Lynching in the second degree is defined as any act of violence inflicted by a mob upon the body of another person and from which death does not result. Lynching requires at least some degree of premeditation. The common intent to do violence may be formed before or during the assemblage.History provides enough evidence that lynchings were more frequent in times of social and economic tension and often were means by which the politically dominant population oppressed social challengers.
Similar acts are occurring in Turkey today. In İnegöl and the Dörtyol district of Hatay, mobs attacked Kurdish homes and shops and tore them down or burned them to take their revenge against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) violence that neither they nor the government have been able to end.
We all know that the PKK is an armed organization that has excelled in terrorist tactics. It has been waging a war on the Turkish security apparatus with the intention of building a separate state, regional autonomy and cultural freedoms. It has been exacting blood since 1984 in the name of Kurdish rights and equality. This last sentence is an obtuse statement for many Turks who constitute the majority population and one that many would find repulsive.
Throughout their education and their socialization into the national political culture, they have learned that only Turks live in this country and that those who are not Turks are either alien or intent on harming the harmony of the nation and disrupting the unity of the country. They do not think this way because of ignorance. They are rendered dangerously ignorant because of the education and political socialization they have experienced. So education in Turkey has corrosive effects on the stability of the regime and the solidarity of the nation, the citizens of which learn that they are not all alike.
When groups or particular people (culturally, ethnically or religiously defined) have tried to express their cultural differences or demanded their rights outside the realm of Turkishness, all hell has broken loose. The Armenians who were expelled from this country in 1915 (by a Turkish nationalist government, namely of the Union and Progress Party) were never allowed to come back. The officially engineered Jewish banishment from Thrace took place in 1934. Many non-Muslim minorities were severely attacked and forced to leave İstanbul and İzmir in 1955. The Maraş massacre in 1978, followed by Malatya (same year), Çorum (1980) and finally the Sivas lynching in 1993 were all incidents that targeted leftists and Alevis, along with a massacre in Malatya in 2007 in which Protestant missionaries and affiliates were massacred, were different forms of lynching. Lynching is committed by provoked nationalist thugs massacring either ethnic or religious minorities.
There has always been a psychological as well as a political infrastructure upon which these attacks were based. Equally important is the fact that either overt or covert authorities have allowed these unfortunate acts to take place. Without such security risks, the military-bureaucratic elite of this country would have lost their right to rule and their privileged and unaccountable positions a long time ago. It is because of these planned pogroms and engineered lynchings that the security establishment ruled this country without really allowing it to become a genuine democracy enjoying the rule of law rather than the law of force.
Scientific research reveals that people who are socialized to be intolerant to minorities and conditioned to obey force engage in lynchings differentially. Some participate in the violence, while many others witness the lynching but do nothing to stop the mob. It seems that complicity has become embedded in the social and cultural fabric of the people, which supports, condones or ignores the violence that is happening around them. Hence, there must a lenient atmosphere shaped by hatred toward the “other” and there must be some degree of official support, guidance or guardianship that enables the bloody vocation to persist.
In any case, lack of the ability of the Turkish political class and the intolerance ingrained in the political culture has rendered the minority issues in Turkey the Achilles heel of the country.
