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Detention at the Airport by the Turkish Police
The moment I arrived at the airport in Istanbul, I was immediately arrested by half a dozen young police officers who appeared to be celebrating the catch. After a boring day, they had a Turkish author (again) from the USA. I was informed about three charges against me, all involving political criticism of Turkish government and its policies. Some consisted of distortions of my published articles, exaggerations, or words taken out-of-context. And most did not even belong to me; they belonged to anonymous people who visit my websites and post their political opinions and criticism at the forums.
They took me to a nearby police station. When I entered the room, I noticed a poster filled with flags under the title: Independent Turkish Republics. I have no problem with such a sense of Turkish idealism. In fact, years ago, when the Turkish nations declared independence from Russia, I hoped and promoted an aggressive Turkish policy to create a unified block. Unfortunately, Turkey missed such an opportunity. However, when I heard an officer's phone ring, I started getting a bit concerned. It was playing the Yeni Ceri march, “Ceddin deden, ceddin baban… hep kahraman Türk milleti…” (Your ancestors your grandparents, your ancestors your fathers. The Turkish nation has always been heroic…) At that point, I knew that I was among an openly racist police department. I have suffered from Turkish racism in many ways. For instance, my young brother Metin Yüksel, a legendary youth leader, was killed by Turkish fascists in 1979. I know first hand the evil of racism.
To my surprise and delight, the Turkish police were very kind and respectful. I am not sure how much of it was because of my American passport, but I think they had a radical change in attitude. They followed the legal procedure to the letter. They informed me about my right to stay silent, my right not to stay more than 24 hours in jail without going to the court. They were music to my ears; I felt as if I was dealing with an American police officer. The jail in which I spent the night was very clean. I laid down on the floor, reading the Newsweek Magazine, a book on Evolution and Intelligent design, and Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities. It was the best night ever I spent in a Turkish jail! Sure, this was a very low traffic police station and they could keep it clean. Regardless, I could not believe in such a change, since it was very different from my experience with the Turkish police and jails years ago. During my heydays, in 1977-1987, I was a frequent host of those jails and they were horrible. Some would have raw sewage passing through, rats mingling with detainees, and when I got out, I would always get lice as a present. Compared to those Turkish jails, this one was like a five star hotel. I commend the Turkish government for this great progress in respecting human dignity and rights.
Kurds, the Oppressed Minority
Well, I had also a bad experience, and should share that too. The chief of the police station treated me like a guest. He took me to his office and ordered food for me where I watched the Turkish TV for about an hour. This made me feel uncomfortable; I was kept unjustly yet I was feeling indebted to my captors. The weekly news program 32nd Day was on. The topic of the discussion was the chronic Kurdish problem. The panel had two Turkish politicians or authors. There was a good debate about the problem which was the making of the racist Turkish policy. The official racist ideology initially denied the existence of Kurds. Before 1970's, you could not find the word Kurds in the newspapers. The Turkish history text books still consider the Kurdish minority as non existent. Even the great Kurdish leader Salahaddin Ayyubi is described as a Turkish leader. Later, when denial became impossible, the racist Turkish oligarchy described them as Mountain Turks. They did not have a different language, there was no such a language called Kurdish.
Yet, they later shamelessly tried to ban the non-existent language and secured the ban of the language through an article in the Constitution of 1982, which was drafted by the generals who interrupted the democracy. The paranoid Turkish racism terrorized politically active Kurds through contra-guerillas, mafia, and Gray Wolf fascists. They kidnapped, tortured and assassinated numerous Kurdish authors and leaders. In a journal article titled “Yes, I am a Kurd,” I exposed the racist Turkish policy against Kurds. “My people are denied their identity, their culture, language, naming their own children, using their own land and living in freedom and security.” (See: http://www.yuksel.org/e/law/kurd.htm ) Kurds were even denied to celebrate their cultural holidays, such as, the Newroz (New Year). Its celebration was banned. When the racist policy politicized Kurds and led to the creation of various Kurdish political movements, including the terrorist PKK organization, the Turkish government was forced to recognize Newroz. Not as a Kurdish holiday, but a newly discovered ancient Turkish holiday! Since racism, like religion, is capable of turning smart people into stupid people, they could not even think about the name of the holiday: The name of the officially hijacked Kurdish holiday was made of two Persian or Kurdish words: New (new) Roz (Day). In the last decade, Kurds have received many rights, but at a huge cost, after losing the lives of tens of thousands and destruction of thousands of towns in South Eastern Turkey. The desire of Kurdish people for equality and dignity is still an ongoing struggle.
Back to the TV program. While listening to the panelists, the young police officer who had been treating me so nicely suddenly confessed: “If I did not have any expectation from life, I would get a machine gun and kill all of them.” The other police officer, who was as young and nice, joined him by declaring his solution for the Kurdish problem: “We should just adopt the ways of our Ottoman ancestors; we should erect hundreds of stakes on the streets and hang hundreds of them on them. Then, you will not hear any Kurdish problem!” Now I knew why their phones were singing Ottoman military marches.
I did not raise an objection. It would be futile to discuss the subject with a group of racist police officers while they had me in their possession. Ignorance and arrogance feed each other, and they had plenty of both. Well, later I would be engaging in a Socratic dialogue with a bored nationalist police officer who stood by curiously asking some questions through the bars. Like most racists, he was in denial of his racism. But, all his arguments were biased and Turkish-centered. According to him, there was no problem in forcing Kurdish people to say “My existence should be sacrificial to the existence of Turkishness” or “One Turk equals the World," or "Happy". Our discussion lasted about two hours until he was tired standing on his feet. I think I was able to penetrate his consciousness, show him the mirror and place major doubts about nationalism, which is one of the worst mental diseases of modern times.
Tried in two Continents in one Day
The Turkish police shuttled me between two courts, one in the Asian and the other in the European part of Istanbul, rushing to beat the deadline so that I would not stay in jail until the next Monday. I was not handcuffed during this travel; except briefly while I was taken to the car by a new police officer whom later was asked by his superior to open the handcuff.
I was also very impressed by the temperament of the judges and their just decision to release me and continue the court. When we arrived in Sultanahmet Adliyesi we rushed to the court's secretary's office. The judge happened to be sitting there. When he heard my name, he told the secretary that he knew where the thick folder was. He pointed at one of the shelves on the wall. Indeed the folder was filled with papers, that is, copies of the hundreds of articles posted by hundreds of people at the forums of 19.org.
The judge initially worried me by telling me that he would continue to ban my exit. But, he turned out to be a very reasonable person. Perhaps he was just bluffing. Not knowing his intention I asked for time for my attorney to come. The judge happily postponed the court to 2 pm in the afternoon. He read the illegal statements copied from my website’s forums. They were primitive and colloquial insult words that I never use. I am puritan and I never use cuss words even in my privacy. They were, according to the complaint prosecutor, insulting Turkishness, insulting the Turkish flag, insulting Turkish generals, insulting The Turkish National Congress, insulting Turkish judges, insulting Turkish prosecutors, and insulting Turkish police officers. The prosecutor had agreed with the informant citizen that I had violated Article 301 of the Criminal Code and a few others. The charges were based on a complaint letter and supportive documents of a cult member affiliated with Adnan Oktar aka Harun Yahya, whose name was recognized by my attorney who has been defending the victims of this cult leader. (This cult leader has used the repressive Turkish laws to ban 19.org and many other popular sites, such as wordpress youtube and richarddawkins.net. Following his instructions, his followers are spamming the Internet with ugly false accusations against me.)
As later Taj would comfort me during my return to London, "if they did not accuse you of insulting Turkish pizza, Turkish bath, and Turkish coffee, no problem." Well, I had problem with the accusations. First, I would never insult the Turkish race, since I am not a racist person. I believe that God allowed the children of Adam to diversify in color, culture and language in order to enrich our lives. I know that the superiority is not by color or ethnic group, but by righteous acts. Besides teaching philosophy at college, I was also teaching Turkish classes at my younger son's K-12 school in Arizona. According to the cultural attaché at the Turkish embassy in Washington, I was the first person in America that started teaching Turkish at a public K-12 school. I displayed a Turkish flag, its map, the picture of Mustafa Kamal Ataturk, and several beautiful pictures from Istanbul on the walls of the class I taught. Some parents traveled to Turkey just because of their children's exposure to the Turkish language and culture. Perhaps, those who accused me of insulting Turkishness would never serve the interest of Turkish people as much as I have done. If I had wanted to retaliate against what the racist Turks had done to me and my family, perhaps I should have joined the ranks of PKK terror organization. I am a Kurd whose mother tongue was banned by the racist Turkish laws, whose brother was killed by Turkish nationalists, and who was imprisoned and tortured for four years for expressing opposing political views, and was forced to serve in the Turkish military for 18 months as a “dangerous soldier.” As a rational monotheist, as a non-sectarian Muslim, I could not have acted as my racist enemies. I promote unity and friendship between Kurds and Turks in all my writings on the issue.
I have written numerous articles critical of authoritarian generals who meddle in the Turkish democracy, or have written satires critical of flag-worshiper jingoists, or criticized the unjustified ban on women's headscarf, but they were never crude insults as they were stated. "Those words could not have been written by me," I told the judge and the prosecutor on the bench. I was a good author and accusing me of authoring those primitive insults were in fact insulting to my profession. "If I wished to insult those things," I said, "I could have insulted in style, in a much better language."
Though I find some of the Turkish laws suppressive of freedom of expression, I am very pleased that the legal system and police conduct have dramatically improved for the better. When it became clear that most of the "criminal words" did not belong to me, but belonged to the forum members at www.19.org , I was blamed for not censoring the postings of Turkish or Kurdish people who had expressed insults to Turkish government and national symbols.
