Cheapening change in Turkey

[Sari Galin]

FETHIYE, Turkey

The ridiculous headline, "Hepimiz Keviniz " (We are all Kevin), used by Turkey's Star News to report Hollywood actor Kevin Costner's starring role in an ad for Turkish Airlines' new first-class service, seems a gross misappropriation of a phrase born to symbolize the Turkish peoples' empathy for persecuted people locally and across the globe.

The phrase Hepimiz (All of us) was made popular after the assassination of the journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007. Dink was a talented Armenian writer who had great faith in the Turkish people. He spent most of his life working to create a tolerant

environment for people like himself who do not fit into the narrow state definition of "Turkishness".

When his 16-year-old killer, Ogun Samast, ran from the scene shouting: "I have killed the gavur" (foreigner or non-Muslim), the nation responded with an outpouring of shame. Streets were flooded with people and placards all defiantly proclaiming, "Hepimiz Hrant'iz, hepimiz Ermeniyiz" (We are all Hrant, we are all Armenian).

The phrase has since become a rallying cry for anyone defending human rights, free speech, equality, women's rights and racial diversity.

In 2008, when the Italian peace campaigner Pippa Bacca was raped and murdered while hitchhiking across Turkey wearing a bridal gown to symbolize her desire to spread a message of "marriage between different peoples and nations", her death was commemorated by supporters and women's groups with the words "Hepimiz Pippa'yiz".

Another example of the phrase has been in response to the savage attacks on Gaza, which have prompted marches in Turkey under the banner "Hepimiz Filistinliyiz" (We are all Palestinians).

The slogan made its first appearance in 2009, at the opening night party of the film The Queen at the Factory. In the movie, Hande Yener, the oft-touted Madonna of Turkish pop, plays the lead in the film which revolves around a brother's inability to accept his sister's homosexuality. Yener started the film's party by proclaiming Hepimiz Gay'iz.

When it first arrived the phrase was all encompassing, it seemed on a par with John F Kennedy's Ich bin ein Berliner, or the French response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, Nous Sommes tous Americains. After well-documented generations of distrust and dislike between Turks and Armenians, some felt it was an important watershed of language and symbolism between the two ethnic groups - something Dink himself would have applauded.

Indeed, the phrase was born in the spirit of fighting racial discrimination. The journalist Alaz Kuseyri, who was responsible for first running the headline on the front page of the widely read Nokta news magazine, was inspired by something he had seen two weeks earlier. At a soccer match in Istanbul, he had watched fans of Besiktas player Pascal Nouma hang signs around the stadium that said "Hepimiz zenciyiz" (We are all black).

The Hepimiz movement is an encouraging small sign in a country which has no national specialized body to combat racism and no nongovernmental organizations to fill the gap. Conservatives say Turkey has no race, but only economic, political or social problems; liberals think differently, and recent legislation put in place under the watchful eye of the ECRI (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) is a step in the right direction.

School textbooks are being evaluated to remove negative views of some minority groups, especially Armenians. Judges and prosecutors have, since 2003, undergone special training on the European Convention of Human Rights. The new criminal code, adopted in 2004, stipulates a jail sentence of up to one year for anyone who discriminates on the grounds of language, race, color or religion in employment or access to public services.

There have also been modifications to the notorious Associations Act, which banned organizations formed to assert differences in class, race, language or religion. The same act now prohibits associations whose purpose is to "create forms of discrimination on the grounds of race, religion, sect or region", however, it still maintains the oppressive ban on those who "create minorities on these grounds and destroy the unitary structure of the Republic of Turkey". But how is one to truly differentiate an organization that claims a minority exists with one whose purpose is to create a minority?

Optimists, as Hrant Dink was, like to believe that the citizens of modern Turkey are the inheritors of the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-lingual rainbow that was the Ottoman Empire. They think that each separate ethnic group can be a tributary flowing into the broad fluid stream of Turkish consciousness, yet this seems unlikely in the short- to middle-term. Only weeks after Hrant's killing the "Hepimiz" that surrounded his death were divided; and once the initial shock had passed, it seemed most people were happy to be Hrant, but not Armenian. The head of the right-wing Milliyetci Hareket Partisi party echoed many people's thoughts when after Hrant's funeral he said; "What does that mean? We are all Turks, we are all Mehmets (Turkish soldiers)."

In the 2005 ECRI report on Turkey, the most common complaint was that while Turkey talked the talk - ie, passed the legislation - it failed to walk the walk. Although the report recognized that "changing attitudes is a much slower process than changing the law", it made specific comment that there had been delays in implementing the reforms and that administrative and judicial authorities often deliberately expressed a contrary attitude to new anti-discriminatory provisions.

Television companies like Star, instead of belittling a hopeful idea of unity by appending it to a Hollywood has-been, would do well to promote it and the multicultural ideas that lie behind it. Turkey's future depends on new definitions of inclusiveness, and Hepimiz is as good a place to start as any.

Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then.

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