What must not be forgotten about Sivas

Exactly 16 years have passed since the 2 July Massacre. The information that has emerged or become clear regarding the event today brings us closer to judging its dimensions in a much more sound way. True, I am not in favor of "referring accounts to history" by saying "history will one day reveal the truth." On the contrary, if possible, it should always be preferred that all the facts be brought out immediately, while still hot. For what we call history is, in the end, the field of knowledge most sensitive and most unimmunized against its surroundings. There is no guarantee at all of how today's history will be written in the future. That is why it is preferable to strike while the iron is hot and, if possible, to show our loyalty to the facts while events are taking place.

Despite this, it is also a fact that the time that has passed is revealing a series of facts about the Sivas massacre that were covered up at the time. Undoubtedly the effect of changed circumstances is also involved in this. The Ergenekon structure and its activities have offered us a wide horizon for looking at this event, as at many events in our history, more comprehensively.

Muhammet Emin Özkan, one of the lawyers in the Sivas case, has been involved in the case voluntarily for years; when you listen to his testimonies you feel the missing pieces of the picture falling into place. For example: "The punishment initially given to the defendants of the massacre was set, within the framework of criminal law, as 17 years' imprisonment for 'premeditated homicide.' But the Court of Cassation overturned this decision. Do not try to console yourselves that it overturned it because it found the sentence too light. If it were for that reason, perhaps there would have been no objection at all. Yet the Court of Cassation's ground for overturning the decision was only that the trial had been conducted on account of 'murder.' According to the high court, an element considered much graver should have been added to the event. Indeed, when the element of 'insurrection against the state' was added, that is, only when this element was added, the sentence was set as 'life imprisonment.'"

May Kürşat Bumin's ears ring. For days and repeatedly he had explained here, astounding us, how "overthrowing the government" and "crimes against the state" can be considered graver than attempting on a human life.

Lawyer Özkan, bearing in mind the negligence, even the near encouragement, of elements of the state in the Sivas event from beginning to end, rightly revolts at this insurrection being tied to its having been "committed against the state." The state's shamelessness, which pushed aside the 33 precious lives who died, declared itself the sole and greatest victim of the event and for that reason ordered 33 death sentences, is maddening whichever way you look at it.

Although all the signs showed that a major event was about to break out, it had become clear that on that day a significant part of the security forces had been taken out of the city for a land survey. Moreover, before the event, when the conditions of Turkey are taken into account, when the data that have emerged to date are assessed, it is understood that many forces worked together, hand in hand and with care, for such an incident to occur in Sivas. One did not need to be a soothsayer to know what kind of provocation it would cause to take Aziz Nesin, who had undertaken the defense in Turkey of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses," which provoked the whole Islamic world in waves, to the Pir Sultan Festivities in Sivas in those days. Naturally, we learn today that Reha Çamuroğlu, having foreseen this in advance, proposed holding these festivities somewhere other than Sivas.

Yet the responsibility for inviting to Sivas, in the name of an Alevi event, the Salman Rushdie mentality that made the gravest insults against the Prophet's wives was never fully questioned, because of the emotional pressure created by the gravity of the event. The accusation to be pinned on those who asked was always kept ready.

The only consoling aspect of the event is that those who wanted to create an Alevi-Sunni conflict in Turkey could not do so directly, and what they were able to do they did by bringing in a provocation of the dimensions of Salman Rushdie or "insulting the Prophet." Indeed, the massacre that broke out in Sivas was set in motion not with a motif of anti-Alevi sentiment but with a motif of "insulting the Prophet." Although this does not lessen the gravity of the event, it is important to emphasize this, at least in order to see the game of those who try to produce enmity against Sunnis from this event.

On the other hand, one must also pay attention to the discourses concerning remembering Sivas. Among some of those who remind us of Sivas, a discourse prevails that makes it easier precisely for those who engineered this event to reach their goals. The angry language directed at an object of grudge and hatred at every reminder serves nothing but the forces behind the massacre. That some association leaders, despite all the information that has emerged in the meantime, play to the language of this hatred only shows that the attempted Sivas massacre is a still-uncompleted attempt.

If one must face 2 July, one must begin especially by seeing the game of those who engineered this event.

If one must not forget, one must not forget only so as not to fall for this game again.

If one must remember, one must remember not to produce grudge and hatred from the pain created by the last act of the event, but to see the dimensions, always capable of recurring, of the trickery and intrigue, the devilry and the plotting that human beings do to one another.