Now and then

I always remember the scene very well; it was a very dark, cold Danish afternoon in January. The bored Danes, since they don’t have any major problems in their country, in order to entertain themselves, were looking for trouble. Turkey was a very good place to find that in those days.

I was a young and inexperienced journalist. I was someone who grew up with the fairy tale that “Turks have only Turks as friends but nobody else.” I was the child of the 1980 military coup and brainwashed by its nationalistic, monolithic and authoritarian ideas. I knew that we had huge problems in our country, but being the talk of the town in Europe was not nice, and it touched the national pride that I had at that time.

When I heard these teasing sentences about my country, I was offended. I thought I was facing European snobbery.

It was a dichotomy for me; on the one side, I was offended, but on the other side, there were horror stories from the predominantly Kurdish areas about extrajudicial killings, disappearing persons, evacuated and burned villages, dirty relations between the terror organization’s heroin smugglers and some of the security forces. During those years, all these awful things were happening, but the mainstream media did not mention them.

I was in Copenhagen then mainly for two reasons: to help out a TV project about recent developments in Turkey and also to interview with Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen about Ankara-Copenhagen relations, which were very sour at that time.

Denmark had claimed that one of its naturalized Turkish citizens had been ill-treated in Turkey while he was in custody. The case was taken to the European Court of Human Rights. It was the first time that a country had taken another one to the European court. Relations were so bad at the time that even a joint business council meeting was not able to be held. The Danish foreign minister, in the interview, explained to me that they did their best to organize the meeting, but unfortunately none of the Danish businessmen were interested in participating.

It was quite interesting for me to observe that Turkey and its Kurdish question were the main subject of debate in the country. It was on the agenda to the extent that in a pub, some people thought that going to Turkey could be a real experience of a lifetime.

These teasing men’s plan was simple. They were planning to take the plane to Turkey, and at passport control, they would shout that there are Kurds living in Turkey and they are in Turkey to defend their human rights. Those people in the pub were having fun with this idea and thinking about staying in a Turkish prison until their government saved them -- later they would be heroes. The only thing that prevented them was the possibility of living “Midnight Express,” Alan Parker’s movie.

I remembered all this again after I get a phone call from a Danish journalist friend whom I know from those days. He was in Ankara to cover the visit of Özlem Çekiç, a member of Denmark’s Socialist Party, another Turk of Kurdish origin and naturalized former Turkish citizen. She participated in the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) conference on the occasion of International Women’s Day.

My Danish friend told me that Çekiç would make part of her speech in Kurdish and he was in Turkey to cover the possible uproar after this Kurdish speech.

I told him that nothing would happen. It would not even make the papers. I told him that even Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had learned a few Kurdish words and that we have a state-run TV station broadcasting in Kurdish.

I am not claiming that Turkey has solved all its democracy problems. We have a very long way to go, the Kurdish question is still on the table and the utmost energy and care is needed to solve it.

But Turkey is definitely not a suitable country for “trouble shouters” any more, although some Europeans are not able to see that and still think speaking Kurdish might be a problem.

Since the conversation with the men in the pub, a lot of water has gone under the bridge; Turkish-Danish trade volume is around $1 billion and increasing steadily, and Turkey is a country that has fulfilled the Copenhagen criteria, which was just a dream only 15 years ago. The more Turkey democratizes, the more confident it becomes; the more confident it is, less disposed it is to teasing and the more open it is to confronting its past and improving its democracy.