Nationalist fantasies against brotherhood

Among people who value Islam as an identity, it is generally difficult, if not impossible, for an identity based on ethnicity to take hold. And such as it does, it is bound to remain under the pressure of the accusation of deviating from Islam's call, which elevates the human being to the rank of the noblest of creatures.

If a person has truly been subjected to humiliation, unjust attack or oppression because of his ethnic identity, it is quite natural, rightful and just for him to display a defensive reflex on that basis. But even to do this, it is not necessary to adopt the ethnic element as the basis of identity and rightfulness. That is why Turkish nationalism, Arab nationalism and Kurdish nationalism alike have always had, and will have, a quarrel with Islam.

The claim today that devout Kurds are disgusted by the rhetoric of brotherhood is also largely nothing but a fantasy constructed against the religion that nationalists see as the greatest obstacle to their own identity projects. They truly long for the miraculous dimension of Islam, which establishes and is able to establish brotherhood, not to be working. Just as for years Turkish nationalists tried to prove that Arabs, Persians or other Muslim nations did not at all hold brotherly feelings toward the Turks, Kurdish nationalists likewise are trying to prove that Islam has been powerless to create a bond of brotherhood between Turks and Kurds.

Yet if they look with the eyes of the heart at the approach displayed toward the Kurdish question during the AK Parti government, which takes Islamic values and feelings extremely seriously, they will see that all the openings made rested precisely on that bond and feeling of brotherhood being at work. In this period the rhetoric of brotherhood was not made; on the contrary, an effort was made to fulfill the requirements of its law. For this, the 80-year racist-nationalist, denialist and assimilationist paradigm was fought against and that paradigm was sidelined. The Kurd was recognized and esteemed with his name, his dignity, his honor and his worth. His language too was recognized by the state, and the way was opened for broadcasting and education in his language.

All of this was not done as a concession to the violence of the racist organization; on the contrary, it had been stated openly, with the philosophy underlying it, in the party program as early as 2001, when the AK Parti was founded, that all this would be done. Of course we cannot say that everything that needs to be done has been done, but the fact that all of this is being done by conservative, devout people overturns the nationalist fantasy of hatred. The emotional rupture experienced there is, frankly, partly a matter for psychology.

While the nationalist fantasy is thus shattered among Muslim Turks, the situation among Kurds is not at all different. For Muslim Kurds, Islam is still more important than ethnic identity, and this shows that discourses opposed to brotherhood are merely a dream fantasized in narrow circles. The picture that emerged in statistical figures in the research Otherness as a Common Identity in Turkey, which we conducted with Egitim Bir-Sen, showed this clearly.

In the research we had asked respondents what they saw themselves as in first, second and third place as an identity. Thus we were able to see how dynamic processes identities really are, that they can change according to circumstance, and moreover that they are not given, and that their dimension of choice is the more dominant one. The share of those who see themselves as Turks in the first place (at 52.6 percent) is higher than those who see themselves as Muslims in the first place (32.9 percent). But in the second place the share of those who see themselves as Muslims rises to 48.4 percent, while that of Turks falls to 25.5 percent. That what emerges here is a Turk-Muslim synthesis rather than a Muslim-Turk synthesis is of course interesting. What is actually more interesting is that, proportionally, a larger majority of Kurds than of Turks make Muslim their first identity choice. Of 311 Kurds, the share of those who express their Kurdishness as a primary choice, at 111 people, remains around 32 percent, while the share of those who express their Kurdishness as a secondary and tertiary identity is 68 percent. The large majority of this 68 percent express their Muslimness as their primary identity.

From this picture there emerges, setting aside the attitude, imagined and wished for by some, of the great majority of Kurds looking with disgust at the bond of brotherhood in Islam, a Muslim-Kurdish reality that has no intention at all of abandoning this bond of Muslimness or brotherhood, persisting in it even if Turks do not fulfill its requirement.