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Reuters, UK
Jan 26 2007
Murders spark soul-searching in sleepy Black Sea town
Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:57 AM GMT
By Gareth Jones
TRABZON, Turkey (Reuters) - Mustafa Coskun fears his once sleepy
Black Sea town has become a byword in Turkey for nationalist violence
after a string of nasty incidents culminating in the murder of a
Turkish-Armenian editor.
"We are all brothers, we have always liked foreigners here. But now,
when I go to other places in Turkey, they point and say 'Oh, he's
from Trabzon, they are all crazy there'," said Coskun, 48, sipping
tea at his market stall near the sea.
Trabzon seems an unlikely place for controversy of any kind.
Nearby, fishermen mend their nets. Seagulls skim the water,
snow-capped hills loom up above the town. There is a smell of fish
and pungent Russian tobacco -- a reminder that Russia and Georgia are
just a few hundred km (miles) east and northeast.
But this town of 300,000 people -- the fabled Trebizond which once
captivated Silk Road explorers such as Marco Polo -- is now asking
how it could have raised youngsters capable of murders that have
shocked the world.
An unemployed youth from Trabzon, Ogun Samast, 17, has been charged
with killing Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian writer, in Istanbul last
Friday. Dink's views on Ottoman Turkish massacres of Armenians in
1915 had angered Turkish nationalists.
The murder has reignited debate about hardline nationalism in Turkey,
which wants to join the European Union.
A man who has confessed to inciting Samast, Yasin Hayal, is also from
Trabzon. In 2004 he was behind the bombing of a restaurant in the
town.
Last year, a 16-year-old boy was jailed for shooting dead an Italian
Catholic priest as he prayed in his church in Trabzon. Turkish media
say the boy had fallen under the influence of Islamist,
anti-Christian and ultra-nationalist ideas.
ECONOMIC WOES
Zeynep Erdugrul knows how dangerous it can be in Trabzon to challenge
Turkey's status quo.
She and four friends were almost lynched two years ago by a
2,000-strong crowd before police intervened. Handing out leaflets
about leftists jailed in Turkey, they were mistaken for supporters of
Kurdish rebel fighters.
"But I do not think Trabzon is more nationalistic than other towns in
Turkey. The problems are economic. There's no industry, agriculture
is dying, young people turn to drugs," she said.
Asked if she saw any connection between the spate of violent
incidents, she said: "I think the state is responsible. It suits the
state to have clashes, be they between Turks and Kurds or between
secularists and Islamists."
Police have dismissed such suggestions.
Many in Trabzon say those who shot the priest and Dink were tools of
outside forces, possibly with links to the "deep state" -- shorthand
in Turkey for shadowy, fiercely nationalistic elements in the
security forces and bureaucracy.
"They can't have carried out these murders alone. They were
manipulated, brainwashed," Israfil Babaoglu, 18, said in an Internet
cafe similar to those used by the teenage gunmen. Like others, he
would not speculate who the "brainwashers" were.
For Trabzon's governor, Huseyin Yavuzdemir, the killings are a
symptom of deeper social problems linked to fast urbanisation. People
have been migrating from the country to the town over the past decade
and both parents work to make ends meet, he said.
"Parents leave their kids in Internet cafes while they go shopping.
This is wrong. We have 250 such cafes here," he said.
Yavuzdemir played down economic factors, saying Trabzon is more
prosperous than many eastern provincial towns and its unemployment
level of nine percent is near the national average.
GUNS AND GREEKS
But he cited factors specific to Trabzon that could have contributed
to the violence, including a strong gun culture and the fiery
character of the people, known in Turkey for a quickness to take
offence.
Yavuzdemir also mentioned the view of sociologists that Trabzon
people try to assert their national identity more than many other
Turks because their region traditionally contained large ethnic Greek
and Armenian communities.
Sociologist Adem Solak, of the Black Sea Technical University, said a
big influx of criminals and prostitutes from Russia, Ukraine and
Georgia after the Soviet Union's demise in 1991 had shocked the
conservative local culture.
"The struggle of values continues now, with the 'clash of
civilisations', the Iraq war, the crisis over the cartoons (in
published in Denmark depicting the Prophet Mohammad). All these have
a negative effect on our young people," said Solak.
"And the decline in the fortunes of (once successful local soccer
team) Trabzonspor is also traumatic for the morale of young people in
a soccer-mad city like this," he said.
Jan 26 2007
Murders spark soul-searching in sleepy Black Sea town
Fri Jan 26, 2007 10:57 AM GMT
By Gareth Jones
TRABZON, Turkey (Reuters) - Mustafa Coskun fears his once sleepy
Black Sea town has become a byword in Turkey for nationalist violence
after a string of nasty incidents culminating in the murder of a
Turkish-Armenian editor.
"We are all brothers, we have always liked foreigners here. But now,
when I go to other places in Turkey, they point and say 'Oh, he's
from Trabzon, they are all crazy there'," said Coskun, 48, sipping
tea at his market stall near the sea.
Trabzon seems an unlikely place for controversy of any kind.
Nearby, fishermen mend their nets. Seagulls skim the water,
snow-capped hills loom up above the town. There is a smell of fish
and pungent Russian tobacco -- a reminder that Russia and Georgia are
just a few hundred km (miles) east and northeast.
But this town of 300,000 people -- the fabled Trebizond which once
captivated Silk Road explorers such as Marco Polo -- is now asking
how it could have raised youngsters capable of murders that have
shocked the world.
An unemployed youth from Trabzon, Ogun Samast, 17, has been charged
with killing Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian writer, in Istanbul last
Friday. Dink's views on Ottoman Turkish massacres of Armenians in
1915 had angered Turkish nationalists.
The murder has reignited debate about hardline nationalism in Turkey,
which wants to join the European Union.
A man who has confessed to inciting Samast, Yasin Hayal, is also from
Trabzon. In 2004 he was behind the bombing of a restaurant in the
town.
Last year, a 16-year-old boy was jailed for shooting dead an Italian
Catholic priest as he prayed in his church in Trabzon. Turkish media
say the boy had fallen under the influence of Islamist,
anti-Christian and ultra-nationalist ideas.
ECONOMIC WOES
Zeynep Erdugrul knows how dangerous it can be in Trabzon to challenge
Turkey's status quo.
She and four friends were almost lynched two years ago by a
2,000-strong crowd before police intervened. Handing out leaflets
about leftists jailed in Turkey, they were mistaken for supporters of
Kurdish rebel fighters.
"But I do not think Trabzon is more nationalistic than other towns in
Turkey. The problems are economic. There's no industry, agriculture
is dying, young people turn to drugs," she said.
Asked if she saw any connection between the spate of violent
incidents, she said: "I think the state is responsible. It suits the
state to have clashes, be they between Turks and Kurds or between
secularists and Islamists."
Police have dismissed such suggestions.
Many in Trabzon say those who shot the priest and Dink were tools of
outside forces, possibly with links to the "deep state" -- shorthand
in Turkey for shadowy, fiercely nationalistic elements in the
security forces and bureaucracy.
"They can't have carried out these murders alone. They were
manipulated, brainwashed," Israfil Babaoglu, 18, said in an Internet
cafe similar to those used by the teenage gunmen. Like others, he
would not speculate who the "brainwashers" were.
For Trabzon's governor, Huseyin Yavuzdemir, the killings are a
symptom of deeper social problems linked to fast urbanisation. People
have been migrating from the country to the town over the past decade
and both parents work to make ends meet, he said.
"Parents leave their kids in Internet cafes while they go shopping.
This is wrong. We have 250 such cafes here," he said.
Yavuzdemir played down economic factors, saying Trabzon is more
prosperous than many eastern provincial towns and its unemployment
level of nine percent is near the national average.
GUNS AND GREEKS
But he cited factors specific to Trabzon that could have contributed
to the violence, including a strong gun culture and the fiery
character of the people, known in Turkey for a quickness to take
offence.
Yavuzdemir also mentioned the view of sociologists that Trabzon
people try to assert their national identity more than many other
Turks because their region traditionally contained large ethnic Greek
and Armenian communities.
Sociologist Adem Solak, of the Black Sea Technical University, said a
big influx of criminals and prostitutes from Russia, Ukraine and
Georgia after the Soviet Union's demise in 1991 had shocked the
conservative local culture.
"The struggle of values continues now, with the 'clash of
civilisations', the Iraq war, the crisis over the cartoons (in
published in Denmark depicting the Prophet Mohammad). All these have
a negative effect on our young people," said Solak.
"And the decline in the fortunes of (once successful local soccer
team) Trabzonspor is also traumatic for the morale of young people in
a soccer-mad city like this," he said.