During the parliamentary session in which the government’s Kurdish initiative was being discussed, on Nov. 10, the following words, which made the blood freeze, poured forth from his lips without any sign of emotion: “Unfortunately, the mothers of this country have wept on so many occasions. Throughout our history, we have had many martyrs. We had 200,000 martyrs at the Battle of Çanakkale. The mothers of all of them cried. But no one suggested ending that war. Didn’t mothers also weep during the War of Independence, at the time of the Sheikh Said Rebellion? Didn’t mothers also cry at the time of the Dersim Rebellion and during the Cyprus operation? Did anyone then suggest stopping the fight, saying, ‘Let no more mothers cry’?”However, during the Dersim incidents, the mothers did not cry as they would have for their lost sons who were martyred during the War of Independence or during the Ottoman period. Indeed, they would not cry for their sons who were fighting against the enemy for the survival of the nation. No, in Dersim, the state and the military of the establishment for which they had worked so hard crushed the heads of their sons. And now, mothers cry for the children of this country fighting against each other. This is the truth that that emotionless state deputy chose to skip over.
Although it is the most striking of all, this is not, unfortunately, the first scandal for this person, who spent his life representing the state as a diplomat in foreign missions. In order to understand his mood and a mentality that is deprived of any notion of peace or brotherhood, we can take a look at his sentence “You have been in power for so many years, but you have never conducted a cross-border operation,” which he uttered as a criticism of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in his same speech.
While Parliament was discussing the reforms to remove restrictions on property rights of the foundations of non-Muslim minorities, he suggested that the principle of reciprocity must be applied vis-à-vis the rights granted to Turks and Muslims in the country where the ethnicities and religions of those non-Muslim minorities are dominant so that these ethnic or religious minorities -- who are Turkish citizens -- could be granted some rights.
He is also considerably skillful in portraying some historical events as if they never happened: “It is against our constitutional and legal system to send away minorities. There is no such event in our civilized country as banishing minorities. ... We have not heard about anyone who was expelled from the country on charges of being from a specific ethnicity.” So, according to this state deputy, neither the forced migration of Armenians nor the exchange of populations nor the incidents of Sept. 6-7, 1955 -- in which a great part of the minorities had to leave the country and which events were later described by some state officials as “a perfect organization” -- nor such discriminatory practices as imposing taxes specifically on minorities were seen in this country.
Given his insensitivity toward the rights of non-Muslim minorities, can we assume him to be utterly sensitive toward the rights of Muslim citizens? I think the following story is sufficient to demonstrate his stance in this respect: Rumor has it that when he was the Turkish ambassador to Germany, he had visited mosques and asked why the mosques did not have a photo of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and threatened imams who refused to hang Atatürk pictures in their mosques that he would send them back home. Moreover, when the lifting of the headscarf ban on university campuses -- which had victimized and continues to victimize tens of thousands of young girls -- was being discussed, he had said, “The headscarf is Nazi and fascist apparel,” never realizing that these words had put that apparel on himself.
The deeds and remarks of this person who is the representative of a political mentality that regards representing the state as a typical state nationalist is superior to representing the society, and who conducts his political career as if it were a state mission, are not restricted to these. In this regard, the response he suggested that Turkey should give to the Armenian genocide claims being discussed in the parliaments of foreign countries is quite interesting: “We must immediately send 70,000 Armenians working in our country back to Armenia. In such issues, we must respect national interests; it is no place to be sentimental.”
Now let us hear what this person said about the Turks who held protests of the murder of Hrant Dink, which has now has been established to have been committed by the shadowy network of the deep state, Ergenekon: “We, as the members of the Turkish foreign mission, gave more than 40 martyrs to Armenian terror. The murderers of many of them have not yet been found. When Ambassador Galip Balkar was murdered by Armenians and his dead body was brought to Turkey, tens of thousands did not walk in protest, and only his family was there. No one shouted ‘We are all Galip Balkar’ or ‘We are all İsmail Erz’.”
In a sense, this reaction is perfectly understandable. This is because his person and his party which he guided had fought hard so that the infamous Article 301 -- which paved the way for the eventual murder of Dink -- should not be lifted.
The people who are like this person, who would oppose any move to extend the rights and freedoms of citizens, were also quick to hail every military and judiciary intervention with civilian politics and democracy. This deputy of the state party, who said, “The TSK [Turkish Armed Forces] is a civil society organization,” had afforded full support to the 367 trickery during the presidential election and also heartily defended the e-memorandum of April 27, 2007, saying, “I agree with every line of the memorandum.” And in the face of the big election defeats that these anti-democratic stances brought about, he had taken refuge behind the illogical statement that “the voters acted irrationally.”
Do you know who this state deputy is? He is the one who said: “Our Constitution allows amendments to the Constitution and amendments of its articles. But we fail to see any article of the Constitution that allows the complete abolishment of the existing Constitution and replacing it with a new one.”
At this point, one cannot agree more with the Freedom Association’s (Özgür-Der) statement: “While many were shocked with the proposal voiced in Parliament for pursuing the policy of deportation and extermination in order to settle the Kurdish issue with a blind eye to the experiences of the past, it is impossible to say for those who closely monitor Turkish politics that this is a strange proposal. It is really hard to understand why everyone is surprised to hear the ‘solution’ proposed by a party official who acts as the guardian of the official Kemalist ideology based on his primary references against political and social issues. In this sense, the mentality of ‘not making compromises from the basic principles or functions of the state so that mothers should not cry’ represents is the exact reflection of the Kemalist and bureaucratic mentality which Onur Öymen represents. There is no inconsistency here.”
In the end, isn’t Republican People’s Party (CHP) Deputy Chairman Onur Öymen, to whom we have not referred explicitly so far, an unyielding defender of the status quo in this country, an official of the language of denial, and an eternal representative of the state? Wouldn’t it be unfair for us to expect more from him?
