By: BURAK BEKDİL

burak.bekdil@hurriyet.com.tr

The laboratories that can perform blood tests to check a human being’s Turkishness are becoming a niche market. That is a business imperative in a country where tens of millions of people are accused of being traitors and terrorists. Naturally, they are not Turks, given the scientific fact that a Turk cannot be a traitor or a terrorist. 

No doubt, a new market is emerging after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the Turkish German MPs who voted in favor of the Armenian genocide resolution in the Bundestag “should go to a lab and check the Turkishness of their blood.”

After the recent jihadist’s attack at a gay club in Orlando, a Turkish Islamist daily newspaper announced the massacre in a headline that said “50 perverts killed in a bar in the U.S.” A better headline could have been “Muslim hero kills 50 perverts.”

On Wednesday, the Alperen Hearths, an ultranationalist youth organization, threatened the LGBT Pride March set to take place on June 26 in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. The Alperens’ threat came shortly after a similar threat made by an Islamist youth group, the Anatolia Muslim Youth Association, which said it would “stop the perversion.” 

The Alperens, with 100 percent tested top quality Turkish blood, basically said:

– We will take all necessary risks and we will stop the march.

– We don’t want them to walk naked on the sacred soil of our country in the blessed month of Ramadan.

– This is not normal freedom. We are issuing a warning and we are not responsible for what will happen after this point.

– The Alperens will give a “very clear and harsh response” if the state did not intervene in the march.

The Alperen Hearths claim that they are the representatives of the people and their duties (such as attacking gays) were passed to them from their ancestors. In the Turkish ultra-nationalist jargon, “our ancestors” often refer to the glorious old times. The Alperens probably don’t know (or want to know) that there is a rich international literature showing how common pederasty was in the society. Some sources quote Halil İnalcık, a prominent professor of history, as saying that “homosexuality was a custom accepted by the society.”

Unsurprisingly, the Alperens stated that it is their religious duty to command good and forbid evil, by force if necessary. Sadly, the Pride March falls into this category: It must be forbidden, by force if necessary. If the state does not stop the perverts, the pure 100 percent-DNA Turks will do.

The Alperens are not the first group adding to an already too rich literature of incidents forcefully exhibiting two ugly asymmetries: 1- Pluralism and Islamist thinking are an oxymoron. 2- Islamists will typically advocate majoritarianism in lands where they are the majority (including majoritarian practices by force, if necessary) but defend minority rights in lands where they are in a minority (as in Europe, for example).
In the Alperens’ public statement, the key line was: “We don’t want them [the other] on the sacred soil of our country.” This is just like a European neo-Nazi saying: We don’t want Muslims on the sacred soil of our country. Right? Right. What would an Alperen say to that? Fascists, Islamophobes, uncivilized monsters!
Alperens and the likes of them will probably never be able to understand that a gay parade will not make them “perverts.” A church sitting at the heart of a Muslim city will not make its Muslims Christian. Really, could a laboratory run blood tests and find out why these people are so afraid of “conversion to perversion” just by the sight of “the other”?

June/17/2016