How Dare You Not Love Ataturk?

turkey must take the prize for the most militant secularism in the world.

How dare you not love Atatürk?!
Saturday, June 14, 2008

Love cannot be imposed. If you want all citizens to appreciate Atatürk as The Father of All Turks, then you should make him the symbol of freedom and justice for all

Mustafa AKYOL
The ultra-secular camp in Turkey has just found a new reason to bolster its campaign of fear. Two young ladies wearing the much-hated Islamic headscarf showed up on a TV program, and one of them declared, “I don’t like Atatürk.” The other even said she rather has sympathy for Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution. And hell broke loose.

No, it is not just the secularist media that unleashed its wrath on these ladies, namely Nuray Bezirgan and Kevser Çakır. The prosecutors have also caught on. The other day, an Istanbul prosecutor announced that an investigation has been launched in order to file a case against these university students for violating the “Law on Crimes Against Atatürk.” If they get penalized for this “felony,” then it will mean that the level of our official thought control has been raised from orange to red. Every Turkish citizen will have to love the Eternal Leader in order to avoid jail.



Not suppressed enough?:

I think the more reasonable secularists will tell you that it will be wrong to prosecute Ms. Bezirgan and Ms. Çakır because of their remarks. Yet, they are arguing that such outrageous ideas show the severity of the “Islamic threat” to the Turkish Republic. They also say that the establishment is right in its authoritarian ways to contain religious practice. “You see,” they reason, “what will happen if we don’t sufficiently suppress these religious bigots.”

Well, could the problem rather be that those “religious bigots” have been suppressed too much?

Let’s just get back to the TV show in question to get some insight. It was journalist Fatih Altaylı who hosted Ms. Bezirgan and Ms. Çakır, who are both university students who wear the headscarf (at least outside the campus). At some point in the show, Mr. Altaylı asked them about Khomeini. Ms. Çakır said she “liked” the late Ayatollah because “he was a Muslim.” Yet when Mr. Altaylı asked them about the current regime in Iran, which is obviously suppressive, both students noted that they don’t approve of it.

The real shocking news came a minute later. Mr. Altaylı asked, “So what about Atatürk, do you love him as well?” Ms. Bezirgan responded first by asking, “Do I have the right not to love him?” And she added, “If yes, then I don’t love him.” Then she said why:

“If people are persecuting me in the name of Atatürk, you can’t expect me to love him.”

When, in return, Mr. Altaylı noted, “Atatürk fought against invasion and saved us from the British yoke,” the young lady gave a very interesting reply. “If the British were here, I actually would have much broader rights,” she said. “That’s the whole point.”

And then she further explained what her problem was with the Kemalist system in Turkey:

“A party which will defend my ideas cannot be found in Turkey. It will be banned. Yes, if any party dares to defend my view, it will be closed down… Muslims work day and night in this country in order to get their rights. Then when Parliament gives them a little right, someone comes and takes those freedoms away from us in the name of Atatürk, or the Republic.”

“What I want,” she finally said, “is a system in which I am totally free, in which my rights and freedoms are not suppressed.”

Thus, fellow columnist Yusuf Kanlı was right yesterday to point out that these ladies “want to wear Islamist attire everywhere, including state offices!” In other words, they want full equal citizenship. What a big heresy for our Republic, which openly favors secular citizens over observant ones...

for the rest of the article go here:
http://www.turkishdailynews.com.tr/a...enewsid=107231