Silenced Voice: Fikret Baskaya

Ever since the appalling genocide of the last World War, sociologists, philosophers and political theorists have strived to lay bare the anatomy of hate. The search for what gives rise to such terrifying racism and ethnic hatred has been undertaken urgently in academic circles the world over. There are many intellectuals - the France-based writer Etienne Balibar foremost among them - who believe that nationalism and racism are inextricably linked: that wherever there are national boundaries a degree of racism will inevitably co-exist. The ethnic majority will discriminate against the ethnic minority. A depressing analysis, if true, as it means that while our world is organized in the current way racism and its dire consequences will remain endemic.

A case in point

The Turkey-born writer and professor Fikret Baskaya has added his own views to this debate. His area of special interest is not surprisingly the case of the Kurds, whom he sees as victims of a "fanatical, racist nationalism" that the Turkish elite (not all Turks, he stresses) have unleashed on them. His analysis is that the Turkish government "still display the mentality of the Ottoman military elite": an imperialistic mindset that made possible such cataclysms as the destruction of Turkish Armenia.

More recently, the Turkish government, in its efforts to join the European Union, has tried to tidy up its act. Several dissident writers and journalists have been released in successive amnesties. Yet these acts of appeasement have never gone far enough in that the laws that hamper freedom of expression are still in place. Fikret Baskaya is now a case in point himself; he has fallen victim to the very mindset he has criticized. He has been sent to jail to serve a 16-month term under Article 8 of Turkey's Anti-Terror legislation.

Aged 61, Baskaya was born in Denizli and is married with two children. A graduate in economics from the University of Ankara, he continued his studies in France, analyzing political transitions at universities in both Paris and Poitier. He emerged with a doctorate, and a suite of theories regarding imperialism, socialism and capitalism; his various books and articles broach these subjects from a springboard of economic theory.

He was made a professor of the Economy of Development and International Economic Relations in Bolu, where he has since worked for most of his career. His articles chiefly appear in papers that are left-leaning or sympathetic to the plight of the Kurds: for instance, he was an enthusiastic contributor to the pro-Kurdish Ozgur Gündem, before its closure: a task not to be undertaken faint-heartedly, seeing as many of its other contributors were murdered.

The Bankruptcy of the Paradigm

In 1991, Baskaya published Westernization, Modernization and Development: The Bankruptcy of the Paradigm. He described the book as "an instruction manual for the criticism of official ideology" where the Kurds as a case study. In it he criticizes Atatürk - who many hail as the founder of modern Turkey. The latter's so-called "national struggle" is dismissed as false rhetoric constructed to camouflage a morally bankrupt policy of repressing the country's ethnic minorities. Baskaya's analysis aims to unravel the nationalistic rhetoric from the economic and practical hardships encountered by many of Turkey's inhabitants. Not surprisingly, the book was banned and a court case initiated against Baskaya. As a result, from March 1994 to July of the following year he was jailed.

His time in jail did not silence him, however. On his release he resumed his professorial and writing activities, especially his pieces for the more radical papers. He emerged as an important contributor to the theoretical underpinning for an evolving Kurdish political leadership.

His views culminated in a forceful article Is This a "Historical Trial"? published in the now-defunct Ozgür Bakis in June 1999. The trial referred to was that of the notorious PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. Baskaya does not comment on Ocalan himself, but is polemical in his description of what he terms Turkey's "lynching machine."

He argues that the events of the 1990s had already been set by the "racist-nationalistic" policies that were shaped between 1914 and 1923, a ten-year period in which the Middle East was shaken upside down by the imperial powers of Britain and in which the modern state of Turkey emerged, based on the notion of an Turkish ethnic majority. He warned the Turkish government that their past methods of dealing with the Kurdish minority, however, would not work in the current case: "Much time has passed. The Kurds are not a rural society any more, they have been urbanized. A widespread Kurdish intelligentsia has come into existence. Thus they are already at the level of forming political leadership. This is the critical point that the leaders of Turkey do not and would not wish to know. If this is so, 'solving the problem' by silencing or destroying the leadership of the movement is no longer possible."

Violation of the right to freedom of expression

His arguments were deemed "separatist propaganda" by the state and a long court case was opened against him. It culminated in a verdict of "guilty" by a court of appeal on January 26, 2001. He was give his sixteen-month sentence and told that he must begin serving it on June 29 this year. At that time he was sent to Kalecik Prison just outside Ankara, where he remains today. It is hoped that with remission he will be released before the end of his term, but his friends and family remain extremely anxious for his well-being and safety while in jail and human rights organizations such as PEN and Amnesty International regard his imprisonment as a violation of his internationally recognized right to freedom of expression.

Please write polite letters appealing for the release of Fikret Baskaya to:

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit

Basbakanlik

Cankaya

Ankara

Turkey

Fax: +(90-312) 417-0476

This article originally appeared in the Literary Review (London).