Turkey’s role and arsenal of grace

    I was pleased to read this past week an article about a press conference held by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to which he had invited Turkish journalists, including Today's Zaman Editor-in-Chief Bülent Keneş, who attended. The Syrian president emphasized that he supports Turkey's democratization initiative to settle the Kurdish issue and its Armenian one as well. Assad said Syria is ready to do its part to help, particularly with respect to the Kurdish initiative. He noted that whatever the results, Turkey's democratic initiative will also affect Syria. This is a step in the right direction.

    Two of my favorite quotes on the subject of reconstruction and reconciliation are:

    “The chains of ungrace can indeed snap.” -- Philip Yancey, “What's So Amazing About Grace.”

    “Only a small crack… but cracks make caves collapse.” -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, “The Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956.”

    It amused me how Andrew Finkel, in his column “Bodynapping and the Kurdish problem,” skillfully raised an essential question by stating a point -- that is, as he put it: “… it seems bizarre that Turkey wrestled with a Kurdish problem while its institutions of higher learning were reluctant to engage in studies that would help clarify what that problem was all about.”

    Let's hope, or as some say “cross our fingers,” that the recent bodynapping does not turn out to be a crack that causes the collapse of a process that has begun to head in the right direction for democracy's sake and reconciliation.

    In order to bring about peace and solve years of conflict, a deep understanding of politics, culture, including burial rites, and language is necessary. Dealing with conflict is neither easy nor simple. Denial and self-imposed ignorance are not the solution.

    With good reasons the Kurds, Armenians and Turks do not trust one another. The same was true of the Soviets. The Russians and the minority groups under their domination did not trust each other or their respective governments. In order to move forward, the past must be remembered and overcome.

    I grew up in the American South, Arkansas and Texas to be exact, and during a time when discrimination was rampant. It was not uncommon to find three restrooms: white men, white woman and colored. The buses had sectioned the front part for whites and the “colored” sat in the back. It was a time when white men owned people of color.

    Sometimes when I have foreign visitors and they see Turkish tea gardens or restaurants with a seating section for men only and another section for families, it brings to mind flashbacks of the past. Foreign visitors have trouble seeing this in any other light considering their understanding of their past, and they have no clue about the local culture and religion here.

    It was President Abraham Lincoln who after the Civil War took steps and set forth a magnanimous plan of reconstruction and reconciliation. In time, the United States has had men from Arkansas, Texas and Georgia serve as president. Presently, the United States has a president who is black.

    The process of racism and African-American reconciliation continues

    Under former President Süleyman Demirel, Turkey forged trade and commerce links with the Turkic states in the former Soviet Union, and now the present government is doing the same with Russia. Every nation to the west, east and south of Turkey's border has been under the domination of the Ottoman Empire and remembers this period. However, since the end of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of the Turkish Republic, Turkey has been redefining its role with its neighbors along with its world role.

    “When we go to war, we are all putting on hoods and pulling the hangman's lever. And as long as we send our armies on the rampage -- whatever the justification -- we will go on stringing up and shooting and chopping off the heads of our ‘criminals' and ‘murderers' with the same enthusiasm as the Romans cheered on the men of blood in the Colosseum 2,000 years ago.” -- Robert Fisk, “The Age of Warriors.”