“A homeland that wants to kill us”

Izmir, 1714. Engraving by Henri Abraham Chatelain. Wikicommons/Atlas historique, Public domain.

Responding to your kind invitation to a conference,

30 years
ago, I was a leftist university student, living in exactly the same house that
I am living in now, then with my mother. I remember how much my mother worried
each time our doorbell rang from downstairs. Neither she nor I felt safe in our
own house. And the threat came not from some criminal gang but the “security
forces.” The tragedy or the irony of the matter is that three decades on, I
still feel unsafe in the same house for exactly the same reason.

In the
1980s, the Turkish regime was struggling to move forward, leaving behind years
of a brutal military junta, or so we, democrats, wanted to believe.
Nevertheless, the political climate was difficult to cope with. So, one day,
during my third year of law school, I had to pack my bags to say goodbye to my
home, my city, my mother and my motherland. I lived as a refugee in the UK for
a long time but my mind and heart have always been here with Turkey. Recently,
I returned as an academic, a political scientist, whose main aim was to lead a
peaceful life, while contributing as much as I could to the peace process
between the government and the Kurdish movement. While in exile, I had had the
opportunity to focus on the national question, particularly the Kurdish and
Irish questions, and I learnt through first-hand experience that what Karl Marx
had to say almost two centuries back is truer than ever: “A people that oppresses
others cannot be free”.

You are
probably aware of the current situation in Turkey. But please allow me to narrate
my account of what has happened since January 2016. As the peace process
collapsed and Turkish forces launched a genocidal campaign in Kurdish
provinces, I signed a petition along with 1128 scholars stating simply that “we
are not going to be part of this crime”. The petition also included a call to
recommence the peace talks. Since then, we have been the target of a hate
campaign concerted personally by President Erdoğan. Hundreds of signatories
around the country were sacked from academic positions; many were harassed by
their nationalist colleagues and students. Erdoğan repeatedly accused us of
treason and an infamous gang leader (Sedat Peker) declared that he would “bathe
with our blood”. The police raided many offices inside universities and houses
of signatories around the country. Officially, our court trials for charges of
treason continue while most of us have already been penalised by the university
administrations that we work in.

In Izmir
where I live and work, a parliamentary deputy listed our names in a local daily
as “the enemies of the city”, and death threats immediately began to appear,
particularly in social media. The Izmir branch of an ultra-nationalist
paramilitary group publicised the names and pictures of Izmir’s signatories
with serious threats and accusations. The threats have been going hand in hand
with isolation. Instead of showing solidarity, many of my colleagues stopped
hailing me in public. Most recently, the supreme administrative institution of
Turkish universities (YÖK) has blocked my application for associate
professorship. An old friend from my student years commented once that during
those days we were treated by the people as if we were characters from
Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed”. It is not easy to become “possessed” again after
so many years.

This hatred
overdose and systematic lynch campaign is something that none of us were
prepared for. We are civilian citizens whose only “crime” is to demand peace.
The first reason why I am reluctant to attempt to leave the country for this
conference is rather tragic. Since the alleged coup attempt of July 2016, the
authorities, without a court decision or legal notice, have been stopping
people at the airport, taking their passports away and arresting them. Some
peace signatories have also been stopped and arrested this way by the border
police. What is even worse is that these scholars, who were stopped on their
way to academic events, have then been defamed by the pro-government media as
if they were captured while trying to flee the country. This is why I am very
reluctant to attempt to cross the Turkish border to attend this conference.

The second
reason is harder to explain. I guess, my unconscious knows something that my
ego prefers to deny: that if I leave, once in safety, I may choose to stay.
Although, the danger of persecution is undeniably present, my heart is probably
too weak to say farewell a second time to my loved ones, my home, my city, my
cat, mother and my motherland.

Returning to my apartment’s
history, after so many years of struggle and hopes for democracy, each time my
doorbell rings from downstairs I am unfortunately as jumpy as I was 30 years
ago. Certainly, it is usually a friend or a salesman but it could well be the
local fascist gangs or, even worse, the Turkish police. This is the short story
of how I learnt the truth of what novelist Tezer Özlü had to say in the 70s:
“This is not our land, but the land of those who want to kill us”.

In conclusion, I beg you to accept my apologies for my absence and ask you to
read this letter to the conference participants instead of my presentation.