{"id":1730,"date":"2015-09-22T14:49:39","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T14:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1730"},"modified":"2015-09-24T14:57:44","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T14:57:44","slug":"the-revival-of-turkeys-lynching-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1730","title":{"rendered":"The revival of Turkey\u2019s ‘lynching’ culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

By FEHIM TA\u015eTEKIN*
\nAl Monitor<\/em><\/p>\n

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Turkey\u2019s collective memory is heavily burdened with state-provoked, politically\u00a0motivated mob violence attempts against minority groups, colloquially described as “lynching.” In recent weeks, hundreds of violent incidents have heralded the resurgence of the mob violence\u00a0culture as the country\u2019s climate grows more toxic by the day, with political actors fanning hatred and normalizing violence.<\/p>\n

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\"Members<\/a>
Members of Turkish police special forces search a suspicious car during a security patrol in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern city of Diyarbakir, Turkey, Sept. 8, 2015. (photo by REUTERS\/Sertac Kayar)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Turkey\u2019s near history, mobs targeted mainly Armenians, Syriacs, Jews, Greeks, Alevis and Kurds. As Tanil Bora, author of the book \u201cTurkey\u2019s Lynching Regime,\u201d puts it, \u201cWhen it comes to Alevis and Kurds, this has always been\u00a0a \u2018free shot\u2019 area<\/a>. The ‘lynching’ of leftists has always been permissible. Police and \u2018sensitive citizens\u2019 act on the basis of this knowledge.\u201d<\/div>\n

The latest\u00a0target of the mobs<\/a>\u00a0are the Kurds again. As of Sept. 16, a Google search with the key words \u201clynching attempt\u201d in Turkish produced some 78,800 results for the period since\u00a0July 24, when Ankara resumed military operations against the Kurdistan Workers\u00a0Party (PKK), shattering the settlement process with the armed, outlawed group.<\/p>\n

The pro-Kurdish Peoples\u2019 Democratic Party (HDP) \u2014\u00a0vilified by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) since the run-up to the\u00a0June 7\u00a0polls and always deemed an enemy by the Nationalist Action Party \u2014\u00a0has seen its offices vandalized, ransacked or torched. According to figures provided by the HDP media department, 128 party offices were attacked in the Sept. 6-11 period alone. Ordinary Kurds have not been spared either. Kurdish workers and\u00a0bus passengers, Kurds speaking Kurdish in the street, and even tanned people mistaken for Kurds have been attacked\u00a0and Kurdish-owned businesses vandalized.<\/p>\n

Turkey\u2019s past century has seen a series of pogroms and mob violence in which the state apparatus directly took part, acted as an instigator or conductor, or simply looked the other way.\u00a0The 1915 Armenian genocide,\u00a0the\u00a01914-15\u00a0massacres<\/a>\u00a0that wiped Syriacs off this geographic area,\u00a0the 1937-38 massacres<\/a>\u00a0of 13,000 Alevi Zazas in Dersim\u00a0and the deportation of 12,000 others could be seen as planned actions of the state. But the\u00a01934 pogroms in Thrace, which prompted the exodus of up to 15,000 Jews;\u00a0the Sept. 6-7, 1955, Istanbul pogroms, which saw Greek, Jewish and Armenian properties ransacked;\u00a0the\u00a01978-80\u00a0massacres<\/a>\u00a0of Alevis in Maras, Sivas and Corum;\u00a0and the 1993 torching of a hotel in Sivas\u00a0in which 37 Alevi intellectuals perished\u00a0are engraved in memory as the terrible deeds of frenzied mobs.<\/p>\n

One can hardly argue that democratic values have now advanced and this is all left in the past. The phenomenon is recurring.<\/p>\n

The first harbinger came with the 2013 Gezi Park protests as stick-wielding shopkeepers took to the streets, terrorizing the demonstrators who were challenging the government. Legitimizing the sticks, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would later famously say, \u201cWhen need be, shopkeepers are police, soldiers, combatants or guardians of the neighborhood.\u201d He went further last month, calling neighborhood mukhtars (elected district headmen)\u00a0to duty\u00a0as informers<\/a>: \u201cI know my mukhtars [are aware] what kind of people live in which house. They [need to] go to their governors or police chiefs and report this to them.\u201d This rhetoric has sanctioned another form of unlawfulness that opens the door to a new form of mob attacks at the hands of informers.<\/p>\n

As military operations against the PKK resumed, the PKK stepped up its own attacks, and funerals of policemen and soldiers became a daily routine. Easily agitated\u00a0\u201csensitive citizens\u201d and long-established nationalist groups such as the Idealist Hearths went on the rampage against Kurds, joined by a hitherto little-known group, the AKP-linked\u00a0Ottoman Hearths<\/a>. Here are several examples of the mob violence that has simmered since late July:<\/p>\n