28 February resurfacing in the TRNC

Just as we were saying "It is behind us now in Turkey," "it can never happen again," "it is a black stain on our history," "let us always remember and remind, so that no one dares such an irrational, Islam-hating and anti-democratic practice again," the 28 February showed up like a zombie in the KKTC.

The KKTC Constitutional Court has concluded the case brought against the state by HİZMET-SEN, a trade union operating in the country whose members include religious officials. Accordingly, the newly added Article 8B of the Religious Affairs Department (Establishment, Duties and Working Principles) Amendment Law, that is, the authority of the Religious Affairs Commission to organize "Qur'an courses," has been taken away from it. It is said that, according to this ruling, the Qur'an courses open on the Island have halted their activities.

At first glance it really is just like a revenant of the 28 February. It is as if the specter of the 28 February had left Turkey and is now wandering over Cyprus. A strange side of this matter is that in the periods when the 28 February reigned, it was "irtica" that was supposedly resurrected. Now what is resurrected is the spirit of the 28 February.

It is a plain fact that the 28 February was a madness that cost Turkey very dearly. It cannot be simplified and passed over as merely the victimization of religious people. The mind that devised and carried out these practices was attempting to strike at the personality, the peace, the integrity of a society. The matter did not remain merely a tension between the religious and the secular. It attempted to distort and corrupt the thousand-year story of the Muslim-Turkish society by severing it from its spiritual roots. The distortion of that story could produce no result other than the dissolution of the nation's mortar. That is why the Kurdish question deepened even more. The Alevi question was also turned into more of a matter of tension. Of course that mind did not begin to operate on the 28 February of 1997. The 28 February was merely a day of special operation of that "crazy Turks" mindset that had long been dominant. That mind did not appear in one day, nor did it end in one day.

However, in the KKTC the spirit has not actually been resurrected, because there its reckoning was never fully made. Unfortunately, in the KKTC the 28 February-style mind has long been dominant in a far more radical form. The new order that took hold of the Island in 1974 in fact required a very strong spiritual dimension. For the people of the Island, who waged a struggle for liberation and brought it to a conclusion with the support of the Motherland, had no other way than holding on to one another, keeping a memory alive so as not to forget what had been done to them, and for that, keeping their spiritual feelings alive.

But the 28 February-style secularist mentality that was dominant in Turkey applied, in its most radical form, on the Island, as a pilot application area, the enmity toward Islam that it could not apply sufficiently in Turkey. There were no Qur'an courses anyway. There was no religious education at all. That is why the generations raised there grew up without any sense of belonging.

We saw the generation that resulted from this, with bitter disappointment, in 2003, during the rapprochement that took place within the framework of the Annan Plan and the opening of the borders. When the borders opened, the vast majority of those who crossed from the Greek side to the Turkish side flocked to the churches remaining on the Turkish side and prayed. By contrast, none of the Turks who crossed to the Greek side went and looked for a mosque. Instead, they all flocked to bars and shopping centers. This scene, quite apart from whether one believes in religion or not, presented a demoralizing darkness in which there was no horizon at all for the raising of the generation that would carry the Cyprus cause.

Today, of course, there are also people in the administration of the KKTC who grasp the importance of the matter. That is why this decision has come as a surprise to them as well. On this occasion I phoned and asked for his views, and my valued friend Mete Tümerkan of the newspaper Haber Kıbrıs said that the AYM ruling had in fact not closed the Qur'an courses, but had merely ruled that they must be run by the state.

KKTC Prime Minister Ersan Saner is also reported to have said that "a situation such as the prohibition of hafiz education courses in the KKTC as a result of the AYM ruling cannot be at issue, that the necessary legal arrangements will be made in light of the court's decision and these courses will continue, that they too are bound by the Constitution but regard receiving religious education as a constitutional right of the citizen and a social need." But he also pointed out the unwarranted nature of the AYM ruling's reminder of the condition that it be "under the supervision and oversight of the state." For the Religious Affairs Commission whose authority was annulled is already not independent of the state; it is itself an institution of the state.

Look at this state of affairs: the AYM has coded one institution of the state as more "state" than another. That the AYM both annulled the authority of this institution and did so with an inappropriate emphasis on the principle of secularism and on "contemporary principles of science and education" shows that what it understands by secularism is nothing but enmity toward Islam.

And this enmity ultimately produces nothing other than an outlook that gets the homeland sold off cheaply. This outlook, which disregards what happened 74 years ago, needs constantly to be reminded of the cruelties and massacres that the so-called contemporary civilized world, hand in hand, saw fit to inflict upon the Cypriot Turk.

In fact, the series Once Upon a Time in Cyprus, being broadcast on TRT these days, reminds us of those events in a striking way.

Although, since I had called, I took the opportunity to get from Mete Tümerkan both his own impressions of this series and the impressions of the Cypriot people watching it. While finding it good for its near-documentary objectivity, which reminds us very well of what happened before 1974, he also touched on some of its problems, in particular the portrayals of Rauf Denktaş and Fazıl Küçük and the excessive heroism loaded onto the Turkish inspector. Let us evaluate these separately as well.