terrorism. Then what about those, who open breathing space and
acting space for terrorism and for suicide bombers through their political
battles, ideological animosities, revolutionary solidarities, who support them,
who open the path to them in their newspapers, in the courts, in the
universities; who unconditionally believe in their propaganda; who are used as
instruments…
If we want to protect our liberties and our security none of us
has the right to become a Simon, especially now, when a list, citing Suruç,
Ankara, Sultanahmet, Ankara, İstiklal, stands before us...NOTES
[1] Here the term “Simons” is most probably used in the way it
was used in Hanefi Avcı’s book, titled Haliç’te Yaşayan Simonlar (Simons
Living in Haliç), basically denoting those people who totally abide with
the priorities and aims of the groups/organizations to which they belong and
who react against only those violations of rights that are directly related to
their groups/organizations. Besides, the name “Simon” has widely been used in
the discourse of conservative circles throughout republican history in Turkey
in a rather pejorative manner. It is a kind of a “catchword” that reflects the
common conservative discriminatory stance against any ethnicity/religious
identity that is not related to Sunni-Muslim Turkishness. Briefly, while the
term is originally Hebrew, it is also used to connote Armenian identity.
