Fascist attacks on those who step `out of the line`

[nazen þansal]

Fascist attacks on those who step `out of the line`
 (*)    Sevgul Uludag  caramel_cy at yahoo.com    The fascists don’t like the theatre play of the Baraka Cultural Centre.  They do not like the fact that Baraka put the word `Morphou` on their  poster instead of  the Turkified name `Guzelyurt` so they attack the  group
 All the names of the towns and villages have been changed after  1974 and have been given new, Turkish names – some unrecognizable,   almost  all without roots or history
 So it is very difficult to know   especially  with the new village names, what it actually is
  But the anger of the fascists does not only consist of this
 There is  more: The Baraka Cultural Centre has a chorus and they were in Morphou   at  a theatre festival organized by the Middle East Technical University   from  Ankara, which built a new campus there
 Baraka was to be part of this  theatre festival, to perform their play called `The Man Who Does Not  Think`
 The play, written by the
 Turkish writer Muzaffer Izgu, was a  criticism to some intellectuals who are cut off from reality and who   live  in their own world
 The play has to be cancelled because the university  authorities cannot guarantee the safety of the amateur theatre players
  The fascists are there with their big Turkish flags and sticks,   shouting  and threatening and attacking
 The pretext? A song dedicated to   Armenians  who died in 1915 during the compulsory immigration in Anatolia
 Baraka  sang the song called `Adi Yemen’dir` (Its name is Yemen), once a very  popular song, sang by famous progressive Turkish singers like Ruhi Su   and  Zulfu Livaneli
 Of course, Baraka, at the theatre festival, has   committed  a `sin` according to fascists: They dared to mention and dedicate the   song  to Armenians who died in 1915
Such a thing is unacceptable for them
 So  they attack
  And the police interrogates the Baraka chorus members, instead of  arresting the fascists who have attacked
 them!
  The fascists don’t like what Serhat Incirli writes in the Afrika  newspaper
 He is a free-thinking journalist, very critical of the   regime  and the military in the northern of Cyprus
 Some years ago, the fascist  newspaper `Volkan` had a campaign against Serhat who lives in London
  Serhat doesn’t live here so the fascists cannot attack him. But his  parents live in Cyprus so the least they can do is to send the police   to  question his parents about his articles!
  The fascists are also very upset about a trade-union in Famagusta   called  DAU-SEN
 The progressive trade union has become strong and held a   strike  for 9 days at the Eastern Mediterranean University recently
 They have   550  members, consisting of the academics lecturing at the university, as   well  as teachers and instructors at the primary and secondary schools of the  university. The fascists are upset because the trade union is getting  stronger and stronger and they can hold strikes for 9
 consecutive days!  They are upset because this trade union is defending peace and   democracy,  freedom of expression and reconciliation
 So they attack the premises   of  the trade union within the university one night last week, breaking its  windows and throwing a letter of threat, saying `they should not   strike!`  The fascists are also upset with the fact that some photos of Che   Guevara  are hanging on the walls of the premises. They threaten the trade union   to  take down the photos of Che, claiming that `his ideas cannot be   accepted  or defended!`
  The fascists are checking who is doing what, how far they are going and  `punishing` when they think it is necessary to `punish`
 The biggest  danger is how people think – therefore they must control through   `fear`
  The ones they attack are fearless but not necessarily those who are   around  them
 This is a small community and there are friends, family members,  relatives and acquaintances who could be
 frightened
 Fascists set   examples  of what might happen to you if you get out of the line
 You should be   like  all the others, think like all the others, act like all the others
  Difference and diversity in ideas is the death sentence of nationalism   and  that’s what the fascists fear
 So they check and control and punish
  And the police, instead of going after such groups, punishes and  intimidates those who `step out of line` like interrogating the Baraka  Theatre Group
 The same thing happened couple of years ago when the   editor  of YENICAG weekly newspaper, Murat Kanatli was attacked and beaten up   by  the Grey Wolves
 The police, instead of trying to find who beat him up,  came and interrogated Kanatli and even sued him for allegedly  `trespassing`
 In fact he was just following a demonstration and a   press  conference of the Grey Wolves when he got attacked and the Grey Wolves   got  the memory card of his camera. Of course, the police never recovered  
 the  memory card, nor caught any of the fascists who beat up the journalist  Murat Kanatli.  The same thing happened when Kutlu Adali, the journalist and writer of  YENIDUZEN newspaper was killed in front of his house about 10 years   ago,  in July 1996. The police did not carry out a proper investigation into   the  murder, did not try to catch the murders
 As a result, the European   Human  Rights Court found Turkey guilty of not carrying out a proper  investigation into the murder
 The police did not even bother to take  fingerprints from the murder scene
 And instead of trying to find out   who  the murderers were,  the civilian police would visit Adali’s house   every  day, intimidating the family so much that one day, the mother-in-law of  Kutlu Adali, my deceased mother, started shouting at them:  `Why are you here again? Why don’t you go and try to find the   murderers?  They are not in this house, they are outside! Why don’t you go and try   to  chase them instead
 of coming here every day and intimidating us?`  The police is not under civilian control – Turkish Cypriots cannot give  directives to the police to do something
 The Turkish Cypriot police is  still under the control of the General Staff of the Turkish Army and  that’s where they take their commands from
 That’s why the police could  never `catch` those fascists who killed Kutlu Adali, who beat up Murat  Kanatli, who bombed Afrika newspaper, who threatened journalists like  Sener Levent or the others
  When you speak with people on either side, they have an inclination to   say  `But the fascists on both sides are a small minority group!` Sure, they  are small and they are in the minority – but who uses them to threaten,   to  bomb and as in the case of Adali, even go as far as to kill? At least   in  the northern part of the island, recent history has shown us through  repeated examples that the fascists are `untouchable`
 They have the  protection of the regime in the
 north – that is very clear
  I do not live in the southern part of the island so I cannot say what’s  going on with the fascist groups like Hrisi Avgi in the southern part
   But  I know that some fascists in the south are also upset with activities  where Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots come together
 In two recent  cultural events, the tires of the cars were destroyed as `punishment`   for  attending such bi-communal events. I know that Panikos Chrysantou, the  film director, has been threatened and attacked during the making of   his  movie `Akamas`.  The writer and journalist Makarios Drusiotis also was  under attack recently, getting `hate-mail` from fascists, very similar   to  the `hate-mails` we got from fascists from the northern part
 The   rhetoric  is the same and so is the fear of the fascists: According to their  thinking, nobody must step out of line, all Greek Cypriots or all   Turkish  Cypriots must be united around just one ideal: Hellenism or
 Turkism
   There  is no space in nationalism for differences, different ideas, different  thinking
 This is the biggest threat to their survival
 So they might   be a  minority on either side of Cyprus but they attack and in the northern  part, they live under the protection of the regime
  Their extinction would only come when we have truly pluralistic   societies  where people would speak up and say without feeling under threat of   what  might happen to them, if they step out of the line
 And in the northern  part of the island, demilitarization, putting the police under civilian  control and dismantling the military structures is a must if we really  want to create a democratic and pluralistic society
    (*) Article published in PHÝLELEFTHEROS newspaper on the 16th of April,   2006.    
    

		
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