Racism in Turkey

In Turkey, racism and ethnic discrimination are present in its society and throughout its history, including institutional racism against non- Muslim and non- Sunni minorities. This appears mainly in the form of negative attitudes and actions by some people towards people who are not considered ethnically Turkic, notably Kurds, Armenians, Arabs, Assyrians, Greeks and Jews.

In recent years, racism in Turkey has increased towards rather Middle Eastern nationals such as Syrian refugees, Afghan and Pakistani migrants.

Overview

Racism and discrimination in Turkey can be traced back to the Ottoman Empire. In the 1860s Some Ottoman Turkish intellectuals such as Ali Suavi stated that:
#Turks are superior to other races in political, military and cultural aspects
#The Turkish language surpasses the European languages in its richness and excellence
#Turks constructed the Islamic civilization.

In the 1920s and 1930s racism became an influential aspect in Turkish politics which counted with the support of the Turkish Government. Through the Turkish History Thesis and the Sun Language Theory, a Turkish racial superiority was to be scientifically proven. The Turkish History Thesis claimed a Turkish racial origin of the modern European people, while the Sun Language Theory called the Turks as having been the first people to have spoken, therefore being Turkish the origin of all other languages. Congresses to promote those ideas to the western scholar world were organized in Turkey. The State Employee Law enacted in 1926 aimed at the Turkification of work life in Turkey. This law defined Turkishness as a condition which was necessary for a person who wished to become a state employee. As in 1932 Keriman Halis Ece was elected Miss Universe, the Turkish President Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) was pleased with the fact that an international jury found a woman representing the essence of the Turkish race the one. Early racists in Turkey were Nihal Atsız and Reha Oğuz Türkkan, who both competed by applying the correct way in defining Turkishness.''The Racist Critics of Atatürk and Kemalism, from the 1930s to the 1960s'', Ilker Aytürk (Bilkent University, Ankara), Journal of Contemporary History, SAGE Pub., 201

p.326 The two were charged in the Racism-Turanism trials, Racism–Turanism Trial in 1944 together with other 21 defendants which included Zeki Velidi Togan and Alparslan Türkeş. Several defendants were sentenced to jail terms, but after a retrial in October 1945 they were all acquitted. The Turkish idealist movement is influenced by Adolf Hitler's views of racism. His book '' Mein Kampf'' (), is very popular amongst right-wing politicians, and as Bülent Ecevit wanted to ban its sale in Turkey, they prevented it.

In Turkey in 2002 the Ministry of Education adopted an educational curriculum with respect to the Armenians which was widely condemned as racist and chauvinistic. The curriculum contained textbooks which included phrases such as "we crushed the Greeks" and "traitor to the nation." Thereafter, civic organizations, including the Turkish Academy of Sciences, published a study which deplored all racism and sexism in textbooks. However, a report which was published by the Minority Rights Group International (MRG) in 2015 states that the curriculum in schools continues to depict "Armenians and Greeks as the enemies of the country." Nurcan Kaya, one of the authors of the report, concluded: "The entire education system is based on Turkishness. Non-Turkish groups are either not referred to or referred in a negative way."

As of 2008 Turkey has also seen an increase in " hate crimes" which are motivated by racism, nationalism, and intolerance.Handbook of the Human Rights Agenda Association on Hate Crimes in Turkey
; accessed on 14 October 2009 According to Ayhan Sefer Üstün, the head of the parliamentary Human Rights Investigation Commission, "'' Hate speech is on the rise in Turkey, so new deterrents should be introduced to stem the increase in such crimes''". Despite provisions in the Constitution and the laws there have been no convictions for a hate crime so far, for either racism or discrimination. In Turkey since the beginning of 2006, a number of killings have been committed against people who are members of ethnic and religious minority groups, people who have a different sexual orientation and people who profess a different social/sexual identity. Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code imposes a general ban against publicly inciting people's hatred and disgust.

According to an article which was written in 2009 by Yavuz Baydar, a senior columnist for the daily newspaper the '' Zaman,'' racism and hate speech are on the rise in Turkey, particularly against Armenians and Jews. On January 12, 2009, he wrote that "If one goes through the press in Turkey, one would easily find cases of racism and hate speech, particularly in response to the deplorable carnage and suffering in Gaza. These are the cases in which there is no longer a distinction between criticizing and condemning Israel's acts and placing Jews on the firing line."Hate speech and racism: Turkey’s ‘untouchables’ on the rise, August 30, 2010, Todayszaman In 2011 Asli Çirakman asserted that there has been an apparent rise in the expression of xenophobic feeling against the Kurdish, Armenian, and Jewish presences in Turkey. Çirakman also noted that the ethno-nationalist discourse of the 2000s identifies the enemies-within as the ethnic and religious groups which reside in Turkey, such as the Kurds, the Armenians, and the Jews.

In 2011, a Pew Global Attitudes and Trends survey of 1,000 Turks found that 6% of them had a favorable opinion of Christians, and 4% of them had a favorable opinion of Jews. Earlier, in 2006, the numbers were 16% and 15%, respectively. The Pew survey also found that 72% of Turks viewed Americans as hostile, and 70% of them viewed Europeans as hostile. When asked to name the world's most violent religion, 45% of Turks cited Christianity and 41% cited Judaism, with 2% saying that it was Islam. Additionally, 65% of Turks said the Westerners were "immoral."

One of the main challenges which is facing Turkey according to the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) is the need to reconcile the strong sense of national identity and the wish to preserve the unity and integrity of the State with the right of different minority groups to express their own senses of ethnic identity within Turkey, for example, the right of a minority group to develop its own sense of ethnic identity through the maintenance of that ethnic identity's linguistic and cultural aspects.

In a recent discovery by the Armenian newspaper ''Agos'', secret racial codes were used to classify minority communities in the country. According to the racial code, which is believed to be established during the foundations of the republic in 1923, Greeks are classified under the number 1, Armenians 2, and Jews 3. Altan Tan, a deputy of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), believed that such codes were always denied by Turkish authorities but stated that "if there is such a thing going on, it is a big disaster. The state illegally profiling its own citizens based on ethnicity and religion, and doing this secretly, is a big catastrophe".

According to research which was conducted by Istanbul Bilgi University, with the support of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK) between 2015 and 2017, 90 percent of youths said they would not want their daughters to marry someone who was "from the 'other' group." While 80 percent of youths said they would not want to have a neighbor who was from the "other," 84 percent said they would not want their children to be friends with children who were from the "other" group. 84 percent said they would not do business with members of the "other" group. 80 percent said they would not hire anyone who was from the "other." Researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with young people between the ages of 18 and 29. When they were asked to state which groups they most perceived to be the "other," they ranked homosexuals first with 89 percent, atheists and nonbelievers ranked second with 86 percent, people from other faiths ranked third with 82 percent, minorities stood at 75 percent and extremely religious people ranked fifth with 74 percent.

Against Kurds

Mahmut Esat Bozkurt, a former Minister of Justice claimed in 1930 the superiority of the Turkish race over the Kurdish one, and permitted non-Turks only the right to be servants and slaves.

The Zilan massacre of 1930Christopher Houston, ''Islam, Kurds and the Turkish nation state'', Berg Publishers, 2001,
p. 102.
/ref> Freedom of the Press
Freedom of the Press 2010 Draft Report
p. 2. Ahmet Alış, "The Process of the Politicization of the Kurdish Identity in Turkey: The Kurds and the Turkish Labor Party (1961–1971)", Atatürk Institute for Modern Turkish History, Boğaziçi University
p. 73.
was a massacre of the Kurdish residents of Turkey during the Ararat rebellion in which 800–1500 armed men participated. According to the daily ''Cumhuriyet'' dated July 16, 1930, about 15,000 people were killed and Zilan River was filled with dead bodies as far as its mouth.Yusuf Mazhar, ''Cumhuriyet'', 16 Temmuz 1930, ''... Zilan harekatında imha edilenlerin sayısı 15.000 kadardır. Zilan Deresi ağzına kadar ceset dolmuştur...'' Ahmet Kahraman, ''ibid'', p. 211, '' Karaköse, 14 (Özel muhabirimiz bildiriyor) ...'' Ayşe Hür
"Osmanlı'dan bugüne Kürtler ve Devlet-4"
, ''Taraf'', October 23, 2008, Retrieved August 16, 2010. Ayşe Hür
"Bu kaçıncı isyan, bu kaçıncı harekât?"
, ''Taraf'', December 23, 2007, Retrieved August 16, 2010. On August 31, 1930, the daily '' Milliyet'' published the declaration of the Turkish prime minister İsmet İnönü: "Only the Turkish nation has the right to demand ethnic and racial rights in this country. Any other element does not have such a right. They are Eastern Turkish who were deceived by unfounded propaganda and eventually lost their way."

Kurds have had a long history of discrimination and massacres which have been perpetrated against them by the Turkish government. One of the most significant is the Dersim rebellion, where according to an official report of the Fourth General Inspectorate, 13,160 civilians were killed by the Turkish Army and 11,818 people were taken into exile, depopulating the province in 1937–38."Resmi raporlarda Dersim katliamı: 13 bin kişi öldürüldü"
''Radikal'', November 19, 2009. According to the Dersimi, many tribesmen were shot dead after surrendering, and women and children were locked into haysheds which were then set on fire. David McDowall states that 40,000 people were killedDavid McDowall, ''A modern history of the Kurds'', I.B.Tauris, 2002, , p. 209. while sources of the Kurdish Diaspora claim over 70,000 casualties.

In an attempt to deny their existence, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until 1991. Other than that, various historical Kurdish personalities were tried to be Turkified by claiming that there is no race called Kurdish and that the Kurds do not have a history. Since then, the Kurdish population of Turkey has long sought to have Kurdish included as a language of instruction in public schools as well as a subject. Several attempts at opening Kurdish instruction centers were stopped on technical grounds, such as wrong dimensions of doors. Turkish sources claimed that running Kurdish-language schools was wound up in 2004 because of 'an apparent lack of interest'. Even though Kurdish language schools have started to operate, many of them have been forced to shut down due to over-regulation by the state. Kurdish language institutes have been monitored under strict surveillance and bureaucratic pressure. Using Kurdish language as main education language is illegal in Turkey. It is accepted only as subject courses.

Kurdish is permitted as a subject in universities, some of those are only language courses while others are graduate or post-graduate Kurdish literature and language programs.

Due to the large number of Turkish Kurds, successive governments have viewed the expression of a Kurdish identity as a potential threat to Turkish unity, a feeling that has been compounded since the armed rebellion initiated by the PKK in 1984. One of the main accusations of cultural assimilation relates to the state's historic suppression of the Kurdish language. Kurdish publications created throughout the 1960s and 1970s were shut down under various legal pretexts. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in government institutions.Toumani, Meline
Minority Rules
''New York Times'', 17 February 2008

In April 2000, US Congressman Bob Filner spoke of a "cultural genocide", stressing that "a way of life known as Kurdish is disappearing at an alarming rate". Mark Levene suggests that the genocidal practices were not limited to cultural genocide, and that the events of the late 19th century continued until 1990. In 2019, Deutsche Welle reported that Kurds had been increasingly subject to violent hate crimes.

Certain academics have claimed that successive Turkish governments adopted a sustained genocide program against Kurds, aimed at their assimilation. The genocide hypothesis remains, however, a minority view among historians, and is not endorsed by any nation or major organisation. Desmond Fernandes, a senior lecturer at De Montfort University, breaks the policy of the Turkish authorities into the following categories:

# Forced assimilation program, which involved, among other things, a ban of the Kurdish language, and the forced relocation of Kurds to non-Kurdish areas of Turkey.
# The banning of any organizations opposed to category one.
# The violent repression of any Kurdish resistance.

In January 2013, the Turkish parliament passed a law that permits use of the Kurdish language in the courts, albeit with restrictions. The law was passed by votes of the ruling AKP and the pro-Kurdish rights opposition party BDP, against criticism from the secularist CHP party and the nationalist MHP, with MHP and CHP deputies nearly coming to blows with BDP deputies over the law. In spite of their support in the parliament, the BDP was critical of the provision in the law that the defendants will pay for the translation fees and that the law applies only to spoken defense in court but not to a written defense or the pre-trial investigation. According to one source the law does not comply with EU standards. Deputy prime minister of Turkey Bekir Bozdağ replied to criticism of the law from both sides saying that the fees of defendants who does not speak Turkish will be paid by the state, while, those who speak Turkish yet prefer to speak in the court in another language will have to pay the fees themselves. European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Füle welcomed the new law.

In February 2013, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said during a meeting with Muslim opinion leaders, that he has "positive views" about imams delivering sermons in Turkish, Kurdish or Arabic, according to the most widely spoken language among the mosque attendees. This move received support from Kurdish politicians and human rights groups.

Against Arabs

Turkey has a history of strong anti-Arabism, which has been on a significant rise because of the Syrian refugee crisis. Haaretz reported that anti-Arabian racism in Turkey mainly affects two groups; tourists from the Gulf who are characterized as "rich and condescending" and the Syrian refugees in Turkey. Haaretz also reported that anti-Syrian sentiment in Turkey is metastasizing into a general hostility toward all Arabs including the Palestinians. Deputy Chairman of the İyi Party warned that Turkey risked becoming "a Middle Eastern country" because of the influx of refugees.

Against Armenians

Although it was possible for Armenians to achieve status and wealth in the Ottoman Empire, as a community, they were accorded a status as second-class citizens (under the Millet system) and were regarded as fundamentally alien to the Muslim character of Ottoman society. In 1895, demands for reform among the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire lead to Sultan Abdul Hamid's decision to suppress them resulting in the Hamidian massacres in which up to 300,000 Armenians were killed and many more tortured. Akçam, Taner (2006) '' A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility'' p. 42, Metropolitan Books, New York Hamidian Massacres
Armenian Genocide. In 1909, a massacre of Armenians in the city of Adana resulted in a series of anti-Armenian pogroms throughout the district resulting in the deaths of 20,000–30,000 Armenians. During World War I, the Ottoman government massacred between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians in the Armenian genocide. The position of the current Turkish government, however, is that the Armenians who died were casualties of the expected hardships of war, the casualties cited are exaggerated, and that the 1915 events could not be considered a genocide. This position has been criticized by international genocide scholars, and by 28 governments, which have resolutions affirming the genocide.

The incident of The Twenty Classes was a policy used by the Turkish government to conscript the male non-Turkish minority population mainly consisting of Armenians, Greeks and Jews during World War II. All of the twenty classes consisted of male minority population, including the elders and mentally ill. They were given no weapons and quite often they did not even wear military uniforms. These non-Muslims were gathered in labor battalions where no Turks were enlisted. They were allegedly forced to work under very bad conditions. The prevailing and widespread point of view on the matter was that wishing to partake in the World War II, Turkey gathered in advance all unreliable non-Turkish men regarded as a “fifth column”.

Varlık Vergisi ("Wealth tax" or "Capital tax") was a Turkish tax levied on the wealthy citizens of Turkey in 1942, with the stated aim of raising funds for the country's defense in case of an eventual entry into World War II. The bill for the one-off tax was proposed by the Şükrü Saracoğlu government, and the act was adopted by the Turkish parliament on November 11, 1942. It was imposed on the fixed assets, such as landed estates, building owners, real estate brokers, businesses, and industrial enterprises of all citizens, including the minorities. However, those who suffered most severely were non-Muslims like the Jews, Greeks and Armenians who controlled a large portion of the economy. Though it was the Armenians who were most heavily taxed.

Some difficulties currently experienced by the Armenian minority in Turkey are a result of an anti-Armenian attitude by ultra-nationalist groups such as the Grey Wolves. According to Minority Rights Group, while the government officially recognizes Armenians as minorities but when used in public, this term denotes second-class status. In Turkey, the term 'Armenian' has often been used as an insult. Kids are taught at a young age to hate Armenians and the "Armenian" and several people have been prosecuted for calling public figures and politicians as such.

In February 2004, the journalist Hrant Dink published an article in the Armenian newspaper ''Agos'' titled "The Secret of Sabiha Hatun" in which a former Gaziantep resident, Hripsime Sebilciyan, claimed to be Sabiha Gökçen's niece, implying that the Turkish nationalist hero Gökçen had Armenian ancestry. The mere notion that Gökçen could have been Armenian caused an uproar throughout Turkey as Dink himself even came under fire, most notably by newspaper columnists and Turkish ultra-nationalist groups, which labeled him a traitor.Cable reference id: #04ISTANBUL374
10 March 2004. A US consul dispatch leaked by WikiLeaks and penned by an official from the consulate in Istanbul observed that the entire affair "exposed an ugly streak of racism in Turkish society."

In 2004, Belge Films, the film's distributor in Turkey pulled the release of Atom Egoyan's '' Ararat'' film, about the Armenian genocide, after receiving threats from the Ülkü Ocakları, an ultra nationalist organization.Gray Wolves Spoil Turkey's Publicity Ploy on ''Ararat''
/ref> This organization was behind similar threat campaigns against the Armenian community in the past. In 1994, hate mail signed by Ülkü Ocakları was sent to Armenian owned businesses and private homes describing Armenians as 'parasites' and that the massacres of the past will resume. The letters also concluded by saying: "Do not forget: Turkey belongs only to the Turks. We will free Turkey of this exploitation. Don’t force us to send you to Yerevan! So leave now, before we do! Or else, it will boil down, as our Prime Minister (Tansu Çiller.) said, to: ‘either you put an end to it, or else we will.’ That is a final warning!"

Hrant Dink, the editor of the ''Agos'' weekly Armenian newspaper, was assassinated in Istanbul on January 19, 2007, by Ogün Samast. He was reportedly acting on the orders of Yasin Hayal, a militant Turkish ultra-nationalist. For his statements on Armenian identity and the Armenian genocide, Dink had been prosecuted three times under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for "insulting Turkishness." He had also received numerous death threats from Turkish nationalists who viewed his "iconoclastic" journalism (particularly regarding the Armenian genocide) as an act of treachery.

The term 'Armenian' is frequently used in politics to discredit political opponents. In 2008, Canan Arıtman, a deputy of İzmir from the Republican People's Party (CHP), called President Abdullah Gül an 'Armenian'. Arıtman was then prosecuted for "insulting" the president. Similarly, in 2010, Turkish journalist Cem Büyükçakır approved a comment on his website claiming that President Abdullah Gül's mother was an Armenian. Büyükçakır was then sentenced to 11 months in prison for “insulting President bdullahGül”.

İbrahim Şahin and 36 other alleged members of Turkish ultra-nationalist Ergenekon group were arrested in January, 2009 in Ankara. The Turkish police said the round-up was triggered by orders Şahin gave to assassinate 12 Armenian community leaders in Sivas. According to the official investigation in Turkey, Ergenekon also had a role in the murder of Hrant Dink.

In 2010, during a football match between Bursaspor and Beşiktaş J.K., fans of Bursaspor chanted: "Armenian dogs support Beşiktaş". The chant was presumably in reference to the fact that Alen Markaryan, the leader of the Beşiktaş fan base, is of Armenian descent.

Sevag Balikci, a Turkish soldier of Armenian descent, was shot dead on April 24, 2011, the day of the commemoration of the Armenian genocide, during his military service in Batman. Through his Facebook profile, it was discovered that killer Kıvanç Ağaoğlu was an ultra-nationalist, and a sympathizer of nationalist politician Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu and Turkish agent / contract killer Abdullah Çatlı, who himself had a history of anti-Armenian activity, such as the Armenian Genocide Memorial bombing in a Paris suburb in 1984. His Facebook profile also showed that he was a Great Union Party

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