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Hürriyet, Turkey
Jan 30 2007
Bekir Coskun; In what sense are we all Armenians?
These days, when we get together, we all talk at the same time about
this phrase "We are all Armenians." (From the banners carried by the
hundreds of thousands protesting journalist Hrant Dink's death in
Istanbul last week.) We all tell eachother how our "grandfathers died
fighting in Yemen," and then go on to ask: "In what way are we
Armenian?" In fact, some of our nationalist siblings even stretch out
their necks to show the shape of their heads, asking "What kind of
head is this?" Receiving the reply they want-"a Turkish head of
course,"-they go on to say "eh, so how does that make me Armenian?"
Our fellow citizen, the one who hijacked the ferryboat a few days ago
as a protest to the "We are all Armenian" banners carried at the Dink
funeral, wound up displaying to us not the outside look of his head,
but instead what occupies the inside of his mind. By hijacking and
scaring the wits out of a boatload of people, he tried to underline
the answer to the question "In what way are we all Armenian?"
(By the way, the man who hijacked the boat was a "nationalist," but I
should add he was also kicked out of the military at an earlier
time.)
And the large banners unfurled at football matches this week reading
"We are not Armenians, we are Turks" really prove that when we get
together, our minds truly work wonders.
The rally leaders at the football matches yelled: "Those who are
sitting are Armenians!" Everyone then stands and is saved from "being
Armenian."
*
In the end, the nationalist was angry. I guess the message of peace,
love, and tolerance which people had wanted to give to the world
didn't work for him. Maybe he really thinks that the one hundred
thousand people all chanting "We are all Armenian" at Dink's funeral
march actually, in one moment, became Armenian.
This same nationalist must think that when people say "I flew like a
bird," they actually became birds, or when they say "I worked like a
donkey," they became donkeys. To put it the other way, just as people
don't actually become "true and hardworking" when they say that they
are (this is from part of a saying which many schoolchildren across
Turkey repeat every day), they also don't become Armenian when they
say they are.
But how can we explain this to the nationalist?
This was really just an expression; a representation of the pain felt
by everyone in the wake of Hrant Dink's murder, of the sincere desire
to share these human feelings.
It was a response to racism and nationalism of the ugly sort.
It was the uplifting of the idea of "Above all else, we are all
humans."
Or, should we just leave it at "In what sense are we all Armenians?"
Jan 30 2007
Bekir Coskun; In what sense are we all Armenians?
These days, when we get together, we all talk at the same time about
this phrase "We are all Armenians." (From the banners carried by the
hundreds of thousands protesting journalist Hrant Dink's death in
Istanbul last week.) We all tell eachother how our "grandfathers died
fighting in Yemen," and then go on to ask: "In what way are we
Armenian?" In fact, some of our nationalist siblings even stretch out
their necks to show the shape of their heads, asking "What kind of
head is this?" Receiving the reply they want-"a Turkish head of
course,"-they go on to say "eh, so how does that make me Armenian?"
Our fellow citizen, the one who hijacked the ferryboat a few days ago
as a protest to the "We are all Armenian" banners carried at the Dink
funeral, wound up displaying to us not the outside look of his head,
but instead what occupies the inside of his mind. By hijacking and
scaring the wits out of a boatload of people, he tried to underline
the answer to the question "In what way are we all Armenian?"
(By the way, the man who hijacked the boat was a "nationalist," but I
should add he was also kicked out of the military at an earlier
time.)
And the large banners unfurled at football matches this week reading
"We are not Armenians, we are Turks" really prove that when we get
together, our minds truly work wonders.
The rally leaders at the football matches yelled: "Those who are
sitting are Armenians!" Everyone then stands and is saved from "being
Armenian."
*
In the end, the nationalist was angry. I guess the message of peace,
love, and tolerance which people had wanted to give to the world
didn't work for him. Maybe he really thinks that the one hundred
thousand people all chanting "We are all Armenian" at Dink's funeral
march actually, in one moment, became Armenian.
This same nationalist must think that when people say "I flew like a
bird," they actually became birds, or when they say "I worked like a
donkey," they became donkeys. To put it the other way, just as people
don't actually become "true and hardworking" when they say that they
are (this is from part of a saying which many schoolchildren across
Turkey repeat every day), they also don't become Armenian when they
say they are.
But how can we explain this to the nationalist?
This was really just an expression; a representation of the pain felt
by everyone in the wake of Hrant Dink's murder, of the sincere desire
to share these human feelings.
It was a response to racism and nationalism of the ugly sort.
It was the uplifting of the idea of "Above all else, we are all
humans."
Or, should we just leave it at "In what sense are we all Armenians?"