Like many from my generation we were under the influence of heavy brainwashing; our school system was turning us into "the strangest creature" right after the Sept. 12, 1980 coup. Even in the math courses we were faced with the propaganda of nationalism. We were learning that leftists were the most awful human beings in the world. In the Turkish classes we were memorizing poems that we didn't understand at all. Our school system was not just trying to make us one-dimensional people, but even to make us look like each other; even our hair had to be the same style.
On that day there was a history class and our teacher told us that even Alexander the Great had Turkish origins, like any important personality in the world. Then she asked me about an incident in the 14th century known as the Sheikh Bedrettin uprising. I repeated what our history text book told us: He was a very bad man and his uprising brought the Ottoman Empire to the brink of collapse, but finally he was hung as he deserved. The teacher congratulated me and awarded me with a high mark.
But on that very same night, while we were visiting the house of a family friend, on their book shelf I saw a book titled "The Epic of Sheik Bedrettin." I remember how confused I was: An epic about a very bad man?
When I took the book from the shelf, I remember the very short discussion in the house that we were visiting. The host asked the permission of my parents to give me the book. He said: "You know, it is Nazım Hikmet. Should we let this little girl read him? It could be dangerous." My parents did not think twice about giving me permission, and since then my life has been different.
I learned many values from reading his poems, first of all the love for humanity. And I was saved from being one of those "strangest creatures." All my life I tried to avoid becoming one of them.
This week the Turkish government finally decided to restore the citizenship of Nazım Hikmet, who was stripped of it for his Marxist beliefs in the 1950s after he fled the country, having spent years in Turkish prisons.
Hikmet's work was banned in Turkey until 1965. Even as recently as 2005 authorities detained and questioned a teenager who read one of his poems at school for suspected activities against the state.
As Professor Doğu Ergil, a writer for Sunday's Zaman, puts it, the government decision was a symbolic step meant to show that the country is now prepared to embrace a limited amount of criticism. The government nowadays is taking these kinds of steps. Finally we have a Kurdish broadcasting channel. Efforts from the government for reconciliation between Alevis and the state are under way. Some are arguing that these efforts are only being made because of the upcoming local elections. But even if they are, it doesn't matter. This country should give its citizens the opportunity to not be the strangest creatures, since -- I can hardly bring myself to say it -- they are the cause of most of the evil things that have prevented us from becoming a real democratic state.
You're like a scorpion, my brother,
you live in cowardly darkness
like a scorpion.
You're like a sparrow, my brother,
always in a sparrow's flutter.
You're like a clam, my brother,
closed like a clam, content,
And you're frightening, my brother,
like the mouth of an extinct volcano.
Not one,
not five--
unfortunately, you number millions.
You're like a sheep, my brother:
when the cloaked drover raises his stick,
you quickly join the flock
and run, almost proudly, to the slaughterhouse.
I mean you're strangest creature on earth-
-
even stranger than the fish
that couldn't see the ocean for the water.
And the oppression in this world
is thanks to you.
And if we're hungry, tired, covered with blood,
and still being crushed like grapes for our wine,
the fault is yours--
I can hardly bring myself to say it,
but most of the fault, my dear brother, is yours.
-- Nazım Hikmet
