Peace too has a language, and denying that language has a price…

In my last article I criticized the Taraf newspaper's headline targeting the Diyanet. Starting from the fact that the Armenian, Hebrew and Kurdish equivalents of the greeting "selam" did not appear on the cover of the Diyanet's magazine, which expresses "selam" in 44 languages, the Diyanet was accused of every kind of racism, fascism and denialism. Moreover, in the same report it was stated that the Diyanet officials who made this cover were asked while the report was being prepared. And what answer was received? The Diyanet officials said they had no intention in this at all, that Hebrew and Armenian in particular were entirely overlooked, and that as for Kurdish, evidently after a cursory search it was decided that the equivalent was "selam" as in Turkish. This decision is neither binding nor final nor normative. After all, this is a cover design, not even a legal text or a religious sermon text. When reminded, if there is a mistake, it is not insisted upon. But they say they were told, by whomever they asked, that the word selam is as common and shared a word in Kurdish as it is in Turkish. Another datum leading one to think so is that the word selam itself, which has no other equivalent in Turkish, is not Turkish.

Now, it is not unknown that looking at the work done by the same Diyanet in this period, it is very far from the denialist approach pursued against Kurdish for eighty years. The groundbreaking statements of its President and his activities on this subject are known. Let us say this much: he is probably the person who popularized the saying "every language is a sign (ayah)," which has become a byword on everyone's tongue these days among those interested in the subject. The person who says "rhetoric of brotherhood is not enough, one must also observe its rights" is also the same person. It is also the Diyanet of the same President that responded to mullahs who asked "can we give sermons and Friday sermons in Kurdish?" with "do you still not give your sermons in Kurdish?", and that opened the way to employing a thousand mullahs for it. How can one explain trying to burden a person doing all these activities, or the institution under his command, with the sin of all the fascistic, racist, denialist practices of eighty years because of a matter they also said they overlooked, whether by oversight or some other consideration?

My concern is not to exonerate the Diyanet; when it errs or insists on its error, I would be its prosecutor, not its lawyer. But what I want to draw attention to on the occasion of this incident is the language of Taraf that has recently become quite disturbing. This language has no mission or function of being the voice of the oppressed. It has no approach that facilitates peace or prepares the conflicting parties for reconciliation. On the contrary, in this form it spreads hatred. If the parties have any chance of reaching an understanding and making peace, its approach is like making them unable ever again to look at one another in good faith. Over Roboski, for example, you can criticize the government and the military, and you should. From the first day, without delaying even a minute, I did not hold back from saying that the government should first apologize for this incident. I am still of the same view. But to present the Roboski incident as "Turks massacring Kurds," "the state massacring its people," and, especially, to look at the New Year's Eve festivities in Istanbul and report "Turks are having fun while Kurds die," is both untrue and serves nothing other than turning the hurt and anger already present in the hearts of Kurds into an irreparable grudge and hatred.

It is untrue, because to say that those having fun were "Turks" is itself racism. (What, was what is racism when done to Kurds going to be innocent when done to Turks?) First of all, how much of the Turkish people takes part in those festivities, and of those who take part, how many are Turks, how many Kurds, how many I don't know what? Who holds what kind of definite information? Everyone who is even slightly informed about Turkey knows that the large majority of the people of Turkey, who are said to be constantly becoming more conservative, have nothing to do with those celebrations. But that headline could be run that way, and the only thing that would be produced from that headline would be nothing other than a Kurdish racism through oppression and victimhood, and so it was. How is it that the prime minister, who was repeatedly portrayed in Taraf's own headlines as a hero of democracy for the steps he took on the Kurdish opening, can be portrayed in a short time as if he had done nothing, indeed as almost the greatest enemy of Kurds in the history of the Republic? What kind of balance problem is this?

What I lament is that Taraf, whose legendary contribution to Turkey's democratization and tearfully humanist approach to ending the war we have seen, serves not peace but war in Turkey with these attitudes. On the one hand you will say that you want peace, and on the other you will insist, with great persistence, on the idea that the most important party to peace is in fact so malicious, brutal, racist, fascist, murderous that no peace can be made with it at all. Then, for God's sake, why do you say peace? If you constantly fill one of the warring parties with grudge and hatred toward the other, if you are going to make them read even situations that would be interpreted with the best intention as signs of ill will, how do you plan to bring about this peace?

Undoubtedly, if you want peace and truly feel the pain of the people killed, you must put forward what this requires intelligently and sincerely. Achieving peace is, before anything else, a problem of language. And this language is not a matter of Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic. It is the human language itself, the language of the heart. While you say peace, the language your attitudes display must not be aggressive; it must be an interpreter of this will for peace. Above all, it must not fan the flames of the fire. This is what I said in my last article. With this kind of publication by Taraf, a fight breaks out, the war heats up, and even if people have a chance of making peace, they go on with the war with their constantly provoked emotions, but no peace emerges. I said these things, and two days later in the pages of Taraf an answering article was published under the headline "What is happening to Yasin Aktay?" signed by Nevzat Eminoglu, who turned out to be one of the writers of the journal Nibahar.

One of the things I never like is to put my person at the center of the subjects I debate. But Eminoglu began with this. Let us continue, again taking utmost care not to personalize.