TURKEY: Dink’s Commemoration & more – 23rd Jan 2024

Merhaba from Keswick Village! This is the Rorshok Turkey Update from the 23rd of January twenty twenty-four A quick summary of what's going down in Turkey.

On Thursday, the 19th, a group gathered in front of Hrant Dink’s Istanbul office to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the Armenian journalist’s assassination. Dink, founder of Agos newspaper, wrote about Armenian identity and the nineteen fifteen Ottoman massacre. He faced controversy and was convicted of 'insulting Turkishness' in two thousand four. Despite this, he upheld his vision of living together as equal and free people in this country. However, his ideology wasn’t welcomed by everyone. He faced threats by ultra-nationalists and even the National Intelligence Organization. Seventeen years ago, Ogün Samast fatally shot him as he left his office. Samast was a regular seventeen-year-old boy, and many believe that ultra-nationalists —maybe backed by the deep government—, manipulated the kid into killing Dink.

Last year, Samast got out of prison for good behavior. At the meeting, a member of the Hrant’s Friends association criticized this and pointed out that whoever hired Samastwas is still on duty in the government —but didn’t give names. Oya Baydar, another speaker at the commemoration, said that Dink's choice of peaceful advocacy made him a target for silencing. If he had been aggressive or defended unity with violence, he might not have faced such threats.

Speaking of the commemoration, as it happens with every kind of gathering, the government was against it. The Istanbul governorate shut down the metro station near Dink’s office to prevent people from attending the demonstration. It announced the news a day prior on Wednesday the 18th, and said that the tube would be closed between 2:30 and 5 PM. The gathering started at 3 pm. The governorate also didn’t give any reason for closing the station, and the metro simply passed by the station without stopping— a move that was called into question, as it was probably carried out because of the commemoration.

Let’s see what the President is up to these days. President Erdoğan said that the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, used Kılıçdaroğlu, its former leader, as a scapegoat and isolated him during the party congress to help Özgür Özel, the new head, win the party leader election. Erdoğan said that this was all a plot to make the CHP collaborate with the pro-Kurdish DEM Party, which Erdoğan says is connected to a terrorist group, namely the PKK.

However, in the past, when Kılıçdaroğlu was leading the CHP, Erdoğan accused him of having ties to the PKK as well. Erdoğan’s comments were put into question since now that the CHP has a new leader, the president might be trying to find ways to make him look bad in the public eye by saying he works for terrorist groups.

On Friday the 19th, in Diyarbakır's Kulp District, Burak Akeller, the District Governor, reportedly struck an imam with a microphone after Friday prayers for skipping a few lines in the Friday prayer sermon. On Sunday the 21st, the Interior Minister revealed that the imam skipped two whole paragraphs about the martyred soldiers who died fighting against terrorist groups. The Religious Affairs Directorate writes the sermon, expecting imams to read it all the way through. This happening in Diyarbakır, with a large Kurdish population, probably raised suspicions of PKK involvement.

Before the Interior Minister’s announcement, the Mil Diyanet-Sen, a religious workers union, said that Akeller berated the imam for the error and accused him of being a terrorist. The imam later got a medical report to prove the attack. The Mil Diyanet-Sen union for religious workers filed a lawsuit against Akeller and the Diyarbakır Governor's Office launched an investigation. The union’s version took off on social media and many sided with the imam. However, after the minister's statement, some started accusing the imam of supporting terrorist groups and knowingly leaving out the part about the martyrs. They think that the union and some social media trolls tried to get ahead of the story and impose its own version on the internet to cover it up.

Hafize Gaye Erkan, the head of the Central Bank, dismissed allegations that her father was involved in the management of the bank despite not being an employee. The allegations came up when Büşra Bozkurt, an employee at the Bank, accused Erkan's father, Erol Erkan, of dismissing her and mistreating employees. She said that he threatened to fire her for refusing to work late and alleged that Gaye Erkan dedicated a room to his father for private use. Governor Erkan denounced the "deliberate and untruthful news" targeting her family and the bank, vowing legal action.

However, Uğur Dündar, a renowned journalist, confirmed that Erkan’s family often visits the bank. He said that it was to help Erkan with his newborn baby. Many found it unprofessional and odd that Erkan’s family, non-employees, could visit the country’s Central Bank freely and called it an ‘alla turca’ way of doing business, as it involves nepotism.

On that note about Gaye Erkan… She has been in the United States, reportedly holding meetings to lure investments to the country for more than two weeks. It has started to raise eyebrows, as it’s odd that a government official leaves the country for this long. Some also speculated that this might have also created discomfort in the government, which could be the reason why allegations against her are popping up now.

Recall that Alper Gezeravcı was set to go to space on Thursday the 18th. However, SpaceX announced that it postponed the space journey to the 19th. It said that they had used the extra time to complete the pre-launch checklists and vehicle data analysis. Nonetheless, the space rocket reached the International Space Station On Saturday the 20th. Reportedly, Gezeravcı's first words in Space were, "The future is in the skies," a quote by Atatürk, the Turkish Republic's founder.

President Erdoğan marked this milestone as a historic moment in the country’s history. However, some people argue that, while Gezeravcı might be the first Turkish person to go to space, it doesn’t mean much to the country. They pointed out that Turkey simply paid SpaceX to take Gezeravcı to space as a tourist and the country didn’t build its own rocket or conduct its own research.

Still on the topic…The government often marketed Gezeravcı as the “The First Turk in Space”. However, some journalists revealed that he is actually the 7th Turk in space. Well, he is the first Turkish astronaut, but there have been other Turkic people in space before him, from other Turkic countries like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

Let’s tune into some projects by the opposition… On Friday the 19th, Evrim Rızvanoğlu, an Istanbul deputy of the opposition DEVA Party, proposed a plan to install water fountains in schools to reduce single-use plastics at the parliament. She also said that installing water filtration systems in schools would also tackle parental concerns about the cost of bottled water. She revealed that the DEVA Party plans a pilot project in Istanbul's Beyoğlu district.

Başak Demirtaş, the wife of imprisoned Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtaş, said that she was open to becoming the Democracy and Equality, or DEM, Party’s Istanbul mayoral candidate. The DEM Party, a pro-Kurdish party, hasn’t officially offered Başak Demirtaş to become a mayoral candidate yet.

Her husband, Selahattin Demirtaş, has been imprisoned since twenty sixteen, and he used to be the co-chair of the People’s Democratic Party, the predecessor of the DEM Party. He was popular among his party’s supporters, and Başak Demirtaş probably believes that her husband’s legacy would make her more trustworthy in the public eye and get the party some votes.

However, she emphasized that the party's goal is to "win" and not weaken other candidates. There are concerns that a DEM Party candidate could split opposition votes, and subsequently contribute to the ruling party getting the majority of votes in the election.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for joining us!

Hey, did you know that if you are listening to us on Spotify you can leave a comments or questions in the episode? Take a look at it, it's right there. The comments are private by default, and we won’t publish them. We might give you a shoutout in the next episode. Put something in there, go crazy! We'd love to hear from you!

Hoşça kalın!