Our minorities - II

While in most parts of the world the term minority implies a group of people who might have ethnical, cultural or religious differences from the majority of the people of that land and while they enjoy "equal rights" with the rest of the community, they are provided with some "additional rights" so that they can protect and promote the "differences" they have from the rest. So while all citizens of a country enjoy full and equal rights, minorities have some "added rights" that aims to enable them to preserve their "peculiarities" or "differences".

There are no laws or de facto restrictions in those democracies barring minority community members, let’s say, from becoming teachers, civil servants, top bureaucrats or even officers. Even, in some democracies, with the aim and intention of giving minorities an opportunity to have a voice in the running of the country, there is the application of "quota" for them in legislatures, though the "quota" application appears odd under the principle of universal suffrage.

Yet, while perhaps because of the bitter recent history and established prejudices it is not valid in Turkey or in our wider geography, in most democracies minorities are in principle an "added value" to society, not a "security threat."

Erdoğan’s confession

If he was not the frustrated prime minister and political party leader, who just before the March local elections declared adamantly during a tour of the southeast that those who did not love this country were free to go wherever they liked, perhaps we would applaud Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for delivering a historical apology to "the other half" of this nation who were told "Love it or leave it" or simply forced by nationalist or Islamist mobs to abandon their homeland and settle somewhere else.

Still, conceding as a grave and fascist mistake that was done to our many minorities both in the founding period of the republic and at various occasions since then must be saluted as a late but welcome awareness of what we indeed have lost by losing those elements of our society. If the person who uttered those words might have been someone of his word, perhaps we would even feel happy that perhaps from now on our minorities would perhaps be provided a better opportunity of manifesting themselves without feeling compelled to hide their cultural, linguistic, ethnic and other peculiarities in a new atmosphere of respect to differences.

But, remembering that the same "great Turkish leader" was using recently a rather xenophobic, tone-bordering hate speech, when he referred to some 40,000 "illegal Armenians" living and working in Turkey and reminded the Yerevan government that if they did not behave well, the Turkish government might pack and send back all those illegal Armenians but so far Turkey is approaching the matter with a humanitarian perspective and not taking any action, it becomes difficult for me to feel happy over the acknowledgment that it was a fascist practice to force emigration of the non-Muslim minorities of this land. Now, even though we have serious questions about Erdoğan’s sincerity in making that confession, I do have difficulty as well in understanding why everyone is attacking the premier because he qualified the oppression of minorities as "fascist practices".

Why don’t we better ask ourselves why even today our Jewish population or other minorities continue to emigrate from Turkey? Why is Turkey still losing its gems?

Why this resistance to facing our own history? Is there any probability to advance before conceding the mistakes, irrespective how serious or how few they might be, we made in the past, draw lessons from them and avoid such shameful attitudes in the future?

The radical, nationalist, Islamist advances in this country, the xenophobic "love it or leave it" attitudes of some of our political elite and the very fact that we only have a handful of minorities in this land today all demonstrate the need for replacing the exclusive understanding with an inclusive one, the confrontation culture with a compromise one, the rejectionist one with an engagement one.

Without its gems this land will be a barren one.