They were unable to resist giving advice to the lovers or cursing at the bad people in the movie. Maybe because of their attitudes, the producers of those movies were never brave enough to finish their stories with a sad ending. When I was a child, by observing those audiences, I realized the fact that the people of this beautiful country are very talented at feeling empathy. I strongly believe that people whose popular culture was that naïve once upon a time cannot be harsh and cannot be discriminative or xenophobic since their ability to establish empathy is so high. Well, actually, almost every day, I witness new things that strengthen this belief of mine. This idea also keeps me hopeful about the future, despite the many negative developments that we are witnessing.Maybe you will remember that in January, when Israel attacked Gaza and killed many civilians, Niyazi Çapa, chairman of the Federation of Osmangazi Cultural Associations in Eskişehir, put up banners in front of the federation's headquarters saying Jews and Armenians were not allowed but dogs could enter. At that time, the public prosecutor opened a court case against him, and the trial ended this week. Çapa, for discriminating against a segment of society based on religion, social class and race, was first convicted to five months in prison. This punishment was commuted to a TL 3,000 fine, which was later postponed. This verdict means that if Çapa commits the same crime again within five years, his first conviction will be added to a second one. If he does not commit the same crime, he is as free as a bird. This case only proves once more that we need laws against discrimination, hate speech and hate crimes.
In those days, many similar events took place; for example, in Kayseri, the deputy chairman of the Turkish Education Union (Turk Eğitim-Sen), Ali İhsan Öztürk, distributed sweets commemorating Adolf Hitler. The worst thing about this incident was Öztürk's profession; he is a teacher. But this is not surprising at all.
Unfortunately, our educational system and textbooks, despite many efforts to change them, still contain many discriminatory elements; they are nationalist and sexist, too. (By the way, newly appointed Minister of Education Nimet Çubukçu reportedly ordered that sexist statements be removed from textbooks, an important move giving us hope for the future.) Aside from this content, elementary school students have to pledge every day that they owe their existence to the Turkish nation.
Overall it is also not surprising that Ergenekon and similar gangs have used the idea of so-called separatist minorities, xenophobia and the threat of missionaries as tools to gather supporters.
This discriminative, nationalistic and to some extent xenophobic approach is a legacy of the mindset of the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki). They thought the reason for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire was foreigners and certain other nations within the empire, namely the Greeks and Armenians. There were uprisings in the Balkans, unrest in the Middle East. So İttihat ve Terakki leaders thought the only way to save the empire was to Turkify it. The republic's military and civilian bureaucracy more or less maintained the same attitude; it was always very suspicious toward its own minorities. Starting in the 1930s, different methods were used to force non-Muslims to leave the country, including implementing heavy taxes on them. During the 1960s, when there was a crisis over Cyprus, a new wave came, and many minorities had to leave the country. But then again, while these developments were taking place upon the orders of the state elite, the people mourned over their neighbors who had to leave. So when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said last week: “This mindset has seemingly not changed. It has been the same for many years in this country. They have chased members of different ethnicities out of this country. Have we won? This was the result of a fascist mentality,” he was very right, and the people who like old Turkish movies were not surprised to hear this because in their hearts they have the ability to feel empathy, which is the real guarantee of this country's unity.
