‘Armenian dogs support Beşiktaş’ they say, but…
by
ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ

After a while, they feel like they are starting to understand everything. Then this feeling of understanding deepens. But, then something happens and they are left with the feeling that they have not understood anything. Finally, they feel that they have just turned back to where they began their endeavor of understanding Turkey.

Why is Turkey so confusing? Turkey is in between everything (cultures, continents, religions and so on) and has quite a complex and complicated story. I think the confusion is caused by a personality split resulting from all these factors in Turkey. You can see extremely pathologic behaviors and very healthy ones, side by side, one after another.

We are a deeply neurotic society, on the one hand. This is what causes our racist, violent, and intolerant side. There is another side which is caring, tolerant, faithful and empathetic. We have this neurotic side, which we have inherited from denial, from supposedly forgetting past traumas, but we also have a healthy side, which operates quite efficiently.

When Hrant Dink was killed, all of a sudden young football fans started to wear white berets during football matches. In this way they were showing their support for and identification with Ogün Samast who was wearing a white beret when he killed Hrant Dink. This pathological side of Turkey was showing us that the “Armenian question” is not a part of history but is still alive. On the other hand, in sharp contrast with this purely racist gesture, we also witnessed that hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets during Hrant Dink’s funeral, carrying placards with “We are all Armenians” and “We are all Hrant Dink” written on them.

An Armenian football fans leader (subtitle)

Last week this pathological side of Turkey was in the football stadium once again. Fans of the Bursa (one of the major industrial cities in the Marmara region) football team were chanting an extremely racist slogan: “Armenian dogs support Beşiktaş.”

Beşiktaş is one of the most famous football teams in Turkey and has fans all over the country. Beşiktaş’s most well-known stadium leaders is Alen Markaryan who is a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent. Markaryan was wounded in his leg and arm on Nov. 28 as a result of an armed attack. Because of this attack Markaryan once again came to agenda of football fans. Racist Bursa fans were trying to provoke Beşiktaş fans by making a reference to the Armenian descent of their leader.

Well, by focusing on the slogan “Armenian dogs support Beşiktaş,” we can say that what happened to the Armenians is still a quite living memory in the subconscious of Turkish society and we can evaluate these kinds of insulting remarks -- and we have so many others in stock -- as a kind of “lapsus lingue” (slip of tongue) in the Freudian sense. The lapsus, shows that the “spirit” is still alive.

On the other hand, if we focus on the fact that a football team like Beşiktaş, has a leader of Armenian descent, we can see quite a different picture. He is brother Alen (Alen abi) to Beşiktaş’s football fans who really love him wholeheartedly and follows his lead. We still do not have any Armenian policemen or soldiers, but in this quite masculine world of football, fans of a football team were able to promote one of their Armenian members to the leadership and put him in the most visible scene in the stadium. This of course makes them vulnerable to racist attacks. Beşiktaş has also an elite group called “Çarşı” which is well-known for their anti-racist stance during soccer games. Markaryan is also one of the leading figures in this group as well.

What is the bottom line? If we can get rid of the deep state, official ideology and stop the constant brainwashing, I think, the healthy side of Turkish society could manage to  heal everyone else in Turkey. This healthy side, if not hampered by the provocations and manipulation of the Turkish deep state, can help us to start the healing process which will lead this country to peace and make it much easier to understand, for foreigners as well as Turks themselves.

I wish Markaryan a quick recovery and hope Beşiktaş fans will see him in stadiums soon.