If you asked a man in the street in Turkey what racism means, you would probably receive a vague answer and some random examples rather than a conceptual definition. These examples most probably would refer to other countries, like the United States and European countries, but not Turkey at all!

For us, racism is what the white man did to the black man. Racism is just an image for us haunting our memories from the film “Roots”. It is the picture of the white man who was whipping a black guy: “Say your name nigger”, “My name is Kunta Kinte”, “Your name is Toby boy”, until at last, after hours of lashing, Kunta Kinte gives in and says “my name is Toby sir!” This is the only form of racism we know.

I have never come across any Turkish person who considers himself a racist. However, racist remarks are just flying in the air in the daily conversations in this country. Our language is full of racist remarks. For example, Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, is called an “Armenian seed” (Ermeni Dölü). If you consider how much Öcalan is hated in this country then you can imagine how “flattering” being an “Armenian seed” may be. “Jews are cowards!” “Arabs are back stabbing people”! Not to mention very offensive vocabulary about the Roma people!

I observe that Turkish people who use racist remarks either as a part of their ultranationalist identity or inadvertently, as a part of their protest against the “games of Imperialist” powers in this country, also have a strong sense of being a victim. They are Kunta Kintes, not the white guy who has the whip in his hand! All this anger and hate arises from this feeling of being the victim – a victim of imperialism, a victim of conspiracies! Where does this distorted identity come from? We have never been colonized, never been captured, none of the Turkish states formed on this territory have been broken up by foreign forces ever! On the contrary, the Ottoman Empire once was the most powerful and feared political entity on the planet!

I do not want to explain at length or analyze the Turkish identity (not in this article at least) but would like to say that being the victim is so deeply rooted in our identities that we cannot consider ourselves as violators. For example, most Turks think we were stabbed in the back by the Greeks, Bulgarians, Romanians and others who declared their independence from the Ottoman Empire. It is very strange, is not it, that a nation that puts so much emphasis on its own independence is so angry with the Ottoman Empire's ex-subjects for their separation from the Empire and for their declarations of independence.

I believe this feeling of ‘being a victim' serves as a kind of block in our collective unconscious. It is a way of turning upside down some historical facts in this country. It is a way of not confronting what had happened to non-Muslim citizens of this country. “I am the victim, not the Armenian, or Greek, or Jew!” Today we still have this feeling and it is getting stronger. We are again the victims of the Western powers' conspiracies against us! We are the Kunta Kintes of the modern times, surrounded by enemies and about to be victimized again by the white man! Are we really!?

Q&A How is the “hate speech” regulated by the Turkish Law?

As I explained in my previous articles for this column, we have a serious problem of “hate speech” in Turkey, especially directed toward minorities. We have an article in the Turkish Penal Code, which punishes incitement to hatred, Article 216 which replaced Article 312 of the former Penal Code. Article 216 reads as follows: (1) A person who openly incites groups of the population to breed enmity or hatred towards one another based on social class, race, religion, sect or regional difference in a manner, which might constitute a clear and imminent danger to public order shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of one to three years.

(2) A person who openly denigrates part of the population on grounds of social class, race, religion, sect, gender or regional differences shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of six months to one year.

(3) A person who openly denigrates the religious values of a part of the population shall be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of six months to one year in the case that the act is likely to disturb public peace.

I have never witnessed the application of this article to punish ‘hate speech' directed against the minorities. Instead it has been systematically applied to punish those who claim that in Turkey there are minorities or different ‘peoples' other than Turks. By saying this they are supposed to be ‘inciting hatred' within the society! But I have never seen this article pressed by prosecutors against those who really incite hatred towards Protestants, Armenians, Greeks, Jews and others! We Turks are the only Kunta Kintes in the world!

orhan.kemal@tdn.com.tr

An odd article created by a Turk, yet many of the perspectives, observations, seem to be that of a pessimist who hangs out with uneducated Turks in villages or something. This Orhan Kemal Cengiz seems to think that it's OK to write the N-word in an article on TurkishDailyNews.com, but then continues a diatribe of how Turks are racist and how they don't care. Has anyone seen a worse hypocrite?

He makes accusations that Turks are racist, by citing examples like "Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, is called an “Armenian seed” (Ermeni Dölü)". From the friends in Turkey that our AGH team knows, and of course the Turkish members of the AGH team, who have visited Turkey numerous times or live there, we know that not in the news or in the streets or among friends do Turks call Abdullah Öcalan as an "Armenian seed", and it appears to be a rare insult, and even the term for seed used "Döl" is even uncommon. An assumption can be made that the writer of the article heard it once by a friend, and then automatically assumed every Turk uses the insult and automatically is a racist.

Another example:

This is completely false, many Turks consider the Arab states that revolted as the "back-stabbers" because they were both Islamic nations at the time, and the Arab Islamic states decided to follow the directives of the British and the British used their divide and conquer strategy to destroy the Ottoman Empire (Not that it was a great empire anymore anyway, remember "The Sick Man Of Europe"). They consider the Arab states as traitors, not because they are unhappy that the Ottoman Empire is gone, but because it is wrong to back stab an empire that you lived in peace for 700 years, and of course, today, the Middle East is full of warfare, hate, and suffering, thus it is safe to assume that many Turks are laughing at the Arab states for betraying them so long ago for very minor reasons.

However, considering a lot of Turks are very religious, they cannot help but respect their Arab "brothers". Of course there are just as many if not more Turks today who really don't like the Arabs because they are exporting their extreme version of Islam into Turkey and corrupting their people to wear head-scarves and commit horrible primitive crimes like "honor killings" etc. This is all a result of Iran and Saudi Arabia's export of their extreme versions of Sunni and Shia religions.

Turks however, have absolutely no hate or anger for Bulgarians or Romanians. The Bulgarians were allied with the Ottomans in WWI, so I don't see where Orhan's assumptions are coming from. The only hate between Greeks and Turks is usually minor anger over territorial tensions in the past 70 years, as well as the Cyprus conflict where Greeks seem to not care about the Turkish Cypriots who suffered. However, even in the last earthquake of 1999 in Istanbul, Greeks sent over aid and workers to help the Turks, and even Greek troops were allowed to play war games on Turkish land. So the hate between Greeks and Turks is mostly over, though some uneducated people might continue to infest their hate on others.

Orhan Kemal Cengiz puts up False Examples of Turkish Racism

None of the AGH team members or their friends have heard of Jewish racism or hate by Turks. In fact, the Jews are the closest friends of Turks, especially in a world that seems to grow with Anti-Turkish hatred. As explained above, Turks do not really feel the Arabs are back stabbers, only if Arabs criticize Turks, does this kind of comment even come out from the mouth of a Turk. Most Turks are religious so they feel the Arabs are their brothers. Some are angry about the terrorism and the exportation of extreme versions of religion by Saudi Arabia and Iran. And no one in the AGH team or other Turkish friends have heard of "offensive vocabulary about the Roma people." No one seems to know what this Orhan Kemal Cengiz is blabbing about.

Orhan Kemal Cengiz points out Turkish Fears

Sure some Turks believe that Western nations have for centuries conducted acts of imperialism towards the East, taking their oil, selling weapons to both sides in wars, exploiting trade deals and diplomacy. However, Orhan Kemal Cengiz explains by telling us:

That's odd, I could swear that every history book in the planet tells us about the capture of Istanbul by the British, and the invasion of Russia and Armenia that conquered most of Van province (currently Turkish). Or the French invasion of South Eastern Turkey, along with battalions of Armenian volunteers thirsty for revenge and Turkish victims whom they massacred in the thousands. Or how bout the many countries that the Russians "freed" in the Balkans, where Christians massacred Muslims and drove the refugees to the Anatolia. These were all history of the Turks, but sure we are taught not to hate others, and even in Turkish classes students are taught to refer to war combatants as "enemies" not as their ethnic or religious names, which makes sure Turkish students are not racist or hateful towards anyone. The British, French, and the Russians were the foreign forces that were breaking up Turkish territories.

As we can see here, Orhan Kemal Cengiz has absolutely minimal knowledge of history. It is safe to assume that we should be careful when Orhan Kemal Cengiz tells us stories.

Orhan Kemal Cengiz's Criticism of Turkish Law

Of course Orhan Kemal Cengiz ends his article with a diatribe of more disinformation and political diatribe:

Apparently, Orhan Kemal Cengiz has "witnessed" thousands of court cases in Turkey and knows exactly how many times this law is applied to minorities hating Turks versus Turks hating minorities. This is a false misconception that he fabricated to make the reader think that Turks feel that Turks cannot be racist or hateful, and that's just ridiculous. In fact, in politics of Turkey today, Turks of about 200+ political parties continuously hate and fight each other over a large arsenal of issues. If anything one can say, based on a perspective that the Turks hate each other the most.

Orhan Kemal Cengiz's Real Intentions Revealed

Orhan Kemal Cengiz, seems to show exactly how he feels about Turks, and reveals his true intentions of the article, to show that Turks want to twist history and cannot confront the realities of their past. It is a platform for which the author can easily later push a point of view to readers that Turks are in fact perpetrators of several genocides, simply because they are "evil". It is like as if he is trying to create the misconception, that an ethnicity has a specific and unique emotion and thinking, so that Orhan Kemal Cengiz can collectively lump all Turks under one group, under one generalization.

Orhan Kemal Cengiz's Hatred

Orhan Kemal Cengiz, seems to be extremely hateful and racist himself towards Turks in his article, by making assumptions, by fabricating rumors about Turks, and exaggerating Turkish behavior. It seems like his perspective is exactly identical to Armenian writers who create diatribes about Turkish hate and Turkish people to portray them as "evil" or "genocidal maniacs" or "barbarians" all to further push their point of view of the Armenian Genocide allegations. It is indeed possible that Orhan Kemal Cengiz is actually a nickname of an Armenian activist who is trying to push a political and nationalistic agenda that "Turks are inherently evil".

Orhan Kemal Cengiz's Propaganda Techniques

This generalization of Turks by Orhan Kemal Cengiz, is the ultimate form of propaganda. This propaganda works excellently because it might even convince some Turks that are unfamiliar with politics and history that the Turks have "issues" facing facts. It is written with a Turkish name, so the reader might assume, that it is probably true (establishing credibility). Then uses historical references that though are inaccurate, are mixed with half-truths, in order to convince the reader of his conclusion. He then uses examples to portray Turks as racists and hateful beings, and perhaps a Turk may have heard an example he provides once in his lifetime, then he might think "Well maybe he's right!" Even the article title "Denial of Racism" seems to show that Orhan Kemal Cengiz is most likely Armenian, since Denialism, denial, denier, and denialist, are the favorite words from Armenians who are trying to convince the world that the Turks are "denying the facts". Usually Armenians use phrases like "revisionist" or "denialist" to describe anyone who disagrees with their point of view.

A little bit of research of Orhan Kemal Cengiz reveals his many other Anti-Turkish and disinformation articles. Statements like this:

I've never heard of anyone refer to a law in their article. This is like in Stalin's Soviet Union the media saying "I know the media is being censored and if I say anything critical about Stalin, I'll be sent to Siberia, but still, I'm thinking about it...blablabla". If there was such a censorship in Turkey, wouldn't that statement alone be a violation of it?

Of course, the real purpose of this statement is to criticize Turkey, and to pretend that anyone who speaks critically of Turkey or it's government will be under a conspiracy of prosecutions of censorship. It is something continuously used by Armenian propagandists in order to make Turkey seem undemocratic, while at the same time they hide their own countries election-cheatings, parliamentary terrorist attacks, their own misuse of civil rights, the fact that minorities cannot hold office in Armenia, the fact that minorities are almost non-existent in Armenia, and of course their own terrible deeds of massacres and invasion of Azerbaijan.

A quick look at other websites, it appears that many others suspect him of being a racist Armenian (not to say that Armenians are racist, they are good people, so please do not assume I am generalizing), with quotes like

Another group of bloggers also seems to have met him in Turkey, and suspect him of criminal acts against Muslims. So one must wonder who exactly is, Orhan Kemal Cengiz, and why he makes such absurd claims about Turks; it brings into question his implied credibility that he is a normal average Turk living in Turkey. Now the suspicions of criminal acts are not conclusive and may as well has nothing to do with reality, but the possibility that he has, should not be discounted.

Conclusion

Orhan Kemal Cengiz is a propagandist, it is possible that his background is not of Turkish Muslim, and thus one should not assume that he is engaging in self-criticism but in criticism of groups that he dislikes or hates. His use of his Turkish name to promote self-criticism implies that he has alternative motives to promote anti-Turkism. One should not assume that he is a legitimate person with a clearer perspective on the issue based on his name. Furthermore, it should be assumed that because of the absurdity of his claims and arguments, that he most likely has a sense of hatred for Turks, this is speculation based on the arguments and statements he has made in his article.

It is important to note that Orhan Kemal Cengiz, may not be who he wants you to think he is. It may explain the harsh and exaggerated statements made in his article, and thus one should not assume that he is simply observant of Turkish society, but that he is using his observations to draw unfounded conclusions to promote a nationalistic or political agenda.