By Uzay Bulut
In Turkey, a NATO member and a candidate for the European Union, citizens are systematically persecuted or even murdered for having been born non-Turkish or non-Muslim.
For decades, the Turkish government and much of the Turkish public have victimized millions of people – Jews, Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds and Alevis. Here are six victims whose life stories I hope will give you an idea about what it means to live as a minority member in Turkey.
Yasef Yahya
Yasef Yahya, 39, a Jewish dentist from Turkey, was brutally murdered on Aug. 21, 2003 in the Şişli district of Istanbul. Yahya was married with two children – a 6-year-old boy and a 6-month-old girl.
Ishak Ibrahimzadeh, the leader of the Jewish community in Turkey, commemorated the death of Yahya with a message posted on Twitter: “13 years ago today, they have murdered the dentist, our Yasef, because they realized he was Jewish from his name.”
The perpetrators were members of an Islamist terrorist organization. Adem Cetinkaya, one of the murderers, told the police that he and his colleagues had needed money for the new organization that they wished to form.
Scholar Rifat Bali said that Cetinkaya made the following confession: “For a long time, we had thought about [carrying out some] action against the Jews. The nameplate of a dentist in Şişli attracted our attention. We spoke [among ourselves] saying, ‘We’ve got to kill this Jew.’”
According to police reports, Yahya was found in a bathroom with his hands and feet tied with clothesline. Women’s stockings were put in his mouth and his head was leaned toward the bathtub; he was then shot with one bullet to the head.
His wife found his lifeless body.
The murderers also took Yahya’s telephone notebook and called the people inside who had Jewish-sounding names, harassing and threatening them, and demanding money from them. In fear, many Jewish lawyers and doctors in Istanbul removed the signs on their offices in order not to have the same fate as Yahya.
Yahya was only one of the victims of Turkish-Islamic anti-Semitism. During the 93-year history of the Turkish Republic, Jews in Turkey have been subjected to various pressures, discrimination and even pogroms. According to the 2015 Anti-Defamation League Global 100 Poll, 71 percent of the Turkish adult population harbors anti-Semitic attitudes.
Lefter Küçükandonyadis
Lefter Küçükandonyadis (1924 – 2012) was born the son of a fisherman on the island of Büyükada in Istanbul. He grew up with 10 brothers and sisters. He transferred to the Turkish football team Fenerbahçe in 1947 in order to be able to buy medicine for his sick father, and achieved instant success.
He was capped 50 times for the Turkish national football team, and was the captain nine times. He was the top scorer for Turkey for decades, but he had a giant fault, even a crime: He was of Greek origin.
When he was 17, the Turkish government enacted the Wealth Tax Law that targeted non-Muslims. Those who were unable to pay the tax were sent to labor camps; the government seized their properties or they were deported.
Journalist Can Dündar reported that author Nebil Ozgenturk, who made a documentary film about Küçükandonyadis, asked him about what his family went through during the Wealth Tax Law.
Küçükandonyadis, a legendary footballer at age 87, did not want to or could not make comments on the record – even 70 years after the Wealth Tax Law – and asked the director to turn off the cameras. Leaning to Ozgenturk’s ear, Küçükandonyadis said, “They made my father suffer so much, too. He was saved from being sent on exile because of his poverty, but all of my family had to leave Turkey.”
Another huge blow to the Greek community was the pogrom on Sept. 6 – 7, 1955. During the pogrom, Greek homes, shops, churches, monasteries, cemeteries, schools and newspapers were sacked, plundered, vandalized and, in some cases, destroyed. The Greeks were the main targets of the pogrom. But the Armenians and Jews of Istanbul were also attacked.
Samuel Agop Uluçyan
Sami Hazinses (1925 – 2002) was a well-known Turkish actor, composer and songwriter from Turkey. His real name was Samuel Agop Uluçyan, but he never used it. He was also an Armenian – a reality he tried to hide his entire life. The online newspaper Duvar recently covered his heart-rending story.
Uluçyan was born in the Herêdan village of the Piran (Dicle) district of Diyarbakir, which is called Dikranagerd or Dikrisagerd by the Armenian community. In one of his rare interviews in 1994 – conducted by Yelda Özcan, a prominent human rights activist and journalist – he was asked about his real ethnic identity.
The conversation started bitterly, as Uluçyan did not want to speak about his Armenian origins.
“You don’t want to speak about being an Armenian?,” Özcan asked.
“Never!” Uluçyan said.
“So you don’t want your Armenian identity to be known?”
“Who told you I am an Armenian?”
When the interviewer, who also comes from Dikranagerd (Diyarbakir), insisted, Uluçyan accepted his Armenian origins, saying: “The love they [the Turks] have for me would go away. That’s why I don’t want [my ethnic roots to be known]. Don’t write these things now. First let me die. After I die, you can write them. For now, forget about it.”
Özcan published the interview in 2003, a year after Uluçyan died.
In the same year of this interview, 1994, the Armenian International Magazine quoted an Armenian of Istanbul as saying “We are guests here. If they say we have to leave, there is nothing we can do about it.”
It was undoubtedly this atmosphere of fear that kept Uluçyan from fully embracing his identity. In Turkey, even the word “Armenian” is used as a swear word by many people – including government and military authorities. Being Armenian is no easy task.
Even 101 years after the 1915 Armenian genocide, Turkey’s hatred for Armenians does not seem to be subsiding. Attacks against Armenians in Turkey include mostly harassment, threat of violence, racist insults and, of course, brutal murders.
For instance, on Dec. 28, 2012, 85-year-old Armenian woman Maritsa Kucuk was beaten and stabbed to death in her home in Istanbul, where she lived alone. Her son Zadig Kucuk, who found her dead body at home, said that a cross had been carved on her chest.
Given Turkey’s 1915 Armenian genocide and the continued denial of it and all other deadly attacks against Armenians, as well as the extreme hatred toward them – both in the Turkish media and much of the Turkish society – Uluçyan had good reasons to hide his Armenian origins.
Read more: https://philosproject.org/turkeys-main-fields-expertise/