Towards a good point in Madımak

Yesterday, July 2, was the 17th anniversary of the Sivas massacre. Engineered in 1993 as a typical social incident of the kind that dark circles had tried again and again, the event left behind a massacre in which 37 lives were savagely taken. But this massacre did not only take lives; it also sowed enormously complex, compounded emotions in the rest of society.

These emotions kept people in society hating one another, looking at one another with suspicion, and kept politics in an atmosphere of tension that could not be relieved, for a long time.

Every year on July 2, in many events held in Sivas or outside Sivas, the incident was commemorated in a way that provoked feelings of hatred against a huge section of society, precisely producing the result that those who engineered it wanted. Yet the incident had been organized, quite clearly and plainly, precisely to achieve this result. The Sivas massacre was engineered for the same purpose for which those who today are thinking of killing the Alevi leader Ali Balkız in Ergenekon wanted to obtain a result. The incident coincided with a period in 1993 when Turkish politics was being redesigned, and, just as planned, it created social segments cut off from one another.

Özal's suspicious death, the incident of the 33 martyrs in Bingöl that ended the ongoing resolution process, Eşref Bitlis's death in a plane crash, the killing of 33 people in Başbağlar to give the appearance of retaliation for Sivas, the murder of Uğur Mumcu and a series of other events all took place within this very year. From the sum of all of them, the genesis of the political theology of February 28, which was brought to perfection with the postmodern coup, was created.

In the commemorations of the July 2 incident every year, the Sivas massacre was directly or indirectly presented as a massacre by "Sunnis" against "Alevis." Thus an attempt was made to create Sunni hatred among Alevis. On the other hand, through the massacre in Başbağlar two days later, which was given the appearance of retaliation, it was probably intended to keep alive among Sunnis the feelings of a blood feud against Alevis. Yet neither the Sivas nor the Başbağlar massacre had anything to do with either Alevism or Sunnism.

In fact, even as a provocative element in the Sivas incident, it was not Alevism but the person of Aziz Nesin that was used, who in those days had assumed all responsibility for Salman Rushdie, who had committed unimaginable insults against the Prophet's wives, that is, the Ahl al-Bayt, and who had therefore become a living object of hatred for the devout segment. Of the 37 people who died in the incidents, only 17 were of Alevi origin. In a sense, the number of those of Sunni origin among the dead is even greater. Of course this can in no way be a reason that tolerates or excuses the deaths; on the contrary, it is a fact that must be recorded only in order to see that anti-Alevi sentiment was not used even as a provocative element in such an incident.

It is worth remembering that Aziz Nesin, whose name alone was enough to provoke the masses, did all that he did in those days through a publishing operation tied to Doğu Perinçek. Murtaza Demir, the former president of the Pir Sultan Abdal Association, who gave a statement on the anniversary of the incident, was among those present at Madımak during the events. I am sure he will shed light on these connections that he knows about and has promised to tell.

In the workshops launched by the government toward understanding and solving the problems of the Alevis, one of the issues on which almost all the Alevi segments agreed was that the Madımak hotel should somehow be rid of its present state and given a form befitting the memory of the 37 people who died there. The concept of "Madımak" had taken shape among all Alevi segments as a matter of symbolic consensus, even though how its content would be filled was not clear. Taking this point of consensus into account, the state ministry responsible for the workshops stepped in on Madımak some time ago and bought the hotel. This was recorded as probably the first concrete result of the Alevi workshops.

In a way, this incident has also been a productive and result-producing example of the practice of deliberative democracy that was meant to be operated through the workshops.

Indeed, yesterday, for the first time, the July 2 incident was commemorated in Sivas with the participation of a state minister. State Minister Faruk Çelik, taking into account the sensitivities of all social segments, set on the way to a resolution the long-knotted demands of a social segment that he had been listening to for over a year. May the same be granted for the other problems of the Alevis, and for our other problems that have also become knots.