art Essays (618 words) - Discrimination, Hatred, Racism, Kurds

One of the deputies of the Republican People's Party (CHP), which happens to be Turkey's main opposition, made an interesting remark during her speech in Parliament. She said that Kurds cannot be equal to Turks. This remark came at a time when there is an important effort to make the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) lay down its weapons and integrate its sympathizers into Turkey's social and political life. The deputy probably had the intention of putting the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) into a difficult position, because she knows that there are many nationalists who vote for this party. Maybe she also had the intention to say to the religious and conservative voters that the party they support is now cooperating with those who murder our policemen and soldiers. This was pure provocation and nothing less than racism. Discrimination and racism are qualified as crimes in the Turkish Penal Code. However, I sincerely don't remember anybody being condemned for these crimes. Even when a murder is committed with racist motives, judges have the habit of viewing the case as simple murder. One of the most illustrious examples on this matter is the Hrant Dink assassination. Several weeks ago, an 85-year-old woman was murdered in Istanbul's Samatya district in her apartment where she was living alone. In the following weeks, three other elderly women were attacked in the same neighborhood. The police have announced that these attacks were carried out by ordinary burglars. However, these four women had something in common: They were all Armenian. When many other women are killed or beaten by their husbands, we generally are never informed about their ethnic origin. However, when the victims are Armenian, their ethnic origins are emphasized by the press. This is a proof that we all have internalized discrimination or that we all expect religious minorities to be attacked for political purposes. Discriminatory or racist rhetoric is so frequent in our political and social language that people don't even notice that the words or expressions they use are racist. Several social groups suffer from it and face discriminatory and humiliating language or behavior on a daily basis, such as ethnic and religious minorities, women or LGBT people. Moreover, when a violent act is committed for racist or discriminatory purposes, there appears an effort to justify these crimes. For example, when there is an attack against the Kurds, some people promptly say that this is normal because Kurds are involved in terrorism. When Armenians are attacked or insulted, some people start to explain how relations between Turks and Armenians have been bad for almost a century. We have to keep in mind that racist and discriminatory attacks are not directed against individual persons but against an entire group. Several months ago, nine Turks were killed in Germany, not because the victims had personal problems with their murderers, but simply because they were Turks living in Germany, and in that country there are people who don't want to cohabitate with the Turks. What the CHP deputy has declared is nothing more than expressing what is internalized by most people. We already know that there are many people among that party who think the same way. We have also seen in the past some members of this party explicitly defending racist crimes, maybe because they didn't think these were crimes. Or maybe the CHP hopes that adopting racist rhetoric will bring in more votes. It is of course wrong to suggest that the CHP is the only political party responsible for discrimination. All parties and too many of our politicians are affected by this phenomenon. Let's hope that this latest scandal will make people think thoroughly about it.