By Khatchatur I. Pilikian<\/p>\n
How well John Seeley, the Scottish historian, has said: “History is past
\npolitics, and politics present history.”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 To grasp well the motives why the
\nvaliant intellectual and human rights publicist Zarakolu is now one of\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 the
\nlatest victims of the oppressive Article 301 of the Turkish penal code, we
\nhave to appreciate the historical background of oppression, the oppressive
\nrulers and their governments’ terror of the truthful word.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
The truthful word is indeed the main target of every anti-democratic
\nauthority anywhere, and in all ages. What Shakespeare portrayed about the
\ncensorship of Art is surely relevant of Truth too, because “Art [and Truth]
\nmade tongue-tied by authority” gratifies the vanity of the grotesque actors
\nof power politics. No wonder when censorship, which in essence is
\nbureaucratic vandalism, eventually fails, the oppressor decides to
\nphysically eliminate the author, who acts with intellectual dignity to
\nenliven the awareness of reality.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Once upon a time there lived one of the great poets of the East, named
\nSarmad, thought to be on a par with Khayyam and Hafez. Sarrmad’s outspoken
\nverses of social and moral criticism angered the supreme authority of the
\nMogul Empire, Shah Aurengzeb. Aurengzeb had deposed and imprisoned his own
\nfather, Shah Jahan of the Taj Mahal renown.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 Ruling over 150 million people,
\ncounting nearly one fourth of the entire world population in the 17th
\ncentury, Aurengzeb was unable to confront let alone accept the truth uttered
\nby his own poet laureate, Sarmad. Failing to silence him, the Shah ordered
\nthe beheading of the poet in 1661.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 Aurengzeb’s own biographer, Ali Khan
\nRazi, wrote down Sarmad’s last verses. Here they are:<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dark was it all<\/p>\n
All around me,<\/p>\n
When from deep slumber<\/p>\n
I opened my eyes anew<\/p>\n
I saw the entire world<\/p>\n
Engulfed in darkness.<\/p>\n
Thus tired of it all<\/p>\n
I closed my eyes anew.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sarmad was not a revolutionary poet. No matter. When his words truthfully
\nreflected the reality of the world he was living in, that frightened the
\nhell out of the oppressor, the most potent ruler of the Mogul Empire of 17th
\nc.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
During the first quarter of the 20th c., a revolutionary leader in the
\nMiddle East founded a new republic — Turkey. Albeit, the founder potentate
\nwas unable to face the truth uttered by a revolutionary poet, Nazim Hikmet,
\nthe poet laureate of the Turkish people. On June 1st, 1933, Mustafa Kemal,
\nthe President of the new Republic, ordered the poet’s arrest and sent him to
\nprison to face the death penalty. Why? The poet himself had the answer:<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
They want to slaughter my songs<\/p>\n
And quench the blazing flame of my wrath.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, just few months later, on October 29, 1933, Mustafa Kemal, in
\npomp and circumstance and accompanied by Stalin’s official envoy,
\nVoroshilof, inspected the Republican Army.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sentenced in 1938 to 28 years imprisonment, the poet was kept in Bursa
\nprison in 1942, the year Nazi Germany’s Fuhrer restored to Turkey, as a
\ngesture of good will, the ashes of Talaat Pasha. Mind you, it was Talaat,
\nthe Young Turk’s Interior Minister, who had telegraphed the genocidal order
\nto the Governor of Aleppo, on September 15, 1915, saying:<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0“The Government has decided to exterminate entirely all the Armenians
\nliving in Turkey […] Without pity for women, children and invalids […]
\nwithout heeding any scruples of conscience, their existence must be
\nterminated.”<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Talaat Pasha was, in fact, articulating his government’s ongoing actions.<\/p>\n
On April 24, 1915, in Istanbul, around 300 Armenian intellectuals, of all
\nprofessions, were all arrested and deported, and soon nearly all of them
\nwere butchered. Until mid May, 1915, the Armenian civic population was
\npractically depleted of its intellectuals; 196 writers, 575 musicians, 336
\ndoctors, 176 teachers and college professors, 160 lawyers, 62 architects, 64
\nactors…all arrested, deported, disappeared for good… The culminating act
\nof the genocidal scheme was thus set in motion. Having also depleted the
\nArmenian nation of its able-bodied male population by conscripting Armenians
\nbefore the First World War broke out, Talaat’s Young Turk government ordered
\nout what remained of the Armenian population of Asia Minor — the elderly,
\nthe women and the children — southward towards the deserts of Northern
\nSyria. Vandalism, rape, extortion, sadistic torture, starvation, murder
\nraids and all ad infinitum. The rest is the scream of humanity at its most
\ninfernal…<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Let me confess, both of my parents, who dared outlive the Genocide of 1915,
\nnever entertained any sentiment of hatred towards the Turkish people. And I
\nfeel serenely proud of that ethical heritage.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lo and behold, Ataturk’s Turkish Republic is now honouring the remains of
\nTalaat Pasha, as the ‘fallen hero’, on the Hill of Liberty in Istanbul.
\nPerhaps it is hoped, ideally with NATO’s blessing, to enshrine, in the
\nmausoleum, the remains of other ‘Young Turk heroes’…After all, on his 50th
\nbirthday, in 1939, a year after Ataturk’s death, speaking to some Turkish
\ngenerals, Hitler had eulogised, in memory of the first President of the
\nRepublic of Turkey who was once a Young Turk comrade, by saying: “Ataturk
\nhas two great students in this world–Mussolini and me.”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
And Nazim Hikmet continued to be imprisoned even in 1948, the year of the
\nUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, and also, most tellingly, of The
\nConvention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The
\nTurkish people’s poet, the comrade-in-Arms and in-Lettres of Aragon,
\nMayakovski and Pablo Neruda, continued writing twelve volumes of verses,
\nconsidered among the best in world literature, while in prison for nearly
\none third of his entire life. The poet warned his beloved people<\/p>\n
Your own hands hold this world<\/p>\n
Oh my working people<\/p>\n
They feed you lies<\/p>\n
While you are starving to death.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nazim Hikmet’s voice rang loud and clear in mid 20th century.<\/p>\n
What is happening now in the 21st century is that an outspoken admirer of
\nthe poet Hikmet is raising his voice in support of the national minorities
\nof his homeland, Turkey. Furthermore, Ragip Zarakolu is denouncing, among
\nothers, the fascistic styled article 301, as if remembering what John
\nMilton, the revolutionary republican poet, had once declared in his Apology
\nof 1648: “they who have put out the peoples eyes, reproach them of their
\nblindness”.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here is what the Canadian Action has recently written on the Kurdish
\nConflict in Turkey:<\/p>\n
“Since 1993, over four thousand Kurdish villages have been destroyed and
\nmore than seventeen thousand killings of innocent Kurds have been carried
\nout by The Turkish Special Forces. Following the March 29, 2010 municipal
\nelections, fifteen hundred politicians, intellectuals, elected
\nrepresentatives, mayors and human rights activists have been jailed to date.
\nAs unacceptable as it is, hundreds of Kurdish children have been killed by
\nThe Turkish Security Forces since 1993 and today, about three thousand
\nKurdish children (aged 6 to 17) are in jail.”<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
What the Canadian Action describes is nothing less than a latter-day
\nenactment of the new Republic’s\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 genocidal massacre in Dersim between
\n1937-1938, when the Turkish army, its land and air force, annahilated 80
\nthousand mostly Alevi kurds, icluding women , children and the elderly.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is obvious, and sadly so,\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 that the Turkish government relentlessly
\ncontinues its undeclared war, yet again, against its own citizens, but
\nfailing, nevertheless, to “put out the people’s eyes”, particularly in this
\ncase, the Kurdish people’s eyes, or, for that matter, the Turkish people’s
\neyes too, as I tend to believe, having met personally the humanist and
\ncouregeous Turkish intellectual, Ragip Zarakolu, here in London, sharing
\nwith him a platform at the House of Commens in memory of Hrant Dink,
\nZarakolu’s\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 comrade-in-letters, assassinated by a fascist thug in 2007.<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here is an Appeal just circulated on November 17, 2011, addressed to the
\nArab World, Europe and International Public Opinion, by the Armenian
\nAssembly of Europe:<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0“Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoghan is increasing his pretensions
\nto the role of judge in regional issues. Erdoghan reached the peak when he
\ncalled on the Syrian regime “not to massacre” people, adding that “otherwise
\nhistory will always remember it as sanguinary”.<\/p>\n
Mr. Erdoghan has no right to teach morality to others unless he listens to
\nthe appeals of the European leaders and comes to terms with the dark pages
\nof Turkish history. […] Turkey is urged to abolish the notorious medieval
\nArticle 301, the latest victim of which became the publicist Zarakolu, who
\nused to voice about the sufferings of national minorities -victims of the
\nTurkish discriminatory policy. ”<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
Let us remember how dignified and emphatic the intellectual giant Bertrand
\nRussell was in his Closing Address to the Stockholm Session of the 1967 War
\nCrimes Tribunal on Vietnam, saying among others:<\/p>\n
“The long arduous struggle for decency and for liberation is unending. A
\nTribunal such as ours will be necessary until the last starving man is fed
\nand a way of life is created which ends exploitation of the many by the few.
\nWherever men struggle against suffering we must be their voice. […] We
\nwill be judged not by our reputations or our pretences but by our will to
\nact.”<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is good to know that such an act was forged and an international
\ncommittee was created in Paris, presided over by the poet Tristan Zara, to
\ncampaign for the release of the imprisoned writer Nazim Hikmet. The
\ncommittee succeeded. The poet was freed in 1950. But his odyssey continued.
\nHikmet tells us about the nature of his odyssey:<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
I went to the Forum<\/p>\n
I convinced people anew<\/p>\n
-Do not kill your brothers<\/p>\n
-Do not be killed by your brothers<\/p>\n
Down with the war<\/p>\n
\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0<\/p>\n
I believe Zarakolu and all his comrades-in-letters and all the human rights
\ncampaigners just recently imprisoned in Turkey have all gone to that same
\nForum for that same reason.\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 Their odyssey now continues in prison. Let us
\nrage against this injustice and demand freedom for the Turkish people’s
\nvaliant humanist intellectual, Ragip Zarakolu, and for all his
\ncomrades-in-letters and all the campaigners for human rights who are the
\nvictims of the notorious Article 301. The latter’s place ought to be surely
\nnot in the Turkish Penal Code but in the dustbin of history, I humbly
\nbelieve.<\/p>\n
photo by peacedevelopmentnetwork<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Khatchatur I. Pilikian How well John Seeley, the Scottish historian, has said: “History is past politics, and politics present history.”\u0569\u0082\u0539\u00a0 To grasp well the motives why the valiant intellectual and human rights publicist Zarakolu […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8230"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8232,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8230\/revisions\/8232"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aaeurop.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}