Posted on 02/27/2007 4:10:07 AM PST by theothercheek
Hilmi Aydogdu, a Kurd who heads the Democratic Society Party's branch in the mainly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir was arrested and charged by Turkish authorities with “threatening public safety by inciting racial enmity and hatred,” reports The Associated Press. Aydogdu allegedly made remarks suggesting that if Turkey attacks Iraqi Kurds in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 20 million Turkish Kurds would consider it an attack on Diyarbakir.
The Stiletto is surprised that there is such a law in Turkey. Hrant Dink’s assassin, Ogun Samast, shouted “I shot the Armenian” after he gunned the journalist down right in front of his newspaper’s offices in Istanbul last month – and the police at the local stationhouse took turns posing with him holding a Turkish flag in front of a calendar depicting an image of Kemal Ataturk. To The Stiletto’s knowledge, neither the murderer nor any of the police taking souvenir photos with their hero have been charged with inciting racial enmity and hatred (second item, The Daily Blade, February 5, 2007).
Meanwhile, a new report has surfaced suggesting that the police chief of the town of Trabzon – a nationalist stronghold – ordered the hit on Dink.
NOTE: In case I did not put all the links in correctly, this is the second item in a feature called The Daily Blade, and follows an article titled, "Why Scooter Libby Is Not Guilty Beyond A Reasonable Doubt."
Aydogdu: What a name. I would change that one.
ping for later..
To what? The women's names are just as, um, unfortunate: Tulin Daloglu. Imagine what a cutie she must be.
Speech laws like that are selectively used by ruling governments (Turks) to deal with opponents. I wonder how many Turks get prosecuted under that law for comments about Kurds or Armenians.
Of course they do. Muslims see all races as equal (Black, White, Asian, etc.), as long as the person is muslim. This is not to be confused with religious hatred or hatred of other nationalities, which they spew forth in volumes of vile prejudice and antimosity.
My guess is none. Of course this is the exact opposite of the practice in the U.S., where the majority is considered to be fair game.
I think more than 60 writers - journalists and fiction writers - have been prosecuted under Article 301. In one case a character in a novel spoke of the Armenian Genocide. Nobel Prize laureat Orhan Pamuk received death threats after acknowledging Turkey's mass killings of Armenians and Kurds and the Turkish government gave him protection. Hrant Dink also received death threats, and when he asked for protection he was denied. Then he was gunned down and his body was left in the street for all to see for nearly an hour - let that be a lesson to those damned Armenians and anyone who dares to talk about the Genocide! - before police bothered to get there to secure the crime scene and remove the bullet-riddled corpse.
Kurds are mostly Muslim, although there are religious minorities.
Armenians are a special case. The Ottoman Turks almost wiped out every one of them in a series of pogroms starting in the mid 1800s that killed 250,000 to 300,000 at a clip, culminating in the Armenian Genocide 1915-1917 that was supposed to - and nearly did - finish the job. It must wound them in their Turkish pride that they came so close to achieving their goal of making the Armenians extinct but ultimately failed. They're just itching to finish what they started.
Turks and Armenians fall into the nationality category for hatred by muslims. Muslims don't hate by race, they hate by nationality and religious preference.
Turkey is supposed to be "secular," even though it's 99.8 percent Muslim. The Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire were atheistic, but cynically used Muslim hatred of Christians to incide their fellow Turks to help them carry out the Genocide. Kemal Attaturk who formed the modern state of Turkey from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire was secular - but with Nationalism and Islamism both ascendant in Turkey today, the future does not look good for the few remaining Armenians who live there. Apparently secularism has not overcome Turks' natural inclinations towards barbarism.
Daloglu is still better than Aye dog doo.
Well, "Turk" and "Turd" are separated by only one letter ... (oops, this could get me arrested or killed in Turkey; I'm so glad I'm living in the USA.)
I just thought of something: "Kurd" and "Turd" are also separated by one letter. But in Turkey, only my previous observation would merit arrest and conviction - after which some nationalist would probably assassinate me. See, it's only a crime when Turks are insulted, not anyone else. Which is why just days after Hrant Dink's assassination, cheerleaders rallied an entire soccer stadium with anti-Armenian chants and not one single person was arrested for inciting racial hatred. This sword only cuts one way.
Actually, it has meaning: "Moon-born", I would guess. Real problem is that this guy is a Kurd and the name is Turkish. Guess he doesn't mind it that much.
Armenians living in Turkey often have Turkish names, too. Given Turkey's track record with persecuting and killing its minority populations, I guess they think it helps them blend in better.
But as for Kurds, etc. using Turkish names, it occurs to me to wonder for how long now their languages have actually been "legal" to use in the media, or in school. Not very.
That sort of thing tends to suck all the oxygen out of the party atmosphere.
Here's another downer: Armenian schoolchildren in Turkey - who lost family members in the Genocide - are required to recite "The Turkish Oath" every morning. "I am a Turk. I am hardworking ..."
A law against inciting racial hatred?
That's a joke coming from a culture that invented invented modern mass racial/religious genocide.
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